Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 17

“That’s not an available option for an adult Psy male. Your pack doesn’t accept outsiders.”

“Bullshit.” Hawke snorted. “We accept human and outside-pack changeling mates all the time. It’d be a small pool if we didn’t.”

“There’s a difference with Psy.”

“Only if you create it. Marlee and Toby are already SnowDancer.”

Hawke’s words caused Judd to go motionless. “Don’t make that statement unless you’re willing to stand by it.” To fight for the kids if Judd, Walker, and Sienna were somehow killed. “Everyone knows you despise the Psy.”

“I’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean.” But he didn’t deny Judd’s accusation. “What happened between you and Bren?”

“None of your business.” The answer came out so fast, he had no chance to censor it. Instinct. Something that could’ve gotten him rehabilitated in the PsyNet. Because what was instinct if not the harbinger of emotion?

“I’m her alpha.” A command, an order.

Judd had never been very good at taking them. “As Brenna would say—you’re not her keeper.”

Hawke grunted. “You do realize Riley and Andrew will gut you where you stand if you so much as touch her.”

“Also none of your business.” Her brothers considered him an easy target. That was their mistake. “But I will ask you to keep her safe over the next day.” Until he could take over the task himself.

“Going somewhere?”

Judd’s vision was fraying at the edges, details lost to the encroaching darkness. “I’ll be back in twenty-four hours.”

Hawke didn’t push for more, surprising given the tight rein he liked to keep on the Lauren family. “What do you think Bren would say if I told her you’d asked me to look out for her?”

“Most likely she’d show you her claws and say that she can take care of herself.”

“She can. But I don’t care what she thinks, she’s not back to full strength yet.” Hawke raised an eyebrow. “Want a piece of advice, one male to another?”

Judd waited.

“Wolf females get really, really, really pissed off when their males don’t support them against others in public.” A flashing smile. “You’re going to have to grovel to get back in her good graces.”

“Loyalty. I understand that.” And he did.

Hawke angled his head. “One of the scouts is returning.”

Judd didn’t bother to waste words. He just walked around the cabin and jogged into the trees. He had three hours at most before the physical crash. Wanting to race through the forest, he nonetheless set a slow enough speed that he could keep an eye on his surroundings. Without his Psy senses, he wasn’t human but less.

Psy were meant to be psychic. Removing that aspect of their makeup affected everything about them. His hearing was already compromised, sounds coming through as if blocked by a wall of water, while his sight was no longer as acute as it should have been. But it was enough to drive.

Reaching the vehicle Brenna had forgotten in her anger, he punched in the code, slid back the door, and entered. Given his destabilized state, he would have normally set it on automatic, but that was impossible in this territory. The roads were less than tracks in most areas, with none of the embedded computronic tags needed by the vehicle’s navigation processor.

Falling back once more on the lessons he’d learned in the bleak emptiness of Old Sapporo, he arrowed his concentration to a fine point. He’d barely reached his destination when the physical crash hit full on. His mind blinked out—to all intents and purposes, he was now in an unbreakable coma.

Brenna pushed herself to the limit on the run back to the den and was exhausted by the time she returned. Peeling off from the other two, she headed toward her room. Unfortunately, since Andrew lived in the same family quarters, she couldn’t get rid of him.

“That was some pace, Bren. Where did that come from?”

She spun around. “I don’t know. I don’t know where anything in my head or body comes from anymore. Even if you ask me a thousand times, I still won’t know!”

“What’s got your tail in a twist?” He scowled. “Your new boyfriend didn’t kiss you right? Oh, I forgot. He’s a fucking robot who doesn’t know how to kiss.”

Drew had always had the ability to push her buttons, but she was not in the mood for games today. She was mad, so damn mad. At Judd, at her brothers, at Hawke, at the whole bloody universe. “Maybe I’m not the one with the problem,” she said, something mean and nasty inside of her taking over. “Why don’t you find Madeline and get laid?” The pack’s young females were all highly sexual, but Madeline was getting perilously close to crossing the line into slutty. “Maybe a good rut will get you off my back.”

Drew’s expression was pure thunder. “You’re not too old for me to wash out your mouth with soap.” Quiet, lethal, a reminder that her usually easygoing middle sibling was also a high-ranking soldier.

“Try it.” It was almost a hiss.

