Heart of Obsidian (Psy-Changeling #12) 6

The pack has a man in the area, she added five minutes later. He’s confirmed the local changeling trackers are happy to work with Psy teams to find the bombers. Changeling rescue and healing/medical teams should also be reaching you within twenty minutes.

Focusing on lifting a massive piece of the outer wall that had fallen inward, he took a second to reply. Silver’s direct line is in the cell phone I gave you. Route her into all communications dealing with rescue and medical so she can coordinate available resources.

I’ll get the number. She disappeared for a minute before returning. Kaleb, the Forgotten also have someone in the area who might be able to assist. She’ll come in with the DarkRiver male and requests no one attempt to shadow her as she works.

The Forgotten, having dropped out of the PsyNet at the inception of Silence, had been marrying humans and mating with changelings for over a hundred years. As a result, Kaleb was well aware they had some very interesting new abilities in their genetic line, abilities they preferred to keep under the radar. No one will interfere with her.

Seeing a bloody but breathing child curled up in a cavity formed by pieces of debris that had saved his small body from being crushed, Kaleb called out for a paramedic. A minute later, and two feet deeper, he found a child who hadn’t been as lucky, her eyes staring blindly into death, grit across her irises. Going down on one knee, he brought her eyelids down in an act that he knew came from the voice in the void.

All the while, he could feel Sahara tucked against his mind, staying with him as she’d done at the university, and in the aftermath of the inferno that had engulfed Hong Kong Island.

Never again, he thought, would he be alone in the dark.

SAHARA’S heart ached at the indefinable emotion she sensed from Kaleb across their telepathic bond. He would speak to her about it when he was ready, of that she had not a single doubt in her mind. Her dangerous lover was learning that she’d become even more stubborn than she’d been at sixteen—she had claimed Kaleb and she would not turn away, no matter what.

Now she met the cat-green eyes of the DarkRiver alpha. Lucas Hunter had turned up at her aerie soon after the news of the bombing went live, his eyes glowing against the early morning darkness on this side of the world. The pack, he’d told her, had no one connected to the Net, and so she was their information source when it came to what was happening on the psychic plane.

“I’m linking in with Kaleb’s aide, Silver,” she said, and he nodded at her from where he was talking on the phone with the leader of the Forgotten, the four slashing lines on the right side of his face a silent reminder of the predator that lived beneath his skin.

Kaleb’s ice-blonde aide, her hair in a flawless twist, was expecting her call. “Do the groups to which you have access,” Silver said without further ado, “have any translators willing to assist the medics? We can comm them in—with a number of the on-site translators dead or critically injured, there aren’t enough to help the medics and keep the survivors calm. Multiple languages needed, some of them esoteric.”

“I’m a translator,” Sahara said. “All languages.” It seemed a safe enough claim, given the tests she’d been running on herself while out and about in the city. Anytime she heard an unfamiliar language, she’d listen . . . and then she’d understand, without ever activating her ability.

Whatever it was she could do, it worked on the subconscious level. “A minor psychic gift,” she explained to Silver. “No official designation.”

The aide’s eyes sharpened. “That’s useful enough that I can justify diverting a Tk to pick you up.”

“I’ll take over as liaison,” Lucas said, entering into the comm frame so Silver could see him. “Give us a couple of minutes to organize an image your teleporter can use as a lock.”

Soon afterward, Sahara was in the trees a short distance from her aerie, and Lucas was tying a brightly colored rope around the trunk of an otherwise nondescript pine—just because the pack wanted to help didn’t mean they intended for a strange Tk to have a permanent image lock inside their territory.

Taking a snapshot with her cell phone, she sent it to Silver, as Lucas said, “Good luck,” his eyes grim.

Vasic was the Tk who teleported in—not surprising, given the distance—and as a result, she was in Geneva seconds later.

“Thank God,” the man in charge of the field hospital said when she told him what she could do.

Slapping the symbol of the Rosetta Stone on her shoulder, he pointed her in the direction of a boy on a stretcher about ten feet away. “Obscure mother tongue. He must have something of one of the major world languages, but he’s lost it in the shock.”

It took Sahara half a minute to comprehend what the boy was saying. “It’s okay,” she reassured him when he began to cry at the realization that she understood him. “You’re not alone anymore. Now, you need to tell the doctor some things so she can help you.”

