Shield of Winter
(Psy-Changeling #13)
by
Nalini Singh
Assassin. Soldier. Arrow. That is who Vasic is, who he will always be. His soul drenched in blood, his conscience heavy with the weight of all he’s done, he exists in the shadows, far from the hope his people can almost touch—if only they do not first drown in the murderous insanity of a lethal contagion. To stop the wave of death, Vasic must complete the simplest and most difficult mission of his life.
For if the Psy race is to survive, the empaths must wake…
Having rebuilt her life after medical “treatment” that violated her mind and sought to suffocate her abilities, Ivy should have run from the black-clad Arrow with eyes of winter frost. But Ivy Jane has never done what she should. Now, she’ll fight for her people, and for this Arrow who stands as her living shield, yet believes he is beyond redemption. But as the world turns to screaming crimson, even Ivy’s fierce will may not be enough to save Vasic from the cold darkness…
Chapter 1
To be an Arrow is to be an island, devoid of attachments that create vulnerability.
— First Code of Arrows
There was nothing left of the man he’d been.
— First Code of Arrows
There was nothing left of the man he’d been.
Vasic stared through the glass wall in front of him as
the computronic gauntlet biologically fused to his left forearm hummed
near silently in the diagnostic mode he’d initiated. Sleek black, the
new invention remained relatively unstable, despite the constant and
ongoing refinement by the medics and techs, but Vasic wasn’t concerned
about his life.
He hadn’t been concerned about anything for a long
time. At first it had been his conditioning under Silence that kept him
cold, his emotions on ice. Now, as the world navigated the first days of
a new year, he was beyond Silence and into a numbness so vast, it was
an endless grayness.
The only reason he kept waking up in the morning was
for the others, the ones in the squad who still had some hope of a
normal life. It was far too late for him, his hands permanently stained
with blood from the countless lives he’d taken in pursuit of a mandate
that had proven false in a very ugly way.
“What is it?” he said to the man clad in a black
combat uniform who’d just entered the common area of Arrow Central
Command. None of them were sociable, yet they maintained this space,
having learned through bitter experience that even an Arrow couldn’t
always walk alone.
Today the room was empty except for the two of them.
Today the room was empty except for the two of them.
“Krychek has a theory.” Aden came to stand beside
Vasic, his dark eyes on the vista beyond the glass. It wasn’t of the
outside world—the Arrows were creatures of shadow, and so they lived in
the shadows, their headquarters buried deep underground in a location
inaccessible to anyone who didn’t know the correct routes and codes.
Even a teleporter needed a visual lock, and there were
no images of Arrow Central Command anywhere in the world, not in any
database, not on the PsyNet, nowhere. Which made it all the more notable
that Kaleb Krychek had demonstrated the ability to ’port into the HQ
when the squad first contacted him.
However, despite the subterranean nature of the
squad’s base of operations, on the other side of the glass lay a
sprawling green space full of trees, ferns, even a natural-seeming pool,
the area bathed in simulated sunlight that would change to moonlight as
the day turned.
It had been difficult to acquire that technology
without tipping their hand—the SnowDancer wolves were very proprietary
of their tech, usually installed it themselves. But the squad had
managed, because that light was as necessary to their sanity and their
physical health as the captured piece of the outside world on which it
shone.
“Krychek’s theory—it’s about the disease in the Net,”
Vasic guessed, aware that the broken remnants of fanatical Pure Psy and
the sporadic new outbreaks of violence notwithstanding, that was the
most dangerous threat facing their race.
“You’ve seen the reports.”
“Yes.” The disease, the infection, was
spreading at a phenomenal pace no one could’ve predicted. Rooted in the
psychic fabric that connected every Psy on the planet but for the
renegades, it had the potential to devastate their race . . . because to
be Psy was to need the biofeedback provided by a psychic network. Now
that same link could well be pumping poison directly into their brains.
There were some who whispered that the fall of Silence
a month prior was behind the acceleration, but Vasic didn’t believe
that to be the truth—the decay was too deeply integrated in the PsyNet.
It had had over a century to grow, feeding on the suppressed psychic
energy of all the dark, twisted emotions their race sought to stifle.
“Krychek’s theory?”
Aden, his hands clasped loosely behind his back, said, “He believes the empaths are the key.”
The empaths.
An unexpected idea from Kaleb Krychek, whom many
considered the epitome of Silence . . . but that was a false truth, as
the entire Net had learned when he had lowered the shield around the
adamantine bond that linked him to Sahara Kyriakus. Of course, it was a
false truth only when it came to Sahara Kyriakus. That was a fact Vasic
didn’t think everyone understood, and it was a critical one.
Kaleb Krychek remained a lethal threat.
