Shield of Winter

Chapter 48

“IVY, STOP,” SASCHA said, using the same tone she used on recalcitrant juveniles in the pack. “Stop right now.” Panic beat in her—the other woman could easily stroke out, causing irrevocable damage to her brain. “Ivy.”

“There are too many, Sascha.” It came out thready. “I can’t stop, or they’ll swarm the defenders.”

Sascha grabbed Ivy’s shoulder, forced her physically around. “You stop right now, or I will telepath Vasic.”

“Not fair.” It came out mumbled, sluggish.

“Yes, well, you’re not exactly acting rationally.” She looked to Alice. “Can you get her to the medics?”

Nodding, the anthropologist rose to her feet with one of Ivy’s arms over her shoulders, her own around the empath’s waist, and staggered away. They were protected by Abbot and the Enforcement officers holding the line so the maddened couldn’t escape this pocket of insanity. Sascha watched long enough to make sure the two women were safe before returning to her task, automatically scanning for Lucas as she did so.

Her mate—claws out—was fighting beside a number of cops, taking out the more aggressive infected so the officers could get the uninfected and injured out. Vasic wasn’t visible, but since Ivy hadn’t raised the alarm, the teleporter must be safe.

“Terminal field,” she said to herself. “Terminal field. Figure it out.”

She tried every tactic in her arsenal, but all it got her was another bloody nose and a pounding in her ears that told her she’d soon be as bad as Ivy. “I am not giving up.” She refused to consign her daughter, any child, to a world overrun with vicious insanity.

That was when the Tk she’d chosen to focus on—on the theory his belligerence would make it easier to tell if what she was doing was working—looked straight at her . . . and teleported. Sascha hadn’t thought he was that strong, and maybe he wasn’t, but she was only twenty feet away and in plain sight. He was in front of her a second later, his hands shoving out as if to make her fly through the air to slam into the heavy- duty Enforcement combat vehicles. The impact would snap her spine.

Adrenaline took over. “Stop!” she yelled on the physical and psychic levels both. “You can’t do this!”

Blinking, he pushed out with his hands. Nothing. Staggered at her success, she almost fell victim to the meaty fist he swung at her face—except her mate was already there. Lucas took her would-be-assailant out with a clean punch to the jaw that left the Tk unconscious but alive.

“Kitten?”

“I’m fine.” Still on her knees, her heart a drum, she touched his calf. “Go, help the others.”

As Lucas returned to the fight, Sascha began to concentrate the terminal field on small, tight areas that didn’t weaken the defenders but eliminated the worst psychic threats. What she’d understood in that split second was that it wasn’t simply about telling an individual he couldn’t do something—it was about hitting his hidden emotional core to convince him he was incapable of the action.

Her nose didn’t bleed now, the pressure easing in her frontal lobe. This, this was what she was meant to be doing, the act as natural and as simple as breathing. And she understood why the post-Silence Council had wanted to eliminate empaths from the gene pool. Not simply because they were the personification of emotion, but because an E could strip power from Councilor and beggar alike.

IVY sat with nerves raw and teeth gritted in the back of an ambulance and listened to the fighting while an M-Psy told her that a blood vessel in her brain was critically close to rupture. “Whatever you were doing, stop it,” he said. “Or the next time, yours will be one of the corpses we body bag off the streets.”

Leaving her with those blunt words, as well as an order that she utilize pain-control mechanisms to ameliorate the agony in her skull, he went to deal with other injuries. Her psychic strain would heal on its own—all it would take was time. Time the world didn’t have, she thought, edging out of the ambulance . . . to see Vasic disable a man who’d been beating another to death with a broken chair leg.

Her throat filled with a raging scream she couldn’t allow herself to utter. He was so strong, so honorable, and he deserved happiness and peace, not this endless ugliness. Enough, she wanted to cry, he’s done enough! Let this gladiator rest. If only she could figure out the cure—

“You! This is your fault!”

Jerking around at the vituperative cry, she found herself facing a young woman on the other side of the secondary Enforcement barricade. She wore ordinary clothes but had a black band around her wrist. As did the man next to her . . . and the man beside him.

All three were staring at her.

A vicious telepathic punch.

Agony searing down her spine, she reacted in pure self-defense to suck out the cold rage that drove them. It poured into her, but she knew it wasn’t hers, that she could filter it to inertness. And though her vision was blurred from the assault, she nonetheless saw her attackers look at one another in confusion before melting into the crowd.

Worried they’d done further damage to her already traumatized brain, she went to find a medic when her mind shut down with icy finality.

THREE hours after the outbreak began and ten minutes after the street was stabilized, Vasic placed an unconscious Ivy in her bed. An M-Psy had confirmed she’d suffered no permanent injury, and Vasic had no intention of permitting that to change. “Stay with her, Rabbit.”

He petted the worried dog, then tugging a blanket over pet and mistress both, stepped out into the living area to speak to the others. “She isn’t going to do any more.” If he had to teleport her to a desert during the next attack, he would, regardless of her fury. “This is killing her.”

