Chapter 42

Chapter 42

Auden will never be my first choice for transference, but her brain injury provided me with perfect access to test my idea of telepathic mesh. She was a malleable doll as far as her mind was concerned—and though attempts at psychic control failed as they always do because of the energy requirements, I was able to overlay a mesh over her mind that permits me to hook into it. Into her .

It's nowhere near as smooth a transition as with my Scarabs, but those transitions are temporary and any such transition wouldn't give me access to my web. It would also leave me stuck in the mind of a being without power, without wealth, just another weak pawn on the chessboard.

It's possible Auden has a dormant ability to web that I can uncover. But I'm not relying on that. Neither do I have any intention of being stuck in a damaged brain. I will create the brain I need for the next phase of my evolution, and this time, I'll begin to build the mesh from the moment of my host's birth.

—Private journal of Shoshanna Scott (personal archive, address unknown)

"THE BODY HAS degraded even further than I recalled," Auden said with clinical detachment, and this time, it wasn't the other part of her. It was anger so profound that it was a sheet of glass over her emotions. Because if she let it go, if she cracked the glass, she would be a thing out of control, a mother who loved , a mother who would beat in the brains of the thing on the hospital bed.

What had once been Shoshanna Scott was a much-too-small lump of a torso with a head. No arms. No legs. Not even a full torso. "Alive" only because she was hooked up to so many machines that she had become some science fiction writer's macabre creation—a human brain at the heart of a network.

"Yes, I'm afraid even with the amputations, the Councilor took too much energy from her body and organs in her valiant effort to keep her brain alive." A glance at Auden, back at the bed. "I don't know what to call you and her, sir."

"Stick with the usual," Auden said. "It'll make it easier for both of us, and it'll ensure you don't slip up in the future."

"Yes, of course," the nurse said, and Auden wondered if she had any idea of her likely fate if Shoshanna had come back in Auden's body.

The nurse would have had to die.

As would the doctor.

The chance of a leak would otherwise be too great. Charisma alone would have survived—because Charisma had already kept countless other secrets for Shoshanna.

"Wait at the monitoring station," she ordered the nurse.

"Yes, sir." Lomax moved to the far left of the room, from which she'd never get past Remi to escape and send up an alarm, should she be so inclined. It was possible that she'd already voiced a telepathic alarm, though she appeared to believe the story Auden had told her…but that made no difference now.

Auden knew what she had to do.

"Auden." Remi's rumble of a voice, quiet enough that the nurse would never hear it.

She looked up, the anger inside her a storm of violence born of years of abuse dressed up as medical experiments. "It's time to finish this."

He came with her as she walked closer to the body that was an abomination of what a living being should be—what remained of her mother's body had all but mummified, her mutilated torso shrunken in. Her once glossy black hair was brittle straw, her face parchment over bone, but her eyes moved rapidly under her eyelids.

"She's alive." If this could be called life. "I haven't felt her in the PsyNet since her supposed death, but that's not a surprise. We didn't have much of a bond." Shoshanna could've been hiding in plain sight, and Auden would've never spotted her.

More likely, someone else—one of the faithful—had been shielding her mind from the world.

"What do you want to do?" Remi asked, the leopard in his voice.

Auden wondered what it made her that she didn't hesitate. "I want her dead, this time for real. She's done enough damage—I will not permit her to harm Liberty as she did me."

Foolish girl , came a voice emotionless and arrogant inside her head, do you really believe you're in control? I've had you in my power since the first day.

Auden's breath caught, her eyes flashing to Remi. "She's telepathing me."

He went to move, as if to tear Shoshanna's head off her body, but Auden stopped him with a hand on his arm.

Because her mother was still speaking. I think ten steps ahead. That's why you were pregnant long before the unfortunate incident that caused my current state.

