by Nalini Singh
"But," she said, "it isn't so much, is it?" She saw the truth in spite of his uncharacteristic gentleness. "Changelings have kept the Earth beautiful and pollution free, and it's mostly humans who've hung its walls with art and filled its corners with music. What's the Psy legacy—endless steel towers of pure function, businesses that deal in emotionless currency ... and Silence?"
The knowing that came to her was unexpected and as clear as the bright light of morning. "If we don't change, the Psy race will one day be forgotten." And that would be a tragedy. No one who'd seen the beauty of the PsyNet, the potential in it, the stunning energy of life even in Silence, could doubt that.
"Then change the future, Faith. Change the Psy."
An extraordinary task for a renegade from the Net. "Will you be with me?"
"I can't believe you asked that question," he mock-growled, throwing an arm around her neck and dragging her to him. "Of course I'll be with you, and so will the rest of the pack. We're family."
"Family." A bittersweet word. "Always?"
He bit the side of her neck. "Beyond always."
"He's coming." The words fell out of her mouth without conscious thought.
Vaughn drew back from her and gave a very low growl that she didn't actually hear, but which made every hair on her body stand up in attention.
"What—?"
"It's a signal," he whispered, pretending to nibble on her earlobe. From the way she'd seen women looking at him ever since they'd entered the campus, she was probably the focus of considerable feminine envy. Something primitive in her was pleased by that, by the fact that this wild and magnificent creature was hers. He wasn't, and never would be, tame, but he was willing to play nice for her sake. And no one else's.
"Can you feel him?" The quiet question broke into her thoughts. She was shocked at how distracted she'd become from something so important. Vaughn did things to her she couldn't control.
"The knowing works with my ability. It's a kind of vision on a very deep psychic plane. I'm not telepathically connected to him." That horror only happened during actual visions.
"Then how are you going to find him?"
"I'm going to send out my telepathic senses. I'm a Gradient 6 telepath." Very powerful, though nowhere near where she estimated Judd to be. "If I brush up against other Psy, I'll withdraw before they can get a lock on me." She didn't mention that some of those minds could track her very, very quickly.
"But if I touch him, I'll attempt to pinpoint a physical location. It doesn't really matter if I can't—Judd can take the mental signature from my mind and use his stronger Tp abilities to zero in on the killer's position."
"I don't like that damn Psy being in your mind."
"Neither do I." Faith didn't think Judd was out to harm her, but he was an unknown, a rebel Arrow with undetermined loyalties. "It'll be a surface link, a simple data transfer."
"If he tries anything, use the bond."
Her heart skipped a beat at the welcome reminder that she'd never be alone again. "I will. I'm going to begin the search now." She 'pathed the same message to Judd.
I can see you. The masculine voice was so clear, her suspicions about Judd's status on the Gradient solidified into certainty. The man might not have the night-sky eyes, but he had to be near cardinal strong. If you keep the scan radius small, I can pinpoint him almost immediately after you.
Faith whispered the suggestion to Vaughn. "We'll have to change position and go out farther into the open as I scan. But it'll give us an unmistakable target when we do find him. Judd won't have to enter my mind, either."
Vaughn's answer was nothing she could've predicted. "Faith, this is your world. What option do you think will work best?"
"You won't try to overrule me?"
"Only if your choice puts you in unnecessary danger." The cat was in his voice, low and husky. "I can't protect your mind, but I sure as hell will keep your body safe."
She figured that was as good as it was going to get with her jaguar. "Then let's do it. If I start to feel we're getting too close and I can't find him, we'll stop. I don't want to paint a bull's-eye on myself." For the first time in twenty-four years, she was truly alive, and she had no intention of changing that.
CHAPTER 24
"If this works like I think it will," she said, "the second he feels me, he'll try to connect and that should give Judd the opportunity he needs."
"I can smell Judd. Tell him to make sure he's well hidden. He doesn't fit into this campus."
