Visions of Heat p-2

by Nalini Singh

  Vaughn's thumb rubbed against her skin and she turned her head. "Yes?"

  "Why did you wait so long to come to us?"

  She was caught by the demand in his voice. That, she recognized. People often demanded things from her. "Because until Marine was murdered, I had no way of knowing whether these visions were real. I thought my mind was disintegrating—it's something that happens to all F-Psy, but generally not until the fifth decade or so of life. I believed my decline was beginning early."

  "I've never heard of that," Sascha whispered.

  "That's not surprising. The PsyClans don't want to be known as producing defective Psy and by the time we deteriorate, we've accumulated enough wealth to ensure discreet medical care during our decline." She tried not to think about what was coming, tried not to imagine herself being unable to speak in coherent sentences or tell the difference between foresight and reality. But that didn't mean she was ignorant of the inevitability. It was why certain NightStar telepaths had trained in the specialist area of blocking. When F-Psy crashed for the final time, it was the blockers who kept their madness from leaking out into the PsyNet, providing the shields the fractured F-Psy could no longer maintain.

  "I think that's a load of bullshit." Vaughn's hand tightened a fraction, but it felt like a full-body hug to her senses.

  The only thing that kept her from an overload reaction was her concentration on his words. "To what are you referring?"

  His touch gentled though she'd made no verbal complaint, that stroking thumb coming to a halt. "They had Sascha convinced she was going mad just because she didn't fit into the mold they'd created for her. Sounds like the same thing."

  Faith looked at Sascha. "He doesn't understand."

  "What?" Vaughn's tone was more growl than sound.

  It was Sascha who answered. "The F-Psy had one of the highest rates of mental illness even before Silence."

  Lucas's arms came around his mate in a tight hug. Faith wondered what Lucas had heard that she hadn't, because from the look on Sascha's face, it seemed to have been exactly what she'd needed. "But highest doesn't translate to all, does it, Sascha darling?"

  Faith found her eyes following the movement of Lucas's hand over Sascha's curls. Until Vaughn's thumb whispered over her skin again. She stiffened, caught off guard to find that he'd moved closer. But she couldn't speak, even to tell him to back off. Perhaps she'd exhausted her ability to deal with the amount of new material she was being forced to process.

  "Don't believe everything you've been told, Faith."

  It was the first time he'd said her name and he made it sound interesting, as if it were more than a useful tag to call her by, made it sound ... She didn't know to describe it, but she knew it was something she'd never before heard.

  "The Psy Council is expert at spinning lies to further their own ends."

  She stood without warning and headed for the door, her steps unsteady but determined. "I need to breathe." Walking out into the night, she grabbed the railing around the porch and took several gulps of cold night air.

  It was no surprise to feel Vaughn's heat beside her a bare second later. He leaned his back against the railing so he could look at her. When he raised a hand, she shook her head. "Please, don't."

  He paused. "You're stronger than this."

  "No, I'm not. If I were strong, I would've faced those visions instead of running from them and my sister would still be alive." There, it was out, the truth she'd been hiding from since the moment her father had told her about Marine. "If I were strong, I would've understood what it was that I was seeing." She stared into the darkness of the forest, a darkness that was a gift and not a curse.

  "I've seen things since I was a child. Benign, useful things. I see when the market's going to go up or down. I see if a new invention is going to catch on so businesses can invest money at the outset. I see if a start-up venture has the potential to succeed." Her hands clenched on the wood of the railing and she felt a sense of chaos beating at the back of her mind, a threat from within her own psyche. That was how the madness began—with the inability to control physical reactions. "I don't see death and blood. I don't see murder."

  "F-Psy used to." Vaughn's voice was a deep purr that rubbed against her insides in a way that was disturbingly intimate. "They used to see disasters and murders, pain and horror."

  She finally looked at him. "No wonder they went mad."

  "Only some of them."

  But these days, all F-Psy eventually faced that fate. She saw what he was trying to say, but couldn't accept it. Too much. It was far too much. "I need time to assimilate everything."

