by Nalini Singh
And felt . . . happy.
Throat dry and skin hot, she shot one last look at the male on the terrace before sliding into his chair. Fear crawled up her spine as she brought up the Internet, and she couldn’t stop from glancing over her shoulder to check that he remained outside. He did, his hair gleaming blue-black in the soft light of the rising sun.
The search box blinked at her.
Biting down on her lower lip, she entered not Kaleb’s name, but that of his apparent mentor, Santano Enrique. Had anyone asked her to explain why she’d done so, she wouldn’t have been able to give them an answer—her choice was driven by raw instinct, the “feel” of Enrique’s name as she typed it out on the infrared keyboard causing a churning sickness in her abdomen.
Search results scrolled across the screen. Clicking the top hit, she found herself at a news site. Councilor Enrique was dead. The details, reproduced from an official Council release, appeared innocuous enou—
“Are you finding what you need?”
Her blood ran cold.
When the man who stood next to the desk put one hand on the back of the chair she’d appropriated, and the other palm-down beside the computer, she found herself torn between the urge to run . . . and to lean her head against the dark heat of his body, breathe deep of the clean male sweat that made his skin glimmer. Her madness where Kaleb was concerned was clearly deep-rooted and without reason.
“Ah,” he said, reading the article she’d pulled up. “So you heard about Santano.”
Once, on a nature show, she’d seen a lion playing with a gazelle, allowing its prey to believe it was about to escape, all the while digging its claws deeper into the helpless animal. She knew she was the gazelle right now, just as she knew there was no point in attempting to hide her fear—she wasn’t that accomplished a liar.
However, neither was she going to sit frozen and allow him to torment her; she’d created the labyrinth to escape her previous captors, and while she had no intention or desire to entomb her mind in that way again, she would find another way to outwit him, to survive.
“Sahara! I’ll come for you! Survive! Survive for me!”
The echo of that primal promise had run in a continuous loop in her mind for the duration of her captivity. Sahara didn’t have the memory of the event or the time when the original words had been spoken, didn’t know the identity of the speaker, but she knew one thing: her death would mean more, far more, than the simple extinguishing of a life.
Some might say the belief was a delusional one her mind had created to survive a nightmare—and perhaps it was—but it had helped her navigate the piercing loneliness of the past seven years. It would help her weather this, too.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, proud her voice didn’t tremble.
Cardinal eyes devoid of stars met her own gaze, Kaleb’s hair uncharacteristically tousled. “Give you your own organizer.” A paper-thin tablet computer landed on the desk an instant later. “I need this screen for a comm conference in twenty minutes.”
With that, he reached out and entered a URL into the browser—an obscure one to her eyes, created as it was of a string of numbers. “That’ll tell you what you need to know about Santano.” Pushing off the desk, he walked to the door. “Remember, I need that screen in nineteen minutes.”
She stared after him in openmouthed disbelief until she could no longer hear his footsteps. Her mind tried to find some kind of reason in his response, was stymied by the inexplicability of it. Kaleb had to know full well that information was power, and yet he’d handed her the key to it.
Rubbing her fingertips over her temples in a vain effort to clear the confusion, she turned her attention to the page he’d brought up—and found herself on a site run by a self-termed conspiracy theorist. The otherwise anonymous owner identified himself as Psy, and given the amount of information on the site, he was one clever enough to hide his tracks from the Council’s enforcers—because the topics he covered were more than taboo.
Skimming past the recent entries, which stated the Council was no longer in existence, regardless of the lack of an official announcement, she found the search box and once more typed in Enrique’s name . . . to be directed to a single continuous page that held update after update. The most recent one was dated just over two years ago and stated simply: Kaleb Krychek now on Council. Acknowledged protégé of Santano Enrique—no evidence for or against theory that he assisted S.E. in the torture murders.
A stabbing pain in her chest, a cry trapped behind her hand. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, she began to read up from the oldest entry.
According to the author, Santano Enrique had been that rarest of anchors, one who’d not only embraced politics instead of isolation, but thrived in the cutthroat world of the Council. He’d also been a serial killer responsible for the torture murders of a number of young changeling women. He hadn’t died of natural causes, as reported in the mainstream media. He’d been executed by the DarkRiver leopards and the SnowDancer wolves in a gruesome fashion, a message to the remainder of the Council left stapled to his tongue.
“You have five more minutes.”
Snapping up her head, she saw Kaleb in the doorway. His hair was damp but neatly combed, his shirt a deep blue, his pants charcoal, the belt black—the same shade as his shoes. He held a glass of the nutrient drink in his hand.
Whatever he’d learned at his mentor’s knee, it could be nothing good. And yet the compulsion to go to him thundered in her blood, making her distrust her own mind—regardless of the fact she knew she was immune to mind control on that level. As no one could compromise her mind, neither could anyone control her, not without her being aware of the interference.
Still, her stomach twisted, her nails digging into the softness of her palms.
