Tangle of Need p-11

by Nalini Singh

  Snuggled in a towel afterward, she sat while he dried her hair, then held on to him as he picked her up and carried her to the bed. Where he cuddled her close and ran his hand down her spine until she knew that held safe in his arms, the woodsmoke and citrus bite of his scent in her every breath, she’d have no nightmares.

  “Te amo.”

  She was on the verge of sleep, her eyes heavy, but she heard the words of love he spoke, her beautiful black wolf … and she knew this night would break the last remaining fragment of her heart.

  Chapter 68

  VASIC WAS A killer. It was what he’d been programmed to be since he was a child pulled into the Arrow Squad. He’d been so confused, so scared. Because he’d still felt then, had known even as a four-year-old that the people who’d come for him weren’t people he wanted in his life.

  He’d escaped them, too. Multiple times. No security could contain a Traveler. That was why he’d been placed in the “care” of another Arrow, the only other Tk-V he’d met in his entire lifetime—and the only one who had understood how Vasic’s mind worked well enough to trap him.

  “Don’t you feel anything?” It had been an innocent question from a child to the man who would become his father, trainer, and jailor.

  “Emotion is a weakness. You’ll be Silent soon enough, then you’ll understand.”

  Vasic hadn’t simply become Silent, he’d become even more an Arrow than his mentor. Patton had been on Jax, the drug used to control Arrows, so long that he’d become a weapon that was aimed, pointed, and told who to kill. And when his performance began to slip, he’d been put down like a dog.

  Vasic hadn’t been on Jax anywhere near as long as Patton, and so, in spite of what many believed, he could still think for himself. Jax might create perfect soldiers, but it also eventually numbed the minds of those soldiers. Vasic’s mind remained razor sharp, his abilities honed to a lethal edge—after all, as a Traveler, he was part of Designation Tk, teleportation not his only skill.

  Now, Vasic turned from the view of the Pacific afforded by this remote headland, the grass reaching the tops of his combat boots, and said, “You have Henry?”

  “Yes.” Aden’s gaze was on the horizon, the sky a pale gray that merged into the black lick of the sea, sunrise at least an hour away.

  “How?”

  “I didn’t look for Henry,” Aden answered in an apparent paradox. “I looked for medics trained in treating severe burn injuries who’d disappeared off the grid.”

  And that was why, Vasic thought, Aden led the Arrows. “Send me the markers for the teleportation lock.”

  A quiet knock on his mind, a request for entry. When he opened the telepathic channel, Aden sent him detailed images of the sterile glass chamber in which Henry lay, his body scarred by X-fire. The medic from whose mind I took the images will not sound the alarm—he has no awareness that I infiltrated his shields.

  “Henry,” Aden added aloud, “has never thought long term, so the fact he left his medics unshielded was a foreseeable error, but I expected better from Vasquez.”

  Vasic considered what they knew of the man who was Henry’s general, weighed it against his acts to date. “No matter what he believes, reason alone doesn’t drive him.” And such a man made mistakes. “What about Ming?”

  They both knew Henry had had help in his more recent military activities—the former Councilor wasn’t creative enough to have come up with strategies such as the sonic weapon that had turned the changelings’ sensitive hearing against them. It was impossible to prove if Ming had also had a hand in the evolution of the idea to cripple the Net by murdering anchors, but the likelihood was high.

  “We risk a fatal Net cascade if we eliminate two former Councilors so close together,” Aden said, his hair lifting in the salt-laced wind coming off the crashing waves.

  Not every Council death, Vasic knew, had such an impact. It depended on the surrounding circumstances. Marshall Hyde’s assassination had caused a minor ripple at most. However, right now, the devastation in Cape Dorset had the populace reeling. Another shock could shatter a number of fragile minds. However—“Henry is already dead as far as most people are concerned.”

  “Exactly. His execution should leave the Net relatively unscathed.”

  “When do you want me to finish the job?”

  Aden’s eyes met his, the dark brown irises having a sense of life in them that Vasic no longer saw in his own. “I’m not your controller, Vasic. If we’re to do this, we’ll do it together.”

