Storm echo, p.11
Storm Echo, page 11
Hands fisting in his hair, she scowled. “I’m not done with this conversation, but I have to go.” She looked over her shoulder, as if being tugged by unseen hands.
Desperation was a howl inside his skull. “Will you remember me when you wake?” he asked her. “Will you remember us?” As they’d been in the forest in Texas, a fragile bubble of happiness.
“I don’t know. I’m so splintered inside I can barely see my way out.” Starlight fingers brushing his cheek … and then she was gone, the stars falling until he held an overflowing handful that flickered and began to die, one by one.
Chapter 18
Gina: Hey, anyone heard from Soleil? She hasn’t posted since before what happened and I can’t see that Yariela has, either. I know it’s only been three days, but I feel sick to the pit of my stomach. I just want to know they’re okay.
Brett: Yeah, I’m the same. Best-case scenario is that they’re just picking up the pieces and will respond to comms later.
Shamita: I hope so. I hate that no one from SkyElm has reached out to the rest of us for assistance. That alpha of theirs is a total ass according to my own alpha, but we would send help regardless. But we can’t go in without an invitation.
Gina: Brett, you’re a cat in the same general region. You heard anything on the feline network?
Brett: Nada. SkyElm’s insular at the best of times, and right now, they seem to be ignoring all attempts at contact—my alpha tried to reach out directly, got nothing. The only thing I can confirm is that there were survivors—we were able to find that out via a human contact on the ground there.
—Chat log: Primal Care Forum (17 February 2082)
SOLEIL CAME AWAKE with no physical movement to betray her change in state. It was a skill she’d cultivated as a child, after being placed in temporary foster care with the kind of people who should’ve never been carers. But her cat wasn’t having it today, too startled by the other scent in the room. Of a much bigger cat.
Her eyes flicked open.
To see a face of warm beauty leaning over her. The woman’s eyes were the shade of rich caramel against skin kissed by the sun, the hair that tumbled over one of her shoulders an intense brown, and her presence a protective blanket.
Soleil knew her: Tamsyn Ryder, the senior DarkRiver healer.
Changeling healers had long had an informal alliance; they shared healing knowledge regardless of politics and other such vagaries. Back in 2080, however, Tamsyn had set up a forum to facilitate that sharing. Having the forum also allowed for information to be saved so it could be searched. Most of all, the forum was an open conversational space for healers across the world.
“Politics is for alphas and sentinels,” Tamsyn had written in the introductory text. “Healers heal.”
Before the massacre, the forum had been one of Soleil’s favorite online places. She wasn’t, however, worried that Tamsyn would recognize her. As SkyElm’s junior healer, she’d never joined any of the visual communications.
“There you are.” Tamsyn’s voice was as warm as her presence. “How are you feeling?”
Soleil did an internal check. “Tired but okay.” And with an echo of loss inside her that had nothing to do with SkyElm. It was colored in a strange glowing orange edged with scarlet … and in shards of blue, like the eyes of the man who’d saved her life … and now thought he owned it.
Hmph. Her cat tilted up its nose, tail flicking. But it wasn’t angry. How could it be when it was convinced Ivan was hers?
Tamsyn helped her up. “Understandable given what you did during the incident.” Her presence was deceptively gentle—because, if changeling gossip was true, Tamsyn was one of the most powerful people in DarkRiver. It was said that she’d dared override Lucas Hunter and come out of it not only alive but with Lucas’s respect.
The thought of a healer being so treated caused a pang in Soleil’s chest. Monroe had never harmed Yariela, had even taken her advice much of the time—but that was as far as it went.
“An energy drink,” Tamsyn said, passing over a tall glass.
Since changelings weren’t known to poison each other, far preferring more direct methods, Soleil took the glass and drank down half of it in one go. Tamsyn’s approving look made her want to flush, her cat in awe of this woman who was all Soleil had once hoped to become: a strong healer who was an integral part of a pack … and a woman with her own small “pack”—a mate and children she adored.
