Visions of Heat

CHAPTER 22

No!

It was a shout from a section of her mind she'd never before seen. Stubborn and rebellious, it slapped her back to her senses and told her to pull out. Now! If she didn't, the Council, the M-Psy, the PsyClan, they all won.

The violence worked. Her mind's eye watering with the strength of the emotional slap, she shook off her panic and began to find reason again. She refused to let them win, refused to have Vaughn feel that he'd taken a weak woman as his lover, someone who'd constantly need rescue.

Layered in determination born out of a lifetime of withheld rage, she threw a solid psychic block across the cascade. The Cassandra Spiral wasn't so easily escaped. It shoved at the block with such force that the wall bulged outward. But it didn't break—she had an excruciatingly small window before the avalanche hit. Not allowing herself to focus on that, she began to repair the cracks that had led to the cascade in the first place.

The work was hard.

Very, very hard.

Her mind felt as if it was caught in a vise. Only her unpolished, ungovernable emotional reaction, her fury at the darkness, and her hunger for vengeance kept her going. That and the need she had to make Vaughn proud of her, to be a woman worthy of a jaguar. Without that wild cauldron of emotional fire, she would've been crippled as she had been for so many years, dependent on others to pull her out.

However, none of her previous cascades—triggered by strong business visions—had ever been this severe. Never had she even touched the periphery of a Cassandra Spiral. A trial by fire, it threatened to engulf her in flames of poison, but Faith had no intention of being burned.

She worked with single-minded determination, and as each fracture healed, the psychic block bulged a little less. Oddly, it was her training for commercial forecasts that came to her aid at a critical moment, when exhaustion was starting to dull her mental muscles and she was in danger of making a fatal error. She fell back on the trick of locking her neurons into certain repeating patterns, a step by mechanical step use of her mind that required no conscious thought.

Leaving that pattern to repair the "easy" fractures, she focused her thinking self on fixing the almost invisible breaks in her innermost core. The next time she looked up, it was after she'd successfully rebuilt the core. The surface of her mind was peaceful, the darkness banished, the cascade subjugated. Tired but triumphant, she took a step back from the psychic plane and opened her eyes. She discovered herself cradled tight against Vaughn, the arms wrapped around her front pure immovable muscle.

"You were in trouble." A rough accusation. "I could smell it."

She tilted her head to look up at him. "I got myself out."

His eyes were jaguar, but he wasn't completely gone. "I knew you could." Shifting to lie flat on his back, he curved one hand over her bottom as she rearranged herself to lean up against his chest.

"Why didn't you break it?"

"You knew what you were doing."

Vaughn, she realized, would never let her shortchange herself. He'd always demand that she be all the woman she could be, even if that woman promised to make life more difficult for him. A stark contrast to the people she'd called family for so long.

Heart aching in an inexplicable way, she ran her palm over a jaw roughened by stubble. "Vaughn, when my mind was pure quiet at the end, I saw something." Something so impossible that she wasn't quite ready to believe. And yet...

"What?" His hand smoothed up her spine and little slivers of lightning danced through her bloodstream, sparked in her mind.

"Another bond." She slid her hand down to lie against his shoulder. "Technically similar to the PsyNet link, but different in every other way. It's wild. Like you." Though she was no changeling to scent things, that bond had held Vaughn's mental scent, a scent as familiar to her as her own, though she had no recollection of ever being in his mind. "What is it?"

"It ties you to me. Forever," he said, his tone absolute. "You're my mate."

"Mate," she whispered, considering everything she knew about changeling society, which wasn't much. "Like Sascha and Lucas?"

"Yes."

She could barely breathe. "Really?"

"Yes. It's done. You can't get out." His fingers tightened on her hip.

"Get out?" She wanted to laugh, but couldn't find enough air to make the sound. "Vaughn, I was scared I was imagining it because I wanted it so much."

His fingers relaxed. "Good."

"How does it work?"

"I don't know. It's the first time for me, too."

"Oh." That strange ache inside of her intensified.

"But I do know it'll keep you alive after you drop out of the PsyNet."

"One changeling mind can't give a Psy brain the feedback it needs. Experiments have proven that conclusively." She shook her head, nails digging into his skin. "I won't kill you to keep myself alive."

