Storm echo, p.4
Storm Echo, page 4
Not Grandmother. And not Arwen.
“Why didn’t you go inside?” Ivan said as he pushed open the door.
“Are you kidding?” Arwen poked his salon-perfect dark head cautiously through the doorway. “Who knows what booby traps you’ve laid.”
“This is just a place to crash. Nothing here I want to protect.” He went to make a nutrient drink. “You hungry?”
“Not for that,” Arwen muttered with a shudder. “I eat real food now.”
Arwen had always been different, gentler, kinder, more vulnerable. Because Arwen was an empath, and he’d made the family better simply by existing. It was difficult to be evil when an empath was trying to give you his toys when he thought you were sad, and crying because you’d gotten a scratch or a cut.
Ivan didn’t know how Arwen could be that open to the world and survive—it was a point on which he, Canto, and Silver agreed. They’d always done everything in their power to shield outwardly suave Arwen.
Reality was that the man had no sense of self-preservation when it came to caring for the people who were his own; if Ivan needed it, Arwen would cut off his own arm and give it to him. It was who he was. Good. Just good in a way Ivan had never been nor ever would be. But Lei … yes, she had the same radiant center as his cousin.
Ivan would spill blood without compunction to protect her.
Because a world that held empaths also held monsters.
Gut tight at the thought of what was coming, what he had to tell her, he turned to lean back against the small counter—to see Arwen making a face at the painting that hung on the wall.
“This is so cliché country classic that it might as well come with the tinny music they put in those kitschy greeting cards,” he pronounced with a shudder.
Yet Ivan had witnessed this same man sit quietly beside a homeless person, accept a cup of tea from a dirty hand. Arwen was a contradiction in terms, but one thing never changed: the kindness within. Fashion and décor might be the target of his scorn, but he’d never turn that rapier judgment on a person.
Ivan’s empath cousin didn’t know about Ivan’s homicidal little hobby, could never know about it. Some stains were too dark, needed to be worn only by the one affected. Grandmother, of course, had figured it out—but Ena Mercant was made of grit and stone and will. She’d handled it even if she continued to disagree with his stance on the matter.
Ivan thought some people needed killing. So he took care of it. The end.
“Where did you find this place?” Arwen muttered as he continued to walk around the small space. “Log Cabins United?”
“Private rental. Closest spot to the RockStorm den I could locate.” He drank half the glass of nutrients. “Arwen?”
Arwen was poking hesitantly at the dusty coat of what looked to be a stuffed hamster. “Oh, thank goodness. It’s fake.” He exhaled. “Though … I suppose you wouldn’t want to be in changeling territory and have actual stuffed animals mounted on plinths.”
He turned, hands on his hips, his jacket pushed back. “I’ll have to make sure I check up on you more often or next thing I know, you’ll be wearing checked shirts and camo pants and singing ‘Yee-haw I’m a mountain man.’”
Sometimes, Ivan wondered what media Arwen consumed that he could come up with those statements. “I need advice.”
Slightly widened eyes.
Ivan had never, not once, said those words to the family empath. And Arwen, to his credit, had never pushed him—though Ivan had sensed long ago that Arwen was distressed around him. Not the distressed of repulsion, but the distressed of knowing something was wrong and being unable to do anything about it.
Poor Arwen, unable to fix a member of his beloved family.
“You can ask me anything, Ivan,” his cousin said now. “I’m a vault when it comes to private talks.” His expression was solemn, nothing in it of the apparently shallow man who’d decried the cabin’s décor.
Ivan inclined his head; he knew that the Arwen who’d tried to help him by giving him his toys still lived in the sophisticated man that child had become. “I’m … fascinated by a woman.” That was the only word that felt right. “I can’t stop thinking about her. I dream of her.”
Arwen’s eyes got progressively wider. “Really?” It was a whisper. “Who?”
Ivan ignored the question, not yet ready to share Lei in any shape or form. “I’ve never had a reaction like this to anyone.” A near compulsion to be with her, to look at her, to hear her voice, to … make her smile. “I missed training on the small chance I’d see her.”
