by Nalini Singh
The words had been ordinary, but the reserved tone made her skin prickle as if she wore an itchy coat. She shrugged to get rid of the sensation and glared in his direction to warn him not to think he could just shut down whenever he felt like it--but he'd already turned away, wasn't looking.
Able to watch him without being watched in return, she traced the outline of his profile with her gaze, trying to see beneath his skin, trying to find out what it was about Bowen Knight that activated the crazy gene in her blood and made her act so impetuously and with such unthinking emotion.
Because while Hugo might've been wrong in one conclusion, that didn't mean his entire dossier was a mistake. The horrific photo of their battered dead flashed across her irises--an echo of pain and torture caught forever in color, smashing up against the remembered feel of Bowen's mouth on her own.
Her gorge threatened to rise.
"Wait," she said, reaching back to undo her apron and pull it off. "I'll come with you." She had to know more of this man, had to understand if she was seeing what she wanted to see, if she was being led by a primitive response that knew nothing of conscience or honor--or if there was more here than a pitiless human out to win even if it meant murder.
She made sure her kitchen hands had enough work to keep on with before she joined Atalina and Bowen in their slow walk out of the kitchen. Hex ran in partway. Picking him up, she carried him cupped in one hand.
It was as they exited into the atrium that she caught the faint glow in the water beyond the seaward wall. Wonder bloomed. "Look to the right and into the black." Someone had already dimmed the external habitat lights.
Kaia knew the instant Bowen saw the bloom of bioluminescent Medusozoa, their fragile tentacles hauntingly beautiful in the water and their bodies pulsing with light. Like living stars caught in a sky that moved.
He went motionless, didn't exhale until the family had passed.
The external lights glowed back up to full strength, just enough to penetrate the deep nearest the station so friends could look in and they could look out.
"I love it when they visit." The Ushijimas lived in the city above Ryujin Station.
"They're changeling?" Bowen's question was directed at her, though his eyes still searched the deep for another glimpse.
"As changeling as me and Attie."
Hand pressing down on his cane, Bowen leaned down to whisper, "I thought jellyfish didn't have brains."
"Things get murky with certain water changelings," she managed to say as his warmth rubbed against her like an affectionate cat. "Impossible transitions are possible."
"I was lucky enough to be invited to take scans of their brains in their aquatic form." Atalina tugged off a hair tie from around her wrist to pull back her bob into a short tail. "Their neural structures aren't anything like those of their natural brethren. Along with a complex nerve net, they have a fully functional central nervous system--brain included. That's why they can control their movements instead of being reliant on the ocean currents."
"Are you sure I'm awake?" Bowen sounded less distant and more like the man who'd become absorbed in Wild Woman and talked to her about bears and walnuts. "I'm talking about jellyfish brains."
"They don't like the term 'jellyfish,'" Kaia warned, not about to have her friends inadvertently insulted--and Bowen Knight stung in retaliation; Mary Ushijima did not hold back when it came to protecting the hearts of her family. "Always use 'Medusozoa' in direct conversation."
Bitter chocolate eyes searching hers, so damn alive that it made her want to scream at the injustice of the choice he'd been offered. "BlackSea faux pas?"
Swallowing back the roiling wave of anger, she nodded. And told herself to take a step back, to be sensible, rational until she figured out the truth or lie of Bowen Knight. But that wild gene in her blood, it wasn't only awake, it was in control. And it made her eyes dip to his mouth again.
"Kaia." A rough whisper of sound.
Chapter 18
If you become as cold as the Psy, haven't they won?
--Leah Knight (54) to her son, Bowen (23)
"COME ON, TIME'S wasting." Dr. Kahananui's voice was absentminded, her attention on the slim organizer she'd pulled out of her pocket, but it was like a rock thrown into a mirror-still pond.
The moment broke.
Red kissing her skin, Kaia walked around Bowen to join Dr. Kahananui. "You had a good sleep?" he heard her asking.
