But Adria, when she rose to her feet, showed no indications of having read more into his suggestion than he meant. “How do you know that? The fact I speak Italian?”

“It’s my job,” he said. “I keep track of anyone in the pack who has a skill that might come in useful internationally.” Adria’s CV had passed across his desk when she transferred. “What I can’t understand is why you chose to learn Italian when Spanish would’ve been more useful in the region.”

She didn’t answer, her next words telling him her mind was on something else altogether. “I don’t want to disrupt things so early on with my trainees.”

“It should only be a day or two.” He knew how heavily the juveniles relied on their assigned supervisors.

A slow nod. “That’s manageable. I was planning to ask Riley to put me on a high-perimeter shift anyway.” Catching his questioning look, she said, “They might be submissives, but constant oversight isn’t good for any wolf’s development.”

“We’ll leave early morning tomorrow,” he said, wondering how a tough senior soldier understood SnowDancer’s submissives so well. “That give you enough time to organize cover for your duties?”

“No problem.” Then to his surprise, she did a funny little dance around her chair, singing, “I’m going to Venice. I’m going to Venice.”

It startled laughter out of him, his wolf standing up in fascination at the unexpected and sweetly charming crack in Adria’s sober facade. “If you’re really good,” he said when she stopped dancing to grin at him, “I’ll take you on a gondola ride through the canals.” Delight, bright and dangerous, cascaded through his veins.

Chapter 37

HAVING COMPLETED HIS research, Vasquez located the first three addresses fast enough, but it took hours of hacking through Net firewalls to unearth the second three, and four days to complete the list. Psychically exhausted, he considered sending the one he served an e-mail with the update, but they had agreed on electronic and psychic silence. Nothing of their plan was going to leak and jeopardize everything they had set so meticulously in place.

Conscious that tiredness could lead to mistakes, Vasquez slept long enough to become functional, then made his way to the compound hidden deep in a rural sector of Ireland. “I have the coordinates and necessary images of the first set of targets.”

“When can we move?” The voice was a rasp, a broken saw, issuing from a throat that had suffered second-degree burns when Henry Scott screamed as his legs were turned to ash, one of his arms sliced below the elbow by a whip of cold fire.

The medics had been working to repair the damage, but it was severe. Sienna Lauren’s X-fire had cauterized the wounds, so they’d needed to be cut open vein by vein to allow for the regeneration aids to work. However, the worst damage had been done when a Pure Psy operative shoved his body over Henry’s in an effort to protect him. That operative’s weapon had melted into the former Councilor’s flesh.

It was proving near impossible to excise the plas from his body, some of it appearing to have integrated into his organs. As a result, Henry remained hooked up to multiple devices, his body supine on a hospital bed inside a large chamber of sterile glass, his ruined voice issuing via a speaker. However, the fire had done nothing to his mind, and they were Psy. The mind was all that mattered.

“Are we in a position to strike?” Henry elaborated, his bloodshot eyes looking at Vasquez through the glass.

“I recommend waiting until we have at least ten complete sets.” It would allow them to strike back to back, leaving no time or room for a counterstrike. However, it all depended on whether Vasquez could muster enough trusted personnel with the right abilities.

Loud, rattling breaths. “The Net is becoming weaker with each day that passes, filled with those whose Silence is flawed. We need to remind them of who we are as a race.”

“Yes, but our chances of success rise exponentially if we act without any warning.” Giving the enemy no time to prepare before the avalanche.

Henry took a long time to reply, his breathing so rough Vasquez knew this interview would soon end. “Five sets,” the former Councilor said at last. “Five complete sets and one outlier.”

“Sir?”

“A small location, a demonstration of what we can do ahead of the primary hits.”

“A test to ascertain the validity of our refined method?” Their earlier plan had proven to have a fatal flaw, so he could agree with the precaution, except that it risked tipping their hand.

But Henry said, “If those in the Net want to feel, then perhaps we should teach them the taste of terror.”

Vasquez would never betray the only man who appeared to be taking the disintegration of Silence not as an inevitability but as a disease that needed to be stopped, but he was also not a cipher who followed Henry’s every command. “We chance losing the element of surprise,” he said. “It could lead to the primary targets being sequestered.”