A family. A sense of belonging. A home.
Energy fizzed in Soleil’s veins. Startled, she looked at the drink. “What is this?”
Tamsyn’s laugh was husky and warm. “Good, isn’t it? It’s a new formulation, based on Psy nutrient drinks. One of our young food scientists saw how the nutrients give Psy an almost immediate boost when they’re stressed energy-wise, and wondered if she could formulate a mix for changeling bodies.”
She nodded at the glass. “It’s only half as effective as the Psy compound, but it packs a punch. Yuka is currently working on another iteration—and she’s already drawn up a business plan where DarkRiver takes over the changeling energy drink market.” Affectionate pride in Tamsyn’s voice.
Soleil’s cat curled up inside her, dejected and lonely and wanting. Yariela had done her best, as had other senior members of the pack, but SkyElm had never functioned in the way of a huge and supportive family. A studious packmate like Yuka would’ve been sniffed at and denigrated by Monroe and his cronies.
But it wasn’t those cronies whom Lucas Hunter had executed. They’d all already been dead. The only ones left had been Monroe, Yariela, the two cubs, Salvador—a submissive packmate who wouldn’t say boo to a goose—and two junior soldiers.
If the alpha of DarkRiver had stuck to killing Monroe and the latter two, Soleil would have been shocked but she’d have understood his reasoning; she wouldn’t have agreed with it when it came to the soldiers—God no—but she’d have been able to see why he’d made that call. Lula and Duke had been baby dominants, but they had been dominants nonetheless. As such, they’d been bound to protect Monroe and could be seen as too loyal to him to set free.
The others … healer, cubs, a submissive. Dominants were meant to protect them. Yet he’d spilled their blood. It made no sense to her that the same man who’d given her a way out had also chosen an act so awful.
A knock on the door.
She watched as Tamsyn went to it, accepted something from the person on the other side before closing it again.
“Why am I alive?” Soleil blurted out.
Tamsyn didn’t startle at her blunt question. Instead, she passed over a small plate that held a helping of fresh rice and what looked to be chicken in a sesame sauce, with a side of steamed vegetables drizzled with what Soleil’s nose told her was honey.
“You must be starving,” the other woman said. “Eat first, then we’ll talk. It’s fresh—benefit of being in the heart of Chinatown.”
Soleil’s stomach rumbled right on cue. Her cheeks blazed. “Thank you.” Food had so long been only fuel to her that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a meal and enjoyed it—but that part of her had apparently awakened with her cat … and with Ivan. “How long have I been out?”
“Twenty-two hours, give or take. You went down late yesterday afternoon, and it’s now midafternoon of the following day.” The senior healer tapped the small screen on the bedside table to bring up the exact time and date. “You needed it. Especially since Lucas couldn’t do anything to assist in your recovery.”
A frown before Tamsyn said, “Why are you unlinked to an alpha? You’re obviously an experienced healer and I’ve never known a single healer to choose the life of a loner. Most of us don’t function well unless surrounded by pack.”
Bleeding at the devastating blow her fellow healer had landed without intent, Soleil thrust the food into her mouth. It tasted of sawdust and tears, her throat threatening to tighten itself until she couldn’t breathe.
Filaments of silver edged in orange-red in her mind, stars that wrapped around her. Ivan. She didn’t know how or why, but she knew it was him. Her personal overprotective Psy. Looking after her as if he had every right to do so. She tugged the filaments and the stars around herself even as she indulged that grumpy thought. She’d rather be grumpy with Ivan than sad … just sad to the bone.
Tamsyn didn’t push her to talk. Settling back in the armchair beside the bed, she looked at Soleil with the worried gaze of a changeling who’d been born to comfort and care. Soleil wanted to spill her guts, tell her all of it, but first she had to get her feet under her. She’d failed in her quest, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t confront Lucas Hunter and make him face the horror of his actions.
Never had Soleil been a coward, and she wasn’t going to start now.
Not even if it meant her life.