"Trust me?"

She did, so much. "Always."

"Then don't worry about it."

"You can't provide the necessary biofeedback," she insisted. "It's psychically impossible."

He kissed her. "Trust, Red. Trust doesn't have any logic or sense."

"I trust you with my life." Placing a kiss on the hard angle of his jaw, she raised her lashes to meet his eyes. "But I'm not sure I trust you with yours." Because she knew how protective the cat was, how possessive.

A slow smile curved over his lips. "Oh, no, Red. I'm planning on living a long, long time now that I've got me a mate who'll satisfy my every need." His fingers lingered on the swell of her buttocks, that wicked smile accompanied by images of—

"Not on my knees," she said, more to tease than anything.

"What if I licked you into submission?" His fingers dipped to stroke lower, hotter places. "Would you go down on your knees then?"

"Perhaps." She felt her breathing start to alter. "You're trying to distract me from the point."

"No, Red. I'm trying to make you see." He stopped teasing her with his fingers. "If I die because of the feedback, then so will you. I'm not letting that happen." Grim determination in every word.

"The protections are holding. I could stay linked and download more data."

"Don't be scared of letting go."

She drew circles on his chest. "The PsyNet is so beautiful, so alive."

"But it's time for you to cut away from it. You know that."

"Yes." The second she was found missing, NightStar guards would be sent to locate her on the psychic plane and haul her back in. Whatever it took. That was if the Council didn't decide to do the job itself—she hadn't forgotten those cloaked martial minds.

Arrows.

Assassins.

In her case, they'd probably attempt containment. But she'd rather die than be incarcerated.

"I've got you." A callused hand pushed strands of hair off her face to cup her cheek.

The unexpected tenderness wrenched at the heart of her, and deep within her mind, she saw the bond pulse. But then it stopped. A frown forming before she could Silence it, she looked inward. "I can't experience the bond in its entirety until I cut the Net link."

"I thought you were unconsciously jamming it." He scowled. "Unless ... Usually, both sides have to deliberately accept the bond for it to come into complete effect. I thought we'd skipped that stage."

"I'm not doing anything. I didn't even know it could be." She paused. "It must be an automatic mental process. It makes sense that only one deep link can be functional at a time. Otherwise, the risk of overload would become unacceptable. But the mating bond is functioning to a certain extent." She could see the images he sent. He could feel when she was in psychic trouble.

Vaughn kissed her hard on the mouth. She gasped and stared.

"You can analyze the bond all you like. After you're out." A demand. "I don't like you being open to Council attack."

"Vaughn." She felt things for him she couldn't even have imagined feeling mere weeks ago. "My sister."

"Do you think you have a real chance of finding the killer through the Net?"

She took her time to answer, to order her thoughts. "The visions are the single link and they come through the channels of my mind. I haven't found anything on the Net."

"Then do it now, Faith. Before they realize you've come over to the side of the damn troublemaking animals."

A small laugh bubbled out of her. It was over before it began, but it had been spontaneous and it had been very real. "Hold me."

"Anytime."

Laying her head on his chest, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Pain squeezed her heart. It was almost a compulsion to step out into the PsyNet for one last look at the magnificent world that was about to be lost to her. But she couldn't. Too much was at stake. The mating bond tied Vaughn to her—if she were ambushed or erased, who knew how it would affect him? And he was more important to her than anything. She did, however, regret that she wouldn't have a chance to say good-bye to the one entity within the Net that wasn't broken, wasn't twisted. It was her hope that the NetMind would understand what she'd done and why.

Drawing in the scent of her mate, she went deep, deep inside herself, past every shield and block, past reason and cognition to the primitive nucleus—because the link to the PsyNet was powered by instinct and made at the instant of birth, the one thing about her race that wasn't controlled or manipulated.

And there it was, in the absolute and utter center.

She'd thought she'd linger over this, but she couldn't. It hurt too much. Saying a soft good-bye, she reached out and sliced through it in a single fatal stroke.

Everything ended.

For one microsecond, she was the only thing in the universe, the only light in the darkness, the only living being in memory. Nerve endings screamed in agony and she felt her physical body jerk in hard spasms that threatened to tear muscle from bone. Life couldn't exist in a vacuum and she was—

But someone was holding her safe.

