Shards of Hope

Chapter 51

MIANE LEVÈQUE ARRIVED in Venice at ten p.m. the same day. She came to the compound dressed in a sleek red dress paired with black heels, her hair in a flawless twist at the back of her head and her face made up with artful precision. Her lips were a bold red that echoed her dress.

It is as much armor as our clothing, Zaira telepathed to Aden when they met the BlackSea contingent of three in the courtyard surrounded by the weathered and vine-covered dual-level buildings of the compound.

Yes, Aden responded.

The two of them had caught five hours of sleep when scouts alerted them to the presence of the BlackSea team in a Venice hotel. The water-based changelings had made their presence obvious only after they got into Venice without setting off a single alarm, even though the squad had been watching out for them. Zaira was certain the show of stealth had been a deliberate display that warned the squad to take them seriously.

“Jim Savua’s body is in a refrigerated lab space within,” Aden said, taking the lead.

“Olivia?” Miane asked, holding Aden’s gaze with an unblinking black stare that made the tiny hairs on Zaira’s arms rise; she had the distinct sense that while the BlackSea alpha appeared human right then, she wasn’t, not fully.

“Olivia Coletti is in detox.” Aden didn’t look away from that unnerving gaze. “She’s said her daughter’s name but nothing else.”

Miane’s expression didn’t change but her eyes became even colder. “I want to see her.” It was an order.

“The squad has no reason to trust you,” Aden said flatly, and Zaira realized he was responding as another alpha, one who was making it plain that Miane Levèque was a guest in his territory with no rights to demand anything.

A changeling alpha would respect nothing less.

“If she comes to harm in your care, it will be considered a hostile act.”

“Her brain is fried on Halcyon—she did the harm herself.”

Zaira caught the slight change in Miane’s features, identified it as surprise. The BlackSea alpha hadn’t expected drugs to be in the mix.

Stance becoming less aggressive, she said, “I would request a chance to talk to Olivia.” This time, the words were polite. “She may speak to me when she wouldn’t to you.”

Aden held her gaze before giving a small nod. “We’ll permit the visitation, but you’ll be observed.”

“Please make certain the observer isn’t in close proximity. She needs to scent her pack, no one else.”

“Understood.”

“Jim?”

“This way.”

Aden led the BlackSea alpha and her two guards to the lab. With the Venice compound clearly compromised, there was no reason to maintain secrecy. Those Arrows who wanted and had earned a life out of the spotlight had already relocated to other covert squad properties. Most had chosen the valley.

This compound would soon cease to exist.

Inside the lab, Miane Levèque stepped close to Jim Savua’s thin but still muscled body in silence and took his hand. His brown skin was dull and yellowed against the healthy glow of hers, his face bearing the ravages of Halcyon. A haunting humming sound came from Miane’s throat a second later, the purity of it sinking into Zaira’s bones and surging through her blood.

Reaching out to touch her fingers to the male’s closed eyelids after what was clearly a song of sorrow, the BlackSea alpha turned to the pathologist. “The drug use is confirmed?” she asked and though her tone was even, it held the roughness of grief.

“Beyond any doubt.”

“Thank you.” She turned to Aden, a wet gleam in her eyes.

The sign of vulnerability surprised Zaira . . . except Miane Levèque wasn’t vulnerable even at that instant. Her strength pulsed under her skin, her sadness stealing nothing from the anger that burned in her gaze.

An alpha mourning a lost packmate and unafraid to show her emotions.

“If the squad has no objections,” she said, “we will take our packmate to the sea that was his home.”

Aden looked to the pathologist. “Release the body.”

Walking out with the BlackSea alpha after she ordered one of her guards to arrange the transport, Aden held out a blindfold. “If you wish to see Olivia, there are certain conditions. Including the fact that you alone will be taken to where she’s being held.”

A sudden stiffness in the spine of the tall, wide-shouldered male in a black suit who shadowed Miane. He leaned down to speak in her ear, his voice so quiet that Zaira picked up nothing. The BlackSea alpha angled her head to respond and her voice, too, was subvocal. One thing was clear, however. The two were having an argument.

He doesn’t want her to go alone and he’s determined to push the point, Zaira ’pathed to Aden. Certainly no cipher.

Aden glanced at her. A strong alpha isn’t scared by the strength of those around him or her, Commander.

Zaira resisted the temptation to touch him, though it was difficult when he was once again making her heart ache. Who do you think will win this argument?

I wouldn’t bet against either.

Miane Levèque turned back to them. “Will transporting Olivia here do her harm?”

