CHAPTER 42

“Silence was set up for a reason. I’d be dead now if not for it.” Judd’s tone was matter-of-fact. “It’s ultimately proven false, but we can’t go back to how things were before conditioning began—the killing, the insanity.” His fists clenched.

“How bad will it get?” Clay asked.

“Measures are being put in place,” Judd said, “but the fallout will be…substantial. Not only deaths from the psychic shock, but from the awakening of a thousand monstrous desires, things that were suppressed by Silence. Like this scientist—before the cracks in the Net, he would have never acted on his instincts.”

Clay bared his teeth. “Means the sociopathic bastard’s not thinking clearly anymore.” Psy made excellent serial killers because they rarely made mistakes. But if this one was fragmenting…“He’ll come here, he’ll want to hurt the woman who stopped his fun.”

“What if he and his associates don’t turn up tonight?” Judd asked. “Do we return tomorrow? And the day after?”

“Yes.” Clay looked at the Psy. “You have a problem with that?”

Judd smiled and it was the ice-cold smile of the assassin he undoubtedly was. “No. I like kids.”

“How do we do this?” Dorian asked. “Get Judd to tear into the head guy’s mind?”

“No,” Clay said at once. He was going to do this, make sure Talin was safe. “Judd can’t risk being made.”

“I can hide very well,” Judd responded. “But we also have to consider the fact that if I go into Larsen’s mind, there’s a high probability I’ll destroy everything he knows. I won’t have time to fine-tune the intrusion.”

Clay’s beast growled inwardly at Judd’s reference to the Psy ability to kill with a single focused mental strike. “Psy can’t strike at us if they’re unconscious, correct?”

“Yes. That is,” he amended, “if they’re strong enough to take you out in the first place. Not every Psy is. Anything below a Gradient 5, you’d survive.”

“Same problem,” Lucas pointed out. “He loses consciousness, we lose the chance to extract information.”

“I put some of our own bugs in the apartment when I checked it out earlier,” Clay told them. “Switch your earpieces to frequency two.”

“And here I thought you didn’t listen when I talked about the tech stuff.” Despite the lighthearted words, Dorian’s amazement was evident. “So, we listen, let Larsen and his buddies tell us what we need to know. Might work unless they choose to telepath. Telepaths, hell—Judd, they going to be able to pick us up?”

“I don’t think this Larsen is smart enough to run a telepathic scan. But if he does, we’ll be fine as long as we’re not too close. Most Psy only have the ability to scan a few meters in any direction.”

“We need to be close enough to intercept when necessary.” Clay scanned the area with a predator’s cool mind. “One covering the back of the building, one the front, two on either side.”

“Dorian—you’re the sniper,” Lucas said. “Get up high, set up your rifle, and aim it at the window of Talin’s apartment. If we need a shot, we’ll let you know.”

Dorian was already moving.

Lucas touched his earpiece a few minutes later. “He has a sightline into the window.”

The three of them moved out toward the building, one Psy assassin and two leopards who knew how to turn to shadows in the dark.

“I’m in position.” Lucas’s calm voice.

“So am I.” Judd.

“Copy.” Clay’s mind was working with near-Psy efficiency by then, his emotions contained until he needed their violent force. He was certain he would tonight.

Because he had no doubts whatsoever that the monster would come.

The animal had scented something in the wind, tasted something in the bruises Jon bore. The man who had preyed on the boy wouldn’t be thinking straight right now. He’d want his plaything back. And the easiest way to get to Jon was through the only person he trusted.

Tally.

Larsen probably planned to torture her, break her. But evil, he thought with a fierce stab of pride, didn’t understand good. Tally would rather die than betray those under her care. Just like twenty years ago, she had gone mute rather than betray him.

Don’t kill me! I promise I won’t touch her again!

Orrin had begged for his life, promised to turn himself in after the first slash of Clay’s leopard claws. Clay had executed him anyway. For the pain he had put in Tally’s eyes, for the childhood he had stolen, Orrin Henderson had deserved to die. But to the authorities, Orrin’s words would have changed Clay’s act from manslaughter in defense of a child, to cold-blooded retaliation.

