Mine to Possess (5 page)

“What do you say, little rabbit?”

“I'm sorry,” Talin replied, sweet as honey. “I don't do pretty boys. In fact, I don't do boys at all.”

Dorian choked on a laugh, then glanced at Clay's shocked face. “Well, shit. She's all yours, buddy.”

Clay hustled Talin to her Jeep and pinned her to the passenger door with his hands on either side of her body. Her fear was a live thing between them, a slimy intruder that had no place being there. He fought to contain the leopard's corresponding rage and knew from the look in her eyes that he'd only been partially successful.

“You like girls?” he asked very, very quietly.

She shook her head, eyes big.

“I can still tell when you're lying and you weren't lying to Dorian.”

“No, I wasn't.” She bit her lower lip. “I was jerking his chain 'cause he was jerking mine. I said I don't like pretty boys.”

The leopard was too wound up to see the logic. “What do you like?”

“Men.”

Time stopped as he digested the knowledge in her eyes. “You've been with men.” He felt as if she'd cut him off at the knees and he shouldn't have. Leopard changelings were sensual creatures—regular sexual contact was considered healthy and natural. He had never before judged a woman for who or how many others she'd been with.

“Yes.” Her skin paled. “Lots of men. So many I can't remember their faces, much less their names. Too many for even my memory to handle.”

Was she trying to hurt him on purpose? That she had the ability to do so enraged the leopard. Keeping that anger at bay only by dint of years of experience, he pushed off the car. “Why? You weren't like that.”

“You knew me before puberty hit,” she said, a tight bitterness to her tone. “Can we go now or would you like a blow-by-blow?”

“Get the hell in!”

Talin got in, conscious of a deep sense of self-loathing. She'd never intended for Clay to know the depths to which she had sunk, but it had been like someone else was controlling her mouth, as if some defiant part of her
wanted
him to know. Now he did. And whatever chance they had had, it was gone.

Talin couldn't blame him for his reaction. The counselor she had finally gone to for a short period after beginning her work for Shine, had assured her that her acting out as a teenager and as a young adult had been an understandable reaction, something often exhibited by victims of childhood abuse. The woman had classified it as a kind of self-harm, said there was no need for Talin to feel shame. But even after eight years of celibacy, except for—

No, she wouldn't think of those times. Her fists turned bloodless. It had been eight years since the final therapy session, eight years since she had begun to try to treat her body as something good, something worth holding precious,
eight years
…but Talin still wasn't sure she believed the counselor.

Maybe she was the slut Orrin had tried to make her. Maybe that defect was built into her genes. The clinic where she'd been abandoned as a baby had been a free one, utilized almost exclusively by prostitutes after all. Orrin had called her the daughter of a whore. Like mother, like daughter.

“Where's your apartment?”

Snapping upright at that cold question, she realized they had reached the outskirts of San Francisco. Lips dry, mouth full of cotton wool, she gave him directions to the small high-rise where Shine had leased her an apartment. “Thank you,” she said when he parked on the street out front.

“Here.” He threw her the key. A split second later, he had opened the door and was gone, a lethal shadow invisible against the rising fog. Eyes stinging, she shifted into the driver's seat and drove the Jeep down into the underground parking area.

Clay had been disgusted by her.

A sob caught in her throat as she sat in the dimly lit garage. Even when Clay had first discovered her grim childhood secret—only seconds before he'd killed Orrin—he had never looked at her with blame in his eyes. Instead, he had written her letters from juvie, telling her that she was still his Tally, still the best thing in his life. Those letters had gotten her through more years than Clay would ever know.

But now…now he blamed her for what she'd become. How could he not? He'd spent four years in a cage so she wouldn't have to live in a nightmare and what had she done? She'd spit on his gift, cheapened it to tawdriness. No wonder he hated her.

That she had been close to insane during those lost, tormented years didn't sound like a particularly good excuse.

Giving in, she pressed her head against the steering wheel and cried.

Ashaya Aleine was
an M-Psy with a Gradient rating of 9.9. The latter made her very unusual. Most Psy that powerful tended to make the 0.1 leap into cardinal status. There was no measuring cardinals. Some were more powerful than others but all had the same eyes—white stars on black velvet.

Distinctive. Memorable.

