Heart of Obsidian

Silver, he said, dropping out of the Net. Alert the offices.

It’s already in progress. A pause. Sir. My family is sending our telekinetics to Geneva in high-speed airjets, to act under your authority. They are not teleport capable, but they can take over some of the rescue work so the Arrows and your teams can focus on the hunt for the fugitives.

Understood. Kaleb sent the information to Aden while continuing to talk to Silver. More medical teams will be needed. Geneva sent a large group to assist in treating the burn victims in Hong Kong, as did a number of other nearby regions. All of those medics would be exhausted and unable to assist here, even if Kaleb diverted Tks to pick them up.

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.