Storm Echo, page 18
Someone inside was thoughtful enough to turn off the sensor lights, too.
That was when Soleil broke their handclasp. “So you’re going.” Eyebrows lowered, she folded her arms across her chest. “Just like that?”
Ivan decided he didn’t understand cats. “It’s the only viable option.”
She sniffed, tapped her foot. “I need to be with the cubs and Yariela tonight, but this conversation isn’t over. I’ll find you tomorrow.”
Ivan wasn’t a good man. He knew that about himself. For one, he had no trouble putting a bullet into the head of those who took advantage of the weak, then dumping their bodies where no one would ever find them.
But he had never been a liar. “We met before I found you in the snow,” he said coldly, knowing he had to snap the thread between them while he still could. “You saw the monster in me and chose to walk away.”
Instead of flinching at the bomb he’d dropped without warning, Soleil cupped one side of his face, tilting her head in a quintessentially feline way. “I figured that out already, beautiful.” A slow smile. “My cat isn’t in the habit of marking strangers—and as for the walking-away part, no.”
“No?”
“I don’t need my memories to tell me that I would’ve never just walked away from you. You’re too important to me, Ivan Mercant.”
Ivan was lost. That was when Soleil wrapped her arms around him, her cheek pressed to his chest.
Ivan didn’t know what to do, where to put his hands.
“Hold me back,” she ordered.
No more walls left, he enclosed her body in the circle of his arms. For a long, silent moment filled with the scent of her, the warmth of her, he could almost pretend that he was normal, that he could be like Silver, like Canto, even like Arwen. That he could love, and be loved in turn, and have a person who was his own.
Then crystalline sparks flared against his irises, and he knew his thoughts for a delusion. He’d been damaged long before he could protect himself. And the damage would hurt everyone with whom he came into contact. Sooner or later, he’d self-destruct—but before he did, he would steal pieces of anyone close to him.
It was wired into his brain.
Breaking away from Soleil, he took a jagged step back. “I can’t find the psychic thread that connects us. When I do, I’ll cut it.”
Soleil folded her arms again, raised an eyebrow. “Did you feel my blood bond with Lucas?”
Ivan thought of the jolt of primal energy that had prickled over his skin, raised the tiny hairs on his nape. “Yes.”
“That’s a changeling thing, not Psy. You won’t find a link to cut.” Leaning in, she put a hand on his shoulder, her lips close to his ear. “And my cat is supremely possessive of you.” A pause. “Do you want out of this?”
He wanted to lie, wanted to tell her to set him free. “I’m not normal, Soleil. Not any kind of normal. Even among Psy, I’m not normal. And you have other priorities. Focus on them.” Turning before she could respond, he walked away.
SOLEIL stood there for the longest time, staring after the beautiful, deadly man who’d vanished into the dark, her soul stretched in two. Her cat wanted to chase him until he told her what haunted him. It was convinced that he needed her—and the human side of her agreed.
His loneliness and hurt was a knot in her heart, a thing old and scarred.
Yet she also needed as much to be with Yariela and the cubs, their need as potent.
“Soleil, sweetheart.” Tamsyn’s voice. “Come inside. I’ve made up a room for you.”
The cubs’ warily hopeful faces in her mind, Soleil made herself move her feet and walk into the house, where Lucas now lounged on the cozy kitchen sofa, under “attack” by four cubs. Two ocelots and two leopards. Growling, he gripped Natal by the ruff of his neck, only to let go when Razi and one of the twins pounced to rescue their friend. It was obvious all five were having a grand old time.
Had Ivan ever played this way, so young and carefree?
A whisper of skirts against her legs, her laughter floating in the air as she turned to look back at the man who chased her. Fleeting glimpses of a face in shadow, of eyes of striking predator blue.
Oh. Oh. We played.
She clutched at the memory, fought desperately to unravel all the pieces of it, but it floated away, lost in the mists inside her mind—just as Yariela tucked her arm through Soleil’s, the scent of her a piercing symbol of hope.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” her mentor murmured. “To see an alpha be so with the smallest of hearts?”