  She expected him to push her as he'd been pushing her since the instant they'd met. But he nodded. "Go on." He jerked his head toward the door. "Sascha's making up a bed for you in one of the rooms."

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  "Ask."

  "Sascha and Lucas—how?" She couldn't fathom how a cardinal Psy could've survived the severance of the Net link, much less entered the changeling world.

  Vaughn's face underwent a subtle shift. "Do you see this?" He lifted his right arm and she saw the tattoo on his biceps for the first time. Three jagged slashing lines, they were reminiscent of the markings on Lucas's face. "I'm a sentinel. My loyalty is to Sascha and Lucas. And you might yet be a threat."

  She wondered why that caused an odd sensation in her chest. "You really would kill me if necessary."

  "Yes." Those cat eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. "So play nice."

  "I don't know how to play." She couldn't ever remember doing such a thing. "I've been working since I could form any kind of understandable sentence."

  CHAPTER 6

  Vaughn's beast scratched at the walls of his mind, wanting a closer sniff of Faith, as she walked past him and into the cabin. He leashed the cat this time. Faith was hanging on by the thinnest of threads. He had no desire to push her over the edge and snap that thread completely.

  Because the truth was, he wasn't certain he could kill her without hesitation. And that made him wary. Psy weren't all gentle and empathic like Sascha. Some of them were coldblooded killers. DarkRiver knew that too well—they'd lost a young female named Kylie to a Psy serial killer less than a year ago and their blood allies, the SnowDancer wolves, had almost lost a female of their own.

  Brenna, the SnowDancer who'd been kidnapped and tortured, remained deeply damaged despite everything Sascha and the healers had done to help her. Vaughn could guess why—as one of the hunters who had tracked down and executed the killer, he'd seen the face of the evil that had touched her, knew exactly what kind of atrocities the Psy were capable of committing.

  Faith could turn out to be nothing like she seemed. Until they knew for sure, Vaughn had to distrust his reactions around her. While it was true that Psy generally had difficulty manipulating changeling minds, Sascha was proof that nothing was impossible. And notwithstanding the training he'd received from his alpha's mate, he wasn't Psy, while Faith was a cardinal.

  Following his quarry into the house, he watched her and Sascha meet in the middle of the living room. His hand rose to rub over the tattoo on his arm—his loyalty to DarkRiver stemmed from an act of the most cruel betrayal and was set in stone.

  It was the leopards who'd come to his aid at a time when he'd lost everyone and everything that mattered. And it was Lucas who'd extended the hand of friendship that had brought him back from the savage edge of an all-consuming rage. He'd lay his life down for his alpha and until this moment, nothing and no one had ever threatened to shift the intensity of that focus. That Faith was doing so after only a few hours made him more than suspicious of the reality of his response.

  Faith fell asleep seconds after her head hit the pillow, body and mind both worn out. But that didn't stop the visions. Nothing ever stopped them when they were determined to find her.

  Darkness brushed her consciousness. Her heartbeat accelerated. She recognized this darkness. It wasn't friendly, wasn't
something she wanted to see. But it wanted her to watch. There was a twisted pleasure in it, pleasure she understood because it wasn't her own but generated by the darkness. During these visions, she was the darkness and if she'd felt fear, that fact would've terrified her. But of course she wasn't scared—she was a product of Silence.

  It wasn't crushing yet, the darkness. It felt... satisfied. Its needs had been fulfilled for the time being and it was relishing the bloody rush. But then it showed her a glimpse of the future. A future she could no more not see than she could stop breathing.

  Suffocation.

  Torture.

  Death.

  Unable to bear the ugliness, she tried to draw back. It refused to let her. Her heart beat in a dangerous, jagged rhythm. This was impossible, her practical Psy mind tried to point out. But it was drowned out by the primitive core of her psyche. It screamed because it knew that this was possible.

  Sometimes, visions didn't let go. Ever. The end result was insanity so deep and true that no more than twisted fragments of the mind remained. Faith clawed at the darkness, but there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to fight her way out of. It was everywhere and nowhere, an enclosing prison she couldn't break. Her racing heart began to go sluggish as her mind concentrated every ounce of energy on finding a way out. Only to slam up against a blank wall.

