Shield of Winter

by Nalini Singh

  The idea of it had made her chest ache, a painful pricking inside her . . . as if a numbed limb was stretching awake. Yet she had to face the fact that she was a patchwork creature, glued together through sheer stubborn will after the reconditioning that had almost erased her. Who was she to think she could heal anyone else?

  We're strong, Ivy, stronger than you might imagine right now. We have to be, to take the pain of others and make it something better.

  Claws clicking on the wooden floor, Rabbit tumbled out from his basket to come stand beside the bed, eyes huge in entreaty. "You're not meant to sleep on the bed." She tried for stern, but it was difficult with Rabbit.

  He gave her a mournful look before he collapsed with his head on his front paws, a pitiful sight.

  "You big ham," she said with a soft laugh and patted the mattress.

  Sadness evaporating into mist, he jumped up and padded around before deciding on his favorite spot near the foot of the bed, diagonally across from her. Ivy smiled at his sigh of contentment, but her smile faded too soon, her thoughts tangled skeins. If she wasn't careful, her PsyNet shields would begin to crack, exposing her and the others to outsiders.

  Her nails cut into her palms.

  Made up of fractured Psy and their families, the settlement was safe only because the tiny population had learned to interlink their shields. It had taken months of trial and error, sheer desperation the juggernaut that powered them, until finally the group had learned to form the connections that allowed each person to remain private while bolstering the shields of the group as a whole.

  However, even their enhanced shields could only take a certain amount of pressure, and Ivy had been responsible for a significant portion of it in the preceding two months. Pushing up into a sitting position on that thought, she closed her eyes, her intention to do a simple mental exercise meant to effect calm. She had to--

  "Woof!"

  Eyes flicking open, she was startled to see Rabbit standing right in front of her. "You know you're not supposed to interrupt me when I meditate," she chided gently.

  He barked again, and this time she heard the worried whine underneath. "I'm fi--"

  That was when she felt it, the trickle of wet from her nose. "Damn it!" Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Rabbit bounding out beside her, she walked into the bathroom and turned on the light to confirm what she already knew.

  She was bleeding from the nose. Not only that, but one of her eyes was bloodshot in the left corner, as if the capillaries had burst. Hands trembling and skin hot, she grabbed a wad of tissue to wipe away the thin trickle of viscous red, squeezing the bridge of her nose until the bleeding stopped. It didn't take long, this incident minor.

  Cleaning up afterward, she went down into a crouch to cradle Rabbit's face. "I'm okay," she reassured him, rubbing at his ears until he stopped whining low in his throat and butted her chest with his small head. "Let's go have something to eat."

  Once in the kitchen, having pulled on a thick cardigan over the camisole she wore with flannel pajama pants, she gave him one of the special dog treats she bought from the general store in the nearest township. The human farmers who ran the shops there minded their own business the same way the settlement minded its own, their relationship cordial. Two years ago, after a severe storm damaged the township, Ivy's group had helped in the cleanup and repair; a year later the favor had been returned when one of their barns needed to be rebuilt.

  Other than that, the two groups didn't mingle, and Ivy knew it was the settlement at fault. Trust was a rare commodity for those who called these sprawling acres home, the majority of them having ended up here after violently traumatic experiences. It was as safe a place as they could make it, one she couldn't bear to leave . . . and that was why it was imperative she did.

  "No more chains," she whispered, hands cupped around the mug of green tea she'd made herself, "especially not ones created by fear."

  Rabbit wagged his tail in her peripheral vision, chewing deliriously on his treat.

  It made her want to laugh, but she controlled the response, conscious once more of the strain she'd been placing on the settlement's interlinked shields. No one had said anything. No one would, because this place was about pooling their resources to survive, but Ivy had never wanted to be a burden. Even when she'd been little more than the shell of a person, she'd pulled her weight.

  Her mother had once told her that her stubborn refusal to simply sit at home, even when she'd been so grievously violated, had given Gwen hope that somewhere beyond her teenage daughter's blank surface remained the girl who'd once passed a physics exam with honors after a teacher told her she was pathetic at the subject.