Chest tight, Soleil nodded. “Where’s Nathan?”
“Tracking your Ivan out of the territory.” She patted Soleil’s arm when Soleil jerked toward the door. “Don’t worry, Leilei, they know he’s yours. I think they’re tracking him more to make sure he’s safe than because they’re worried about trusting him.” Soft eyes. “The way that man looks at you, mi ángel. He’d cut off his arm if you asked.”
Who, Soleil thought, was that person for Ivan?
Me, said her cat, and daintily licked a paw.
He’s ours.
Yes.
Chapter 29
Drug 7AX has leaked into the general population and is being sold under the street name Jax. Investigations are currently underway to identify the source of the leak, but in the interim, street users are being monitored to build a database of reactions on uncalibrated usage.
—Classified Report to the Psy Council by PsyMed:
Pharmaceutical Development & Testing. Project Manager:
Councilor Neiza Adelaja Defoe (circa 2022)
IVAN WENT HOME.
He didn’t attempt any detours, didn’t try any tricks, he just drove straight to a parking garage close to the apartment he’d rented for the duration of his stay. The apartment hadn’t come with a garage of its own, but he didn’t mind the easy ten-minute walk—he’d covered the same distance in less than half the time mere hours ago, driven by the compulsion that had led him to Soleil. The walk usually allowed him to clear out his mind, find balance again.
Balance was everything; balance kept him sane.
Today, however, he kept tripping over images of huge ocelot eyes, a hand gripping his own, and the passionate strength of Soleil’s arms as she hugged him. As if he was the vulnerable one.
I would’ve never just walked away from you. You’re too important to me, Ivan Mercant.
His shoulders began to tighten, his pulse to race … and the spider flexed.
Gritting his teeth, he wrenched it back and attempted to rebuild the walls that had fragmented tonight. Control, creating boundaries around his noxious psychic power, that was all that kept the ugliness at bay. Without it … without it, he would’ve been a cold, dark nightmare, a bloated spider that violated and swallowed everyone in its path, a monstrous thing far beyond a psychopath.
“I don’t believe that of you, Ivan,” Grandmother had said to him when he’d told her that as a child. “You came to me the instant you realized what you might be doing, and you weren’t in any way reveling in your ability.”
“That’s because I didn’t want to disappoint you, Grandmother,” Ivan had said with deep honesty, because he never lied to the woman who’d given him a life worth living. “If I was still on the streets, I’d have used it to survive.”
A long look before his grandmother inclined her head. “You’re old enough to know yourself. Do you think you could’ve lived with your actions?”
A snapshot of memory, his mother’s cold body, blankness where her mind should’ve been. The idea of that multiplied over and over … “Maybe not at the start,” he’d said, his hair flying back in the sea winds. “But the street, it has a way of eating away pieces of you. It would’ve eaten the good part of me one day.”
Ivan respected his grandmother above anyone else in the entire world, but Ena had been born a Mercant, had grown up a Mercant. She’d never been wholly alone—as Ivan had been even when his mother was alive. Jax had owned his mother, until she was barely conscious of the son she professed to love.
“Love you, my boy,” she’d say with a hazy smile, and he’d wonder if she even saw him.
Ivan knew the truth: that hunger, cold, violence, pain, loneliness, it eroded who the person had once been.
And created a monster.
He’d already been riddled with spots of emptiness by the time he became a Mercant. Those spots had scarred over in the years since, the blank spaces filled by the loyalty and fidelity of his family, but the damage done was permanent.
Once inside his apartment, he shrugged out of his jacket, put it aside, then walked into the kitchenette area to mix himself a nutrient drink. Tamsyn Ryder had offered him food, but he’d declined, not wanting to divert his attention in even so small a way. She’d still put a plate of cookies in front of him.
The cubs had been vocal in their enjoyment of the cookies, but Ivan didn’t enjoy food. Perhaps he could have once. With Soleil.