“Yes,” Aden replied. “She’s currently hooked up to drip meds and in a special medical bed that monitors her vitals.”

The BlackSea alpha held out her hand for the blindfold, gave it to the guard who’d argued with her, the one who was most probably her lieutenant. Jaw clenched, he nonetheless wrapped it around her eyes and tied it securely, his expression making it clear that if anything happened to his alpha, he would rip them all to shreds with his bare hands.

Zaira decided she liked him.

Abbot had been on standby for this contingency and now appeared to teleport Miane Levèque to the facility, along with Zaira. Aden remained in Venice with Miane’s guards, a deliberate decision on his part—he wanted to make sure he was on hand should BlackSea have brought more reinforcements.

At present, the squad had no way of knowing whether or not the water-based changelings had acted against the squad as a group, or whether Jim and Olivia had broken away for reasons of their own.

Guiding the alpha to the correct room with a touch of her fingertips against Miane’s upper arm, Zaira ushered her inside. “You may remove your blindfold once I shut the door.” The room was a generic infirmary room, with no windows and nothing else that would betray its location.

“Thank you.”

Zaira pulled the door shut, authorizing a computronic lock before removing herself from the vicinity and using her organizer to connect to the feed from the room. Having already pulled down the blindfold, Miane Levèque let it hang around her neck as she closed the distance from the door to the bed.

Reaching Olivia, who had her eyes closed, Miane put her hands on either side of the woman’s face and leaned in so close that her breath mingled with Olivia’s. Her lips moved, the words inaudible.

Zaira increased the volume levels to maximum and barely caught, “. . . you home. I am here.”

A promise, she surmised.

“Wake.”

This time, it was an order, in the same alpha tone Zaira had heard Remi use in RainFire, the same tone Aden could put in his own voice.

Olivia’s eyes fluttered open. The clarity of the feed allowed Zaira to see that her gaze was dull, but it sharpened quickly. “Miane.” The single word came out a sob.

Stroking back Olivia’s hair, Miane leaned in to kiss her on both cheeks. “Shh, I have you.”

Raising one thin arm, her skin still bearing the yellowish tint of Halcyon, Olivia grabbed at her alpha’s wrist. “Persephone. They have Persephone.”

“Who?” Miane asked, the harsh anger of her echoing the emotions in Zaira’s heart at the thought of a vulnerable child in the hands of the enemy.

Olivia shook her head, her face crumpling. Her eyes phased out at the same time, going dull and staring out into nothing.

“Olivia.” Miane’s voice was alpha again, her packmate’s name imbued with command.

A sucked-in breath as Olivia struggled to focus. She came back enough to say. “E-mail. They sent photos of our baby.” Sobbing took her over. “Killed Cary. They killed him, said they’d kill our baby, too, if I . . .”

This time when she phased out, she didn’t come back, the Halcyon damage yet too deep. Instead of leaving, Miane Levèque kicked off her high-heeled shoes and got into bed with her distressed packmate, holding her close and murmuring things too soft for the microphones to pick up.

It took fifteen minutes for Olivia to fall asleep again.

Leaving her with another kiss, the BlackSea alpha pulled up the blindfold.

ADEN took Zaira’s report telepathically when she returned, glanced at Miane Levèque afterward. “Are you aware of your packmate’s e-mail address?”

“Malachai is just retrieving it.” Miane’s face was all hard angles, her eyes pieces of jet. “Olivia was too affected by the ravages of Halcyon to lie. Someone used her daughter as leverage to get her to commit these acts.”

I agree with her, Zaira said, remembering the anguished pain in Olivia’s voice. Olivia’s medical readings also indicated extreme distress.

“We’ve cooperated with you far beyond what anyone could expect,” Aden said when Malachai spoke quietly into his alpha’s ear. “We’re also willing to assist you in retrieving the child, but for that, we need the data from your packmate’s e-mail.”

“The enemy of my enemy . . . ?” Raising an eyebrow, Miane glanced at the phone Malachai had just handed her.

Rage burned in those black eyes.

Turning the phone toward Aden without a word, she waited as Aden and Zaira scanned the image.

Zaira’s own rage roared to the surface at the photograph of a small, teary-eyed girl clinging desperately to a rag doll with red hair. Her dress was dirty and her surroundings barren, the bed on which she sat nothing but a cot without a mattress. The doll’s hair, of what appeared to be thick red wool, obscured over half of Persephone’s face, but there was no hiding the thinness of that face, or of her body. It was clear she hadn’t been given enough food or any real care.

