Blaze of Memory

CHAPTER 14

It was dark. So dark. Darker than the night, than the midnight sun. No, that didn’t make sense. There was no such thing as a midnight sun. No . . . Alaska had a midnight sun. But that meant there was light all day long. Here there was no daylight, no sunlight, no hope.

She tried to curl her fingers and toes but couldn’t feel them. It was as if they’d been eaten up by the darkness. It was tempting to scream, to hear sound even if she couldn’t see, couldn’t feel, but she held it inside, locked within the walls of her mind. The monster had taken everything else she had.

She wouldn’t give him her screams.

But minutes, hours, days later, she lost the battle and her anguish poured out of her in a wave of sound.

Except . . . she heard only silence. The darkness absorbed even her scream.

And that was when she knew.

She truly was dead.

Heat.

Touch.

Life, electric in its fury. . .a kiss that demanded her participation.

Shuddering in surrender, she drowned in the scent of him. Wild and exotic. Dark and male.

A man who’d snarled at her, caged her. . . fed her.

“Dev.” Spoken against his lips, she was so loath to break contact.

His mouth took hers again before she could say anything more, his teeth sinking into her lower lip. She jerked, dug her fingers into solid masculine shoulders. Never, she knew, had she experienced anything even remotely similar. He was so hot, she wanted to crawl into him. His skin burned her fingertips, and she wanted more, wanted to be naked, to have him crush her to the sheets, his weight a heavy, immovable blanket.

Gasping in a breath when he released her, she stared into his eyes, wondering if he could read the clawing depths of her need.

“You back?” His voice was harsh, his eyes glittering fever bright.

Her breasts brushed against his chest with every breath, the tips so tight with need, it was almost pain. “Where did I go?”

“You were screaming your lungs out.” He continued to hold her in an embrace she knew she’d never be able to break. “Wouldn’t wake up no matter how much I shook you.”

“So you kissed me.” It had been, she was forced to admit, a highly practical decision. Even a broken Psy would react to something so completely against her conditioning. “Thank you.” It would’ve been prudent to pull back, but she’d never felt more alive, more real. “I think . . . that was my first kiss.”

A low, rough word. “Hell, I’m sorry.”

“Do it again.”

His lashes came down. Once. Twice. She expected refusal. Instead, he tugged back her head and brushed his lips over hers, a single hot caress. When she tried to get closer, he refused to let her. “Dev.”

“Don’t rush.” And then he touched his mouth to hers again, but this time, he lingered.

Acting on instinct, she sipped at the fullness of his lower lip, felt the rough warmth of his body tense against the palms she’d pressed flat on his chest. For a second, she was afraid he’d stop. But he deepened the kiss with slow, sweet strokes that made her fingers dig into the firm muscle under her hands as her body filled with a liquid kind of heat. Hips twisting in a hunger she barely understood, she tried to pull him closer.

“Enough.” Harsh, spoken against her lips.

“A little more.” Every hot breath, every stroke, every lick, it anchored her in the most sensual, most earthy of ways. “Touch me.”

His fingers tightened in her hair instead, his jaw setting in a way that was already becoming familiar. “Why were you screaming?”

Somehow, the softness of the question, the strength of his hold, made it easier to return to the nightmare. “I dreamed I was in the hole, the nothing-place, again.”

Something flashed across his face, something so razor sharp in its fury, it should’ve made her run. But all she wanted to do was strip him to the skin, feel his body hard and unashamedly male over hers. “Dev—”

“You’re scared,” he said, fingers on her jaw. “I’m not going to take advantage.”

Her eyes dipped to the straining bulge of his arousal. “You want to.”

“What we want”—a voice as unbending as stone—“isn’t always good for us.”

Hearing the finality in that, she swallowed the need that urged her to keep pushing. “Thank you for coming to me.”

“Are you going to be alright now?”

The truth came out before she could censor herself. “No.” Without the erotic shield of Dev’s kiss, fear was already crawling up her legs, creeping into her lungs.

He didn’t say a word, simply got up and nudged her over on the bed. She shifted with alacrity, feeling the mattress dip to his side as he lay down beside her seated form. He was, she noticed, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, his chest a lithely muscled plane sprinkled with dark hair. Fingers curling into her palms, she found her gaze dropping, following the trail that—

“Come here.” He held up an arm.

Jerking up her head, she felt her cheeks burn.

“I don’t bite.”

She wasn’t so certain. This man, he confused her. As hard as he was beautiful, and yet capable of a gentleness that left her floundering. Now, he just watched her, let her make up her own mind. There was only one choice, only one place she wanted to be.

The erotically charged taste of him still in her mouth, she scooted over and laid her head down on his arm. It curled around her shoulders, curving her into his body. And the contact—hot, real, Dev—shoved the fear aside. When he pulled a sheet over them, she didn’t protest, tucking her head against his chest, her fingers curling into the crisp hairs on his chest. The last thing she was aware of was his heartbeat.

