Shield of Winter

Chapter 58

“KALEB KRYCHEK IS making me another offer!”

Vasic turned from where he stood between the rows of winter-dressed apple trees, playing stick slave for Rabbit, to find his empath tugging on her boots in the doorway to their cabin. Her face was flushed, her curls awry, and she’d pulled on his Arrow jacket like she always did now that they were home.

“As a counselor?” he asked when she reached him, referring to the resurrection of a pre-Silence employment option for Es; such therapeutic help was needed at a critical level as millions of people struggled to cope with the staggering changes in their lives. Ivy was already training under and being supervised by a cadre of human specialists and changeling healers.

But she shook her head, an unfolded letter in one hand. “He wants me to represent the empaths on the Ruling Coalition.” Her eyes were huge, the copper brilliant and the gold shimmering under the North Dakota sun.

“Not unexpected,” he said, cupping her jaw with his gauntleted hand. “You came up with the Honeycomb Protocol, and you seem to know every empath in the world.”

“Ha ha.” She poked his side. “I don’t know why I’ve become one-third of E-Psy Central.” The other two-thirds were Sahara Kyriakus and Sascha Duncan.

Sahara handled data while Sascha was in charge of the education of Es. Ivy, on the other hand, had slowly become the port of call for any E who had a problem, psychic or otherwise. She’d already had multiple dealings with the Ruling Coalition in that role.

“I do like it though,” she said now, “keeping an eye on them all, making sure no one feels isolated or overwhelmed.”

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Vasic made sure she was warm as they walked the snowy paths, Rabbit racing imaginary opponents in front of them. “What else did the letter say?”

Ivy made a face. “That I’d be paid by the rest of the ruling group.”

Vasic immediately saw the problem. “You wouldn’t be an equal at the table.”

“Exactly.” Ivy put the letter into a pocket of his jacket. “Any ideas?”

“Politics is Aden’s field of expertise. Let me ask him.”

His partner came back with an answer five minutes after Vasic ’pathed him, while Ivy was throwing a snowball at Vasic’s head. Ducking it, he got her in the leg with his own snowball before hauling her laughing face close for a kiss.

“Aden says you need to set up an E-Psy union,” he said when they parted, both breathless. “Ask the membership to pay a small percentage of their income to belong. That would cover your salary, as well as giving designation E funds to use to fight another attack such as the one that almost wiped you out once.”

It was a solemn reminder. “We’d have to have a vote,” Ivy said. “I don’t want to just assume I’ll be the leader of this union.”

“No one else,” Vasic said, “will relish the idea of sitting across from Krychek, Nikita, and Anthony.”

“Neither do I.” She’d do it though, because Vasic and Aden were right—designation E had to fight to make sure it was never again sidelined or buried. “Thank Aden for his idea. It’s a good one—I’ll talk to the others.”

Taking a trembling breath, she stroked her free hand down the gauntlet. It was covered by his jacket, but she could feel the hardness of the carapace. “How bad?” The question was a terrible one, but she had to ask it, had to know how much time they had together before he had to go under the surgeon’s knife.

His forehead touched hers. “Approximately seventy-two hours, maybe less if the power surges become more erratic.”

Ivy tried to stifle her sob, but she couldn’t, not this time. Burying her face against his chest, she held on to him with all her strength, hands cupped desperately around the flickering hope inside her. Please, she said, not sure to whom she was speaking, please don’t take him away from me.

There was no answer.

VASIC hated seeing Ivy cry. She was so strong, his empath. Day by day, week by week, she’d pushed on, determined and relentless in her belief that fate wouldn’t do this to them, wouldn’t so maliciously destroy their love. Now he held her, rocked her, aware of Rabbit nudging at her with his head. And he knew what he was about to ask her to do would cause her even more pain, but his Ivy was strong . . . and he needed her with him as he made good on a promise.

It had taken the elderly stonemason longer than he’d initially estimated to finish his commission, but he’d made it just in time. Vasic would never be able to wash the stain of his sins from his flesh, but at least he would go into the operating room as a man who’d accepted those sins and laid them bare.

“Will you come somewhere with me?” he asked after Ivy’s tears had gone quiet, her breathing raspy.

Wiping her face on the sleeve of his jacket, she looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “You know I’d go anywhere with you.”

