by Nalini Singh
Tamsyn’s eyes flashed to human in a heartbeat. “You sound very sure.”
“One of my adoptive brothers—Tanner—he taught me to use knives when I developed and he thought men were looking at me funny.”
“Brothers.” The single word held a wealth of affection.
Talin had never really considered how much that act of Tanner’s had meant to her, but now she smiled. “Do you have any?”
“No need. I had the whole damn pack watching over me.” She put the photos down, then stood. “I need to think.” To Talin’s surprise, she went to the counter and began pulling out ingredients for some type of baking. “I think better this way,” she said, noticing Talin’s expression. “The whole Earth Mother routine works for me.”
Though it was said in a self-deprecating tone, it was clear Tammy was deeply content with who she was. Talin ached for that kind of peace, that kind of self-acceptance. “I like cooking, too,” she found herself saying, when she didn’t usually share anything. “I used to do it with my adoptive father.”
“Do you want to help?” Tamsyn’s eyes brightened. “I’d love a cooking buddy. And if you do the cookies, I can finish up a batch of muffins. I figure Kit and Cory deserve something extra.”
Talin hesitated. “I have to work on why these particular children might have been targeted.”
“You can do that as well on your feet, stirring”—she brought a bar of dark chocolate to her nose, breathed in the scent—“or chopping chocolate.”
“You fight dirty.” Pushing back her chair, Talin walked over. Yes, she could think about the kids even as she did this. It was not thinking about the kids that was the problem. They were ghosts in her mind day and night, whispering at her, pleading with her.
We’ll get the bastards, she promised them, subconsciously including Clay in her vow. And we’ll come for you, Johnny D. Just hold on a little while longer.
CHAPTER 18
Jonquil could hear the sounds of their shoes in the corridor. His hearing had always been good. Better than good. It had saved his life more than once, helped him avoid getting the crap kicked out of him even more times. But today, he knew danger approached and he had nowhere to run.
You have every right to be proud. Stand up straight.
Talin’s voice was a whip in his head. She’d said that to him the day he’d been nominated for some dumb city medal. All he’d done was pull a scared little kid out of a building going up in flames. The small burns he’d sustained hadn’t even hurt much. But they had wanted to give him an award. He’d been planning to sneak out of the whole deal—like his posse would care that he had a medal—but then Talin had come along, bullied him into a stupid-ass suit, and brushed his hair.
That was when she had told him to stop slouching and be proud. Damn if he hadn’t walked onto that stage and taken that worthless bit of tin from the frickin’ mayor. Stupid. Except that he’d never thrown the medal away, hiding it in his stash of important stuff. He hoped his stash was still where he’d left it when he got out of this hellhole. And he would get out—he had to apologize to Talin.
The footsteps were getting closer. Closer. They stopped in front of his door.
Fear coated the back of his throat, but he pushed himself upright, back straight, head held high. They could hurt him, but he wouldn’t let them break him.
The door slid open to reveal two figures. For a second, before his eyes adjusted to the light, he thought they were painted white. Then he separated out the elements that made up the whole. Their hands were gloved, their faces covered with white surgical masks, and they wore white scrubs like he’d seen at a clinic once.
The only points of color came from their skin, eyes, and hair. The tall one on the left had dark skin, sort of like the color of really thick toffee, the kind that made your teeth stick together. It was all sort of glowing and rich and would have been pretty if he hadn’t known that she was there to hurt him. Her eyes were a freaky, pale bluish gray—like a wolf’s, he thought—her hair so dark brown it was almost black. He decided to name her Blue.
The one on the right had deep blonde hair, hazel eyes, and the kind of golden skin he’d seen on some rich tanned babes, but never on a woman who looked like she sprayed her hands with antiseptic after shaking, she was that clean.
“This way.” It was the Blonde who spoke, but as Jon walked out without argument—no use in fighting before he knew the lay of the land—he was certain it was Blue who was in charge. That woman had hips, serious shoulda-been-hot curves, but there was something off about the way she walked, the way she watched him.