  "You didn't even like physics," Gwen had said that day, as Ivy helped her transfer seedlings from the settlement greenhouse to the vegetable garden the group maintained to balance out their diet. "But you refused to change subjects, not until you'd made your point."

  Knowing she'd need that stubborn streak even more in the weeks to come, Ivy opened the back door, pulled on her snow boots, and stepped out into the gray light of early morning. It was bitingly cold, the snow thick enough to mute sound, but she liked the freshness, the skeletal bareness of the apple trees stretching out in front of her, branches piercing the fog. Beyond them lay peach and plum trees, a row of fruiting cherry trees, even a trellis for the myriad berries Ivy managed to coax to life each spring.

  All of it was bedded down or barren in the winter cold, but the landscape was no less beautiful for being so stark. Walking toward the trees, mug of tea in hand, she was unsurprised when Rabbit came after her, an aggrieved look on his face at having been forced to abandon his treat in order to escort her.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered, her affection for her small friend a warmth inside her.

  "Grr."

  Muscles tensing at that snarling sound from a suddenly stiff Rabbit, she looked out into the mist and saw the man. Part of her was expecting Vasic, waiting for him, but it wasn't the Arrow. This man was running at her, face contorted and hand held out in front of him in a way that shouted of a weapon.

  Ivy reacted on instinct.

  Throwing her still-hot tea and mug into his face, to his howl of rage, Ivy turned and ran. "Go, Rabbit!"

  They zigzagged through the trees to throw off the attacker's line of sight. Ivy didn't look back as she hit the cabin, slamming the door shut behind her and Rabbit just as something thudded into it on the other side.

  The stranger was using a projectile weapon.

  Shooting home the dead bolt, she urged a bristling Rabbit away from the door and crouch-walked to the kitchen cabinets to retrieve a gun her father had placed there. Her skin turned clammy at the idea of using it, of harming a living being, but when another bullet shattered the window above her head, she knew it was either that or die herself. Shaking off the slivers of glass to the sound of Rabbit's angry barking, she telepathed her parents and neighbors . . . but then the front door was shot open while bullets pounded into the back, and she knew she was out of time.

  There were two of them.

  She set her jaw and flicked off the safety on the gun. "No, you do not get to steal my life. Not again." Squeezing herself into a corner so no one could come at her from the back, Rabbit beside her, she waited for the intruder to come into view. While her angry determination to survive didn't eliminate the nausea in her stomach, she didn't allow it to affect her grip on the weapon.

  A second later, she heard the intruder's feet hit the wood of the living room, followed by a loud thud, the gun at the back door falling silent soon afterward. Not sure what had happened, she was deciding whether to move or stay when Rabbit wiggled out and ran into the living room, cleverly avoiding the broken glass on the floor.

  "Rabbit," she hissed over the pounding of her heart, but followed him out.

  Her front door was busted, doorjamb in splinters, muddy boot prints on the floor and on the door itself. Swallowing to wet a dry throat, her pulse a thudding
echo in her ears, she carefully walked outside and around to the back door to find it peppered with bullets. The damage had her releasing a shuddering breath. She hadn't imagined the assailants in a mental fugue--they'd simply disappeared into thin air in the space of three breaths.

  A shiver raced over her skin.

  It was no surprise to turn and find Vasic behind her; Rabbit was startled into an annoyed bark at his abrupt appearance. "How did you know?" she asked the man who had, in all probability, just killed two people for her.

  His cold gray eyes scanned her from head to toe with the same clinical precision she'd noted on his first visit. "Are you injured?"

  "What? No." Tremors threatened to shake her frame. Gritting her teeth to fight them, she repeated her earlier question. "How did you know?"

  "The squad received intelligence just prior to the attack that a certain segment of the population has chosen to blame the empaths for the fall of Silence."

  "That makes no sense." She didn't fight when--ignoring Rabbit's growling body between them--he eased the gun from her white-knuckled grip and flicked the safety back on. If she never had to touch the thing again, it would be far too soon. Rubbing her hands on the worn flannel of her pajama pants to get rid of the feel of the rigid black plas, she said, "E-Psy have been suppressed for over a hundred years."