Ashaya was neither. Her eyes were an unremarkable blue gray, her hair a plain black. It was curly but once pinned into a severe knot, it became forgettable. Her dark brown skin, too, was nothing surprising among the genetically mixed population of the Psy. But Psy weren't the only ones she had to consider. For her plan to succeed, she had to learn to become invisible among the humans and changelings, a far harder task.

The clear panel of her computer screen flashed an incoming call. She answered it to find herself facing a woman with almond-shaped eyes and ruler-straight black hair. “Councilor Duncan. What can I do for you?”

Nikita Duncan put down what appeared to be an electronic pen. “I'd like a progress report. How far along are you?” Her face was a static wall, a testament to perfect Silence.

“Back at the start.” She remained as unmoving as the Councilor. “The saboteurs' attack on the previous lab destroyed the majority of my research.” And her little twist in the programming of the prototype implants had taken care of those few that had been liberated from the lab without her consent.

“Nothing can be salvaged?”

“It may be possible,” she admitted. “However, in my opinion, it would be more effective to start from the very beginning. There were errors in the earlier prototypes I was unable to pinpoint. If I restart with those errors in mind, I may be able to eradicate them.”

“Of course.” Nikita's dark eyes were unblinking. Like a snake's. It was an apt comparison, given that Nikita was reputed to possess the deadly ability to infect other minds with mental viruses—an excellent, untraceable way of getting rid of competitors. “When can the Council expect a full update?”

“I'll send one this week, but it will simply be a detailed reiteration of what I've already indicated.”

“Understood. I'll wait for that report.” Nikita clicked off.

Ashaya found nothing unusual in the Councilor's ready agreement. As the head M-Psy on the team dedicated to the implementation of Protocol I—also known as the Implant Protocol—Ashaya had complete autonomy over research and development.

Their goal was simple: to develop an implant that could be fitted into all Psy brains—but with a focus on infants—in order to create a totally unified society. In other words, a hive mind.

By the time
Talin made it up to her apartment, having no idea how long she'd spent in the Jeep, her eyes were swollen, likely bloodshot. Tasting salt on her lips, she pressed her palm against the scanner beside her door, waited for the lock to disengage, then pushed the door open. The lights came on automatically—she hated being in an enclosed space in the dark. Being outside in the dark didn't scare her. It was the sense of being shut in that got to her—and she didn't need a degree in psychology to figure out why.

Closing the door behind her, she took a step forward. And froze. At first, she couldn't comprehend what it was that she was seeing. Then it hit her in a stomach-churning rush, a kaleidoscope of color and destruction perfumed with the smell of death.

The intruders were gone, that much was obvious. But they had left their mark. She slid down the back of the door to collapse into a sitting position, unable to take her eyes off the message dripping down the opposite wall in a dark red that screamed with the iron-richness of blood.

Stop. Or you're next.

What a stupid message, she thought, childish in its sniggering simplicity. But it worked. The chill of a visceral fear crawled up her body until it closed around her throat, making her want to gag. Still she didn't blink, didn't look away.

How dare they? How
dare
they!

She didn't care about the intrusion or the mess. Those things meant little to a woman who had never allowed any place to be home. But to do what they had done with the photos of her kids?

The holo-image frames had been crushed into the carpet, but they hadn't stopped there. The hard copies had been shredded, the pieces stuck into the blood creeping down the wall. That desecration she couldn't forgive. It made her want to scream and cry and crawl forward to gather up the broken pieces.

But she wasn't a fool. Though anguish and a bone-deep anger roiled in her gut, she didn't attempt to rescue those small things that meant so much to her. That was what they wanted, the monster or monsters who had taken and murdered the children under her care. They wanted to shred her credibility, turn her into a crazy woman no one would believe.

Well, fuck them.

Reaching for her cell phone, she began to press the keys. Only at the last second did she realize she was punching in the code for Clay's office line. A different kind of nausea filled her mouth.

Taking several short breaths, loath to drag in the violated air of her apartment, she shook her head, cleared the screen, and pressed in a far more familiar code.

After leaving Talin,
Clay made his way back to the bar and proceeded to get blind drunk. He was aware of Dorian coming to sit with him, aware of Rina throwing worried glances in his direction and of Joe coming by several times, but he ignored them all, determined to wipe out the image of Tally,
his Tally
, with other men.

