<I did,> Dunatis replied grimly, and several other mind voices agreed. <This is evil, brothers.> Lieutenant General MacClintock's companion looked out over the surging sea of humans, and his tail flicked with fury. <This was done to him. I do not know how, but it must have been the work of some human evil doer.> The other 'cats nodded. All of them had bonded to Forestry Service personnel, and all had been forced to confront the division between law abiding people and criminals. <I have never heard of its like, but there is much we still do not understand about the tools and knowledge of the humans. No doubt theywill know how this could be accomplished. Yet they are occupied now with surprise and confusion. It will be some time before they think clearly, and they are mind-blind, unable to taste what hides behind their fellow humans' eyes.>
<But weare notmind-blind,> Parsifal said, and Dunatis flicked his ears.
<Spread out, brothers,> he commanded. <It may be that the evil doer responsible for this thing is nowhere near, that he had no need or desire to witness the working of his plans. But it is also possible he isnear at hand. Seek him, and if you find him, summon us. Perhaps—> there was grim, vengeful anticipation in Dunatis' mind voice <—we can . . . delay his steps until our humans arrive to ask him how his day has been.>
Thoreau wanted to use his size and strength to plow an escape route through the crowds, but he dared not. He had to blend, vanish into the protective confusion, and so he let the press of people carry him towards the gates. They were moving slower than he would have liked, but at least they were moving, and—
A high, sibilant hiss from above jerked his head up. Grass-green eyes blazed down at him from a branch two meters above his head, and the hiss became a low, rumbling snarl as his gaze met those eyes. He swallowed in sudden terror and started to turn away, only to freeze as another hiss came from the tree behind him. Another 'cat hissed at him, and then there was another—and another!
Henry Thoreau stood paralyzed as fourteen silken-coated arboreals glared down at him, lashing their tails while ivory claws kneaded in and out of the tree bark. There was nothing cute or cuddly about them, and he felt the bright, angry intelligence behind their unflinching eyes as they pinned him with their green glare.
They know, he thought. The little bastards knowI had something to do with what just went down! But how? Howcould they know? Unless—
And then he had it. They were empaths, and his emotions might as well have been screaming his guilt at the tops of his lungs, as far as they were concerned. But they were the only ones who knew. If he got away, there would be no way they could pass that information on to anyone else.
All he had to do was get away.
He swallowed again, then began to back slowly away.
He'd gotten perhaps three meters when a needle-fanged tide of treecats came flooding out of the trees.
TEN
Adrienne Michelle Aoriana Elizabeth Winton opened her eyes slowly. Her head hurt, her face hurt, her back hurt, and her right eye refused to focus properly. Aside from that, she thought woozily, there's not a thing wrong with me. Now if I could only remember whyI hurt. . . .
She stared up at the ceiling, trying to get her thoughts herded up and moving in a single direction. It was a difficult task, but then something shifted on the pillow, right beside her left ear. Silky softness stirred, just brushing the surface of her skin, and she gasped in sudden memory. Her head snapped over, and the bright green eyes of the treecat looked back at her while a soft, buzzing purr welcomed her awakening.
She stared at the 'cat, and her thoughts were still slow and confused. But she wasn't too confused to recall that moment when the 'cat dropped into her arms, and she reached out for him once more. Pain lanced through her skull with the movement, but the 'cat flowed into her embrace, hugging her neck with his strong, wiry forearms while he rubbed his head ever so gently against her cheek.
"I see you're awake," a familiar voice said, and she looked past the 'cat as Alvin Tudev, one arm in a sling, appeared in the door of what she now realized was a hospital room. "Good," the lieutenant colonel went on. "It's been a while."
"How—" She cleared her throat. "How long is `a while,' and what happened?"
"A while is several hours," he replied. "And what happened is a bit complicated. As far as your headache is concerned, I'm afraid that's my fault. I hit you a bit harder than I meant to."
"You hit me?" she repeated carefully, and he nodded.
"One of the things bodyguards do when there may be bullets flying around, Your Highness. There wasn't time to ask politely, or I would have." He smiled, and she realized his half-joking tone was a reaction to his relief that she was all right. "As to why I hit you, you can thank your little friend." Adrienne raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. "He and his buddies have just demonstrated a very good reason for a monarch or his heir to be accompanied by treecats everywhere they go," he said in a much more serious tone.
"An assassin," she said. The word came out in a half-whisper and her eyes darkened as she realized what Tudev was leading up to, and he nodded.
"An assassin," he confirmed. "But the 'cats sensed him before he got into range, and they all went straight for him. Your friend got to him first, but the others were only seconds behind. They not only took him down, they managed to hold him—alive—until us mere two-foots could figure out what was going on and close in on him. And that," he added grimly, "wasn't as easy as you might think, because the poor bas—" He stopped and cleared his throat. "The assassin was wired up with enough explosives to send himself into orbit without counter-grav," he continued, "and he would've done it, too."
"That's crazy," she said.
"No, Your Highness," he said even more grimly. "It was supposed to look crazy." Adrienne looked at him in confusion, and he sighed. "We're still just getting started, Your Highness, but it's already clear your intended assassin was psych-adjusted for the job. It's going to take weeks to even begin finding all the triggers and compulsions, but it seems pretty evident that one of his compulsions was to blow himself up—and take you with him, if possible—in order to keep us from realizing he'd been programmed."
"Oh my God," Adrienne whispered, and Tudev nodded.
"I think He—and the 'cats—had an awful lot to do with the fact that you're still alive, Your Highness. More than that, the 'cats may have caught us a break on cracking this entire plot wide open."
"What do you mean? And what plot?"
"To take your second question first, this had to be an inside job in at least one respect. The killers were here waiting for you, in position, before your visit was announced. That means somebody gave them a copy of the Alpha List, because Twin Forks was only on the Alpha List; it never appeared on any of the decoy lists. And that means somebody was able to extract a Blue File and decrypt it, which takes a very highly placed source, and that implies a far wider-reaching plot than anyone in my line of work likes to think about. Still, given your father's success in concentrating authority in the Crown, I can see where he could have aroused the, um . . .forceful opposition of some powerful people."