Slave to Sensation

CHAPTER 8

He was beginning to expect her in his dreams. When she touched his shoulder, he rolled away to look up at her. His intention had been to tell her that he had no heart to play with her tonight, but when he saw her, he stopped. Wearing what looked like old cotton pajamas, her hair in two simple braids, she appeared about sixteen.

That was when he realized that he was dressed in a pair of dark gray sweatpants identical to his favorite pair. “What’s the matter, kitten?”

A kind of confused vulnerability swirled in her eyes. “I don’t know.” She wrapped her arms around herself.

Opening his own arms, he said, “Come here.”

After a small hesitation, she laid her head down on his chest and stretched her legs out along his side. “I feel so… heavy.” One fine-boned hand rested beside her head, palm-down on his skin.

“Me, too.” The rock that sat on his heart would be gone by morning but its memory would linger.

Her hand stroked over his heartbeat. “Why are you sad?”

“Sometimes I remember that I can’t always protect those I love.” Under his fingers, her hair was soft and silky.

She didn’t try to tell him that he wasn’t God, that he couldn’t protect everyone. He knew that. But knowing and believing were two different things. What she did say succeeded in stopping his heart. “I wish you’d love me.”

“Why?”

“Because then maybe you could protect me, too.” Haunting sorrow whispered through her tone.

“Why do you need protecting?” His male instincts were rising past the dark burden of memory.

She cuddled closer and he wrapped his arms tight. “Because I’m broken.” Her hand kept smoothing over his heart and he could feel a melting warmth invade his body. “And the Psy don’t allow broken creatures to live.”

“You feel perfect to me.”

No answer. Only that smoothing hand over his chest. With each stroke he felt more at peace. A different form of heaviness infiltrated his bones. It felt strangely as if he was going to sleep again. As darkness closed over him, her quiet statement circled his mind like an endless river.

Because I’m broken.

And the Psy don’t allow broken creatures to live.

Sascha was waiting for him when he arrived at the office the next day. Troubled by the disquieting intensity of the dream, he tried to draw her into conversation but hit a brick wall. It was as if she’d retreated deep within herself, so deep that she’d almost ceased to exist.

“Are you all right?” He could feel the shadows around her, feel her… as if she were Pack.

“I’d like to suggest some alternatives to the materials you’re planning to use,” she said, instead of answering. “My research tells me this type of wood will weather better in the site environment.” She slid across a sample and an accompanying inch-thick report.

Frustrated by her intransigence, he fingered the sample. “This stuff is cheaper.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s no good. Please read the report.”

“I will.” He put it aside. “You look like hell, Sascha darling.” No way was he going to let her push him away, not after last night. She was Psy and he’d been dreaming some pretty odd dreams. He could do the math.

Her hands tightened on her organizer before she got herself under control. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

Every instinct he had told him it was time to press hard. “Dreams keeping you awake?”

“I’ve told you, the Psy don’t dream.” She refused to meet his gaze.

“But you do, don’t you, Sascha?” he said softly. “What does that make you?”

Her head jerked up and he glimpsed something very lost in her eyes in the second’s window before her computerized security-blanket chimed. “Excuse me.” She walked out of the room and he knew it was because of him, not the call. He’d finally reached her. If that call hadn’t interrupted them…

“Damn it.” His claws sliced out of his hands, an indication of just how much control he’d lost. Forcing them back in, he went to hunt down his elusive prey.

She was gone.

Ria, his administrative assistant, gave him the message. “Said she had to leave to take care of something but that she’d be back for the two o’clock with Zara.”

Lucas took the message with an ill-hidden frown. “Thanks.” His tone said otherwise.

“Sorry. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to let her go.” Ria screwed up her pretty human face into a scowl. “You’re supposed to warn me about things like that.” Mated to a DarkRiver leopard for the past seven years, she had no problem talking her mind with Lucas.

“Don’t worry about it. She’ll be back.” Where else could she go? If he was right about her, then her very uniqueness might get her rejected by her own people.

What worried him was that rather than calculating how he could use her weakness to further his own goals, he was concerned for her. The unexpected development was enough to disturb both man and beast—how had one of the enemy gained a slice of his loyalty?

