Visions of Heat p-2

by Nalini Singh

  Vaughn cradled Faith against his chest. "She'll be fine in a few minutes."

  Sascha rose from her crouch. "How do you know that?"

  "Maybe I'm Psy."

  She sighed. "Do I smell breakfast?" Without waiting for an answer, she strode inside the house.

  Lucas only spoke when she was out of earshot. "I've never questioned your judgment and I won't do it now."

  "But?"

  "She's not like Sascha, Vaughn. Sascha could already feel before she came to us. Even if Faith's story is completely true, she's as cold as the rest of her race. Don't forget that."

  In his arms, he felt her heartbeat, felt the rush of her blood. "She's warmer than you know."

  "What happened?"

  "I think you and Sascha both need to hear that. Have breakfast and give Faith time to wake up."

  Lucas nodded and followed his mate inside. Vaughn felt a strange tension release from his shoulders. He couldn't quite pinpoint the source, but something about the other cat had set him on edge, though Lucas was his friend in the truest sense of the word. They'd never been just alpha and sentinel. The loyalty forged in the dark days of their childhoods went both ways—he trusted Lucas as absolutely as the other male trusted him. But all of a sudden his instincts were reacting as if the other man were a threat.

  Frowning, he returned his attention to the woman in his arms. He had a reason for keeping her outside. From what Sascha had told them since she'd become part of DarkRiver, Psy were used to living in boxes and it seemed Faith had been more boxed in than most. But she'd had no problem walking into a forest on her own so maybe a hidden sense in this particular Psy craved the freedom to be found in the wild.

  A tiny movement. He ran his hand up and down her arm, fingering the material of her shirt and stroking her back to wakefulness. As her head shifted against his chest, he used his feet to make the swing sway gently back and forth. Her eyelashes lifted and fluttered back down, then lifted again.

  "How was your nap, Red?" He lowered the volume of his voice in an effort to keep this conversation private.

  She balled up a fist against his chest. "Why are you touching me?" were the first words out of her mouth. They were soft and a little husky.

  "Why aren't you seizing again?"

  Night-sky eyes blinked and, sitting up, she used both hands to push her hair off her face. "You're correct. Why am I not having another seizure?"

  Surprised, he had no response. Sascha and Lucas came back out at that instant. The look on Sascha's face when she saw Faith, awake and apparently aware, was priceless. Lucas had grabbed a couple of chairs from inside the house and now placed them so they faced Vaughn and Faith. "Sit."

  Sascha obeyed, hands full with two plates of food. "You okay?" she asked as Lucas took the bigger plate off her hands.

  "I believe so." Faith rubbed her temples. "All my shields are holding against..." She paused and seemed to have to force the next words out: "Against the PsyNet." There was something very relieved about that statement, and suddenly Vaughn knew Faith's greatest fear. When she made a move to get off his lap, he had the urge to force her to stay, but that very urge made him let go.

  She stood on shaky feet and took a deep breath. "Yes, I think I'm fine. Though the block against talking about the PsyNet is quite strong."

  "Tell them about your vision, Red." He'd guessed what she'd seen, but he wanted her to talk about it, confront it.

  She covered the small distance to the railing and seemed to focus her attention on the solid green of the trees. "It was another vision of heavy, formless darkness—the beginning. It'll build up until there's a murder to relieve the pressure. At least that's how I think it works. I've never had any contact with a killer before."

  "Why do you call it darkness?" Lucas asked.

  "I can't see anything in detail. I merely get a sense of darkness." It was as if she could find no other word to describe it. "There's evil in the darkness, a malicious intent I understand, though I've never before experienced those things." Her voice held an underlying thread of strain Vaughn could almost taste. "I think it's because I'm somehow actually him for the time I'm having the visions."

  "Is any of that normal?" Sascha laid her fork down on her plate.

  "No." Faith's back straightened and she finally turned to face them. "I usually see extremely clearly, details down to serial numbers, but it's all very clean. I'm never a participant."

