Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(19)

That training ground had been chosen because this area of the PsyNet was quiet. It gave trainee empaths room to learn control and run their psychic exercises without interference from—or to—other minds. And though the compound was on the border between DarkRiver and SnowDancer territory, it was the Arrow Squad that guarded the trainees.

The wolf watching over the lamb.

“I’m receiving multiple alerts from my people at the compound of a disturbance nearby,” Aden said almost before Alexei finished speaking. “Team en route.”



* * *



? ? ?

MEMORY screamed and screamed on the psychic plane, using her terror and turning it into a disruption that rolled through the PsyNet. Renault might still have the ability to smash through to her mind, but he’d never again bleed her dry—he needed physical contact to make the initial connection for the transfer. Once made, that connection only lasted a finite period, and he’d left her alone in the bunker for far too long.

She’d shaken off the murderous parasite.

That knowledge gave her the strength to keep on fighting, her body encircled by the primal heat of Alexei’s. The physical contact made her stronger—but Renault had all the advantages on the psychic level. He’d shredded her shields a lifetime ago. She had no defenses, a turtle without its shell.

The only reason Renault wasn’t already inside her mind was that she’d had a small and zealously guarded store of psychic energy that she’d released in panicked desperation when she first jerked awake. He’d been so close by then that she’d felt his breath on her neck, a fetid heat. The energy had created a shock wave. A pitifully weak one, but he hadn’t expected it, and it had buffeted his mind a short distance from her own.

“Show me where you are!” he screamed at her on the PsyNet as he came closer and closer. “Give me a visual! You know you can’t win! You belong to me!”

Memory had no more energy left.

But surrender was not an option. Never would it be an option.

She would fight to the death.

Blood cold at the emptiness around her, the overwhelming aloneness that would’ve crushed her but for the wolf who held her, Memory screamed again into the psychic space, disrupting the limited data flows around her. Then, in a final act of defiant resolve, she tore at the golden threads around her, hoping her actions would trigger an automatic alert that would send out a security team.

She hadn’t been on the PsyNet in a long time. Not for years. Renault had closed his mind around hers, creating a psychic prison that had failed at the same time as the other, darker link between them. As if the latter had bolstered the former. The failure had happened seconds before Alexei tore off the bunker door.

Grief-stricken and shocked as she’d been, she hadn’t immediately realized the implications of that second failure. Because from the moment Renault had caged her, her basic biofeedback connection had been her only direct link to the psychic space. A lifeline only, with no access to the Net itself.

Despite that, she knew what those golden strands represented: the Honeycomb, the empathic network that was currently holding the PsyNet together. She’d read about it in the Beacon.

A glimmer of awareness.

Renault was turning. He was running.

“I’ll find a younger, fresher replacement!” he threw back as a final taunt. “You’re worthless now anyway!”

No surprise that his presence disappeared in the blink of an eye. His mind wasn’t anchored in this region—he’d retracted the roaming part he’d sent out to hunt her down.

Memory stopped screaming, the cold that invaded her veins this time a frigid terror.

Renault would’ve never run from her. He didn’t see her as a threat or an opponent. He saw her as a thing, a possession.

Darkness. Pure darkness.

Memory focused on the horizon, on the wave of deadly black coming closer. Her eyes snapped open. “Darkness comes.” She could never defeat those minds.

“Arrows,” Alexei said, rubbing gently at her nape.

Her heartbeat stuttered. Renault had told her about Arrows. Master assassins, they hunted people for the leaders of the Psy, and Renault was connected to those leaders. Arrows also hunted others—murderers and monsters and nightmares.

Jerking away from Alexei, she fell onto the floor. She scrambled back from him as nausea and betrayal twisted her gut.

He watched her with unblinking amber eyes. “Arrows are affiliated with empaths,” he said, his primal power pulsing in the air. “They’ll protect you.”

Memory’s breath turned into shards of ice in her lungs.

She wasn’t an empath. The Arrows executed those like her.





Chapter 9


Intruder has fled, but we have his psychic signature. Proceeding to the E.

—Arrow field team to Arrow command


RENAULT OPENED HIS eyes with a racing heart, his brain working a hundred different angles. He wasn’t afraid. Renault was Silent, had never felt except for the exultation that swept over him in the aftermath of the murderous ritual that he craved. He did, however, have a well-developed sense of self-preservation.

How had the Arrows discovered Memory so quickly?

He’d set it up so she’d be returned to him long before anyone affiliated with the squad or the Empathic Collective stumbled upon her. Her mind wasn’t the same as an E’s, but it bore a direct resemblance to it, and he’d factored both the squad and the Collective into his retrieval strategy.