Someone else breathed.

Someone else lived.

Someone else blazed bright in the utter black of nothing.

She came awake with a gasp as her mind shoved through the lone avenue left to it—the bond to Vaughn. A flood of color, an overwhelming rush of scent and sound, fur under her fingertips and the sharp claws of animal passion, it all thrust into her heart and began to dig.

Then someone kissed her.

And that someone was hers in a way no one else would ever be. She comprehended that he was the fury and the passion, the male heat and the rich earth. She even knew his name. "Vaughn.”

The soft whisper into his mouth kick-started Vaughn's heart with a vicious jolt. He'd never been as terrified as he'd been the moment he'd felt Faith just stop.

No heartbeat.

No breath.

No life.

It had been less than a second, but he'd almost died. Then had come the avalanche of loneliness crashing into him with the violence of a freight train going downhill at full speed. It had nearly torn out his heart. "I'm here, baby. I'm here." Kissing her again and again, he fed his need for her down the bond, letting her know that she wasn't alone, that she'd never be alone again.

Murmuring wordlessly, she wrapped her arms and legs around him in a desperate movement. Her kiss was that of a woman trying to convince herself of his existence. He let her take what she wanted, would've given his life had she asked for it. But what she wanted was his passion, his hunger, his heat.

So he gave her that, moving his hands to caress every inch of her creamy skin, branding her with his touch and his kiss. She wouldn't unclasp her body from his. Not willing to break the contact either, he found a way to love her as she was, sliding his hands under her bottom to position her above his erection, his skin stretched so tight that the pleasure was exquisite pain.

He meant to go gently, but she wouldn't wait, pushing down hard and taking him into her body like the most perfectly crafted glove. He held her tight and flipped them over, her body lush and welcoming under his. Bracing himself above her with one arm, he used the other to grasp her hip.

"Faith." It was a warning she responded to by dragging her nails down his back and biting hard on his shoulder.

Growling low in his throat, he thrust into her. Deep. And again.

She was liquid fire in his bloodstream, sheer woman heat, and when her closed eyes flashed open, he saw jagged sparks of white lightning.

Faith lay in Vaughn's arms and listened to his heartbeat. Real, true, steady, it anchored her. But despite that and the fact that it was close to dawn, her mind continued to race. She had to see the new world in which she lived. Unlike for the changeling who was the most important being in her life, the mental plane was as much a reality for her as the earth and the sky, the trees and the forest.

She'd rather know now whether that plane was barren, and she'd do it while Vaughn was asleep. She didn't ever want to hurt him by intimating that it wounded her to not be part of the PsyNet, cut off from a facet of her existence that was central to her identity as a Psy.

Closing her eyes on one plane, she opened them on another. But she couldn't step out, couldn't bear to face the endless darkness.

"Open your eyes, Faith. Look at the Web of Stars."

How had he known what she was doing? He wasn't Psy. But he was her mate. "The Web of Stars?" she asked, standing poised on the doorstep of her mind. His answer was a kiss placed carefully on the pulse at the curve of her neck.

Finding strength from the power of that simple caress, she took the next step and looked. There were no stars on black velvet, no isolated lights burning like blades, no black spaces. Her breath rushed out of her. Not because this place was barren, but because it wasn't. There was color everywhere, multicolored sparkles that flickered rainbow-bright and teased the eye with quicksilver speed.

Heart thudding, she looked past the stunning beauty that threatened to hold her spellbound and found Vaughn's mind. He was cardinal bright but hot and golden, wild and passionate. A fragile-seeming gold thread linked her to him, but she knew it to be unbreakable. When she looked further, she saw that he was linked to a central mind by another thread, but that thread was different from the bond that tied the two of them together.

Her Psy mind was at home here. It somehow understood that the other bond could be broken. That it wasn't, was its strength. More minds linked out from the core. Not many, but enough to sustain her without draining anyone. More than enough. These minds sparked with so much energy, it was as if each was more than it seemed. Tears falling inside her most secret heart, she searched for the source of those brilliant, beautiful sparks that she, a child raised in the dark, had never imagined might exist.