  "But not this time." Vaughn didn't like how she'd separated herself from the group when it was obvious she needed to be held.

  "No." Her eyes were bleeding to black again and the effect was eerie. "It's like he reaches out and grabs me. I couldn't snap out of the vision until you touched me."

  "Come sit here," he ordered, at the end of his patience.

  She shook her head. "You won't keep your distance."

  "That's exactly what you need."

  "Who are you to make that judgment?"

  "I saw something in your room this morning. Come here and I'll tell you what."

  Her eyes were completely black by this point and full of suspicion. She took a few seconds to think about it before coming and sitting down on the swing ... as far from him as physically possible. The cat wanted to snarl, but the male knew when to demand and when to let be.

  "What did you see?" she asked. "You're not Psy—what could you possibly have seen?"

  "There was something around you when you woke. A physical blackness that looked real enough to touch."

  "Vaughn, are you sure?" Sascha leaned forward.

  "It was like a shadow sticking to her."

  Faith had absently begun to propel the swing back and forth. "I don't understand. None of my visions have ever manifested like that and I've been monitored since I was three years old."

  "But you've never had these kinds of visions," he pointed out, struck by the delicacy of her profile. She was so easily breakable. He'd never put a bruise on her, but others weren't so careful and the Psy Council was made up of monsters.

  "No. That's why I came to you. I need to know how to stop them."

  Vaughn glanced up and caught Sascha's pained expression as she answered. "Faith, I'm sorry, but I don't think you can."

  Faith's hands tightened on the edge of the seat. "I have to find a way. If I don't, I won't be able to function at acceptable levels."

  "You didn't come to us because you wanted the visions to stop." Vaughn waited until she looked at him. "What you want is the ability to control them—so you can see what it is that your mind's trying to show you."

  She shook her head. "No. I don't have the capacity to handle the visions. Why would I want them to continue?"

  Looking into those ebony eyes, he closed the gap between them. "Because then you'll stop feeling guilty about your sister."

  Her body turned to ice and she stared straight ahead. "I'm Psy. I don't feel guilt."

  "There was nothing you could've done." He pressed his thigh against hers, forcing her attention back to him. "You were never trained to deal with the kinds of things you're seeing now."

  "I shouldn't be seeing them in the first place."

  "Why?"

  CHAPTER 8

  Faith opened her mouth to reply and realized she had no real answer. She'd been taught that because of the Protocol, the visions would always focus on the narrow subject of commerce. But she'd also been taught that predatory changelings were uniformly violent creatures to be avoided at all costs. And she'd been taught that Sascha Duncan was a failed Psy, when the other cardinal's power was a vibrant blaze.

  "Faith." Sascha's voice was gentle, her eyes even more so. "Maybe this was what you were always meant to see."

  She'd made the logical connections, but found herself hesitating to draw a conclusion. "Why would they lie to me about that?"

  "Because there's no money in stopping murder." Lucas's harsh voice cut into the silence.

  "No." She brought the swaying motion to an abrupt halt. "No one could condition that out o
f me."

  "They didn't. You're seeing," Vaughn reminded her.

  "I'm twenty-four years old. Why would the dark visions come now?"

  "Maybe that's the point at which conditioning starts to break down in certain Psy," Sascha murmured. "I'm only two years older."

  Faith stared at the other cardinal. "What did they condition out of you?"

  "Everything." Sascha leaned into her mate's stroking hand. "They crippled me, told me I wasn't a cardinal. It almost drove me mad."

  Madness. The demon that stalked Faith's every waking hour, whispered in her ear, and awaited her at the end of her life. "Is that what you think will happen to me?"

  "If you don't embrace your gift, yes."

  "It's not a gift. It's a curse." She didn't want to see horror and pain, terror and malevolence, didn't want to feel. "It might drive me mad by itself."