“How could anyone outside the Council know all these details?” she said, surprised the words came out sounding calm and rational when her body and mind continued to fight a battle she couldn’t explain. “Either he’s delusional or he has a source.”
Kaleb sipped at his drink, never taking his eyes off her. “What do you think?”
“His accusations are so outlandish, they might well be the truth. A source.”
“Likely.” Finishing the drink, he teleported the glass away. “He is correct in all particulars.”
Her fingers trembled as she picked up the organizer, noting absently that it was far thinner and lighter than had been the norm seven years before. “Santano Enrique was insane?” Even as she asked the question, she was thinking about the statement she’d just read that said Kaleb had effectively been in Enrique’s “care” since he was five years of age. It would be the greatest fallacy to assume the experience hadn’t warped his development, turning him into a mirror of the man who had been the paternal figure in his life.
Kaleb slid his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, nothing in him speaking of the boy he’d been—a boy who had grown up with a monster. “That,” he said, “is a matter of opinion. Some would say he was a perfect creation of Silence. Totally without emotion, without empathy. To him, the murders were interesting experiments.”
* * *
KALEB saw the slick sheen of fear in Sahara’s eyes as she rose from his chair, her hair clipped back to expose a face that had no deceit in it. He wondered if she was even capable of the games he played on a daily basis, using truths and lies interchangeably to achieve his aims.
Though she left the room without taking her eyes off him, he knew she hadn’t regained the totality of her memories—she wasn’t afraid enough, the wariness in her generalized and not specific to him.
He let her go, not pointing out that if he wanted to hurt her right this instant, there was nothing in the world she could do to stop him. Her bones would snap like matchsticks should he unleash the merest fraction of his telekinetic strength, her blood pouring out of her in a pulse of darkest scarlet. As it had once before, to soak into the sheets on the bed in that cheap
hotel room that had burned to black cinders but hadn’t escaped Enforcement’s eye, thanks to the games Santano liked to play.
Waiting several minutes to give her guard a chance to go down, he walked to the open doors to see that she’d taken a cross-legged position on the sun lounger. The umbrella, unnecessary at this time of day, remained closed, the glossy black of her hair glowing with hints of red-gold in the dawn light.
Those strands were unusual but not totally unpredictable, given the genetic mix of maternal and paternal DNA. Her mother’s hair color was a soft black, while her father’s was that of wet clay, the otherwise recessive trait for red hair strong in the Kyriakus family tree. It was Sahara’s psychic profile that had come out of the blue, rare as that of a dual cardinal.
To Kaleb’s knowledge, Sahara was the only individual in the Net with her specific ability—one so coveted her captors hadn’t executed her despite the labyrinth.
Sahara Kyriakus held within her the potential to make a man into an emperor.
Pure Psy
IF THERE WAS one individual in the Net who had Vasquez’s respect, it was Kaleb Krychek. The cardinal Tk had proven his Silence with his cool, calculated ascension to the Council, eliminating anyone who stood in his way, and doing so with a stealth and an intelligence that meant none of the executions had ever been connected to him.
Henry, too, had spoken well of the younger man, but he’d been unsure about trusting Kaleb with the inner workings of Pure Psy. “Krychek’s priorities are not our own,” the now-dead leader of Pure Psy had said. “He wants to take total, unquestioned control of the Net, of that I’m certain.”
That goal had clashed with Pure Psy’s—for where Krychek wanted to utilize such control to increase his power, Pure Psy wanted to use it for the betterment of the Psy race. However, the situation had changed since Henry’s original decision not to invite Krychek into their inner circle, the most critical being Henry’s assassination.
The organization would need a strong man at the helm when it rose to power and Krychek fit the bill to perfection. His involvement would also serve to calm the populace, maintaining continuity with the previous Council.
Vasquez had no issue with giving up his current position to Kaleb for a function more suited to his training. He knew he wasn’t meant for leadership. He was a general with the capacity for absolute loyalty to his chosen leader. Krychek, by contrast, took orders from no one. Exactly as it should be for the man at the top of the food chain.
Together, they would make the perfect team.
Chapter 9
SAHARA UNDERSTOOD THE organizer Kaleb had given her could well be set up to transmit her activities to him, but it seemed counterintuitive since he could’ve withheld the device in the first place. Then there was the fact that her mind remained naked, for all intents and purposes, her shields nascent, and yet he’d made no effort to intrude, done not a single thing to make her feel hunted.
“Worrying about his motivations won’t change things,” she muttered to herself and began to pull up the major news sites.
It surprised her, how much information she found on Psy-affiliated sites—information that would’ve been embargoed under threat of severe punishment by the Council at the time of her kidnapping. Fascinated by the references to an armed conflict that had involved Councilor Henry Scott and a group named Pure Psy against the changelings, she read article after article.
What startled her even more than the idea of an open conflict were the opinion pieces.
The Silence Protocol has come to define us as a race, read one anonymous piece in a human-run news outlet, but is this the legacy we want to leave? Do we not have the strength to face our demons rather than stifling them and pretending that means they no longer exist, all the while knowing that evil walks amongst us?