THE DarkRiver healer didn’t speak again until Soleil had cleared her plate. Then, taking it and putting it aside on the bedside table, Tamsyn said, “You carry so much pain in you, little sister.”
Such a lack of judgment in her eyes that tears burned Soleil’s irises.
“I wish I could take you home and care for you,” Tamsyn continued, “but we must know who you are and why you’re here. The times are too unsettled for us to simply accept an unknown into our midst.”
Soleil couldn’t process all of that. The idea of a pack ever just accepting anyone was alien to her. She’d always had to fight for her place by being so cheerful and friendly that people couldn’t dislike her; even that might not have worked if she hadn’t been born a healer.
You weren’t cheerful with Ivan and he still likes you.
She squelched that annoying voice from the back of her brain. Ivan Mercant, she thought, wasn’t the kind of man who went around “liking” people. He felt a responsibility toward her, that was all—and he struck her as someone who did not shirk his responsibilities.
An appealing trait in a man … if she wasn’t the target.
Her cat rumbled its agreement.
But Ivan wasn’t the problem right this minute. “Are you saying your alpha will execute me if I don’t cooperate?” Soleil needed to know exactly how much rope she had before she hanged herself.
Tamsyn’s eyebrows drew together in a deep frown. “Healers are not to be harmed,” she said, as if that was an absolute truth. “And of all the people to not do such an act, Lucas sits at the very top of the list.”
That was it. Soleil threw up her hands. “Why do people keep saying things like that as if I’m supposed to know something?!” Frustration burned away the calm with which she’d intended to approach this. “I don’t know! Your alpha is a stranger to me!”
Tamsyn’s lips tugged up at the edges. “There you are, little sister,” she murmured, a feline gleam in her eyes. “I knew you were in there.”
Shit. There went Soleil’s intention of sliding under the radar until she wanted to act. But what was done was done. It looked like her temper had reappeared with her cat. She blamed Ivan. He was the one who’d poked her cat awake, hadn’t he?
That cat prowled inside her mind, smug and happy because it had found him.
Meanwhile, the human side of her hadn’t even known they’d been hunting a particular Psy.
“Lucas,” Tamsyn said, her smile fading, “is the son of a healer.” Gentle words. “She was murdered when he was a boy. Doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, he will never touch you in violence.”
Chapter 19
It’s okay, mi ángel. Cry if you need to. Your Abuela Yari will hold you safe. Oh, my poor sweet Leilei.
—Yariela Castaneda to Soleil Bijoux Garcia (9 September 2067)
SOLEIL STARED AT the other woman, a brittle flame of hope fluttering to life inside her. Tamsyn was smart, well respected. Surely, surely she couldn’t be so wrong about her alpha. But if she was right … What did that mean? Where was Yariela? Why had she vanished off the face of the Earth?
Soleil wasn’t irrational. She’d done her research. After being told of Lucas Hunter’s apparent actions, she’d looked for Yariela and the other survivors in every possible place they could be; she’d even used Yariela’s passwords—which Yariela had never hidden from Soleil—to log on to the healer forum so she could see when Yariela had last accessed the site, even if she hadn’t posted anything.
Nothing. No logged entries. Not since the massacre.
That, more than anything, had made Soleil believe Yariela must be dead. The forum had been the only online site her mentor used. She’d maintained no social media profile, but she’d loved hanging out with the older healers on the forum. They’d named themselves the Creaky Knees.
Soleil’s own inbox had been full of worried messages, but despite how awful she felt about ignoring them, she hadn’t replied. She’d believed that to do so would be to expose herself to DarkRiver and their murderous alpha before she could uncover what had happened to the rest of her pack. Because the fact that Yariela and six others had survived the initial massacre wasn’t a mistake—three unaffiliated people had confirmed that piece of information for Soleil.
The first had been a neighbor of SkyElm’s, the second a human priest who’d come by the pack’s territory with a carload of food cooked by his parishioners and a willingness to listen and offer comfort.