  "You really think you're that weak, Red?" Vaughn's voice was a husky purr against her ear. "You climbed that fence and walked into changeling territory without pause. We have teeth and claws and you took us on. Compared to that, visions should be easy."

  Faith turned and met those amazing wild eyes. "The only thing you could've done was kill me. The visions might leave me one of the walking dead."

  "Why are you so scared of them?" Sascha asked.

  "I don't feel fear." Faith jerked to her feet. "My PsyClan has always ensured I was taken care of. Why would they want to handicap me in any sense?" She knew, she could reason it out, but she wanted someone else to be the one to vocalize it.

  Vaughn shifted and she caught the movement with the corner of her eye. "You know the answer to that."

  She should've guessed he'd never let her take the easy way out. "Money." Her PsyClan had sold her out for money. "Why am I the first to ... break?"

  "Maybe you're not." Sascha stood to face her. "Maybe you're simply the first one who hasn't been found out and silenced."

  Faith saw the truth Sascha was too kind to point out. "You mean rehabilitated, don't you?"

  "Or perhaps worse, given your value. Any strange disappearances in your family tree?"

  "My grandmother was last seen shortly after she gave birth to my father. And five years ago, one of my cousins vanished—Sahara was only sixteen." She let herself think about what that might mean. "You think the Council or the PsyClan might be keeping them captive, working them when they're lucid and letting the dark visions ravage them when they're not?"

  "I don't know, Faith. I'm not an F-Psy."

  Faith felt Vaughn walk to stand behind her. Somehow that gave her the strength she needed. "I am. And I know that even in the madness, there are moments of clarity. My paternal aunt is held in a care facility—she went conventionally insane during her sixth decade—but she continues to make million-dollar predictions four or five times a year. More than enough to pay for her care." To make her comfortable in her madness.

  The last time Faith had seen her aunt, it had been via a communication screen—Carina NightStar could no longer bear any kind of immediate sentient contact. What she'd seen would haunt Faith till the day she died. The icy Gradient 7.5 Psy who'd been one of her trainers, a woman with a record of almost eighty-five percent accuracy, had turned into a creature that no longer looked human. She'd chewed off her own lips and bitten and scratched herself so many times that they'd had to remove most of her fingernails and teeth. Her clothing had been torn, her hair matted. Something strange and wrong had skittered behind her eyes.

  "But unlike my aunt, the ones who saw the dark visions could never be allowed to speak to the rest of us. It would bring the success of the entire Protocol into question. They'd have to be locked away, caged before they fell victim to the mental degradation." Faith began to see the true inhumanity of what it was these changelings were asking her to accept.

  "Caged Psy can still forecast. In fact, they'd be the perfect tools—machines no one knew existed, their treatment subject to no laws. And if certain other segments of conditioning were deliberately broken, it would leave them open to everything ... including visions of plots or rebellions that might come in very useful to those in power."

  "Faith," Sascha began.

  "I'm sorry." She raised a hand. "I need time to process everything I've learned so far."

  "You might not have a lot of time left." Sascha's tone was anything but harsh.

  "Will you see me again? I think I can get away in five days or so."

  "Of course."

  Faith wondered if in those five days she might make some sense out of the pack of lies upon which she'd apparently been raised. What was true and what was false? The changelings might be right in some matters, but who said they were right in everything? Their loyalties were different, their lives controlled by emotion.

  Maybe they were wrong. Maybe her own people didn't only see her as a money-making asset. Maybe.

  Vaughn escorted Faith to the edge of the trees. "Will you be okay climbing the fence?"

  "Yes." She settled her bag carefully on her back. "You'll be here in five days?" Her eyes were looking anywhere but at him.

  "I keep my promises, Red." He curved his hand around her nape. "I may even pay you an earlier visit. Wouldn't want to undo all the good we've done."

  "Good?"

  He rubbed his thumb over her skin. "I like the way you feel under my touch."

  "Don't come, Vaughn. If they catch you, they'll hurt you."