She found it shielded below the central mind, as if the unique sentience that created such beauty needed more protection than others. Perhaps it did. Even with a single glance, she knew that this mind was incredibly gentle, that it would never do any harm, never kill.

Astonished by the explosion of color and life in her new psychic world, a world that for all its small size would never bore, never grow stagnant, she withdrew and opened her eyes in the physical world. "The colors. It's Sascha, isn't it?"

"I can't see what you see, Red," Vaughn pointed out. "But she's an empath."

"I don't know what that is." But she had a lifetime in which to find out. "Vaughn, how can this Web exist? The other minds I saw except for Sascha were changeling." And Psy knowledge said that changelings didn't have the capacity to maintain psychic links. Of any kind.

He nuzzled at her before kissing her again. She wasn't averse to him indulging himself. Not when she remained shell-shocked from the Net separation.

"It has to do with the blood oath the sentinels take. We don't know how it works—we'd forgotten it even existed."

Vaughn had never been this content. It was as if a missing part of him had come home, a part that he'd been functioning without but, now that he'd found it, the loss of which he'd never survive. Faith was inside of him, held in the core of his animal heart, protected with every ounce of strength he had. If she saw their bond on the level of the mind, he saw the physical reality of it, the strength and the purity.

She ran a hand through his hair and he purred against her, asking for more. She complied, understanding him without words. It was part of the bond, but it was also because she wanted to know, wanted to please him. And that gave him more pleasure than anything else.

Yet a sadness lingered in her and he knew why. "You're thinking about Marine."

"We have to stop him."

"I'll call Pack."

"Pack?"

"You're one of us. They'll want to help."

"Even a Psy?"

"You're my Psy now."

His possessiveness was welcome, but it set off a less joyful thought. "The Council isn't going to let me go without a fight."

"Leave that to me. You think about how to catch this killer and I'll work out a way to keep you safe."

"Alright." Trusting Vaughn was easy. He'd never made a promise he didn't keep.

Faith wasn't surprised when Vaughn drove them to the now familiar wooden cabin for the meeting with his pack-mates. She had a feeling her jaguar didn't like too many people in his home territory. Exiting the car, she straightened her spine and began closing the distance to the porch. She didn't want to look weak in front of these people who mattered to the man who meant everything to her.

However, it wasn't only Sascha and her mate waiting for them, but also a stranger dressed in black.

"This is Judd Lauren," Sascha said, from her chair beside Lucas's.

Faith nodded, conscious of the sudden rise in Vaughn's aggressiveness. Lucas didn't look too happy either. The truly peculiar thing was that the silent stranger triggered her internal alarms as well. She couldn't reason why. What she did know was that for all his icy masculine beauty, he was deadly. But then so were the two changelings.

Aware she was being rude, but unwilling to let it go, she continued to stare at him where he leaned against the outer wall of the cabin. "I've seen you before."

"No." His expression betrayed nothing, not even by the flicker of an eyelash.

No one was that controlled. No one but a Psy. But of course Judd wasn't one of her race. "No," she agreed. "But I've seen others like you." He inspired the same primal fear response as those cloaked guards who'd escorted her to the candidacy meeting.

Judd was hardly likely to be one of the almost mythical Arrows, but he made her very uneasy. And if that wasn't enough, another male who set off her defenses appeared that second from around the corner of the house. He prowled to lean against the railing a small distance from the others, his green eyes watching her with the unblinking stare of a predator sizing up prey. She was extremely glad Vaughn was beside her.

Lucas jerked his head at the new arrival. "Clay, I thought you were bringing Tammy."

"Cubs. Rosebushes. Thorns," came the truncated reply.

Everyone but her seemed to understand. Sascha shook her head, a small smile on her lips. "Are they okay?"

Clay nodded.

Feeling out of the loop, she leaned her back against Vaughn's chest. White fire licked up her fingertips where they touched his jeans. He seemed to freeze and then reawaken, his hand never ceasing its soothing strokes down her arm. "You all know why we're here."

"To locate the man who murdered Faith's sister," Sascha said. "But I thought you didn't know enough."

"Red?"

"At first," she began, "all I saw was her, the intended victim—very pale skin, white-blonde hair, blue eyes. Unusual looks for a Psy, but not a practical way to track her." She forced herself to go back into the evil of the visions. "Then I started to get more—"

"Because he's stalking her?" Sascha interrupted.