  “That’s not rational. It heightens the risk of discovery.”

  “Perhaps,” Aden said quietly, “we shouldn’t always be so rational. Judd wasn’t rational when he gave up everything on the slim chance that his family would find sanctuary with SnowDancer, and he has a life.”

  While they existed.

  Vasic knew he would never have a life like Judd, was too damaged, but Aden had a chance. “I’ll get it done,” he said, and teleported out before the other man could stop him.

  Arriving at his quarters, he pulled a black cloak around his body, the hood and over his head, tugging the cowl forward until it shaded his face to dark invisibility. There was no need to give Henry’s men, Vasquez in particular, a specific target—the more confusion, the less effective Pure Psy would become.

  A heartbeat of concentration on the images Aden had retracted from the mind of the burns specialist, and he was standing beside Henry’s sleeping form, the teleport so precise the air didn’t stir, the proximity alarms quiet. Shadows filled the muted light of the room, until he was simply another part of the darkness.

  The technician beyond the glass had no inkling of an intruder, his eyes on a monitor. Teleporting behind him, Vasic disabled the older man with a simple, painless nerve pinch that would keep him under for approximately an hour, before returning to the glass room filled with the hushed pump of the machines that kept Henry Scott’s mangled body alive, his breath a harsh, repetitive wheeze.

  X-fire wasn’t like normal fire, the damage it caused so extensive and deep it wasn’t always possible to totally repair. Henry, he saw, had lost his legs, part of an arm. The limbs must have been brushed by the cold fire and disintegrated before the former Councilor was ’ported out. Part of his stomach was visible through the medical gown, the teak color of his flesh appearing to be merged with the melted and bubbled black of some kind of plas. His face was relatively unscathed—except for the burn across his cheek and mouth that had taken his lips. Perhaps enough of a change to stop a teleporter who locked on to people as well as places, if Henry’s shields hadn’t been so strong.

  Seeing this would disturb Sienna Lauren.

  It was an abrupt thought, about a girl he’d met only once—when he’d reported in to Ming as an eighteen-year-old newly minted Arrow. She’d been a child, with a look in her eyes he’d recognized on a visceral level. His response to her had been one of the first signs that he wasn’t Patton and never would be, the knowledge a gift that had allowed him to survive this long.

  Now, having been watching the heart monitor, he glanced down … to see the former Councilor’s eyes staring up at him.

  “No,” Henry rasped, his vocal cords clearly scorched.

  “Any chance that we may have let you be,” Vasic said, “was lost when you attempted to destroy the Net itself.” The Arrows would not let anyone shatter the Net.

  Reaching out with the part of his mind that wasn’t as elegant as his teleportation ability, but worked as well, he snapped Henry’s neck even as he unplugged the machines monitoring the other Psy’s broken body. The use of Tk was negligible, the effect catastrophic. Henry died in the silence he’d wanted to create in the Net, and Vasic stood guard until the former Councilor’s body was cold to the touch, with no hope of revival.

  He teleported to the headland to find Aden seated on a bench someone had placed there so long ago, it had become part of the landscape. “It’s done.” Shoving back the hood of his cloak, he walked to the very e
dge of the cliff, the shimmering fire of the sky speaking of a luminous sunrise. “We must find and eliminate Vasquez to completely disable the Pure Psy machinery.”

  “Vasquez is smarter than Henry.”

  “We’ll find him.” Arrows always found those they hunted.

  “I won’t let you die, Vasic.” Aden’s voice was quiet.

  Vasic didn’t answer, but they both knew Aden couldn’t stop him. Once Vasic had paid his debts, once the Net was safe, all he wanted was peace. Forever.

  Chapter 69

  EMOTIONALLY BATTERED BY a tender, haunting night that had been followed by the possessive wildness of her lone wolf’s loving when morning broke—a loving she hadn’t been able to resist, even knowing it was wrong—the last person Adria anticipated seeing when she opened her door to a knock a few hours later, was Martin.

