A teleport-capable empath?
Alexei had never heard of that combination of psychic abilities, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t exist. There was a lot changelings and humans didn’t know about the Psy. The psychic race had kept a wall of cold Silence between themselves and the rest of the world for over a hundred years.
The protocol that had stifled emotion among the Psy race had also severed their bonds with those outside the PsyNet, the sprawling psychic network that connected all Psy on the planet but for the defectors and renegades. For more than a century, the Psy had focused on icy perfection. They had regarded the other races as lesser, as primitive beings driven by basic animal urges.
Things had changed in recent times, and Alexei’s alpha was mated to a deadly cardinal Psy, while one of Alexei’s closest friends was a telekinetic former assassin. But even his Psy packmates and friends didn’t know all of their race’s secrets—Psy leaders had kept the truth from their own people, too. Hidden monsters and predators and psychopaths.
For it was only the pathologically emotionless who’d truly thrived under Silence.
Where was she?
He growled deep inside his chest, his wolf rising to the surface to alter his vision. Had anyone been looking at him, they’d have seen his gray eyes turn a shockingly pale amber shot through with shards of gold, his pupils pinpricks of black.
The effect was startling because of his dark eyelashes and eyebrows—quite unlike the “sun-gold” of his hair—as described by his aunt. Even wet, it didn’t darken much. Thank God the color didn’t translate into his wolf’s pelt; his packmates would’ve never let him live down being a fucking yellow wolf.
Agony, such agony.
Clenching his jaw, he tried to pick up any scent that denoted a living being. He caught hints of a small woodland creature and of a wild bird, but that was it. Only sodden vegetation, snow, and rock.
Hauling himself over a large jut of rock as the rain became a raging waterfall, he dropped down into an easy crouch on the other side. He found nothing but a thick pile of snow protected by the shadow the rock would throw in sunlight. Glancing absently back at the rock he’d scaled, he stilled at the sight of the jagged crack in the stone. Once, as a pup, Alexei’s brother had found a small cave behind a crack just like that one and turned it into their secret hiding spot.
Brodie had always been generous with his kid brother. Maybe because he’d somehow known that, in the end, it would come down to the two of them. Except it hadn’t worked out that way.
Could the empath be curled up in there?
He took extreme care as he went to explore the possibility. That he still couldn’t scent even a hint of her told him his search was apt to be futile, because as far as he was aware, no one had yet discovered a way to cloak their scent from changeling noses. The closest people had come was to soak themselves in a scent that echoed their surroundings, but rain and wet was too subtle a scent to be counterfeited.
Far more likely was interference by the raging wind, the scents ripped away before he could catch them. Not that it applied to the cracked rock—this close, there was no way he’d have missed anyone.
The gap in the stone was barely large enough for his body, even though he turned himself sideways. He knew before he entered that there was no living creature directly beyond. The only smells he’d caught had been of cold and dirt.
Cold had a scent; any wolf could tell you that.
Snow cold was different from dirt cold. And dirt cold was different from night cold.
Grumbling silently in disgust when a lump of snow fell on his face from some ledge it had been hiding on, he wiped it off before managing to squeeze through the narrow opening. His eyes adjusted quickly, his night vision kicking in. The space inside the cracked stone was nothing much; if he tried to spread out his arms, he’d have to stop with his elbows bent at ninety-degree angles. The area wasn’t much deeper, either . . . but there, in the ground.
What the hell?
Alexei crouched down to stare at a depression in the dirt that was oddly square. Water dripped from his body and hair to darken the dirt. No way that was a natural shape, not unless nature had begun walking around with a tape measure and a slide rule.
Taking care not to make sounds that would carry, he began to push the dirt away using his claws. It was hard, compacted. As if it hadn’t been disturbed in years. No question now—there had to be a teleporter involved in this somewhere.
His claws scraped against what felt like iron.
Slowing down, he worked with grim focus until he uncovered what he’d expected: a trapdoor. It was bolted down securely from the outside, the lock twisted in a way that had to have taken telekinesis. Nothing and no one would ever again open that lock. Rust crawled over it, as it did the solid metal hinges on the other end and the thick strips of iron that formed the body of the trapdoor.
The thing was old, possibly old enough to be from the time that had left SnowDancer badly wounded, many of its strongest lost.
Grief, rising and falling, rising and falling. Piercing his heart.
