Valentin couldn't argue with any of that. "You're the smartest person I know, Starlight." Bar none. "You'll figure it out, but you can't keep it Psy-only at the top."
Noticing the traffic jam up ahead, dust rising up to blur the glittering Moscow skyline and a sea of brake lights coloring the night scarlet, he brought the vehicle to a stop on the side of the street. "Can you walk the distance?" He knew better than to offer to carry her, but he could bull his way through in the all-wheel drive. It'd be messy and noisy and it'd piss off a lot of people, but it was doable.
And he was a bear. It wouldn't be the first time he'd made people swear and wave their fists at him.
"I can walk."
Exiting the vehicle, the two of them moved down the sidewalk; it grew more and more congested the nearer they got to the disaster zone. He made sure he was in the front, so Starlight wouldn't be jostled. Most people shrank back from the force of his dominance--or maybe it was the scowl on his face.
They arrived at the cordon set up by the first responders, were immediately waved in. Controlled chaos lay beyond, with an Enforcement officer attempting to organize the surge of help from various agencies and groups. Sweaty and overwhelmed, he clearly didn't have the training for it.
Valentin saw his shoulders drop in open relief when he spotted Silver. "Ms. Mercant," he said in Russian. "I think this qualifies as an EmNet situation."
Silver caught the ball, ran with it. "Who's already here?" she asked without preamble. "Tell me what resources I have to work with."
The officer, looking much less harassed now that someone else was in charge, listed all available personnel on-site. Valentin forced himself to take a mental step back. He was used to being a caretaker, but if he hovered, he'd do more damage to Silver's reputation than if she collapsed.
It had nothing to do with being the director of the world's biggest humanitarian organization and everything to do with being Silver Mercant. Tough and in control and without weakness. "I'm going to see if I can help scent out survivors," he said when the Enforcement officer paused for breath.
Silver's eyes met his, all frost and sexy intelligence. "Take the southeast quadrant. That sector has no changeling assistance, and the lights currently on-site are limited. Your greater night vision will be welcome."
Realizing she'd received a telepathic update, he nodded, would've left, but she said, "Valentin. Be careful." No change in her tone, but it was the words that mattered. "The debris is unstable."
Despite the circumstances, despite the permanent bruise on his heart, a smile formed inside him. Of all the changelings here, he was undoubtedly the one most able to survive half a building falling on him. But it was him she was warning. "You, too, Starlight."
Bear ready, he headed to his assigned sector--but not before he found the young clanmate he'd scented nearby. "Devi." He squeezed her skinny, dusty body into his arms, held her until her tremors eased. "You hurt?"
A jerky shake of her head. "A few friends and I were about to go into the restaurant across the road when it . . . when it happened." Her voice broke, this member of his clan a bear with a soft heart and gentle hands. "I tried to help, get people out, but Zarina said I should s-stay back."
It had been the right call, given Devi's physical strength and skills. Now Valentin made another one. "Come on." He took her to Silver. "Devi is an athlete," he said when his brilliant Starlichka shot him a silent question. "A runner. Fast, with bear endurance."
Silver didn't question his word. "Wait here," she said to Devi. "I'll be using you to run water to the rescuers in a moment."
"Okay, sure." No longer trembling, Devi reached back to tighten her ponytail. "I can do that."
Valentin was already turning to head to the quadrant Silver had assigned him. He caught sight of Krychek lifting off large pieces of the rubble in the distance, but even the telekinetic was having to go slow, his movements based on information passed to him by a red-haired changeling Valentin recognized as a BlackEdge wolf: an engineer doing double duty, scenting survivors and planning the safest actions Krychek could take.
Krychek was a power, but if the cardinal moved the wrong piece, the debris would collapse like a house of cards, crushing any survivors within.
Valentin saw no more of how it went; he'd reached his quadrant to find a mixed group of Psy and human first responders. The medics had been ordered to stand back, but the others were picking up and moving pieces of the broken building with painstaking care.