First they dropped Rabbit off with Ivy’s parents. Then Vasic ’ported Ivy to a room at Central Command. She glanced around the spartan space with its single bed made up with military neatness, the only other piece of furniture a metal trunk at the end of the bed. “Is this your room?”

“I slept here.” Going to the trunk, he flipped it open to retrieve a piece of paper. He didn’t really need that paper, with all the names branded on his brain and backed up on a secure computronic drive. But he’d started writing the names on this list the day he’d understood exactly how he’d been used, what he’d done, and now the yellowed sheet was both a talisman and a physical reminder of the debt he owed.

Ivy put a hand on his shoulder where he crouched by the trunk. “What’s that?”

“A list of the people I was sent to erase.” He looked up, held her gaze; never had he lied to her about who he was, the things he’d done. Today, he told her the worst of it, his heart a block of ice. “Some were murdered by those whose Silence had broken, others were ‘accidents’ at the hands of out-of-control anchors, still others were the victims of serial killers the Council couldn’t afford to acknowledge.

“I had to make them disappear, get rid of any trace of their deaths.” He’d cleaned blood out of carpet, made bodies vanish into crematoriums, erased betraying particles of DNA, destroyed any other physical evidence. “I wiped these people out of existence, stole the peace of a final good-bye from their families.”

Gentle fingers stroked through his hair. “You remember each name,” she whispered. “That matters.”

“Not enough.” He rose, the list in his hand. “Someone once said to me that I had no right to rest until I could give the lost their names, set the record straight. I don’t want that kind of rest anymore,” he said, rage in his blood at the idea of leaving her. “But I can’t go forward without paying this debt.”

“I understand.” Taking the list from him, she unfolded it. “What can I do to help?”

Such a simple question. It threatened to break him. “Just be with me.”

Ivy nodded and slipped her hand into his. He took them first to a secure room that was the records hub when it came to births and deaths among the Psy. Using a password he’d been given by a fellow Arrow who’d had reason to have hacked the system, he logged in and uploaded the corrected files, ensured the changes were made across the entire system.

If a member of a victim’s family checked the records now, they’d find the truth, discover exactly how their family member had died. But that wasn’t enough. No one might ever check. I considered sending an e-mail to each family unit with details of the updated information, he telepathed Ivy, but some have no families . . . and others will not care. I’ll personally deliver the truth to the ones who will care, who’ve searched for that truth.

He held the clear honesty of her gaze. It could take as long as twenty-four hours. One of the final precious days before he placed his life in the hands of a surgeon who’d given him an eight to ten percent chance of survival.

Even if it takes seventy-two, Ivy replied, her expression both tender and fierce, we’ll make sure we reach every single one of them.

Vasic said nothing; there was nothing to say. His Ivy understood him.

Upload complete, he teleported them to a remote location beside a brace of staggering mountains, home to a stonemason who worked with his hands. “Oh, there you are!” the white-haired man called out. “You got my message, I see! I sent it as soon as I finished.”

They followed the sturdy-limbed artisan down a pebbled pathway swept free of snow. He eventually stopped beside a simple obelisk about seven feet tall, the stone a smooth black with glittering minerals wound through the midnight. “It’s lovely,” Ivy whispered, a fist gripping her heart. She knew without asking that Vasic had chosen the stone, taken great care to create a memorial haunting in its beauty.

“Yes, yes.” The stonemason smiled, smoothing his weathered palm over the stone with pride. “Each name, I do by hand. See? All perfect. I checked to make sure no mistakes.”

Regardless of the man’s words, Vasic spoke each name aloud from memory as he checked the obelisk, his hand intertwined with hers. With every name he spoke, he telepathed her the truth of that person’s death. Her eyes burned for all those who had been lost, many so young. And her heart, it broke for her Arrow who carried the weight of these losses on his shoulders in silent penance.

He spoke the last name and went quiet. Beside them, the stonemason surreptitiously wiped away a tear. “This is good, what you do,” he said into the quiet. “The heavens weep.”

Thanking the stonemason for his work, Vasic ’ported the memorial to a place of astonishing beauty on a high bluff that overlooked a serene aquamarine beach, waves rolling gently to shore and grasses waving in the wind. Instead of using his Tk to sink the foundation of the obelisk into the ground, Vasic dug for two hours with a shovel he’d left there earlier.

Ivy got on her knees and used her hands to clear away the dirt.

