by Nalini Singh
“Sometimes the blackouts last for half a day. The longest one I’m aware of was sixteen hours.” She was crying in earnest now, deep, hiccuping sobs that made him bleed on the inside.
“Come here, Tally.” He tried to gentle his voice but that wasn’t who he was. It came out rough, almost a growl. “Come on, baby.”
She scooted a little bit closer. Carefully, he closed the gap between her body and his bent knees, one hand stroking over her hair, the other clenched into a fist so tight, he was bleeding from cuts in his palm as his claws broke through to bite into skin.
Ever since joining DarkRiver, he’d been taught to take care of the pack, to protect. He’d taken to the task like a natural, funneling all his anger and rage into something that made him feel like a better man. His packmates might find him a loner, but not one would hesitate to come to him for help. But tonight he could do nothing for the one person who mattered most to him. In spite of how badly they clashed, or how angry he was with her, she was his to protect. “Baby, I need to help you.”
“Don’t,” she whispered, “don’t treat me like a patient.” Like Isla.
He heard the words she would never say. “You give me far too much lip to be a patient. You’re Tally.” His to fight with, his to keep safe. “Do you want me to call Sascha?” He wasn’t too proud to ask the pack for help, not if it would lessen Tally’s pain. “She’s good at this kind of stuff.”
Talin bit her lower lip again, a lip already swollen from previous bites. He wanted to kiss the hurt, lick his tongue over it. The leopard couldn’t understand why he didn’t.
“I want to say no,” Talin replied even as he fought the internal battle. “I don’t know her. She’s a stranger and…well, I’m not sure what she feels about me.”
Knowing she would hate platitudes, he gave her the truth. “I didn’t smell any hint of dislike on her, and I’m damn good at picking up scents.”
“That doesn’t mean she likes me.” Talin took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “I don’t think anyone in your pack will ever like me. Look what I do to you.” Her hand brushed over his fist. “You’re bleeding.”
He released the fist and flexed his fingers, soaking in the heat of her touch. “It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last. Don’t worry about it.”
“Your pack worries about you,” she insisted. “I’m hardly bringing flowers and butterflies into your life.”
He gave her a tight smile. “I’m not sure I’d know what to do with those things anyway.” Giving in to the needs of the leopard, he cupped her cheek with his good hand. “I am who I am. They know that. If they worry, it’s because of things you can’t control.”
Her hand rose to lie over his, soft, fragile. “But part of who you are is because of me and what you did for me.”
“That goes both ways—part of who you are is because of what I did.” And what he had failed to do. He sat unmoving as her hand clenched on his, as her eyes darkened, that fine ring of bronze almost cat-bright against the gray.
“Do you think we can ever get past that?”
He shrugged, his leopard gaining strength as a fiercely sexual hunger uncurled inside of him, fostered by the delicacy of her touch, the soft warmth of her scent. The leopard needed to mark her, to convince itself she was okay. “Who says we have to?”
She frowned. “It’s like a white elephant between us, Clay.”
“No.” He moved his hand from her cheek to the side of her neck, closed. Careful, he told himself, be careful of your strength. “That would imply we aren’t aware of it. Which is definitely not true.”
Her frown turned into a scowl. “Are you saying you’re sick of talking about it?”
“Talking never solves anything.” He could feel her pulse, thudding hard, out of time. A panicked beat? Or something else? He was sure it was the latter—she wasn’t scared of him right this second. “I have no idea why women seem to like doing it so much.”
“It’s a good thing I make you talk—left alone you’d forget how to speak,” Talin said, trying to tease. “I’ll talk to your Sascha, too.” She was no use to anyone if her mind kept crashing out of control. “But not now.” Not when she was at such a huge disadvantage. The cardinal Psy was so composed, so elegantly beautiful, that Talin felt like a drab sparrow in comparison.
Clay’s eyes were on her lips and suddenly she remembered what had started this whole thing. Her palms dampened. “I told you not to look at me that way.”
He blinked, but it was the slow, lazy blink of a predator very sure of his prey. “Why does it bother you so much?”
“Because even as you touch me, you’re hating me.” She saw the truth in the rich, sensual green of his eyes. “Admit it—you hate me for what I did.”
“Why?” A stark demand, his hand remaining clasped around the side of her neck. “Why did you give away what you should have protected?”
The question caused an emotional rock to lodge in her throat. “Will you let me go?”
His answer was to stroke his thumb over her skin.
“Clay.” When his eyes focused on her this time, she sucked in a breath. The cat was clearly in charge. Irrational fear spiked, but she refused to buckle under again. “Intimidation never worked with me.”
He growled low in his throat. “Answer the fucking question.”
“I did it so I’d feel something,” she snapped, wanting to growl back at him. “I went through life feeling nothing. I couldn’t love the Larkspurs, I couldn’t make friends, I couldn’t do anything but pretend!”
“And did you?” His hand tightened on her neck.
Cold sweat broke out over her body but she stayed. “No. I’ve never felt as dead as I did when I was in those beds. I went into my mind like I used to do as a child—so I wouldn’t be present while my body was used.”