Spotting Valentin, an older woman called a halt. "Your nose as good as a wolf's?"
Ignoring the tired attempt at a joke, Valentin began to climb the pile of rubble, careful to ensure his weight was in no danger of causing a collapse. Sweat and desperation--the rescuers' own scents--were pungent in the air. But he was a bear alpha. He knew how to filter out unwanted scents-- Chert!
"Has the gas been turned off?"
Chapter 16
"YEAH! AT THE city's system mains!" The speaker was wearing the gear of Moscow's fire-safety crews, the reflective stripes bright on his jacket. "You smell a leak?"
"There are discrete pockets." Gas wasn't a common fuel any longer, except in older buildings like this one where conversion wasn't worth the cost, but Valentin knew the scent.
"That's probably from right after the initial collapse!" the fireman called back. "It took ten minutes for someone to request the gas be cut off."
Having scented nothing that went against the other man's hypothesis, Valentin continued on--but not before yelling down, "Make sure Silver Mercant has that information!"
He was aware of his every tiny move as he navigated the jagged mountain of debris. If gas was trapped within, a single spark could ignite molten death.
". . . help. Please."
Valentin froze. "I hear you." He focused on the area where he'd heard the sign of life, soon scented the air exhaled on a living breath. It was the most precarious part of the rubble. "Is there anyone else with you?"
"Daughter." A gurgle followed that single word. "Just m-- . . ."
The man was dying.
"Will you permit a telepath to scan your minds so a telekinetic can get you out?" he called down, aware even Krychek needed a face to lock on to.
The response came not in the original male voice, but in a shaky female one. "No. Never."
Some things, Valentin thought, were worse than death. "This is Alpha Nikolaev--you have my word that your minds will not be touched," he said, so they wouldn't fear a psychic invasion.
His bears might cause trouble in Moscow, but they were also well-liked because they always stepped in to help if someone was in trouble. Two weeks earlier, Pasha had stopped traffic so an elderly lady could cross the street. The lunatic Moscow drivers had called out a slew of insults as they hooted impatiently, but the lady had kissed Pasha on both cheeks, then taken him home to feed him lunch.
"Spasibo, Alpha Nikolaev," the survivor whispered. ". . . trust you."
Shifting his attention to the rescuers waiting below, he said, "Here!" and pointed at the exact spot. "Two alive!"
"Silver's located a couple more structural engineers!" It was the same woman who'd spoken to him when he first arrived. "One will be here in a minute!"
A minute's wait might well prove fatal, but if Valentin began to throw around the wreckage in an effort to clear it off them, he could crush the very people he was attempting to save. "Hold on," he ordered the survivors in his most alpha tone. "We're coming to get you out."
He spent the time till the engineer's arrival searching for more survivors.
The acrid smoke of burned flesh, the metallic sting of blood mingled with alcohol fumes, the warm tones of seared wood, he scented that and more, but no other voices called out to him . . . and he smelled no more living breaths. By the time he climbed back down with careful hands and a heart on which sat a huge metal anvil, the engineer had come up with a plan to get to the trapped survivors.
Valentin listened, began to lift. His musc
les burned, but he had no intention of stopping until they'd saved two people trapped in hell.
The Human Patriot
HE WATCHED THE footage streaming in from Moscow with interest. It didn't take him long to spot Silver Mercant. It'd be so convenient to take her out now, but unfortunately, that didn't suit his plans. Nor did it suit the plans of the fools who were helping him achieve his aims while believing him a power-hungry sociopath like them.
Silver had to be removed quietly from the equation. He didn't want the world uniting behind her assassination, trying to be better than violence. It was pure luck that his "associates" had the same goal. No one had argued with his idea of a domestic poisoning--the Mercants, after all, would never air their dirty laundry.