Shoving a hand through her hair at words that would’ve led to a swift rehabilitation order seven years ago, the writer’s mind and personality stripped to leave him barely functional enough for menial labor, she continued to read, absorbing everything with the hunger of a mind that had been starved of knowledge for years.
However, compelled though she was by the political changes that had taken place during that time, the subject that fascinated her most was Kaleb Krychek. But setting aside the conspiracy site Kaleb himself had shown her, searches on him brought up only business and public Council biographical data, the only non-Council biography being on a human-run public encyclopedia:
KALEB KRYCHEK
Summary: An unexpected cardinal telekinetic born of two low-Gradient parents whose recessive genes combined with powerful results in the fetus. Trained and monitored by Santano Enrique from age five.1
Made first millions at age twenty-three after backing high-risk project that led to a major breakthrough in comm screen tech. Ascended to Council at age twenty-seven.
Resident in Moscow.
Continue to full article
1. Citation needed
After reading through the entire biography, which insinuated that Kaleb had risen to his current position by eliminating everyone who stood in his path—timely natural deaths, people dropping out of negotiations without warning, unexplained disappearances—but offered no proof of the allegations, Sahara returned to the conspiracy site. There, she read that he was rumored to be able to cause madness, a fact he’d already confirmed, and that while he had publicly clean hands, he wasn’t averse to doing his own dirty work.
Though Krychek is the youngest member of the Council, stated an update made a year ago, he is the most ruthless and dangerous. No one else ever comes out the winner in any negotiation in which Krychek shows an interest.
Six months ago, Agro Grav turned down an offer by the Councilor. However, the CEO had a sudden change of heart two days later. At no point did he explain his reversal—but it is notable that he removed his daughters from boarding school at the same time, in favor of home tutoring.
Her hand shook again and so badly that she had to put down the tablet before she dropped it. Inside her chest, her heart raced at a manic pace, as her head spun, her body no longer under her control. Panicking, she swung her legs over the side of the lounger and tried to stand up, only to collapse back down, her bones the consistency of rubber, and her heartbeat was in her mouth now, her breath stuck in her chest, shards of broken mirrors stabbing at her throat and a suffocating blackness creeping into the edges of her vision.
“Breathe.” It was a ruthless command, an insistent hand pushing her head between her knees.
She went, her sight limited to two tiny pinpricks of light.
A sense of movement, Kaleb’s body crouching down in front of her. “In and out.”
She clung to the steady rhythm of the words he repeated in a calm, tempered voice, her chest expanding and deflating until the black began to recede and he lifted his hand from her nape.
Raising her head, she drank the water he gave her before meeting the eyes of this man who might truly be the worst monster of them all. That cardinal gaze was pure black again, no light in the darkness, and for some reason, the sight made her want to sob as if her heart was broken, the knot of tears inside her a painful tightness.
“Thank you,” she said, barely managing to rein in the violent need to mourn something that had never belonged to her. “I’ve never had a panic attack before.”
He stayed in his crouched position, looking up at her with that hard, beautiful face she had the haunting sense she’d seen many, many times before, except he didn’t appear in a single one of her returning memories. Perhaps because her mind was playing tricks on her . . . or perhaps because their meeting had been too ugly to remember.
Kaleb had, after all, been protégé to a serial killer, a fact she could not allow herself to forget. Santano Enrique had preferred changeling victims, but who was to say Kaleb hadn’t stuck with women of his own race?
Kaleb will never hurt me.
Again that voice from deep within her psyche, that compulsion to trust tha
t sang to the tears locked in her chest.
“Even when they took you?” Kaleb asked, and though she couldn’t forget what she’d read about him, neither could she stop herself from brushing her fingers lightly over the warm hardness of his jaw.
He went motionless, but didn’t stop her.
It’s been so very long.
Holding the mysterious thought inside, she said, “I was afraid,” and waited to see if he would react to the evidence that her Silence had always been problematic, but he simply continued to watch her.
“Afraid,” she said again. “In a way that made everything inside me turn cold, but I didn’t panic. Not like this.” Saying the words made her realize that far more than her body had turned fragile in the years she’d been kept like a performing animal in a cage. “I’m broken.”
No change in his expression. “Do you believe that makes you irreversibly flawed?”
Frowning, she curled her fingers into her palm when they would’ve reached for him again. “That doesn’t make sense. If I’m broken, I’m flawed.”
“That is one interpretation.” With that enigmatic statement, he rose to his feet, a male of such ice-cut beauty that he was more akin to a statue than living, breathing flesh.
And yet he was flesh—her fingertips held the echo of the warmth of his skin, her body remembered the strength of his back from when she’d leaned against him on this very lounger . . . and it ached for further contact, reason colliding against a need born in memories she couldn’t access, and that might not even exist beyond the realm of the imagination.
“It’s near certain,” he said, “that you’re suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”