Hostage to Pleasure

CHAPTER 3

Ashaya lay down on the tilted examining table, her eyes focused on the ceiling. Though her vision remained sharp, her fingertips were numb. It was her forearms that tingled now, even as her heart labored to maintain a steady rhythm.

Humans and changelings, she thought, as the medical personnel laid out their instruments and began to explain the procedure to her, had it easy. They could fake their deaths any number of ways—crash a car off a cliff, leave a pool of blood for others to find, even write a simple suicide note and fade into the crowds.

But a Psy was tied to the PsyNet by the umbilical cord of a link that was necessary for life, yet also functioned as a shackle. If she ran her car off a cliff, no one would think her dead—not so long as they could see the living beacon of her psychic star on the Net. Even comatose Psy retained the link, their bodies fighting to maintain the life-giving connection.

Ashaya felt her heart begin to stutter, her vision to haze, as the poison spread through her system like a malignant cancer.

But this cancer had the potential to save her life. Because if this worked, she would go into a state beyond a coma.

Some people might call what she was trying to achieve hibernation, but that wasn’t technically correct—during hibernation, oxygen did circulate, just so little of it that the individual appeared dead. But it wasn’t enough for Ashaya to appear dead. She had to be dead for the duration. And there was only one known way to achieve that—cryonic suspension.

While suspended, the body literally stopped. Every aspect of it, even the brain… and a psychic link could not be held when the brain ceased to function. A simple, practical plan, except that while it was relatively easy to put someone into a cryonic state, no individual, their race notwithstanding, had ever successfully been brought back out—not unless a permanent vegetative state could be counted as success.

Ashaya hadn’t made the breakthrough of the century and discovered a foolproof way to reverse the suspended state. Instead, she’d taken the principles of cryonics and applied them in an abstract way. Rather than relying on temperatures well below zero to slow her heart rate and brain activity, she’d tracked down the neurotoxin of a dangerous Australian tick, one that caused paralysis in its victims. She’d then manufactured and remanufactured the neurotoxin, using her abilities to change it a little each time… until she had the perfect poison. It would stop everything in her body, including her brain—thereby terminating her Net link. If it worked as intended, she would wake from her deathlike state in exactly ten hours. If she didn’t wake… that was the risk she took.

The real test would come after the waking. As soon as her brain flickered to life, it would instinctively search for, and make, a new connection to the PsyNet. There was no way Ashaya could stop that. She’d be unconscious while it was being made—for a Psy, the Net link was more important than breathing. Those initial moments after relinking would be the vulnerable time. The time when her allies would either protect her or leave her to be recaptured.

Something pricked her elbow. She looked down but there was nothing there. The medical personnel around her were starting to ask her questions at sharp volume, attempting telepathic contact that she deflected with manufactured confusion. Her mind was functioning fine, though her breath was starting to catch, her eyes to close. Even then she knew that this might all be for nothing—for her plan to work, they had to move her.

The PsyNet was a psychic construct, but it had a physical component—a Psy in Europe didn’t occupy the same section of the Net as a Psy in the Philippines. If she was far enough away from her last known location when she woke, the link would be made in an area not under blackout by Ming’s troops. However, the instant she came to full consciousness, her mind would try to resettle her back where she “belonged.” But not if things went according to plan… except what…

Her brain was fuzzy, unable to deal with complex psychic concepts. She became aware she could no longer feel her body, no longer feel the air going into her lungs. Perhaps she might have broken Silence and panicked at that instant, but it was too late.

Ashaya died.

Deep in the Canadian Rockies, Amara dropped a glass vial. It shattered into a thousand vicious points, but she heard nothing, her head echoing with absolute and utter emptiness as Ashaya blinked out of existence. No!

Glass cut into her palms, her side, and she realized she’d slumped to the floor. Her blood, she thought, was very red.

Dorian lay Keenan down in a bed located inside the home of DarkRiver’s healer, Tamsyn. The original plan had called for the boy to be taken up to the SnowDancer den, located deep in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But with him in the Web of Stars, Judd had suggested he should be closer to DarkRiver.

Which was how Dorian found himself at Tammy’s. Situated roughly an hour out of San Francisco, the house was isolated down the end of a long drive and backed onto a heavily wooded area, but it was still nowhere near as safe as the SnowDancer den. “There’s more chance of him being seen here.” His cat didn’t like the boy being so exposed.

Tammy tucked a soft blanket around their charge, hands gentle. “Talin wanted to take him since her and Clay’s place is harder to find, but Sascha said no.”

“Sascha said that?” The Psy renegade who had mated with DarkRiver’s alpha, Lucas, adored children.

“We don’t know what the boy can do,” Tammy reminded him, “and Talin’s got Jon and Noor living with her. Jon would probably be okay, but we’re not sure how well Noor can safeguard herself. Keenan could influence her telepathically without even meaning to.”

Dorian nodded, his leopard retreating. Keenan was now his to protect, but so was little Noor. “Right.” Changelings had rock-solid mental shields; but Noor wasn’t changeling, and though she carried some Psy DNA, most of her was vulnerably human. “What about your boys?”

“I’m sending them to stay with their grandparents for a bit.” She brushed Keenan’s hair off his forehead. “Poor baby’s so small—how could anyone have hurt him?” Her tone was on the dangerous side of feral.

He walked over to take her into his arms. “Shh, we’ve got him now.”

“I’ll gut anyone who tries to bruise this boy again.” She tucked her head under his chin, letting him soothe her. “I don’t know who Ashaya Aleine is, but she did something good in getting him out.”