“Okay, I need to sit down.” Arwen gave the ratty old armchair a jaundiced look but took it, then blew out a breath. “It sounds like the beginning of something important.” He looked up, a gentle smile on his lips. “Your shields are sky-high, cousin. You barely even let family in. She must be special to get through your defenses.”
Ivan pushed aside the nagging voice that told him he couldn’t afford to allow anyone beyond his defenses. He was stable, had been stable for nearly two decades. Assuming she accepted him once she knew the truth of him, he was in a position to take this risk, embrace the laughter and the warmth that had stepped unexpectedly into his life. He’d never looked for it, never wanted it, but he couldn’t turn away now that it had found him.
Now that she’d found him.
“She is special,” he said simply. “I don’t know how to be in any kind of a romantic relationship. I’m not good at bonding.” The words were in his medical file, which he’d accessed as an adult. He agreed with them.
Arwen’s lips tugged up. “Ivan, I know that if I ever needed help, I could call on you and you’d turn up, ready to coolly, calmly, extract me from trouble.”
He held up a hand when Ivan would’ve spoken. “You don’t have to be warm and fluffy to bond with people—you just have to be there, loyal and present. It helps if you’re ready to do things that give them joy, but I don’t have to tell you that. It wasn’t Grandmother who got me that introduction to the best tailor in Moscow.”
“Family is different.” He’d grown up with Arwen, had known that he’d appreciate the introduction to the master craftsman. “I don’t know anything about her. I don’t know how to make her happy.”
Arwen’s smile deepened. “That’s the best start. The fact that you want to make her happy. Now just listen to her, and you’ll learn what delights her, what brings her joy.”
Ivan thought of how she’d laughed and colored a little as she’d told him she liked “silly, pretty things,” considered his mental file of her colorful earrings and dresses, the way she’d had little threads of sparkle in her hair today.
He nodded slowly. Maybe he could do this, could actually have a chance at normality in a way he’d never before believed. Because he had a gift for noticing things. Most Mercants did; a side effect of growing up in a family of spies. “Thanks, Arwen.”
Arwen’s smile held none of the snooty elegance he could do so well; it was innocent in a way Ivan had never been. At least not as far as he recalled. Perhaps he’d been the same as Arwen as a very young infant, but it was unlikely. He’d already had the crystalline flower in his mind, had already walked its noxious petals.
“I’m so delighted for you.” Rising, Arwen walked over but stopped before making physical contact; he knew Ivan was even less comfortable with that than most Psy. “You deserve happiness.”
Ivan stared at his cousin with the glass of nutrients partway to his mouth. It was uncanny, how Arwen could say things out of the blue that cut right to the heart. Not until that moment had Ivan so clearly understood that he’d always believed he didn’t deserve any kind of a good life. Not given the ugliness of what lived in his mind.
But he’d reached thirty-two years of age without hurting anyone, and his shields were airtight. The faceted crystal spider was contained. Silence had fallen. He’d never felt any compulsion to take the drug that had stolen his mother. And … Lei existed.
There was no reason for him to walk away. Not yet. Not when there remained a chance that she might not reject him once he showed her the spider that slept inside him.
SHE brought one of her colorful little cat planters to the picnic. The blue and pink striped creature, formed as if it was about to pounce, fit easily on the palm of Ivan’s hand. There was a tiny chip on one paw that spoke of its unknown history, and the hole in the cat’s back was so small that he asked Lei what plant could possibly thrive within.
Laughter in her expression, she held up her hands, palms up. “I don’t know. It’ll be fun to find out. Tell me what you decide.”
“What?”
She ducked her head a fraction, her unbound hair sliding over the shoulder of the vibrant red-violet dress that she’d paired with a denim jacket. “I brought it for you.” A quick look up. “It’s silly, isn’t it? I’ll take it back. Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
He kept it out of her reach. “No. You said I could have it.”