Human he might proudly be, but money talked even to Psy, and he had his informants. He knew all about the Mercants and the opaque shield they kept between themselves and the rest of the world. Their cold arrogance could be utilized as effectively against them.
All this, the bombing in Moscow, it was a good distraction from his far more intelligent strategies. Sad that good humans had to die, but that was the way of war. People had to understand what was at stake, the ruin to come if those pushing Trinity were permitted to have their way. He'd kill every human on the planet before he allowed them to be turned into slaves.
Chapter 17
We are, all of us, better than we believe ourselves to be.
--Adrian Kenner: peace negotiator, Territorial Wars (eighteenth century)
SILVER DRANK HALF a bottle of water into which she'd poured a nutrient sachet provided by a member of the emergency medical team. She'd also had Devi run similarly doctored bottles to the rescuers. The girl was thin, but she was bear-tough, and Silver was using her to the edge of her endurance.
Devi didn't complain; she thrived.
Silver, meanwhile, was coordinating every facet of the rescue and security operation--because if this hadn't been a lone radical or unhinged individual, and those behind them wanted to cause secondary casualties, now would be the time to strike. That in mind, she made a call. "This is Silver Mercant," she said into the dot of the microphone mounted on her collar.
"What do you need?" an ice-cold voice responded.
"A security cordon at the site of the Moscow bombing." The locals she'd put on the cordon were doing their best, but there weren't enough of them, and she couldn't request more officers without leaving other parts of the city vulnerable. "Possibility of a secondary strike."
"Understood."
Silver hung up, confident the deadly men and women of the Arrow Squad would respond to her request. Aden Kai, their leader, had made it known to Silver that EmNet could count on Arrow assistance. The only reason they hadn't already appeared was because of the executive memo she'd sent out a month earlier, requesting that signatories to the Trinity Accord not independently respond to an emergency situation that wasn't in their local area and where EmNet had a presence.
All our resources cannot be pooled in one place at one time, she'd written. Such a concentration makes it very difficult for EmNet to mobilize rescuers to emergencies in other areas. Give us time to assess the situation and send out a call for the help required.
Now that she'd sent out that call, however, the Arrows appeared in a matter of seconds. Vasic Zen. The only known Tk-V in the world, a man who wasn't a teleport-capable telekinetic but a born teleporter, he wasn't worn out by teleporting. For him, it was akin to breathing.
The black-clad men and women he'd brought in spread out on the perimeter, a small but highly effective unit. One Arrow, it was said, was worth twenty trained and experienced soldiers.
Ms. Mercant. A polite telepathic contact, Vasic Zen's mental voice as clear as arctic ice.
She saw him in the distance, a tall form made distinctive in silhouette by his loss of an arm. It had been amputated after a failed biofusion experiment, the details of which were so classified that even Mercants hadn't been able to find out much more. None of that concerned Silver right now. What mattered was that Vasic Zen was the Arrows' second-in-command, with the attendant skills.
Do you have specific instructions for my team?
Do what's necessary, she replied. You're the security experts. That the Arrows had broken free of those who'd used them as a death squad didn't change their lethal gifts and skills.
Three minutes later, she received an update. The cordon is now airtight, Vasic said. However, there may be devices planted inside that cordon.
Silver took in his deadly summation, while on the vocal level, she issued instructions to the traffic controllers to continue to block a particular roadway to general traffic: she needed that roadway for the emergency vehicles moving in and out of the site.
My changeling friends tell me there's a specific scent to the most commonly used family of explosives even before they are detonated, Vasic continued. Something from that family appears to have been used in the initial attack. You should warn all changelings in the area to be on alert for that scent--if any of them need an exemplar, I've teleported in a sample and am now giving it to your runner.
Devi returned less than a minute later with a sealed container in the palm of her hand. Silver opened it to see a minute amount of an inert gray-white substance that, to her, had no scent. "Smell this," she said to the girl.
Devi did, twisted her nose. "Ugh. It smells like the explosion but more . . . raw."