Sascha nodded where she sat on the sofa with her mate beside her. The DarkRiver alpha pair had both showered and were now eating. Sascha had expended so much psychic energy that she’d lost physical weight, her cheekbones slicing against her skin, while Lucas Hunter had fought with hot changeling energy side by side with Vasic.

Alice Eldridge lay curled up asleep on the other sofa. The scientist’s physical stamina was still low as a result of her time in stasis, but no one could say she hadn’t pulled her weight today.

Vasic grabbed a chair and sat down. He had no desire to eat, but he consumed nutrition bar after nutrition bar with methodical precision—he’d be useless to Ivy otherwise.

“I thought I’d discovered a solution to the pressure on the brain,” Sascha said, face drawn, “but the method I use to create a terminal field doesn’t work to encourage calm.” She thrust a hand through her hair. “There’s so much we just don’t know, don’t understand.” Eating the bite of pizza her mate held up to her lips, she chewed and swallowed. “I’ll stay, help. I couldn’t bear to go home knowing—”

“No,” Vasic interrupted. “You need to return to your territory.”

Scowling at his mate when she parted her lips to speak, Lucas Hunter put a nutrition drink in her hand and waited until she’d started drinking before turning to Vasic. “You want Sascha to train other cardinals?”

“Yes.” He finished off his fourth nutrition bar. “We need cardinals ready and able to effect the terminal field, and we need them now. Everything else can come later.”

Sascha put down the empty glass. “You’re talking about cardinals who’ve been told they’re flawed and of no use their entire lives,” she said with such passionate force, Vasic knew she’d been told the same. “It’ll take time for them to come to grips with the betrayal of it all.”

“Ivy almost killed herself today,” he pointed out, his jaw tense. “You’ve lost a fifth of your body weight, and Jaya is still at the hospital.”

Lucas completed Vasic’s train of thought, the DarkRiver alpha’s eyes nightglow in the muted living room light. “An empath’s instincts will always win out.”

Of that Vasic had no doubt. “Will you do it?”

“Of course.” Sascha closed her hand over Lucas’s thigh, her eyes bruised from the anguish and terror that no doubt blanketed the city. “But that’ll leave you with only Jaya, and she’s a medical empath. Ivy risks brain damage or death if she goes out.”

Vasic couldn’t trust himself to even think about losing Ivy. “We have to think long-term. If you die here, your knowledge dies with you.” He had to be ruthless, consider not the hundreds Sascha might save in the city, but the hundreds of thousands who’d die across the world. “I’m guessing using the terminal field will require a foundation of basic skills. No one else is qualified to assess and teach that.”

Lucas ran his knuckles over his mate’s cheek. “I know your instincts tell you to stay, but Vasic’s right,” the alpha said. “I’ve seen how hard you’ve fought to figure out each tiny crumb of practical knowledge. You know more than you think.”

“And,” Vasic pointed out, “you’re the most stable and well-known E in the world.” The psychological impact of that couldn’t be underestimated. “The other cardinals might struggle with feelings of betrayal when it comes to everyone else, but they’ll trust you to tell them the truth.”

“All right,” Sascha said into the quiet. “I’ll contact Chang first, since he already has the basic training.”

Nodding, Vasic waited only long enough for his psychic batteries to recharge a certain percentage before bringing in Aden to watch over Ivy while he ’ported the alpha couple and Alice Eldridge back to DarkRiver territory. Lucas and Sascha needed to talk to the wolves about turning the compound into a permanent training ground for empaths, and that discussion needed to happen as fast as possible.

Rabbit jumped off the bed and padded over to him when Vasic returned, a low whine in the back of the dog’s throat. Bending down, Vasic stroked the anxious animal with a firm touch. “Ivy will be all right,” he said. “I’m here to take care of her.”

Bumping his head against Vasic’s hand, the whine gone—as if their pet had understood Vasic’s reassurance—Rabbit scampered up to the bed to settle by Ivy’s side once more. Vasic checked her skin, found it warm, her lips curving at the press of his fingers against her pulse. “Vasic.”

Releasing a breath at that drowsy mumble, he said, “Sleep.”

But she struggled to lift her eyelids. “The others, did they . . .”

“No,” he answered, almost able to read her thoughts. “It appears Brigitte is another medical empath, but Isaiah, Chang, and the others are in the same position as you.” He’d just received a report that Isaiah had suffered a brain bleed, was in intensive care, but Ivy didn’t need to know that right now.

Bleakness in her eyes, her hand curling on the blanket.

He knelt down beside the bed, cradling her cheek and jaw with one hand, his other arm on the pillow above her head. “Sleep. Then rise strong to fight again.” That was what motivated her, and he’d use it without pity to help her heal. Even when he had no intention whatsoever of permitting her to cause herself such harm again.

Lids heavy, she closed her fingers over his wrist. “I love you.”

The words reverberated in him long after she fell asleep. Forcing himself to leave her some time later, he stepped out to the living area where Aden waited.