They would have been wrong.

Clay had stopped thinking straight the second he’d heard that first, faint cry, the utter despair in it a violation. As Orrin broke Tally, something in Clay had broken, too. He could have no more stopped himself from killing Orrin than he could have left Tally to take the hurt. Part of him wondered if, deep down, she still blamed him. His leopard’s heart remained deeply scarred by the failure.

Without warning, warmth soothed into his bones, a silent whisper telling him the past was over and done. What they were now was the truth. He accepted that whisper, accepted it was Tally speaking to him, though she might not know it yet. He understood full well that she thought they weren’t truly mated. He hadn’t done anything to correct her misapprehension—with the shadow of disease hovering over her, she didn’t want to bond him to her in such an inescapable fashion, didn’t want to handicap him.

Sometimes, Tally could be very stupid for a smart woman.

She was his life, his soul. Without her, he would have gone rogue sooner rather than later. Faith had said that to him, once. That he was on the thinnest of edges and that his time would come. Now, Clay felt blood fury roar through him, inciting the urge to maim, to tear, to annihilate this creature who had dared threaten Tally…and knew that what Faith had foretold had come to pass. Today would decide his future, tell him whether he could be the mate Tally deserved.

“They’re coming.” Dorian’s voice. “Unable to confirm if male is the one described by Jon. Female is blonde, possible match to description of Ashaya’s assistant.”

Clay buried his emotions, knowing he had to act as a man tonight, not a ravaging beast. A second later, he felt his nostrils flare as the night air brought him the sharp metallic stink of Psy. Not all of the race had that scent—Vaughn’s theory was that it only marked those who had accepted Silence on the most fundamental level. The ones who retained some spark of humanity, they smelled human, normal.

Clay could smell the female, too, but couldn’t tell if the sharp metallic scent was her own or an overwhelming echo of the male’s. The leopard didn’t particularly like hurting women, but he had been in this cold war with the Psy long enough to know that female hearts and minds could carry as much evil as male—Nikita Duncan, Sascha’s mother, would’ve had no compunction in ordering the extermination of her own daughter if she’d thought she could get away with it. But knowing that didn’t make him any less uncomfortable with the idea.

“I can see them in Tally’s room. No lights.” Dorian again.

Clay frowned. “That’s Talin to you, Boy Genius.”

Dorian’s growl was low. “Ice-fucking-cold water.”

They went silent as their earpieces picked up the sound of floorboards squeaking. Neither intruder had spoken yet. If they remained silent, interrogation might have to give way to a simple execution, Clay thought with cold logic. Once his identity was confirmed, Larsen had to die, no ifs, no buts.

“Should I pull the curtains over this window?” a female voice asked.

Damn! Clay could’ve kicked himself for leaving those curtains up there. One pull and Dorian’s line of sight was gone.

“Leave it,” the male said. “We can’t risk some nosy neighbor catching the movement and becoming suspicious.”

“As you say. What should I look for?”

“Do you have no initiative?” The man’s voice was pure Psy, but there was an ugly undertone to it the animal in Clay understood all too well. Safe behind the shield of Silence, this monster enjoyed abusing and bullying those weaker than himself. “Look for any signs of where Talin McKade might have gone after she left this apartment. She was here a few hours ago—there should be some evidence of her presence.”

“This seems an illogical endeavor,” the woman persisted. “Have you checked the detective’s records?”

“Why do you think we wasted our time going to that motel in Sacramento? He had it listed as her place of residence.”

Good on Max, Clay thought with a savage grin.

Something crunched and he realized one of the two Psy had stepped on the broken holo-frames scattered in Tally’s living room.

“Careful,” the male hissed. “We don’t want someone calling Enforcement.”

“I thought you had Councilor LeBon’s support. Surely he can stifle any Enforcement action.”

A pause. “It seems Ashaya has used my absence to convince him that my results are worthless. I need Jonquil Duchslaya to prove her wrong—and Talin McKade is certain to know his present whereabouts. The human will serve the dual purpose of providing me with a new access point into Shine’s databases.”

