Chapter 69

How many of our vanished are dead, Mal? How many of my people will I never be able to bring home?

—Miane Levèque to Malachai Rhys, one dark rainswept night

KAIA HAD LEFT in the middle of the night, a strong, beautiful woman who’d waded out into the water without fear. Standing submerged up to her hips, she’d turned and whistled at Bo in a complicated pattern. He’d done the same in return and she’d grinned with utter delight . . . then dived. Only to reappear far in the distance, her dolphin form arcing over the water to splash back in.

Bo had watched until there was no hope of seeing her again. Going back to Venice afterward, he’d waited for her to call in from the waypoints she intended to pass. His siren was a wild creature, but she understood his worry, had laid out her entire path back home so he could track her on the massive map of the world’s oceans that he’d put up on his office wall.

The first call had eased the fist clutching his heart, Kaia had sounded so joyously delighted in herself for making the trip alone. The second and third calls left him smiling. He waited for the fourth one, when she’d haul herself out of the ocean and get on a jet.

It never came.

Lungs in a vise, he called Malachai. “Kaia should have reached Miraza by now.” He’d marked the floating city on his map. “She hasn’t called in. She’s only half an hour overdue, but I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Fuck.” Malachai hung up on that single harsh word.

He called back minutes later to confirm that Kaia hadn’t made it to Miraza—nor had she been spotted by the city’s long-range scouts.

BlackSea was initiating a search.

Bo thought desperately about what he could do. BlackSea was better equipped to search the deepest parts of the ocean. So he’d search the areas closer to land. Commandeering a small boat, he began to crisscross the water starting from the beach and heading along the route she’d told him she was taking.

Yes, she’d made three waypoints before disappearing, but perhaps by following her trail he’d find a clue to what had happened. Maybe he’d run across a yacht or ship that had seen another vessel on her tail.

Kaia might’ve surfed the bow wave of a ship, could’ve been caught on camera.

“It might have nothing to do with the Consortium,” he told himself. “KJ is gone.” But the security chief part of his brain asked, if KJ was the dangerous central mole, what had he left in BlackSea’s computer and comm systems? Back doors where others could listen in or download data? Kaia would’ve tagged her family from the waypoints, too, likely given them her intended route. What if the enemy had a way to monitor comms? Or could be they had spotters near the cities and they’d figured out Kaia’s likely path.

When a dorsal fin appeared in the distance, he felt his heart skip a beat, but it proved to be a shark. That shark turned out to be huge and it swam alongside him for long enough that he realized it was changeling—and it was searching to his right. So he went left. And when other creatures of the sea appeared out of nowhere, he was very careful with where he piloted his craft.

Together, they all searched, Bowen’s heart leading him deeper and deeper into the blue. The mating bond told him Kaia was alive, and that was all that kept him sane.

Malachai called back four hours later, his hair damp and his upper body clad in a black T-shirt that had patches of wet on it. “No sign of her and we’ve got hundreds of people in the water looking. You?”

“Nothing.” Not even a hint of a familiar playful dolphin. “Is it possible she took a detour?”

“With the vanishings, we’ve got strict rules in place for all our people. She was mad when she left Bebe’s island, but when she ran across Armand just off the island, she told him exactly where she was going. And she filed her return path at the first settlement she hit after leaving Italy.” Malachai shoved a hand through his hair. “She knows exactly how terrified we’d all be if she went off-route.”

Bowen’s mind chilled to Arctic coldness. He couldn’t afford to feel fear right now. “Are those filed routes on a networked system?”

“No.” Malachai folded his arms. “I isolated that data to a local unit at each city or town; those units are accessible only by me, Miane, and the commanders of the cities. Griffin’s at Miraza—he’s as loyal to BlackSea as I am, and he considers Kaia a close friend.”

Bo took Mal at his word; the other man knew his people. But . . . “No one new in Griffin’s life?” Bo would’ve never thought Heenali would do what she’d done.

Mal’s face tightened. “No. Trust me, Bo. None of the commanders along Kaia’s route could be turned—we’ve lost too many people to be anything but fucking suspicious.”

Bo shifted tack. “Humans have pleasure and race boats all over the place,” he said. “They know not to go into BlackSea territory”—a command he’d reiterated after his return, with any accidental incursions to be immediately reported to him—“but Kaia’s route home would’ve taken her through areas where humans might’ve spotted her in the distance.”

“Sea is a vast place, Bo,” Malachai said bluntly. “It’s ours, but I’m not arrogant enough to turn down assistance. Canvass your people.”

That was when Bo asked a question he didn’t want to ask. “Mal, what does it mean if a mating bond is patching in and out like a bad signal? Still there but strong one second, flat the next.”

“I’m not mated but I know who to ask.” Returning a minute later, he said, “She’s either unconscious or drugged is the best guess.” Ruthless lines on his face. “Can you get to her?”

“I can feel the general direction.” Like a homing beacon in his chest. “But it’s far, and the signal keeps switching off.” The first time it had happened, he’d almost thrown up, but a moment of panicked concentration and he’d realized she was still inside him but “quieter.” “I’m going to get in a plane, try to trace it.”

“The call of the mating bond isn’t always that specific,” Malachai warned. “But if you can narrow it down to a general wide area, we can at least focus the search.”

“Have you asked Vasic?” Some teleporters could lock onto faces as well as physical locations.

“Yes. He’s being blocked the same way he was with the other vanished. They were deliberately scarred so their faces no longer matched available images.” A vein pulsed in his temple. “The survivors we’ve recovered say the bastards moved quickly to cut and brand them. Within minutes.”

