Branded by Fire

by Singh, Nalini

  And since Psy were connected to the Net on the most visceral level, needing the biofeedback to survive, anything that happened there had real-life impact. It even made sense that the violence was occurring in this region—the PsyNet wasn’t defined by geographical limits, but they’d had a number of disturbances in this area and the psychic effect would be strongest at the point of origin. A big enough surge could have short-circuited some aspect of the conditioning under Silence.

  However, Anthony wasn’t convinced. His fellow Councilors seemed to be ignoring the events, but—

  The comm panel beeped. Glancing at the ID screen, he saw it was Kaleb Krychek, fellow Councilor and perhaps the most powerful telekinetic in the Net. From what Anthony had unearthed, he knew that Kaleb’s control over the NetMind, the neosentient entity that was both the librarian and guardian of the Net, was close to complete. It was the very situation the Council hadn’t wanted after Santano Enrique. The now-dead Councilor had used his power over the NetMind to hide his murderous crimes.

  Kaleb was much more subtle. He let others believe they held power even as he played them for fools. A very dangerous man. And one whose history was close to opaque—though there were rumors he’d been Enrique’s protégé.

  “Kaleb,” he said, answering the call. “It must be early in Moscow.”

  “Very,” Kaleb said, but since the visual was blocked on both ends, Anthony knew the other man could be anywhere. It was difficult to tie a teleport-capable Tk to one location. “But it’s your region I’m calling about—I saw the reports.”

  “There’s been a new incident.”

  “The shooter,” Kaleb said. “Data is already flowing in.”

  “The others appear to consider these occurrences a statistical anomaly.”

  “And you?”

  Anthony leaned back in his seat. “I think we need to scan the shooter’s mind.” He paused as a message came through on his cell phone. Interesting. “Henry just sent me a note proposing the same thing—and he’s offered to take care of the scan.” But what exactly was Henry doing in California? His home was in London.

  “I assume you’ll be going with him.”

  “Of course.” After all, none of the Councilors trusted each other. Anthony, as the leader of a rebellion determined to bring a new reigning order to the Net, trusted very, very few people at all.

  In a room at the San Francisco branch of the Center, the shooter lay tied to a table, his entire body restrained. “Please,” he said. “Let me go.”

  The M-Psy monitoring his room heard but didn’t respond to his plea. Their job was to make sure he stayed alive, and, given his violent tendencies, the best way to keep him safe from himself was to make sure he couldn’t move.

  The fact that his mind had been locked in telepathic shields would have been termed inhumane by the other races, but those races had no experience with psychotic telepaths. This man could blow out other people’s brains with a burst of pure power—it might liquefy his own brains, too, but if he was suicidal, that wouldn’t matter.

  So they sat silent and watchful as the man in the bed started to say, “I have to. I have to. I have to.” But he never said what he had to do. And they didn’t figure it out until it was too late.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mercy was about to bring her vehicle to a stop a little distance from her cabin when the news bulletin came on.

  “The body of a twenty-nine-year-old Tahoe woman was found buried in a shallow grave near the western shore of the lake an hour ago. The grisly find was made by a local resident out for a walk with his dog.

  “Enforcement hasn’t yet released a formal statement, but sources close to the investigation tell us the condition of the body suggests she died recently, possibly within the past forty-eight hours. We’ll keep you updated as the story develops.”

  Riley, having decided to ride this far with her, reached forward to turn off the feed. “We need to warn our people. Just in case.” His tone was even. Too even.

  Mercy didn’t try to talk to him about the pain he held so fiercely to his heart, knowing she’d get a blank look at best—Brenna’s abduction and its aftermath was the one thing Riley simply refused to discuss. It was instinct to want to touch him, to offer comfort, but she knew that right now, he’d accept nothing. So she stuck to the facts.

  “Let’s hope it was a one-off.” She felt deep sorrow for the murdered woman and her family, but a jealous boyfriend or husband would be quickly caught. A serial, on the other hand . . . “No use borrowing trouble. I’ll get the word out and have some of our comm people follow the story.”

