by Nalini Singh
He was shot.
He had a feeling the projectile had been meant to hit his skull, take him out in a single split second, but he'd listened to his instincts and moved at the last moment. The bullet entered through the back of his neck and punched out the front. He knew it missed his spinal cord because he still had functionality in his arms and legs, but from the blood spraying out, it had hit a major artery.
Drawing very slightly on Vasic's telekinesis because he didn't want to weaken his friend--who was currently with Zaira's team--he clamped a hand over the gushing wound and, managing to stay on his feet, projected a shield that stopped the second bullet. I'm hit, he telepathed to Abbot; the Tk had been waiting for him at the end of the park so they could do a discreet 'port back to the valley.
His attacker took off at high speed.
Abbot 'ported in, took one look at Aden, and didn't bother to give chase. Placing his hand on Aden's shoulder, the other man took him directly inside a medical facility maintained by the squad. Aden's knees buckled on arrival, the blood loss critical. But even then, his mind, it tried to reach out to the one person for whom he was the first priority, the one person who was his own.
Except they weren't truly bonded and with his blood pumping out with each beat of his heart . . . she was too far.
*
ZAIRA felt the faint whisper of Aden's psychic touch just as they cleared the final property on their list, but when she responded, she felt only blankness. Nothingness. Ice infiltrated her veins. Grabbing Vasic's arm, she said, "Aden--go to Aden!"
The two of them found themselves in a white corridor splattered with blood a heartbeat later, two nurses and a doctor working on the man who lay on the floor, his skin pale and his white shirt saturated with red where it hadn't been cut away by the medical personnel. "No." It was a keening whisper.
Dropping to her knees, she found his bloodied hand, gripped it. "No." You don't get to go. You don't get to leave me alone.
There was no answer from the one person who had never let her down.
"We need to get him into the OR!" The doctor looked up. "Vasic, teleport him in."
That quickly, Aden's touch was gone from her hand, the medics 'ported away with him. Kneeling on the floor staring at the red on her palm, Zaira felt the rage inside her rise in a murderous wave. She got slowly to her feet, and by the time Vasic returned, she was heading toward Abbot, the younger Tk standing shell-shocked in the hallway.
"I need to get Judd," Vasic said. "He may be able to do what the medics can't."
Zaira heard him through the rage. She didn't know Judd well, had believed him another Tk. Clearly, he was something more. Vasic was gone on the next breath, and all she wanted to do was annihilate the person who had hurt Aden.
*
VASIC couldn't teleport to Judd, not with the way the other man's shields were structured, so he did the next best thing: got himself to SnowDancer territory, then called Judd. "Aden's hit. Dying."
Judd asked for a telepathic visual and, using it, teleported himself to Vasic's side, his face set in harsh lines. "What can I do?"
Taking him back to the operating room, Vasic watched the Tk-Cell move in to attempt to repair the damage to Aden's artery and veins. It was so severe the medics couldn't plug the hole--Vasic had heard one doctor use the word "shredded," and from what Vasic had seen, the bullet had been designed to cause maximum damage.
Judd might not be able to do much, either, his ability to move the cells of the body a slow and careful process that might not beat the ticking clock on Aden's life. But each time the monitor beeped, it meant Aden was alive.
Vasic listened to that monitor for too long.
By the time he realized he hadn't told Zaira what was happening and went back out into the corridor, she was gone.
PSYNET BEACON: BREAKING NEWS
Aden Kai has been shot. Unconfirmed reports are coming in from those who witnessed the shooting. All state it was a killing hit.
"His jugular was torn wide open, or more likely his carotid, maybe both," one witness stated. "Look at all the blood on the grass. It just gushed out."
"No one can survive that," said a medic who was on his way to a shift at a nearby clinic at the time of the shooting. "He's dead."
The Beacon is attempting to make contact with the squad for verification.