He shook his head to clear it of the empath’s overwhelming pain, his wolf snarling inside his chest. Strands of hair fell across his forehead to drip water down his face. He shoved them roughly back. Despite his rage at finding a living being trapped in a fucking hole in the ground, he didn’t immediately begin to hunt for a way to open the trapdoor. Instead, he sliced his claws back in and took out his satellite-linked phone.
The signal was weak, but his message got through. Should anything happen to Alexei, another wolf would find the grieving empath. And if it was a clever trap to capture a wolf, then his packmates would be warned and armed. He also sent a second message telling SnowDancer not to mobilize until he’d scoped out the situation—no point in more wolves coming out in this ugly weather if there was no lethal threat to the pack.
A return message lit up the screen as he was examining the hinges on the trapdoor: We don’t hear back from you in twenty, we head out.—H.
Putting the phone in a side pocket of his black cargo pants, Alexei focused all his attention on the hinges. They were the weakest point in the entire construction.
And a predatory changeling wolf of Alexei’s size and training was strong.
Far, far stronger than the Psy who’d probably built this thing.
Yeah, it could’ve been a changeling or a human who’d put this trapdoor in place, but he didn’t think so. Such a thing couldn’t be built in so small a space; it had to have been brought in, and no human or changeling could have ever traipsed through wolf territory carrying a trapdoor, or pieces for its construction, without being spotted. Not even at their weakest had SnowDancer let its borders fall to that extent.
Psy, then.
Nearly all Psy underestimated changeling strength by a large margin.
Only one problem though—there was no way to get leverage anywhere near the hinges. No gap through which to insert his claws. No twisted or warped area to provide even a minor entry point. He could leave it, ask his packmates to come up with tools, but he’d have to be a psychopath himself to abandon the E. Her crying had become quieter inside his head, even more lost.
She was breaking his heart and he wanted to growl at her to stop it, even knowing his response was irrational. Another part of him wanted to gather her in his arms while he growled at her—Es had that in common with changelings: they liked touch, hurt without it. So he’d promise to cuddle her if she’d just stop hurting.
Wiping away water from his face, he switched focus to the lock.
No way to open it, but the part where it was attached to the main body of the trapdoor was bolted down into rusting metal. Teeth bared, Alexei grabbed the entire lock mechanism and wrenched.
His biceps bunched, his abdomen clenching.
One pull. Two. Three.
A metallic groan as part of the attachment tore away from the base. It only took one more pull to break it fully off. Dropping the entire mass of cold and rust to the side, he inserted his fingers through the small warping in the iron where the lock had been bolted and used that grip to lift up the trapdoor.
It came away with a loud creak.
He halted, but the waves of emotion didn’t stop or blip. No audible alarms went off. No voices rose in a shout. And no new living scents hit his nose.
Opening the trapdoor the rest of the way, he propped it up against the opposite wall. He wasn’t afraid of it falling in. With the lock gone, he could push it open from the inside with only minimal effort.
Blackness greeted him when he first looked inside the space exposed by the opening. But his night vision didn’t let him down and he was able to confirm the floor wasn’t a dangerous distance for a jump.
He dropped down into the hole without further delay, landing silently in a hunting crouch.
A second later, a high frequency hum had the tiny hairs on his arms rising, his wolf flashing his canines. He shook it off, but made a note of what it represented: you didn’t get that hum with newer lights, only the old ones that occasionally flickered and failed. Dust drifted around him, the motes caught in the extremely faint light emanating from some distance away. He followed that light, followed the grief.
A door stood in his way, barred and bolted from his side, with iron padlocks at the end of each bolt.
A cage.
His wolf ready to kill by now, he looked at the door and saw it was wood. Heavy wood that would’ve stopped most people.
Alexei slipped his claws in under the hinges and pulled.
The first pull created enough space for true leverage. The second gave him room to properly grip the wood.
He wrenched.
The grief hitched at last. The empath had heard him this time . . . but there was no spike of fear, no terror, a worrying flatness under the grief. Not a lack of emotion. A numbness caused by constant pain.
Maybe he’d try not to growl at her. It’d be difficult since he’d been in a bad mood for twelve months, but scaring an E wasn’t a thing to be proud of—it’d be like stomping on a kitten.
Heat building in his muscles as he worked, Alexei kept going until he’d created enough weakness in the door that he could tear it off its hinges.