She didn’t turn up for the meeting until a minute before two. “Shall we go in?” were her first words to him. Her suit was black, her shirt white, and her tone as chilling as the most brittle of frost.

In spite of his concern at what she made him feel, he wanted to reach out and kiss her until she purred. He’d seen beneath the shell and he was never going help her bury the woman he’d glimpsed. Sascha Duncan might be Psy, but he was a Hunter.

“By all means.” He waved his arm, willing to let her believe she’d defeated him. Sometimes an unexpected ambush worked better than a full frontal attack. “Zara should be in there with Dorian, one of the other architects. Kit’s asked to sit in. Fine with you?”

“Of course. I learned business the same way.”

The second they walked into the meeting room, he knew there was going to be trouble. Dorian was standing with his back to the window, the lines around his mouth white with strain, his shoulders so taut that the muscles were almost vibrating.

“Kit.” Lucas chose to greet the juvenile next to Dorian, giving the sentinel time to get himself under control.

“Hey, Lucas. I have the designs.” Kit pointed to the pile of document tubes on the table, his gaze shifting to Sascha and then skating away.

“Where’s Zara?” Lucas didn’t take his eyes off Dorian—the other male hadn’t stopped staring at Sascha since the moment they’d entered the room. Beside him, Sascha had gone preternaturally silent, as though she knew how precarious the situation was.

Kit pulled at the cuffs of his brown cable-knit sweater and shoved a hand through his hair. “She got delayed.” His tone held a subtle appeal—he didn’t want to discuss Pack business with an outsider in the room.

Lucas spoke without looking away from the lethal fury that was Dorian. “Would you give us a moment, Sascha?”

“I’ll wait outside.” She turned and walked out the door, pulling it shut behind her.

“What happened?” he asked.

The other man bared his teeth. “SnowDancer lost a female today.”

Lucas felt rage arc through his bloodstream. “When?”

“Dorian said two hours ago.” It was Kit who answered. “One of Hawke’s lieutenants just called him.”

“Which means we have a week before a body turns up.” Dorian’s voice was raw, his fists clenched so tight that the tendons in his neck stood out. “He’ll keep her for that week and when he’s finished doing whatever it is he does to them, he’ll slice her up and leave her someplace that was once a safe haven.”

Lucas didn’t even try to soothe the other man. “Do they know anything?” Despite his rejection of torture as a way to find the killer’s identity, a fury as cold as Dorian’s had burned in Lucas’s heart since Kylie’s murder. She’d been under his protection, a juvenile not much older than Kit. What had been done to her had been inhuman and the panther in him craved justice.

“No.” Dorian shoved both hands through his hair. “Why don’t you drag your pet Psy in here and force her to tell us who he is?” His eyes held such pure menace that Lucas knew he couldn’t be allowed anywhere near Sascha.

“She might not know anything,” he pointed out. “Kit?”

“Yes.”

“Go tell Zara we need her.” His eyes held a different message. It wasn’t the wildcat they needed, but their healer. Many of the other juveniles wouldn’t have understood. However, Kit was already being trained for soldier duties—it was the only way to keep a future alpha out of trouble.

The boy nodded. “I’ll get on it.” He ran from the room.

It was lucky for them that the healer had come into the city proper to take the cubs shopping. Her presence here was vital—Dorian was almost at breaking point. Until this moment, Lucas hadn’t known just how fragile the sentinel’s control was. He could almost see the rage clawing behind those surfer-blue eyes, ready to maim, torture, kill.

“Kidnapping one Psy will give us nothing. They aren’t like us—they’ll cut family dead without a thought.” He walked over to stand in front of Dorian, keeping his body between him and the exit.

Suddenly Dorian’s head snapped up to focus on something behind Lucas. “She’s part of their damn hive mind! Get her to tell us where the SnowDancer is before it’s too fucking late!” His voice vibrated with anger but he wasn’t completely out of control. Yet.

Lucas didn’t have to turn to know that Sascha was in the doorway—he could smell her. “Leave, Sascha.” The panther wanted to grip her by the nape and haul her out of harm’s way.

