Memory saw that Lucas and Alexei had the quartet corralled—all four of whom blinked as one right then and began to look around in confusion. “He’s moved on from that group.” Her mouth went dry, her heart thundering. “There are too many Psy here. Too many minds for him to grab, none of them as well shielded as the Arrows’.”

“You let us worry about that.” Sascha’s eyes were pure obsidian when they met Memory’s. “You focus on locating the threat—you’re the only one who can sense it.” The cardinal returned her attention to the street, and, a second later, Memory saw people stop in their tracks, their hands going to cradle the sides of their heads.

Squeezing her own eyes shut, she focused on the serrated presence of the huge, cracked mind. It hovered like a black cloud over the street, its intent to eliminate the Es. Hate and fear emanated from it, the toxic emotions directed at the Es. But it couldn’t capture empathic minds directly, kept sliding off.

That’s why it used other living beings as weapons. But there was something very wrong with this mind, a strange blankness where a sense of identity should be. Worse than at the compound. Then, she’d sensed his maleness and confidence both. Now even those basic elements were faded and dull.

There.

Memory caught the intruder’s psychic “frequency,” much as she’d caught Renault’s after he took Vashti. It was loud. “He’s here.” Lashes snapping up, she ran out of the doorway before Sascha could stop her.

Memory didn’t hesitate as she weaved in and out through the confused but nonviolent crowd.

Crowd control. Terminal field.

Whatever it was Sascha and the other Es were doing, it was working.

The air pressure changed again without warning, a second massive power entering the zone. Panic stuttered her heart, but this mind was ruthlessly sane, its discipline so precise that nothing leaked, not even the faintest edge of emotion. Only that sense of incomprehensible power.

Oh.

She hadn’t sensed him with her abilities at all, she realized. It had been pure survival instinct that alerted her to his presence. Still running, she spotted him up ahead: a terrifyingly handsome man in a black-on-black suit, his features all clean lines and his eyes cardinal starlight. She’d seen his face on the comm while buried in the bunker, knew he could raze cities and cause earthquakes: Kaleb Krychek.

His presence frosted the world in ice.

And his eyes, they landed on her. Hard to miss a woman running full tilt when everyone around her was preternaturally calm. Even the huge parade dragon had laid down its head, its controllers yawning as they leaned up against the dragon’s body.

Where? The single word was a crystalline telepathic contact, so pure her ears rang.

Far right of the street. Clenching her jaw against her dislike of psychic contact with unknowns, she sent him an image of what she could see—the black cloud with tendrils going from person to person, every new victim being aimed toward an E.

There were so many Es here. Why?

The compound—the empaths trained there see this as home ground. It was the same cold telepathic voice, frigid as winter snow, razor-sharp in its clarity and nearly painful with it.

She sucked in a breath. Get out of my head.

I wasn’t in it. Don’t broadcast your question so loudly if you don’t want an answer. He was gone a split second later, his body reappearing at the far end of the street.

Chilled to the bone—what did that much power do to a man—she continued to run in his direction. Her breath wheezed, her chest ached, and she knew her body couldn’t keep up this pace. She was far stronger than she’d been, but years of bad nutrition and lack of muscle strength would take time to fully undo.

A flash of gold in her peripheral vision, Alexei racing across the street to her. With barely a pause, he scooped her up in his arms and said, “Just point.”

Slinging one arm around his neck, she did. And Alexei moved, a predator with lightning-fast reflexes, his body primal grace.

I’m cutting off the assailant to the right. Tell the wolf to go left.

Memory winced at the icy chill of Krychek’s telepathic voice, but relayed the message. “The intruder can’t teleport.” He would’ve done so by now if he’d had that ability. “I think he’s trying to get out now. No more attempts to turn people.”

Empaths are madness.

Memory froze; that hadn’t been Krychek. It was a far less disciplined voice, a thing of fractures and need. Empaths heal wounds of the mind, she replied.

I had no wounds before the waking of Designation E. A kind of frothing energy against her, an attack her mind foiled without effort. You’re not like the others. A sudden quiet. You are darkness. You are like me.

Yes. It was the truth, at least in one sense. You need help. Let me.

It’s too late.

Less pressure. Then none.

“Stop.” She asked her wolf to put her down, then, one of her palms pressed against his heartbeat, she searched with her empathic senses and came up blank. “I can’t sense him anymore.” She relayed the same to Kaleb Krychek.