Chapter 76
ABBOT HADN'T WANTED to leave Zaira alone in the leafy and sunshine-laden park where Aden had been shot, but she gave him no choice. "You need to cover Aden's security shift in the valley. Go."
The younger Arrow hesitated, his sea blue eyes scanning the people who'd drawn back from the center of the scene at their arrival. "You're not safe here alone."
That was what she was counting on. "I'm giving you a direct order."
"Yes, sir."
Staring at the blood on the grass after he left, Zaira crouched down to touch her fingers to it. It was still wet, the speed of events fast enough that the inevitable gawkers hadn't stepped close enough to contaminate the scene. Driven by rage, her first thought had been to track the shooter, but then she'd realized there was an easier way. If this individual had shot Aden in broad daylight, then he or she was brazen enough to try again. A second public attack on an Arrow would cement the conspirators' point that no one was safe.
So she'd give them an easy target.
Only Zaira didn't play by the same rules as Aden. She didn't only do surface telepathic scans as she waited while ostensibly checking the evidence; she went as deep as she possibly could without causing damage or alerting her targets. Part of her was still thinking, still able to remember that if she smashed the shields of blameless people, it would undo all the work Aden had done to place the Arrows in a position where the public didn't fear them so much that they sought to hunt them out of existence.
We can protect ourselves, but what of the Carolinas, the Tavishes, and the other children we don't even know about yet? If people start to fear Arrows, it's a short step to start eliminating those who might grow up into Arrows.
Aden's words. Words she could still hear through the roar of rage. As she could feel her small breakfast companion's heartbeat as she sat so vulnerable and happy beside her. As she could hear the hope in Pip's voice when he asked her when he could go play with Jojo again.
She would keep the innocents safe. She couldn't promise the same for the guilty.
A few people dared come closer as she worked, including a man who said, "Is Aden Kai all right? We were some distance away so we couldn't help, but we saw the shooter."
"He's fine." No matter what, Aden needed to remain invincible in the minds of the public. "Can you describe the shooter?"
"A runner. Male, I'm fairly certain. I'm sorry, that's all I saw."
The witness was human, his shields paper-thin.
Her deep scan of his mind told her he wasn't lying. So she scanned the next person and the next and the next, frustrated only by the changelings' tough natural shields and by those Psy who had good enough shielding that her intrusion would be noted.
Those people she evaluated visually.
Two were mothers with very young children in prams, the third an elderly woman who walked with the aid of a cane. She felt confident in eliminating them from the suspect pool, though she took mental snapshots of their faces so she could trace their identities should it become necessary.
Every other individual who came within her proximity was subjected to a deep scan that told her all their secrets, all their nightmares. She didn't care about any of it, discarding all data that didn't relate directly to Aden and the attempts on his life.
He wouldn't agree with her choice, would say she was violating people. Zaira didn't care. Not when he was lying bleeding in a hospital bed. Not when his mind had disconnected from her own as his psychic abilities shut down. Not when his blood still glistened on the grass in front of her.
Eyes burning with what she told herself was pure rage, she hit on another changeling mind.
This one was a healthy adult male in running clothes. That alone didn't make him guilty; there were a number of runners milling around, the park having a well-utilized track. Because she couldn't use her telepathy to clear him, she watched him with her peripheral vision while she used a small scanner she'd grabbed off a medical tray as a prop, as if she was gathering data from the scene.
The truth was that the tool was meant for DNA scans and loaded with the profiles of those in the squad; all it flashed was Aden's name, his blood painting the grass. The rage boiled hotter with each iteration of his name, each reminder that he'd been hurt, might be dying.
When she continued in her apparent work without doing anything flashy or interesting, the crowd began to disperse, until only a white-haired human couple and the changeling runner were left. She didn't discard the elderly pair until a deep scan showed them as having no ulterior motives. The changeling made no aggressive moves, but she stayed within his reach, within shooting distance.
