Shield of Winter

Chapter 39

Alice was one of the most gifted graduate students I have ever had the pleasure to supervise. In truth, I had come to consider her a colleague long before she earned her doctorate. Alice saw the truth with an incisiveness that is rare in academia and, indeed, the world. She often asked me questions that made me take a second look at my conclusions, challenging me to dig deeper, uncover more.

What she accomplished in a short twenty-seven years is extraordinary. She leaves behind a legacy that will stand the test of countless decades. The consequences of the upheaval in the Net means there are few empaths in attendance today, but they stand for the many, and those many tell me that no one knew designation E as well as Alice. No one.

Excerpted from Professor George Kim’s eulogy for Alice Eldridge, PhD

SASCHA’S MIND WAS full of her intense, frustrating discussions with the Es scattered around the world, when Lucas picked her up at the pack healer’s home around two. Their destination was the Sierra Nevada wolf den. According to him, he had business with Hawke, but the truth was, he knew how much the news of the outbreaks had shaken her. So many dead and injured and it was only the tip of the iceberg.

As for their baby girl, she was being looked after by Kit and his best friend, Cory. The soldiers also had charge of Tamsyn’s “twin terrors,” the healer having gone to take care of an injured elder. Sascha would’ve been leery of leaving the two young males with a baby if she hadn’t known all the juveniles in the pack grew up pulling babysitting duty—and as evidenced by Kit and Cory, most didn’t mind pitching in even when older.

Her phone beeped right then, the screen filling with Kit’s handsome face, a happy Naya cradled nonchalantly in one muscular arm. “Sascha, Naya wants the Toy That Shall Not Be Named. Did you forget to pack it?”

Sascha’s lips twitched, the shadows lifting at the sight of the two of them. “In the side pocket of the bag. I put it in at the last minute.”

Kit disappeared, then appeared with the fluffy little wolf in his free hand. Naya gurgled and reached for it with a squeal of delight before her attention was caught by seeing Sascha’s face on the comm. Making “Mommy” noises at her baby, Sascha waited until Kit had distracted Naya with the plush toy before hanging up. “You’re still growling,” she pointed out to her green-eyed panther.

“Why?” Lucas snarled. “Of all the things in the world she could’ve become attached to, why did my otherwise brilliant daughter pick that damn wolf’s stupid gift?”

“Careful,” she said, voice husky with the knowledge of how lucky she was to have this life, this freedom, “or you’ll start to need that knit cap Hawke gave you.” According to the wolf alpha, it was for when Naya caused Lucas to pull out his hair.

“Grr.” Managing the all-wheel-drive vehicle with ease, he reached out to grab her hand and bring it to his mouth for a playful bite. “You okay?”

“I just hate the unfairness of it all.” She dropped her head back against the seat, choked by the unvarnished fury of her emotions. “All this death when, for the first time in a hundred years, life in the PsyNet might be something more, something better than cold Silence.”

“Give yourself and the other Es time to figure things out,” Lucas said, placing her hand on his thigh after a kiss to her knuckles. “I know exactly how tough empaths can be.”

She curved her fingers over the firm muscle of him. Lucas purred. “Harder.”

Digging her nails into him in a kneading motion, Sascha leaned across and grazed her teeth over the muted-gold skin of his throat. The purr intensified. “I’ll pet you later,” he promised, running his knuckles over her cheek.

Feeling petted and spoiled already, Sascha settled back into her seat but kept her hand on his thigh. The contact, Lucas’s voice as they discussed pack matters, they centered her; she felt far more able to face the stark facts of the crisis in the Net when they walked into the SnowDancer den. Splitting at the entrance to the light-filled network of underground tunnels, they agreed to meet in two hours for the drive back.

When little Ben overheard Sascha asking the SnowDancer healer about Alice’s whereabouts, the human scientist not in the quarters she’d been assigned after being released from the infirmary, he tugged on her hand. “I’ll show you, Sascha darling. She’s outside.”

Bubbles of laughter in her blood, Sascha attempted to frown at the pup, his eyes a gorgeous rich brown and his fine silky hair so deep a mahogany it appeared black in this light, but it was a losing battle. “Where did you hear that?” she asked, knowing the culprits full well.

Ben gave her a cheeky smile as she scooped him up into her arms for a cuddle. “I guess I have a guide,” she said to the SnowDancer healer, after hitching Ben on one hip. “Will he be warm enough dressed as he is?” It snowed heavily at this elevation.

The other woman ruffled Ben’s hair. “He’s a wolf,” she said with a kiss to his cheek.

“Yeah.” Ben lifted a hand, claws out, and made a fierce face. “I’m a wolf! Grr.”