Dorian’s heart kicked.

I saved two innocent lives. You won’t kill me.

“Is Sascha on her way?” he asked, ignoring the flicker of memory. It was far harder to erase the image burned into his brain—of an icy stranger silhouetted against the night sky.

“She should be arr—” They both heard it at the same time. The sound of a car coming down the drive. “That’ll be her.”

“Hope she can help the kid cope.” It wasn’t a vain wish. While Tammy was a healer attuned to changeling leopards, Sascha was an E-Psy, an empath, born with the ability to sense and heal emotional wounds.

Tammy drew back, kissing him on the cheek in thanks. “Sascha said he’s connected to you. How?”

Dorian had been thinking about that. He raised his hand and showed Tammy the cut on his palm—it was already close to healed. “Blood oaths are powerful things and I promised him he’d be okay. Maybe because of that, when my blood mixed with his, it gave him a choice as to where he wanted to go.” And he’d chosen to trust Dorian. It was a trust both leopard and man intended to honor.

Sascha came in at that instant, tall and with worry in her cardinal eyes—white stars on black velvet. “That’s as good a guess as any,” she said, walking over to stroke her hand gently over Keenan’s brow. “He’s in the Web, but only through you. You’re his lifeline.”

Dorian’s protectiveness toward the boy intensified. If he had a weakness, it was for the vulnerable, for those who couldn’t fight the monsters on their own. “He’ll be scared when he wakes.” He could still feel those fragile bones trembling as the boy tried to hide his excruciating fear.

“He’ll sleep awhile yet.” Sascha sent Dorian a worried glance as Tammy excused herself in order to pack for her cubs’ stay with their grandparents. “Why don’t you go for a run? It’s been a hard day.” There was a question in her eyes that he read loud and clear.

“No need to worry, Sascha darling.” He smiled at her chiding look, knowing full well she had a soft spot for him. “I’m not going to lose any sleep over taking those shots today—they were holding a child hostage.” His leopard growled inwardly at the memory of the blood on Keenan’s wrists.

Sascha seemed satisfied with that, her attention shifting back to Keenan. “He’ll be safe now.” Her voice caught and he wondered what emotions she’d sensed around the boy. “Protected.”

“Thanks to his mother.” Dorian’s thoughts turned to Ashaya Aleine, a woman he’d seen as a shadow in the darkness two months ago… and hadn’t been able to forget since. “You think she can get out?”

“I have my doubts.” Sascha closed her hand around one of Keenan’s. “From what Judd shared, the Council needs her. And it has a way of getting what it wants.”

“I think you’re underestimating her.” Dorian recalled the freezing tones of Ashaya’s voice, recalled, too, how hard and low that voice had hit him. Fucking two-fisted punch to the gut. If—

The trapped leopard inside of him snapped its teeth when he bit off that thought, but the human half was in no mood to listen. “So far, she’s managed to get three children out of potentially fatal situations—Jon, Noor, and now, Keenan.” The woman might be cold enough to give him freezer burn, but she was also smart as hell.

Sascha nodded. “The trouble is, we have no clue as to her motivation. I want to believe that she did it out of love for her son… but we both know mothers don’t always protect their own in the Net.”

Dorian couldn’t argue with that. Ashaya was Psy. Psy didn’t feel. So why had the Council been able to use Keenan as leverage to ensure his mother’s good behavior? It made her a mystery. Dorian had always liked mysteries. What he didn’t like were Psy in the Net, Psy who worshipped the cold, unfeeling God of Silence.

Psy like Ashaya Aleine.

His blood thundered with a tidal wave of black rage. It was a familiar feeling—one of the Silent, a cardinal telekinetic named Santano Enrique, had butchered Dorian’s sister, using her as a canvas on which to carve his sick fantasies. Dorian had torn the killer apart with his bare hands, but that hadn’t quieted the rage in his animal heart, the torment in his human soul.

Kylie’s body had still been warm when he reached her.

“Dorian.” Sascha’s voice cut through the miasma of pain and rage. “Don’t.”

Don’t punish yourself for a monster’s crime; don’t let him kill you, too. It was what she’d said to him in the months after Enrique’s execution, and Dorian had tried to listen. For a while, he’d thought he’d conquered the anger, but it had only been in hiding. Now, it came to pulsing life, triggered by the remembered sight of the blood on Keenan’s wrists… triggered, too, by the memory of Ashaya Aleine’s blue ice of a voice.

He got up. “I’m going for that run. Look after Keenan.” Even Sascha, with all her gifts, couldn’t erase his guilt. Because that anger, it wasn’t all directed at the Psy—he’d failed Kylie, failed his baby sister. If he could’ve split a vein, torn out his heart, given up his soul, and known it would bring her back, he’d have done so in a heartbeat.

But he couldn’t, so he’d learned to live with the grief, learned to live despite the guilt, had even fooled the pack into thinking he was getting better. Perhaps even fooled himself. Until her.

He’d almost shot Ashaya Aleine at first sight.

Not because she was evil. Or because he’d considered her a dangerous wildcard. No, the sole reason he had almost put a bullet through her was because the instant he’d caught her scent, his cock had gone as hard as fucking rock. The unexpected and unwanted reaction had ratcheted up the raw, angry fury of his guilt until it was an ever-tightening noose around his throat, a burning in his heart. All he’d wanted to do was destroy the cause of his shattering betrayal to Kylie’s memory.

Attracted to one of the Silent?

His mouth set in a grim line. He’d cut off his own balls before he accepted that.