Her patience was rewarded five minutes later as he slid his hand surreptitiously to the back of his shorts. By the time he brought out a sleek gun complete with silencer, she was already moving. Her body slammed his to the ground as his finger touched the trigger, the shot thudding into a nearby sculpture. The human pair screamed while the shooter grunted and tried to punch her in the face, but Zaira had calculated his muscle mass and strength in the time he'd watched her, had already devised countermeasures against his greater strength.
She was also powered by rage.
Avoiding the blow, she smashed a single fist down at the precise angle to do maximum damage.
Blood splurted. His eyes altering from human blue to a slitted black, he swiped at her with a clawed hand. She flipped out of reach and deliberately waited until he was almost upright to kick out with one booted foot and dislocate his knee. He crumpled to a sideways position on his knees with a scream of fury, this changeling who had shot the only person who had ever loved her.
Not giving him time to recover, she kicked again, smashing his jaw.
Another kick, this one to his ribs. She deliberately avoided his head, not wanting him unconscious, wanting him to feel this, feel the cold rage that drove her. She saw others join the human couple, saw phones turned in her direction as people recorded the violence, but that didn't stop her. Today, Aden wasn't there to stop her, either, his solid, stable presence missing from her mind.
The aloneness howled, the rage creature wanting blood, wanting to brutalize this man who might have stolen Aden from her forever.
Taking the shooter to the ground once more with another well-aimed kick, where he lay on his back and struggled to breathe through his broken nose and shattered jaw, his face smeared red, she stepped on one thick wrist so he couldn't get her with his claws, and when he lifted his other hand to slice at her, kicked out with her boot at an angle that would've broken a Psy male's bones.
Changeling bones were tougher, so the bone didn't break, but she did enough damage that his hand didn't seem to work as it should. When he scrabbled at her, there was no power in it, his claws not even penetrating the tough fabric of her uniform pants.
He was totally at her mercy.
When she glimpsed his form begin to shimmer, she said, "Don't shift." Her own gun in her hand, pointed directly at him. "You do and I'll shoot directly into the shift." She didn't know exactly what that would do, but she had a feeling it would be fatal. "It'll be interesting to see if the pieces of you that end up scattered all over this park will be from your human or your animal form."
The man's body solidified, the threat clearly finding its mark.
She thought about how to torture him and a hundred different methods popped into her mind. Sliding away her gun and lifting the foot not on his wrist--which she'd slowly crushed and which had to be causing him agony, she placed it very carefully on his sternum and met his gaze. The torture was psychological this time.
She had no intention of crushing his ribs into his internal organs. To do so would equal too quick a death. But he believed she did, terror a slick sheen over his eyes. Giving him just enough time to truly fear her, she took her foot off his sternum and went down on her haunches without removing the boot she had on his mangled wrist.
Then, dropping her voice into a range that would be inaudible to their audience but which this changeling would hear, she said, "You have two choices. To die quickly or to die slowly and in intense agony. If you choose the latter, it doesn't matter if you later beg me for mercy. I won't have mercy. I don't know how. I was trained that way."
She saw from his expression that he believed her.
Speaking through the blood that had bubbled down to his mouth, he said, "Quick." His voice was slurred as a result of the damage she'd done to his jaw.
"It doesn't work that way," she said, grinding her boot into his broken wrist without doing anything other than slightly shifting her weight.
A scream erupted from his throat, causing their silent audience to flinch. Waiting until he'd settled, she said, "Tell me what you know." She didn't elaborate--there was no need for it. And this one had to know something. His hit had been too up close and personal with too high a risk of capture. He was either a leftover Pure Psy fanatic or part of the conspiracy.
Instinct told her it was the latter. He hadn't intended to become a martyr; his plan was to escape. And there was the fact that the squad had picked up certain scuttlebutt in the dark highways of the world--seemed like the contract killers were turning down major pay packets at any whisper a hit might involve an Arrow. Too many of their fellow killers had been eliminated or taken hostage for the money to be worth it.
