Branded by Fire
Page 40

"That's what I thought."
"Anyway, it could be simple drowning or suicide." Putting on thin protective gloves, she checked the corpse for evidence of how the male might've died, while Riley took photographs with a small but high-resolution camera. "Fish have nibbled a bit and he's been banged around, but I'm not seeing anything that screams murder. Of course, I'm no expert."
He tapped a finger on his knee. "Can you take samples without it being obvious you took them?"
"No problem - I'll go through one of the bite sites." She was drawing blood as she spoke. "Haven't done anything like this for a while."
"Remind you of med school?"
A pointed glance. "That background check sure was thorough."
"Of course." He kept an eye out around them as he spoke, making certain to look skyward, too. "Falcons are coming today. They want us to grant them permission to fly over pack land."
She took a number of swabs, making quick notes on where they'd been taken from. "Been in the works for a while." The WindHaven clan occupied territory - a large slice of Arizona - that bordered SnowDancer land. Their request wasn't unprecedented. The bird changelings, especially the species that were meant to fly far and wide, often negotiated such treaties - the right to flight along strictly drawn paths.
If WindHaven wanted even limited landing privileges, they'd have to agree on some kind of an alliance, but first SnowDancer - and DarkRiver, as the wolves' main ally - had to find them worthy of an alliance. A weak partner could cause incredible damage. However - "They seem pretty solid."
"Guess we'll find out when we meet." He looked at her as she removed her gloves and put them in the biohazard bag before closing the lid on the whole kit. "Done?"
"Yeah. At least we got this much." She made a face. "Probably won't be enough for any real answers."
"Maybe we'll get lucky with the blood work." He held out his hand for the kit. When she raised an eyebrow, he didn't so much as blink. "I'm stronger. Suck it up."
Her mouth fell open as he turned something she'd said to him more than once, right back on her. Taking the chance to grab the kit, he loped over the rocks and up to the car ahead of her.
Since his back was turned to the cat prowling up behind him, he missed the smile tugging at the curve of her lips.
Mercy checked her phone when they got back to the car. "Falcons postponed," she told Riley. "Meet's set for day after tomorrow instead."
"Must've been something big," Riley murmured. "They've been working for months to reach this point."
Agreeing, Mercy cleared the message. "I'm thinking we get a Rat to call in an anonymous tip on the body. No use leaving him out there to rot. Who knows what's in his system."
"I have to meet more of these Rats. Teijan wasn't what I was expecting."
Mercy made the call before answering him. "They don't like you wolves as much as us leopards," she said, closing her phone. "Apparently, you've been known to threaten to skin any Rat you see sniffing around."
Riley gave a grim smile. "That was when they were spies with no allegiance to anyone. Now they're valued associates."
Mercy snorted, but the cat was intrigued by his logic. As agile as it was, it needed a mate who could match it mentally as well as physically. "Getting back to the body - I can't quite figure out how this guy fits into the recent slew of Psy going nuts. You heard of anything going down where the perpetrator wasn't found?"
"No."
"Me, either. But it's not like Enforcement sends us memos."
"What about that cop?"
"Who? Max?" Mercy frowned. "He went back up to New York."
"He might have contacts."
Mercy nodded. "I'll ask Clay to tap him. But if the Psy decide to hush it up, no one will know anything." She blew out a frustrated breath.
"Mercy." A tone so restrained, it spoke of the greatest emotion.
"What is it?"
"Am I out of the hole I dug myself with the last op?"
"Maybe." But she couldn't help it - he was so serious. Reaching across, she brushed her fingertips over his jaw, tenderness tugging at her very soul. It would, she thought, be so very easy to hurt this man and never know she'd done it, he held everything so close. "You're out of that hole."
He winced. "You found out."
"How long did you think the mating dance was going to escape my notice?" She folded her arms, though she wanted only to stroke him.
"Can we talk about this later?"
"Hmm." She glanced at the kit he'd put on the backseat. "After we drop off the samples."
"I'll get one of my men to take it up to Sierra Tech. Work for you?"
Mercy nodded. Most of the respected R & D company was commercial, but a small area had been set aside to research things the packs needed to know. Since DarkRiver and SnowDancer paid for that section out of their own funds, the minority shareholders weren't bothered. And both packs had a place where they could get work done in efficient privacy. "Let me call Ashaya and tell her about the samples. She'll probably want to head up."
