Tangle of Need (58 page)

“The decision is yours,” Nikita had said. “As an E, you have the capability to judge whether or not a former Arrow will use the information to kill.”

It was, Judd knew, the first time Nikita had ever acknowledged that Sascha wasn’t a failed cardinal, but a powerful one. And because he, Sascha, Lucas, and Hawke all knew that even if the civil war in the Net turned brutal and threatened to engulf the packs, none of them would seek to collapse the Net, to murder indiscriminately, he held the file inside his mind, tucked away in a section that would immediately and automatically degrade if his shields were ever breached.

Only the people who had been at that meeting, as well as Walker and Sienna, knew that he and Sascha carried the files. The information was too explosive, too dangerous, could make them both targets if it got out. Unless an anchor in the relevant area sent out an emergency distress call, no one would ever know.

“The same is being attempted in every region across the world,” Aden now said, “but the task is massive, and the majority of cities don’t have the resources of two Councilors. For the time being, we’re recommending the anchors move their furniture around in unexpected ways and never go unarmed.”

No Tk ever used the layout of furniture as a lock—it was too transient. And all teleport-capable Tks had an inbuilt space-sensing ability that meant they would never materialize in solid matter. Unless there was a psychic failure, the teleport would abort at the obstruction. However, if a Tk did ’port in, the unfamiliar layout could grant the anchor an extra few seconds in which to run or use a weapon. “It’s a smart move.”

“Henry is dead.”

“You?”

“Vasic.” A pause. “We can’t trust him, not after this is done.”

Judd didn’t misunderstand the warning. “The children in the Arrow schools,” he said, instead of responding directly to the statement, “who’s watching out for them?” Even with the darkness swallowing the Net and the Arrows’ attention, Aden would not have forgotten their youngest brethren.

“The most stable of us each have a group we monitor.” Aden passed Judd a small black data crystal. “The names and addresses of the children. If anything happens to us, they are the ones you must protect.” A pause. “Trust it to Walker—he’ll understand and be able to help them better than you or I.”

Judd put the crystal into the inside pocket of his leather-synth jacket, the act an unspoken promise. “Does Vasic monitor a group?” Vasic might not feel, but he had a conscience, would never damage a child by abandoning him. That conscience was why the Tk-V hated himself, though he would not put it in those terms.

“No.” Aden looked out into the night. “He doesn’t trust himself not to kill if he sees a teacher hurting a child—we can’t yet intervene. It risks giving everything away before we’re in a position to take total control of the training system.”

“How close are you?”

“On the verge. Unlike Ming, Kaleb appears to have no inclination to take a direct hand in the schools.” A long pause. “Even when we seize the reins, total liberation will be impossible.”

“I know.” Without the mental discipline forged by his rigid Arrow training, Judd’s abilities might have self-destructed long ago. “But the process doesn’t have to be cruel.” A young boy’s arm didn’t have to be broken over and over again until he stopped screaming.

“Some would say such a stance will destroy the foundation of the program.”

That pain was a state of mind, to be overcome. “And perhaps we’ll discover it makes us stronger.”

Aden didn’t say anything for a long time. “I have to go. There has been an explosion at a Psy research facility in Belgrade.”

Judd watched the other Arrow disappear into the darkness before rising and entering the church to take the second pew from the back. He felt the slightest brush of air as the Ghost slid into the pew behind him a minute later. “Do you know about Belgrade?” Judd asked while they waited for Father Xavier Perez, the third part of their unexpected triumvirate, to finish speaking with a parishioner in his office.

“Of course.” No arrogance, simple fact. “It was small and is being contained, no fatalities.”

“Luck or a lack of planning on the part of the attackers?”

“The latter. The facility is privately funded, and about to begin a critical assessment of the Silence Protocol—somehow, their mission statement leaked into the Net twenty-four hours ago.”

The fact that any group had gained permission to conduct such a study was momentous, though Judd had a very good idea of how it had been done. As he had about the leak. “Pure Psy acted in the heat of the moment.” Judd knew what the Ghost knew about Vasquez, and so he knew this act was out of character. “Henry’s death may have severed the leash that kept Vasquez rational.” He had no doubt his fellow rebel was aware of the ex-Councilor’s demise.

