Storm echo, p.13
Storm Echo, page 13
Her heart began to beat too fast, echoes in her mind of a ruined voice telling her she was sorry.
Baby, I’m … so … sorry. Get … out. Out, my … Leilei. Out … baby … the fuel …
The smell of burnt flesh, the tattoo of melted tires on asphalt, the pounding thunder of the rain, it came back in a crashing roar, like it had happened yesterday.
The animal opened its mouth, wanting to yowl in pain. She should’ve expected this. The human part had been ascendant for so long that the cat’d had no outlet for all the layers of its grief, and it was now getting shaky.
Stars in her mind, connected by that silvery-red spiderweb so lovely and delicate that the cat lifted a paw to bat against it. A mere touch of play, but it was enough to recenter her most primal half.
It began to pad its way along the ledge once more, using its claws and its tail to maintain its balance. It had to pass by one window on its way to the far edge. The cat stilled before nudging its head forward so it could sneak a look inside.
Not a bedroom, but a storage space set up with neat rows of shelving … through which Tamsyn moved with a small datapad in hand. The cat ducked back its head, fighting its natural tendency toward friendliness. Tamsyn was the most dangerous changeling to it now—she’d been close to Soleil, would recognize her scent if she caught a hint of it.
The only slice of good luck was that the window was fully shut. And when she dared another glance, it was to find that Tamsyn had her back to the window.
Heart thudding, her cat managed to get safely to the other side of the window.
It wasn’t too difficult to reach the far edge, from where she gauged the distance to the rooftop on the other side. And realized she’d miscalculated. It was too far for even her cat to jump. Not wasting time, she turned right instead and kept on going along the ledge across the back of the building, looking for a tree, something that she could jump on to climb down to the ground.
Nothing and more nothing—until the large drainpipe that funneled water away from the roof and into what was most likely an underground water tank. Changelings didn’t waste water when they could collect and recycle it. No leopard could’ve climbed down that drainpipe, their body weight far too heavy. It would’ve collapsed. But she had a feeling it would hold her far slighter weight.
She had nothing to lose.
The drainpipe gave a small groan when she jumped onto it, but it held. Deciding not to push her luck, she went down as fast as she could, parts of the pipe digging into her stomach as she slid down. The cat flattened its ears but kept going, leaving deep scratch marks on the plas.
The leopards would see that, of course, but she’d be long gone by then.
All at once, she was thumping onto the ground on her butt. Ugh. Her cat looked around to make sure no one had spotted that hideously embarrassing descent. No other ocelot would ever let her live it down.
But there were no ocelots here. Not unless that scent on Tamsyn had been true.
Driven by a sense of pounding urgency, she shook off her sore butt and ran around the side—and though she should’ve gone to the very front of the building and found a hiding spot from where she could watch for Tamsyn’s exit, she went to a gate in the fence directly opposite where she’d come down.
The gate was closed but not locked.
Not worrying about who might see her, she shifted and unlatched it, then shifted back again. A naked woman would attract far more attention than a small cat that stuck to the shadows. Most people wouldn’t see her in that form—and the ones who did would probably mistake her for a freakishly large housecat. Not a mistake that would hold on a closer look, but she didn’t intend to let anyone get that close.
Sliding through the gate, she looked left then right, saw that the sidewalk was empty. Again, she should’ve gone right and made her way to the front of the building … but she went directly across the sidewalk and to a black car shaped as sleek as a bullet.
The passenger-side door slid back.
Her cat wasn’t the least surprised to look up and see a Psy with eyes of piercing blue waiting for her. Bunching on her haunches, she launched herself into the passenger seat.
Chapter 21
Ivan Mercant: Telepath, 6.2, black hair, killer blue eyes, and ice-cold sexiness. Here’s the tea, wild women. This fine specimen of manhood has long floated under our radar. How, we do not know. The man is so hot that certain bear ladies were willing to risk freezer burn to get close to him.