His eyes shifted back to human, as if she’d caught him by surprise. “Then why keep doing it?”
“Because I thought that that was all I was good for.” A blunt response and the utter truth. “I was messed up, Clay. What Orrin did to me—it twisted me up on the inside. I couldn’t get past all that poison he put into my head. I kept hearing his voice telling me that I was nothing but a whore.”
“I’m glad I killed him,” Clay said, his tone so quiet it was a blade. “I only wish I’d been more patient. I should’ve ripped off his dick first, made him eat it.”
Her gorge rose but she was so damn tired of running, of disappointing Clay. Maybe she was weak, broken, human, but she was no coward. Not anymore. Making a small move, she put her hand on his knee. He seemed to come back to her at the contact.
“Let it go,” she whispered, eyes tracing over the harsh masculine lines of his face. “Don’t let him poison you, too. I’ve finally broken free.”
“Have you?”
“I haven’t chosen to share a man’s bed in eight years. That’s why the fugues hurt so much,” she admitted. The time for lies had passed. “I know I’m worth more now. The therapist I went to for a while helped me see that. But it was the kids at Shine who really saved me—they’re the reason I decided I couldn’t keep going as I had been.”
He watched her, a cool, dangerous predator with rage coating him in a seemingly impenetrable shield.
“So many of them come from the same place we did or worse, and they keep going, keep fighting. How could I possibly think to help them, lead them, if I wasn’t strong enough to do the same?” She swallowed. “They have courage and heart and they’re mine. I can’t let any more of them die, Clay. I can’t.”
“I told you—I’ll find this boy, Jon, for you.”
“I know you will.” Her trust in him was rooted not only in childhood memory but in her growing knowledge of the man he’d become. Strong. Protective. Beautiful. And more than a little wild. “I trust you.” A confession that took more courage than she knew she had.
Flames in the depths of his eyes. “You going back to bed?”
“No.” She tensed, wonderi
ng where this was leading. She might not be changeling, but she knew how to read desire in a man’s eyes.
As if he’d heard her unspoken fear, he rose to his feet, held out his hand. “Come on, then. I’ll show you some of my forest. I need to get out of here.”
Her heart smiled, that defiant hope spreading across her soul in an unstoppable inferno. “I’d like that.”
CHAPTER 15
Ashaya looked at the holographic map projected above her desk. It showed the location of her lab in relation to nearby towns and farms. “You’re sure the lab won’t be discovered?” she asked the man on the other side of the transparent wall of light particles.
Councilor Ming LeBon nodded. “You’re surrounded by acres of cornfields, with only a single, apparently unused, access road. From above, the lab looks like a crumbling farmhouse.”
“Forgive me if my confidence doesn’t mirror yours.” She terminated the projection. “You assured me the previous lab was secure. The saboteurs had no trouble getting in, detonating their bombs, and destroying the original prototype. Not to mention the targeted psychic strike that killed several of my top scientists.”
“That was an unfortunate mistake on my part,” Ming admitted with the emotionless confidence of a man so deadly, most people spoke his name in a whisper. Psy might not feel emotions, Ashaya thought, but even those of her clinical race valued their lives.
“That mistake,” Ming continued, “will not be repeated.” His eyes were those of a cardinal but unique in that Ming’s had less white stars than most. Liquid black filled his eyes, broken only by one or two pinpricks of light.
The uniqueness of his eyes wasn’t a well-known fact—most people had no idea of Ming LeBon’s physical appearance. He was a true shadow in the PsyNet. Ashaya was well aware that the sole reason he’d allowed her to see him was because he knew the Council had her totally under their control.
It might have made a human or changeling angry to be so manipulated. Ashaya wasn’t human or changeling. She didn’t feel fear, anger, any negative emotion. But that didn’t mean she agreed with the Councilor. “Explain the security features to me,” she said.
“Your job is on the inside. My officers will take care of security.”
“With respect, I disagree.” If she backed down now, it was all over. “I need to know the options in case of emergency—you have no way to accurately factor in the variables I’d be working with to stabilize safe transport of the prototypes. A fire would require a different response than an earthquake.”
Ming watched her, unblinking. His presence filled the room, though he wasn’t a large man. The word that came to mind was compact. Compact and sleek, like the assassin he’d been before he became Council. “You’re suddenly very interested in security.”
“Self-preservation.” She didn’t look away. “The attack on the previous lab taught me that I am the sole person who can be trusted with my own safety.”
“Are you sure you’re not considering an escape?”
Ashaya hadn’t made it this far in the cold machinery of the Psy world by being easily shaken. “You don’t believe that to be a true threat—you’ve assured my compliance.”
“True. And unless you’ve broken Silence, you aren’t a woman prone to making foolish, emotional mistakes.”
She knew the emphasis had been very deliberate. “I assure you, my conditioning is intact.” Even more so than the day she had officially graduated from the Protocol. She felt nothing. There was ice where the emotional heart might have been in a human or changeling woman. “I’ve made my decisions and I intend to stick by them.”