"And you do?" She relayed the message.
"I'm the rough type the good girl always falls for," he said, displaying a rare vein of humor. "That Psy just looks like he's here to take someone out."
Shaking her head, she sent out the first seeking touch. "Nothing."
Vaughn silently picked out a spot closer to the building that housed the intended victim and she repeated the scan. "Nothing."
Two more attempts produced the same frustrating result. Emotion definitely had a downside—an emotionless Psy would've continued scanning with mechanical precision until they achieved success. "Nothing, nothing, nothing!"
"I don't want you any nearer the prey. If you know what he looks like, he might have seen you, too."
"I hadn't considered that, but if he is an F-Psy, that may be a possibility."
"Whatever else he is, he's also a coward," Vaughn spit out. "They're always dangerous when cornered."
She agreed. Certain telepathic abilities could cause massive damage when used offensively. Judd was the perfect example. "Let me try one more sweep. I know he's here." Taking a deep breath, she spread out her senses. This one's for you, Marine.
And there he was.
The darkness recognized her, too. Homing in on her position with frightening speed, it scrabbled for purchase into her mind. Gut instinct came to her aid—she snapped her entire psychic self into a tiny ball, burying it deep within the bond with Vaughn. Changeling wildness locked around her and the talons of darkness slipped away without finding purchase.
It had taken mere milliseconds, but when she opened her eyes, she felt as if she'd run a marathon. Vaughn's body was so tense next to her that she knew he'd sensed the danger. "He's a telepath with attacking capabilities. Foresight might be a secondary talent."
She could see him now. He was standing a few easy meters from her, a tall male with Silent discipline stamped onto his handsome features. In his black suit and white shirt, he was just another anonymous Psy as he swept the area in an effort to find her. "Why doesn't he look like a monster?"
"They never do." Vaughn's claws pricked at her skin through her clothing.
Panic a knot in her throat, she closed her hand over his. "You can't go for him. Enforcement would love to get their hands on you."
"You're my mate."
She knew it was killing him to not be the one to ensure her vengeance. "I need you alive and with me. Vaughn, please. Please.”
"Tell the damn Psy." A growled command.
She did and shot by the killer's mind once more in a move calculated to break his concentration. It worked— Judd located him. Dropping his head into his hands all of a sudden, the killer began to whimper. But he wasn't yet incapacitated. There was too much intelligence in those black eyes as they searched the area for the source of attack. She wondered why Judd was holding back.
Then the Tp-Psy materialized to stand beside her. "Be sure," he said. "This is irreversible."
About to give an answer powered by fury, she forced herself to think, to consider the fact that this was a life. Going back over that last contact, she added them to the ones before. And came to a startling realization. "Something's wrong."
"Do I pull out?" No judgment, no worry; Judd Lauren was so cold he made her want to shiver.
"It is him, but... Vaughn, remember what you said about seeing darkness around me?"
"Not something I could ever forget." A voice walking the finest edge of rage.
She leaned more heavily ag
ainst him, afraid the cat would take control and overrule his decision not to rip the man to pieces in plain sight. "Well, that used to coat him, too. In the visions when I was him, it was a cloak around us." It was why she'd instinctively called him the darkness. "But now it's gone. I can't see into his mind, but I know it's gone."
"Do we move on him, Faith?" Judd asked. "I've only got one shot at this—he's starting to recover and fight back."
She looked at the target again, this man who'd become so much a part of her life but was a stranger. Once more, what chilled her most was his ordinariness. It was too dangerous to try to enter his mind, so she had no idea what had driven him to murder. It was even possible that he'd been the pawn of a greater evil and was now purged, free like her. To order his death might be to kill an innocent.
She found herself frozen and in that instant, she saw the blood that would be spilled if he did not die. The darkness might've been sloughed off, but he remained a nightmare. "Yes. Go."
And that quickly, vengeance was hers.