  Riley nodded as they exited. Leaning back against the hood, she returned to their earlier topic of conversation. “I’ll call you the second we hear anything about Nash.” The groundwork had been laid—the intel would come in, of that Mercy was certain. “Trying to hide an adult lynx in a city full of changelings isn’t going to be easy.” Especially with the Rats on alert for any sign of the missing male.

  “We can’t underestimate them,” Riley cautioned. “They managed to grab a pissed-off male lynx and get him out pretty efficiently.”

  About to tease him for his caution, she glimpsed something in his hair. “Don’t move.” Reaching up, she removed a square of glass, putting it on the car’s hood so it wouldn’t litter the forest floor. To double-check, she ran her fingers through the thick weight of his hair. “You’re tense as a board.” His body was so taut, it was a wonder he could breathe.

  No answer.

  Looking into his eyes, she felt her breath lock. The wolf glimmered amber bright, hungry and edgy and dangerous. “What is it this time?” She shouldn’t have provoked him, but she couldn’t help herself. It was like he was catnip. One sniff and she lost her mind.

  Riley was barely holding back his wolf. The creature wanted him to throw Mercy to the ground, rip off her pants, bite down on her neck, and take her. Hard. Fast. Again. And again. Dear God but the man in him wanted to do exactly the same. Fighting the instinct, he squeezed his hands into fists so tight, his veins threatened to explode.

  “Riley?” Mercy scowled, taking a step back.

  The wolf bared its teeth inside him, but he held on to his humanity. She’d bled earlier today when her arms had hit the asphalt as they took down the would-be shooter. The wolf had gone insane at the scent. Riley had somehow managed to keep it together this far—he wasn’t known for his control for nothing—but now the wolf was clawing at him, determined to get out. And do what?

  Mercy didn’t belong to him.

  The wolf didn’t care. Neither, Riley was surprised to realize, did the man. He wanted to take her, taste her, fucking bite her for daring to allow harm to come to herself. The possessive, protective thoughts hazed his brain, pushing him closer to the edge than he’d been for a long, long time.

  Focus.

  He closed his eyes.

  And felt her breath against his neck. “So tense you’re about to snap.” Lips brushing his skin, hands on his shoulders.

  “Mercy.” It came out a growl.

  “I’m being nice to you.” Teeth closing over the pulse in his neck, a gentle reprimand. “Accept it gracefully.”

  He squeezed her hip with a hand that had somehow found its way to her body, but remained still. She was being nice to him, using touch to anchor him. It was the changeling way. But he didn’t particularly want comforting from Mercy. He thrust his hand into her hair, pulling it out from the rough ponytail.

  Her hand stroked the side of his neck. “Can’t help it, can you?” A kiss pressed to the hollow of his throat. “You’re going all wolf on me because I got a little bruised up.”

  He was too startled by her knowledge to answer.

  “Didn’t think I saw the way you looked at my hands, did you?” Sliding those hands under his T-shirt, she ran her nails gently down his back. “Poor guy—blinded by testosterone.”

  Now she was laughing at him. He should’ve snarled. Instead, he relaxed his hold on her hair
so she could more easily claim a kiss. She was the uncontested aggressor this time. He let her taste his mouth, let her lick her tongue over his lip. Cat. She was such a cat. Stroking him with those cat claws, nipping at his lip with feline flirtatiousness.

  When she broke the kiss to tug at his T-shirt, he cooperated and pulled it over his head. Her lashes dropped to shade the expression in her eyes as she shaped him with her hands, stroking down the planes of his chest. His hand was back in her hair, but he was no longer as wound up, no longer as close to going wolf.

  Then she pressed an openmouthed kiss to his chest and he felt another kind of hunger overtake him. “More.” It was a raw demand.

  She laughed softly and leaned into him, tracing circles around one flat nipple. “I think you’re fine, now.”