“Krychek,” Aden continued, “theorizes that the fact
the empaths are so prevalent in the population speaks to their necessity
in subtle ways we’ve never grasped. Stifling their abilities has thus
had a dangerous flow-on effect.”
Vasic saw the logic—empaths might’ve been publicly
erased from the Net, but every Arrow knew the E designation had never
been rare. Except once. Their emotion-linked abilities contrary to the
very foundations of the Protocol, the Es had been systematically
eliminated from the gene pool in the years after Silence was first
implemented, only for the ruling Council to realize almost too late that
it was attempting to excise a vital organ.
No one truly understood why the Net needed the Es, but
it was incontrovertible that it did. The Council that had first come
face-to-face with that truth had named it the Correlation Concept—the
lower the number of E-Psy in the population, the higher the incidents of
psychopathy and insanity.
However, while the current generation of Es might’ve been allowed to be born, they’d never been allowed to be,
conditioned to suppress their abilities since birth. “Has Krychek
considered the fact that it might not be a case of merely awakening the
Es?”
“Yes. You see the critical problem.”
It was inescapable—if the empaths had to do something
active to negate the infection, then the Psy race might well
disintegrate to ash, because there was no one left to teach the Es what
to do. By the time the ruling Council of the time had accepted their
mistake in attempting to cull the Es from the gene pool, all the old
ones were dead and information about their abilities had been erased
from every known archive.
“How many?” Vasic asked, knowing they couldn’t simply
begin to nudge the empaths awake on a wholesale level. Their deaths had
almost collapsed the PsyNet. No one knew what would happen if they woke
all at once, disoriented and unable to control their abilities.
“A test group of ten.” Aden telepathed him the list.
Scanning it, Vasic saw the short-listed Es were all
high Gradient, from cardinal to 8.7. “No,” he said, before Aden could
make the request. “I won’t retrieve them.”
“You don’t have to retrieve them all. Just one.”
“No,” Vasic said again. “If Krychek wishes to abduct
empaths, he’s capable of doing so himself.” Vasic was no longer on
anyone’s leash but his own.
Aden’s response was quiet. “Do you think I’d bring you such a request?”
Turning at last, Vasic met the eyes of the telepath
who was the one individual in the world he considered a friend, their
lives intertwined since childhood—when they’d been paired up to do
exercises designed to turn Vasic into a stone-cold killer. To their
trainers, Aden had simply been a useful telepathic sparring partner, a
well-behaved complement to Vasic’s erratic temperament at the time, an
Arrow trainee only because his parents were both Arrows who’d worked to
hone his skills since the cradle.
As such, Aden had been put into classes that
eventually qualified him as a field medic. He’d been given the same
harsh training all inductees were given, but was never deemed worthy of
any extra interest—except when it came to punishments designed to
“harden” a boy who’d been small for his age. Always, the ones who would
use the Arrows had underestimated Aden, and in so doing, they’d given
the squad a leader who’d saved countless lives and who they would follow
into any hell.
“No,” Vasic conceded. “You wouldn’t.” Aden knew
exactly how close Vasic was to the edge, that the destruction of, or
damage to one more innocent life could snap the razor-fine thread that
bound him to the world.
“Krychek,” Aden continued into the quiet between them,
“doesn’t think his proposed experiment as to the impact of the empaths
on the infection will work if the Es are forced to participate.” A
pause. “I’m not certain if that’s his personal view, or if it’s
Sahara’s, but whatever the case, each of the Es must volunteer.”
Vasic agreed with Aden that the compassion was likely
to emanate from the woman who had appeared out of nowhere to forge an
unbreakable bond with the otherwise cold-blooded dual cardinal, and who,
their investigations told them, was in no way Silent. “Where does
Krychek intend to run his experiment?”
“SnowDancer-DarkRiver territory.”
Very few things had the capacity to surprise Vasic, on any level. This, however, was unexpected.
“The SnowDancer wolves have a tendency to shoot
intruders on sight”—“shoot first and ask questions of the corpses” was
their rumored motto—“and the leopards aren’t much friendlier.”
“I’ve told Krychek the same, yet I can see his point as to the area’s suitability.”
“An isolated location, no other PsyNet connected minds
for miles in any direction.” As a result, that part of the Net, too,
would be quiet, giving Krychek a clean canvas on which to run his
experiment.
However, that was a factor that could be replicated elsewhere.
Which left a single critical element that could only
be found in the changeling-held territory. “Sascha Duncan.” Access to
the only active E in the world no doubt played a crucial part in
Krychek’s plans.
“There’s no infection in that section of the Net,”
Aden said, instead of nodding to confirm what they both knew must be
true. “However Krychek has the ability to shift the infection in that
direction, or seed the area with it. He says he can’t control it beyond
that, but I haven’t yet decided if he’s lying.” The other Arrow turned
to acknowledge another member of the squad who’d just entered, walking
over to her when she indicated she needed to speak to him.
