Visions of Heat

CHAPTER 10

Faith found herself doing something inexplicable the next day. Instead of spending her time reinforcing shields that were clearly malfunctioning, she kept going over what Vaughn's skin had felt like under her fingertips, so hot, so different from her own. Caught in the memory, she ran her fingers over her upper arm. It was the first time she'd treated her body as a sensual object quite apart from its functionality.

A discreet alarm chimed.

Still disciplined enough to not betray startlement, she terminated the alarm. It was one in the afternoon and well past the time she should've started work. After a quick but thorough review of her shields, which actually proved not to be compromised, she walked out and took a reclining position on the chair. Monitoring functions came online with a hum meant to be inaudible to the human ear, but which she'd always heard with some unknown sense deep within her body.

A few seconds later, the voice of the M-Psy overseeing this session issued from the small communicator built into the arm of the chair. There was no visual because they hadn't wanted her being distracted by another face as a child, and she'd never asked for that to be changed. But she was under no illusion that they couldn't see her.

"All your biological and neurological functions are within the acceptable limits. There has, however, been an increase in your raw psychic potential."

That was a surprise. As a cardinal, she was off the Gradient but apparently, M-Psy could gauge fluctuations in her abilities. "An increase?" She feigned only cool interest. "Is that a sign of mental degradation?"

"On the contrary, it's a sign of health. Such increases have occasionally been noted in high-Gradient minds—we can't measure cardinals past 10.0, but we are able to tell when your abilities shift in either direction," he explained, displaying the truth that everyone, even Psy, liked to talk about what they knew. "We theorize that the mind learns psychic shortcuts over years of constant use, thereby creating extra capacity."

Double-talk, Faith thought. The reason her powers had increased was because the conditioning was falling away. The logical connection was irrefutable. Her vision channels were being forced to encompass more than the narrow field of commerce, thereby becoming wider. The subject matter or palatability of the new visions was irrelevant. That they existed was proof enough of her untapped potential, potential she'd deliberately been taught to suppress.

It made her wonder what else had been stifled. Who might she have been had she not been created in Silence, genetically selected to generate a steady stream of income? What would it have been like to have been born normal, born without fear of certain madness, born woman enough to take Vaughn on?

"Shall we start the session?" the M-Psy asked. "Or would you like to review the new brain scans?"

"I want to do some work first. Initiate random sequence, full list."

A clear panel rose up from behind the chair to curve over her eyes. It stopped half a centimeter from her lashes and clouded to opaque. A split second later, a steady flow of words began to scroll across it at high speed. It was her list of current dormant requests. Foresight could be steered, but not completely controlled, much to many a business's frustration. Faith, however, was a near-certain bet, which was why she had such a high price tag.

Once she'd entered the relevant triggers into her mind, she usually had a vision within a week or two and they could happen anywhere—in the garden as she walked, during sleep, while in a meeting with the M-Psy. However, over the years, it had become apparent that if she put her mind into a receptive frame, the visions could be guided out in a more controlled environment. That particular skill gave her some freedom from being watched twenty-four/seven, but so long as even one vision came outside of this chair, she'd never be accorded total privacy.

Her eye fell on the Tricep symbol among the mass of scrolling data. She kept picking it up again and again in spite of the speed and amount of other information. Her mind had chosen. Closing her eyes, she allowed her breathing to alter. It was the first step in putting herself into the half sleep she personally called suspended animation. While suspended, she existed neither in this world nor on the Net, but somewhere F-Psy alone could go, becoming part of the timestreams of the world.

Then she opened her psychic channels. In truth, she couldn't ever close them, but she could, with concentration, expand them to the nth degree. Part of her brain itself, the channels were inaccessible from the PsyNet—the only things that could come through them were visions. And if there was a part of her that wasn't sure which visions would choose to crawl in, she didn't let those uncertainties filter through to her conscious mind.

The Tricep prediction was child's play. She came out of it with the now-familiar feeling of barely having stretched her mental muscles. As she dictated the details of what she'd seen, it struck her that if she continued down this path, she'd most certainly go insane—from boredom. Having the M-Psy restart the screen scroll, she gave him two more perfect readings before he called a halt.

"We don't want to strain your mind."

Since the session had utilized a minuscule portion of her considerable powers, Faith could've overruled him, but she didn't. She had other things to do with her time and energy. "I'll be in my private quarters."

"Faith, your monitoring levels have dropped off considerably recently."

Meaning she was no longer spied on every minute of every day. "I've cleared it with my father." A stopgap measure at best. Anthony would soon realize that she wasn't reaching for induction into the Council ranks—then what excuse would she use to escape the stranglehold of surveillance?

Having made it to her bedroom, she peeled off the dress at the same time as ingesting a nutrition bar, then had a quick shower before pulling on cotton pajama bottoms and a singlet top. Ready, she took a classic cross-legged yoga position on the bed and began to calm the rivers of her mind in preparation for entry into the Net.