And it is thanks to our lovely bear readers in StoneWater that we now have knowledge of Mr. Ivan Mercant. They tell us he attended their alpha’s mating ceremony to another Mercant (covered in our special mating issue!), slayed many a heart, and left without a backward look. Oh, ouch.
We know you’re all wondering about the scary part of this description. Word is he’s a security specialist—and that the bear dominants confirm they wouldn’t pick a fight with him unless they meant it. Because the man doesn’t play if you come for him or his.
Can we say swoooooooon?!
—From the “Scary but Sexy” column in the March 2083 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”
UNTIL THE MOMENT that a small cat of gold and black jumped into the passenger seat of his vehicle, Ivan hadn’t known what he was doing here. Hadn’t known why he’d canceled a comm meeting with his Grandmother and left his apartment by stealth—because a Mercant always had a secret way out.
He’d just known he had to get here in time, and he had to do it without alerting the leopards. Now he stared at the stunningly gorgeous cat that sat there staring back at him with eyes so huge and wild that they held him captive. He had the most intense urge to stroke her fur but was rational enough to know she was a wild creature who hadn’t given him the permission.
Somehow finding his footing, he said, “Your daypack is in the back seat,” and pulled away from the curb.
But she hissed and clawed at his arm when he indicated that he was going to turn left. He looked down, changed the indicator to the right. “You want to be in front of the DarkRiver building?”
A nod from the cat who walked in his dreams.
“I’ll find us a space where we won’t be noticed straight off the bat,” he said, “but we won’t be able to hang around there for long. Cats see everything.” The leopards might as well be part of his own family, they were so conscious of intruders and those who might present a risk to their pack.
The bears back in Moscow were security conscious, too, but they were more in-your-face about it. The cats had stealth down to an art. Or as Valentin would put it, they knew how to be sneaky.
Exactly like Mercants.
The ocelot who was Soleil slipped in between the seats to the back—flicking its tail across Ivan’s chest as it did so, the pressure light but conscious. Ivan saw a shimmer of light in his peripheral vision, kept that vision directed resolutely forward as things rustled in back. He hadn’t looked inside her bag—every part of his training said he should have—yet he hadn’t.
Because that was Soleil’s bag.
However, there’d clearly been a change of clothing in there, because when Soleil slipped back through the gap between the seats in her human form, she was wearing a large gray sweatshirt over thick black tights. She even had shoes—thin trainers, but better than bare feet if she had to get out on the city streets.
Ivan liked clothes—they allowed him to present himself to the world exactly as he wished. He also knew how Soleil had liked to present herself. Full of color and shine, sparkle and joy. But that had been before the massacre, before an ax in the back and a living burial in the snow.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“I need to follow the healer.” Her voice was husky, her body straining forward.
“Tamsyn Ryder.” All part of his research into the pack. “Why?”
When she didn’t answer, he glanced at her, at this woman who’d hooked herself inside his soul. “You need me and I don’t work without full information. That’s how people get dead.” And he’d do nothing to bring her to harm.
A narrow-eyed glance. “Why are you even here?”
He thought of the sensation he’d felt against his face in the apartment, of fur and the slightest touch of claws. Softness and hardness. Strange and inexplicable. “Because you called me.”
Feline eyes in a human face. “I’m not Psy—I don’t have that power,” she said, but there was something in her voice that said she wasn’t quite certain. And the way she looked at him, as if seeing straight through him … no, it wasn’t comfortable.
He didn’t want her to see, didn’t want her to know. Because then, she’d walk away again, and he’d lose even this fragile moment of time where she didn’t see him as a monster.
Thief.
A low whisper from his conscience, a quiet reminder that he was using her lack of memory against her, that he was stealing this time.
It’s only for a drop in the timeline of her life, he argued back. I’ll be removing myself from the situation soon enough. The truth would only make her wary when she has no reason to be wary. My sole purpose is to keep her safe.