Three hours later, she found herself sitting inside the alpha pair's aerie surrounded by Sascha and several changelings—Vaughn, Clay, Lucas, and a blond sentinel who'd been introduced to her as Dorian. There was something angry in Dorian's blue eyes when he looked at her, a cold rage she couldn't understand, not when he hadn't participated in the hunt. A changeling word. A changeling punishment. Delivered by a Psy mind. That Psy had disappeared afterward and she was glad. She owed him for what he'd done, but Judd had a tendency to push Vaughn the wrong way.
Everyone else was considering how to keep her safe, but she was thinking about that morning's events. She'd ordered the destruction of a mind, a decision that should've filled her with guilt. But though she felt sorrow, she also felt a sense of rightness. Marine could now rest in peace, safe in the knowledge that no other woman would die at the hands of the darkness.
Vaughn walked over from where he'd been standing talking to Clay. "Up."
"What?"
Scowling, he simply lifted her up off the large cushion on which she sat and settled back down with her in his lap. She curled into his warmth, conscious of the others sitting or standing mere steps away, but not caring. Cats lived by different rules and she was adapting.
"Sometimes," Vaughn said, "blood has to be spilled."
She could still hear the raw anger in his voice and it worried her. "But I can't not think about it. That would make me a monster, too."
He just held her as she made her peace with what she'd done. Some time later, she was about to join in the conversation going on around her when she felt a prod at her mind. Instead of reacting with a defensive strike, her ability took over and opened a telepathic channel.
Hundreds of images of flowers waterfalled through that narrow band.
"Oh." Faith's hand clenched on Vaughn's upper arm.
Her cat was instantly on the alert. "What is it?"
"Shh." She closed her eyes and tried to figure out a way to send her reply without affecting the others, but couldn't. "Everyone who can receive Tp thoughts, ignore this." Then she shot back a single flower, layering it with sheer joy and excitement.
A complicated set of images answered her.
Deciphering the message, she endeavored to tune her mind to the right frequency, one so unusual, she knew no other sentience that used it. "Sascha, can you see this?" She sent out a test image.
"No."
But the NetMind had seen. It sent her another flower. Smiling at having worked out how to broadcast to it without telling everyone her thoughts, she considered the best way to ask her next question.
An image of the PsyNet, with a bridge connecting it to her.
The image came back devoid of the bridge.
Frowning, she sent confusion.
The PsyNet. Her. A night sky-colored glow passing from one to the other.
"Of course. You don't need a bridge," she whispered. "Because this is what you were born to do." Trusting her instincts and putting more than her own life on the line, she showed it a snapshot of the Web of Stars.
What came back made her gasp aloud.
She understood. She told it so. It gave her back sunshine. Happiness. But then it followed with rain. Sadness. Images of the PsyNet with rivers of unrelieved darkness running through it, places where it could not go. In the darkness, she saw nothing alive. Death ruled.
She sent it a teardrop to wash the darkness away.
In response, it sent her images that made no sense ... until she realized they were the memories of a child, but one who was more ancient than she could imagine—pictures of the PsyNet as it once was, rainbow-hued and alive. Then it showed her something else, something that stunned her into silence.
Barely able to think, she answered its good-bye sunshine with a flower, and opened her eyes. Vaughn was holding her, but he was relaxed.
"I felt something touch you." He frowned. "It wasn't bad. Like a cub isn't bad. But different."
"The NetMind." Her answer set off a cacophony of questions from the others.
"How—?"
"—a leak?"
"—Council?"
"Is it—?"
"Quiet!" Vaughn cut them off with a roar. "Go on, Red."
She laughed and, to everyone's surprise, kissed him on the lips. "I love you."
His growl vibrated along her nerve endings, the most intimate of caresses. "Hell of a time to tell me."
The tension diffused from everyone but her jaguar—she felt his continuing anger through the direct connection of the mating bond. She wanted to soothe, to stroke, but for that she needed privacy and right now, the others were waiting for her to speak. "I'm assuming everyone here knows about the NetMind?"
