Heart of Obsidian

Chapter 23

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Kaleb returned to the rock face, Sahara now safe in her bedroom. She hadn’t run from him even after he’d exposed his murderous possessiveness where she was concerned. But then, they both knew she had the power to stop him, the only individual in the Net who could.

“If you ever do it,” he’d said when she touched her fingers to his cheek in a tender good-bye, “make sure you go all the way and end me.” Should he be left breathing after Sahara’s power sliced through him, taking the only thing that mattered, he’d become the monster Santano had groomed him to be. “Serial killer, mass murderer, there’s not a name for the evil that lives inside me.”

Jaw set and eyes fierce, she’d shaken her head. “I won’t let the darkness have you.”

Her promise echoing in his head, he climbed with single-minded focus, his muscles straining to hold him to the wall as he fought to overcome the physical frustration that was a pulsing grip around his erection. It wasn’t until halfway through the third ascent that he could think again, his mind coldly rational.

His campaign to win Sahara’s trust, he thought, was progressing according to plan. She’d not only called him when she felt under threat, she’d invited physical contact. The fact that physical contact was causing severe damage to his shields and his thinking processes was a side effect he’d have to handle. Backing off was not an option—her memories were becoming more lucid with each passing day, her psyche healing at a rate that spoke to a remorseless internal strength.

Soon she would be ready to remember him, and why her subconscious had blocked him from her conscious mind in the first place. There were some things no one could take, some betrayals too reprehensible to forgive.

“No! Don’t! Kaleb, stop!”

Scraping the skin off his palm as he lunged for a grip, he blew out a harsh breath and continued to climb until it was only the cold stone and the next grip that mattered. And still he heard her screaming at him to stop.

IT was the creak that woke Sahara in the pitch-dark early morning hours, intruding on hazy dreams of a boy she couldn’t quite see.

Snapping to full alertness with the speed and silence of someone who’d been at the mercy of others for too long, she nonetheless kept her eyes closed, listening with every cell in her body. It was a trick she’d learned during her years of confinement, a way to gather information while the guards thought her asleep.

She flicked her eyes open only once she was sure the intruder wasn’t in the room. Her attention locked on the door, her pulse a drumbeat. Releasing a quiet breath, she listened . . . and just barely heard the stealthy movements of someone attempting to disengage the lock she’d flicked on for no reason but that she was obsessed with her privacy.

Father?

No response along the old telepathic pathway to her call, nothing but a dull silence that made enraged fear ripple through her blood. Reaching under the bed, she retrieved the butcher’s knife she’d stolen from an unused set of kitchen tools her father had been given by a patient who was an F, and as such, received goods from businesses as a matter of course. The idea of ever again being caught unarmed and vulnerable was her worst nightmare.

Pushing off the sheets with care, she shoved the pillows underneath to create the illusion of a person and pulled the sheets back up, just as the lock snicked open. Heart thudding and eyes on the knob as it began to turn, she padded across the floor to press her back to the wall. She knew every inch of this house, her feet silent on the old wood that had given the intruder away.

When the door opened, she waited only long enough to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake, that it wasn’t her father, before she struck. It might have been cleaner to use her ability, but Sahara had no intention of getting any closer to the stranger than she had to be before he was immobilized. All indications were that no one had any effective means of defense against her ability; however, she wasn’t going to bet her life on that assumption so soon after leaving the labyrinth.

Screaming as the butcher’s knife buried itself between his shoulder blades, the darkly-clad intruder spun around, reaching for her with his arms and no doubt his mind. She felt nothing of the telepathic assault inside the obsidian shields that protected her, and it took little skill to avoid his hands, his balance destroyed by the blow she’d struck, the heavy blade lodged in his back.

The man’s feet skidded in his own blood right as she caught a flicker at the corner of her eye, and suddenly the unknown male was thrown across the room.

“Wait!” she screamed an instant before his back hit the wall, realizing Kaleb had to have detected the attempted attack on her shields.

The man froze in midair, blood dripping to the floor in fat droplets.

“Don’t kill him. We need to know who sent him.” Sahara went to step closer, but she was too slow.

