Shield Of Winter Part 4

The older man fell quiet for so long that Vasic was certain Zie Zen's time of talking was done for this night, but then he said, "Watch over your Sunny as I wasn't able to watch over mine."

The Silent answer would've been to say that Ivy wasn't his, was just another task. However on this moonlit night when his great-grandfather had told him of a woman named Sunny who Vasic would never meet-but who he now realized had shaped Zie Zen's entire existence, there was only one correct answer. "I will, Grandfather."

Zie Zen closed his book, his hands steady and his jaw a firm line. "You must make certain the Es aren't sacrificed as they were then, aren't broken under the weight of the burden that is this new world." His gaze locked with Vasic's. "They will walk into any h.e.l.l; with very few exceptions, it's how they're made. Of stubborn courage and little to no ability to be selfish. This new chaos will annihilate them unless there is a stronger force that will put the Es first."

Vasic had made a vow to protect, and he would do it until his dying breath, but-"That is a task for a better man, a man like Aden." Strong and intelligent and without fractures in every corner of his being. Vasic's self was held together by countless jagged st.i.tches that tore him b.l.o.o.d.y night and day.

"I'm a brute weapon and an expendable shield," he said as the night wind cut across his exposed face, "my task to stand in the way of any violence directed toward the Es." He'd do so without flinching. "I'm not strong enough to last the time the empaths will need their protector to last." Into untold decades to come.

Zie Zen shook his head again. "No, Vasic. This isn't your choice. It is a matter of honor-mine and yours." Another shaky breath. "You are the son of my heart, my truest descendent. You may have lost faith, but you will never give up, regardless of what you believe at this instant. You will do what must be done."

Vasic said nothing. Zie Zen's word was law as far as he was concerned, but there was no doubt in his mind that he would disappoint his great-grandfather this one time. Zie Zen was right-Vasic would never give up, but there would come a time when he'd simply stop working, his body and mind shutting down as a malfunctioning machine might do.

After all, that was what he was: a machine trained to mete out death.

Standing after another half hour of silence, he gave a respectful bow of his head before walking to the water's edge, the snow soft and the pebbles small and smooth beneath the heavy tread of his combat boots. Zie Zen was growing frailer, the hand he'd placed on his cane as Vasic turned away trembling a little, but Vasic had known better than to offer his a.s.sistance. His great-grandfather would've considered that an insult of the highest magnitude.

I'll need your help soon enough. When it is time, I will ask.

Reaching a hundred and thirty years of age was not unheard of in their world, with a limited few living beyond that, but Vasic didn't think his great-grandfather would make it. He saw the same tiredness in Zie Zen's eyes that he felt in his soul, and after what he'd heard tonight, he understood that Zie Zen had suffered blows that had left grievous wounds. And still he continued on.

You are the son of my heart, my truest descendent . . . You will do what must be done.

As Vasic once again considered his great-grandfather's life, he thought of Ivy with her too-perceptive eyes that showed her every thought and her sc.r.a.ppy dog that thought it was a mastiff. Yet there was a fierce strength there, strength that had led her to seek to protect those who were her own even if it meant facing down an Arrow.

. . . it's how they're made. Of stubborn courage and little to no ability to be selfish.

If Ivy followed that pattern, she'd be eaten alive by the monsters that prowled the Net. The world was an even harder place now than that which had claimed Zie Zen's Sunny. Too many people had had their sense of empathy worn away to nothing, become cold inside in a way that couldn't be ameliorated. Sociopaths reigned supreme in many areas of life-from business, to education, to medicine.

It would take decades to fix that imbalance.

Others were so used to being told what to do that they were finding it difficult to function under the current regime. Total freedom would be their worst nightmare. Voracious in their need, these hungry individuals would ask for more and more and still more from the empaths, until an E had nothing left.

Until she lay down to sleep one day and never again woke.

That realization uppermost on Vasic's mind, he walked for near to an hour along the rim of the lake. When he saw the large spotted cat watching him from the trees, he didn't make any sudden moves. Instead, he inclined his head in quiet acknowledgment. The leopard-or perhaps it was a jaguar-did the same, then whispered away into the trees, two predators pa.s.sing in the night.

a a a UNABLE to sleep, Ivy sat in her doorway wrapped up in a thick throw, and stared at the star-studded sky. A drowsy Rabbit had pulled and pushed his cushioned basket to her side with annoyed huffs, and now lay snoring beside her. A normal night, the sky holding a hard-edged clarity that came only on the coldest nights . . . except that her life would never again be normal.

Ivy's lips twisted. Her life hadn't ever been normal, not as the Psy understood it. Even before her collapse at sixteen, she'd known she was different. She'd tried so hard to be like her fellow students at school, increasingly rational and remote with every year of growth and training, but Silence had always been a coat so ill-fitting it exhausted her to wear it.

