The Psy-Changeling Collection Read Free Page A

before I meet with him again.”
    “Prompt for a changeling. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon for a briefing. Good night.”
    “Good night, Mother.” She was talking to dead air. Regardless of the fact that Nikita had been no more a mother to her than the computer that controlled this apartment, it hurt. But tonight that hurt was buried under far more dangerous emotions.
    She’d barely started to relax when the console chimed an incoming call. Since the caller identification function had been disabled along with the screen, she had no way of knowing who it was. “Sascha Duncan,” she said, trying not to panic that Nikita had changed her mind.
    “Hello, Sascha.”
    Her knees almost buckled at the sound of that honey-smooth voice, more purr than growl now. “Mr. Hunter.”
    “Lucas. We’re colleagues, after all.”
    “Why are you calling?” Harsh practicality was the only way she could deal with her roller-coaster emotions.
    “I can’t see you, Sascha.”
    “It’s a screen malfunction.”
    “Not very efficient.” Was that amusement she could hear?
    “I assume you didn’t call to chat.”
    “I wanted to invite you to a breakfast meeting with the design team tomorrow.” His tone was pure silk.
    Sascha didn’t know if Lucas always sounded like an invitation to sin or whether he was doing it to unsettle her. That thought unsettled her. If he even suspected that there was something not quite right about her, then she might as well sign her death warrant. Internment at the Center was nothing less than a living death anyway.
    “Time?” She wrapped her arms tight around her ribs and forced her voice to even out. The Psy were very, very careful that the world never saw their mistakes, their flawed ones. No one had ever successfully fought the Council after being slated for rehabilitation.
    “Seven thirty. Is that good for you?”
    How could he make the most businesslike of invitations sound like purest temptation? Maybe it was all in her mind—she was finally cracking. “Location?”
    “My office. You know where that is?”
    “Of course.” DarkRiver had set up business camp near the chaotic bustle of Chinatown, taking over a medium-sized office building. “I’ll be there.”
    “I’ll be waiting.”
    To her heightened senses, that sounded more like a threat than a promise.

CHAPTER 2
     
     
     
    Lucas prowled to the edge of his office and stared down at the narrow streets that led into the sensory explosion that was Chinatown, his mind on Sascha Duncan’s night-sky eyes. His animal nature had sniffed something in her that didn’t quite fit, wasn’t quite . . . right. And yet, she didn’t have the sickly smell of insanity but a delectably enticing scent that was at odds with the metallic stink of most Psy.
    “Lucas?”
    He had no need to turn around to identify his visitor. “What is it, Dorian?”
    Dorian came to stand beside him. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he could’ve passed for a surfer hanging out, waiting for the right wave. Except for the feral edge in those eyes. Dorian was a latent leopard. Something had gone wrong in the womb and he’d been born changeling in all ways except one—he lacked the ability to shift forms. “How did it go?”
    “I have a Psy shadow.” He watched a car glide by on the darkening street, the energy cells that powered it leaving no trace of their passage. The cells had been created by changelings. Without their race, the world would’ve sunk into a quagmire of pollution by now.
    The Psy thought themselves the leaders of the planet, but it was the changelings who were attuned to the Earth’s heartbeat, the changelings who saw the intertwined streams of life. Changelings and the occasional human.
    “Think you can pump her?”
    Lucas shrugged. “She’s like the rest of them. But I’m in. And she’s a cardinal.”
    Dorian rocked back on his heels. “If one of them knows about the killer, they all do. Their web keeps every single one of them in