  “More.” His hand tightened in her hair.

  She stroked her own hand down his body . . . and stopped an inch from the erection threatening to poke a hole in his jeans. “Play nice.” Fingers tap dancing a quarter of an inch from his straining cock.

  “No.” He pulled back her head, baring her neck . . . then let go.

  She held the position, offering him her throat. A gift of trust, because in changeling combat, you could lose your life to jaws clamping over your throat. Relaxing completely, he slid a hand over her nape and kissed his way up the arch of her neck. She tasted of—

  Air under his palms. A red-haired cat with her hands on her hips several feet away.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Teasing?”

  “You know that wasn’t what I was doing.”

  He showed her his teeth. “Coward.”

  “See if I pet you next time you go all crazy.”

  Good going, Riley. “I didn’t like seeing you hurt.”

  “We’ve been over this—I’m not your concern. The only reason I’m not spitting at you is because I know you literally can’t help it.” Then she was gone.

  Riley shrugged into his T-shirt, his stomach taut with a knowledge he didn’t want to consider. She was right—predatory changeling men were protective as a rule. But Riley was his alpha’s second. His control over his reactions was legendary. He protected, but he didn’t go feral. Not like this.

  Today, he’d become a wolf in human form, a wolf fixated on Mercy alone.

  Wanting to prowl after her but knowing that would be the absolute wrong move with this cat, he was about to leave when he caught two distinct and unfamiliar male scents on the air currents.

  The wolf exploded to the forefront of his mind.

  He was at the cabin before he knew it—to find Mercy standing at the foot of the steps that led up to her porch, facing off against two strangers he immediately categorized as threats. The growl that started at the back of his throat turned into cold focus between one instant and the next. His claws sliced out.

  CHAPTER 13

  At the same instant, Councilors Henry Scott and Anthony Kyriakus walked into the observation chamber opposite the would-be shooter’s room.

  “Has he said anything?” Henry asked.

  “He’s been mumbling that he has to do something,” the head M-Psy said, “but we don’t know what.”

  Henry stared through the glass. “The mind scan should give us the answer.”

  Anthony knew Henry was the Councilor most involved with Pure Psy, the group that had vowed to maintain Silence at all costs. He wondered what their reaction would be to these acts of violence, acts that showed the clear disintegration of the Protocol. “Let’s go,” he said quietly.

  As they went to move into the room, they glimpsed an orderly undoing the straps on the patient’s arm. Anthony blasted out with a telepathic order to stop . . . but it was too late. The patient wrenched out his hand, pulled a pen from the orderly’s front pocket, and stabbed himself through the ear in the space of a single fractured second.

  Anthony sensed the M-Psy running toward the bed, but he focused on the man’s dying mind, reading what he could before the shock of death petrified everything to stone. He caught the edge of compulsion, knew someone had been pulling this man’s strings. He’d been nothing more than a puppet.

  Easily used. Easily discarded.

  It was clear the puppet master had implanted a suggestion that his pawn suicide after the completion of his mission, or if he was caught. Only the fact that the shooter had been stunned at the scene, and then under mental guard, had stopped him from using his telepathy to accomplish the task.

  Even as the thought passed through Anthony’s head, he saw the orderly crumple to the floor, and belatedly realized the man had been laboring under the same compulsion. Who had the access and ability to control this many people? The answer was—a significant number of people in the Council superstructure.

  The real question was why.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mercy spun around to find Riley amber eyed and cold in a way that told her he wasn’t thinking about anything but blood. “Riley.”

  He didn’t look at her. “Who are they?”

  The two men opposite her had gone hunting-quiet at his approach, and now she felt the promise of violence lick the air. “Why is this wolf near your home?” Eduardo asked, his leopard crawling in the menace of his voice.

  “Quiet,” she ordered, turning to the newcomers with furious eyes. “He has a right to be here. You’re the interlopers so shut it.”