“The incoming cardinals will need Arrow shields,” he said to the other man. “Sascha’s organs would’ve shut down today if Lucas hadn’t realized how much energy she was burning and grabbed energy drinks from the medics.” The DarkRiver alpha had known because of the mating bond that tied him to Sascha on a psychic level.

Vasic didn’t understand how that bond worked. Neither did he comprehend the intricacies of the tie Kaleb Krychek shared with Sahara Kyriakus, but he knew he wanted the same with Ivy. “The Arrows,” he said, “will have to be trained to force the Es to stop and refuel.”

“We’re going to be spread thin.” Aden leaned against a wall. “We could request Krychek’s men take over.”

“No. Not until there are no more Arrows who can step in.”

When Aden raised an eyebrow at that flat response, Vasic said, “Abbot’s not the only one who’s more stable since the day he began working with his empath.”

“Yes,” Aden said. “Regardless of the development or not of an emotional connection—though the most stable are the ones who’ve formed a friendship with their Es at least.” His gaze was steady in the dim glow coming from the streetlamps outside, the room otherwise dark. “You’ve stabilized the most of all.”

Vasic thought of Ivy’s anger as she fought for him, her sweet sensual generosity, her smile, her courage. She was his anchor and his hope. It was as simple and as powerful as that. “We need to give others in the squad the same chance.”

“I’ll organize it. Silver Mercant’s network is now functional worldwide, and everyone—Psy, human, changeling—who can send help in an outbreak is doing so. The squad shouldn’t be as necessary on the front line as we’ve been thus far.”

Vasic looked out into the heavy dark of the night beyond the windows. Arrows might be able to step back for the moment, but these outbreaks were the first stones to fall. When the avalanche came, every man and woman in the squad would be needed to stand against it. And the empaths, he knew, would stand right beside them.

His Ivy would be at his side to the end . . . because the truth was, he couldn’t cage her, couldn’t take her choices from her, no matter his fury and his fear. It would break her. “The ones who attacked Ivy today.” His blood iced. “Did you track them down?”

“It’s been taken care of.”

“You can’t protect my sanity by destroying yours.” His partner had already done far more than anyone could’ve ever expected in managing to keep Vasic alive this long. “It’s not necessary any longer.”

Aden didn’t answer directly. “The breakaway Venice group,” he said instead. “They’re asking to be placed on active duty.”

“They’ve always been on active duty.” Having defected from the PsyNet using great care to hide their tracks, the Venetian element of the squad had been feeding information to other Arrows and running operations as long as they’d been in existence.

“They want to respond to outbreaks,” Aden clarified. “If I don’t give the order, you know Zaira will simply make that decision on her own.”

“Yes.” Her independence of thought was why the other Arrow had been given charge of the Venice operation. “Zaira also knows they can’t risk being recognized.” Each and every Arrow in the Venice compound was officially dead.

“She’s put forward a proposal that they be called in on night outbreaks in Europe, where her men and women can work with only a minimal disguise.” Aden rubbed his forehead in an unusual sign of strain. “Venice also holds some of our most broken.”

Vasic thought of Alejandro, the male’s brain reset by an overdose of Jax so that he couldn’t deviate from a command—but only if that command came from Zaira. Alejandro couldn’t be helped, the damage done to his organic brain, but what of some of the others? “A civilian won’t have any reason to ask whether or not an Arrow is supposed to exist,” he said. “We can slowly pair up the Venetians with their own Es.”

Aden continued to look out the window. “That’ll require they rejoin the Net. That can be done covertly, and Zaira’s team is ready to do so, even with the current problems . . . but they will stay in exile as long as necessary.”

Until, Vasic thought, the squad no longer needed the escape hatch. That, however, might no longer be an option. “Is their network clean?”

“No signs of the infection, but a network populated only with Arrows was never going to be balanced,” Aden responded. “Zaira suspects it’s starting to show hairline fractures. There’s no urgency yet, and it’ll become a moot point if they rejoin the Net. For now, they continue to act as our eyes and ears in the wider world.”

Calling in a teleport from another Arrow, Aden left only minutes later to speak to Kaleb about making up a list of dormant cardinal Es. It left Vasic free to concentrate on Ivy. She lay silent in a deep sleep. Rabbit was settled against her back, his small body rising and falling in quiet huffs.

Scanning her using the gauntlet, Vasic noted that the damaged and torn blood vessels the emergency medics had treated—with Aden having double-checked the work—were already healing. Her mental state however . . .

Vasic couldn’t forget how defeated she’d looked when he’d found her in the ambulance. His Ivy, who had fought for him, who never gave up, had appeared in splinters during her single, bittersweet moment of consciousness as he lifted her in his arms.

Eyes dulled and bloody, she’d said, Why can’t I do this? What if what they did to me in the rehabilitation center broke me permanently?

“You are not broken,” he said in a harsh murmur as he got into bed and gathered her close. “You’re the strongest woman I know.” A woman who refused to surrender, regardless of the near impossible odds.

A woman who had beaten the numbness that had been swallowing him alive.

A woman for whom he’d fight death itself.