He couldn't hear the doctor's answer past the roaring in his ears. He'd thought he'd gotten a handle on his response to Kaia, enough to think past it, but he'd been lying to himself. All he'd done was shut down the part of him that felt far too much, but one look from her and his shields had blown wide open.
Gut tight, he followed her and Dr. Kahananui out of the atrium and away from the magic of that wall that looked out at "the black," as Kaia had called it. He liked that description, because infinite blackness lay at the heart of the ocean. A place so deep and mysterious that there was no way to see through it unless you'd been born for it.
Kaia was like that, a mystery that swirled with dark currents. "What do you shift into?" The words left his mouth before he was consciously aware of what he was about to ask, his hunger to know her a craving.
No time. He had no time to learn the mystery of her second by second, kiss by kiss.
The look she shot him over her shoulder was a challenge. "You'll know if I decide to show you."
At that moment, he'd have sold his soul for the answer.
"Here we go." Dr. Kahananui put her hand on the scanpad outside the door he'd seen on his way out of this same corridor only ninety minutes earlier.
It felt like a lifetime ago and in that lifetime, a massive earthquake had shaken his world to its foundations. Bowen was used to standing on solid ground, but this ground kept shifting, kept asking him to make new choices, kept whispering at him to live.
Kaia looked back at him after entering the lab behind Dr. Kahananui, her gaze going to his legs. Checking his balance. "You're not really relying on the cane anymore."
Bowen hadn't realized the truth of that until she pointed it out. "I love these bugs." Delighted at the slow but notable improvement in his mobility, he leaned the cane up against a nearby table and took in the rest of the lab.
It covered a significant area.
His room, he realized, must be on the other side of the far wall.
The space was clean and white with plenty of glass beakers and gleaming machinery that hummed while completing arcane tasks. In short, it looked like every other laboratory he'd ever been in. Except for the mouse currently running along one counter.
He hadn't seen Kaia put down her pet, but he watched as Hex ran into a maze at the far end of the counter that appeared to be created of stiff cardboard cut, bent, and taped neatly together so as to eliminate all external light and sightlines.
When he walked over to look down into that maze, he was astonished at the complexity of it--it went up in multiple levels and had any number of dead ends, as well as slides that would drop Hex right back in the heart of the maze. "Is he genetically engineered?" It was a serious question.
"No, he's just a mouse genius," Kaia said from where she was helping Dr. Kahananui with a large device centered on a chair that glittered with hundreds of lines of the same sensor wire that lay against his skull. "He kept solving the other puzzles too quickly so I made him this one."
Bowen thought of Toric again, of the simple joy of having a friend who asked nothing from him but his companionship. "What do you do when he just keeps going around in circles?" At this instant, Hex's nose was twitching as he debated between turning right or heading left.
"He's too smart to do that. When he's had enough, he rings one of the bells placed throughout the maze and I pick him up."
Dr. Kahananui waved Bo over. "Take a seat."
A tall and almost cadaverously thin man walked into the room before Bo could take a step. He was probably around Bo's age, t
hough the total lack of fat or muscle on his frame made him appear at least a decade older. His skin was around the same shade as Lily's, but his eyes were a pale hazel and his hair a lightish brown.
"Dr. Kahananui," he said. "I went to ensure the med-panel was correctly recording all data and found your subject gone." A stern look aimed in Bowen's direction. "It's inconvenient having a subject who goes for walks."
Bowen saw Kaia's lips twitch and felt warmth uncurl within his own stomach. "Just consider me a brain on legs," he said, feeling oddly young.
Coughing loudly, Kaia turned away.
"Bowen," Dr. Kahananui said after a concerned glance at Kaia, "this is my assistant, George." She patted Kaia's back. "Did you swallow your own saliva the wrong way?"
Bowen saw Kaia's shoulders jerk, decided to rescue her. "Good to meet you, George." He held out a hand.
Shooting him a wide-eyed look, George shook it so delicately that it was as if he was afraid to break Bo. For an instant, Bo wondered if George was one of the clumsy orcas who kept breaking things, but he couldn't bring himself to believe it. The man looked like a twig Bo could snap in half.