“Perhaps.” No concern. “It’s time, Judd.”

Yes, the dominoes had begun to fall, unstoppable and inexorable. “Is the violence necessary?”

“Some things need to be broken to become stronger.”

The Ghost left thirty seconds later, called away by something urgent.

Sitting alone in the peace of the church, Judd thought of the murders perpetrated by Pure Psy, the violence done tonight, the blood that would be spilled in the future. Instead of reminding the populace of the value of Silence, the aggression was nudging awake long-buried emotions, fear so dark and from so deep in the psyche that not even the most painful conditioning could keep it imprisoned.

Silence was one crack away from total failure.

Some things need to be broken to become stronger.

“He does not understand friendship,” Judd said to Xavier later, “but I do.”

The priest’s dark skin glowed in the light from the candles that were the sole illumination now that he’d turned off the lights. “Is it mercy to end the life of a friend savaged by torment, or is it a sin?”

“Those are your questions, Xavier. Mine is only this: if he proves too unstable”—willing to extinguish the Net in a rippling wave of endless death—“will I have the strength to execute a man who is a mirror of who I might’ve been in another life?”

Chapter 71

TWO WEEKS AFTER
the attempted assassination of the San Francisco anchor, and a week after the flurry of bombings on a number of Psy research centers and institutions of learning, it felt to Adria as if the entire world was holding its breath. Seven days had passed with no more signs of a civil war that could devastate the planet, but with Judd Lauren having shared what he knew with the senior members of the pack, Adria knew the lull was nothing but the calm in the eye of the storm.

It was all going to come crashing down, sooner rather than later.

As a soldier, she worked with her packmates and their allies to prepare the pack and the region—and to some extent, other parts of the world. Through their allies’ connections, and their links with the Human Alliance, the BlackEdge Wolves, the water-based changelings, and less formal relationships with other groups, SnowDancer had a worldwide network that disseminated and shared information in an effort to provide people with the means to protect themselves when the storm blew in.

However, within herself, where no one could see, she fought a far more heartbreaking war. Her love for Riaz had come to define her. She knew that no matter what the future brought, she would never again feel this glory, never again burn with such vibrant passion and wild tenderness. It brought her incredible joy to live with him, to laugh with him, to fall asleep in his arms … and every day, she woke up and for a single painful second, wondered if this was the day he’d look at her and realize what he’d given up.

She’d learned to hide that instinctive dart of pain, and today, as they sat on a bench in Golden Gate Park, watching the people out for a stroll
among the flower beds on this piercingly bright fall day, she could almost believe that everything was as it should be, that she was with a man who was meant to be her own and no one else’s.

“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” Riaz demanded, his tone that of a man at the end of his patience.

It puzzled her. “Didn’t we just have a conversation about the toy dog we saw in that woman’s purse?” The little yapping thing had gone silent when the woman walked past them, its big eyes watching Riaz and Adria as if it expected to be eaten.

It had made them both laugh.

But no laughter colored Riaz’s voice when he spoke again. “We talk about everyday things, inconsequential things.” Eyes of palest brown met hers, shimmering with a film of heated anger … but his words, they held raw pain. “You’ve shut me out of your heart,
amada
, and it’s shredding me to pieces.”

It made her blood turn to ice, her breath catch until she had to get up, to walk, so she could find air again. He didn’t try to hem her in, her black wolf, didn’t do anything but watch. When she came back down to sit beside him, she gripped the edges of the bench. “I didn’t mean to.” It was instinctive, this withdrawing into herself, a defensive measure she’d learned in the years she’d been with Martin. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it.” Hurting him in the same horrible way she’d once been hurt, something she’d vowed never to do to anyone.

Devastated, she willed him to believe her. “I never meant to—”

“I know.” He reached out to tuck a flyaway strand of her unbound hair behind her ear in a sweet, familiar intimacy. “And I’m trying so goddamn hard not to push you, but I need you to be mine. Because I’m yours.”