“Teleporter?” Alexei’s gaze continued to sweep the area.

“No, I didn’t feel a sudden disconnect. It was more a . . . fading. As if he drew the darkness inside himself.” Memory shoved her curls behind her ears, told herself to think. “How can a person disappear while physically here?”

Krychek walked down the street toward them, the starlight of his eyes speaking to her of cold, distant places where it was never warm. “Our quarry has escaped?”

Shivering, Memory backed into Alexei. “Yes,” she managed to get out past her overwhelming awareness of Krychek’s lethal power. Yet this man was mated, was said to be devoted to his lover. Did he show this same deadly face to—

Oh.

“Two faces,” she blurted out on a wave of realization. “He has two faces.” One that was normal, could fool the world, the other a creature of darkness and madness with that odd blankness at its heart.

Memory worried over that blankness, but couldn’t explain it. She had, however, picked up more than she’d realized during that fleeting moment of telepathic contact—she’d never attempt to hack another mind, but his was so fragmented that his hidden thoughts had leaked through on their own. “He hates Es, wants to wipe us out of existence.”

A cold wind swept down the street, raising every tiny hair on her body.

Chapter 43

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

—From Hamlet, by the human artist William Shakespeare (17th century)

WHERE AM I?

He “woke” on an unfamiliar street in the smudged dark of night that had just fallen, his heart thumping and his body sweaty under a thin gray sweater and black pants he didn’t remember putting on. He’d been wearing a suit when he left the office. The cologne he drew in with every breath was far denser than his usual crisp choice.

His pulse hammered at his throat.

Forcing himself to keep moving, he reached into his pants pockets, but there was no phone there, and his wrist was bare of his usual unit. His hands curled into fists inside the pockets, but he kept his face expressionless; from the way others on the street glanced at him before carrying on their way, he must’ve appeared normal enough.

No one blanched. No one tried to run.

Swallowing to wet his dry throat, he paid careful attention to the architecture and the geography. Unless he’d lost days instead of hours, he must be in his own city.

A woman laughed up ahead and opened out a lace parasol.

Next to her were several other women in pretty dresses. Nothing about them gave him a location. He could’ve looked in the PsyNet to orient himself, but with his mind as chaotic as it was, he didn’t want to risk suffering a fugue while only partially in his body.

“Good evening, ladies,” he said with a smile he’d learned to produce on cue because it put humans and nonpredatory changelings at ease.

The women looked at one another and giggled.

He deepened the smile; he knew from a lifetime of experience that he had a pleasing aesthetic appearance, one that appealed to women. He’d never had much reason to use that tool in his arsenal, but today, it might gain him some desperately needed answers. “I was wondering if you could help me,” he said. “I’m a visitor just arrived in your beautiful city. I don’t suppose you have recommendations about what I could do this evening?”

The women giggled again, before one said, “You’re not far from Chinatown, and the Chinese New Year festival is uh-mazing.”

“Oh, and Fisherman’s Wharf is jumping,” her friend added. “They’ve got circus performers there tonight. While we were there, one of the DarkRiver cats shifted and dove through a ring of fire on a dare!”

The rest of their words faded into the background.

Fisherman’s Wharf. Chinatown. DarkRiver. He was in San Francisco. Where he kept an apartment because he flew in and out for business. Right now, that included a major deal with the SnowDancer wolves.

Many of those wolves had to be on the streets attending the festival, but no one called him out. It wasn’t until five minutes later, when he passed by a glossy shop window that he realized why: his hair was the wrong color and he was wearing the paper-thin latex mask that he’d used for the medical appointment. It altered his features beyond recognition.

Red trickled out of his nose as he watched.

His head began to pound.

Chapter 44

Project Scarab: Closed. All outstanding matters cleared.

—Psy Council (2004)

ALEXEI THUMPED A nutrient drink down on the conference table in front of Memory. He’d brought her to DarkRiver HQ for a debrief, but like hell he’d let anyone else near her until she’d gotten some food in her. “I can see your cheekbones cutting against your skin.” Whatever she did when she tracked the unknown mind, she used up the same massive amount of psychic energy as when she worked with Amara.

“Drink.” It came out a growled order, his wolf’s chest heaving with its worry for her. “Judd says the stuff’s still the best way to get a calorie hit after a psychic burn.”