Dropping her half-raised hand, she looked at him with eyes that were big and oddly soft. Vulnerable, he realized. As vulnerable as Arwen’s. And he knew she truly was afraid he wouldn’t want the gift.
Parting those soft lips, she said, “You like it?”
He brought it back down, looked at it again. “Yes.” It was a thing he’d never thought to have in his life, but he would now protect it with everything he had. Because she’d given it to him. “Thank you.”
Her smile was dawn breaking across the sky; it made his heart twist in ways he didn’t understand. He didn’t smile back. He didn’t know how to smile in truth, had only ever put it on as a mask and he couldn’t wear a mask with her—but she didn’t seem to mind.
“I packed a whole bunch of things for our picnic, not just the tart.” Her joy was a welcoming fire flickering against him, warming places that had been cold for an eternity.
When she handed him small bites to try, he did so without argument. The flavors were explosions of sensation on his tongue, an overload of input. He must’ve betrayed some response because she laughed—the kind of laugh that said this was a shared amusement. He knew that even though he had never laughed.
“Try this instead,” she said, offering him another tidbit.
He took it, but waited. “You, too.” Ivan didn’t know about relationships like this, but he knew he wanted to take care of her, keep that happiness on her face.
When her smile dimpled the roundness of her cheeks, he realized this wasn’t so difficult after all. Arwen was right; he could figure it out if he only listened. So he did exactly that, content—more than content—to stay quiet as she spoke about what she’d got up to with her friend, how she’d made the tart, and myriad other topics. Her mind was a quicksilver place, bright and enthusiastic.
But she wouldn’t allow him to listen alone. No, she asked him questions, wanted to know about him as much as he wanted to know about her. He answered with honesty; he would not lie to her, would not steal her by hiding the scars on his mind and psyche.
“I’m part of an unusual PsyNet family,” he said. “My cousin turned up yesterday to check that I wasn’t dead, after I fell out of contact for a week. I guess you could call us a pack.”
Laughter, but hidden within the sparkle was a thread far darker and less joyful. “That’s exactly how a pack should be—a strong, cohesive, loving unit.”
“Is your pack not that way?”
“No. I’m visiting with my friend partially because I needed space to come to a decision.” She swallowed. “I’m thinking about leaving the pack.”
Pack was the core of changeling life. Even Psy knew that. For Lei to be considering a permanent break, particularly given the lack of stability in her past, things had to have gone terribly wrong. “Have you decided?”
“No.” She twisted her lips. “I love my packmates, but—” An exhale. “Is it okay if we don’t talk about this anymore? I’m not being sly by not telling you details about my pack. I will. I just … I need time apart from them, even in my own head.”
“Just tell me one more thing—are you safe there?” Unspoken was that if she wasn’t, he’d handle it.
A blink, her pupils expanding. “Yes,” she whispered, then raised her hand as if to touch his face.
When he didn’t shift away, she brushed her fingertips over his skin, and the contact was a tactile punch that rocked him. He tightened his abdomen, held his breath, not about to flinch and cause her to believe he didn’t want her touch. He did. But his body wasn’t used to it, didn’t know how to process the sensations.
Dropping her hand, she said, “You’re a dangerous man.”
Ivan gripped the wrist of his left hand with his right, squeezed. “Yes.”
“Have you killed?” A soft question.
Chapter 6
The infection is in the Net … we’re all vulnerable to breathing in the poison if we come too close to it.
—Vasic Zen, Tp-V, Arrow Squad (January 2082)
GIVING A CURT nod, Ivan said, “Many times. There can be no forgiveness for some crimes, execution the only appropriate punishment.”
No flinch. No withdrawal. “Changelings have the same law.” Hugging her arms around her raised knees, she said, “But meting out death, it changes a person.” A look at him. “Each life taken darkens a piece of your soul.”
He should’ve just nodded and let it go, but nothing was simple with this woman who was like a dream become flesh and blood. “I feel no remorse, Lei.” It was a compulsion, to show her all of himself and see if she ran. Far better to do it now, when she was nearly a mirage, a dream he could one day forget, than to wait until she’d become part of the fabric of his very being.