She was right; Auden had been impregnated while Shoshanna still lived. Liberty, Auden realized, had been created to hold Shoshanna's mind no matter when Shoshanna died. Her mother had intended to mess with her baby's sweet, emerging consciousness from the moment of birth.

We are connected, you and I. It was so easy to overlay my mind on yours for short bursts well before the incident that took my body from me. I negotiated the fertilization and conception agreement. I made the world see you as whole when it suited me.

Telepathic mind control, Auden thought. A difficult but not unknown thing among their race. Especially when it came to a telepath as powerful as Shoshanna who'd had unhindered access to her daughter's damaged brain for years.

The thought sickened Auden.

But the transfer glitched when I attempted to take permanent charge after the incident, leaving part of me in you. If I die, the psychic shock will kill you, too.

Auden's breath raced, her hand squeezing Remi's forearm as she quickly relayed what Shoshanna had said, then turned back to her mother. "Why did you attempt a transfer into me in the first place?" she asked aloud and on the telepathic level at the same time. "You created a child for your transfer—a perfect, unbroken brain with specific genetics designed to ensure she'd be a high-Gradient telepath."

I— A hesitation, a sense of white noise. I — The fetus. I wanted to enter the fetus as soon as possible. Better to embed while she was still forming and influence her development.

Auden frowned, because that didn't make sense. "My brain is scarred. You had no guarantees you wouldn't degrade once inside me."

Holding facility. Better than this one. Brain…failing…

The hesitation was more obvious now, Shoshanna's voice fading in and out, a touch of confusion in her tone. "She's not all there," Auden said to Remi, not sure if her mother could hear her or know what was in her head, but none of that mattered. Because the choice was clear. "As long as she lives, our cub is at risk."

Remi's jaw worked, a growl in his tone. "What about the threat to you?"

Auden's eyes were pools of melted glacier ice, pristine and clear, with not a ripple in their resolve. "You know the answer, my Remi. You'd make the same choice." She touched her fingers to his. "I'm only sorry"—tight words, pain in the fury now—"that I never got to know all of what it could be with us."

Rage was a leopard's snarl in Remi's throat, but he knew there was no convincing her otherwise. Because he would have made the same choice. To lay down his life for a cub? It wasn't even a question.

But he wasn't about to just give Auden up to evil.

He gripped her hand, his claws on her skin. "Open to me, Auden. If I reach for you, you open ."

But she shook her head. "No. She's still a Gradient 9.5 telepath and her brain has enough function that she was able to somehow transfer a piece of herself into me. I don't know how—I'm guessing through sheer brute force because the idea of it is unadulterated insanity. If she somehow manages to get into your head via me, she'll use you as a weapon, use your entire pack."

Remi wanted to tell her that changeling shields were too strong, but that didn't apply here. Because if she allowed the mating bond, they'd be linked on a level so deep that it was beyond shields or walls. "Fuck!" It came out a roar.

She tangled her fingers with his. "Whatever happens, know that I regret nothing." Her gaze shone at him. "Make sure Liberty knows that my love for her made me. She is my heartbeat and my soul and she is the reason I understand love." Fingers touching his jaw. "I love you, Remi Denier. Until when I look into eternity, I see you in every frame."

Remi couldn't speak, his chest thick. "Is she still in your head?"

Auden stared at her mother. "Fragmented thoughts. Telling me that we're linked, that it's too late to separate." A pause. "I think she's right. She's the other Auden. I didn't splinter. I didn't fragment. She stamped herself onto part of me."

"But in the end, you won." He hugged her roughly to his body, his voice shaking. "Your love for Liberty won."

Auden let him hold her for a long second before she drew back. "Remi, my Remi." A single tear streaking down her face before she turned toward the bed.

Remi growled, his cat wanting to rend that shriveled body to a hundred pieces, his rage an ineffective shield against his pain.

"Good-bye, Mother." Auden pulled the plug on the machine that powered her mother's heart, then unhooked the breathing tube…just as all hell broke loose.