“No.” Dorian pushed at his chest hard enough to have cracked a human’s ribs. His latency had robbed him purely of the ability to change, nothing else. “Tell her what this freak’s been doing. Tell her what her precious Council is hiding from her.”

Sascha took a step into the room and closed the door. “What’s he talking about?” There was steel in that icy tone, resolve in the way she walked around to stand less than a foot away. No fear clouded those night-sky eyes.

Lucas continued to keep himself between her and Dorian. “A serial killer has been preying on changeling women for several years.” The time for subterfuge was over—a life hung in the balance.

Sascha’s expression didn’t change. “We don’t have serial killers in our population.”

“Bullshit!” Dorian spit out. “The killer is Psy and your Council knows it. You’re a race of psychopaths!”

“No, we’re not.”

“No conscience, no heart, no feelings! How else do you define psychopath?”

“How do you know that it’s one of us?” She tried to get around Lucas.

He pushed her back with a single hand. “Don’t get too close. Right now, Dorian would settle for ripping out your throat in lieu of the murderer’s. His sister was one of the victims.” He made sure she saw truth in his expression.

After a short silence, she took a step back and allowed him to hold Dorian at bay. “How do you know it’s a Psy?” she repeated.

“We detected the scent of a Psy at the site of Kylie’s murder.” Lucas would remember the pervading ugliness of that scent to the day he died. “You have a very distinctive smell to us. Unlike humans or changelings, you give off only coldness, a metallic stink that repels.” It was why so many changelings refused to work with the Psy or live in buildings created by them. The taint, some felt, could never be erased.

He thought he saw hurt shadow Sascha’s face but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “If this is a serial, why hasn’t it been reported? I haven’t heard a single thing about it on the Net or through the human-changeling media.”

Dorian turned to bang his palms flat against the window. The glass cracked. “Your Council killed the reports like they killed the investigations. Changelings and a couple of humans have tried to get the cases marked as the work of a serial, but they’ve been blocked over and over.”

Lucas met Sascha’s intent gaze and decided to take a step that could be a mistake. They had no more time to go softly, softly. Either his instincts about Sascha were right or he’d never had a chance. “Detectives are working underground on their own time and changeling packs are sharing information across the affected areas.

“Given enough time, we will hunt down the killer.” He had no doubt about that. All the predatory changelings had one thing in common—if one of their own was hurt, they’d track the perpetrator with grim determination even if it took years.

“What’s changed? Why are you so angry?” she asked Dorian and there was something almost like pain in her tone.

The sentinel didn’t speak, his head bowed, palms pressed against the glass. Lucas knew that rather than striking out, he was withdrawing into himself and that couldn’t be allowed. He was Pack. He would never be left to suffer on his own.

He put one hand on Dorian’s shoulder. It was enough to hold him to the bonds of Pack until Tamsyn arrived. “SnowDancer lost a female two hours ago. If we don’t find her within seven days, she’ll be discovered mutilated in a way that would make even a Psy throw up.”

There was a flurry at the door and Tamsyn ran into the room alongside Kit and his older sister, Rina, a curvaceous, sensual female with the rank of soldier. Lucas turned to Sascha. “Wait for me outside.” This was Pack business. And no matter how much he craved her, she was an outsider. In spite of the chance he’d taken in telling her the truth, she might even be the enemy.

She looked at Dorian for a long time then silently turned and walked away. Rina closed the door behind her, shutting her out.

Sascha went down to the public lounge at the bottom floor of the building, Dorian’s anguish continuing to pound at her. She’d never felt such excruciating agony. It took everything she had not to scream in unison with him. It was almost as if the pain was drawn to her, as if she were sucking it inside, where it could mingle with her own unbearable hurt.

… you give off only coldness, a metallic stink that repels…

She couldn’t forget either Lucas’s words or the hatred she’d felt directed at her. Dorian, Kit, that beautiful blonde female, and even Tamsyn. They’d all looked at her as if she were the embodiment of evil. Perhaps she was. If they were right, she belonged to a race which would allow murder in order to protect their code of Silence.

A stab of pain slashed across her heart. She gasped and tried to stifle it but it only grew worse. She had to stop it, had to find some way of helping Dorian before he killed her. Locating the leopard was easy. He pulsated with anger and rage, the air around him pure darkness churning with endless echoes of pain.