  "People are not rational at present."

  "Did they follow you? To find me?" Ivy herself hadn't known of her empathic skill set until Vasic's visit.

  A shake of his head, the deep black strands of his hair slightly wet, as if they'd been dusted by snow that had since melted. "It's random chance the two events coincided. The group behind the attack hacked into the database of the rehabilitation and reconditioning center where you were treated; at 9.3 on the Gradient you were undeniably the strongest of those who came in and as such were the first target."

  9.3? That was a staggering level of power--and it had been forcibly trapped inside her. "My God," she whispered. "It's a miracle I haven't suffered a severe brain bleed."

  He propped the gun against the side of the house, and she suddenly realized how physically dangerous he was. There was just something so contained about Vasic that she'd focused on the threat posed by his telekinetic abilities, but he could cause serious damage without recourse to his Tk. He was taller than her by a good foot, with wide shoulders and biceps shaped with taut muscle, strong thighs pressing against the black fabric of his combat uniform when he moved.

  Not big. That wasn't the right word.

  No, he was like the gun. A sleek weapon honed to ruthless perfection.

  "The centers do have certain techniques to lessen the risk of a neural bleed," he said, eyes on his gauntlet as the small screen embedded in it flowed with data, "but your reconditioning, as we're both aware, was incompetent at best."

  Shoving her fingers through her hair, she wrenched her eyes off the deadly purity of him and shrugged off the past. It was done. Finished. It no longer had any claim on her. Her focus had to be on the future--about which fate had sent her a flashing neon sign this morning, should she have needed one. "The others who were reconditioned at the same center?"

  "In the process of being transferred to safe houses." His head lifted, the force of his attention a blade. "Do you wish a transfer?"

  Ivy shook her head. "I should be safe here--this area is so remote it's unlikely any group has two teleporters who can find a way to 'port in." And the settlement was well guarded against more physical means of infiltration.

  Vasic shook his head. "Neither one of them was a teleport-capable Tk." He tapped his gauntlet. "According to my sources, a small private plane flew over the orchard a minute prior to the attack. They likely parachuted in."

  "Oh." Ivy folded her arms, having not even considered that option. "I don't think we have any defenses against attack from the air." Her parents and Ivy, the others, ran the farm at a deliberate middling profit so as not to attract unwelcome attention, but it meant they didn't have a lot of money to spend on expensive surveillance.

  "The squad's tech team has already added the settlement to their aerial watch list," Vasic answered. "There will be no further surprises from that direction."

  "Thank you." Biting down hard on her lower lip, she forced herself to ask the other question, the one she didn't want to ask. "Are the two people who . . . Are they dead?"

  "No."

  Ivy pressed a hand against the cold outer wall of the house as her knees went weak, breath rushing out of her lungs, but Vasic wasn't finished.

  "We need to interrogate the two to discover if this was an ill-thought-out attack prompted by fear, or if they're part of a larger, more organized cell." Legs slightly spread, he slid his hands behind his back, a soldier at rest. "It's possible the fragmented remnants of Pure Psy," he added, naming the group behind a slew of horrifying violence prior to the fall of Silence, "may have had a hand in it."

  "Ivy!"

  Shifting on her heel at her father's yell, she called back, "I'm not hurt!"

  A change in the air and she knew Vasic was gone before she saw the empty space where he'd been standing a second ago.

  "Coincidence?" was her father's suspicious response when she shared Vasic's explanation for the attack. "Or a setup to make you more amenable to Krychek's offer?"

  "I don't think Vasic would lie." The words spilled past her lips, born in a part of her she didn't consciously understand.

  "He's an Arrow, serves another master." Flint hard, her mother's tone made Gwen Jane's view of the situation clear.

  "You're wrong. I don't think he serves anyone." There was a sense of piercing aloneness around the Arrow with eyes of winter frost. "And Mother, if this was about scaring me into agreeing, all he had to do was teleport me over the edge of a cliff."

