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The only people who knew what he could really do were his parents, his older brother, and his team. That was enough for him. He’d prefer that his younger siblings never find out what he could do. If they ever did, he wouldn’t lie to them, but it was safer to keep them in the dark.
Hiding the truth from the rest of the world was easy enough due to his family’s status. They came from old money and were influential in both the political arena and business, which gave him plenty of cover. He was well aware it was hypocritical to use his family’s wealth and status as a shield, but he considered it an advantage of his birth more than an ill-gotten gain.
Talon’s rather dubious reputation gave him additional protection. He was a dangerous man, and not just because of his special abilities. He was an excellent tactician, a skilled fighter, and an expert marksman. Those skills alone would have made him the perfect assassin, so his extra powers were just a lethal bonus.
With his skills, it hadn’t been surprising that Talon had quickly risen in the ranks to become a commander of his own elite Strike Force Team. However, his swift ascension had caused a few people to develop personal grudges against him. That didn’t bother him, though. One didn’t grow up as part of a powerful family without learning how to deal with enemies.
He had forged his own path in life, but that didn’t matter to some. He could live with whatever petty grievances were aimed his way as long as they stayed the hell away from the other members of his team. Anyone who was foolish enough to cross them did so at their own peril.
While people were aware that Talon was the commander of a Strike Force Team, only a few individuals knew that his small team was made up entirely of assassins who specialized in a variety of ways to kill. Since they operated under the highest level of secrecy, there wasn’t much oversight over his team. They were allowed to operate covertly and without interference.
That didn’t stop the whispers and rumors from spreading about them. While there were some who would have loved to use him to strike out at his family, there was nothing anyone could do without clear evidence.
And evidence was something Talon never left behind.
Like his mother, Talon had been born with the ability to see auras, but he had thankfully skipped inheriting the empathic part of her gift. As a child, he’d never really cared about the various colors he saw swirling around people. Back then, he’d thought it was pretty lame, but his attitude had changed once he’d realized he could differentiate between good and bad people simply by reading their colors.
That had given him a powerful advantage that couldn’t be denied.
Most people believed auras were a simple concept, but it was actually a complex physical manifestation of one’s essential being. Some liked to call it a soul, while others denied such a thing existed. The truth was that all living things had an aura. However, the colors and brightness of an aura varied depending on the essence of the individual. Some of the colors were contingent on one’s emotional state, but the base usually remained pretty constant.
After being enhanced, Talon hadn’t noticed any immediate changes. He hadn’t realized anything was different until he and his brother, Jax, had been kidnapped when they’d been returning home during one of their breaks away from the academy. Then, his new gift had come out full force. It had shocked the hell out of him and Jax when he had killed their captors.
He hadn’t meant to do it.
It had just…happened.
His abilities had unexpectedly transformed into something that was utterly terrifying. In an instant, he went from seeing auras to being able to manipulate them. With the slightest skin-to-skin contact, Talon could alter someone’s emotions. If someone was sad, he could brighten their mood. If they were angry, he could instantly calm them.
But that wasn’t all he was able to do.
The power over life and death had literally been put into his hands.
It was a complicated process, but broken down in the simplest terms, Talon could use the darkness that manifested from evil deeds and turn it back on its owner. He couldn’t exactly fix a corrupted aura. He could only void it out. The problem was if there was enough darkness present in someone’s aura, eliminating it also destroyed the owner. It was like wiping a slate clean until there was nothing left.
His death touch was the part of his gift he kept secret from the rest of the world. Naturally, he didn’t go around killing everyone with a dark aura. That would be too damn psychotic, even for him. While everyone showed hints of darkness at times, only a few wore those dark stains like beacons of malevolence. Those were the people who didn’t deserve to keep breathing.
The mark Talon had just taken out was a prime example.
He had been a predator who preyed on women. The man’s background hadn’t been that different from Talon’s. Coming from an affluent family with political connections that had shielded him for most of his life, he’d grown up with every advantage. However, instead of making something of his life, the bastard had used his wealth and privilege to cover up the various crimes he’d committed over the years.
Since most of the victims had been civilians and rebels, Alliance officials hadn’t put much effort into finding out what had happened to them. For years, no one had realized what he had done.
Then, the male had unfortunately crossed paths with Talon.
As his team was highly specialized and only went after specific targets, they tended to have a fair amount of time between assignments. That didn’t mean they didn’t stay busy. Besides conducting their own investigations, they also assisted other Strike Force Teams when requested, or if their particular skill set was needed. Although their team was small, they were an asset on any mission. They didn’t accept every request. If a case was interesting enough, they made the time to assist.
And their success rate only added to their mysterious reputation.
They had just finished assisting another Strike Force Team with a difficult mission in Zion when Talon had noticed a man with a dark aura on the street. One glance was all it had taken to realize he shouldn’t have been walking free. His team had done a deep dive for information on the man, and in a matter of hours, they had started to put the pieces together that other investigators hadn’t bothered to.
The man had a history of being a womanizer. That was common knowledge. He usually partied with a small group of friends and entertained different women wherever he went. What people didn’t know was a lot of those females ended up meeting tragic ends. Some of them had simply disappeared, while others had been confirmed to be dead.
Several of those cases had been written off as accidents, but there were a few crimes that had been blamed on different perpetrators. Since the females had been spread out over different cities and space stations, no one knew the total tally of the missing and murdered.
It was easy to make a body disappear in space.
Talon’s team cared about each life that had been taken. They also understood how difficult it would have been to make the man pay under the regular system of justice. That was one of the reasons he’d never been caught. In his younger years, there had been a few women who had tried to bring charges against him for sexual assault. But in the end, they had all withdrawn their complaints after being paid off or intimidated into silence.