Bowen realized at that moment that he was capable of cold-blooded and violent vengeance. “Go. Keep looking.” Ending the conversation on that order, he activated the same network he’d used when they’d been hunting George. But this time, he limited it to those who’d checked in as being on the water. That done, he went to power his way to land and to a plane . . . when he realized he had one other option.

It might not work, but it was worth a shot. If he used it, however, he could put the Alliance in debt to a man who’d use that advantage without compunction. So he’d have to think, be smart in what he gave up.

Picking up his phone, he input a code not many people had. “Krychek,” he said when the cardinal telekinetic answered. “I need a favor. Can you ’port to me? I’m not in my office.”

“I’m on my way.”

Kaleb Krychek appeared in front of Bo almost before he’d hung up the call. As always, the cardinal teleporter was wearing a black suit. But there was no tie today, his white shirt open at the collar. And his hair wasn’t as perfectly in place, the black strands tumbled.

“An unusual location.” Krychek looked out at the water lapping against the small but fast vessel, his balance so perfect you’d think he’d grown up on boats. That was the thing with teleporters—they had a preternatural physical grace.

“I’ll give you a human mind for the PsyNet,” Bowen said, his hands clenching on the control panel that was currently humming in wait for his next order; he’d stopped the boat in anticipation of the conversation with Krychek. “Mine.”

“It’s not that easy,” Krychek answered, the eerie white stars on black that was a cardinal’s gaze impossible to read. “The connection must be a true emotional bond to be of benefit to the PsyNet. Or the unscrupulous would’ve already forced humans into the network.”

“You have empaths.” He might not trust powerful Psy, but Bo wasn’t a monster; he worried about the millions of Psy who weren’t powerful and who’d die horrific deaths should the PsyNet fail. As a result, he’d been thinking about the implications of Krychek’s request since the day the other man made it—and today, driven by desperation, he’d seen something the Psy seemed to have missed. “I like empaths. Friendship with one won’t be difficult.”

“Friendship.” Kaleb’s midnight voice was musing. “Love works to create the right type of psychic bond, but friendship? No one has considered it.”

“Probably because Psy-human friendships are all but extinct.”

“Possible. It’s also possible I’ll be the loser in this bargain.”

Bowen held the other man’s inscrutable gaze. “I won’t sell out the Alliance.” If Kaia discovered he’d bargained humanity into bondage for her freedom, it’d destroy her. “But my mind is my own and I’m handing it to you. Any experiment you want to run, I won’t fight it.”

Krychek raised an eyebrow. “You have a shield.”

Bo had never thought he’d want to rip out the shield inside his head. “Break it,” he said flatly. “I know Psy can smash changeling shields with massive use of telepathic force.” It usually led to death or to severe brain injuries, but Krychek was clever enough to recover enough of Bowen’s mind to make it worth his while.

Kaia would hate him for the choice, but Bo wasn’t about to leave his mate in enemy hands. “And if none of that works, then I’ll owe you as many favors as you want. Me, not the Alliance, but I’ll owe them for a lifetime.” It’d be a millstone around his neck because he had no illusions about Krychek’s ruthless nature, but the price was one Bowen was more than willing to pay.

“A fair deal,” Krychek accepted. “As for the attempt at joining the PsyNet via a friendship bond, why would you agree to an action you find abhorrent? You’ve made it clear you don’t trust Psy to respect the sanctity of the human mind—should friendship be enough to form a bond, you’d be surrounded by millions of telepaths on the PsyNet.”

Bowen kept his roiling gut under vicious control. “You can teleport using a face as a lock, correct?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to find my mate.” Krychek was undoubtedly the most powerful teleport-capable telekinetic in the world; Bowen had to try this, had to know if Krychek could pick up “signals” that were invisible to Vasic.

“I need a clear image of your mate’s face.”

Taking out his phone, Bo showed Kaleb the picture of Kaia he’d snapped in the kitchen one day while she’d been laughing. “I have more.” He swiped through.

“No lock,” Krychek said almost at once. “You’re sure she’s alive?”

“Yes.” Bo thumped a fist against his heart. “She’s right here.”

Krychek might be a pitiless bastard, but he was also mated to another Psy. That was how every changeling Bowen knew described the cardinal’s relationship with Sahara Kyriakus. It felt like a mating bond to those who’d been close enough to the couple to get a sense of their emotional connection. So it didn’t surprise Bo when Krychek just nodded. “Is she wearing anything distinctive?”

“No.” Kaia had gone into the water naked, would’ve shifted out of it naked. “What else can you use?”

“Something that can lead only to her—or to a strictly limited number of people. Eye color won’t work. Neither will hair color or even a tattoo unless that tattoo is unique. Most scars won’t work unless it’s a collection. There can be no blurred ID lines for a lock.”

Krychek rode the rocking of a wave with ease. “When I try to find her this way,” he said, “I’m effectively treating her as a place—and to find a place, I need a detailed image of the location. The smaller the ‘location,’ the more specific the image has to be because there’s nothing around it to give it context or to differentiate it from another similar location.”

Kaia had no tattoos or other distinctive markings on her body, except—“What about a small toe that’s twisted inward and slightly overlaps the fourth toe?”

“Too general. Too many likely hits.”

“The toe also has a scar and is missing the nail. Kaia had small multicolored dots tattooed on it with ink that lasts through a shift and back.” Such a small thing that her abductors might’ve missed it; the colors on her “diva nail” blended in with the polish she liked to wear on her other nails.

“Yes,” Krychek said. “That’s probably unique enough, but I need an image.”

Bo went frantically through his photos. So many of her laughing face, her body in motion, none of her feet. Fuck, fuck, fuck!