Tangle of Need (Psy-Changeling #11)(73)

Her pulse spiked. “We?”

“I’m going to need backup.” Riaz saw Adria’s eyes widen. “Situation like this, I’d usually ask my man already in the area, but he’s got something else on his plate, and you speak fluent Italian.” He knew it was the right decision, that her linguistic skill and status as an experienced soldier made her the perfect choice. He also knew he was treading a dangerous line.

But Adria, when she rose to her feet, showed no indications of having read more into his suggestion than he meant. “How do you know that? The fact I speak Italian?”

“It’s my job,” he said. “I keep track of anyone in the pack who has a skill that might come in useful internationally.” Adria’s CV had passed across his desk when she transferred. “What I can’t understand is why you chose to learn Italian when Spanish would’ve been more useful in the region.”

She didn’t answer, her next words telling him her mind was on something else altogether. “I don’t want to disrupt things so early on with my trainees.”

“It should only be a day or two.” He knew how heavily the juveniles relied on their assigned supervisors.

A slow nod. “That’s manageable. I was planning to ask Riley to put me on a high-perimeter shift anyway.” Catching his questioning look, she said, “They might be submissives, but constant oversight isn’t good for any wolf’s development.”

“We’ll leave early morning tomorrow,” he said, wondering how a tough senior soldier understood SnowDancer’s submissives so well. “That give you enough time to organize cover for your duties?”

“No problem.” Then to his surprise, she did a funny little dance around her chair, singing, “I’m going to Venice. I’m going to Venice.”

It startled laughter out of him, his wolf standing up in fascination at the unexpected and sweetly charming crack in Adria’s sober facade. “If you’re really good,” he said when she stopped dancing to grin at him, “I’ll take you on a gondola ride through the canals.” Delight, bright and dangerous, cascaded through his veins.





Chapter 37





HAVING COMPLETED HIS research, Vasquez located the first three addresses fast enough, but it took hours of hacking through Net firewalls to unearth the second three, and four days to complete the list. Psychically exhausted, he considered sending the one he served an e-mail with the update, but they had agreed on electronic and psychic silence. Nothing of their plan was going to leak and jeopardize everything they had set so meticulously in place.

Conscious that tiredness could lead to mistakes, Vasquez slept long enough to become functional, then made his way to the compound hidden deep in a rural sector of Ireland. “I have the coordinates and necessary images of the first set of targets.”

“When can we move?” The voice was a rasp, a broken saw, issuing from a throat that had suffered second-degree burns when Henry Scott screamed as his legs were turned to ash, one of his arms sliced below the elbow by a whip of cold fire.

The medics had been working to repair the damage, but it was severe. Sienna Lauren’s X-fire had cauterized the wounds, so they’d needed to be cut open vein by vein to allow for the regeneration aids to work. However, the worst damage had been done when a Pure Psy operative shoved his body over Henry’s in an effort to protect him. That operative’s weapon had melted into the former Councilor’s flesh.

It was proving near impossible to excise the plas from his body, some of it appearing to have integrated into his organs. As a result, Henry remained hooked up to multiple devices, his body supine on a hospital bed inside a large chamber of sterile glass, his ruined voice issuing via a speaker. However, the fire had done nothing to his mind, and they were Psy. The mind was all that mattered.

“Are we in a position to strike?” Henry elaborated, his bloodshot eyes looking at Vasquez through the glass.

“I recommend waiting until we have at least ten complete sets.” It would allow them to strike back to back, leaving no time or room for a counterstrike. However, it all depended on whether Vasquez could muster enough trusted personnel with the right abilities.

Loud, rattling breaths. “The Net is becoming weaker with each day that passes, filled with those whose Silence is flawed. We need to remind them of who we are as a race.”

“Yes, but our chances of success rise exponentially if we act without any warning.” Giving the enemy no time to prepare before the avalanche.

Henry took a long time to reply, his breathing so rough Vasquez knew this interview would soon end. “Five sets,” the former Councilor said at last. “Five complete sets and one outlier.”

“Sir?”

“A small location, a demonstration of what we can do ahead of the primary hits.”

“A test to ascertain the validity of our refined method?” Their earlier plan had proven to have a fatal flaw, so he could agree with the precaution, except that it risked tipping their hand.

But Henry said, “If those in the Net want to feel, then perhaps we should teach them the taste of terror.”

Vasquez would never betray the only man who appeared to be taking the disintegration of Silence not as an inevitability but as a disease that needed to be stopped, but he was also not a cipher who followed Henry’s every command. “We chance losing the element of surprise,” he said. “It could lead to the primary targets being sequestered.”