Psy & Changelings 06 - Branded by Fire

“If it was me, and I had to get four sober people to do what I wanted, I’d grab one while he or she was separated from the group, then force the others to follow by threatening the one I had.”
    “The thing is, you know about how loyal we are—would the Alliance?”
    “They’ve proven to be smart. They study the enemy before striking.”
    “So your scenario is a possibility.” Mercy’s claws were out, though she didn’t seem to realize it. “But unless there were a lot of attackers, it’d be hard to control that many changelings, especially once you had them in a van or truck.”
    “Unless you use the threat of death against one to force the others to behave”—his brain made a cognitive leap—“or to dose themselves with a tranquilizer.” Every single captured changeling would’ve tried to find an escape hatch, but if someone was holding a gun to the head of a friend, they wouldn’t have dared risk an action that didn’t promise a hundred percent chance of success. Packmates did not sacrifice one to save many. The Psy called that a weakness. Riley thought it their greatest strength. “But even if they’re all knocked out, what then?”
    “Exactly.” Mercy began to pace up and down the street, both of them deliberately ignoring the fact that the tranq doses in their scenario could’ve been fatal. “If it’s a message, we need to receive it. Otherwise, we don’t know who did it, and they don’t get credit. And the Alliance likes to make a splash.”
    “We need to factor in another thing—the kidnappers need time to get away after delivering the message.” The wolf in him saw a hint of possibility. “We need to be searching isolated places where the missing wouldn’t immediately be found, but where they wouldn’t not be found in a reasonable amount of time.”
    Mercy apparently located a hair tie in her pocket because she began to pull the flowing strands of her hair into a messy ponytail. “They’re not totally familiar with this city, so they won’t go far from their ‘circle’ of movement.”
    “We need to dumb the search down.” Riley straightened, seeing the truth. “We’ve been searching in places they probably have no clue how to even find.”
    Mercy’s eyes turned night-glow. “There were reports of possible Alliance movements in the streets leading up to the Palace of Fine Arts. It fits. It’s not so isolated that the missing wouldn’t be found, but it’s isolated enough that likely no one will pass through it at this time of the morning.” The clock had just ticked over five thirty.
    They were already moving as she finished speaking. Adopting Mercy’s hell-on-wheels driving technique, Riley had them on the Palace grounds five minutes later.
    Magnificent in daylight, the huge pillars that curved out from the rotunda were ominous in darkness. Mercy deliberately avoided looking at the glassy surface of the lake to her right. No going there until necessary.
    Using her night vision to negotiate around the pillars, she kept her body low to the ground, trying to pick up a scent. What she found instead was a jagged claw mark in the grass. “Riley.” This had been made by a wolf.
    He was beside her in a second. “Scent’s dissipated, but it’s fresh.”
    They all but crawled on the ground, alert to any other hint that the mark might’ve been made by one of their lost packmates. Riley found the next bread crumb—an earring with dangling glass beads.
    Mercy’s heart jumped into her throat. “Mia. She’s learning to work with glass—she’s so crazy-proud of those earrings, she’d never have dropped one accidentally. Not if she was conscious.”
    A few feet later, she saw a worn, handmade button. “Grey.” He loved that blue shirt despite the fact it was all but threadbare. Sage had made the buttons in one of his fits of creativity, and their mother had cut out and sewn the shirt itself. “They left us a trail. Maybe they weren’t knocked out.”
    “Or the drug began to wear off.”
    It was tempting to speed things up now that they knew the missing had come through here, but they stuck to the trail. This was a large area—better to be a little slow than miss them altogether. It was as well that they fought the instinct to chase blindly . . . because four minutes later, they found both the cats and the wolves. All were propped around a pillar shaded by overgrown greenery, and so deep in shadow Mercy and Riley could’ve easily passed them by. All