Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,115

leaned up against the dragon’s body.

Where? The single word was a crystalline telepathic contact, so pure her ears rang.

Far right of the street. Clenching her jaw against her dislike of psychic contact with unknowns, she sent him an image of what she could see—the black cloud with tendrils going from person to person, every new victim being aimed toward an E.

There were so many Es here. Why?

The compound—the empaths trained there see this as home ground. It was the same cold telepathic voice, frigid as winter snow, razor-sharp in its clarity and nearly painful with it.

She sucked in a breath. Get out of my head.

I wasn’t in it. Don’t broadcast your question so loudly if you don’t want an answer. He was gone a split second later, his body reappearing at the far end of the street.

Chilled to the bone—what did that much power do to a man—she continued to run in his direction. Her breath wheezed, her chest ached, and she knew her body couldn’t keep up this pace. She was far stronger than she’d been, but years of bad nutrition and lack of muscle strength would take time to fully undo.

A flash of gold in her peripheral vision, Alexei racing across the street to her. With barely a pause, he scooped her up in his arms and said, “Just point.”

Slinging one arm around his neck, she did. And Alexei moved, a predator with lightning-fast reflexes, his body primal grace.

I’m cutting off the assailant to the right. Tell the wolf to go left.

Memory winced at the icy chill of Krychek’s telepathic voice, but relayed the message. “The intruder can’t teleport.” He would’ve done so by now if he’d had that ability. “I think he’s trying to get out now. No more attempts to turn people.”

Empaths are madness.

Memory froze; that hadn’t been Krychek. It was a far less disciplined voice, a thing of fractures and need. Empaths heal wounds of the mind, she replied.

I had no wounds before the waking of Designation E. A kind of frothing energy against her, an attack her mind foiled without effort. You’re not like the others. A sudden quiet. You are darkness. You are like me.

Yes. It was the truth, at least in one sense. You need help. Let me.

It’s too late.

Less pressure. Then none.

“Stop.” She asked her wolf to put her down, then, one of her palms pressed against his heartbeat, she searched with her empathic senses and came up blank. “I can’t sense him anymore.” She relayed the same to Kaleb Krychek.

“Teleporter?” Alexei’s gaze continued to sweep the area.

“No, I didn’t feel a sudden disconnect. It was more a . . . fading. As if he drew the darkness inside himself.” Memory shoved her curls behind her ears, told herself to think. “How can a person disappear while physically here?”

Krychek walked down the street toward them, the starlight of his eyes speaking to her of cold, distant places where it was never warm. “Our quarry has escaped?”

Shivering, Memory backed into Alexei. “Yes,” she managed to get out past her overwhelming awareness of Krychek’s lethal power. Yet this man was mated, was said to be devoted to his lover. Did he show this same deadly face to—

Oh.

“Two faces,” she blurted out on a wave of realization. “He has two faces.” One that was normal, could fool the world, the other a creature of darkness and madness with that odd blankness at its heart.

Memory worried over that blankness, but couldn’t explain it. She had, however, picked up more than she’d realized during that fleeting moment of telepathic contact—she’d never attempt to hack another mind, but his was so fragmented that his hidden thoughts had leaked through on their own. “He hates Es, wants to wipe us out of existence.”

A cold wind swept down the street, raising every tiny hair on her body.

Chapter 43

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

—From Hamlet, by the human artist William Shakespeare (17th century)

WHERE AM I?

He “woke” on an unfamiliar street in the smudged dark of night that had just fallen, his heart thumping and his body sweaty under a thin gray sweater and black pants he didn’t remember putting on. He’d been wearing a suit when he left the office. The cologne he drew in with every breath was far denser than his usual crisp choice.

His pulse hammered at his throat.

Forcing himself to keep moving, he reached into his pants pockets, but there was no phone there, and his wrist was bare of his usual unit. His