"At the time, it was because he was going to stalk her."

Everyone went silent as they digested the reality of her life. Lucas was the first to shake himself out of it. "How far gone is he?"

"In the final stages. The visions I'm seeing now are of blood." Vaughn's arms came around her though she'd betrayed nothing by either gesture or tone—being unemotionally Psy was a form of protection against these predators, not all of whom were in her comer. "We have to stop him at the kidnapping because I know the location and I even know the time."

"How?" It was the dark-skinned male called Clay.

She had to force herself not to press closer into Vaughn. "There were time markers in the last series of images, things that let me place a vision in the correct time frame. Some markers are hard to spot, like seasonal changes or the color of the sky, but these were unmistakable."

No one spoke so she continued, grounding herself in the muscled heat of the body surrounding hers. The embrace was a silent statement of his loyalty, she knew that much. "I saw a datebook open on her desk as well as the face of an electronic clock. Both the same." Time markers didn't get much clearer than that.

Then she revealed something she'd told Vaughn in the car after unraveling all the other markers. "We have one day." Too close for comfort, far too close. "If we don't get him... it's likely we won't save her. He feels"—she searched for the right words—"full, full of anticipation, of need. He doesn't keep and torture his victims, either. While stalking his intended victim excites him, his biggest thrill comes from the actual kill." Like when he'd killed Marine. Once again, her heart clenched and now she knew what to call it: a mixture of pain and grief, sorrow and loss.

"Where?" Judd asked, his voice utterly toneless.

"You're Psy." She was suddenly positive beyond any reasonable doubt. "Only Sascha is supposed to be outside the Net."

He didn't answer her implied question. "Where?"

She decided to ask Vaughn later. "The small private university that went up a few years ago on the edge of Napa. It specializes in viticulture."

"Most students and staff are human or changeling," Lucas pointed out. "What would a Psy be doing there? They're not much into organic assets."

"I think she's some kind of technician. Don't wineries have sophisticated temperature monitoring and cooling systems?"

"It could be that." Vaughn's hands dropped to rest on her hips—an act of male ownership, one she didn't have any desire to fight. "Not that it matters if she's going to be there on that date and at that time. We'll pick him off before he gets to her."

"Why are we cleaning up a Psy mess again?" Clay's deep voice. "Faith's not in any danger. The killer and possible victim are both Psy. Shouldn't the Council be taking care of this?"

"Clay!" Sascha looked shocked. "We're speaking about a woman's life."

"I'm not saying we forget about it, just that we let those responsible tidy it up."

"And what if they don't?" Faith asked softly, staring into that harshly masculine face that was so without mercy. Clay was different from Vaughn, no matter that Vaughn's animal roamed nearer to the skin. There was something very dark in the leopard, something that walked a fine line between good and evil.

She had a knowing almost on top of that thought—Clay's time was coming. One day soon he'd have to decide which side of that line he wanted to be on. "What if she simply disappears like the others I heard about on the Net? Will you be able to sleep at night, your conscience clear?" Because he wasn't quite gone yet, was still on the good side of the line. By a bare fraction.

Clay raised an eyebrow. "So we take this guy out. Great. What about the next and the next and the next?"

Faith didn't know where her answer came from. "Some futures we can't see, some lives we can't save, but this one we can. Let's discuss the rest later."

"There's a bigger problem." Lucas rocked back in his chair, propping his feet up on the railing. "If neither victim nor killer is changeling, it falls within Enforcement jurisdiction. We don't have the right to enforce Law."

Faith had forgotten that. "We could let the authorities know."

"Same as telling the Council." Clay snorted. "Unless you're ready to hand over the whole fucking mess to your psychopathic race?"

Vaughn went utterly still around her. "Watch it, cat."

Faith didn't understand all of what was going on, but she could read the aggression in the air. She shifted to wrap an arm around Vaughn's waist. He didn't take his eyes off Clay.

After a tense moment, the other male gave a slow nod. "I was out of line." A pause. "She reminds me of someone."

Faith worked through the statement, startled at the belated realization that Vaughn had turned hostile toward Clay because of his rudeness to her. Warmth spread in her secret heart. But notwithstanding that, she didn't want to be the cause of Vaughn fighting with his pack.