Alone, Vasic considered the misleading simplicity of
Krychek’s proposed experiment. An isolated group of empaths surrounded
on the Net by the infection. If the experiment failed and the infection
threatened to overwhelm them in a wave of murderous madness or more
subtle mental degradation, it would be relatively easy to relocate all
ten men and women at short notice. As well, the deterioration of an
empty part of the Net would cause few ripples.
In that sense, it was a clean plan, with no threat of major losses.
Of course, no one could predict how the infection
would move, what it would do to the empaths. “I can’t, Aden,” he said
when the other man returned to his side, their fellow Arrow having left
the room.
Aden waited.
“You know what happened when I had cause to pass near
Sascha Duncan prior to her defection. It was a deeply . . .
uncomfortable experience.” Councilor Nikita Duncan’s daughter had been
pretending to be Silent at the time, but even then, there’d been
something about her that had made his instincts bristle.
It was one of the few times he’d felt true pain as an
adult—at first, he’d thought he was under attack, only to realize it was
Sascha’s simple presence in a room separated from the one where he
stood by a solid wall, that was sandpaper along the insides of
his skin. As if some part of him knew she was the antithesis to
everything he had ever been taught to be, the rejection primal.
It wasn’t until her defection and the resulting
revelation of her empathy that he’d realized the reason behind the
strange effect; the knowledge had made him recall the numerous other
times he’d felt a faint irritation against his skin as he moved through
the shadows in populated areas.
Sleeping empaths, their conditioning not as badly degraded as Sascha’s must have been.
He also knew he was an anomaly in sensing them in such
a way—according to Aden, no one else in the squad had ever reported the
same. Vasic had a theory that the awareness was an undocumented adjunct
of being a Tk-V, a born teleporter. Patton, the only other Tk-V Vasic
had ever met, had often complained about an “itch” under his skin when
he was in the outside world.
Regardless of whether that was true or not, the effect
continued unchecked for Vasic, causing deeper and more frequent
serrated scrapes over his skin as the conditioning of the Es in the Net
fractured further with each passing day.
Aden took several minutes to reply. “Uncomfortable,
not debilitating.” The words of a leader evaluating one of his men. “The
empaths will need a protection squad—their designation has never been
aggressive according to the historical records I’ve been able to unearth
so far, and none of this group are, either.”
The telepath’s tone remained even as he added, “I want
you to run it. You’re the only man I trust to get them all out of
danger if there’s a sudden spike in the infection, or if the pro-Silence
elements in the Net seek to do them harm.”
Vasic knew that wasn’t quite the truth—the squad had
other teleport-capable operatives in its ranks. No one as fast as Vasic,
but fast enough. None of them, however, stood so close to an
irrevocable and final descent into the abyss. “Are you trying to put me
on soft duty?”
“Yes.” Eyes on the greenery outside, but his attention
on Vasic, Aden continued to speak. “You don’t see it, but you’re one of
the core members of the squad, the one we all rely on when things go to
hell. Outside emergency situations, the younger Arrows turn to you for
guidance; the older ones use you as a sounding board. Your loss would be
a staggering blow to the group . . . to me.”
“I won’t snap.” Even though he knew the oblivion of
death was the only peace he’d ever find. “I have things to do yet.” And
it didn’t only have to do with helping to save those Arrows who might
still have the chance to live some kind of a real life.
You don’t have the right to be tired. When you can
write her name on a memorial, when you can honor her blood, then you’ll
have earned the right.
A leopard changeling had said that to him over the
broken body of a woman whose death Vasic had been sent to erase. The
leopard couldn’t know how many names Vasic needed to write, how many
deaths he’d covered up when he’d believed that what he was doing was for
the good of his people . . . and later, when he’d known it was too
early for any revolution to succeed. Each and every name had a claim on
his soul.
“Nevertheless, I want you away from the violence, at
least for a short period.” Again, Aden’s voice was that of the leader he
was, and yet it was no order, their relationship far too old to need
any such trappings. “There’s another reason I want you on this
detail—and why I’m going to ask you to consider certain others for your
team. Being near empaths may be uncomfortable for you, but it will
likely be soothing for the Es.”
Because, Vasic realized, he and the others like him,
were ice-cold, permanently cut off from their emotions. Unlike the
fractured, they would leak neither fear nor pain, eliminating one source
of stress on the newly awakened Es. “How does that tie in with being so
close to the changelings?” The shapeshifting race was as rawly
emotional as the Psy were not, their world painted in vivid shades of
passion.
“If Krychek manages to negotiate access to part of
their land, he intends to agree to full satellite and remote
surveillance, while asking them to keep a physical distance the majority
of the time.” Aden paused as a butterfly flew from the lush green of
the trees to flutter its scarlet wings against the glass before
returning to more hospitable climes. “It’ll take time for negotiations
to be concluded, a location to be settled on, whether it’s in changeling
territory or elsewhere. Take the invitation to your nominated E, gauge
whether you could remain in her proximity for the duration.”