“You think Councilor LeBon will allow you to continue your experiments?”

“Yes, of course, once I’m able to return and show him the real results.”

“Why continue?”

“Are you questioning my judgment?”

“Your findings indicate beyond any doubt that the brains of the Forgotten are different from ours. They can’t be utilized as test subjects.”

“It’s not about using them as test subjects.” The man’s voice held a superior tone, as if he was deigning to share a secret. “It’s about finding out what they’ve become, eliminating the possible threat to the Psy.”

“That’s an illogical presumption,” the female said. “They are no threat, their powers have mutated, weakened—”

“Mutated but not necessarily weakened.” Shuffling, rustling sounds that Clay identified as that of paper. “Where is she hiding? According to our research, she hasn’t returned to her adopted family and she has no close friends.”

“Your approach makes little sense.” The woman stood her ground, a point in her favor—if she really was loyal to Ashaya, she’d walk out of this alive. “Talin McKade isn’t high enough up in Shine to give us the information we need.”

“She has access to their computers. That’s all we need. Once we break open her natural shields and implant a control link, we can direct her to search for what we want. The situation will be more draining on your powers than if she was a cooperative subject, but it’ll work.”

“My powers?”

“I need to be fully functional for the experiments.”

Silence and then the sounds of the female finally moving about. Ten minutes later, the pair left the apartment.

“Dorian?”

“I’ve got them,” Dorian said, tone cool and focused. “They just passed the seventh-floor window, took the stairs.”

“Figures,” Lucas murmured. “They wouldn’t want to be captured on the elevator surveillance.”

They were all moving into intercept positions as they spoke.

“Luc,” Clay said, “can you get the girl away from the male?”

“Dorian, split them up,” Lucas ordered.

“They’re at the exit,” Dorian noted. “Shot coming up. Silenced.”

A short feminine scream followed soon afterward and then the sound of someone running away from Clay’s location, heavier male steps in pursuit. Lucas had taken the girl.

“Judd—we need to find out what she knows,” Clay said as Larsen ran past the alley where he stood cloaked in shadow.

“I’m on it.”

Satisfied the two men would control the female, Clay went after the monster who had killed so many children. In a test of physical strength and speed, a changeling would always win over a Psy. He caught up within seconds, close enough to verify that the Psy fit the description Jon had given them.

“Judd—chances he’s sending telepathically?” he asked as he tracked the man out of the residential streets and toward a quieter area full of warehouses closed up for the night. Fog curled up around his feet, muddied the air, but the leopard had excellent vision and a nose trained to track prey.

“If we’re lucky, he might be too agitated to send. That won’t last.”

“Did he see Lucas?”

“No.” Judd sounded as if he was running. “I’m blocking the girl, but she’s too exhausted to try to send anyway. We’re about to run her to ground.”

The link went silent.

Clay waited. If Larsen hadn’t seen Lucas, that meant he remained unaware of any changeling connection. Even if he did send a telepathic message, he could report nothing but an attack. His superior—Ming LeBon—would likely assume Shine involvement. Clay’s blood boiled at the thought of Ming, but he knew the Councilor wouldn’t pursue this particular evil if he destroyed the man who was driving it.

The Psy male began to slow down. As he bent over in a dark alleyway, breathing hard, Clay’s earpiece activated. It was Lucas. “We’ve got her—blindfolded. She can’t ID us and doesn’t want to. Says she’s one of Ashaya Aleine’s people, and she fits Jon’s description of the blonde he saw with Ashaya. She confirms the Psy you’re chasing is Larsen Brandell, the man behind the experiments. Gradient 7.”

A Psy that strong could shove enough power through a changeling’s mind to cause instantaneous death. So Clay gave Larsen no warning. Slicing out with his claws, he cut through the man’s jugular in a clean sweep.

Blood spurted in a dark splash, coloring the ground and the wall beside the Psy. A gurgling sound followed. Larsen was dead before he hit the asphalt.

It was an execution. And that he felt no pity or guilt should have made Clay a monster. Perhaps it did. But as blood scented the air, sharp and metallic, he wondered if it took a monster to kill a monster.