Psychically, she didn’t know what she was doing. No one had ever trained her in this. She didn’t even know what it was that she was trying to do. Reaching into the darkness enclosing him, she gathered up his pain into her arms. There was so much of it that it overflowed. Determined, she kept gathering until the shadows around him softened and the agony in her heart became easier to endure.

Her arms were full of sorrow and she could think of only one way to destroy it, an instinctive understanding that came from a buried part of her mind. But she couldn’t do it here. Barely able to see, she walked out of the building, still holding her incomprehensible harvest.

Getting into her vehicle, she programmed in the destination and set the car to automatic. The sorrow was getting heavier and heavier. She had to get to the safety of her apartment before her mind cracked wide open under the pressure. Already her flaw was obvious in the tremble in her fingertips, in the hollow beat of her heart.

With most of her remaining energy, she reinforced her mental shields against the PsyNet. The energy that kept her alive was tied into those shields. If they failed, it would be because she’d died and there was nothing left to sustain them. She only hoped she made it inside the walls of her apartment before the darkness became too much, before it destroyed her from the inside out.

Lucas felt the pain being drawn away out of Dorian. From his position cradling the other man’s body against his chest, he said, “Tamsyn, what did you do?”

The healer ran her hands over Dorian’s face. “I’ve barely started. This wasn’t me. Dorian, what did you feel?”

“Like someone took the pain and left… peace behind.” He shook his head and sat up. There was no shame in him at having leaned on Pack. That was what they were there for—if Lucas fell, Dorian would do the same for him.

Rina linked her fingers to Dorian’s. “You feel…” Lost for words, the soldier turned to Tamsyn.

“Balanced,” Tamsyn said, as Lucas got to his feet.

Dorian frowned and pushed back his hair. “It was the damnedest thing. If felt like warmth spreading inside me, shoving out the rage. I can think again. For the first time since Kylie was taken, I can think.” He let Rina wrap her arms around him and lay her head against his chest.

Dorian ran his hand over Rina’s bare arm and Lucas knew he was grounding himself in the feel of her skin, in the way she smelled of Pack. This had nothing to do with male-female sharing and everything to do with Pack healing.

“If it wasn’t you, then who?” Lucas’s heart was thumping with a suspicion so outlandish, he could barely bring himself to believe it. But his instincts had never lied about this one thing and he’d felt the flare of power.

“I don’t know anyone who could do what Dorian’s described.” Tamsyn paused. “I’ve heard rumors but they’re just that—rumors.”

Dorian looked at Lucas. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. We have to find the SnowDancer female before the wolves go berserk. At this point they’re in shock but that’s going to turn into rage.”

“We’ll find her.” It was an alpha’s promise. “I’m going to ask Sascha to help us.”

“A Psy?” Rina’s voice was harsh. “They don’t even help their own children.”

“We don’t have a choice.” There was no other way to infiltrate the PsyNet.

Sascha was gone. According to the ground-floor receptionist, she hadn’t looked so good.

“Got in her car and took off.” The woman shrugged. “I was going to ask if she was okay but you know, she’s one of them so I figured she wouldn’t want to be bothered.”

“Thanks.” Lucas shoved both his hands into his pockets.

Rina, who’d come down with him, said, “Think she’s gone back to report to the Council?”

It was a valid suspicion but something in Lucas rebelled against accepting it. Pulling out his phone, he pressed her code and waited. No answer. “I guess we’ll know soon enough. Tell the sentinels to alert the pack.” If the Council discovered that DarkRiver was working to bring them down, they’d launch a preemptive strike.

The Psy might not be able to manipulate the minds of changelings without a huge expenditure of power, but they could kill if they were determined enough. The most vulnerable were the cubs, who hadn’t yet finished developing the natural shields which made older changelings that much harder to hurt.

He watched Rina take off as he pushed in another code. Within ten minutes, every member of DarkRiver would be contacted. The weaker ones would head to the safe houses, where Pack soldiers could protect them. The one advantage changelings had was that the Psy had to come very close to attack them through psychic means. No Psy had ever killed a changeling from afar.

But today, someone had reached Dorian from afar.