“You’ve already decided who I’m to approach.”
“According to Krychek, all the empaths on the list but
one have already begun to wake to their abilities, even if they aren’t
cognizant of it.”
Vasic didn’t ask how Krychek could’ve known that,
aware the cardinal telekinetic had an intimate link with the NetMind,
the vast neosentience that was the librarian and guardian of the Net.
The NetMind had no doubt informed Krychek of the Es who were coming to
an awareness of their true designation.
“Your retrieval, however, first broke conditioning at
sixteen and was given aggressive reconditioning to wrench her abilities
back under. Two months later, she and her parents quietly disappeared.”
It was the second surprise of the conversation. “The NetMind can’t locate the family unit?”
“Not that type of disappearance,” Aden clarified. “We
know where they are geographically, but they’ve done an impeccable job
of making themselves of no interest to anyone. Her mother was a systems
analyst for a cutting edge computronic firm in Washington; her father
held a senior position in a bank. Now they run a large but only
moderately successful farm in North Dakota, in cooperation with a number
of other Psy.”
Psy preferred to live in cities, near others of their
kind, but that wasn’t to say none of their race ever chose outdoor
occupations. Like humans and changelings, Psy needed to eat, to put a
roof over their heads, and work was work. Such a massive career change,
however, was an indication of a conscious decision. “Protecting their
child?” It wasn’t impossible, the parental instinct a driving force even
in many of the Silent, though Vasic had no personal experience of such.
“Possible but unconfirmed.”
Vasic knew there was more to come.
“What’s also unconfirmed is if she still has access to
her abilities—or if they were terminally damaged by the reconditioning
process.” Aden stared unblinking through the glass. “I watched the
recording, and it was one of the most brutal sessions I’ve ever seen, a
hairsbreadth from a rehabilitation.”
“Then why is she on the list?” The ugliness of
rehabilitation erased the personality, left the individual a drooling
vegetable, and if this E had come so close to it, she had to bear major
mental scars.
“To be valid, the experiment needs not only Psy who
have never been reconditioned, but those who’ve been through the
process. She’s one of six in the group who have, but the others
underwent only a minor reset.”
It made absolute sense . . . because the majority of
empaths in the Net would’ve undergone reconditioning at some stage, the
process designed to force their minds back into the accepted norm, in
denial of the fact those minds had never been meant to be emotionless
constructs. Which meant the PsyNet had to deal not only with Es who
didn’t have any idea of how to utilize their abilities, but also ones
damaged on a fundamental level.
“The flip side to their problematic conditioning,”
Aden added, faultlessly following Vasic’s line of thought, “is that
they’ll suffer no pain breaking it.”
“Of course.” The process known as dissonance was
designed to reinforce Silence by punishing any unacceptable emotional
deviation with pain, but clearly that approach wouldn’t work on an
individual whose mental pathways were structured with emotion as the
core. It would simply kill. “The details of the retrieval.”
Aden handed Vasic an envelope. “A letter to her
directly from Krychek, setting out the parameters of her engagement, as
well as the payment schedule.”
“He’s offering them jobs?” The Council had always just taken.
“We both know how intelligent he is. Why coerce when
you can contract?” With that cool statement that perfectly described the
way Krychek’s mind worked, Aden sent Vasic a telepathic image.
It was of a small female with black hair to her
shoulders, the strands shaping themselves into soft natural curls, and
eyes so unusual, he took a second look. The pupils were jet-black
against irises of translucent copper ringed by a fine rim of gold. They
stood out against the golden cream of her skin, somehow too old, too
perceptive.
As if she saw beneath the skin.
Storing the photograph in a mental vault after
imprinting a geographic location on his mind using her appearance as a
lock, he looked down at the envelope. Her name was hand-written across
it in black ink: Ivy Jane.
He wondered what Ivy Jane would think of the Arrow
about to enter her life, a man who could never again feel anything. Even
were it physiologically possible, Vasic had no intention of allowing
his Silence to fragment . . . because behind it lay only a howling
madness created of blood and death and endless horror.
I've been writing as long as I can remember and all of my stories always
held a thread of romance (even when I was writing about a prince who
could shoot lasers out of his eyes). I love creating unique characters,
love giving them happy endings and I even love the voices in my head.
There's no other job I would rather be doing. In September 2002, when I
got the call that Silhouette Desire wanted to buy my first book, Desert Warrior, it was a dream come true. I hope to continue living the dream until I keel over of old age on my keyboard.
You can buy a copy of Shield of Winter from these bookstores
Release Date
( June 3, 2014)
My Rating
5 stars
My Review