He nodded once, the light catching on the pure white of his hair. She had heard that he’d been born with that hair, that skin. The lack of pigmentation in his body probably accounted for his eyes, but Ming was not an albino in the true sense of the word. No, he straddled an odd line between colorless and too much color. His hair and skin were white but the left side of his face bore a spreading birthmark the color of fresh blood.
“My physical imperfection intrigues you,” he said in that oddly accented voice that made it impossible to pin down his origins.
“From a purely scientific standpoint.” A true statement. “Why haven’t you had it corrected? It would be a simple procedure.” Though Psy cared little for looks, serious imperfections were not acceptable. She knew that truth far too well. The single exception was for those born with high-Gradient powers of the mind. However, that dispensation only went so far. The Psy had no chronically ill children, no unfortunate victims of spontaneous mutations. Which made her wonder why Ming chose to flaunt his genetic flaws.
“It is about power,” he answered, though she had expected silence. “The difference between what people perceive and reality.”
Was that a threat? “I see.”
“No, you don’t.” His tone didn’t change. “But what I see is that you continue to argue against Protocol I.”
“I’ve never hidden my views.” The idea of drowning all individuality and turning many into one, a one controlled by a privileged few, was nothing she wanted to support. “I made my stance clear when I was asked to head this project.”
“You were always the best M-Psy for the job.”
So the Council had made sure she couldn’t say no. “An interesting paradox, but it proves my point—escape is not an issue.”
“No.”
Ming’s confidence was justified. After all, the Council held Keenan as insurance against her continued cooperation.
They held her son.
CHAPTER 16
Talin was still glowing with the wonder of the night hours she’d spent with Clay when he told her to get in the Tank. “Where are we going?” she asked, putting away the last of the breakfast dishes. “I have to go through these files.” Max had kept his promise. The Enforcement data had come through an hour ago.
“To see someone with medical training. They can look over the autopsy reports for you.” He began to gather up the hard copies she’d printed out.
“You’re right.” She picked up the rest of her stuff. “That way, I can concentrate on finding the commonalities between the children.” It would help, she told herself. She wasn’t just spinning her wheels while Jon was being hurt. “Clay, I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. We’ll find him.” With that, he led her outside and to the vehicle, putting the files in the backseat. He was all business, no sign remaining of the man who’d shown her the magic of a moonlight-dappled clearing where a herd of deer slept, his voice a warm whisper against her ear. “Tamsyn’s the pack healer, but she’s got a medical degree as well.”
She nodded, treading lightly. The forest run aside, last night had left them both with emotional bruises.
Clay shot her a sharp glance once they were on their way. “Stop biting your tongue, Talin. It doesn’t suit you.”
So she was back to Talin in the light of day? “I was trying to be considerate.”
“Like I said, it doesn’t suit you.” He navigated the vehicle down a different forest track from the one they had used to arrive at his lair. “How’re you feeling?”
“I thought you didn’t like to talk about feelings.”
He bared his teeth at her.
She smiled, happy now that she’d gotten under his skin. “I’m fine. I tend to bounce back pretty fast after an episode.” It had been either that or give up on life. And though she might not have cherished her body as she should have, she cherished the life Clay had fought to give her. If he hadn’t killed Orrin, the other man would have used her in the most brutal fashion, then buried her in the same graveyard as his other “brides.”
“Talin?”
She came back from the memories with a shiver. “Sorry, woolgathering. Thank you for taking me out last night. It really helped.” She’d never known there was so much life in the night, so much beauty.
“That’s not what you were thinking about before. It was the junkyard, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t have to ask how he knew. “It’s our nightmare, isn’t it?” No one else could hope to understand. “After they found the bodies, I used to think about how we played there. On top of their graves.”
“Yeah.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “But you brought something good into that junkyard. Maybe they felt it. Maybe it helped them rest in peace.”
It was the last thing she would have expected him to say. “I never thought of it that way. Do you really think that?”
“Why not?”
Yes, she thought, why not? “Did they ever identify all the bodies?” Pa Larkspur had banned her from following the case after she began to get obsessive about it. He’d been right—much longer and she would have fallen back into the abyss.
“Yes.” Clay’s hands tightened on the wheel. “They were all DNA-banked at birth.”
“I’m glad. I visited two of their graves,” she confessed.
“So did I.” His tone hardened. “After I was told you were dead.”
The tension between them went from bearable to cutting. “I thought we’d gone past that.” Had last night meant nothing to him? “How many times do you want me to apologize?” Her guilt was crushing.
“I don’t want apologies. I never did.” He swung out onto a relatively clear track. That wasn’t saying much—trees stood tall and thick on either side, blocking them in a tunnel of dark green. “I want an explanation.”
“I told you,” she said between gritted teeth. “I wasn’t in a good place. I needed some space. You’re so bossy, you take over everything and I needed to be my own person.”
He threw her another look. “There might be some truth in that, but it’s not everything. Why, Tally? Why tell me you were dead?”
“Clay—”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to—”
“Why?”
“Because you left me!” she screamed, driven to the brink. “You left me!”