Mother, why can't I do it right? The teacher says I'm flawed.

She'd been sobbing as she asked that question, a nine-year-old girl who'd failed her Silence evaluation for the second time. Ivy would never forget what her mother had said.

Flaws make us who we are, Ivy. Without them, we might as well be made of plas, featureless and indistinct. Never ever be ashamed of your flaws.

Then her parents had worked together to figure out a way she could pa.s.s the evaluations, though inside, her conditioning was as bad as always. Now an Arrow named Vasic had given her the answer why, and it destroyed everything she thought she knew about the world, her mind turbulent with the need to believe.

A shooting star fell across the sky in a splinter of light at that instant . . . and her nose began to bleed.

Ivy had already made her choice. This, she thought as she used tissues from the pocket of her robe to deal with the blood, was simply the coda on that decision. If the E designation did indeed exist and Ivy carried the ability, she wanted to explore it with every ounce of her being. The fact it would likely stop her brain from crushing itself was a bonus- Her breath caught in her throat, her hand falling to her side, fisted on the b.l.o.o.d.y tissues. "You're early," she whispered to the man who'd appeared in front of the cabin.

"I'm not here for your decision." Winter gray eyes scanned the area.

Rabbit jerked awake on a growl just as the Arrow disappeared around the side of the house. Heart thudding, Ivy could almost think she'd imagined the whole surreal experience, but he appeared around the other side of the cabin not long afterward. "You expected a threat?" she managed to ask, one hand on Rabbit's rigid back.

"No." His face an unreadable silhouette against the night sky, his shoulders outlined by starlight, he added, "A simple security sweep." Ivy was now under Vasic's protection, even if she hadn't accepted the contract.

A startled spark in eyes that were dangerously expressive even in the low light. "Oh." Continuing to pet her dog, she said, "Would you like something hot to drink?" A frown. "You must be cold if you're doing security sweeps at this time of night."

Vasic paused. She was afraid of him, the instinctive response an intelligent one. And yet she'd offered him sustenance. His great-grandfather was right-empaths did not appear to have the best sense of self-preservation. "No," he said. "Why are you sitting here?" Talking to her hadn't been on the agenda.

"I like the quiet." Her face softened, the husky thread in her voice more apparent. "There's a kind of secrecy in the world at this time of night, as if I'm allowed to see mysteries hidden in daylight."

Vasic thought of the deserts and isolated mountain outlooks where he went in an effort to find peace from the shades of those he had erased, considered if Ivy Jane would see mysteries in those locations, too. "You should go inside." His thoughts were immaterial because Ivy would never experience the places in question. "My readings tell me the temperature will drop considerably in the next fifteen minutes."

Getting to her feet, the throw bulky around her, Ivy nodded. "I think you're right. I can taste more snow in the air."

It was a sensual way to describe a meteorological function, another sign that Ivy Jane was in no way Silent. Not that he needed the confirmation-her presence was sandpaper against his senses, harsh and abrasive. It didn't matter. As Aden had pointed out, the sensation might be uncomfortable, but it wasn't debilitating.

And Vasic had made a promise.

So long as he drew breath, he would protect her.

Chapter 7.

Sahara Kyriakus has simply been sucked into the gravitational pull of Kaleb Krychek's power. We should be considering how to rescue her, not peering in fascination at a bond that is a prison.

Letter to the Editor from "Concerned Citizen," PsyNet Beacon KALEB AGREED TO meet Lucas Hunter and Sascha Duncan only because the alpha pair had been blunt in their request. "We need to see that Sahara is happy, content," Lucas had stated.

"Some men would take that as an insult."

The DarkRiver alpha had given an unconcerned shrug in response to Kaleb's reply. "Not in a pack, he wouldn't. We look after our own."

Kaleb was feral in his possessiveness when it came to Sahara, but he understood that such a connection to a powerful pack was a good thing for her to have in her a.r.s.enal.

"Sometimes, my gorgeous man," Sahara said when he stated that, "it isn't about strategy but about family." Her fingers in his hair, nails lightly grazing his scalp. "If DarkRiver and SnowDancer permit the empathic compound in their territory, it won't be because of politics, but because of ties of family."

"An unsound way to make a security decision," he pointed out, while the most scarred, most violent part of him stretched out lazily under her caresses.

"Is it?" Rising on tiptoe, she pressed kisses along his jaw. "Would you ever cause either pack harm when I call them family? Together, they are, after all, a dangerous aggressive force."