Dev brushed Katya’s hair off her cheek and studied her sleeping face, his eyes lingering on the lush sweetness of her mouth. Hunger and innocence, it was one hell of a potent combination. His body surged at the memory, defying his efforts to keep it under control. Gritting his teeth, he sought out all the metal in the house.

The cool kiss of iron and steel brushed his mind, invaded his limbs. It wouldn’t last long, not with Katya’s slight form resting trustingly against him—but he’d use the calm while he had it, see if he could find answers to some of his questions in the ShadowNet. He’d heard stories of the PsyNet, that it was an endless field of black littered with millions of white stars, each star representing a mind, but it was a concept he had trouble understanding.

How could minds remain completely separate?

Closing his physical eyes, he opened a psychic gateway and stepped out into the organized chaos of the ShadowNet. Given their comparatively small numbers, the “skies” of this psychic network were stretched thin in comparison to the endless breadth of the PsyNet, but it was a riot of color, of connections.

From where he stood, he could see the solid threads that tied him to both sets of grandparents—his bond with his maternal grandmother was the strongest, but he was linked indelibly to all four, and the two couples were also connected to each other, though those links were much weaker. More threads linked him to uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, some thin, some strong, some on the verge of breaking.

And then, there was the strange, almost invisible dark thread that tied him to his father.

All the crisscrossing bonds made the ShadowNet a busy place to navigate. Most people tended to follow the lines of connection until they found the person they wanted—sometimes even then, the lines were so tangled that it took a few tries to locate the right thread. But the one that Dev wanted stood out like a beacon—bright silver and tough as titanium.

His maternal grandmother took no shit from anyone.

Smiling inside at the thought of the woman he’d loved since the day he’d first opened his eyes and seen her watching over him, he shot along the silver thread and “knocked” on the door to her mind. She responded a moment later. Conversation in the ShadowNet itself was difficult because of the amount of psychic “noise,” so they both hooked into the emotional line that connected them, creating a direct conduit for speech—and affording unbreachable privacy.

“Devraj.” His grandmother’s energy was strong, beautiful, carrying within it the echoes of incense and spice, silica and molten heat. “A little late to come calling, beta.”

Only his grandmother ever called him “beloved child” in the language of his mother. “I figured you’d be up working on your designs.”

“The glass is becoming more and more stubborn with age. Today, I meant to finish a stained glass window except the red refused to cooperate. It turned orange instead.”

He was used to the way she spoke of her precious glass as if it were a sentient being. “You still haven’t sent me my birthday present.”

“Cheeky boy.” A psychic brush against his mind, an affectionate kiss on his forehead. “You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

He laughed, and it was perhaps the only time he ever truly did that anymore—with her, the woman who’d loved him even when he’d hated himself. “Nani,” he said, using the Hindi word for maternal grandmother, “I need some advice.”

“You’ve been walking a lonely path these past few years.”

“Yes.” He’d never lied to his grandmother. Perhaps he’d withheld his darkest secrets, but he’d never lied.

“The metal—I know it kept you sane at a time when another child might’ve broken,” she said, the warmth of her love a gentle wind across his senses, “but you must see what it’s doing to you.”

It was, Dev knew, becoming fused into his very cells. Sometimes his mind was so cool, so flawlessly quiet that he wondered if it was blood that ran in his veins, or something far less human. “I can no more stop reaching for metal than you can stop shaping glass.” Steel and iron, copper and gold, it all called to him, resonating on a psychic frequency he alone could sense. “It helps me do what I need to do.”

“Understand the Psy?”

“Yes. And make decisions that need making.”

A sigh. “Metal melts, too, beta. It is not always hard, not always cold.”

“That’s the problem. Something’s penetrating my shields.”

“Without your conscious control?”

“Yes.” He told her about Katya. “I’m the director—I can’t afford that kind of a chink in my shields.”

“No.”

“I should remove the threat.”

“Kill her, you mean.”

“Yes.”

There was no shock from his grandmother. In her youth, she’d been one of the foot soldiers for the Forgotten. “This woman, this Katya,” she now said, “she plays on your weaknesses.”

Katya’s screams echoed inside him, full of so much terror, he didn’t know how she’d survived. “I don’t think it’s deliberate.”

“Perhaps.” A pause. “If she is a sleeper assassin, it may be that she was chosen. . .no, that she was made to disarm you. Your history isn’t public knowledge, but neither is it completely hidden—you may believe you’re refusing her entry, but your subconscious has clearly opened a door for her.”

Something twisted inside him, shooting barbs into his heart. “If she was designed to get under my skin, they did a good job.” She’d slipped inside him with such stealth, the perfect stiletto in the dark.

“Ah, Devraj, don’t sound as if you’ve been played for a fool.” A pulse of loving energy that was as familiar as the melting silica of her precious glass. “I’m happy for you.”

“Why?”

“It shows you still have heart, that you didn’t immediately move to strike. And I’d rather you have that than be a cold-blooded general who thinks of nothing but power.”

“Her mind,” he said, “do you think you might be able to unravel the programming?” His grandmother was only a midrange sender, but she was very, very good at untangling psychic knots—an odd skill that the Psy in the Net seemed to have lost. Perhaps it was no longer necessary now that they were Silent.