“They weren’t of my faith or my church,” the dark-eyed man of some sixty years of age, his skin browned by the sun, had told Soleil. “SkyElm long preferred to mind its own business, so we had little contact with them. But at such a time, it’s not about a particular creed, but about kindness, about compassion. I simply wished them to know they weren’t alone.”
He’d met Yariela face-to-face, and she’d thanked him, and spoken to him of the survivors, but she’d then hurried him off with the statement that her alpha was in no mood to have a stranger this close to their vulnerable.
The third confirmation had come from the hospital where Monroe had disavowed Soleil as a packmate. The orderly who’d dealt with him had remembered him. “He said his pack was only seven now,” the slender human male had told Soleil when she began to hunt for the truth. “I remember because it was so sad. An entire pack decimated.”
Throat thick, Soleil wanted to ask her questions aloud of Tamsyn, wanted to trust. Her cat strained toward this beautiful woman with her aura of maternal warmth. Stifling the urge because if she fell, she might break, might accept the unacceptable, she took the drink she’d set aside, finished it.
“I’m still really tired,” she said afterward, the words tight. “Can I rest?”
Tamsyn rose to her feet. Bending down, she brushed her hand over Soleil’s hair before pressing a kiss to her temple. Emotion clogging up her throat, Soleil couldn’t speak until Tamsyn had left the room.
Even then, she sat there blinking for long moments until she could see again, her mind filled with memories of a small woman with delicate bones and skin of flawless ebony, her eyes a brown so dark they were endless.
Yariela was the only person who’d hugged and openly taken care of her after Soleil—quiet and withdrawn and crushed by grief—became part of SkyElm. Others had been nice to her in secret, but they’d been too weak to stand up to the dominants in public—and the dominants had all followed her grandfather’s lead. He had been their alpha, after all.
A much younger Monroe had been his right hand back then.
Soleil had never blamed the ones whose care was given only in secret. Their pack had been broken long before the day their blood stained the snow. But they’d still been her pack, still been her family—and she would not rest until she knew what had happened to them.
She hadn’t heard the click of a lock when Tamsyn left the room, but she knew there had to be a guard out there. As the healer had pointed out, Soleil was a dangerous unknown. Which left the window to the right. Before she explored that option, however, she got out of bed and checked out the other door in the room. As she’d expected, it went to the bathroom: the sink was to her left, the shower just beyond it, and the toilet in a private cubicle to the right.
A fluffy blue bathmat lay in front of the sparkling glass of the shower partition.
Someone had put a fresh set of clothing on the small vanity that held the sink. Fingering the material, she saw that it was stiff, new. She’d expected—and would’ve been happy—for it to have been used, from the stores the pack kept for members who found themselves coming out of a shift naked. Every pack kept such a stash of clothing in various places where packmates might gather.
Perhaps they hadn’t wanted to risk her cat acting out. There was no way to completely wash out the scent threads of a pack from clothing that was worn by packmates on a regular basis. Those threads were often a thing of comfort. But Soleil wasn’t pack. She was an intruder.
On top of the jeans, T-shirt, and sweatshirt were sealed packs of underwear.
There was no reason for her not to take a shower. Any escape attempt would have to be under the cover of darkness.
That in mind, she stripped and stepped under spray as hard as she could make it, so that it pummeled her skin. When she closed her eyes, she expected to see the dead, or the chaos from yesterday. What she saw were stars against velvet black. An endless sprawl, lovely and haunting and overlaid by a silvery web that emanated from a single dark star.
Wonder whispering through her veins, she found herself drawn to the dark star devoid of light. She should’ve been afraid. After all, what sat at the center of a web but a spider? Yet this dark star, it wasn’t using the web to entrap people. It was doing something else to the stars hooked into the web. It was—
The water cut off.
Blinking it out of her eyes, she looked at the control panel and saw that it was set to eco-mode. She could’ve restarted it, but she was changeling, understood what it was to care for the land on which she stood. So she got out, clinging to the beautiful image that had bloomed in those moments where she’d expected only pain, only horror.
