“I’ll take the humiliation out of your hide later,” she warned Alexei.

Prior to leaving the den, Alexei called and asked to be put in touch with the leopard on patrol in the area around Renault’s home. He got Emmett Schaeffer, a rough-hewn soldier with sharp eyes, who promised to keep the townhouse under surveillance and follow anyone who came out. “Can’t follow a teleporter,” he pointed out. “But he’s probably asleep—no movement that I can see. External security lights are on, but nothing inside.”

Had Emmett said Renault was there and active, Alexei would’ve swallowed his need to personally haul Renault in for Memory’s vengeance, and asked the leopards to go in. “If that changes, you let me know.”

Surveillance sorted, he and the team decided to utilize Judd’s teleportation skills from the halfway point—it would speed things up without wiping him out. Judd had once told Alexei that teleporting SnowDancers had become exponentially easier for him a year after he blood-oathed fealty to Hawke and became a ranked SnowDancer lieutenant. As if the bond with Hawke created a pathway of psychic trust with all the members of the pack.

Alexei didn’t care too much about the mechanics, just that Judd could get them to the location quickly. It was worth the weird split-second disorientation that came with being teleported.

Once in the city, it took them a short few seconds to make their way up to Renault’s townhouse—Judd had asked Emmett to send through a photograph of the street, then used a distinctive house down the block as a visual reference for the teleport. Just in case Memory’s abductor happened to be looking out the window when five strangers appeared out of nowhere.

It wasn’t yet dawn, but multiple houses had light glowing from their windows as people got out of bed and downed their first coffee in preparation for the day ahead. Another half hour and some folks would start leaving for work.

Emmett emerged from the shadows as Alexei first set eyes on the target home. “I thought I smelled wolf,” the leopard said, a faint smile on his face and his jaw rough with stubble.

The other man was one of the more laid-back cats in DarkRiver, but he was also a lethally skilled senior soldier. More critical to Alexei, Emmett had a mother who was currently in the midst of running the second study ever done on changeling rogues. Keelie Schaeffer had sent a message to all predatory changeling groups around the world, requesting dialogue with anyone impacted by a rogue.

The subject is a painful one, she’d written, but we must confront it if we are to have any hope of finding an answer to why a small number of our kind succumb to such violent impulses.

Alexei had deleted the message at the time, the loss of Brodie too close, but he hadn’t forgotten it. When Dr. Schaeffer gave an interview on the subject four months ago, he’d listened to every word. Trying to find answers. Trying to not be so angry. Yet he still couldn’t speak to her. Not when the wound kept on bleeding inside him.

“No movement,” Emmett said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the well-kept property. “I can watch streetside while you go in.”

Technically, SnowDancer should’ve asked for Enforcement permission since it was a Psy home they were about to breach, but Enforcement remained full of leaks. And when it came down to it, this was leopard territory. Even many of the resident Psy now had more faith in the cats than in their own leaders. When the shit hit the fan, the people of San Francisco knew DarkRiver and its allies would come to their aid.

So yeah, no one was too worried about Enforcement.

“Thanks, Emmett.” Wolf snarling inside him to begin the hunt, Alexei glanced at his alpha.

Hawke nodded, and the five of them flowed across the dark street. The first thing they did was find a window through which Judd could gain a visual. Teleporting inside a second later, he then opened the front door to let them in. All of it in silence.

A split second of warning and Renault would disappear.

Alexei’s nostrils flared at the distinctive ice-metal scent he’d caught in the bunker, that scent laid down thick around him now, as he’d expect in any living creature’s home. Yet nothing felt fresh, not Renault’s scent and not the other smells you’d expect to find in a home. Regardless, none of them spoke as they split up to search the house in silence.

“Fucker’s gone,” he said to the others when they met in the large upstairs bedroom.

“Arrogant, but not arrogant enough to believe he could hide for long right under DarkRiver’s and SnowDancer’s noses,” Judd murmured. “A pity.”

“It’ll have to be a different kind of hunt now.” Hawke folded his arms, his pale gaze pitiless. “I’ll blast his face across the Trinity network.”

“We could get some pushback for playing judge and jury,” Sing-Liu said with a curl of her lip, her small body held with a predator’s stillness. She might be genetically human, but her heart was pure wolf.

Alexei, meanwhile, prowled around the room, his skin too full of energy and a growl building in his chest as he caught fleeting hints of a musty, unpleasant smell he couldn’t quite identify.