“Done.” The intruder’s body slammed into the wall, the blade thudding home against his breastbone with a sickening crunch as it all but cut him in half. He crumpled to the floor, blood pouring out of his mouth.

Her stomach might have lurched at the sight at any other time, but she was already running out of her room and into the one down the hallway. “Father!” Leon Kryiakus’s big body lay limp beside his bed, a necklace of sticky red wreathing his throat. “No, no. Please no. Father, please.” Fingers trembling, she searched for a pulse. “Kaleb! He’s alive!”

“Move.” Gathering her father’s body in his arms with telekinetic ease, Kaleb teleported out with the terse instruction to keep her telepathic pathways open.

He returned less than three minutes later, to find her seated on the bed, staring at the smear of blood on the carpet. She snapped up her head. “Is he—”

“Your father’s in emergency surgery, watched over by a temporary guard from one of my units in the area. I’ve notified Anthony, and NightStar’s people will be at the hospital within the next half hour.”

Hand shaking, Sahara went to thrust it through her hair when the iron-rich scent of blood hit her nostrils. Her fury reignited as she realized it was her father’s blood on her fingers. Shoving past Kaleb to the attached bathroom, she washed it off with jagged actions before wiping her hands clean. “I want to go to him.”

“You’d just be waiting outside surgery,” Kaleb said with grim pragmatism. “My man knows to contact you should there be a change in your father’s condition.”

She couldn’t bear the idea of her father slipping away just when she’d found him again. “I want—”

“The hospital has multiple exits and entrances; the risk of someone getting to you is much higher.” Hard words, no hint of tenderness. “You know Leon wouldn’t want you in the line of fire.”

Conscious he was right, she forced herself to think past adrenaline-fueled anger tangled with gut-wrenching worry and walked back to her own room—and to the body of the man who had nearly taken her father’s life. “Who was he?”

“A freelance operative, not a particularly adept one or Leon would be dead and you’d be in his grasp.”

“You tore his mind open? You know that compromises data,” she said, turning on him in a fury. “That was irresponsible and reckless.”

A shrug as false and as remote as his eyes were not. “I offered him a quick death in exchange for the information,” Kaleb said, as if speaking of a business negotiation. “He kept his end of the bargain; I kept mine.” Eyes of starless night pinned her to the spot. “It appears you have a bounty on you.”

“What? Who? Tatiana?” The other woman was in no position to give orders, but she had people who might well do so for her.

Kaleb shook his head and spoke the last name she had ever expected to hear. “Santano Enrique.”

Ice in her blood, choking up her throat. “He’s dead,” she forced past the sudden, overwhelming rage.

“It appears he has risen from the ashes.” Kaleb tucked her hair behind her ear. “He was involved in your abduction.”

Sahara knew she should follow that thread, should ask him exactly why a serial killer with a predilection for changeling victims had turned his attention to her, and whether Kaleb had had anything to do with it, but she couldn’t. The idea of bringing up the topic made her stomach hurt, her breath stick in her throat. Not yet. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to know, wasn’t strong enough to face the dark truth.

If Kaleb had betrayed her, the knowledge would break her.

“The bounty,” he said when she remained silent, “must’ve been a fail-safe in case of your escape.” Halting at the sound of the front door opening, he waited until Anthony stepped into the room.

The head of her clan examined the dead bounty hunter with an impassive expression before shifting his attention to Kaleb. “I assume you got the information we need before you executed him?”

Kaleb told Anthony the same thing he’d told Sahara. Anthony’s response was, “Not even the most bumbling bounty hunter would hunt a target for a dead man. Payment is everything.”

“Santano may have been a psychopath, but he was a smart one. The considerable fee for this bounty is held in trust by a certain mercenary organization. To be paid on delivery of Sahara Kyriakus—dead or alive—to either Santano or the current head of his operations.”

“Santano kept his interest in you quiet,” Anthony said to Sahara and hidden in the words was a question. “I never suspected him of involvement in your abduction.”

She spread her hands, not sharing the fact that Enrique’s protégé had apparently always been aware of her ability.

“NightStar has a leak,” Kaleb said at the same time.