I packed a whole bunch of things for our picnic, not just the tart.
For her, this cat who’d emerged out of the forest and walked right inside him, he’d have tried dish after dish. Just because she’d asked. But that time was gone, his personal clock almost to midnight. There would be no more evolution for Ivan Mercant. His future path held only a dark and crumbling devolution.
He knew his inability to embrace the sensation of taste drove his eldest cousin crazy. Canto appreciated food, as did Arwen. Silver had always been more like Ivan, but she’d changed since her mating. Or perhaps it was more correct to say that she’d shrugged off the weight of Silence to accept her true nature.
Ivan’s true nature was a horror born of a drug that promised ecstasy, but that eventually stripped Psy of their inborn abilities. He often wondered how long his family would continue to see him as one of them when it was so clear that he didn’t have within him the potential they all did—to leave all vestiges of Silence in the past and live a life beyond what had been mandated for them by the now-defunct Psy Council.
Ivan could only go so far, and no further. Not because he cared about Silence. But because he had to maintain the cage in which lived the devouring spider of his true psychic ability. A man who had to do that couldn’t break his shackles.
Ever.
“Grandmother’s like me,” he reminded himself, because Ena Mercant had been too long in Silence to drop it. But even Ena had learned to live among a pack of bears … and the cubs followed her for a reason; she might be firm and strict but below that sat a cool, dark well of ferocious love.
She’d held her entire clan together with that same unspoken love. As a child, Ivan had known that no matter what, no matter when, if he needed help, Grandmother would come for him. Always.
Ivan was too scarred up for such a well, a hollow man who could never give Soleil what she needed.
A musical sound.
The doorbell.
Figuring it had to be one of the cats checking to ensure that he was in his apartment, he brought up the door feed on his phone. And sat up ramrod straight. “What the hell?”
He left his half-finished drink on the bedside table and jogged down the stairs—to open the door to a slender man with eyes of an unusual silver-blue against olive skin, his hair as straight as a ruler and cut with sophisticated ruthlessness, and his cheekbones a thing of catwalks. He wore crisp jeans of darkest blue and a fine black sweater that was probably cashmere, and held a small tote bag.
Arwen grinned. “Hello, cousin!”
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”
A shrug. “Genara was visiting an associate in San Francisco and I hitched a ride. Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Why is Genara visiting her associate at midnight?”
“She’s a woman of intrigue and mystery,” Arwen said with zero concern in his tone for those mysteries and intrigues.
Ivan should’ve seen this coming. Genara, a deadly teleport-capable telekinetic with a murky past, and Arwen the empath who worried about everyone, were fast friends. A more dangerous combination Ivan couldn’t imagine.
“So, you going to invite me in?”
Ivan stepped aside. He was in no mood for company, least of all of the one family member who might see right through him. “Come up.” No point taking him to the empty box of the downstairs lounge; Ivan had seen no reason to get furniture for it when he didn’t ever use the space.
His cousin sprawled easily onto his bed, palms braced behind him. “Well,” Arwen said after a look around, “it’s an upgrade from the last place. Hideous wallpaper—I’d be embarrassed to claim that if I was the designer—but at least there are no stuffed creatures.” A shudder, followed by a startled, “I like the cat statue. Whimsical.”
Ivan didn’t correct him about the little multicolored cat that sat on the bedside table. “You want nutrients?”
“No. I ate.” Then he stared at Ivan.
“Have I turned green?” Leaning against a wall facing Arwen, Ivan folded his arms over his T-shirt and stared back; he was fully confident of his ability to withstand the worst torture—and then there was Arwen.
“Noooo.” Arwen frowned as he stretched out that one-syllable word to an improbable length. “Except for the whole whimsical-statue thing. I suppose it came with the place?” More staring. Followed by a gasp as he sat up straight in a rapid snap of movement. “What’s her name? Is it the same woman as before? The one you’ve been missing all this time?”
Ivan barely held back his jolt, his gut clenching and arm muscles rigid. “What?”
