Caressed By Ice (Psy-Changeling 3)

This was the first that Judd had heard of the clearly malicious attempt to cause Brenna emotional pain and it was the last thing he would have predicted. The wolves might make vicious enemies, but they were also fiercely protective of their own and had closed ranks around Brenna as soon as she'd been rescued.

He looked at Tai. "I think you should go."

The young wolf didn't argue, sliding past them as quickly as his legs would carry him.

"Do you know what makes it worse?" Brenna's question shifted his attention from the boy's retreating footsteps.

"What?"

"It's true." She turned the full power of that shattered blue-brown gaze on him. "I'm different. I see things with these damn eyes he gave me. Terrible things."

"They're simply echoes of what happened to you." A powerful sociopath had ripped open her mind, raped her on the most intimate of levels. That the experience had left her with psychic scars was unsurprising.

"That's what Sascha said. But the deaths I see - "

A scream ripped the moment into two.

They were both running before it ended. A hundred feet down a second tunnel, they were joined by Indigo and a couple of others. As they turned a corner, Andrew came tearing around it and clamped his hand on Brenna's upper arm, jerking his sister to a halt and raising his free hand at the same time. Everyone stopped.

"Indigo - there's a body." Andrew snapped out the words like bullets. "Northeast tunnel number six, alcove forty."

Brenna wrenched out of her brother's hold the second he finished and took off without warning. Having caught the unhidden blaze of her anger before she'd quickly masked it, Judd was the first to move after her. Indigo and a furious Andrew followed at his back. Most Psy would have been overtaken by now, but he was different, a difference that had predestined his life in the PsyNet.

Brenna was a streak in front of him, moving with impressive speed for someone who had been confined to a bed only months ago. She'd almost reached the number six tunnel when he caught up. "Stop," he ordered, his breathing not as ragged as it should have been. "You don't need to see this."

"Yes, I do," she said on a gasping breath.

Putting on a burst of speed, Andrew grabbed her from the back, linking his arms around her waist to lift her off her feet. "Bren, calm down."

Indigo raced past, a flash of long legs, dark hair streaming behind her.

In Andrew's grip, Brenna began to twist furiously enough to cause herself harm. Judd couldn't allow that. "She'll calm down if you set her free."

Brenna jerked to a stop, chest heaving and eyes surprised. Andrew wasn't so silent. "I'll take care of my sister, Psy." The last word was a curse.

"What, by locking me up?" Brenna asked in a razor-sharp tone. "I'm never going to be put in a box again, Drew, and I swear if you try, I'll claw my hands bloody getting out." It was a mercilessly graphic image, especially for anyone who had seen the condition she'd been in after they had first found her.

Behind her, Andrew paled, but his jaw remained set. "This is what's best for you."

"Perhaps it's not," Judd said, meeting Andrew's angry eyes without flinching. The SnowDancer soldier blamed all Psy for his sister's pain and Judd could guess at the line of emotion-driven logic that had led him to that conclusion. But those same emotions also blinded him. "She can't spend the rest of her life in chains."

"What the f**k would you know about anything?" Andrew snarled. "You don't even care about your own!"

"He knows a hell of a lot more than you!"

"Bren." Andrew's voice was a warning.

"Shut up, Drew. I'm not a baby anymore." Her voice held echoes of darker things, of evil witnessed and innocence lost. "Did you ever stop to wonder what Judd did for me during the healing? Did you ever bother to find out what it cost him? No, of course not, because you know everything."

She took a jerky breath. "Well, guess what, you know nothing! You haven't been where I've been. You haven't even been close. Let. Me. Go." The words were no longer enraged but calm. Normal for a Psy. Not for a wolf changeling. Especially not for Brenna. Judd's senses went on high alert.

Andrew shook his head. "I don't care what the hell you say, little sister, you don't need to see that."

"Then I'm sorry, Drew." Brenna slashed her claws across his arms a split second later, shocking her brother into letting her go. She was moving almost before her feet hit the ground.

"Jesus," Andrew whispered, staring after her. "I can't believe..." He looked down at his bloody forearms. "Brenna never hurts anyone."

"She's not the Brenna you knew anymore," Judd told the other male. "What Enrique did to her altered her on a fundamental level, in ways she herself doesn't understand." He took off after Brenna before Andrew could reply - he had to be beside her to deflect the fallout from this death. What he couldn't understand was why she was so determined to see it.

He caught up with her as she raced past a startled guard and into the small room off tunnel number six. She came to such a sudden halt that he almost slammed into her. Following her gaze, he saw the sprawled body of an unknown SnowDancer male on the floor. The victim's face and na**d body bore considerable bruising, the skin splotched different colors by the damage. But Judd knew that that wasn't what held Brenna frozen.

It was the cuts.

The changeling had been sliced very carefully with a knife, none of the cuts fatal but the last. That one had severed the carotid artery. Which meant there was something wrong with this scene. "Where's the blood?" he asked Indigo, who was crouching on the other side of the body, a couple of her soldiers beside her.