Her brother blinked, visibly taken aback by the venom in her voice. She had always been the sweetest of the three of them, the one who could talk both Drew and Riley into almost anything. They’d babied her, protected her, loved her. But that didn’t give them the right to stick their noses into her business. “You seem to have forgotten that I’m an adult female, not a juvenile,” she said when he remained silent. “Touch me and I’ll shred your face.” Her voice was cold, cutting…mean.

“Jesus, Bren. Where the hell is that poison coming from?”

The taste of bile bloomed on her tongue as her mind recognized the horror. This spiteful, violent woman isn’t me. Even when he pissed her off, even when he acted suffocatingly arrogant, she adored Drew. But if it wasn’t her, then who else could it be? This wasn’t a dream—she was fully conscious and spewing hatred.

It made her want to be sick.

Covering her mouth with her hand, she ran the rest of the way to her room and slammed the door shut. When Drew pounded for entrance, she told him to leave her alone.

“Damn it, Bren. You’re in no shape to be alone. Come out, baby sister.”

Tears filled her eyes at his unflinching affection. “Please, Drew. I need to think. Just let me think.”

A small silence. “I’ll always be here if you need me, you know that, right?”

“Yes. I know.” But he couldn’t help with what was happening to her mind. No one but a Psy could—except the Psy she’d given her trust to had turned on her.

She heard Drew’s footsteps as he padded to his own room. The shower started a few minutes later. Suddenly feeling sweaty and dirty, she stripped off her own clothes with such haste she tore holes in them. It didn’t matter. She had to wash off the filth, scrub away the stench of evil and that of her own ugliness.

The water smelled like rain, fresh and pure. After use, it would flow back out, purified by an amalgam of old-tech methods using natural cleansers and high-tech filters regulated by precision computronic processors. A perfect, peaceful cycle that stole nothing from the Earth and put no pollutants into it. So brilliant that even the Psy used it. Not because they cared about the Earth, but because this method was so cheap as to be laughable.

Scrubbing at her skin till it reddened, she tried to keep her mind full of such technical matters. As long as her brain was busy, she’d be safe from the putrid evil he’d planted inside of her, the rot eating away at her insides.

No, don’t think of that. Think of the tech. So beautiful, so complex.

Before Enrique had kidnapped her, she’d been close to completing her certification as a Level 1 computronic technician. It was the highest of the ten available grades, requiring skill, intelligence, and something extra—the ability to innovate new systems, create new designs. It was unheard of for a twenty-year-old to tackle the certification, but she’d finished school at fifteen, the exams a cakewalk. Over the next five years, she’d steadily increased her tech rating from an initial 6, to 5, all the way down to 2. She would’ve been a Level 1 by now if he hadn’t taken her.

Blood scented the air. Acrid. Iron-rich.

Blinking awake out of her semishocked state, she saw that she’d scrubbed so hard, she’d taken skin off her forearm. And still she felt dirty—she wanted to keep scrubbing, keep removing layers. The things the monster had done, the things he had forced her to witness, to remember, they dirtied her from the inside out, transforming her mind into a cesspool of malice, hatred, and the sickest of desire.

“No!” Turning off the water, she got out and dried herself. She would defeat the butcher. And she’d do it without the help of a Psy who’d not only lied to her, but had abandoned her when he should’ve stood by her.

Why? her brain asked. Why did you expect him to stand by you?

It infuriated her that she had no real answer to that question. Nothing but a burning anger that sprang from something in her that was miraculously untouched by evil.

You survived and you kept him from your mind. You didn’t break.

Sascha had said those words to her the day she’d discovered Brenna in the grip of the killer’s madness. Somehow, despite the agony of a hurt that had been everywhere inside of her, Brenna had managed to keep part of herself, a strong precious part, safe. And now that part knew Judd should’ve stood by her, though it couldn’t explain why.

But if she had no answer to that question, she did have one to the issue of what she was going to do about her career. Dressing quickly, she went to the communication panel and put through a call to her old course supervisor.

He seemed delighted to see her. “Bren! You back up and about?”

“Yes, Dr. Shah. I wanted to talk to you about my Level 1 certification.” Already her mood was lifting, her sense of self returning. “I’d like to continue the course.”

His eyes widened owlishly behind the old-tech spectacles he insisted on wearing. “But didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“You’re already a Level 1.”