  Too stunned to speak, she just stared at the sandy-haired man who had once been her lover. She didn’t know what she’d expected if they did ever meet again, but it wasn’t this muted sense of loss, slivers of memory floating through her mind. As if he’d been part of another lifetime.

  “What are you doing here?” she finally asked, searching for but not finding whatever it was that had drawn her to him so long ago. In spite of the pain he’d caused her, she knew that in the final calculation, he wasn’t a bad person—it was simply that there was no strength in him, and she needed that in her man.

  “I wanted to talk,” he said in a hesitant voice, his hazel eyes uncertain. “I won’t blame you if you say no, but I’m asking.”

  Stepping out, she closed the door behind herself, the cell phone she’d returned to the room to retrieve in hand. “Let’s walk outside.” No matter what the status of her relationship with the black wolf who refused to allow her to set him free, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, have Martin’s scent inside her room. It would be a betrayal.

  Martin didn’t say anything until they were in a part of the forest that overlooked the lake closest to the den, its waters smooth as glass today. Several packmates walked along the water’s edge, played in the shallows in wolf form, or sat on the pebbled shore, but there was no one nearby, no chance anyone would overhear their conversation.

  Leaning up against a sturdy young cedar, she ran her gaze over Martin. He was … different, the changes subtle but present. As if he, too, had been broken and put back together, his face holding a maturity it hadn’t had the day she’d slammed the door in his face. And his eyes, they were turbulent with emotion when they met her own. “I came to say what I should have a year ago.”

  Still unsure about where this was going, she simply waited.

  “I’m sorry, Adria.” Stark words, his expression devoid of pretence, of the stiff dignity that had always been his armor. “Sorry for being a bastard and sorry for not having the guts to face up to what I was doing to us.”

  It wasn’t anything she’d ever expected to hear, but she had the words to answer him. “Thank you for saying that.” It meant something that he’d made the effort to find her, to speak an apology she knew couldn’t have come easily. “But it wasn’t all your fault—I played my part.”

  “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t absolve me of blame I full well know I deserve.”

  “I’m not,” she said, because she understood the courage it took to face your own failings, and she would not belittle Martin’s.

  “But”—she held his gaze, let him see the truth in her eyes—“it’s done with, nothing you need to carry like a millstone around your neck.” Her life right now might be a turbulent storm, but the chapter with Martin, she’d closed long ago. It was part of a past that had shaped her but no longer caged her. “I hope you find happiness.” The wish was a genuine one, for a man who had once made her laugh.

  Closing the distance between them, he touched a hesitant finger to her cheek. “I never knew what I had until you were gone.” An unspoken question, his eyes shadowed with loss and a tormented guilt both.

  “We’re a piece of each other’s history now, Martin,” she said gently, the strength to be kind coming not from her aggressive soldier instincts but from the part of her that understood compassion did not have to mean weakness. “In the past.”

  His gaze betrayed a regret that silvered the most poignant emotion through her, but found no twin. As Riaz had seen what seemed like a lifetime ago, she had never loved Martin the way a predatory changeling female should love her man—until it was a wild howl in her blood, a near-painful craving and a tenderness that burned. Still, they had not always been adversaries, so she didn’t hurt him by rejecting his embrace before he left.

  “Good-bye,” Adria whispered as his back disappeared into the trees, knowing she had laid the final ghost to rest, even if Martin continued to wrestle with them. There was calm in making peace with her past, but that peace was overwhelmed by an anguish that went to the soul, as if a chunk of her self had been ripped out and the wound wasn’t healing.

  Because this time, she’d loved true.

  Until, in spite of the silent promise she’d made not to ask him for what he couldn’t give her, she couldn’t bear to be with Riaz knowing she wasn’t his one, his only. Yet … the way he loved her, the way he branded her with his kiss, the primal possession in the rough, beautiful words he spoke to her—it made her want to believe his heart bore her name, not Lisette’s.

  The tumult of her opposing thoughts had her wolf clawing and snarling, no longer sure which choice was the right one.