  Touch intruded, a sensory alarm so shocking that it snapped the twining threads of the vision. She woke with a gasp, her eyes clashing with a pair that were not quite human. A ragged breath later, she became aware of hands holding on to her upper arms. Skin to skin. Her tank top was soaked with perspiration and, by rights, she should've begun to cascade because of the sensory overload, but she said, "Don't let go." Her voice was a rasp. "Don't let go or I'll fall back in."

  Vaughn tightened his hold, worried by the look in Faith's eyes. There was something unfocused about them, as if she wasn't fully awake. "Talk to me, Faith."

  She kept breathing those jerky ragged breaths and then, to his surprise, reached out to put her hands flat against his bare chest. Her touch was pure heat when he'd expected coolness. It burned and the jaguar wanted more. "Don't let me fall back in. Please, Vaughn. Please.”

  He didn't understand what she was so afraid of, but he was a sentinel—he knew how to protect. His senses had lit up in warning minutes ago, though Faith hadn't made a sound. He'd walked into her room on silent feet, expecting her to wake and tell him to get the hell out. Instead, he'd found her barely breathing, her skin sheened in sweat, her hands curled into fists so tight she'd been bleeding from tiny cuts made by her nails.

  Now those same instincts had him locking his arms tight around her. Touch unsettled Faith; maybe it would unsettle her enough to bring her back from wherever it was that she'd gone.

  Pure black.

  He finally realized what it was about her eyes that had worried him—the complete lack of stars. He'd seen Sascha's eyes do that before, but there had been something different about Faith tonight, as if there were a deeper darkness behind the one he could see. He ran a hand up her back and under her hair to close over her nape. The woman he'd met hours earlier would've been shoving him away and threatening to go into seizures. This one was too still, too passive.

  "Shall I kiss you, Red?" It was a dare. "Never kissed a Psy before. Might be fun."

  Her breath hitched and she shook her head against him like a kitten shaking off wet. Then she shoved at his chest. The devil might've made him keep her with him for a second longer, but he was all too aware that her body had had an unexpected effect on his. He was used to his sexuality; what he wasn't used to was it reacting so completely against his wishes. Letting Faith pull free, he watched as she scrambled backward until her back pressed against the headboard. The eyes staring into his were wide and full of stars.

  He made his smile a slow tease. "So, you back?"

  She nodded, continuing to stare at him as if he were some large wild animal who might see her as dessert. She wasn't far wrong. The cat definitely liked the smell of this Psy and the man found her disturbingly fascinating.

  "I've never scared anyone by threatening to kiss them before," he commented, checking her face for any lingering signs of whatever it was that had frightened her badly enough that he'd become safe.

  "I don't feel fear."

  He tugged at her tank top. "Lost control of your physiological responses again, huh?"

  She pulled the damp fabric from his grasp. "Even Psy can't control sweat in sleep."

  "You going to be okay?"

  Faith didn't want him to go, an illogical reaction. Vaughn couldn't stop the visions if they were determined to come, but some irrational part of her was convinced that if he left, the darkness would return and this time, nothing would make it let go. "Of course."

  "You don't look it." He scowled and reached to push her hair off her face. "Do you want to shower?"

  His touch made every nerve ending ignite but she held strong. She could handle this. It was what had brought her back from the vision and she'd learn to deal with anything that helped keep the darkness at bay. "Yes. Will I wake Sascha and Lucas?"

  "They're not here."

  "We're alone?" She suddenly felt vulnerable in a way that was so viscerally female, it was an utterly new sensation.

  "You didn't think I'd let our alpha and his mate remain in a spot that a cardinal Psy knew about?" He snorted. "We might've blindfolded you, but Psy have other ways of knowing."

  "You thought I'd lead others here."

  "It was a possibility."

  She didn't know what to say, hadn't expected Sascha to abandon her like this. Though of course, once she thought about it, her supposition had no basis in fact.