As she was finishing the conversation with the M-Psy, she remembered something else. "Did you manage to talk to Nash again?"
"Yes, but he wouldn't share any details of his research over the comm link," Ashaya replied. "I'm sorry - I know you need more to evaluate his protection needs."
"Not your fault." She leaned back against the seat. "Let me see if I can set up a face-to-face. Might get something that way."
"Good luck."
The NetMind came calling while Faith was sitting in the office Vaughn had rigged for her - an office she absolutely adored, because it was as wild as the man who was her mate, being situated in a hollow cavern off the spectacular main cave that Vaughn had made into a home. The walls in this cavern glittered with embedded minerals, setting off the glow in the thin tubes threaded through the walls of the entire "house." Those tubes provided both heat and light in an eco-friendly way, leaving her cocooned in warmth.
It was, she thought, just one element in the whole that added up to a feeling of total safety. No one would dare touch her now that she belonged to Vaughn, but it was nice to be able to work without any worry whatsoever - the route to her and Vaughn's home was booby-trapped in every way you could imagine, and some most people never would.
Lying back in her favorite easy chair, she began to go through the list of forecasts she'd been requested to make. She never made any business predictions alone, of course. There was always the potential for a Cassandra Spiral, the major mental cascade that could destroy her - the mating bond limited the danger, but neither she nor Vaughn wanted to take chances. Not when she was already so vulnerable to the dark visions, the ones that entered her mind without warning.
But even there, she thought with pride, she'd learned to use the mating bond to anchor herself so the nightmare didn't take her over. In comparison, this - playing with the list, "priming" her brain - was utterly safe.
It was as she was going through the list for the third time that the NetMind "knocked." She couldn't really see it - had never been able to. She simply knew it was there, a vast, endless presence that was at once ageless and childish. Today she caught the tumble of roses it threw into her mind in its version of hello, and laughed.
Talking to the NetMind was difficult - it seemed to understand images better than words, and yet it was the librarian of the PsyNet, holding on to and organizing the billions of words that passed through the Net. And it was a sentience, one that changed with the Net. Now its roses were followed by torrent of images Faith could barely process.
Violence. Blood. Suicide. Over and over.
She showed the NetMind a hand, palm-out, their by-now familiar signal for "slow down." It obeyed, though its version of slow was still almost too fast for her brain to process. But it was better than before. Catching the avalanche of images, she put them aside for later review, sensing the NetMind's distress. Worried, she sent it an image of a woman colored in darkness.
The DarkMind.
It was the twin of the NetMind, created out of all the horror, the hurt, the badness that the Psy had Silenced. Faith knew from painful experience that the DarkMind was mute - but it had found a way to scream, to vent its rage through acts of violence committed by those fragile minds already predisposed toward darkness.
Now she asked the NetMind if its twin was behind the wave of violence.
The answer came within a split second, less.
The image she'd sent was returned to her, but with the DarkMind scrubbed out. So this wasn't the DarkMind trying to speak in whatever limited, tortured way it could. But then the NetMind sent her another image - of the PsyNet, with tendrils of darkness creeping through it. Except this darkness wasn't normal, wasn't healthy. It was putrid in a way Faith couldn't explain - she just felt it deep in her soul.
An image of a thousand tears overlaid the snapshot of the PsyNet.
The PsyNet was dying, Faith thought, and the NetMind was the PsyNet in many ways. Her heart stuttered. But this sending also had another message - the DarkMind might not be driving these acts, but its influence had subtly corrupted another, or others. However, though it was tempting to think of the DarkMind as evil, Faith knew that was wrong. It was also a sentience, and the blame for its insanity lay in Silence.
She sent the NetMind an image of arms outstretched, an offer of help.
The response was of a globe, but a globe colored in the shades of the Net - white stars against a background of black velvet. Around that globe was a shimmering shield that repelled her hands.
The Net wasn't ready for help.
But there were cracks in the shield. She touched a finger to one crack, and knew that was Judd. The one next to it, Walker. And not far from them, Sascha. So many fine, fine cracks. The most isolated one, the newest . . . no, this was the very first, but it was hidden, hidden deep. And it was male, powerful, so very powerful. When this ghost . . . "Oh," she whispered, realizing who it was she touched. "The Ghost." When the most notorious rebel in the Net broke his Silence, the shield would well and truly shatter.