In fact, there was something weird about both of them. Before they’d started walking, he’d looked straight into their faces and could have sworn that there was nothing looking back at him. Those eyes. Dead eyes. That’s what they were. They reminded him of the eyes he’d seen on some of the street girls, the ones that weren’t quite there anymore.
But that made no sense. These women were dressed like scientists, not street pros.
Then they turned a corner and he heard the screams. “Jesus,” he whispered. “That’s a little girl.”
No answer.
“What kind of monsters are you?” He’d meant to play this cool but fuck it, there was some stuff you didn’t do, not if you were human.
Blue glanced at him over her shoulder and he realized she wasn’t human, not by a long shot. “We’re the kind of monsters responsible for your nightmares.” Then she opened a door. “Come inside.”
CHAPTER 19
Clay nodded to the shopkeeper and jogged back to where Nate stood waiting by a lamppost. “Tally did a good job. That guy confirms he saw Jon. He remembers the kid.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Nate looked down at the holo-slide Talin had salvaged from her apartment. It bore a jagged crack down one side but was otherwise undamaged. “He’s even prettier than Dorian.”
It was true. The boy was male without question, but he was also good-looking enough to be on a catwalk. “Boy like that on the street—” Gut tight, he shoved a hand through his hair. “We could be looking in the wrong direction.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too, so I checked up on the gang tat.” Nate tapped at the spiderweb pattern on the boy’s neck, half-hidden by long white-blond hair. “The Crawlers aren’t some toy gang. If the kid survived in there, he’s got brains and balls. I can see him taking up a career as a bank robber but not as a pro selling his body.”
The angry disgust Clay felt was reflected in Nate’s face. To DarkRiver, children were everything. They would fight to the death to protect the cubs, but neither man was a romantic. As Clay knew from brutal experience, changelings, too, sometimes fell short. So did humans. Ironically, as Max had said, it was the cold, merciless Psy who appeared to take the best care of their children—aside from the forcible imposition of Silence. There were no Psy street kids, no Psy orphans, no Psy child prostitutes.
Clay looked down the street, at the teenagers he could see hanging out on the corner, all smirks and punk bravado when they should’ve been in school. “Never thought I’d say this, but the Psy are good at one thing.”
“Yeah,” Nate agreed, even as the teens gave them wary glances and began to disperse. “We never see their kids fucking around like this. But we never see anything the Council doesn’t want us to see. Maybe they simply erase their mistakes.”
“You’re probably right. Hell, they called Sascha a mistake.” And despite the fact that he preferred to keep his distance from Sascha and her too-perceptive gift, Clay knew she was something good, something worth bringing into this world.
“Yep.” Nate blew out a harsh breath. “Look, I’ll put out the word that we’re looking for Jon. We’ve built up a good network with the businesspeople around here.”
Clay nodded. The human and nonpredatory changeling shopkeepers helped DarkRiver in return for the pack’s protection against gangs. Over time, as DarkRiver had cleaned house to the extent that no major criminal networks operated in
their territory, that relationship had evolved into one driven less by necessity and more by shared interests. “While you do that, I’m going Down Below.”
Nate made a face. “That place gives me the creeps. Have fun.”
Down Below was literally that. After a short delay caused by taking care of a persistent annoyance, Clay found a backstreet alley, lifted open an antiquated manhole cover, and dropped into the narrow passage that would lead him down into the shattered remains of the unused subway tunnels. A hundred and twenty years ago these tunnels, and the trains that utilized them, had been the height of technology. Then had come the seismic events of the late twentieth century, which in turn had led to innovation in safer methods of transportation. The city’s sleek, clear skyways had long since eclipsed the subways.
Coughing against the dirt, he pulled the manhole cover closed behind himself. It was a good thing he had the night vision of a cat because it was pitch-black down here. Tally would hate it, he thought. His leopard wasn’t too pleased, either.