Pretend growling at him in turn, to his delighted laughter, Sascha carried him outside, one of his arms slung companionably around her neck. At least ten other pups near to Ben’s age were already playing in the fine white powder that coated the area. When she glimpsed Judd’s niece, Marlee, in the distance with a group of older children, she whispered, “Are you and Marlee still fighting?” The cause of the fight was a mystery to all as far as Sascha knew.

Ben smiled and waved at Marlee, but didn’t wriggle down to run over and join his friend. “No,” he said as Marlee waved back. “I ’pologized for messing up her girl party, and she said sorry for her friends calling me a dumb baby.”

Sascha’s curiosity won out. “How did you mess up her girl party?”

Sighing, Ben lay his head against her shoulder. “I shifted and jumped on their picnic blanket from a tree after Julian and Roman showed me how to climb, and I squished their cake and spilled stuff on their clothes.”

Sascha had a hard time not bursting into laughter, the image of a cake-and-cream-covered little wolf pup bringing tears to her eyes. “Was the cake nice?”

Ben grinned, glee in his expression. “Yes. I ate it all since everyone except Marlee ran away.”

Pressing a laughing kiss to his temple, she said, “I’m glad you two are friends again.”

“Me, too.” He pointed to the right. “Ally is over there. She likes to sit by the small waterfall pond. Sometimes I sit with her.”

Putting him on the ground, she said, “Thank you for showing me.”

A sweet smile. “I’m gonna go eat a cookie now. Mama said I could have one ’cause she’s baking. Bye!”

Watching after him until he was safely back inside, she walked out to the “waterfall pond.” It proved an apt description. Unlike the large waterfall a longer distance out from the den, this one was tiny, would barely create a splash as it poured into the pond in summer. Right now, it was a stunning piece of natural sculpture, the water frozen as it fell, the pond a mirror.

Alice sat on a sun-drenched boulder beside the sheet of ice, her eyes closed and face lifted up to the late-afternoon rays. That fine-boned face was no longer sallow, her brown skin holding a golden glow. Her hair, too, Sascha saw, had begun to grow, though it was only a delicate feathering on her scalp right now, the glorious curls that Sascha had seen in an old photograph not yet in evidence.

“Sascha.” A quiet smile, a faded shadow of the huge grin Sascha had seen in that same photo. “Have you come to see if my cracked egg of a brain has any more information?”

Sascha made a rueful face. “Does it feel like that’s the only reason I come to see you?” The truth was, she wanted desperately to help the other woman heal, but Alice wasn’t ready yet.

First, I have to mourn, she’d said on Sascha’s last visit. I lost everyone I loved when I was put into that cryonic chamber. I don’t know if my heart is strong enough to recover.

Sascha believed differently. Alice had already shown her strength in waking from a sleep that should’ve consumed her; it might take time, but the scientist would put the pieces of her self back together. When she did, she would be extraordinary, of that Sascha had not a single doubt.

“No,” Alice said in reply to her question. “It’s me.” Closing her eyes, she tilted her face up to the sun again. “I wish I could give you the answers you need.” She exhaled, lashes lifting as her gaze turned to the frozen water. “I heard about what happened, the madness and the violence.”

Taking a seat on a nearby boulder, Sascha told Alice what she knew. As a result of the relationships Sascha had formed with the Es in the compound, she’d heard from every one of them since their placements—it made her the one person who could see patterns within the individual experiences, mine answers that could help them all. The trouble was, the pattern was bleak.

“At least,” she said, clinging to the single point of light in the darkness, “we now understand one of the unofficial subdesignations.” Jaya did instinctively what it had taken Sascha considerable time and intense focus to accomplish. “An elderly Forgotten empath once told me only cardinals could stop riots,” she said, thinking aloud. “Something to do with a terminal field. But Ivy can clearly tap into a similar ability—though neither one of us can maintain it for long.”

Angling her face out of the sun, Alice frowned. “The Forgotten empath conflated two different elements, unsurprising given that the two are often used in concert. Only a cardinal can create a terminal field, but other high-level empaths can control crowds.”

Sascha stared at Alice . . . who blinked and stared back. “Did that just come out of my mouth?” the other woman whispered, her eyes huge and luminescent in the indirect sunlight.

“You sounded like a professor.” Sascha’s heart thudded against her ribs. “As if I was a student who’d made a basic error.”

Alice rubbed at her face with gloved hands. “It’s gone now, but for that instant, it was as if I was the Alice of before, my mind tumbling with ideas and concepts and a thousand thoughts instead of this dullness I can’t penetrate.”

Sascha touched the other woman’s shoulder, hope a golden surge in her blood. “It’s okay, Alice. I think . . . I think you’re coming back.” Bringing with her the knowledge that might save an entire race.