Gut tight because he knew that lying by omission was still lying, he said, “I’m very good at what I do,” his voice ice tipped in frost as he fought the warring forces within. “I can help you, but only if I have all the data.”
“She has a scent on her.” Soleil’s voice was rough. “I need to know the origin.”
Ivan was a Mercant; it took him a split second to make the connection. “You’re looking for someone.” Someone important enough to her that she’d risked execution by coming uninvited into the territory of another predator.
The fact that Soleil Bijoux Garcia was a woman who’d fight for the people who mattered to her, it fit absolutely with all he knew of her. And if the spider’s mind flared a touch red at the edges in a biting jealousy, Ivan was in control enough to shut that down right then and there.
It was far better for her that she’d decided Ivan wasn’t one of her people. Because the woman beside him? She wouldn’t let go once she committed. And in so doing, she’d have gone down with him.
Not acceptable.
An answer from every part of his psyche.
Soleil didn’t respond to his supposition, her attention on the black SUV that had pulled to a stop in front of DarkRiver HQ. A tall dark-haired man with wide shoulders and the build of a changeling soldier got out of the driver’s seat, just as Tamsyn Ryder exited the front door of the HQ in the fiery light of sunset.
“Nathan Ryder,” Ivan murmured to Soleil. “Tamsyn’s mate.”
Nathan kissed Tamsyn, was kissed in turn, Tamsyn’s palm gentle against his cheek. The slightest movement, Nathan leaning into her touch as he closed his fingers over her wrist, two people in such perfect harmony that even Ivan, with his stunted emotional growth, couldn’t miss it.
He’d seen the beginning of such a bond with his cousins and their mates, but those ties were yet new. This was a bond matured by time and season after season of life … of love.
It struck him then, the depth of what he would never know, never so much as touch. All he’d ever have were memories of what could’ve been a beginning. It was more than he’d ever expected before Soleil, but an angry part of him that he could never allow freedom raged against the unfairness of that.
Ivan wasn’t the one who’d chosen to inject himself with a toxic drug.
Yet he was the one who had to pay the price.
When the Ryders broke apart, Tamsyn opened the back passenger door and seemed to be speaking to someone in the back. Her mate held the front passenger-side door open for her when she closed the back door and turned to get in the car. Then she was inside, and Nathan Ryder went round to get into the driver’s seat.
He was the oldest of the DarkRiver sentinels, but the added experience just made him more dangerous: the muscle on him was fluid, his movements of a changeling in the prime of his life.
“Tamsyn said her mate had taken their cubs and their friends to dinner,” Soleil said, a haunted kind of need in her tone.
Ivan couldn’t stand it, her aloneness. But he also knew that he wasn’t what she needed—or wanted—to assuage it. So he gave her what he could: “The Ryders have twin boys.”
DarkRiver was protective about information when it came to their cubs, so Ivan had only picked up this piece of it by watching. He’d seen the two boys with their mother, the three sometimes accompanied by other children, including a much smaller girl with eyes of panther green: Nadiya “Naya” Hunter.
Lucas Hunter and Sascha Duncan’s child.
“That’s what healers are built for.” Soleil’s voice was an ache of desolation. “For family. For pack.” She spoke again before he could respond. “Can you follow them? I need to know.” Anguish in every word.
“Yes.” Ivan waited until the SUV was almost out of sight before pulling into the flow of traffic.
Soleil’s body all but vibrated with emotion. “You’re falling too far behind,” she said at one point, her hands braced on the dash in the quickly falling darkness. “You’re going to lose him.”
Ivan maintained his pace. “The easiest way to get caught tracking is to be obvious about it. Nathan also currently has his mate and children in the vehicle.” Predatory changelings were never more a threat than when they were in protective mode. “Any closer and he’ll tag us.”