After it was done, they stood in silence for a long minute. “This isn’t enough,” Vasic said at last. “This place is isolated.”

Stroking his back, Ivy said, “No, Vasic, it’s beautiful.” A song of sorrow and peace. “To go public with this information is to risk other lives.” The Net was stable in one sense, but the psychological impact of the events of the past months—the past century—had left jagged cracks in millions. One more thing could tip an already wounded people over the edge of tolerance.

“The day will come when people are ready to confront the past,” she said, her throat thick. “On that day, we’ll make a public announcement, read each name aloud, make sure their stories are known.”

“I don’t want to cheat them, Ivy.” Vasic’s eyes held such raw emotion, she couldn’t imagine how she’d once thought him cold. “I don’t want to build a future on a broken promise.”

“You aren’t.” It was hard to speak past the knot choking her, because she knew he carried each and every name in his heart and his mind always. “This, what you’re doing, it’s what you can do at this moment in time. As the world changes, you’ll keep going.” She cupped his face. “I know you’ll never stop, never forget. We’ll come here as often as you need to, and we’ll bring the families to whom the truth matters. We’ll keep the promise, Vasic. Together.”

He didn’t answer, simply lowered his face to her neck, his arms coming around her. Ivy held him tight, held her Arrow who couldn’t cry, but who mourned all the same.

IT took them almost two days to personally visit those Vasic knew wanted the truth—because he’d kept track of every single one of the affected families. Ivy stood with him as he accepted their recriminations, their rage and sadness, and then she held the people who needed it. Others were too angry, would need time to come to terms with the truth.

That was their right.

As it was Ivy’s to spend these last hours before the operation making sure Vasic’s life was ordinary. A normal day in a normal life . . . or as normal as it could be when the man she loved was an Arrow. He deserved a normal day, one without blood and horror and darkness. He deserved a million such days and she wanted to give them to him.

Sitting on the stoop of the cabin, she hugged her knees to her chest and watched him go through a quiet, dangerous martial arts routine with Aden in a corner of the yard he’d telekinetically cleared of snow. His best friend hadn’t said a word since his arrival, his shields impenetrable and his face expressionless.

Zie Zen would also soon be here, Vasic scheduled to pick him up in another forty-five minutes. They’d have lunch together with her parents, and she’d make sure she laughed because Vasic hated it when she cried. And she’d continue to hope for the comm to chime or her phone to buzz.

So many people were working to the final hour to find another, less dangerous solution. Ashaya and Amara Aleine hadn’t yet been able to unravel the complexities of Samuel Rain’s invention, but continued to try. The original project team had never stopped its attempts at formulating an answer. Even the surgeon was completing simulated operation after simulated operation in an effort to alter the percentages.

Samuel Rain, however, had become a hermit.

“I’m sorry,” Clara had said to Ivy when she’d called the sympathetic woman this morning. “I’ve tried to get in, see him, but he’s intransigent. All I can tell you is that the medical scanners built into the room report he’s healthy. He continues to send out order requests for arcane equipment and supplies, all of which Zie Zen fulfills at once, but we have no idea what he’s doing with it.”

Ivy caught the subtext—Samuel Rain might be trying to do what he’d once done with such ease, and each failure could be driving him further and further into despair. “Has he . . . Is it a total breakdown?” Ivy’s fingers had clenched on the phone.

“He seems rational when he does communicate, but he barely communicates.” Clara’s voice had softened. “I’ll keep trying, Ivy. I know how important this is. But we can’t barge in; that’ll erode any trust he might still have in us.”

“It’s all right, Clara. I never wanted to harm Samuel in any way.” She’d truly believed he was strong and becoming stronger. “I hope he comes through this.”

Now, four hours after that call, she sat watching the man she loved move with a deadly economy of motion beside his best friend. Aden had treated the latest burn an hour ago but hadn’t had the equipment to totally remove the mark, and so it was an ugly redness on Vasic’s arm.

Fingers fisting in Rabbit’s coat, she said, “You know it, too, don’t you?” Rabbit had taken to following Vasic around, leaning up against his leg any time he stopped. Vasic didn’t rebuke their pet, always finding time to stop and touch Rabbit before going about his work again. But Rabbit wouldn’t be soothed, as Ivy couldn’t be soothed.

Her mate was dying and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.