  Eduardo blinked as if he’d never had someone speak to him in that tone. Beside him, Joaquin retracted his claws, but she wasn’t fooled. These men were sentinels. They could go attack-ready in a split second. But then, so could she. “Stay here.” Stepping away from the porch, she headed toward Riley.

  He still didn’t take his eyes off the men. Snarling, she pushed him in the chest. His head snapped toward her. “Who are they?” he asked again in that cold wolf voice.

  “Sentinels from my grandmother’s pack,” she said, livid at all three men, but mostly at Riley. She wasn’t a bone to be fought over. He had no right to act territorial—she hadn’t given him that right. “And I thought I told you to head back.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone with strangers.” Quiet. Implacable.

  Her temper rose. “We just had this conversation, Riley.”

  He didn’t answer, his amber gaze shifting over her shoulder. “Why are they here?”

  “Mercy’s grandmother,” Eduardo said from the porch, “thought she might have . . . chemistry with one of us.”

  Mercy decided she’d have to shoot Eduardo. That pause had been calculated, the innuendo unmistakable. Damn cat was enjoying this. And she could all but sense Riley’s beast pounding against his skin, ready to savage and kill. “Out,” she said, pointing her finger first at Eduardo, then at Joaquin. “You come near my home again without permission, I’ll show you exactly why my grandmother calls me her favorite grand-daughter.”

  To their credit, neither man turned noticeably green. But they did come down off her porch. “I’m not leaving you alone with a wolf.” Eduardo again. Acting as if he held authority over her.

  Mercy had had it. She moved without warning, spinning her clawed hand out toward the other sentinel’s throat. He shifted back . . . but not fast enough to escape the graze across his throat. As he swore, his friend grinned and said something in Portuguese that he probably thought Mercy couldn’t understand. But she’d spent time roaming in their homeland.

  Now she retracted her claws and said, “Joaquin is right. You asked for that one.” She raised an eyebrow when they didn’t move. “Why are you still here?”

  Surprisingly, it was the quiet one who answered. “We like the night air.” His eyes were on Riley . . . who’d stepped closer, until only Mercy separated the three men.

  They weren’t going to listen.

  Fuck.

  Tempted to leave them to it, she glanced at Riley, saw his rage in the iron-hard line of his jaw, and felt her heart give a jagged beat. He was at the edge of his control after everything that had happened today—if she left him alone with th
ese two, somebody would get seriously damaged. “You like the night air?” She smiled, sweet as pie. “In that case, let’s go for a run.”

  Wolf and leopard both looked at her like she was insane.

  “What? Don’t think you can keep up with me? You’re probably right.” With that, she walked into the forest and took off, hoping the gamble would work. It did. All three followed her, the protectiveness built into their nature winning out over the possessiveness. Not that she needed protecting. Never had. Never would.

  And the fact that Riley didn’t understand that more than irritated her. But in a tiny, secret corner, she was surprised to find a hint of pleasure. The wolf saw her as a woman, something men were often too blinded by her status to notice. Too bad Kincaid couldn’t compartmentalize—what she’d accept from a lover, she’d never accept from an ally who was supposed to be her partner.

  Now she took them on one hell of a chase. All were fast. But Riley knew this land like the back of his hand. Quickly outstripping Eduardo and Joaquin, he tracked her to a spot leading away from her house and toward the Sierra. She kept up the run even when he came up beside her.

  “Stop,” he said, putting a hand on her arm.

  She shook it off. “If I have to escort you home, then that’s what I’ll do. A SnowDancer lieutenant is not going to be injured on my watch on DarkRiver land.”

  “This isn’t about the alliance.” The wolf was riding him so hard, she could scarcely understand the words.

  “Yeah, it’s about you acting stupid.”

  “Mercy, damn it. Stop.” Riley swung around to block her path. “You’re tired and bruised from today. You need to be in a bath.” It agitated the wolf that she was tiring herself even further when she should’ve been resting.

  She halted, raised an eyebrow. “I know that. What do you think I planned to do before you three started pounding your chests?”