Heart of Obsidian

Chapter 5

KALEB’S THOUGHTS TOOK an instant to normalize when he returned to his body. It was a predictable result of the amount of power he’d expended to seal the breach while continuing to function on a basic level in Moscow—to the point where he was never vulnerable to a physical or psychic attack.

Blinking to clear dry eyes, he reached for the glass of water beside his hand, the glass positioned beside several nutrition bars. None of it had been on the table when he entered the Net. “Thank you,” he said and began to methodically eat his way through the tasteless items of food, his energy levels already nearly back to peak efficiency. Most Psy couldn’t recover as quickly, but Kaleb had long been aware that he wasn’t “normal” in any way, his DNA holding a thousand secrets.

Finishing the third nutrition bar, he looked across at the woman for whom he might yet cause a massacre that’d make today look like the merest incident. And saw that she’d changed in a fundamental way—her back was no longer bent, her head no longer ducked. Rather, she sat straight up, her hair tucked behind her ears, the dark blue of her eyes focused on him with a vivid intelligence that had always tested his own.

If he hadn’t had such granite control over his body and mind, his heartbeat might’ve accelerated, his breathing might have turned ragged. She was coming back. “The labyrinth,” he said through the primal scream inside him, “you’ve navigated it?”

“There was no need. It has dissolved.”

Her response was unexpected—the mind he’d glimpsed during teleport had been so chaotic a mess that it seemed impossible the strands had untangled themselves. “Have you regained your memories and abilities?” Do you remember?

“My abilities, yes. The entirety of my memories, no.” She folded her arms on the table and he saw again how thin they were, how fragile her body.

Rising, he mixed up a nutrient drink flavored with her favorite, cherry. She accepted it and took a sip. Eyes widening, she took another. “Cherry.” A sigh heavy with pleasure. “Thank you.”

He gave a curt nod before retaking his seat.

“The duration of the labyrinth,” she said, her voice still husky from disuse, “may have caused permanent damage to my memory centers. I was very young when I created it, not yet fully trained, and the construction was rough.”

Sixteen. That’s how old she’d been when she had disappeared. “What is your name?” he asked, every cell in his body motionless as he waited for her answer, waited to see how much of her had come back.

Midnight blue caught his own, his image reflected in the opaque depths. “Sahara Kyriakus, of the PsyClan NightStar.”

SAHARA’S revelation incited no visible change in Kaleb’s expression, not even the flicker of an eyelash. His Silence, she thought, taking another sip of the cherry-flavored drink he’d given her, must be pristine. Wholly unlike her own. Yet her responses . . . she knew they weren’t quite right, weren’t quite rational, given her precarious situation.

I am, she realized within her strange calm, not yet truly awake.

“What do you know about NightStar?” the dangerous man across from her asked in that chill-as-frost voice that resonated inside her in a way she couldn’t understand—as if she heard things in it he didn’t say, knew him in ways that were impossible. Even in her current state, she recognized that a man like Kaleb Krychek would trust no one with his secrets.

And if someone had the misfortune to discover them?

That person would not live long enough to share the discovery. With his black hair, cardinal eyes, and honed physique, Kaleb might be almost shockingly handsome, but the beauty was nothing but a mask for the deadly mind within. The knowledge should’ve made her afraid, but she found herself fighting the strangest compulsion to cry, her eyes burning as the eerie calm threatened to splinter.

“NightStar is an F-Psy clan,” she said, her voice rough from the effort it took to hold those unfathomable tears at bay—for a stranger who might well end her life when he realized she had no intention of cooperating with him any more than she had with her previous captors. “But I do not carry the PsyClan’s name as my last, as I am not a foreseer, do not see what will be.”

“No.” The black silk of Kaleb’s hair glinted in the morning sunlight, and she had the disorienting sense that she’d been here in this moment before, sitting across from this man while the sun played over his hair. “You see the past.”