  "She didn't want to go," Vaughn said, and almost startled her into an overt physical response. "But we weren't going to let her heart put her in danger."

  "Her heart?"

  "She's an E-Psy."

  Faith flicked through a mental file. "There's no such thing as an E designation."

  "Have your shower and I'll tell you something else your Council's been hiding from you. It's almost five—you want coffee?"

  "Okay." Faith was aware there were peculiar gaps in her knowledge and the taste of coffee was one of them. She knew of it, of course. No one who read as much as she did could miss knowing about it, but she'd never actually drunk it.

  Vaughn got up from the bed and her eyes followed the shift of lean muscle and male strength. He was built perfectly in proportion, beautifully constructed. His musculature was well defined and his skin shimmered with a healthy glow that her mind found... interesting, she thought desperately, when that same mind tried to insert another word.

  "Do I pass inspection?"

  Her eyes met ones that glowed slightly in the dark and she saw something in them that she now recognized as laughter. Her answer came from a part of her she hadn't known existed. "You appear healthy, but I'd have to dissect you to make an accurate judgment."

  To her surprise, his lips curved. "So you can play after all."

  She wanted to argue, but he was already walking out. "Wait!" It came out without thought.

  He turned. "What's the matter?"

  Now that he'd stopped, she couldn't say it. What if he left and the darkness found her again? "The shower—where can I get a towel?"

  "Hold on." He stepped out.

  By the time he returned, she'd started to breathe faster. He paused the second he got inside the doorway. "I smell fear, Red."

  She got off the bed and went to grab the towel. What she couldn't even allow herself to think was that she was going to him because he made her feel safe. "You're imagining things." She tugged at the towel.

  He held on to it. "I'm a cat. I don't make mistakes like that. Come on."

  Knowing she should argue, but not having the will to do so, she followed as he led her from the bedroom. When he didn't switch on a single light, she realized it was because he could see perfectly well in the dark. Since she couldn
't, she reached out with her mind and flicked on the kitchen light as they headed into that room.

  He froze. "Telekinesis?"

  "A touch." In reality her Tk strength was close to negligible, but she didn't think it smart to admit that.

  "Any other 'touches' I should know about?" He gave her a piercing look.

  She shrugged. "What are you doing?"

  "Starting the coffee before I babysit you." He opened a canister sitting on the counter that ran along the back wall.

  It felt like he'd slapped her. "Give me the towel. I don't need babysitting."

  Ignoring her, he finished setting up the coffeemaker. "I was teasing, Red. Don't get your fur ruffled." He pointed down the hallway. "Go use that shower and I'll sit outside and wait for you."

  She took the towel he held out. "I'm fine." She didn't know what had driven her to tell that complete untruth. She never lied—she had no reason to. "And I don't have fur." But for some bizarre reason, she found herself imagining what it would be like to stroke that black and gold fur she'd glimpsed when he'd first stalked her.

  "Ask nice and I might let you."

  He'd read her mind for the second time. "You're telepathic?"

  He nudged her toward the shower. "No, you just can't lie worth a damn. Everything's in your eyes. Plus I know when a woman's thinking about stroking me."

  "I wasn't thinking about stroking you." She preceded him down the hallway. "I was imagining your fur."

  Heat at her back and a rough whisper against her ear. "You let me stroke you and I'll let you stroke me—I have a thing about your skin."

  Faith had no idea how to deal with him. So she opened the bathroom door and stepped inside. "I won't be long."

  His eyes lingered over her and she became aware that the tank top was plastered to her skin, outlining everything about her, from her full breasts to the curve of her hip. "Take your time."

  Faith wondered why she felt like she'd been marked. He hadn't touched her and yet... he had.

  Vaughn heard the shower come on as he leaned against the wall next to the bathroom. He'd said he'd stay there while she showered and he would. And it wasn't only because he'd smelled the acrid tang of bone-chilling fear. Something far more disquieting had been present in that nightmare-soaked room—a third entity that the cat had recognized as nothing natural, nothing good.