Heart of Obsidian (Psy-Changeling 12)

The problem, of course, was that a large percentage of the world’s strongest Tks were also exhausted after Hong Kong, leaving a dangerous gap. Find out who has spare medics close enough to be useful, and get them here any way you can.

The M-Psy Union is sending me a list, Silver answered. I’m also coordinating with major changeling groups and the Human Alliance to get all useful personnel to Geneva.

I didn’t realize you had a contact within the Alliance.

I don’t—their security chief just made the contact. A pause of several minutes. Sir, the Alliance heard about your broadcast and have thrown their public support behind the call to apprehend Pure Psy.

Good. It would ameliorate the world’s growing anger if they saw the races working together to hunt down the perpetrators.

They also have a large medical warehouse less than an hour’s flight away, Silver continued. An airjet is already in the air with equipment and necessary drugs.

Switching telepathic channels when he felt Sahara’s touch, he listened as she said, I heard your message, and I called Vaughn to tell him. He says it’s being communicated to all groups with whom the pack has any kind of a link.

Kaleb knew he had no need to explain the importance of that communication given DarkRiver’s strategic position, not to Sahara, his lover with her brilliant mind.

The pack has a man in the area, she added five minutes later. He’s confirmed the local changeling trackers are happy to work with Psy teams to find the bombers. Changeling rescue and healing/medical teams should also be reaching you within twenty minutes.

Focusing on lifting a massive piece of the outer wall that had fallen inward, he took a second to reply. Silver’s direct line is in the cell phone I gave you. Route her into all communications dealing with rescue and medical so she can coordinate available resources.

I’ll get the number. She disappeared for a minute before returning. Kaleb, the Forgotten also have someone in the area who might be able to assist. She’ll come in with the DarkRiver male and requests no one attempt to shadow her as she works.

The Forgotten, having dropped out of the PsyNet at the inception of Silence, had been marrying humans and mating with changelings for over a hundred years. As a result, Kaleb was well aware they had some very interesting new abilities in their genetic line, abilities they preferred to keep under the radar. No one will interfere with her.

Seeing a bloody but breathing child curled up in a cavity formed by pieces of debris that had saved his small body from being crushed, Kaleb called out for a paramedic. A minute later, and two feet deeper, he found a child who hadn’t been as lucky, her eyes staring blindly into death, grit across her irises. Going down on one knee, he brought her eyelids down in an act that he knew came from the voice in the void.

All the while, he could feel Sahara tucked against his mind, staying with him as she’d done at the university, and in the aftermath of the inferno that had engulfed Hong Kong Island.

Never again, he thought, would he be alone in the dark.

* * *

SAHARA’S heart ached at the indefinable emotion she sensed from Kaleb across their telepathic bond. He would speak to her about it when he was ready, of that she had not a single doubt in her mind. Her dangerous lover was learning that she’d become even more stubborn than she’d been at sixteen—she had claimed Kaleb and she would not turn away, no matter what.

Now she met the cat-green eyes of the DarkRiver alpha. Lucas Hunter had turned up at her aerie soon after the news of the bombing went live, his eyes glowing against the early morning darkness on this side of the world. The pack, he’d told her, had no one connected to the Net, and so she was their information source when it came to what was happening on the psychic plane.

“I’m linking in with Kaleb’s aide, Silver,” she said, and he nodded at her from where he was talking on the phone with the leader of the Forgotten, the four slashing lines on the right side of his face a silent reminder of the predator that lived beneath his skin.

Kaleb’s ice-blonde aide, her hair in a flawless twist, was expecting her call. “Do the groups to which you have access,” Silver said without further ado, “have any translators willing to assist the medics? We can comm them in—with a number of the on-site translators dead or critically injured, there aren’t enough to help the medics and keep the survivors calm. Multiple languages needed, some of them esoteric.”

“I’m a translator,” Sahara said. “All languages.” It seemed a safe enough claim, given the tests she’d been running on herself while out and about in the city. Anytime she heard an unfamiliar language, she’d listen . . . and then she’d understand, without ever activating her ability.

Whatever it was she could do, it worked on the subconscious level. “A minor psychic gift,” she explained to Silver. “No official designation.”

The aide’s eyes sharpened. “That’s useful enough that I can justify diverting a Tk to pick you up.”

“I’ll take over as liaison,” Lucas said, entering into the comm frame so Silver could see him. “Give us a couple of minutes to organize an image your teleporter can use as a lock.”

Soon afterward, Sahara was in the trees a short distance from her aerie, and Lucas was tying a brightly colored rope around the trunk of an otherwise nondescript pine—just because the pack wanted to help didn’t mean they intended for a strange Tk to have a permanent image lock inside their territory.

Taking a snapshot with her cell phone, she sent it to Silver, as Lucas said, “Good luck,” his eyes grim.