As he made his way down and into the tunnels, he could hear the whispers of the Rats. They were scurrying away, leaving their leader to deal with the predator who had invaded their home. Clay knew he was in no danger of being attacked—DarkRiver kept an eye on the denizens of Down Below and, for the most part, the Rats were nothing more than human misfits who had made a ragtag pack of their own. The name—Rats—was a misnomer. Only three of the Down Below residents were actually changeling.
Now, one of those three stepped out of the darkness. “You don’t have permission to pass this way. Leave.” A flash of razor-sharp canines.
“Cut the theatrics, Teijan.” Clay folded his arms and leaned against the tunnel wall.
“Clay?” Teijan stepped closer. “I didn’t recognize you—your scent’s got human all over it.”
Rats had a superior sense of smell, so Clay didn’t doubt Teijan’s assessment. But it was a surprise. For a man to be branded that deep with a woman’s scent, it generally required a sexual relationship. But then again, he and Tally had belonged to each other since childhood. The leopard wasn’t fussed—it liked the idea of having her so close. “How’s your domain?”
Teijan’s near-black eyes darted away and back, an act that would have denoted deceit Above. In the tunnels it was a far more nuanced action. “Don’t you mean, ‘How’s the domain I keep on Lucas’s sufferance?’”
Clay shrugged. “Your status is transitory because you choose not to swear full allegiance to DarkRiver.” The world of predatory changelings was an unforgiving one. There were allies and enemies. Lines of gray were few and far between.
Teijan shifted his body in jerky movements reminiscent of his animal form. “You know why we’re hesitating—if we give full allegiance to DarkRiver, we become linked to the wolves through your blood bond with them. And both DarkRiver and SnowDancer have a way of pinning bit fat targets on their backs.”
“We don’t use nonpredatories or humans as cannon fodder,” Clay responded, sensing a change in Teijan’s previous stance.
“Rats aren’t exactly nonpredatory.” He bared his teeth.
“But you’re not strong enough to control San Francisco, even if you had a whole colony.” A simple fact dictated by the physical attributes of their different beasts and the natural food chain. “We’re locking this city down, Teijan. You have another four weeks to make your decision. Ally with us or leave.”
Before the devastating attack orchestrated by the Psy Council on another one of DarkRiver’s allies—a deer herd—the Rats had been too weak to bother with. Now they were a possible strength and a current weakness—the tunnels needed to be watched in case this cold war with the Psy escalated into a very real one. But unless the Rats swore allegiance, their word couldn’t be trusted.
“We ruled here before DarkRiver,” Teijan snapped.
“No, you cowered Below while Psy walked Above,” Clay returned, pitiless. “You’re no match for us.” A human might have read his words as a humiliation but changelings understood dominance.
“If,” Teijan now ventured, “we were to swear allegiance, we’d have to come to your aid if called? And to the wolves’?”
“Yes. We’d come to yours in turn.”
A pause. “A cat will protect a mouse?”
Clay grinned. “Unless the mouse tries to bite the cat.” Betrayal would not be tolerated.
The other changeling’s eyes gleamed. “Then perhaps, I should talk to Lucas.”
“I’ll tell him.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a copy of Jonquil’s picture. “Right now, I need a favor. Show this photo around to your folks—ask if anyone saw anything.”
Teijan took it in an inhuman burst of movement. “A favor? Not an order?”
“A favor.” Clay pushed off the wall. “One predator to another.”
A sharp smile, full of teeth. That was the problem with the Rats—they lived too much Down Below, forgetting their humanity. It was why there were only three of their kind left in the city. The others had been hunted down after going rogue.
Last year, Clay recalled, Dahlia had succeeded in killing seven residents of Down Below before Teijan had tracked down and slit his former lover’s throat. It was a chilling reminder of the road Clay had almost taken. Almost. Now he had Tally’s kiss and no way in hell was he giving that up. He smiled, wondering what she’d made of their parting this morning. He could still taste her on his lips—a hint of coffee, spice, and pure female heat.