It wasn't necessary to be in such a state—Psy entered and left the Net at will. The difference was that Faith wasn't used to opening herself up to the massive information archive. Even in her last foray, she'd remained out of the most data-rich, and therefore most chaotic, areas. But she was through with being a perfect conditioned machine; she would not let programmed stress responses imprison her.

So, what other physiological factors did you experience?

Vaughn's amused voice drifted into her mind and threatened to negate the fruits of her meditation. She told herself to forget the scent of his skin, the heavy heat of his jaguar form as he'd brushed past her legs, the sensation of his lips.

"Focus," she muttered, and began to recite the list of companies on the waiting list for a prediction. It took her twenty minutes to complete and her mind was pure calm by the end.

Opening her mind's eye, she stepped out into the biggest and most constantly updated data archive in the world, ready to search for information on the F-Psy, on herself. But today the Net granted her nothing, despite her concentration. Her F designation abilities did pick up something below the surface, but whether it was an echo or a forecast, she had no way of knowing.

Hours later, she finally gave up the fruitless quest and, eschewing another nutrition bar or a cup of soup, curled up under the thin blanket on her bed. Usually when she was so mentally tired, there were no visions, or if there were, she remained unconscious of them. But the darkness hadn't been satisfied the last time it had invaded.

Now, it was going to make her pay.

Vaughn completed his watch on the extended boundary and met up with his replacement, Dorian. The latent male was in human form, as he had no ability to go leopard. That made him no less capable or lethal. He'd never have reached the rank of sentinel otherwise.

Like all of them, Dorian also had an immutable core of loyalty. No sentinel could ever be tempted into betrayal. But being tempted into something else was another matter altogether.

"You know the grid?"

Nodding, Dorian slung a rifle across his back. It was his single visible weapon. "Any problems?"

"Some wolf juveniles are playing at hunting in the east quadrant."

"Can I shoot them?"

"We're friends now." The two packs were, in fact, blood-bonded. But given that Lucas and Hawke, the SnowDancer alpha, had agreed on the bond only a few months ago, it was taking both packs time to adapt. "No using them for target practice."

Dorian's smile was feral. "I promise I'll only shoot to wound."

"I'm sure Lucas and Hawke would appreciate that." Giving the younger sentinel a quick rundown on the other movements in the grid, he changed back to jaguar form and took off.

He should've been going to his own lair to catch up on some sleep—his body had kept him up most of last night. When he had slept, it was to find himself waking from heavy dreams of sensation, more than ready to roll over and sink himself into a very specific female body.

If he'd believed that the hunger could be sated with another, he would've had no trouble finding a willing lover. He might be jaguar to their leopard, but the females in DarkRiver had always considered him a more than satisfactory sexual partner. And they weren't the kind of women who hesitated to let a man know if he wasn't up to scratch.

However, he ran not in the direction of one of those welcoming felines, but toward a Psy who might overload into a seizure at the fury within him. That was unacceptable to either half of his self. He'd marked her and he would have her, even if he had to coax her kiss by slow kiss. Cats were good at coaxing. It was only a more sensual aspect of their favorite game—stalking.

The jaguar covered the distance between his watch and her home with the efficient confidence that came from being the most dangerous thing in the forest. But tonight he had no interest in the small creatures that darted into the shadows at the sound of his approach.

Because tonight, he was hunting pleasure.

Faith's instinct was to fight the sucking edges of the darkness, but as she'd learned in the weeks prior to Marine's murder, the more she struggled, the harder it would hold on. So she let it—let him—take her under and bring her into his world.

His darkness churned with faint hints of red. The blood hunger was reawakening far more quickly than she would've guessed—Marine's murder hadn't sated this creature, it had simply whetted the edge of his appetite.

He released her when there was no longer any chance of escape. Now she would watch and see, now she would be his audience and his disciple, for he was a great being and expected others to pay homage. That she was the solitary individual aware of his genius was a source of great anger, which he took out on her by forcing her to bear witness to his every malevolent act. They hadn't yet come to pass, but while in the twisted coils of a vision somehow linked to the killer's mind, they were her reality.

A violent swirl of red sliced her thoughts in half as he shoved into her mind. She lost all sense of self, of being a cardinal named Faith, and became a creature of pain and fear. The darkness pushed her to the raw edge of madness, threatening her with the very emotions she'd been trained not to feel, or to even admit possessing. Her helplessness made the killer laugh. He grabbed her with his teeth, shook her hard.

He wanted her to not only watch, but understand his sick desires. That she didn't, couldn't, enraged him. Surrounded by the vicious thickness of murderous fury, Faith did the sole thing she could to protect herself. She surrendered the civilized thinking part of her mind and retreated into the walled inner core of her psyche, curling up around herself like a child going into the fetal position.

Still, the darkness battered her. He was amused by her inability to deal with him, playing with her as a cat might play with a trapped mouse. He didn't want to kill her. No, what he wanted was to flaunt his power until she stopped resisting and let him rape her mind. Then he'd be free to show her all his desires, every one of his planned future acts, an endless reel of horror.

Too deep inside the most animal heart of her psyche to remember that she wasn't supposed to feel fear, Faith began to struggle with everything in her.