They’ve put her in a cage. The insane little girl inside Zaira had her lifting her head to meet Miane Levèque’s eyes. “I will find her for you, bring her home.”

The alpha’s dangerous expression didn’t alter as she said, “I’ll accept any help. I know Psy have teleporters who can use people’s faces as anchors. Can you teleport to her?”

“I’m telepathing the image through to a teleporter to verify,” Aden replied.

Vasic? Zaira asked.

Yes. If he can’t get to someone, no one can. Jaw a hard line, he was quiet for a minute before shaking his head. “He can’t get a lock—her face is too obscured and the room too generic. Do you have a better photograph of her?”

“We’ll find one,” Miane said, and after a short conversation with Malachai, showed them four other images on the phone. “Can your teleporter go to any of these people? They’re all missing, too, and it’s possible they’re being held in the same location as Persephone.”

Zaira waited for Vasic’s response once Aden sent through the request, her stomach tense.

“No,” Aden said at last. “Either their features have changed in a substantial way—or they’re dead.”

Miane’s anger was black ice. “Olivia wasn’t scarred when she disappeared,” she said. “Would that kind of a change destabilize a teleport lock?”

Aden nodded. “When it’s that extensive, yes.”

“The depth and degree of Jim Savua’s Halcyon scars would’ve had the same effect,” Zaira said, wondering if Jim’s reaction to the drug had in fact given his and Olivia’s captors the idea of destroying their victims’ faces just in case BlackSea gained access to a teleporter like Vasic. “Persephone was likely left alone only because by the time the people behind this began to scar their prisoners, her face had already changed naturally.”

Anger crackled in the air and it wasn’t all coming from the changeling side.

“It appears your enemy has thought of every angle,” Aden said into the tense quiet. “However, if you have any other missing packmates you want our teleporters to try to find, we’re willing to make the attempt. A single mistake on their end could break things wide open for both the squad and BlackSea.”

Miane inclined her head in regal acceptance of the offer. “Malachai will send you more photos, and we will share the information about Olivia’s e-mail account so you can track from your end while we do it from ours.” Her chilly gaze, which had gone to her lieutenant, shifted back to Aden. “We did not attack you and have no desire to make an enemy of you.”

A strand of her hair escaping to slide against her face, she added, “You should also know that Jim was no drug addict. He lost two family members to a drug that was created by a sea changeling”—a tightening of her lips—“and that affects our biochemistry specifically. It turned him adamantly against drugs.”

“It could also be argued that he had a genetic predisposition to addiction.”

“Do you know your people?” A blunt question.

“I get your point.”

“Olivia, too, was strong and healthy, with no tendencies toward mind-altering substances.”

“Could she have built the poison bombs?”

“Yes. She’s a chemist, a very good one.”

Stepping out into a patch of moonlight, Aden said, “It appears your packmates were forcibly addicted to keep them on a short leash. Olivia was likely addicted after building the bombs—or the components at least.”

Yes, Zaira thought, that made sense. Olivia’s captors had used Persephone as the leash at first, but had wanted further control when they sent Olivia out into the world. In all probability, she’d come to the end of her expertise, and was thus rendered expendable. Now, so would her daughter be.

Screaming anger howling in her skull, Zaira knew there was a good chance Persephone was already dead, killed when her mother outlived her usefulness, but until she knew for certain, she would consider the child alive and a hostage.

“I would not sacrifice my people this way,” Miane said in answer to the unasked question in the air. “I would not degrade them.”

Zaira believed her. There was something undeniably ruthless about Miane, but her grief was real, as was her fury.

“The e-mail details.” Malachai passed over a slip of paper.

Zaira immediately saw why he’d been able to get into his packmate’s account so easily.

The password was “Persephone.”

Looking up with her own fury a firestorm inside her, she said, “No child should ever be put in a cage.”

“It appears we understand one another.” Reaching into a hidden pocket, Miane retrieved a black card engraved with her name and contact details and gave it to Zaira. “Should you need to get in touch with me. Now, we must hunt.”

It looks like you have made a political ally, Aden said as Miane and her guards left.

Zaira held the card so Aden could see it, too. I think she sensed that we are very similar in certain ways.

“You should take her up on her offer.”

“For political purposes?”

“No, out of friendship. If nothing else, you will have a conversation with a woman rumored to be a mako shark in changeling form—though I’m not so certain she’s anything so explicable.”

Zaira slid away the card. “Friendship.” She’d never considered the concept in relation to anyone but Aden, certainly never with anyone outside the squad. But she’d already broken countless rules. Why not this one, too?