“I’ll ask,” Teijan finally said. “You swear that if we ally ourselves with you, our home is safe?”
“Hell, Teijan, these tunnels are shot with cracks—but we won’t do anything to push you out.” The alliance would establish hierarchy once and for all, allowing coexistence. Without that agreement, once the grace period ran out, the Rats were dead. No arguments. No second chances. A harsh law, but it kept peace in the volatile world of predatory changelings.
The only reason the Rats weren’t already dead was that Lucas had better control over the blood hunger of his beast than most alphas and he thought decades in advance—ten years ago, when DarkRiver had first begun flexing its muscle, he’d seen potential in the odd dwellers of Down Below.
“The tunnels are sound.” Teijan’s pride was in his voice. “We keep them repaired.”
“Then you’ll be fine. We don’t want to move in.”
A pause, then, “Something’s happening. We’re everywhere under the city—basements, garages, tunnels, house foundations—and there are times when we hear whispers we shouldn’t be hearing.”
Like Clay had thought—Lucas was fucking smart. “Any details?”
“An assassination. Psy target,” he added when Clay went leopard-still. “Definitely one of them. Someone high up. I can’t tell you who’s planning the hit but things are shakier with that cold-blooded lot than it looks like from the outside.”
“Anything we need to worry about?” The information Teijan had already provided was critical. If the Psy were getting closer to implosion, DarkRiver and SnowDancer both needed to know, to prepare, because like it or not, the psychic race occupied a vital spot in the world’s ecosystem. “You get names?”
“They mentioned an Anthony Kyriakus,” he threw out. “Never heard of him. Must be one of them.”
Clay snapped to attention. “You’re sure?” Anthony was Faith’s father and the possible leader of a quiet revolution against the Psy Council. Aside from Faith and Vaughn, only the sentinels and DarkRiver’s alpha pair knew that deadly secret.
“Yes. But I don’t know if he was the target.” His eyes flicked to the photo in his hand. “There’s something about this boy—he’s different. I’ll see what I can find out.” He was gone in a dark flash.
Retracing his steps, Clay pulled himself out of the manhole before using his cell phone to make a call to Vaughn. “Tell Faith to warn her father.”
“I have a feeling even if he is the target, it’s Anthony who’ll come out alive,” Vaugh
n drawled. “He’s a tough son of a bitch.”
“If you see him, try and get a feel for the general weather in the PsyNet.”
“Last time we spoke, he said the storm winds are building. This other rebel—the Ghost—he’s done some serious damage in the past few months.” The sound of metal against stone, as if Vaughn was continuing to sculpt as they talked. “So what’s this I hear about you?”
“What?”
“You’ve shacked up with a woman?”
Clay scowled. “None of your damn business.”
“Tell that to Faith—she’s got a thing for you.” Sheer amusement in the jaguar’s tone. “She thinks you need a protector. I told her you need one about as much as a pit bull needs one.”
“Thanks.” He meant that. Talin, regardless of what she said, was damn possessive where he was concerned. She would not react well to another woman’s interference.
Ending the call, Clay made his way to DarkRiver’s business HQ, located in a medium-sized office building near Chinatown. Lucas was meant to be there today—he had a meeting with the heads of a human corporation. Clay, as construction supervisor on the project, had originally been scheduled to attend.
Ria, Lucas’s executive assistant, was working at her desk when Clay entered the outer part of Lucas’s office.
“He free?”
She smiled. “The meeting wrapped up a few minutes ago.”
“Thanks.” He entered after a quick knock, knowing Lucas would have already caught his scent.
The other man was sitting on one of the black leather-synth sofas he kept for clients. “Grab a seat while I finish this sandwich.”
Clay collapsed into the opposing seat but couldn’t relax, his mind on Talin and what it would do to her if they didn’t find this boy in time.
“Here.” Lucas threw him an apple.
Catching it by reflex, he bit into it. “It’s like this kid disappeared into thin air.” Clay was one of the most patient hunters in the pack, but today, he felt dangerously on edge.
