Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
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 was her so 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.
—Carlo Hunter to Lucas Hunter (2058)
SOLEIL IGNORED THE terror rising at the back of her throat, burning her from the inside as people continued to fall around her, and just got on with it. She didn’t think about the fact that she was blowing her cover wide open—she was a healer; to help or not, it wasn’t a question.
Her cat had given up its rebellion, was with her every step of the way. They were and would always be one in this. To care, to help, to heal, that was the very nature of Soleil’s soul.
She knew deep within that had the cat yet been dormant when the world broke around her, it would’ve awakened with a clawing jolt. Its retreat had been fueled by the biggest shock any changeling could ever suffer—the loss of the entirety of its pack—but even that traumatic shock couldn’t kill the drive that was a healer’s heart.
A man went down with a sickening thud to the head that told her it was too late to help him even before she checked on him and found a broken neck. Leaving him with a whispered apology for being too late, she ran to the teenage girls who’d collapsed as a group. All five gasped in a breath right then, their eyes flashing open, pupils expanding to cover their irises.