Blaze of Memory

CHAPTER 9

Katya broke several nails but the panel wouldn’t shift. It took her ten precious seconds to realize it had been locked in place by a second layer of security. Frustrated, she moved on, trying things she hadn’t even known she knew until her brain put her fingers into motion.

All for naught.

The car’s systems were as impregnable as a tank’s. Giving up when it became obvious she was wasting her energy, she slid back into her seat and pressed two fingers to her forehead in an attempt to follow the thread of the compulsion, find out if her need to go there. . . go north—yes, north!—was nothing but another booby trap.

At first, there was only the sticky blankness of the cobweb, a prison that trapped her hands, muted her mouth. But then, she found herself standing in a quiet, hidden part of her psyche, a part protected by the phoenix’s wings. That part whispered that this need, this urge, came from within herself. Yet how could she trust that it did when her mind was a cracked and fractured thing, full of holes and lies, illusions and nightmares? What if the phoenix she’d glimpsed was only a madness-induced fantasy, something she’d clung to when all else was taken from her?

A click of sound.

She snapped up her head to see the driver’s-side door sliding back. Dev got in, his tall, muscular body taking up what felt like every inch of spare space. “Here.”

Accepting the take-out drink container he held out, she frowned. “This is heavy for juice.”

“Milk shake,” he said, unscrewing the lid on a bottle of water and putting a spare bottle in the holder between them. “That’s for you, too.”

“Thank you.” The cold of the milk shake seeped through the insulated container, a small thing, but she luxuriated in it, in the reminder that she was no longer in the dark.

“I made a call while I was in there,” Dev said, surprising her. “The panther? It’s a real memory.”

“Oh.” A slow bloom of hope unfurled. “Are you certain?”

A quick nod that sent his hair sliding across his forehead, drawing her eye. Pushing it back, he looked at the container she held. “Drink.”

Aware she’d likely never tasted such a thing before, she took a cautious sip. Nothing came up. “The straw’s defective.”

Dev shot her a quick grin. It altered his face, turning him strikingly beautiful. But that wasn’t the odd part. The odd part was that seeing him smile made her heart change its rhythm. She lifted her hand a fraction, compelled to trace the curve of his lips, the crease in his cheek. Would he let her, she thought, this man who moved with the liquid grace of a soldier. . . or a beast of prey?

“Did I say milk shake?” he said, withheld laughter in his voice. “I meant ice cream smoothie—with enough fresh fruit blended into it to turn it solid.” Glancing at her when she didn’t move, he raised an eyebrow.

She felt a wave of heat across her face, and the sensation was so strange, it broke through her fascination. Looking down, she took off the lid after removing the straw and stared at the swirls of pink and white that dominated the delicious-smelling concoction. Intrigued, she poked at it with the tip of her straw. “I can see pieces of strawberry, and what’s that?” She looked more closely at the pink-coated black seeds. “Passion fruit?”

“Try it and see.” Handing her his water bottle, he started the car and got them on their way.

“How would I know?” She put his water in the holder next to the unopened bottle. “And I need a spoon for this.”

Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a plastic-wrapped piece of cutlery. “Here.”

“You did that on purpose,” she accused. “Did you want to see how hard I’d try to suck the mixture up?”

Another smile, this one a bare shadow. “Would I do that?”

It startled her to realize he was teasing her. Devraj Santos, she thought, wasn’t supposed to have a sense of humor. That was something she just knew. And, it was wrong.

That meant the shadow-man didn’t know everything, that he wasn’t omnipotent.

A cascade of bubbles sparkled through her veins, bright and effervescent. “I think you’re capable of almost anything.” Dipping in the spoon, she brought the decadent mixture to her lips.

Oh!

The crisp sting of ice, the cream rich and sweet, the fruit a tart burst of sensation. It was impossible not to take a second bite. And a third.

Though he kept his eyes on the road, Dev was acutely conscious of Katya eating up the smoothie. She was concentrating so hard on the treat she appeared to have forgotten all about him. The clawing protectiveness in him relaxed—he’d found something she’d eat. And if he had to feed her those things for the next month, she would put on weight.

She was of enemy blood. It would be in his best interests to keep her weak.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. That ruthless voice was as much a part of him as the protectiveness, no getting around that—but these days, it dominated more and more. On the flip side, he thought, the Santos family tree was also lucky enough to contain an empath, a woman gifted with the ability to heal emotional wounds—maybe his great-grandmother’s blood would save him from becoming a complete and utter bastard. That was what she’d predicted the last time he’d seen her.

“So much iron in your heart, boy,” Maya had said. “I touch you and I taste metal.”

“It’s part of who I am.”

“You think it makes you strong.”

He hadn’t argued.

“This isn’t why my parents left the Net,” she’d said, a scowl marring her delicate features. “They fought for our right—your right—to feel, to live as you wanted. Instead, you’re becoming so cold you might as well be Psy.”

His great-grandmother had been a child at the time of the defection, and, as with the others of her generation, it had been the defining moment of her life. What the old ones didn’t understand was that the war had never ended, that iron-hard choices were all that kept the Forgotten from extinction.

And Dev wasn’t yet bastard enough to shatter the heart of an empath.