  "But now you're grateful," her father pointed out. "You see him as your savior."

  Aware her parents' words made sense and unable to articulate a rational reason for her desire to trust a man who made no attempt to hide his lethal nature, she spread her hands. "None of that matters--my decision was always going to be the same." She looked at her mother and father in turn. "I need to find out who I am."

  Even if that meant trusting herself to an Arrow who was a weapon more deadly than any gun.

  Chapter 9

  The protection of Silence is the mandate of every Arrow. Execution of those who would challenge the Protocol will, at times, be necessary. Do not hesitate to take terminal action, for in so doing you protect our people from annihilation.

  First Code of Arrows

  VASIC 'PORTED INTO the cell where he'd thrown one of Ivy's attackers, the other in the cell opposite. Located in the bowels of Arrow Central Command, the cell was a solid square block with no door, teleportation the only way to enter or exit. Regardless of the fact that neither assailant was teleport-capable, Vasic had used a squad mental trick to temporarily leash their psychic abilities; it ensured they couldn't 'path for assistance or use the PsyNet to send a message.

  He hadn't lied to Ivy. Neither was dead.

  "Help me!" screamed the one whose arms Vasic had broken, his face heavily bruised from being smashed into the wall.

  "You won't die of those injuries," Vasic said, just as Abbot teleported in with Aden.

  A nod from Aden and Abbot left them alone.

  You need to leave, too. Aden's voice in Vasic's head as the other man took over the psychic leash. Go.

  Ivy is at risk.

  I'll get you the information. Your task is to keep her safe.

  Again, Aden was attempting to put Vasic on soft duty.

  Having never shifted his gaze from the assailant who'd smashed open Ivy's door, Vasic went down on his haunches in front of the injured male. "Stop," he said quietly, and the man went silent, terror a slick sheen in his eyes.

  A predictable response. This coward might wish to reinstate Silence, but his was a desire driven by a craven fear of the unknown.

  "I'm capable of torturing yo
u until you don't have a single unbroken bone left from here"--he indicated the male's breastbone--"to here." He pointed to the man's toes. "You'd resemble a piece of meat pounded with a mallet by the time I was done."

  The threat was the absolute truth. He'd taken responsibility for Ivy's safety, and there was nothing he wouldn't do in pursuit of that goal. "I'm a Tk, can make you feel each individual break without lifting a hand."

  He snapped the tiniest bone of the man's smallest finger as an illustration. Waiting for the screams to die down to snuffling sobs, Vasic said, "I can use the same tiny breaks to dismantle your torso, breaking your ribs into splinters, then cracking open your breastplate.

  "Fracturing your collarbone into inch-long segments would take considerable time and skill, but I have both." He lowered his voice so the prisoner had to strain to hear. "I'm also patient. By the time I reach your toes, your fingers will have healed, and I can start the whole process all over again. You don't want me to stay in this room."

  The man's entire body began to shake.

  "Answer my questions," Vasic continued in the same even tone he'd used throughout, "and I'll leave."

  Ten minutes later, the prisoner had given them everything he knew. It wasn't much. His partner knew even less, but the pieces led to a single answer: the attack had been orchestrated by one of the few remaining Pure Psy lieutenants. Stupid. If Vasic had been in the lieutenant's position, he'd have gone under and stayed there until he had the opportunity to strike at the heart of the new regime.

  "I'll update Krychek," Aden told Vasic after they left the cells for the squad's common area, "and undertake the hunt for the lieutenant."

  Vasic had no argument with that, the cleanup of Pure Psy far less important than protecting the Es. "What will you do with the two males?"

  Aden was quiet for a long time, his eyes on the greenery beyond the glass, the ferns thick and curling on the lower part of the window. "Part of the problem with the Council was that everything was done in the shadows, 'justice' meted out on an arbitrary basis. We need to return to an open system, where men like this can be tried and punished according to our laws."

  "The Net's not ready for that yet."

  "No." Aden clasped his hands behind his back. "But it will be one day. Until then, I'll dump them in a maximum security prison, complete with a paper trail that'll guarantee they stay there for a long time."