“You know how some of the non-changeling groups can be about our laws,” Sing-Liu added.

An eye for an eye, a life for a life, it was a perfectly rational law, but humans and Psy occasionally got squeamish about the brutality of changeling punishments. Alexei might’ve lost a brother to execution, but Brodie’s death wasn’t the fault of their laws. His brother had written his own death warrant the day he broke the vow the two of them had sworn as tormented young teenagers.

“Renault made this SnowDancer business when he intruded on our territory.” Hawke’s tone was hard as granite, the wolf prowling behind his eyes. “He’s now subject to our rules—and I want the entire world to know that. Fuck with us and pay the price.”

Alexei frowned at a sudden change under his feet. Moving back, he walked over the spot again, listening to the subtle difference in the sound of his footsteps. “What’s below this bedroom?”

“Garage,” Matthias said. “Empty except for a single spiderweb.”

“Did the ceiling strike you as low?”

Matthias took a second, frowned. “Yeah, now that you mention it. I’m used to being too tall for a lot of spaces so I didn’t really think it was odd. What’re you thinking?”

Alexei’s claws sliced out of his fingers. “We may have a hidden compartment.”

Everyone switched focus with predator speed.

It was Matthias who spotted that the carpet was only lightly pinned down along one edge. After Judd lifted the small side table sitting on that part of the carpet, Alexei peeled the carpet up and back.

“It’s big enough for a person.” Sing-Liu’s words were quiet. “What’s that smell? Bleach?”

“No, a specialized dehumidifying compound,” Judd said, old nightmares in his voice. “Used to dry flesh out, halt putrefaction and the attendant smells.”

“Looks like a goddamn coffin.” Hawke’s eyes didn’t move off the abomination they’d uncovered. “I can scent a bare hint of decay below the chemicals.”

So could Alexei, the scent a sly intruder that’d finally taken ugly shape.

Blood cold, he took hold of one circular pull, Matthias the other, and the two of them lifted the large lid open. As he did so, he tried not to wonder if the psychopathic bastard had ever put Memory in one of these boxes.

Then the lid was open.

Sing-Liu was the first one to speak. “No one is going to argue with our laws now.”

Inside the space were the mummified remains of a woman with skin that looked ebony now but had probably been dark brown at death. Tucked around her were sealed but transparent packets that appeared to hold hair clippings.

When Hawke found a tissue and used it to lift out one of the packets, they saw that a name and a date were written on the label: Hanna, December 2075.

Alexei’s gaze snagged on the corpse’s hair. She’d had wild black curls, the woman who’d died in this coffin—or been placed there after death. Hair just like an empath Alexei had pulled out of another box. And he knew in his gut that Memory’s mother must’ve had the same hair, and that her skin had been a shade of brown.

Just like her.

He understood in that moment that Memory had been meant to die alongside her mother—two victims who fueled Renault’s murderous fantasies. Then the killer had touched her and discovered what she could do.

But had he succeeded in overusing Memory to the point where her mind broke under the pressure, he’d have reduced her to a lock of hair in his sick trophy case. He’d have destroyed her vibrant light before it ever had the chance to shine. “I get to rip his head off,” Alexei said very, very quietly. “He’s mine.”

No one argued.

Chapter 26

Jaya Laila Storm is to be the Beacon’s new Social Interaction columnist. In the wake of the fall of Silence, as our people grapple with emotion, we are facing questions about love, about hate, about courtship, about friendship, and the Beacon has always been on the cutting edge of news. In this, too, we will not fail.

As a Gradient 8.8 medical empath who survived Silence unbroken and who has psychically bonded with an Arrow, and who maintains friendships with individuals of all three races, we believe she is uniquely qualified to lead Beacon readers through the minefield that is emotion.

Initially, the Beacon senior team objected to my choice of Jaya as columnist because she has barely entered her twenties, but in the end, it was decided that this is a new age. It should be led by the young.

—Madrigal Esperanza, Editorial Director, PsyNet Beacon

MEMORY SLEPT DEEPLY that night, cocooned in a familiar male scent and tired from the sessions with Amara and Sascha. When she woke, it was with a delicious heaviness in her limbs. She yawned.

“Jitterbug?” She rubbed her eyes as she rose into a sitting position. “I’ll get you—”

Reality intruded along with the beams of the cabin around her, the light coming through the crack in her curtains. This wasn’t a prison, and her beloved pet wouldn’t amble over from his position at the foot of her bed to nuzzle against her face.