  WHEN Riaz returned to den territory late that afternoon after handling something in the city, he was determined to continue on where he’d left off with Adria—to discover she’d requested a change in her duties that saw her stationed up in the mountains for three days, on one of the high perimeter watches no one but the lone wolves much liked, they were so isolated. The soldier she’d replaced was ecstatic, and more than happy to take Adria’s shifts on anchor detail.

  He knew the only reason she hadn’t volunteered for an even longer stretch was that she was too loyal to her trainees to leave them scrambling. As it was, she’d organized two special sessions for them with the lone dominant who had the gift of not intimidating even the gentlest submissive—Drew—and taken a sat phone with her, in case the kids needed to get in touch. A sat phone she’d apparently pick up for everyone but Riaz.

  His wolf snarled, but he bided his time, because when he went after her, he wasn’t coming back alone. First, he had to take care of another matter he’d been working on in the background—and, given the shifts he was doing with the anchor protection squad, as well as his duties as the lieutenant in charge of SnowDancer’s international business interests, it took him until the end of the following day to put all the pieces in place.

  It was on the morning of the day after that he drove down to San Francisco.

  Lisette smiled at seeing him at the door to her hotel room. “This is a nice surprise.”

  “We have to talk.” It was past time. “About us.”

  Her smile dimmed. “Riaz, I sensed something the first time we met, but—”

  He pressed a finger to her lips, feeling an affectionate tenderness toward her, such as he might feel for a cherished friend. “I know. I don’t love you either.” It was as simple as that, regardless of the promise of the mating bond that existed with Lisette. His heart, the heart of a lone wolf, belonged absolutely and indelibly to a stubborn violet-eyed woman who was going to make him chase her up into the mountains. No potential chimera of a future could hold a candle to the incandescent happiness man and wolf both felt simply being in Adria’s presence.

  “Oh good.” Lisette’s laugh was a bit teary. “Because I’m stupid in love with a man who doesn’t want me.”

  Stepping inside the room, he closed the door and tugged her to the window that looked out over the parking lot below and the quiet street beyond. “You’re angry.”

  Lisette’s hand tightened on his. “Furious would be the better word. I know I left Emil, but he was supposed to
fight for me! How could he just let me go?”

  “Look down.” He pushed aside the lace curtain.

  Lisette’s breath released in a soft whisper when she saw the slender blond man standing beside a silver rental sedan in the parking lot. “You called him?”

  “He’s been in the city since the day after you arrived.” Emil was a good man, one who loved his wife so much, he’d thought to set her free when he’d been diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder that would mean years of arduous hospital visits to cure, therapy that might leave him in agony—something he knew would cause Lisette brutal pain. Except he couldn’t bear to be without her, had followed her across the ocean and kept a watch on her. “He loves you.”

  “He sent me divorce papers!” Clearly outraged, Lisette fisted both hands … though her eyes continued to drink in the sight of her husband.

  “Cut him a little slack. He was thinking crazy.” Riaz had tracked Emil down with the intention of getting to the bottom of things, of making the other man see how badly he was hurting Lisette. However, it turned out Emil had already made up his mind to reclaim his wife and trust in the strength of their love to get them through the test to come.

  “When I spoke to him today,” Riaz continued, “he was planning to storm the defenses, but he agreed to give me a few minutes with you first.” Only because Riaz had promised to try to soften Lisette’s mood—though until right this second, he’d had no idea she even had a temper.

  “Hah!” Lisette kicked the wall with a foot clad in a flimsy peach-colored heel, trying to push up the locked-shut window at the same time. “He thinks he can get me back just by turning up?!” A rapid storm of indignant French as she gave up on the window and stalked to the door.

  Opening it so hard it slammed into the wall, she headed out.

  Emil wasn’t looking at the hotel when she stomped out, but he turned a split second later. Expression lighting up, he went to take Lisette into his arms. At which point, his sweet, loving, cultured wife punched him on the jaw, hard enough that his head spun. After which she cradled his face in her hands and kissed the life out of him, before stepping back and gesticulating in unrestrained fury.