"I have this, George." Dr. Kahananui patted Kaia's back one last time before returning her attention to the scanner. "Could you drop by habitat three and help Tansy move across a hydro processor? It's a bit big for her to manage on her own."
"I'll go over now." George looked again at Bo, his thin lips pressed tightly together before he spoke. "Consider staying put. Dr. Kahananui can't go around chasing her experiments."
"I'm guessing you didn't hire George for his charming personality," Bo said after the door closed behind the other man.
"No, for his brain. The same reason I want you."
Kaia had been wiping at her eyes, her lips curved . . . but her smile faded to nothing in front of Bowen's gaze as he stepped up onto the podium that held the large diagnostic chair.
"Kaia, help me calibrate."
Jerking at the doctor's voice, Kaia walked to the chair and took one of his forearms, lifting to position it exactly against the arm of the diagnostic chair. When she would've done the same with his right, he cupped her cheek with his palm. She leaned into the touch for a stunning heartbeat before pulling his hand off her cheek and positioning him as needed, his fingertips directly on top of five small sensors.
Her hands were strong and capable--and boasted small nicks and scars that probably came from the kitchen. Warmth lingered everywhere she touched, the sensation deeper and far more wrenching than the lightning that had struck him in the kitchen.
The cells of his body thirsted.
More. More.
Bo could've lied, could've told himself his response was a result of the coma. But this violent storm inside him, it had nothing to do with anything as ordinary as attraction or desire. In a short ninety minutes, Kaia had smashed his defenses open, aroused him to boiling point and to fury, and made him act the rash youth he'd never been.
Kaia was his reckoning.
And she was the greatest challenge of his life.
His muscles locked at the memory of her allegations, but the cold that seared his mind to razor clarity wasn't aimed at her. Kaia was fire and love and devotion. Her rage came from losing the people she loved.
What iced his senses was the possibility of evil among his own. Because in one thing, she was right: humans had benefited from BlackSea beginning to look outward.
Chapter 19
Bo, you don't have to ask. You know I'd walk into hell itself beside you.
--Heenali Roy to Bowen Knight (2079)
MALACHAI HAD NEVER specifically stated that it was the vanishings that had driven the change in BlackSea's isolationist policy, but the connection hadn't been difficult to make once Bo learned of the people BlackSea had lost.
It was a dagger in the back to think he might've been manipulated and lied to, nasty things going on behind an illusion of fidelity, but that didn't mean he was about to close his eyes to the possibility. But neither was he ready to write off Heenali. Small and fierce and marked by psychic scars that caused her to wake screaming in the night, she'd walked beside him into danger year after year.
Her loyalty to the Alliance was a force of nature.
He'd speak to Malachai, then contact Lily and Cassius. Lily was incapable of hiding anything from him, and the bond that tied him and Cassius together was too primal to be fractured by anything less than death. He couldn't go to the surface, but they would be his hands and his eyes. However, the ultimate responsibility was and would always be his: Bo had never believed in false truths, in saying he had clean hands simply because he hadn't had advance knowledge of an action.
If it was committed under the Alliance banner, he owned it.
And should Kaia's allegations prove true?
Bowen's hands tightened over the ends of the chair arms. If Heenali had helped commit the atrocities of abduction, torture, and murder, then there was only one suitable punishment--and Bowen would mete it out himself. It'd break his fucking heart, but he'd do it.
Heenali would die in a prison cell anyway.
In front of him, Kaia closed black straps over his forearms and wrists. Bo didn't protest. Of a soft fabric, they'd be effortless to break.
"These are to keep your hands from moving out of alignment," she said, her head bent as she nudged his fingertips back into position. "Try to remain as still as you can."
The cinnamon and exotic bloom of her scent swirled around Bo as she reached over and behind him to pull down a part of the machine that fit over his head, with a particular rectangular piece sliding in front of his eyes.
It was cold, metallic, a harsh contrast to the soft warmth of this woman who wasn't certain whether he was a monster. And yeah, the blow landed exactly as hard the second time around. "Eyes open or closed?" he asked from behind the metal that turned his world black.
