PLAY OF PASSION

However, he’d barely reached the underground area that was home to all their vehicles when someone pulled him aside and whispered that he’d been hearing rumors to do with “purity.” Freezing, Drew asked for further details, but the mechanic shrugged. “I think it’s something nasty, but no one’s sure quite what.”


His anger tempered by the need to protect the pack, Andrew began to do what he did best—talk to people. Over the next few hours, he moved from group to group, eating lunch with the soldiers, playing chess with a few of the elders, hanging out in the infirmary and in the training rooms.

His gut was a knot at the start. The last traitor within the pack had almost killed SnowDancer, stabbing a knife straight into its heart. He wasn’t sure they could bear it a second time. The pack was too tight a unit, their loyalty to each other the bedrock on which they built their worlds. But what he found was something else, something unexpected.

“An e-mail,” he said to Hawke later that day, after managing to get his hands on a copy at last. “Sent from an anonymous account but, from the content, it’s connected to Pure Psy, that group all about maintaining Silence. No one knows where it originated—and a few of the people who received it had enough skill to attempt a backtrace. Nada.”

Hawke held his hand out for the e-mail. Andrew passed it across, having already memorized the poison.

We invite our brothers and sisters in SnowDancer to help us achieve our aim of a world of absolute Purity. Surely you do not want your blood polluted with those of the other races—surely you do not want your pack weakened by humans.

Hawke threw down the piece of paper, his jaw a brutal line. “Do we have a problem?”

“No,” Andrew was happy to say, his wolf’s relief a powerful beat against his skin. “Everyone I ran into who’d had contact with the thing found it ugly and malicious and deleted it immediately. I got this copy from someone’s recycle bin.”

Hawke rubbed at his forehead. “Why the fuck didn’t they e-mail it to me? I need to know about shit like this.” When Andrew said nothing, his alpha sat back in his chair. “Yeah, yeah, that’s why I have you.”

Andrew gave him a wry smile. “Most people just didn’t think it was that important—figured it was a nasty e-mail campaign by some crackpot group but nothing more.” Relaxed now, but with a different tension thrumming in his blood, he nodded at the e-mail. “That was a miscalculation on the part of Pure Psy. Almost everyone in the pack has someone human in their family, and they’ve come to see the Lauren children as pups to protect.” And wolves, changeling or feral, would give their lives to protect the young. “But I don’t like the fact the sender seems to have targeted people lower down in the hierarchy.”

“Means they’ve made enough of a study of us to get a handle on at least a little of how the pack functions.” Hawke tapped a finger on his desk. “We need to figure out if they’re trying to recruit outside the den as well.”

“I’ve already got my team on it,” Andrew told him. “So far, it looks like it was a concentrated e-mail blast to our people in this area.”

“Good. The other thing we need to consider is whether they targeted other groups within the city’s population. Something like this could generate serious friction.”

“I’ll put some feelers out, see if that’s a possibility.”

The wolf apparent in his gaze, Hawke picked up the e-mail again. “They’re not going to get inside this pack,” he said with cool finality. “But we need to know how strong they are in the PsyNet.”

Andrew didn’t need Hawke to explain why. Given the Psy race’s influence on economics and politics, whatever happened inside the Net had the potential to affect them all. “I’m meeting Judd after this. I’ll see what he can dig up. Last we heard, Pure Psy was mostly a splinter faction.”

“Things change fast in that bloody hive mind.” Lines marred his brow. “Maybe we should talk to the cop as well,” Hawke said, referring to Nikita’s new security chief.

“I’m on it,” Andrew said, taking the e-mail and folding it into a square he could slide into the pocket of his jeans. “As an aside, Nikita can’t exactly be popular with Pure Psy if she’s got a human security chief.”

That in itself, the fact of a human in a Councilor’s domain, had to be one hell of a story. Andrew had heard bits and pieces of what had gone down with Max Shannon and the J-Psy who was his wife, but he’d been away in another area when most of it was taking place. However, he’d made it a point to get in touch with Max when he returned to the den, knowing the cop’s position meant he’d be privy to some very useful information. Max, too, had seen the benefit of having a direct point of contact with SnowDancer.

“She’s still a Councilor,” Hawke said, his tone grim. “Be careful what intel you share.”

“There’s not much sharing going on right now.” Andrew knew true trust would take time. Hell, it had taken over a decade with the leopards. “We’re feeling each other out.”