“The changeling who’s in you like Valentin is in Silver.” Arwen’s handsome face scrunched up into a frown, his gaze suddenly far more intense. The gaze of an empath. “It’s not the same as those two, but I can definitely feel a bond.”
“She’s just someone I helped once,” Ivan forced himself to say. “It’s a temporary bond, will fade with distance.”
Piercing gaze and soft voice, Arwen said, “Changelings are possessive, Ivan. And if she’s marked you deep enough that it speaks to an empath, there’s nothing temporary about it.”
Need clawed at Ivan, ripping open the scars. “Arwen.” A tight word. “I can’t talk about this.”
The gentlest of his cousins just nodded. “Okay. Want to walk to the halfway house instead?”
It was Ivan’s turn to stare. “How do you know that?” That was his secret, his obsession.
“Family of spies, hello.” Arwen pretended to shrug on an invisible suit jacket. “I do have some spy skills, you know. Infected with them by osmosis.”
“Why are you spying on me?”
“Because I worry about you.” Guileless, sincere words that laid Arwen’s heart right there in the open and made Ivan wonder all over again how Arwen managed to exist in this world without being smashed into a million pieces.
Good thing he was surrounded by a family of sharks. As Ivan’s healer was now surrounded by a family of ruthless leopards.
Safe, they’d keep her safe.
“Oh, before I forget,” Arwen said. “I got you a present.” He shook the tote. “Brand-new blazer from your favorite designer.”
“Thanks.” Arwen had impeccable taste, so Ivan knew the piece would be one he’d have chosen himself; his cousin understood the power conveyed by clothes, understood the mask Ivan preferred to present to the world.
As for the unexpected gift, that was par for the course for Arwen.
Arwen had been a boy of only five when eight-year-old Ivan joined the family, and he’d soon started to bring Ivan things: a plant he’d grown from seed, a perfect spiral shell he’d found on the beach, his favorite study tablet, even the raggedy old scarf that he had a habit of wearing everywhere, rain or shine, sun or hail.
Ivan hadn’t understood what Arwen wanted from him until a teenaged Canto had looked at him with cardinal eyes full of stars and said, “He just wants you to be happy.” Quiet words that held a deep power. “He’s small, so he thinks if he gives you things that make him happy, you’ll be happy, too.”
If Ena had saved Ivan, Arwen had taught him what it was to be generous, to live in a world without a constant mental balance sheet, to give for no reason but that it might bring joy to the receiver. What ability Ivan had to love, the small thimbleful of softness that had allowed Soleil to sneak into his heart? It had been born courtesy of Arwen Mercant.
Ivan would never do anything to hurt his cousin. And if that meant visiting with Arwen at a time when Ivan’s soul was draped in midnight, the spider stirring, so be it. “Come on,” he said, pulling on his jacket. “Let’s go on that walk.”
After they left the apartment, he made no attempt to hide where he was going. It was no secret, after all. He’d walked there countless nights by now.
“How did you find the halfway house in the first place?” Arwen asked, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“After I first landed and saw there were no Jax junkies hanging around, I figured the cats had rounded up the addicts and thrown them out.” DarkRiver hadn’t held on to power here by being soft.
“Still, I couldn’t let it go—how could a city this big have no users? Didn’t make sense.” Not when Jax was a plague that had infected the Psy since the first generation born into Silence. “So I dug. Family of spies.”
Arwen laughed, the warmth of the sound an echo of another laugh, one that had dug its way into Ivan’s soul. “Spies R Us—Pasha says we should use that as our corporate name,” he said, referencing the bear with whom he was entangled. “Think Grandmother would go for it?”
“You tell her while I watch.”
“Hah.” A grin. “I’ll send Pasha in as the ritual sacrifice.”
After that, they walked on in silence. Arwen could be a very comfortable companion. Back when Ivan had been in his early teens, Arwen would sometimes come into Ivan’s room and just sit there reading his book while Ivan studied. It hadn’t been until much later that Ivan realized he’d always felt more centered afterward.