“I’ll handle that situation.”

Kaleb inclined his head in silent agreement—Anthony had come by his reputation honestly. Unlike certain others in the Net, the other man did not mind getting his hands dirty. And if he failed to take care of the matter, Kaleb would do so. He’d permit no threat to Sahara to exist, much less live and breathe.

“You need to move immediately into a safe house.”

Sahara’s back went stiff at Anthony’s statement, her muscles rigid. “No. I won’t be caged again.”

“There is no other option,” Anthony responded. “As long as the bounty exists, you stay a target.”

“Are you certain a safe house will provide any better protection?” Kaleb had no intention of allowing Sahara to go anywhere aside from the home he’d built for her in Moscow. “This hunter, inept and young, managed to evade your perimeter guards.”

“That will be investigated.” A flint-hard promise. “Our safe houses are fortresses.”

Sahara, hands fisted, shook her head. “No.” Backing away from them until her spine hit the wall, she began to bump her fists against it. “No. No. No.”

Recognizing the danger, Kaleb reacted before Anthony could figure out what was happening. “No safe house, no cage,” he said, cupping her face and forcing her to meet his gaze until she stopped bumping her fists against the wall, though she continued to rock back and forth.

You risk losing her if you push this, he ’pathed to Anthony as he released her. Her mind isn’t fully healed. It was why Kaleb had scared information from the intruder instead of permitting her to exercise her ability.

I can’t leave her unprotected.

I can protect her.

“So can the cats.”

Kaleb was still trying to digest that wholly unexpected statement when Anthony shifted to enter Sahara’s line of sight. “I’m sending you to Faith.”

Sahara’s body stopped moving, eyes of midnight blue shifting to Anthony. “Faith?”

“Even the best bounty hunter in the world won’t think to look for you in the midst of a changeling pack.”

“The connection with Faith,” Sahara began, her intelligence plainly pushing past the visceral reaction that had sent her tumbling back into her personal hell.

Anthony shook his head. “No one expected NightStar to jettison the most powerful F-Psy on the planet, regardless of her personal choices. That was business and expected. This is family.”

Kaleb knew Anthony wasn’t saying everything, but he could guess. NightStar had been very, very careful to maintain a line of demarcation between its business dealings with Faith and her lack of status as a member of the family—in public at least. Privately was another matter: Anthony remained in regular, direct contact with his daughter.

The latter suspicion was one it had taken Kaleb a year to confirm.

“You’re ready to trust the changelings with Sahara’s life?” The only reason he was willing to consider the proposal was because of Sahara’s response to the mention of her cousin—and because he knew Anthony was right about the prospect of any bounty hunter venturing onto DarkRiver land.

“If they accept her as family, the leopards will close ranks. With Faith certain to vouch for her, as well as Sahara’s broken Silence, there is no reason to assume they won’t treat her as one of their own.” Anthony’s next words were directed at Sahara. “You’ll be safe within their borders, and you’ll have the forested part of their territory to roam.”

That territory is vast, Kaleb added, sending Sahara a number of telepathic images. You’ll be as free as any leopard changeling, so long as you don’t go into a city.

Deep blue eyes met his before moving to Anthony. “Yes.”

“I’ll clear it with the DarkRiver alpha.” Anthony glanced at Kaleb. “You seem to be treating my territory as your own.” It was a warning.

Kaleb slid his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Would you rather I let her die?” he said aloud, even as he spoke to Sahara along their private telepathic channel. Why didn’t you call me?

I had it under control. I am a grown woman.

Anthony’s stare bore into him on the heels of Sahara’s tart reply, but Kaleb hadn’t been intimidated by anyone for a long time. “I can transfer Sahara to leopard territory.”

“Thank you but that won’t be necessary.”

“Very well.” He looked to Sahara. The knife was a nice touch.

Her scowl faded into a frown. Someone once told me I must always be prepared. I don’t remember who it was, but it was sound advice.

If only, Kaleb thought, she’d followed it when she was sixteen. But then, Santano had been a cardinal Tk, an adult male who found pleasure in the pain of young women who couldn’t fight back. Sahara had never stood a chance.