Fighting her way through the sticky threads of a web seductive in its insistence she trust Kaleb, she fell back on facts burned into her long-term memory. “Sahara Kyriakus, Clan NightStar, custodial parent Leon Kyriakus—Gradient 7.7 M-Psy with recessive F genes.

“Biological mother Daniela García, Gradient 8.2 telepath, part of a small but highly regarded family group based out of Cuba.” Her skin tone, she thought as her eyes fell on her arm, came as a result of the mix of maternal and paternal DNA, would turn a deep golden brown with further exposure to the sun.

“Daniela García also possesses markers for recessive F abilities, the latter the reason she was considered a good genetic match for my father.” Foreseers ran in the NightStar family tree, and the clan did everything it could to maintain that lucrative line. “While I am not a foreseer, I am placed in the same designation, subdesignation B.”

Considered a rare offshoot of the F ability, backsight, her mind recited, bore enough similarities to the kind of telepathy utilized by Justice Psy that there was continuing debate within academic circles as to its proper placement. The most significant difference between the two designations was that unlike the J-Psy, those in subdesignation B did not go into a living mind and retrieve a particular memory.

Rather, they could be hit by flashes about the past without warning, independent of their physical proximity to the locations or individuals involved—though, like their F brethren, a B could “prime” her mind to seek knowledge about a particular past event. And similarly to a J, they could project the entire piece of backsight to another mind. As a result, one of their uses was that at times, they could act as witnesses to events that left no survivors. Subdesignation B had also been consulted in situations where critical data had been lost due to a sudden injury or accident.

“Testing,” she added as the facts continued to scroll in her mind, “puts me at 8.1 on the Gradient.”

Kaleb nudged her forgotten glass and waited until she’d drunk half of the cherry-flavored supplement before saying, “Those were your stats at sixteen, but you hadn’t plateaued and been assigned your permanent position on the Gradient. I’d guess you’re now between 9.5 and 9.7.”

“Is that why you want me?” she asked, the tears inside her forming into an aching knot. “For my backsight?”

The clean line of his jaw caught her eye as he spoke, her fingers spreading on the table. “I have no use or need of a B.”

His words gave her pause, her mind on the dangerous shadow ability that existed below her backsight and, unbeknownst to those who had tested her, was the true reason for her position on the Gradient. Her backsight was, at most, only a 3 on the scale used to measure psychic ability. However, the error didn’t speak to the skills of the testing staff but to the stealthy nature of what existed inside her—to the extent that she herself hadn’t become aware of it until she was twelve. And then, she’d learned to hide it, because it made her a target.

“If you don’t need my backsight,” she said to Kaleb, “then why am I here?” Regardless of her question, she was dead certain he knew what she could do—there could be no other reason he’d gone to such lengths to find and capture her.

The black depths of his eyes devoid of stars once more, an endless night that threatened to suck her under, he rose to his feet and, placing his hands on the table, leaned toward her until she could’ve reached out and run her fingers along his freshly shaven jaw. “You are here,” he said in a tone that made her heart thump wildly against her ribs, “because you belong to me.”

TEN minutes later, Sahara sat on the edge of the bed that was her own, Kaleb’s words gleaming against the wall of her mind. They made as little sense now as they had when he’d spoken them. One thing, however, was patent.

She was not free to leave this house. Neither was she free to enter the PsyNet.

Considering those facts in the abnormal calm that insulated her from her perilous situation, she decided she didn’t want to do either at present. The instant she slipped outside the obsidian of Kaleb’s mental protection, she exposed her naked, vulnerable mind. Further, she had no idea of where she’d go, what she’d do upon escaping him. As proven by the hazy distance between her and her emotions—until it felt as if she were looking out at the world through a wall of water—her mind remained bruised, her thinking processes flawed.

NightStar.

An option for sanctuary, except, with her fragmented memory centers, she had no way of knowing if her clan hadn’t in fact worked hand in glove with her captors to harness her ability to their own ends, giving her up to soul-destroying loneliness. The guards in her prison hadn’t seen her as an individual, hadn’t even seen her as a sentient being. She’d simply been a task, nameless and without identity.

