Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,118
deaths. Two of the Es had minor broken bones, the other two some bruising. No other major injuries. The driver who’d hit them was being treated for slightly more severe wounds, but he was alert and aware—and appeared distraught.
One of the Es was sitting beside him, holding his hand.
The offending vehicle was an old model, likely had no automatic collision avoidance systems. The empaths had been driving a newer model, but the avoidance system’d had nowhere to take the vehicle on this narrow road bordered by centuries-old stone walls. Not when another car was aiming itself at them.
Kaleb stared at the tire marks on the road. “It looks like the solo driver came straight at the vehicle carrying the Es, then tried to avoid it at the last minute,” he said to the Enforcement officer in charge of the scene.
The stocky male with heavy black stubble against pallid brown skin didn’t technically answer to Kaleb; he was human and had no allegiance to the Psy. As far as Kaleb was aware, this particular detective had never been turned by any Psy interests. He was an honest man—and one who didn’t play games.
“I have a witness who pretty much describes exactly that.” The cop, his Irish accent thick, nodded toward a lanky cyclist who sat white-faced on the curb. “She called emergency services, tried to help the injured before our arrival.”
A glance down at the tire marks. “Driver in the wrong claims to have no memory of the incident and I believe him—man’s plain befuddled.” He rubbed his jaw. “Medics say he hasn’t suffered a knock to the head, so we might be looking at dementia, other mental deterioration.”
A logical conclusion, but Kaleb didn’t think so. Not so close on the heels of the attack in Chinatown. He reached for the NetMind and DarkMind, wondering if they’d interceded to protect the Es, but all he got was static and confusion around smaller and smaller patches of coherence. The neosentient twins were failing along with the PsyNet. They could offer him no help against this destructive threat.
Kaleb stared at the road again before sending a message to his fellow members of the Ruling Coalition, then thanked the Enforcement officer for his help. He teleported home a second later. It was empty—he knew that the instant he arrived. It only ever felt like a home when Sahara was in residence.
Taking off his jacket, he removed his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt before stepping out onto the terrace of their home. The gorge fell away endlessly on the other side. Standing by the railing he’d put in when he found Sahara, his lover who couldn’t teleport out of a fall, he entered the psychic vault of the Ruling Coalition chambers.
Nikita Duncan and Anthony Kyriakus were already there. Aden Kai and Ivy Jane Zen arrived at nearly the same time as Kaleb.
As expected, Ivy Jane was already up to date with today’s events.
Power hummed around her, but it wasn’t a power like Kaleb’s—empathic power functioned on its own rules and it was defiant. Even now, the sparks of color from Ivy Jane’s mind infiltrated the minds around her.
Kaleb didn’t fight it—that empathic energy was part of the reason he wasn’t insane. He added his thoughts as Ivy Jane recapped the day’s events, then turned his attention in another direction. “Nikita.”
Sascha Duncan’s mother, a woman as ruthless as Sascha was empathic, didn’t pretend not to know why he’d addressed her. “Regardless of what you might believe,” she said, “I didn’t have knowledge of every single Council stratagem even while I was a Councilor.”
Oddly, Kaleb did believe her. The previous Psy Council had been made up of seven members, each and every one hungry for power. Kaleb included himself in that assessment. So many plots had existed at any one time that no one could’ve been aware of all of them—however, Nikita had been on the Council for decades longer than either Kaleb or Anthony.
“You know where to dig for the Council’s skeletons,” he pointed out.
“True enough.” No emotion in her tone, yet this woman had brought a cardinal E to term in her womb. “As it happens, I’ve been making use of my shovel since your first report of a careless new power in the PsyNet.” She uploaded data onto the walls of the psychic vault, a rain of silver symbols against the black of the Net.
“I discovered this report in a sealed historical archive buried in what I believed was an