Katya sighed, and that quickly, he was wrenched very much into the present. “Good?” he asked.

“I want to eat more but my stomach is protesting.”

He let the ice of control go for the moment, the dark heat of his nature filling the empty spaces within. “I’ll pull up at a rest stop so you can throw away the cup.”

“I don’t want to throw it away.” She licked the spoon with an innocent relish that hit him as anything but.

His entire body went taut, fixated on the lush softness of her mouth, the pink dart of her tongue. Jesus, Dev, he told himself, this is hardly the time to be thinking of sex.

His body had other ideas. Weak, fragile women had never attracted him. And Katya, she was all of that. But he’d glimpsed the steel frame beneath that translucent skin, those lost eyes—when this woman found herself again, she’d be a force to be reckoned with.

“I’ll make you another one at home,” he managed to say, his voice raw. “We’ll stop at a grocer’s on the way and pick up supplies.” He couldn’t stop looking after her. Another small weakness, another chink in his armor.

“Can I choose the fruit?”

Her excitement was both a balm to his hunger and fuel for the same. “How will you know what to choose?”

“I’ll take one of each, then decide what I like.” An eminently practical answer. . . and yet the shimmering joy in her voice was nothing practical, nothing remotely Psy.

If she was a weapon, she was a masterstroke.

A little more than two hours later, Katya walked across a wide porch and into a graceful house isolated at the end of a long drive and surrounded by what seemed to be acres of trees. A fine layer of snow had turned the area into a won derland, but it was the house that captured her interest. “You consider this your home?”

Dev gave a short nod. “When I can get to it. Give me a second to put these groceries in the kitchen.”

Deeply curious about the man behind the director, she turned slowly, taking in everything. The split-level house was wide and full of light, with furniture that was stylish yet appeared lived in. Blown-up photographs graced a few walls—she found herself moving toward one in mute fascination. It was a shell lying on the beach, its every precise angle illuminated by the lens. But there was warmth in the black-and-white shot, a sense that the photographer had been entranced by the beauty of the simple object. “Art,” she whispered, hearing Dev’s footsteps, “is not something the Psy appreciate.”

“Perhaps that’s why the Forgotten held on to it so hard.” He leaned a shoulder on the wall beside the photograph, his arms loosely folded. “Almost all Forgotten children are brought up with a strong appreciation for art and music.”

Katya considered whether that was a piece of knowledge that could be used to harm Dev and his people should she ever be thrown back in the hole, in the darkness, and decided not. “You prefer art.”

A slight nod.

“You’re very good.” Psy didn’t truly understand art, but there was a store of data in her head that told her she’d learned how to value it. Because, to those of her race, anything that gained in value was a sound investment, whether or not the owner actually found the piece aesthetically pleasing.

Dev’s eyes gleamed when she looked to him. “How do you know they’re mine?”

“They echo with you.” Even as she spoke, she wasn’t sure what she meant. She just knew she’d sensed his fingerprint on each and every piece. The clarity, the focus, it rang with his personality. But that warmth. . . something had changed. “When did you take these?”

“A few years back.”

She wondered what had happened in the ensuing time. Because while he’d laughed with her, she sensed a cool kind of distance in Dev, a feeling that he held everything behind multiple shields. But then again, she was the enemy. Why should he share anything of himself with her?

Dev tapped the photograph of the shell. “Ever been to the beach?”

Sand in her shoes, in her hair, in her clothes.

“Yes.” Grabbing the memory with frantic hands, she held on. “Once, when I was a child. It was . . . an accident. Our vehicle had a malfunction and my father had to pull to a stop near the beach.”

“You grew up with your father?”

“Yes.” Again, fragments of memory, sharp, almost vicious, as if they were being rammed out through the cells of her very brain. “No. Both.”

“Both?”

“Yes.” She shook her head, searching through the scraps for the piece that would complete the puzzle. Pain resonated down her spine, but she found that last, broken fragment. “They had a joint-parenting agreement.”

“Sometimes,” Dev murmured, “I think the Psy have it right with their agreements.” The expression on his face was strangely remote. “Leaves no room for human error.”

“There’s no room for anything.” Her mind continued to withhold so much, but she remembered the sense of isolation she’d always felt, even as a child. “There are no emotional bonds. My father could as easily have been a stranger—to him, I was an investment, his genetic legacy.”

“Yet you feel strongly about him—you mentioned him first.”

That halted her. She blinked, looked into those eyes she’d begun to see in her dreams. “Yes. I suppose . . . but isn’t that a paradox? I didn’t feel in the Net. I was Silent.”

“Or maybe,” he murmured, reaching out to slide a strand of her hair behind her ear, the touch inciting a shocking burst of sensation along her nerves, “you were simply silenced.”

EARTHTWO COMMAND LOG: SUNSHINE STATION

18 May 2080: The medical team is reporting a higher than average number of minor illnesses, with headaches being the main complaint. Tests to date have revealed that a small number of staff are suffering from recurring pinprick hemorrhages in the cerebral cortex.

Those affected are being regularly monitored, while a biomed team has been instructed to scan the area for any toxins that may be causing the problem.

However, no one has been disabled or seriously compromised as a result of these illnesses, and productivity remains high. There is no need for replacement personnel.