Soleil’s claws—small, perfectly formed blades—sliced into the leather-synth of the passenger seat. Jerking, she looked down, retracted her claws at once. “I’m so sorry.” Hot blooms of color on her cheeks.
“It’s nothing, a simple repair.”
“I still shouldn’t have done it.” Soleil folded her arms across her chest, to make sure it didn’t happen again. “I just—” A harsh exhale, then in a quiet, quiet voice she admitted the fear that haunted her. “I’m so scared I’m imagining it, imagining what I want to be true.”
The man in the driver’s seat, so icy and controlled, said, “We’ll find you some answers today.” And though his voice betrayed nothing, her cat snarled and swiped a claw through the air.
Glad to have something else on which to focus, she looked at him, really looked at him … and saw the tension in the line of his jaw, the vein that throbbed down the side of his neck. His shoulder muscles were tight, the hands he had on the steering wheel locked around the hard plas.
Her fingers flexed against her as she fought the urge to reach out, stroke back his hair, rub the tension from his nape. Strange, but she didn’t think this lethal man would reject the touch.
Her cat rubbed against her skin, aching to reach out. Hating that he was hurting.
Things inside her clenched in pain that felt too intimate between two near strangers.
“Can I touch you?” It felt as if she didn’t need to ask, her cat sure he’d given her permission already, would welcome the contact, but skin privileges weren’t a thing to be taken. She had to be certain.
His spine went even stiffer, but he gave a curt nod.
She put her fingers on his nape without further discussion, her need to soothe him a raw compulsion. The contact burned. She jerked away her hand, stared at her fingertips.
Nothing.
Wary, she tried again. His skin was cooler than her own, and the burn, she understood at last, had been pure primal sensation. Her heart thudded, her skin hot and her breasts suddenly feeling fuller.
Oh yeah, her body liked him, wanted to melt him—and melt for him.
But this wasn’t about her. Focusing on him, she used gentle and careful strokes on his nape and the sides of his neck to ease the tension that had turned him to all but rock. As a healer, she was used to having patience, but this … it wasn’t about patience. She liked doing this. Liked touching him. Liked knowing it was helping.
Increment by increment perhaps, but it was working.
Her toes curling, she leaned a little more toward him, distracted by the spice that underlay the cool breeze of his scent. A warning that this man would bite. That was fine. She was a cat. She had claws.
The truck in front of them turned off—and Ivan turned off with it.
Soleil hissed, breaking contact with his skin, all thoughts of hazy pleasure overridden by panic. “What are you doing? They’re going straight.”
“They’re headed home.” A cool response.
“You can’t know that!” She twisted in her seat in a vain attempt to keep the main highway in sight. “They could be going—”
“Nathan Ryder has his family with him and he’s on the road directly to DarkRiver territory. I know where they live.”
Perspiration breaking out over her skin, Soleil rubbed her hands on the thighs of her tights. “What? How?” DarkRiver was notoriously protective of its people.
“Because she’s a healer.” Just like the stressed and panicked cat in the seat next to Ivan—the same cat who’d just touched him with an infinite tenderness that threatened to drive him mad with thoughts of what could’ve been.
He might live for decades yet in the cage for which he was destined, and he knew he’d rerun her touch over and over again in his mind each and every day. Just as he’d rerun their time in the forest.
Fragments of another life to last him through an eternity of lonely madness.
It took everything he had to stay on the topic. This was important to her, and he would finish it before the spider took control. “The Ryder home is on the edge of the territory, and while access to it isn’t open, it’s far easier to get to than any other part of the territory.”
He was in no doubt that DarkRiver had guards everywhere, however. Leopards were masters of stealth.
Again—exactly like Mercants.
“DarkRiver allows anyone to seek Tamsyn’s help?” Disbelief in every syllable.
“Word on the street is that while she doesn’t run an open practice, she’ll stitch you up or treat you if you turn up on her doorstep—doesn’t matter if you’re Psy, human, or changeling.”