Realizing he'd lost this battle, he decided to be seduced instead. Later that day, when they arrived at the meeting, he was ready for Sascha Duncan to ask him and Sahara to lower their surface shields. He'd have drawn the line at that-no one had the right to intrude on his and Sahara's bond.

As it was, the cardinal empath asked nothing of the kind, yet her smile made it clear she'd sensed enough to ease her concerns. It gave Kaleb an acute insight into how deeply integrated an empath's abilities were to her ordinary senses. "Any team with an E on their side has a tactical advantage in a negotiation," he said to Sahara when they returned home. "Political, social, or business."

Sahara frowned. "I never considered that an E might work in a business capacity, but it makes perfect sense. If both sides have an E at the table, it balances out the negotiation." Kissing him with an affection that was still a surprise, she smoothed her hands down the black of his suit jacket. "But we can talk about that later. You don't want to be late for this next meeting, and I have a paper to write."

A minute and a much more thorough kiss later, Kaleb teleported onto the roof of a New York skysc.r.a.per to talk to a man who might hold the secret to the Psy race's future survival. "I appreciate you responding so quickly to my request."

Turning to face Kaleb, the city at his back and the wind tugging at the rich brown of the tailored coat he wore over a business suit, Devraj Santos raised an eyebrow. "It's not every day the most powerful telekinetic in the PsyNet asks to speak to one of the Forgotten."

Not simply one of the Forgotten. Dev Santos was the leader of the people who had once been Psy but were now something else, having defected from the Net at the dawn of Silence and intermingled heavily with the human and changeling populations. As a result, their psychic abilities ranged from zero to potent-and according to Kaleb's sources, for those Forgotten who did carry psychic abilities, the biofeedback from a neural network remained a necessity for survival.

"The PsyNet," he said to the dark-haired male, "is undergoing certain changes."

Santos slid his hands into the pockets of his open coat, an amused glint in his eyes. "That may be the understatement of the century." Not waiting for a response, he continued, "You want to know how we survived without Silence."

"Yes." The ShadowNet, as the Forgotten apparently called their network, was the most a.n.a.logous construct to the PsyNet in the world. Yet, as far as Kaleb had been able to determine, the Forgotten network carried no infection. Furthermore, the percentage of serial killers among Santos' people was comparable to that of the humans and changelings, far less than that in the Psy population pre- or post-Silence. "I need to know why you survived, and are now thriving."

Expression darkening, Santos said, "We didn't. Not at first." He shifted to face the city, his gaze on the skysc.r.a.pers piercing the snow-heavy sky and beyond them, the turbulent water of the East River.

Kaleb joined him, waited.

"My ancestors," the other man said into the quiet, "formed the ShadowNet in desperation when it became clear the only way to escape Silence was to defect, but they brought with them the problems that led the rest of the Psy to choose the Protocol.

"We had foreseers who fell into their visions and never returned, telepaths whose shields splintered until they couldn't block out the noise, telekinetics who broke the necks of the people they loved when their abilities spiraled out of control."

Kaleb attempted to imagine what it must've been like for the defectors, alone and cut off from the vast resources of the PsyNet. "Yet the ShadowNet is producing individuals with unheard-of abilities"-the reason another Councilor had once attempted to hunt them-"while the PsyNet remains problematic."

"Will you accept a 'pathed image?"

Kaleb inclined his head at the inquiry, and Santos sent him the image. It was of a chaos of multihued lines, intersecting and parallel, numerous threads coming in from opposing directions, curving below and above, often smashing into a knot no one could ever untangle, only to spread out in new directions on the other side.

"This is the ShadowNet?" It was the most anarchic mental landscape he'd ever seen.

A nod from Santos. "We're connected to one another through multiple bonds of emotion. Friendship, love, even hate-negative emotions can create bonds as powerful as positive."

Kaleb had never before considered that, but of course the other man was right. Kaleb had spent most of his adult life searching for a way to destroy the Council, his focus relentless. A vicious connection, but a connection nonetheless. "Emotion alone can't be the key, or Silence would've never been necessary."

"There is another element, but it's not one you can replicate," the other man answered. "The ShadowNet is smaller than the PsyNet by a magnitude of hundreds." He turned to face Kaleb once again. "We keep a close eye on one another, notice the symptoms of any disintegration quickly, act even quicker. My personal, unscientific view is that the compactness of the ShadowNet also offers a certain level of automatic stability."

Kaleb thought of the vast s.p.a.ces between minds in the Net. "Akin to a village where trouble is easily spotted, in comparison to a city where an individual may walk alone amongst thousands."

"Exactly. Consider the fact the changelings have been shown to have the lowest rates of psychopathy and mental illness of all the races. They almost always live in comparatively small, tightly linked pack groups."

