Silver Silence
Page 6

Not that the alpha of StoneWater made a habit of climbing up apartment buildings. He only did that for his icy Starlight.
“Most people,” Ena responded, “including most changelings, don’t have the kind of claws sported by bears. You’re also heavily muscled and, I’m guessing, extremely strong.”
“Teleporters don’t need claws or physical strength.”
“No, but Silver has worked with a cardinal telekinetic for years. She had scent filters put in, motion sensors. Kaleb tested the precautions to make sure they’d work against someone with his ability. She should’ve known the instant an intruder entered, but it’s clear she registered no such intrusion.”
Valentin’s bear froze. “You think the poison was added by someone she let in.” Easy if the guest was a person Silver trusted, a person she would’ve left alone in the living area while she went to fetch something from another room or maybe excused herself to take a private call. The kitchen was only steps away.
Ena inclined her head. “If this individual was smart, he or she wouldn’t have dosed the jar Silver was using at the time.”
“That’s what I figured.” His bear head-butting him in a stubborn refusal to sit down and behave until it had seen Silver, Valentin thought back to her kitchen cupboards and to the second tainted jar. “How long does a jar last?”
“One month if used nonstop, which Silver doesn’t do. Two to three months if interspersed with other sources of nutrients like the bars and protein supplements.”
“We need to go through all the visitors she’s had in the time since she began using the jar before this one.” Even though Silver had just opened this jar, they’d have to go back at least four months to be on the safe side.
“No, Valentin,” Ena said, interrupting him midthought. “That is not your responsibility.”
Valentin’s bear roared in outrage.
He clenched his jaw, frustratingly conscious that he had no rights here. Silver wasn’t his, hadn’t even let him through her front door yet. Today didn’t count, and even his bear wouldn’t argue that it set a precedent. Starlight had to invite him in for it to count.
“Your job,” Ena said, “is to give her safe harbor.”
The bear stopped midroar, stunned into silence.
“I’d like nothing better,” Valentin said through his surprise, “but Silver won’t accept a bodyguard.” And he was alpha, his time bound to the clan, a truth Ena had to understand. What she couldn’t know was just how badly his clan needed him right now. His short visits to annoy and court Starlight had been the only breaks he’d taken since becoming alpha eight months earlier.
“I know,” Ena replied. “I also know she won’t go far from her center of work. But she can’t continue to live in a place where anyone can walk in and poison her.”
Valentin’s fur ruffled inside him, his bear’s attention caught. “The poison is important.” His next question was pure instinct. “Is it a Mercant weapon?” Shadow players would strike with stealth rather than in open aggression.
Ena’s response was telling. “I can’t offer her any of our safe houses. They’re keyed to all Mercants.”
Biting back a harsh word in his native tongue, quite certain both Babushka Caroline and Babushka Anzhela would clip him on the ear if they heard he’d uttered that particular word in the presence of an elder, he ran a hand through his hair. “You think one of your own went after Silver.”
“Our entire family is built on trust.”
“Like a bear clan.” Betrayal was a dagger to the heart, and it hurt. Valentin knew. He’d felt it stab him to the core, was still bleeding and bruised because of it, his bear dejected by the unexpected blow.
“Why not ask Krychek for a place?” Valentin forced himself to ask; he wanted to haul Silver deep into his territory where no one could hurt her, but these were the same questions she’d ask—better he and Ena have her boxed in before she woke.
The bear inside him snorted at the idea of playing fair when it was Starlight’s life at stake.
“Since Silver won’t abandon her work by moving to a totally different region, the only possibilities Kaleb can offer her will be in central Moscow. She’d remain accessible to her enemies.”
Valentin unfolded his arms, a smile starting to tug at his lips. “Are you asking me to kidnap your granddaughter?”
“Let’s call it an enforced move out of the field of danger.”
He was fluent in English, thanks to his Canadian polar bear maternal grandmother, but it still took him a second to work out that yes, Ena was in favor of Valentin kidnapping Silver.
Chapter 3
Blind uniformity is a fool’s goal.
—Ena Mercant (circa 2072)
ALREADY PLOTTING THE kidnapping, Valentin said, “Silver knows a lot of teleporters.” Even the deadly and secretive Arrow Squad, who Nika said were the bogeymen of the Psy, responded to a call from the director of EmNet.
“Given the nature of this incident, she’d ask no one but Kaleb, and Kaleb understands the problem.”
Her words confirmed what he’d begun to suspect—Krychek wasn’t simply a telekinetic for whom Silver had worked for years prior to taking up the reins of EmNet; the other man had become tightly bonded to the Mercants. “Why trust me?”
“You could’ve let her die. You didn’t. That means you and Kaleb are the two people I can trust without question right now.”
“I need to talk to my clan.” Valentin was alpha, his word law, but no bear clan would function well with an autocrat at the helm. Clan was about family, about respect, about loyalty.
Pain lanced through his bear’s heart as terrible memories rose on the heels of that thought, the wound as fresh today as the day it had been made.
Ena rose to her feet. “I will sit with my granddaughter while you confer with your people.”
Valentin pulled out his phone the instant she was inside the recovery room; he’d picked up the sleek black device almost automatically before he entered Silver’s kitchen to hunt down the poison. He pressed a familiar code.
“What did you break now?” were Stasya’s opening words.
Ignoring the greeting only a big sister would think to offer her alpha, he said, “Security threats if we bring a Psy into Denhome.” Like beads on a necklace that tumbled this way and that, Denhome was a mazelike collection of interconnected dwellings dug out of a mountain. It was sprawling and snug and, most of all, safe for the occasionally uncoordinated and always troublemaking balls of fur that were their cubs.
“Which Psy?” Stasya asked with her usual no-nonsense directness.
“Silver Mercant.”
“Very funny, Mishka,” she said, using his childhood nickname of “little bear”—sisters never forgot anything and they told everyone they knew until a man had to remind people his name was actually the very adult-sounding Valentin Mikhailovich Nikolaev.
“I know you have a thing for her, but abducting women is against the law.” She said the last very firmly. “Even for bears. Get that into your head.”
“No joke.” He wished it had been play, that he’d given in to his primal instincts and thrown Silver over his shoulder—she’d have reacted badly, but she wouldn’t now be lying unconscious in a hospital bed. “She needs a safe place to lie low, and we’re the best available.”