Had one shown her even the smallest kindness, would the labyrinth have begun to unravel? Sahara would never know, because the instant the individual in charge of her incarceration had discovered the labyrinth—too late to halt the process—her normal guards, who occasionally spoke to her, had been replaced by men and women so icily Silent it had never occurred to them to deviate from their assigned duties . . . whether those duties were to force-feed her or to strip her to the skin while lowering the room temperature to freezing.

Kaleb, in contrast, had thus far done nothing to cause her harm. He’d given her privacy, free access to clean clothing and a shower, as well as food that made her taste buds sing and her parched soul shudder. Neither had he commented on or challenged her broken Silence. It would be stupid and premature to leave his protection until she was in a better mental state, able to judge friend from foe.

As for Kaleb himself . . . the responses he aroused in her were raw, disturbing, painful. Even now, the knot of tears lay rigid against her breastbone, as if simply waiting for her to surrender to an emotion that was wholly without reason. To cry for Kaleb, she would have to know him, and he was a stranger . . . who knew she adored cherry-flavored drinks and that she felt the cold more acutely than most people. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the entire sprawl of the house was now at a temperature she found most comfortable.

Taking a deep breath in an effort to fight the compulsion to go to him, to demand answers to questions she couldn’t articulate, she picked up the book he’d given her the previous night and decided to walk to the terrace. The sunshine, the cool autumn wind, she craved it against her skin . . . as she craved contact with another living being, her body starved for far more than food.

Her thoughts scattered when she caught the fleeting reflection of a woman with a tangled dark mane. Blinking, she stared at the window, but it wasn’t the best mirror and only served to frustrate. Since her room had no mirrors—a vague memory of shattered glass, shards slicing a fine, bright line across her cheek—she walked back down the corridor and entered the room across from her own.

The clean, fresh scent of soap and aftershave that held a hint of pine.

Since Kaleb had left the door open, she decided it wasn’t off-limits and continued deeper inside, placing the book on the bed while she explored. Barren of anything but the bed and a small bedside table, the closet built into the wall opposite the sliding doors that led out onto the terrace, the room was military neat, not a single piece of clothing or other ephemera scattered around.

The bathroom was the same, Kaleb’s personal grooming gear stored efficiently inside the mirrored cabinet above the granite countertop that housed the sink. Fascinated, she picked up his aftershave, drew in the scent that made her skin ache, then examined the slick black device he used to shave, unable to imagine the ice-edged man who considered her his doing such an intimate act.

Touching her hand to her own jaw, she thought back to when he’d leaned over her in the kitchen. It had taken every ounce of her will not to brush her fingers over the hard angles of his face.

It had been so long.

She shook off the bone-piercing thought, knowing it to be a creation of her damaged mind. A cardinal Tk would have had no reason to be in the circumference of her life as a girl—NightStar was famously insular, and Tks were trained in special schools for reasons of safety. No, she had never touched Kaleb Krychek, regardless of what might be termed the birth of a dangerously obsessive compulsion toward the man who was effectively her jailer.

Putting the shaver back in its spot, her fingers lingering longer than they should have, she closed the cabinet doors . . . and looked at who she’d become. At sixteen, she’d had a little more fat in her cheeks, a softer curve to her jaw. Right now, she was all bone. Her increased calorie intake would ensure a return to a healthier appearance—but not to the extent that she’d carry the baby fat in her cheeks again. The finer line of her face was a natural result of adulthood and she liked it.

Her hair, however . . .

Taking a tangled hunk, she brought it to her nose, caught the scent of citrus and something softer. So, she hadn’t imagined taking a shower and scrubbing her hair three times over. Clean though it was, it was also knotted to the point of making her appear a madwoman—

“That was the goal.” The labyrinth had been only part of her plan to hide herself from those who would turn her into a trained animal poised to perform on command. “It’s not necessary any longer,” she whispered and clawed back another piece of herself.