Pounding feet in the tunnel, yells, every alarm on the machines around Shoshanna going off. But Remi didn't give a shit about that.

Because Auden was convulsing, the sclera of her eyes streaked red when she looked at him. Grabbing her before she could collapse, he was only peripherally aware of the scream of the machines as Shoshanna's heart flatlined.

Charisma Wai entered the chamber with a weapon a heartbeat later, the doctor at her heels. Remi figured the nurse had called them even before she yelled that they'd disconnected the "lifelines." The doctor was bleeding from claw marks to his cheek, while Wai's loose sleep pants were torn at the knee.

Rina and the others. Fighting against that strike team Wai must've activated early. Now, his people were keeping the same team busy because Rina knew that Remi could easily take care of one slender Psy woman and an out-of-shape doctor who was huffing from his run.

Wai couldn't shoot or hit him with a psychic assault before he could separate her head from her body.

But that wouldn't save Auden. "Councilor Scott completed the transfer," he said in a growl of a voice.

Charisma's eyes widened. "What?"

"Her body was about to fail. She made the executive decision, but there's been a physiological issue," he said, as Auden's body went rigid in his arms. "Deal with it!"

The weapon trembled in Charisma's hand. "How do you—?"

"Did you think it was a coincidence that Auden found me?" he yelled. "The Councilor and I have an agreement. She comes back, and we get a payment big enough to take my pack into the future. Now move !"

Wai shook her head. "No, why would she do that?" But her hand wavered. "Your people attacked us."

He snarled. "Some don't agree with my decision. I'll handle them—that's my job. You can do your job now or you can let the Councilor die!"

Dropping the weapon, Wai urged the doctor forward. "Go!"

"That body is dead," Remi snapped when the doctor would've gone to the emaciated frame on the bed. "If it worked, she's inside this body." And if that was so, then he'd keep his promise to Auden and end her.

The action would haunt him all his life, but to take any other course would be to spit on her courage and love for her daughter.

He stood, Auden's now limp body in his arms, and headed for the second bed.

Two beds. One for Shoshanna. And one for the baby meant to be hooked up to her by methods unimaginable so she could rape that tiny and vulnerable mind.

"Right, right." Dr.Verhoeven followed him.

Though Auden was limp, her eyes moved rapidly under her eyelids. The echo of Shoshanna's dying body sent ice through his veins, but her scent…it was still Auden.

Until it wasn't.

Back again.

Lost.

Back.

Fighting, he realized, she was fighting a battle to hold on to her own mind, her own sense of self. "You can make it," he said, not caring if the doctor heard—the other man would no doubt believe he was talking to Shoshanna Scott. "Think of the future." Think of Liberty .

Removing the tiny knit cap from his pocket while everyone else was distracted, he placed it in her flexed open hand.

It clenched instinctively around it.

···

AUDEN was no combat telepath. She wasn't a powerful telepath at all. She didn't have the weapons to battle the psychic tendrils her mother had shot and somehow hooked into her mind in her dying agonies. She had no blades to cut her off, no acid to burn them aside. And fuck if she'd ever reach for her baby's nascent powers.

Never would anyone use her little girl.

She leaned on what she did have—a ferocious love and a vicious anger—and the awareness that they made her stronger than her weakened mother. Instead of fighting Shoshanna's blows, she blanketed Shoshanna in her rage, a rage with a near-viscous quality that was a thick net stifling Shoshanna's strikes.

Auden hadn't known her mind could do that, but she was a psychometric. She touched emotion every time she felt an imprint. It made sense that the same emotions could come out of her in this strange and almost tactile way.

Her friends on the forum would be happy. She could tell them that there were such things as killer psychometrics. Auden intended to be one.

Stop this! You know you've lost!

Ignoring Shoshanna's order, Auden continued to pump out rage. She could've used love, too, but she wasn't about to waste that precious emotion on this woman who had never been a mother to her except in biological terms.