She felt the anger return in a scalding wave. “I don’t need or want special favors. I’ll earn my certification.” Pity would destroy her dream, completing what Enrique had begun.

Dr. Shah laughed. “The same stubborn Brenna I remember. My dear, you should know I’d never disrespect your abilities in such a way. Shame on you for thinking I would.”

She frowned, anger replaced by bewilderment. “Then how can I possibly be certified? I never completed the final tests.”

“Your long-term project—FAST.” He said the acronym as one word. “I know you did further work on it after you gave me the draft, but I was impressed enough by that draft to submit it for review by the Computronic and Tech Professional Association.”

Brenna’s heart stuttered. Review by the association was the single sanctioned way to shortcut the requirements of the training program. But the association was tough with a capital T. In her five years of study, she had heard of only one other trainee who had successfully passed review. “Why didn’t you tell me about the submission?”

“Well, while I was certain of the caliber of your work, I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case some association idiot didn’t have the brains to understand your genius.” Dr. Shah’s weathered face beamed. “But they did. So you’re now Level 1.

“Since the college is still listed as your professional point of contact, I’ve got a stack of offers for you from the big conglomerates and research facilities. Would you like me to forward them as well as your certification code?”

She nodded, numb. The FAST project was an extremely lateral interpretation of her area of specialization—communication. It was also something she’d been working on since age sixteen. Her goal was to build a system that allowed real-time place-to-place transfer. In simple terms, fast and safe teleportation for the masses.

It was pure theory at this stage, but she’d cracked a few of the initial problems. It would probably take her decades to turn theory into anything close to reality, but as a Level 1, she could get association grants as well as positions in companies that would fund her research. “Thank you,” she said as the offers started downloading into her in-box.

“You’re my prize pupil, but don’t tell the others.” He winked conspiratorially. “I expect you to keep me up-to-date with everything.”

“Of course.” Also a Level 1, he was her best technical sounding board. “Your views and opinions helped me get this far.”

“We’ll talk more later,” he said. “Level 3 class to teach.”

The first thing she did after the call ended was check her bank balance. Her eyes went huge. Before the abduction, she’d worked part-time at a SnowDancer lab—after Hawke had lured her back from a human competitor. Level 2 and 3 techs pulled great salaries, so her savings had been good. But now she saw that the college had refunded her course fees for the component she hadn’t had to complete. She was flush and she was qualified at the top of her field.

The world was literally her oyster. And this den didn’t have to be her prison.

It was two hours later—around nine at night—that she went looking for Judd “Damn” Lauren. She had things to say and he was going to listen. Ignoring the voice of reason, the one that said a Psy assassin was unlikely to be brought into line by her steaming temper, she stalked to his quarters. When that room proved empty, she made her way to the family apartment occupied by the rest of the Laurens.

She didn’t get past the corridor outside the apartment. Little Marlee Lauren, her strawberry blonde hair in two pigtails and a smile on her lips, was bouncing a ball against the wall. Normal…if you overlooked the fact that she wasn’t touching the ball.

Brenna’s throat dried up at the same instant that the eight-year-old—a child whose calm bearing often had her being mistaken for older—realized she was being watched. Her ball fell out of rhythm, rolling to a stop at Brenna’s feet. Heart thundering so hard she thought it might bruise against her ribs, Brenna went down to her haunches and picked it up, never taking her eyes off the little girl in denim overalls and a fluffy pink sweater. It was stupid, but she was scared of Marlee.

“Hi,” she said, not rising. “This is a nice ball.” She rolled the sparkly blue sphere back to Marlee, who grabbed it physically and held it to her chest.

“My uncle Judd gave it to me,” the child volunteered, no Psy coldness in her face—Marlee and her cousin Toby had never finished the conditioning under Silence. To them, emotion was not an enemy but simply part of who they were. “He gave me a seesaw game, too, but that’s really hard.”

Both things to help train developing Tk powers, Brenna guessed. “Oh?” She tried to smile—Marlee was hardly capable of hurting her. But logic was no match for the nightmare of memory. “Actually, I was looking for your uncle. Have you seen him?”

Marlee shook her head, pigtails bouncing. “I could look in our secret Net but I’m not allowed. I could take a peek if you want.” A soft whisper that asked for permission.

Something in Brenna tightened. “That’s okay. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

Marlee continued to stare at her with the pale green eyes she’d inherited from her father, Walker. “Why don’t you like me?”