“Enough.” Dorian grabbed the bottle out of his hand.

Clay backhanded the other sentinel, retrieving the bottle at the same time.

“Jesus H. Christ.” Dorian got up off the floor, rubbing at his jaw. “I am not letting you pass out here.”

“Get lost.” Clay had every intention of drinking himself into an unconscious stupor.

Dorian swore, then went quiet. “Well, thank bloody God. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

Clay said nothing as Nathan settled into the other side of the booth. DarkRiver's most senior sentinel folded his arms and leaned back against the crimson leather-synth of the bench seat. “Give us a minute, Dorian. Get Rina to ice that bruise.”

“Call me if you need a hand to drag him out of here.”

Clay waited for Nate to light into him, but the other man simply watched him with those dark blue eyes that were always so damn calm.

“What?” he said, his tone flat. Other leopards might have growled or snapped, but Clay knew if he allowed his rage to surface tonight, it would end in blood.

“The one and only time I've ever seen you drunk,” Nate replied, “was when I hauled your sorry ass out of that bar in New York.”

Clay grunted, well aware that Nate had saved his life that night. Fresh out of juvie and having just been told that Talin was dead, he had been well on the road to self-annihilation. It was in that pain-fueled anger that he'd picked a fight with Nate. Over ten years older and a trained fighter, Nate had wiped the floor with him.

But instead of leaving him to the scavengers, the sentinel had dragged Clay back to his hotel room. Nathan's mate, Tamsyn, had taken one look at him and said, “Good Lord, I didn't think there were any big cats in New York!” That was the first time in his life that Clay had been in the company of fellow leopards.

“That time,” Nate commented, “it was a girl. You'd lost your Talin.”

“I should've never told you about her.”

“You were young.” Nate shrugged. “Rina said you were in here with a woman earlier.”

“Rina has a big mouth.”

Nate grinned. “Pack law. Being nosy about fellow packmates is required. So, you gonna tell me?”

“No.”

“Fair enough.” The other man rose to his feet. “When you've finished destroying yourself, you might recall Lucas and Sascha have a meeting with Nikita Duncan tomorrow. You're supposed to be watching our alpha pair's backs.”

“Fuck!” Clay put down the bottle, the black haze of his anger clearing in a harsh burst of reality. Nikita Duncan was Sascha's mother, and a member of the powerful Psy Council. She was also a murderous bitch. “I'll be there.”

“No.” Nate's eyes grew cold. “You're compromised. I'll cover.”

That got through to Clay as nothing else could have. His loyalty to DarkRiver was what kept him on the right side of the line. Take that away and he'd be a stone-cold killer. Especially now that Talin had cut his heart right out of him. “Point taken.”

“You're still off tomorrow.” Nate held out a hand. “Come on.”

After a dangerous pause in which the leopard rose to crouching readiness, hungry for violence, Clay accepted the offer and let one of the few men he called friend haul him upright. The floor spun. “Shit. I'm drunk.” He slung an arm around Nate's shoulders.

“You think, Sherlock?” Dorian appeared to prop up his other side. “Man, it must've cut you up that your girl only likes other girls.”

“What?”
Nate stumbled, threatening to take them all down.

Clay bared his teeth. “She likes
men
”—another surge of fury—“just not pretty
boys
like you.”

Dorian began to scowl. “Smart-ass. Wait till the next time I see her.”

Clay was about to reply when the hard alcohol caught up with him, his changeling body deciding it would be better if he slept off the drunk.

Max arrived with
a crime scene team half an hour after Talin's call. By then, she'd taken the chance to wash away her tears, thinking clearly enough to buy bottles of cold water from the vending machine on the ground floor instead of going in and using her own sink.

“Did you touch anything?” Max asked after looking over the scene, his uptilted eyes and olive skin giving his face an exotic cast.

Clay's skin was darker than Max's, she found herself thinking even as she shook her head. “Nothing but the door and the bit of carpet around it.”

“Good.” He nodded at the crime scene techs.

Talin watched dispassionately as the white-garbed men and women walked in, their shoes enclosed in protective booties, their hair and clothing covered to minimize contamination. “They won't get anything. It might look like a teenage prank, but this was a slick operation.”