And failed to break out.

Vaughn landed silently on the soft carpet of Faith's bedroom. His feet were bare but his legs covered—he'd cached a pair of jeans in the forest earlier that day, not wanting to scandalize Faith any more than she was already going to be scandalized. Of course, he was still looking forward to seeing the surprise in her eyes when she found him there for the second night in a row.

However, his senses went on red alert the second he took a step toward the bed. Her blanket in a heap on the floor, Faith lay curled into a tight ball, breath shallow and heartbeat sluggish to the cat's keen hearing. The scent of something that shouldn't have been there, something that didn't belong, was pungent in the air. When he narrowed his eyes in the semidarkness, he picked out a more extreme blackness around Faith, just as he'd done at the cabin.

Convinced the darkness would grip her tighter if it knew Vaughn was about to intervene, he got onto the bed in silence. His next move was lightning fast. Picking her up, he crashed her against him, physically blocking the darkness with the way his body curved over hers. Logic argued it wouldn't work—whatever was attacking her was doing so on the psychic plane. But instinct said it would. And instinct was proven right.

He felt the cold emptiness of sheer evil brush over him as the darkness was ripped in two by his body. It was unable to cling to anything in him because he was too different, too animal. Vaughn allowed a growl to rise up in his throat—his claws had sliced out the instant after he'd dragged Faith to safety. Now she lay protected by a human cage and, no longer able to feed on her, the dark thing withered away.

Vaughn waited until the air was purged of the noxious scent before he dropped his gaze to Faith. Retracting his claws, he used one hand to clear the strands of hair off her face. Her skin was cool, too cool. And her heartbeat was becoming ever slower, as if she continued to fight with all her strength, unaware she was safe. He wanted to do violence. But instead, he slid a hand under her nape and kissed her.

Only touch affected Faith deeply enough to break through the psychic nature of her mind. Most humans would've been shocked at the animal intensity of his kiss, but he wasn't human. And he wasn't shocked.

Something sizzled along Faith's most intimate inner skin and, though it wasn't painful, it demanded. Fearful that it was a trick, but incapable of ignoring the flaring pain of nerve endings snapping to wakefulness, she uncurled from her protective crouch. And saw energy arcing through her mind, silver and bright, passionate and unstoppable, a lightning storm that burned away the lingering echoes of malignant darkness.

Her blood began to pump with heat that burned. Around her, a thousand fires sparked to life. She stood in the center, protected but not shielded from the inferno. These flames wanted to caress, to touch, to stroke.

Unable to take the wild hunger of the storm, to withstand the intensity of the conflagration, she willed herself from the dream and into waking life. But the dream followed her to the outside. Her lips were on fire. Her body exploded with heat. Enfolding her was a stronger flame, skin that seemed to burn with a higher temperature than her own, living heat that lay against her nape, under her thighs, against the cheek she had pressed to a hard muscled surface.

She tried to suck in a breath, but her mouth had already been claimed. Her lashes flicked upward. Night-gold eyes met hers, brutal, savage ... and safe. Her lips were freed for the second it took her to gasp a breath and then reclaimed. She found that her hand was on his shoulder, holding on, holding him.

Her mind spun with too much sensation, but the alternative was worse. In her not-quite-conscious state, she wasn't sure the darkness wouldn't return if she broke away from this overload. So she embraced it, shifting to wrap her arms around the neck of the dangerous male in her bed, melding her body to his.

If it came to madness, she'd rather drown in heat than be sucked into the sadistic cruelty of darkness. The woman heart of her was aware that his hands were on her back, pressing her to him, and that while those hands were big and powerful, they did no harm. Then even that thought was swept under the shock wave of sensation and she became nothing but flesh, a creature who had no mind and no thoughts. Her eyes closed.

Vaughn sensed Faith's utter surrender. The cat was ready to take what was his, but the man knew this wasn't the kind of submission that would ever satisfy him and it might just scar her. She wasn't giving in to him. She was using him to escape the darkness. Vaughn didn't mind being used by Faith, but he did mind that she wasn't conscious of who it was she clung to.

He broke the kiss and had the pleasure of feeling her nails dig into his skin as she tried to make him return. "Faith."

She pressed closer, her eyes remaining shut.

"Faith." He made his voice a command edged with the roughness of a growl. It wasn't difficult. This aroused, he had trouble controlling the beast. It was something Faith was going to have to learn to deal with, but not today. Today was about keeping her safe. "Open your eyes."

She shook her head, but her hands slipped down from around his neck to curl into fists against his chest.

A slow smile spread over his lips. "I'm not naked." Taking one feminine fist, he pressed it against his jean-covered thigh, then had to bite back a very sexual demand when the fingers of that hand spread and sent sensation straight to his groin.

"Are you real?"

It was a question that made it brutally clear how deep she'd retreated into her mind before he'd pulled her out. Leaning forward, he nipped at the skin of her neck. She jerked and opened her eyes at last.

Silver lightning sparked in their night-sky depths, vivid and wild.