Page 21 of Storm Echo

Ivan used his newfound stability to literally throw the untethered mind deeper into the PsyNet, where—since he’d caught it before a total break—it would reconnect instinctively. Psy were built tobeconnected to a network. Disconnection was the error.

In front of him in the physical world, a brunette woman who’d fallen to the ground gasped and sat up in a jagged movement. Ignoring her because she was safe now, he grabbed another mind, then another, then another.

At some point, he became aware that all those minds were now linked to him by fine silvery threads. Not unexpected with the continuing erosion of his shields. He’d deal with it later, would cut them free the same way he’d learned to cut his cousins free when he’d inadvertently captured them in his web as a child.

Behind him, the breach in the Net grew and grew, such a massive divide that he knew it couldn’t be fixed. That was when he saw it. A mind on theotherside of the divide about to slide off into the abyss. Into death.

He didn’t even think about it, just threw a grappling hook over the fracture and toward that person. It slammed into the mind and was grabbed with scrabbling desperation, while Ivan threw another grappling hook into the piece of the PsyNet closest to the other mind.

The person clinging to him clearly saw what he was doing and was rational enough to switch telepathic lines and “climb” back to safe ground on the other side of the nothingness that was this unsalvageable fracture.

A fine silvery thread floated over the canyon, linking the two of them.

Spider, spider, my beautiful spider.

Ignoring the haunting singsong voice of memory, Ivan grabbed more people on both sides of the growing divide. Part of him knew that he shouldn’t have been able to reach that far, not across dead space devoid of psychic energy.

At the same time, he was conscious that he didn’t know half of his genetic history—and the half he did know had been compromised and reshaped by a drug that had seeped into the womb and into the cells of the fetus he’d once been.

No one knew what Ivan carried in his mind and in his blood.

He’d also never fully explored his toxic secondary ability. It was thanks to Grandmother that he was classified as a telepath alone—she’d known that any other classification would mark him and make him a target for the Council. That political body might now be gone, but Ivan’s ability remained as ruthless and cold as ever. He had no intention of wearing it as a label—but perhaps it had a side benefit he’d never before realized.

Rich iron. Wet.

His nose was beginning to bleed.

Judging it a sign of a minor psychic overload, he continued to grab and throw back as many minds as he could. Even with all that, he never lost his awareness of the woman he’d been following, the compulsion to get closer, find out if it washerso strong that it had overridden every other need.

Her eyes were dark, her lips as lush as the ones that had kissed him, her skin a familiar midbrown, and her hair a thick tumble of inky black, her curls so loose they were waves.

But while she had Lei’s height, she was painfully thin. Not the thin of genetics. The thin of not enough food. The evidence was there in the lack of light in her skin, the way her features didn’t quite fit right.

Hollows existed in her cheekbones, the blades sharp instead of rounded—and she bore no scar on her face. Her clothes were also nothing Lei would’ve worn: a baggy gray sweatshirt and ill-fitting jeans.

Yet every instinct he had said he’d found her.

Found the woman who’d awakened him … then left him in the dark.

The softness of her hair shone under the summer sunshine as she ran into his line of sight to assist a woman who’d crashed hard to the ground, cracking a gash into her skull.

Despite her apparent fragility, she wedged one shoulder under the fallen woman’s arm and got her up in a single lift, though the injured woman appeared far heavier than her.

Changeling.

Another piece of the puzzle slotting into place.

His quarry took the Psy woman to the side of the street, set her down gently against a wall. A store owner ran out with a red box stamped with a cross, and the familiar stranger who had to be Lei—unless he’d lost his mind at last—said something before grabbing gauze out of the box and holding it to the side of the woman’s head.

The shopkeeper nodded and took over the pressure, while Lei ran back to assist others who’d collapsed in ways that caused injury. Even with most of his mind focused on the Net, Ivan was too compelled by her not to note the way she moved, so fluid and quick and graceful.

The same way Lei had moved when she played with him. This time, however, he had an advantage: he’d been in San Francisco long enough to have seen plenty of leopards in motion. She was a cat. Of what variety, he didn’t know, but he would bet that one dazzling kiss on his prey being feline.

Then he saw five minds going over the cliff edge at once as the chasm widened, and turned all his energy into holding them to the world. To life.

Chapter 11

Your mother’s heart, my boy, is a fierce beast, ferocious in its will. Healers are like that.

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