"You can differentiate between the two?"
"No problem. It's the difference between a hard green fruit and a ripe one."
"I want you to run this to every single changeling inside the cordon, and tell them to shout an alert if they smell even a hint of it in the area. Understood?"
The girl's nod was immediate. "You think there might be more bombs?"
"We have to assume the worst."
A message popped up on Silver's phone as Devi left on her task. It was an update on the first survivor they'd discovered after Silver's arrival, a man who'd been rushed to the nearest hospital minutes earlier: Dead on arrival. Catastrophic percussive injuries, multiple loss of limbs. DNA identification unsuccessful. Prints unavailable. Image being forwarded.
Silver added that image to the file she'd already opened. Unlike Psy, humans weren't always in a DNA database. That could pose severe difficulties when it came to identifying the injured and dead so their families could be contacted; many of the bodies were being pulled out in shattered pieces. Silver didn't even have faces for several of the confirmed dead.
The bomber had achieved his or her aim of maximum damage.
*
VALENTIN had to grip his impatience in a tight fist as the engineer called out, step-by-tiny-step, how to safely remove the rubble from above the survivors Valentin had found. Neither the man nor the woman had spoken in the past five minutes. "Next!" he yelled out after passing down a chunk of a wooden beam to the person in the living chain behind him.
"The large piece at fourteen hundred ten hours!" the engineer called out, his eyes on the scanner with which he was mapping the ruin of the bar. "Can you move it?"
Valentin didn't bother answering back. He just reached out and hauled off the piece in a single move. The problem came when he went to pass it to the next person in the chain. It was a changeling--but not a bear. The wolf thought fast. "You and you!" he called to the next two people in the line.
The three of them took hold of the piece with a grunt, started to carry it down. Valentin didn't watch except to make sure they could handle it. If they dropped it, it could crash through the rubble, collapsing it onto the survivors. When he saw that the wolf was managing to take at least half the weight, with the other two supporting effectively, he turned back to the hole he'd created.
"Three seventeen!" the engineer called out.
Valentin shook his head. "It's big enough! Get me some rope!"
That rope was sent up with alacrity. He asked two burly human construction workers who'd moved up the line when the wolf
and the other two began to head down, to anchor the rope. "Got it, boss," one of them said, his beard short and orange and his build close enough to Valentin's that he might've been a bear if not for his scent.
Valentin fed the rest of the rope down into the hole, while the two construction workers set their feet apart and gripped the rope tight. "Ready?"
Both men nodded.
Valentin took a grip on the rope and began to lower himself. He could've easily jumped down. He was no feline--they were fucking "bouncy" when they landed--but he was solid. However, when he'd looked into the hole, his bear's night vision penetrating the darkness as if it didn't exist, he'd seen the survivors almost directly below.
He managed to bring himself down to the left of their tangled bodies, the construction workers holding strong even when he swung off to the side. "Chert voz'mi," he muttered when he saw the woman's dress.
It was all pretty and flowy and white.
The bride was a broken doll in the wreckage, her father's hand tight on hers as he lay at a right angle to her, his lower body crushed so badly that it was a miracle he'd survived even a minute. Valentin's gut twisted. He knew what he was going to find even before he knelt and checked the gray-haired man's pulse.
Nothing, his skin cold.
"Come, milochka," he murmured to the bride, "tell me you made it." He pressed his fingers against her skin. Cool, but not cold. A fluttering heartbeat.
"She's alive!" Sliding out his phone, he snapped a photograph of her amidst the rubble. He sent it directly to the number he'd been forwarded for Vasic Zen.
The bride disappeared a second after he'd sent the photo. An instant later so did her father, though Valentin had tagged the man as deceased. The father had only been in the image because Valentin had wanted to be sure the Arrow had enough visuals to do the remote teleport. The teleporter was only supposed to be asked to retrieve survivors, not the dead.