That was the first of many similar conversations she had over the hours that followed, as Geneva went from light to dark, the stars bright overhead. Someone brought her a meal when she began to fade, and that kept her going until the early morning hours. Deciding to crash for an hour to head off a collapse, she curled up on one of the cots set up for rescue personnel. Have you eaten? she asked the cardinal Tk who, she knew, would not sleep.

I’ve had nutrition bars delivered to me throughout the day.

No one, she thought, wanted to lose any of the already depleted telekinetics—but Kaleb was in a league of his own. Take care with the structural damage. Some of the areas are really unstable.

Though he had to know that far better than her, he didn’t reject her concern. I’ll be careful.

Will you wake me in an hour?

Yes. Rest now.

“COUNCILOR.”

Turning at the voice, Kaleb found an older woman holding a bottle of the energy drink he’d been downing twice an hour to fuel his body. “Thank you.”

“I can take the bottle once you’re done.” A polite enough offer, but her eyes didn’t move off the bottle in his hand.

Kaleb’s instincts went on immediate and high alert. Pinning the woman’s body in place using telekinesis and compressing her jaw to keep her silent, he unscrewed the bottle to take a sniff.

Nothing smelled off. Vasic, a second.

The Arrow walked around the corner soon afterward. I’m near flameout. I’ll need to rest for three hours at least before I can continue.

Kaleb nodded. “Can you quickly test this?”

Holding up his left arm, Vasic slid back a small screen on the computronic gauntlet fused to his body. “One drop.”

Kaleb placed the sample on the test surface.

Chapter 40

“IT’S A COMPLEX poison,” Vasic said in less than a minute, “would’ve incapacitated you almost immediately.” His eyes shifted to the would-be assassin. “At which point, she would’ve killed you with the garrote in her bracelet.” Removing the bracelet, he snapped out the thin metal wire designed to cut off a target’s air supply with silent efficiency.

“Who sent you?” Kaleb asked, releasing the woman’s jaw so she could reply.

“Do what you will, Councilor Krychek,” was the icy response. “My mind is set to implode at any attempt at an intrusion.”

“Interesting.” Having already told the DarkMind to entrap her so she couldn’t connect to anyone on the psychic plane, he pinched a nerve that made her slump to the ground, then ordered another of his men on the scene to blindfold and tie her up. “Put her somewhere out of the way. I’ll deal with her later.”

He ’ported the poisonous drink into a biohazard container on-site, just as Vasic said, “The explosives used at this site have been traced back to a Council depot in Europe under Ming’s control.”

Kaleb had always believed Ming to be the martial mastermind behind Henry Scott during the time the now-dead Councilor headed Pure Psy, but this type of indiscriminate violence didn’t fit Ming’s modus operandi. Neither did Pure Psy’s racial agenda. It was far too irrational and Ming was nothing if not rational; that was part of what made him so dangerous.

However, Ming was also fully capable of playing a deep game, Pure Psy likely nothing but a pawn to help further an agenda of which the fanatical group knew nothing. “I’ll have one of my men tug that thread,” he said to Vasic, “see what comes of it. I want the squad to remain on Pure Psy.”

It wasn’t until six hours later, having done everything he could to assist in the search for survivors, that Kaleb had time to deal with the woman who had attempted to poison him. But first he wanted to see Sahara. Locking on her image, he found her alone in the tent that had functioned as a canteen for survivors and those working in the field hospital. She was tidying up the detritus, the area quiet and calm.

From his telepathic conversations with her during the past hours, he knew the majority of the survivors were now in hospitals in Geneva and nearby cities. Each also had the support of at least one individual from his or her own country, the multilingual representatives having been flown in from around the world on high-speed jets courtesy of an airline controlled by Nikita Duncan.

The ex-Councilor wasn’t famous for being a humanitarian, but she was smart enough to know the action would paint her in a positive light when the dust settled. It was an intelligent, calculated move worthy of the woman who had lasted more than a decade on the Council. Nikita, he thought, would always find a way to come out alive on the other side.

Anthony Kyriakus, too, had made his mark. An unidentified NightStar foreseer had seen a vision of further bombings in Luxembourg and Paris with enough specificity for both to be averted. “It is unfortunate that we could not do the same for other recent tragedies,” had been the statement of the NightStar press officer when questioned by media in the aftermath. “Nonbusiness foresight is a new area for NightStar, and we are learning that not all events can be foreseen or averted.”