It was very much necessary for the Forgotten.

Nani was the one who’d untangled the ribbons of madness that had ravaged Dev’s father. The ribbons always came back—faster each time—but now they knew what to watch for. The first time . . . Dev shook his head in violent repudiation.

For a second, his attention split between the psychic and physical aspects of his nature as Katya stirred. Putting his hand on the back of her head, he gentled her into sleep once more before returning to his grandmother.

“I’d have to see her.” Her mental tone was serene, yet no less sharp for it. “But you know the problem—we’re not the same as the Psy in the Net. I may not even be able to sense the bonds that lock her in, much less the deeper programming.”

“I don’t want you trying yet in any case.” A midrange Psy telepath could do a lot of damage to one of the Forgotten who’d lowered her shields.

“You call me when you need me.” Another psychic brush. “Do you want to talk to your nana?”

“No, let him sleep.”

“You know he never sleeps while I’m awake. Stubborn man.”

He sent her a good-bye kiss before dropping from the ShadowNet. Coming back into his own mind was an easy glide, a familiar truth. He understood exactly how the woman in his arms felt at being cut off from the psychic plane. It must be akin to having a limb amputated, a claustrophobic terror.

If, of course, she was telling the truth.

This woman, this Katya, she plays on your weaknesses.

How could he not have seen it? It was as if someone had gone into his very psyche and created a woman he simply could not harm, no matter what he’d told himself to the contrary. Even now, with the truth of his grandmother’s words ringing in his head, he couldn’t repudiate Katya . . . couldn’t send her back to the dark.

Her hand spread over his chest.

He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. He was a healthy male in his prime—he liked women, and most of the time, women liked him back. But never had he felt so close to the edge, so close to going out of control. Too many emotions clashed inside him—including a dawning possessiveness that might yet spell his death.

“Dev.” It was a complaint. “Stop broadcasting.”

He froze. “Have you been listening to my thoughts?” That should’ve been impossible. He’d never been able to send to anyone but his mother. When she’d died, that part of him had simply gone silent.

A shake of her head, fingers rubbing at sleepy eyes. “It’s a drumbeat against my skull—bam, bam, bam.”

Intrigued, he ran his fingers through her hair. “How do you know it’s me?”

“It feels like you.” A yawn and her lashes lifted. “And you’re giving me a headache.”

He should’ve been penitent. Instead, he moved to brace himself on his arms, her body slender but intrinsically feminine beneath his. It was her eyes that did it, huge pools that asked something from him he’d never be able to give—to her, to anyone. He’d left that part of himself behind in a sun-drenched room the day he watched his father close those always careful hands around his mother’s throat.

Shadows moved in the clear hazel, awareness sparking out of sleep. “Dev.”

“Shh. No words.” He ensured that by claiming her mouth, by stealing her breath. There was no gentleness in him this time. He crushed her to the bed, used his teeth on her neck, fisted his hand in her hair.

Just one kiss, he thought, just one.

Then she wrapped her arms around him. And he gave himself leave to take this much of her. Their lips came together in a darkly sensual connection, every gasp filled with the inevitable truth—this moment, this kiss, was a stolen one. All too soon, reality would claim them both. And when it did, Dev would either have to destroy her fledgling smile, savage her heart. . . or betray every vow he’d ever taken.

PETROKOV FAMILY ARCHIVES

Letter dated March 4, 1972

Dear Matthew,

Something extraordinary happened today. I’m still not sure I believe it. Catherine and Arif Adelaja appeared in public for the first time in a decade—with their twins, Tendaji and Naeem. The boys are teenagers, strong and quite beautiful. And they are Silent.

Arif made a speech, said that he and his wife had—wait, I have an idea. I’ll paste a copy of the relevant part of his speech into this letter. When you’re older, it will give you a glimpse of the strange world in which you grew up, in which your sister will be born.

Like many of you, Catherine and I have lost too many family members to the ravages of their gifts. Some have simply crumpled under the pressure, while others have broken in a more violent way, taking countless men, women, and children with them.

We lost our infant daughter to a psychotic outbreak that destroyed a close family friend, turning her into a malevolent creature no one could recognize. Tilly was a sweet, gentle woman who loved children, and yet that day, she used her telepathy to shatter our Margaret’s mind as our precious baby screamed and screamed.

In truth, we lost two people that day. Margaret to Tilly’s madness, and Tilly to her own horror and guilt.

We refuse to lose any more of those we love. Which is why we’ve been working to condition emotion out of our sons since the moment of their birth. Perhaps some of you will call us monsters, but today, our children stand alive beside us, in full control of their gifts. We’ve given them life.

I understand Arif’s grief—I was only twenty when he and Catherine lost Margaret, but I’ll never forget his keening agony the night he found their poor, sweet baby. It ravaged him, ravaged them both. The man I saw today bears the emotional scars still. They’re so deep and true that he can’t see the paradox in his own words. To save those he loves, he’s willing to destroy the capacity to love itself?

How is that in any way an answer?

Mom