If Kaleb were to follow that logic, it would mean breaking the PsyNet into manifold pieces. "Your levels of insanity?" he asked, exploring another path. "I was unable to access any hard data." His aide had compiled the information about the propensity for serial killing in this population by painstakingly tracking known members of the Forgotten in the prison system, then extrapolating that data using a statistical program.

"Attempting to break our encryptions?" There was unvarnished steel in Santos's tone. "Don't bother. We learned to protect ourselves a long time ago."

Kaleb had come to the same conclusion when his best hackers failed to get into the Forgotten's databases. "The data is less necessary than any coping mechanisms your people have discovered that can be adapted for use in the PsyNet." He could and would execute the predators as soon as each was identified, but that wouldn't fix the underlying problem.

The monsters would continue to sp.a.w.n.

"Our elders," said the leader of the Forgotten, "think we should keep our distance from your problems. The original adult defectors have all pa.s.sed on, but many of the current elders were youths at that time, can remember the turbulence and pain of it. They say we shouldn't get involved in your troubles."

"What do you say?"

"I'm not a dictator, Krychek. I listen to my people." He went silent as an airjet pa.s.sed overhead, his expression giving nothing away. "But I listen to them all-including the ones who say that in working with you we may find answers to the problems that continue to haunt us." Golden brown skin pulled taut over his cheekbones. "We have our mad still; people we simply cannot reach."

"It's been said the broken ones are the price our race pays for violent psychic abilities," Kaleb pointed out. "We are our minds."

"I'm not willing to give up on any of my people. Are you?"

Kaleb wasn't used to thinking in such a way. The only person who mattered to him was Sahara. Everyone else was irrelevant . . . except that Sahara had asked him to save them. "I never give up on anything." With that he asked another critical question, "Your empaths have been active throughout, and yet you continue to have problematic rates of mental illness?"

Santos's answer was unexpected. "The Forgotten didn't have many powerful empaths to begin with." Face shadowed by the clouds that had moved in directly overhead, he said, "My great-grandmother says it's because the Es thought the defectors would be all right. We had a strong mind-set, were brutally organized, while the Net was in chaos.

"So, despite the fact Silence was anathema to their very being, the vast majority of Es stayed behind." He thrust a hand through his hair. "It meant our first generation was unbalanced enough that we never quite made up the numbers. Today, we have no high-level empaths as you'd judge them, but our mentally ill are far calmer and more productive in comparison to what I've heard of those in the Net." A questioning look.

"Rehabilitation was the usual response under Silence," Kaleb told him. "The more lucrative were locked up and made use of in their cogent moments."

Santos's mouth thinned. "We don't just erase those who break. And some have made recoveries to the extent that they can pick up the threads of their lives."

Rocking back on his heels, he answered Kaleb's next question before it was asked. "From what one of our elder empaths has told me of her sessions with Sascha Duncan, Psy empaths and Forgotten empaths have diverged to a degree that while we can offer some advice and direction, we can't train your people. Our minds no longer function quite the same way when it comes to psychic abilities." A faint smile. "Too much mixed blood."

Kaleb wondered what unique abilities that mixed blood had bequeathed Devraj Santos, the fact one Kaleb had been unable to unearth. "Regardless of our differences," he said, "having an open line of communication between my people and yours could prove beneficial to both."

Santos held his gaze, the world beyond sketched in gray. "Are you declaring a cease-fire between the Psy and the Forgotten?"

"No," Kaleb said. "I'm declaring peace." He held out his hand as the snow began to fall in a hush of white. Touch wasn't something he enjoyed with anyone aside from Sahara, but he could meet the Forgotten leader halfway. "I have no quarrel with the Forgotten." Kaleb's vengeance had always been focused on the corrupt within his own race.

Santos took a long moment before accepting Kaleb's hand. "Peace."

Chapter 8.

The irony, of course, is that E-Psy are often treated as a vulnerable segment of the population. While this may be true in certain circ.u.mstances (as discussed in depth in chapter 3), such a simplistic understanding obfuscates the day-to-day reality of their existence.

Excerpted from The Mysterious E Designation: Empathic Gifts & Shadows by Alice Eldridge LYING IN BED as the birds began to wake on the third day after an Arrow appeared in her life, Ivy thought of what Sascha Duncan had shared when she'd contacted the cardinal for confirmation of the E designation. We heal the mind and the heart. Sorrow, fear, pain, we help people navigate their way out of darkness.

The idea of it had made her chest ache, a painful p.r.i.c.king inside her . . . as if a numbed limb was stretching awake. Yet she had to face the fact that she was a patchwork creature, glued together through sheer stubborn will after the reconditioning that had almost erased her. Who was she to think she could heal anyone else?