Simple. Unguarded. A lone wolf’s heart in her hands.

Her chest ached. “I’m so afraid,” she whispered, tearing her soul open because his honesty demanded her own. “I try not to be, but I’m
so
scared you’ll regret letting her go. The fear chokes me up sometimes.”

Riaz didn’t do anything she would’ve expected from a dominant male. He didn’t take her into his arms and try to convince her it would be all right, didn’t growl or snarl until she relented. Instead, he said, “Look over there.”

Following his gaze, she found herself looking across the large flower bed in front to focus on an elderly couple who’d been sitting on the bench
opposite them for some time. Adria had watched them take snacks out of a small lunchbox, pass each other coffee from a silver thermos, and hold hands. As they were doing now. “They’re beautiful together.” Their love was age worn and familiar, a groove worn into their lives and hearts. “You can tell they’re a unit.” Like a mated pair, one wouldn’t long survive the other.

“They’re not changeling.”

“Human,” she said. “Must be a hundred and twenty-five at least.” Fit and healthy, though they’d allowed their hair to turn snow white, their bodies to soften. Age sat on them with the warmest elegance.

“It’s their hundredth anniversary today,” Riaz said to her surprise. “So they decided to recreate their first date.”

Wonder bloomed within her. “How do you know?”

A small smile curved his lips, brought that light into his eyes she so adored. “I was eavesdropping when the park was a little quieter. The wind carried their words.”

“That’s so romantic,” she said, her face stretching from the depth of her smile. Maybe one day, it would be her and Riaz on this bench, a hundred years from now.

The dream was one she wanted with her every breath … and one, she understood in a moment of crystal clarity, that she had the power to make come true. As she had the power to destroy it, burying it under the cold darkness of fear until nothing remained.

The realization wiped everything else aside to leave her with a single blinding truth: their future had never been, and was never going to be, Riaz’s choice alone. He’d fought so hard for her, her lone wolf, and she would fight for him, too, to the last beat of her heart. Never again would she step gracefully aside. Forget about setting something free if you loved it—she would goddamn hold on to her man. Her wolf growled in agreement, its bruised spirit infused with steel, a door crashing open inside her that she hadn’t even been aware was locked shut.

“They’re not changeling, Adria.”

Her determination a hot pulse in her skin, she turned to look at him, his profile strong. “I know.” It was a frustrated statement, because all she wanted to do was touch her black wolf, hold him, make it up to him for having been such an idiot for so long.

“What does that mean?”

“Riaz.”

He slipped his hand to her nape, squeezed. “Look.”

Still scowling, she glanced up to see the man lean over to kiss his wife before he turned on the tiny music player he’d put on the bench. He held out his hand and she flowed into his arms. The song was an old one, from the time of their youth, and while their feet moved a little slower than they might have on that long-ago first date, the love between them was so luminous, it made every single person around them halt, stop breathing.

Adria, too, didn’t take her eyes off the couple until they finished dancing and packed up their things to walk away, hand in hand. “That’s…” She had no words for the sheer beauty of what she’d seen.

“They’re not changeling,” Riaz said again. “They don’t have the mating bond. Whatever they feel for one another can’t be what one mate-bonded changeling feels for another.”

“How can you say that?” She swiveled to face him, incensed that he’d try to lessen the wonder of what they’d just witnessed. “I dare anyone pry them apart.”

Riaz said nothing, his eyes a brilliant dark gold that glowed.

And she heard what she’d said, what he’d said. “We’re not human,” she whispered, hope an incandescent burst of sunshine in her blood.

This time, he did take her into his arms, into his lap, uncaring of who might be watching. “Does that mean we love any less?” Rough words from the heart of the wolf.

Shaking her head, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. “I love you to madness.” She pulled back, his face cupped in her hands, giving him the words, the courtship, he’d given her. “Until I wake up early some days just to watch you sleep, until it hurts to be separated from you for even a day, until I steal your sweatshirts so I can rub my face against your scent.”