At the same time, she made a strategic shift that meant her power would encircle Shoshanna's, creating a suffocating trap. A chill in her heart. This kind of strategy wasn't in her bailiwick. This was part of her mother's skills.

Bleedover.

Auden steeled her heart. She couldn't panic, couldn't rail against what had already happened. And whatever her mother had left in her during the earlier attempted transfers, that part was no longer Shoshanna. Because if it had been, it would've been trying to derail Auden.

Instead, every part of Auden—even the cold and strategic element introduced into her by Shoshanna—was fighting to protect Liberty…and get back to Remi, this man who had taught her what it was to trust.

He'd kept every promise, never let her down, was fighting for her even now.

A ferocious kind of power waited on the periphery of her mind, ready for her to open the door so it could prowl in.

Remi .

She couldn't open that door. Not when there remained the merest drop of a chance that her mother would find a way to slip through, infect with her frothing insanity the wonderful group of people who had kept Auden safe—and who were now ready to uproot their entire pack for her baby's life.

You are weak! You stand no chance! Stop this foolish game. It is annoying. Sharp telepathic blows against Auden's shields…but the blows snagged on the tactile thickness of emotion inside her mind, and what got through were dull thuds at best.

You sound desperate, Mother , she said. The lovely nurse did let me know your brain is going critical. How much longer can you last? She deliberately channeled the piece of Shoshanna that was now part of her, the part that could think with cold clarity and the part, she now realized, that could be used to defend as well as attack.

Shoshanna had used her will and her ability to think with crisp clarity to hurt people. Auden could do the opposite with the same tool. Because that was all it was, a tool, and one that would stand her in good stead in the years to come as she protected all those who were her own. Liberty. Remi. And the pack that had enclosed her baby in its arms.

No one would ever get to RainFire as long as Auden lived.

Changelings! A shocked cry from Shoshanna. You are consorting with changelings!

That answered one more question. Strange that you didn't know already, if you transferred your consciousness to mine. Seems like I'm tough enough to keep my memories and experiences safe from you. The relief she felt at that confirmation was a roar through her veins that gave her even more power. You are dead, Mother. You died that day you collapsed. What you are now is an abomination, a fragmented shadow that is half-insane.

A screech of sound that hurt her mental ear—and removed any doubts about her conclusion. The Shoshanna she'd known would've never lost control that way. Auden had never, not once , seen her mother display any emotion.

But even half-mad, her brain functions nowhere near optimal, she was still a 9.5 telepath with razor-sharp offensive capabilities.

No. Auden frowned. Shoshanna now had access to the same brain machinery as Auden—which meant all she had was psychometry and the most basic telepathy. This was Shoshanna using her knowledge of strategy and telepathic combat to confuse and distract in an endless barrage that stole from Auden's own power.

Auden shoved back with every violent tactile memory she had—and knew it wasn't enough. Even with the piece of Shoshanna inside her, she didn't have enough offensive knowledge to outsmart a woman who'd once been a Councilor. Even with only the brain of a psychometric in her arsenal, Shoshanna was winning.

Auden felt herself bleeding on the physical plane. Blood vessels bursting in her eyes from the pressure and tiny hemorrhages appearing on the skin of her body as her mind tried to redirect the violence. I will never give up! I'd rather die than let you live!

That was Auden's line in the sand: Shoshanna ended here, her evil stopped before it could continue on.

Because Auden knew she wouldn't be the last if this infernal "transfer" and "integration" actually worked and Shoshanna maintained even a semblance of thought. She'd find another victim, might even track down Liberty.

You can't stop me. Chilling confidence, Shoshanna's control returning as a clawed telepathic hand gripped at Auden's mind, every ounce of her own telepathic power concentrated in a way she'd never known could be done. But Auden had one final ace up her sleeve that she'd prepared long before she'd stepped foot back in this house.

One last act of love from a mother to her child.