  His beast heard something it liked in her tone. "I never get caught, baby. If I can infiltrate the SnowDancer den without tipping them off, then this is child's play."

  "There are Psy guards, able to scan the area for signs of sentient life."

  "These forests are changeling territory—they have to know we're going to keep an eye on them. Don't worry about me. I'm a big boy." But he was delighted by her concern, for that was definitely what he'd sniffed in the air.

  "I simply don't want to mess up my next meeting with Sascha. If you're caught, they'll put me under tougher surveillance." Her skin was soft, but her spine as straight as a rod.

  He brushed his lips over her cheek. She gasped and moved away. "Go, Red. The guards are at the optimal distance."

  She ran quickly to the fence and scaled it with smooth feminine grace. Oh yeah, she'd definitely make things very interesting in bed. And he had every intention of getting her there. The taste of her on his lips was the most intoxicating thing he'd ever felt.

  She landed on her feet on the other side and looked back as if searching for him. He allowed his eyes to go night-glow in the forest and knew the instant she spotted him. Then she was gone, hidden behind the fences of the Psy world.

  Good thing cats were excellent climbers.

  Early the next morning, Faith shored up her shields against the endless mass of the PsyNet and took a step out of her bedroom. As she'd expected, the chime of the incoming call didn't cease. The M-Psy were checking up on her well before her three-day rest period was officially over. If she didn't answer, they'd likely take it as justification to enter her home.

  In the past, that knowledge had settled her—if a vision went wrong, they'd be there to pick up the pieces. But today, the lack of privacy, the lack of her ability to live any kind of a real life, made her— She had no word to describe her reaction. No word that didn't imply feeling, the one thing she couldn't embrace.

  She pressed the answer key on the touch pad. "Yes?"

  The composed face of one of Xi Yun's underlings looked back at her. "You didn't answer our two earlier calls. We wished to ensure you were conscious and rational."

  Because F-Psy had a habit of becoming irrational and mad.

  Faith realized the M-Psy always subtly pointed that out, never letting her forget the threat looming over her head.

  Tell a child something often enough and she starts to believe it.

  Sascha's words whispered through her mind and refused to let her return to the isolated, accepting state she'd been in before she'd breached the fence. And run headfirs
t into the most dangerous predator she could imagine.

  "While I accept your need to ensure my safety, I gave notice that I would not be available for three days. That period doesn't end till this evening. Is that so difficult to understand?" Her voice was cold, a knife forged in the fires of isolation. "Or would you like me to have you transferred and replaced with someone who understands my statements?" She'd never threatened any such thing in the past, but the nameless awakening thing inside of her would not be quiet over this latest threat to her independence.

  The M-Psy blinked. "My apologies, Foreseer. I will not make this error again."

  He'd also log in her unusual behavior and put her down for a complete physical. Faith turned off the communication console without another word, conscious that she'd shot herself in the foot. The only places where she'd be safe from monitoring now would be in her private areas and even that wasn't certain. It would've been far more logical to have kept her mouth shut. Or would it? She stilled and considered her behavior. She was a twenty-four-year-old F-Psy who produced with near perfect accuracy. She was worth billions, not the millions Sascha had guessed at. And she knew that her psychic strength offered her immunity from a lot of things that might otherwise be issues.

  Such as being interned at the Center, her mind wiped clean in a process of "rehabilitation."

  Put that way, arrogance was almost a given. Merely because they'd subjugated their feelings, it didn't mean that her people were no longer cognizant of distinctions of class, wealth, and power. For the first time, she considered the untapped reservoir of her own political power. Perhaps she even had enough to delete all monitoring of her, aside from when she was in the chair. Maybe not at once, but slowly?

  Glancing at the object on which she'd spent so much of her life, she made her decision. Instead of sliding onto it, she returned to her bedroom and lay down on the bed. She was going to use this free time to surf the PsyNet, to look for information she'd never before considered might exist— because her keepers had surrounded her in so much cotton wool that it had become a prison.