Since Vaughn was one of those changelings, she heard him feed the curious a story about teenagers playing with banned fireworks. The explanation wasn’t wholly believed, but the travelers, regardless of race, relaxed as soon as they realized the changelings had the situation under control. It gave Sahara a glimpse of exactly how much San Francisco had become a changeling—specifically leopard—city.
In the end, that was the only damage done that day, but Vasquez, faceless and unidentifiable, remained in the wind. Accepting Kaleb’s offer of a teleport, the changeling trackers used the faint scent found at the fan to begin their hunt, each changeling accompanied by an Arrow who could scan for and block possible psychic attacks.
Not strong or fast enough to keep up, Sahara decided to stay at the station. “In case Vasquez or his men decide to circle back,” she said to Kaleb.
He nodded, his eyes connecting with Vaughn’s. “Take care of her.”
The jaguar male’s responding nod was quiet, the grim look he laid on Sahara after Kaleb left not the least unexpected. “He’s not the kind of man you want to be involved with.”
Sahara made a face at him. “That would be my business.”
“Sorry, doesn’t work like that.” Folding his arms, he leaned back against the wall, eyes fully jaguar. “You’re family now, little sister.”
“And look how safe you are,” she said, hands on her hips. “I’m sorry, anyone who turns into a predatory cat with big teeth and claws can’t exactly throw stones.”
Vaughn narrowed his eyes at her. “I will hurt him if he puts a single bruise on you.”
“You won’t have to,” Sahara said softly. “He’d end himself before causing me harm.” As he’d once almost done . . . her beautiful Kaleb who had bled so much she’d thought he’d do permanent damage to his brain.
“No! Don’t! Kaleb, stop!”
IT was a long day that merged into an even longer night. Kaleb stayed with the changeling trackers . . . and Sahara stayed with him. She’d left the station when it became night-quiet and gone to DarkRiver’s HQ, but remained connected to Kaleb on the telepathic plane. It was a quiet reminder that he mattered, that someone would miss him if he was gone.
Ahead of him, one of the trackers—a wolf named Drew—held up a hand. Kaleb scanned the area and pinpointed a number of Psy minds in the vicinity, but there was nothing to tell him if one belonged to the individual who’d left the scent, whether it had been Vasquez or one of his skeleton team. Then a gunshot rang out from the four-level garage to the left and he had a far smaller area to scan.
Unable to teleport to the location without a clear visual, he ran to a vehicle in front of the structure, then reached for both Judd and Aden with his mind. I need cover.
Go. Laser fire erupted from all sides, interspersed with the harder sounds of gunfire.
I can bring in more people, he said to Judd once his back hit the inside wall of the garage. No hostiles on this level.
We’ll stay out here, draw his attention. Looks like a single shooter.
Kaleb was already moving, taking extra care to ensure his footfalls didn’t echo. He was almost to the fourth level when the world went silent. Judd, update.
He stopped without warning. May have realized you’re there.
Kaleb increased his speed, aware Vasquez—if it was the leader of Pure Psy, and not one of his subordinates—had the skill to rappel down the side of the structure and once again elude capture. The bullet came out of nowhere, glancing off his upper arm. Gritting his teeth against the bruising pain, he rolled behind the protective bulk of a gleaming black all-wheel drive.
Kaleb!
He didn’t know how Sahara had sensed the blow. Bulletproof fabric did its job. I’m fine. His arm remained functional.
Risking a look around the corner, he twisted back as another bullet snapped past his head, but the quick glimpse combined with the trajectory of the bullet gave him what he needed to zero in on the location of the shooter. He rose to his haunches as the all-wheel drive took multiple shots from both a projectile weapon and a laser, safety glass cascading around him. Shaking it off, he spread his hands, palms out, and shoved every single car on this level of the garage forward in a lethal wave that left the shooter with nowhere to go.
The guns went wild as the shooter tried to take Kaleb down and cut off the flow of his telekinetic power. Kaleb easily avoided the bullets . . . until one ricocheted off a metal sign on the wall to punch into his thigh with an impact that told him it had been designed to penetrate bulletproof fabric. It did. The violent pain might have interrupted the concentration of another Tk, but Kaleb had learned to work through worse as a boy.
Gritting his teeth, he slammed the cars into the back wall, the metal scraping along the sides of the parking garage to leave deep gouges. Then came silence. Total and possibly dangerous. Sweeping out with his telepathic senses, he found a living Psy mind, but it was flickering, for lack of a better word, critically injured. He had to shift three crushed cars to get to the shooter, who lay crumpled between the wall and the twisted hulks of metal, his guns crushed, his lower body sticky and red, bones in splinters.
The only way Kaleb could know if this physically unremarkable male was Vasquez would be to tear into his mind. But even with the blood pooling around his lower body, thick and dark, the man had a look in his eyes that told Kaleb his mind was apt to be rigged to collapse if breached.
Removing the man’s knife and anything else he could use to speed up his own death, Kaleb ’ported to Sahara, after sending her a warning message, tugged the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head to shadow her face, and ’ported back with her.
Sounds had begun to echo through the garage by the time they arrived, the rest of the team doing a level-by-level sweep to make sure there was no one else hiding in the structure.
“No questions?” the critically injured male rasped on their return, blood bubbling out of the corners of his mouth.
Kaleb’s leg was bleeding badly now, the viscous liquid having soaked into the tough fabric of his pants and trickled into his boot, but he would finish this. “You’re unlikely to answer them.”
The man’s lashes came down, settled, then lifted to show he was still alive and conscious. “So you’ll stand there and watch me die, not even attempt a retraction?” Contempt in those words.
It is Andrea Vasquez, Sahara said along their familiar telepathic pathway. But this was not his final strike. That is what he calls the Phoenix Code: he’s split Pure Psy into multiple cells, each with the goal of collapsing as much of the PsyNet as possible, until only the “pure” remain—his belief system, as well as those of his followers, has altered until they now truly think that those who are “pure” are stronger. Anyone who dies was therefore not pure.
The tautology of that belief did more to disprove Pure Psy’s “rational” rhetoric than any reasoned argument.
Geneva, Sahara continued, Luxembourg, Paris, San Francisco, they were all intended to give his people time to scatter and hide deep, only to arise anew once the dust has settled. While their goal to rid the Net of the impure is paramount, their secondary aim is to instigate a worldwide war that will eliminate the weak and the “inferior.”