Though … he had the sense that it was already too late. It had been too late the day she’d walked out of the forest, the embodiment of a promise he’d never dared imagine for himself. “I think of my targets as vermin who need to be eliminated.”
Huge eyes looking at him with care, as if she was trying to see the truth or the lie in his words … but she still didn’t run. “Tell me,” she demanded with unexpected sternness. “Tell me of the last person you targeted and why.”
Squeezing his wrist even harder, Ivan gave another short nod. He’d started this and he’d finish it. “A Psy who used his money and influence to ‘clean’ the streets around his home. He hired a group of thugs to beat homeless people and addicts to death. His thugs then incinerated their bodies in a commercial furnace.”
Breath coming faster and a golden ring around her irises, Lei said, “How did you find out?”
“Because I speak to people most don’t.” He’d left the street behind a long time ago, had never thought to return, but it got into your bones, the street. So he’d decided to use his contacts for good—though some might not see it that way.
“Tell me about another target,” she said.
So he did. Three more times. At the end of which, tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she was shaking her head. “Ivan, no. I can’t argue with you that they were evil, that the world is a better place with them gone, but it hurts you to see yourself that way. As an assassin, a killer.”
Ivan shook his head. “It doesn’t hurt me. I don’t feel anything at all—it’s a job. I do it. Then it’s over.” He didn’t dare touch her, but he refused to break their locked gazes. “I need you to tell me if any of this is a deal breaker. I need to know now, before …” Before I give you more pieces of myself.
As if she’d heard the silent coda, she said, “It’s too late.” A whisper, her fingers rising to touch his cheek again. “You’re inside me already.” Her palm flattened on his cheek, her lips soft and parted. “It should feel too fast, but it doesn’t. It feels exactly as fast as it should be.”
“There’s more,” he continued, dogged in his determination to show her the darkest recesses of his soul. “I have a psychic ability that can enslave people. It lives inside a cage in my mind but should I let it out, it’ll ensnare other minds in its web and suck them dry.”
“Yet you don’t use it, do you? Because you believe in good and evil, and you choose to be good.”
“I’m not—”
“Stop trying to chase me away.” Words that were a breath, the warmth of her soaking into his skin and through to the chilled heart of his soul. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Ivan didn’t know about intimate physical contact, not from experience. But he’d seen others kiss. And now he understood why. He wanted to taste her breath, taste her lips, know her. So he bent his head toward her, waiting, watching to see if she’d pull back.
She didn’t.
She met him halfway.
Breath on breath, lips on lips, it was too much sensation to process, but he didn’t care. Staying motionless, he let her lead the kiss. He let her teach him. By the time he put his hand on her—curving it around the side of her rib cage—his heart rate was erratic, his vision hazed.
Breathless, she pulled back, and her eyes, they weren’t in any way human. A pale kind of tawny with golden edges and a slightly elongated black pupil. Eyes full of a wild light. He could’ve run a quick PsyNet search, come up with a short list of animals who bore such eyes, but she was showing herself to him piece by piece, and now that he knew she wasn’t going to run, he could be patient, could wait until she was ready to reveal all of herself.
“That was …” She lifted trembling fingers to her lips. “I never saw you coming, Ivan.”
He went to lean in, take another kiss, but she shifted position without warning, busying herself putting away the picnic. A flush rode her cheekbones, a jitteriness to her every action.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, not sure how things had gone awry.
She froze. “No, God, no.” A shuddering exhale. “I just … I’m overwhelmed.” A haunted look. “I think I know who you’re meant to be for me, and I’m not ready. Not now, not when I’m already so lost and confused and screwed up.”
Leaning in, she brushed her lips over his in a jolt of pure adrenaline. “But overwhelmed or not, I’ll never run from this, from us. I’ll be back tomorrow night, and I’ll tell you about me. Promise.”