Max walked her a small distance from the open doorway of her apartment. “You're probably right. But this is bad, Talin. One of my men is changeling—his nose tells him that that's definitely human blood.”

She felt her fingers curl into claws. “It'll be from one of the children.” The monsters were playing mind games, sickening, brutal, and without conscience.

Max didn't bother to dispute her claim. “What bothers me is that they know how hard you've been pushing the investigation.”

“Enforcement is a sieve,” she muttered.

“Yeah.” An uncharacteristically bitter look clouded his expression. “If I hadn't been born with airtight mental shields, I'd probably have made captain by now.”

She rubbed a hand over her face. “Psy spies can't read you?”

“No. But that doesn't make any difference here.” He put his hands on his hips, below his trench coat. “Council plants are simply the most obvious. We've got others who think nothing of selling information for profit.”

Dropping her hand, she shook her head. “Why stay in such a corrupt system?”

“Because we do more good than harm,” he said, his dedication clear. “The Psy don't interfere in most investigations, especially not when it involves the other races.”

“Maybe not,” she agreed, “but they still treat humans as a lesser species. It makes me wonder why they let us live at all.”

“Every society needs its worker bees.” The dry sarcasm in Max's words didn't negate their truth. “We do all the jobs they can't be bothered with. But we can't blame the Psy for the lack of support in this case. This is because of plain old human prejudice. People see the victims, their lifestyles, and make judgments.”

“What use is Enforcement if it ignores those who need it most?” She knew Max didn't deserve her anger, but God, she was mad. “These are
children
, most of whom have no one else to speak for them.”

Max's jaw locked tight. “I prefer the changeling way sometimes,” he said, to her surprise. “You hit one of them, you get executed. End of story.”

Her stomach twisted. “Who does the executions?”

“The high-level guys in the predatory packs.”

High-level guys like Clay. Talin wasn't going to lie to herself—she wanted to kill these bastards, too—but the reminder of the brutality implicit in Clay's world made her break out in a cold sweat.

You always knew what I was. You chose not to think about it, chose to pretend I was what you wanted me to be.

She'd refuted his assessment but now wondered if he hadn't been right. Had she given lip service to accepting his leopard, while expecting him to be human—exactly as his mother had done? The realization fractured the already shaky foundation of her current emotional state. Shoving her hair off her face, she forcibly contained her confusion and focused on something she could understand. “When can I have my place back?”

Max shook his head. “You can't stay here, you know that. You need to be in protective custody.”

“No.” The last time she'd run, she'd lost all claim to the only man who had ever seen goodness in her.

“Talin, don't be stupid. If these people”—he jerked his head toward her apartment—“think you're getting too close, they won't stop with a warning.”

“I know.” She stared back at him. “I'll be fine. I know how to take care of myself.” No more hiding. No more cowering in the corner while someone else fought for her.

Max threw up his hands, having learned his lesson after butting heads with her more than once. “At least find a safer place to stay. This apartment isn't secure enough to deter anyone determined to break in. Do you have somewhere to go?”

Clay.
The answer hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she bit down hard before it could escape. The pain brought tears to her eyes but it did the job, cutting through the confusion to illuminate the stark truth—
Clay wasn't hers any longer, hadn't been for two long decades.
That admission was discordant music in her head, painful and sandpaper rough.

“Yes,” she lied. “I have a friend who'll put me up.” She had no friends, had spent a lifetime avoiding commitment. Even the Larkspurs hadn't been able to break through. The truth was, she trusted no one. Not even herself. Especially not herself.

Clay,
her mind whispered again.
Call him
.
You trust him still.

Not true, she argued. Yes, she had trusted the boy he'd been, but she didn't know the man he'd become. And he hated her, was right to hate her. When she thought of the way she'd treated her body, her soul, she hated herself.

“I'll have one of my officers drop you off.”

She jerked at the sound of Max's voice. “No. I'll wait until you guys are done, pack up some gear, and go.”

“It'll be daylight by then. If you're worried about a leak, don't be. The man I had in mind is changeling. Leakproof.” He tapped his temple as if to remind her of the other race's superior natural shields. “More important, I trust him.”