And even those who still believed in Pure Psy were looking askance at recent events. The latest whispers tagged by the squad said the fanatics had started to mistrust their new ally when it was only the Pure Psy people who seemed to be dying--without any observable change in the status of Silence in the Net.
The honeymoon was over in those quarters.
As a result, the conspiracy had likely run out of disposable bodies and been forced to use some of its own. "Talk," she reiterated coldly when he didn't say anything.
"They'll kill me."
"So you choose a slow death." Retrieving a blade from her boot, she had the point at his eyeball with such speed that he blinked, not realizing the blade was so sharp it would split his eyelid.
When it did, blood dripping into his eye, he said, "No."
"Then talk." She bent closer, always keeping an eye on his limbs. His shattered jaw meant he couldn't bite her, but she didn't disregard that, either.
As it was, he knew he was beaten, saw living death in her eyes. He spoke in a near-subvocal murmur and though his words were a touch garbled, she understood it all. And she knew he'd given her everything he had on the wider conspiracy, his fear of her too pungent to allow for a bluff. But she had one more question to ask him. "There's a changeling child. About two years old. Her name is Persephone."
His throat moved, Adam's apple prominent. "She's dead," he whispered.
The rage in Zaira wanted to stab the blade into his eyeball. "You saw the body?"
A shake of his head. "I helped move her to a new holding area, and after, I was told she died in the night." A touch of horror in his expression. "I never agreed with keeping the kid."
But he hadn't helped the small, vulnerable girl, which made him just as culpable. "Tell me the location of the new holding area, and any other locations you know."
He gave her three addresses.
"Quick," he said at the end, his breathing strained and pupils hugely dilated. "You promised quick."
Zaira let the tip of the blade touch his eyeball. "I lied." She wanted to torture him until he begged for her to end it. The fact that they were in public didn't matter. The fact that people would see her as a monster didn't matter. Icy rage had morphed into a red-hot murderous anger that shoved at her to rip him limb from limb. Smash in his skull as she had her parents'. Erase
his face.
Sunlight glinted on the ring on her finger as she went to wrench back her captive's head with a grip in his hair.
If you didn't have anger inside you, you'd be inhuman.
I refuse to accept that my Arrows are frozen in amber.
I have faith in your will. Fight for us.
The memory of Aden's voice, his absolute faith in her, halted her when she would've punctured the changeling's eyeball in the first act of brutalization. The rage monster in her hesitated.
Don't go. Don't leave me alone.
I have faith that the girl who chose to stop crying at three years of age has the will to conquer this demon.
I like you. You're nice.
Aden just needs you.
There is a reason every Arrow in Venice, even the most recalcitrant senior, would die for you.
Blind faith. And love.
Breathe, Zaira. Take a minute and just breathe.
Remembering Ivy's lesson through her fury, she focused on the ruby on her finger, the ring that Aden had given her because he wanted to keep her, and took a breath. Another.
Aden loved her.
All those other voices were of people who liked her, too, who thought she had value as a person. If she did this, if she surrendered to evil, she'd lose them all. Persephone would die. And if Aden survived, he'd wake to find himself alone because the rage would've swallowed Zaira whole: she'd promised him he'd never be alone, that she'd always be with him . . . that she'd be his partner.
You aren't locked in that cell anymore. You live in the light.
Aden was gone from her mind and it hurt. It hurt. But he'd marked her regardless, and she clung to the echo of him, holding him possessively tight. Don't you go, she said along the dead telepathic connection she kept trying to force open. Don't you leave me. I'll become a monster if you do. It was a threat that held endless need. I can only be human if you're there to teach me.
No answer, but the rage creature inside her was leashed. Looking down, she found herself facing a gaze full of terror, one eye red with blood that had dripped from his split eyelid. She'd broken him, obtained the data the squad needed. There was no need to kill him. Flipping the blade, she tapped his temple with the back end, putting him under.
