Shards of Hope(173)

Aden’s words. Words she could still hear through the roar of rage. As she could feel her small breakfast companion’s heartbeat as she sat so vulnerable and happy beside her. As she could hear the hope in Pip’s voice when he asked her when he could go play with Jojo again.

She would keep the innocents safe. She couldn’t promise the same for the guilty.

A few people dared come closer as she worked, including a man who said, “Is Aden Kai all right? We were some distance away so we couldn’t help, but we saw the shooter.”

“He’s fine.” No matter what, Aden needed to remain invincible in the minds of the public. “Can you describe the shooter?”

“A runner. Male, I’m fairly certain. I’m sorry, that’s all I saw.”

The witness was human, his shields paper-thin.

Her deep scan of his mind told her he wasn’t lying. So she scanned the next person and the next and the next, frustrated only by the changelings’ tough natural shields and by those Psy who had good enough shielding that her intrusion would be noted.

Those people she evaluated visually.

Two were mothers with very young children in prams, the third an elderly woman who walked with the aid of a cane. She felt confident in eliminating them from the suspect pool, though she took mental snapshots of their faces so she could trace their identities should it become necessary.

Every other individual who came within her proximity was subjected to a deep scan that told her all their secrets, all their nightmares. She didn’t care about any of it, discarding all data that didn’t relate directly to Aden and the attempts on his life.

He wouldn’t agree with her choice, would say she was violating people. Zaira didn’t care. Not when he was lying bleeding in a hospital bed. Not when his mind had disconnected from her own as his psychic abilities shut down. Not when his blood still glistened on the grass in front of her.

Eyes burning with what she told herself was pure rage, she hit on another changeling mind. This one was a healthy adult male in running clothes. That alone didn’t make him guilty; there were a number of runners milling around, the park having a well-utilized track. Because she couldn’t use her telepathy to clear him, she watched him with her peripheral vision while she used a small scanner she’d grabbed off a medical tray as a prop, as if she was gathering data from the scene.

The truth was that the tool was meant for DNA scans and loaded with the profiles of those in the squad; all it flashed was Aden’s name, his blood painting the grass. The rage boiled hotter with each iteration of his name, each reminder that he’d been hurt, might be dying.

When she continued in her apparent work without doing anything flashy or interesting, the crowd began to disperse, until only a white-haired human couple and the changeling runner were left. She didn’t discard the elderly pair until a deep scan showed them as having no ulterior motives. The changeling made no aggressive moves, but she stayed within his reach, within shooting distance.

Her patience was rewarded five minutes later as he slid his hand surreptitiously to the back of his shorts. By the time he brought out a sleek gun complete with silencer, she was already moving. Her body slammed his to the ground as his finger touched the trigger, the shot thudding into a nearby sculpture. The human pair screamed while the shooter grunted and tried to punch her in the face, but Zaira had calculated his muscle mass and strength in the time he’d watched her, had already devised countermeasures against his greater strength.

She was also powered by rage.

Avoiding the blow, she smashed a single fist down at the precise angle to do maximum damage.

Blood splurted. His eyes altering from human blue to a slitted black, he swiped at her with a clawed hand. She flipped out of reach and deliberately waited until he was almost upright to kick out with one booted foot and dislocate his knee. He crumpled to a sideways position on his knees with a scream of fury, this changeling who had shot the only person who had ever loved her.

Not giving him time to recover, she kicked again, smashing his jaw.

Another kick, this one to his ribs. She deliberately avoided his head, not wanting him unconscious, wanting him to feel this, feel the cold rage that drove her. She saw others join the human couple, saw phones turned in her direction as people recorded the violence, but that didn’t stop her. Today, Aden wasn’t there to stop her, either, his solid, stable presence missing from her mind.

The aloneness howled, the rage creature wanting blood, wanting to brutalize this man who might have stolen Aden from her forever.

Taking the shooter to the ground once more with another well-aimed kick, where he lay on his back and struggled to breathe through his broken nose and shattered jaw, his face smeared red, she stepped on one thick wrist so he couldn’t get her with his claws, and when he lifted his other hand to slice at her, kicked out with her boot at an angle that would’ve broken a Psy male’s bones.