"About Enforcement," she said, sliding her hand under his T-shirt to lie palm down on his back. Her cat responded to the stroking, looking away from Clay at last.

"I know a couple of cops we can trust," Clay replied, surprising her. "If they make the arrest, it'll be legal."

"And the killer will be out by nightfall, sprung by the Council. He'll disappear into the Net, never to be seen again." Sascha's voice was grim. "They'll either kill him to ensure no one learns of the breakdown in the Protocol, or if he's one of theirs gone rogue, attempt to reinstate control."

Lucas dropped his feet to the porch and leaned over to kiss his mate. Softening, she curled her fingers around his biceps, but Lucas's eyes were narrowed when he turned back to them. "Sascha's right. We saw what happened last time."

Anger was suddenly alive in the air. Faith happened to be looking at Sascha and saw the other cardinal breathe deeply several times, eyes going the pure black of a Psy expending large amounts of power. The anger level dropped.

"I can take care of him." Judd sounded like he was talking about the weather. "Even from a distance."

Faith's stomach curdled. "No. We can't commit one murder to stop another." She'd thought to do precisely that, but that had been in the red-hot heat of anger. She was no stone-cold killer.

"You have a better idea?" Judd asked, something very much like insolence in his otherwise icy tone.

"Back off," Vaughn said, in a very quiet voice. She could hear a difference from his reaction to Clay—he was dangerous this time, where before he'd been issuing a warning. "You're here because you helped save Sascha's life, but that only goes so far."

The other male's smile was humorless. "It doesn't go far at all."

Faith was a babe at understanding emotion, but it seemed to her that the Psy wanted a physical fight. What could possibly inspire that kind of death wish? Even if Judd was an Arrow, Vaughn was a jaguar.

"Wait, I do have an idea."

Everyone looked at her.

"Incapacitate him." She stared at Judd. "Tie his mind up in mental ropes he'll never be able to break."

"What makes you think I can do that?" Judd stared back, daring her.

"If Arrows exist, then you were an Arrow." She heard Sascha gasp. "A telepathic Arrow is likely to be trained in all sorts of things."

He didn't deny either her accusation or her guess about his Tp status. "It'll send him insane. Imagine never being able to act out any of your impulses—he'll function, but only on a very basic level."

Faith felt fury arc through her. "Then that will be his life sentence." At least he'd have a life to live, unlike Marine and the other women he'd killed. And there had definitely been others. His appetite was too certain, his tastes too set.

"Will you have to hack the PsyNet to do what Faith's suggesting?" Lucas asked. "Will they be able to track it back to you?"

"No, I can do it telepathically, but it's a specialized skill. They'll deduce that they have an unknown renegade, but they already know that." He didn't explain why. "However, it'll involve getting through his protective walls."

"How hard will that be?"

"He has to have considerable power given what Sascha's told me about his effect on Faith, but he's going to be in the grip of the killing instinct. Anyone affected by strong emotion becomes vulnerable. He's going to be no exception." He looked at Faith, unblinking, eerily focused. "If you distract him at a critical moment, it'll ensure I get through."

Vaughn's growl was almost too low for Psy hearing, but she felt it in her bones. "She's not going anywhere near the son of a bitch."

"Vaughn, listen—"

"No way in hell, Red. Forget about it."

"It needn't be physical," she said. "I could just brush up against him telepathically. He'd recognize my mental scent."

"Because he's somehow able to connect to you through the visions?" Sascha clearly remembered their earlier conversation.

"Yes. I see the future, but I see it through the lens of his mind," she explained for the sake of the others. "It's as if we experience the visions together...." Her mouth fell open. "An F-Psy. He must be one of my designation." The implications were staggering.

"Maybe," Judd broke in. "But before we get into that, are you sure you can identify him?"

"Yes. Don't worry that you'll be incapacitating an innocent man."

"I'm Psy. Worry is a changeling emotion."

She wondered which one of them he was trying to convince, because the truth was, Judd was no longer Psy. He'd ceased to exist in the PsyNet, probably been written off as dead. And now he lived in a different world. "I'll know. I've seen his face."

All sound ceased.