“Would it not be better,” Henry said, “if we did not have to act against those targets? Perhaps one demonstration is all that will be needed.”

Vasquez considered the question, realized his leader was right. This strategy was not one they had agreed to lightly—it went against the founding tenets of Pure Psy. However, it was a proven fact that those who adapted to altered circumstances were the ones who survived. “One outlier,” he said, already weighing up suitable possibilities. “If we are to hold to the timetable, I must get back to my duties.”

“Go.” A pause. “Vasquez?”

“Sir?”

“You have been loyal. I won’t forget.”

“Purity will save us, sir.” Vasquez’s ancestors before Silence had been murderers and sociopaths. Silence was his salvation. “I’ll set things in motion.”

Everyone, no matter their location or race, had a Psy neighbor, colleague, or business acquaintance. When Pure Psy rose this time, it wasn’t only the Psy who would learn the meaning of fear.

Chapter 38

RIAZ STEPPED OFF the watercraft he and Adria had boarded to reach Venice after the airjet landed in nearby Marco Polo Airport, both of them carrying small duffel bags. It was temperate this time of year, the air around them dusky with the oncoming sunset, the soft light burnishing the old stone of the buildings that remained above the waterline.

As a result of changing water levels in the Adriatic and an undersea quake that had badly damaged the wooden foundations on which Venice stood, much of the jewel of a city was now underwater, though some of its iconic, graceful bridges survived, a few marooned in the midst of wide canals. However, instead of sinking into obscurity, Venice remained a vibrant, living city as a result of its complex network of biospheres below the waterline.

The spheres had been developed by a consortium of water-based changelings and put into place during the final decade of the twentieth century. A large number of BlackSea’s people still called Venice home, but Riaz’s wolf found the old city claustrophobic, especially beneath the surface, where the biospheres acted as—to his mind—protective prisons.

“I’ve always been fascinated by Venice.” Adria did a full circle on the “floating” roadway designed to rise with the water, her eyes taking in everything with unhidden wonder. “It’s filled with so much history you can almost hear the city whisper it to you.”

Painful though his memories of Venice were, it was impossible not to be affected by the infectious depth of her joy. “You should see it during Carnevale.” It was just before the last Carnevale that he’d first seen Lisette, and he’d been unable to stop himself from seeking her out during the celebrations.

Standing in the shadows created by the alcove of a moss-covered building, his face concealed by a half mask, he’d watched her lithe figure swirl in her husband’s arms, both of them full of the wild energy that came from the beautiful chaos of the festival. She’d been dressed in red and black, a Spanish flamenco dancer transplanted onto Venetian soil, her sun gold hair dyed a vivid black.

“It’s on my list.” Adria’s slightly husky voice broke into his thoughts, so very different from Lisette’s French-accented soprano. “Along with Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the Inca Trail, the Taj Ma—” Her eyes connecting with his, she cut herself off midstream, a slight wash of color on her cheekbones. “Sorry, I’m talking your ear off.”

“No, tell me.” Struck once more by how much he didn’t know about her, he found himself fascinated.

“How about you tell me,” she said instead, cocking her head a little to the side as they detoured to drop their bags off at the hotel. “You were away for a long time. Tell me some of the places you visited, the things you saw.”

Riaz shoved a hand through his hair, thinking back. Though he had been based in Europe, he’d traveled through Asia and parts of Africa, had adventures that had thrilled and changed him in different ways. “I once got caught in the monsoon rains in India,” he said, choosing a memory he knew would make her laugh, because when Adria laughed … the edges inside him gentled, hurt less. “The human part of me loved it, but my wolf was not impressed.” He shuddered, as if flinging water off his fur.

Adria’s laughter held her own wolf’s amusement, the fine streaks of gold in her eyes glittering in the deep orange light of the setting sun. “I can imagine. Did you make it to Nepal, see Kathmandu?”

He shook his head. “I was on my way there when I was recalled to Rome to take care of some pack business.” He’d met Lisette not much later, and the ensuing months had torn him bloody, until he’d had to go home to the den deep in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he could lick his wounds surrounded by the warmth of his pack.

He still needed that warmth, that connection, but felt no lack today, though he was far from his heartland. It wasn’t hard to understand why, with Adria walking long-legged and happy beside him, her pleasure in Venice as open and as unhidden as the heart of her wolf.