"Open." Kaia seemed to brush her fingers over his hair, but that was probably wishful thinking on his part. "But it doesn't matter if you blink. This is going to be an intensive scan; if you try to keep from blinking that long, you'll probably burst an eyeball."
Bo had heard that some changelings bit their mates during sex, or just for fun, or when they were mad. He'd never been a biter, but he was starting to reconsider his stand on the matter where Kaia was concerned. They could call it foreplay. Of course, he'd probably have a kitchen knife embedded in his gut before he ever got close enough.
His lips tugged up.
"And in three," Atalina began, "two . . . one."
A soft hum entered his ears while multicolored lasers danced across his eyes--or that was what it felt like. "I'm in the middle of a kaleidoscope."
"Is it disorienting?"
"No, it's incredible." As if he were at a desert rave, the beat of his pulse the bass beat of the dance.
Except that Bo had never attended a rave. Never kissed a pretty woman while music boomed and lights crashed over their heads. Now, when he imagined it, he saw only one face in front of his: Kaia's.
Laughing and contrary and softhearted Kaia who thought he was the enemy and whose turbulent confusion over their kiss was an intruder between them.
Despite his decision to live in the moment, in the now, he felt the sharp spear of regret after all.
"Your brain is very active." Dr. Kahananui's no-nonsense tone. "Can you stop thinking for a minute?"
Bo took a deep breath and banished the images of a life he'd never have. "How?"
"Have you ever meditated, done yoga?"
"No."
"Mal says he goes into a meditative state when he moves through a martial arts kata." Kaia's voice, like dark water swirling around him. "Do that in your mind using your preferred form of physical combat."
The regret stabbed again. Kaia, water changeling and scientist-turned-cook, already understood him better than any lover he'd ever had. Someone up above had a hellish sense of humor to bring her into his path at this time and in this place--and with su
ch horror in the world.
"Bowen."
"Working on it, Doc." Gripping the regret in a granite fist, he began to run through a mixed martial arts sequence in his head, concentrating on creating perfect angles with his body and nothing else.
Chapter 20
Fixed the computronic fault in your oven before work today. I demand mocha cupcakes with chocolate icing as payment.
--Message from Hugo Sorensen to Kaia Luna
"YOUR SUBJECT'S FALLEN asleep," Kaia murmured to Attie, her gaze on Bowen's face. Not relaxed, even now. But perhaps a touch less hard. "Do you want me to wake him?" It was a reluctant question; he needed the rest.
Day one out of a coma and Bowen Knight already made more demands on himself than any man she'd ever met. Even asleep, he had a drive and an unrelenting focus to him that was a silent storm.
"No," Atalina said absently. "I have the scans I needed with his eyes open. The rest will go more smoothly while he's asleep."
"He won't be happy when he wakes." A stark rush of unexpected affection had her brushing her fingers over his hair again. She wondered if he ever truly rested when at full strength, or if he rode himself brutally hard day in and day out.
Kaia knew the answer, had read it in the relentless lines of his face. "I think I'll make some blackberry pies," she murmured as Attie continued to stare at the large screen on the wall beyond which lay Bowen's room, her attention on the intricate mapping of his brain.
"You know that's not my favorite," her cousin muttered five minutes later. "I like cherry."
But Kaia was still going to make blackberry. Bowen's sister had thrust the list of Bowen's favorite foods into Kaia's hand on the day of the kidnapping, a hopeful desperation in her eyes.
And though Hugo's assertions had been loud in her head, Kaia had carefully saved the list. Just in case Lily's brother woke up. Only he wasn't simply that any longer. He was Bowen Knight, a dangerously compelling man and security chief in forced exile.
"Attie."
"Hmm?"
"Do you ever think about what Hugo said?" Kaia's mind remained in tumult, caught between the evidence gathered by her closest childhood friend--and the reality of a man who burned with honor. "The things I told you." Atalina and Hugo weren't close, never spent any time together except when Kaia was holding a get-together and had invited them both.