"I tried to explain it," Sascha said, "but I think you're the expert. You speak to it in images?"
"Yes. It looks like we've managed to work out a number of pictures that translate as the same every time—sunshine is happiness, rain is sadness."
"It feels?" Sascha whispered.
"Yes." And that signaled a precious hope.
"How can it contact you if you're not in the Net?" Lucas asked from his position against the window ledge.
"It's a sentience that finds it natural to live in networks of minds," she said, bursting to share what she'd learned. "If there is a network, it can travel to that place."
"The Web of Stars." Sascha walked to stand in her mate's embrace, back to his chest. "I've never felt it there."
"I'm saying this wrong." Faith tried to order her thoughts. "It won't come into a different network, perhaps not unless it's invited—I think I did that by thinking of it after I dropped out of the PsyNet—because each network has its own NetMind."
Everyone went completely silent.
"It seems as if each time a network—a web—forms, it sows the seeds for the creation of a new sentience. The NetMind in the Web of Stars is a baby, a mere thought. Do you know of any other webs?"
Lucas narrowed his eyes. "Tell us what you saw first."
Able to read changeling aggression to some extent, she knew it wasn't a display of distrust, but an unwillingness to color her perception. Her Psy mind appreciated that. "I saw several small networks, but it showed me one other in particular made up of five Psy minds. And if our NetMind is a baby, theirs hasn't even been born."
"Christ. It's the Laurens." Lucas's statement shook her— she hadn't known that Judd was part of a group. A family. And yet he'd chanced helping her. "Does this make us vulnerable to the Psy?"
"No. The NetMind is no longer bound by the Council, though they don't know it."
"What? How?" Sascha tugged her plait from Lucas. He just lifted it back up and dropped a kiss on the curve of her neck.
Faith watched Sascha melt and understood. These predators were impossible to resist when they played nice. "In our terms, it's a teenager now," she answered. "It can think beyond what it's been told, understand the bigger picture." Sadness flowed into her. Vaughn's nuzzled kiss was a welcome
burst of sensation, of hope. "It showed me evil in the Net, badness that's infecting everything. If that evil isn't stopped, it'll kill the Net itself."
"A rot." Sascha voice went heavy with sorrow that sank into every person in the room.
The sentinel named Dorian walked over to pull her into his arms. Lucas allowed the embrace though Faith had expected him to react with possessive violence. Another facet of her new family, one that would take time to become accustomed to. Such open affection was disconcerting to a mind fresh out of Silent bondage.
"Anything else?" Clay asked.
She nodded. "I think the killer was possessed." Everyone looked at her in blatant disbelief. "Maybe I should think about it a bit more."
Vaughn kissed her forehead. "Possessed, Red?"
"Do you think the mental degradation's taken root?" It was an attempt to make a joke out of her greatest fear. She might have cut free from the Net, but she was still an F-Psy, her mind more fragile than others.
"I think you're beautiful for a crazy woman." His hungry kiss brought the lightning to life, but when they separated, the others' expressions hadn't changed.
"The NetMind showed me something the first time we spoke." She explained the images. "I think the starry woman represents the good side and the one empty of stars, the bad."
"What about the Web of Stars?" Sascha asked from within Dorian's embrace.
Faith wriggled to a more upright position. "It's a single entity. Same with the LaurenNet."
Vaughn wrapped his arms around her neck and pulled her back against his chest. The wall of fire was a sweet benediction. "So what makes the Psy NetMind different?"
"Emotion." Sascha's eyes had gone pure black.
Lucas reached out to tug at her plait and Dorian released her to her mate. "Talk to me, Sascha darling." He ran his finger down her cheek.
"The Psy have cut off emotion, tried to suppress it into nonexistence. So if the NetMinds are created when a net is created, then the basic material is provided by the net in question."
Faith saw where Sascha was going. "Our Web is fed by everything—love, hate, fear, joy."