Visions of Heat

CHAPTER 23

Judd picked up the logical disconnect in milliseconds. "You just said the visions are from his point of view."

"They are."

"Then how, Red?" Though there was no anger in Vaughn's voice, she knew he had to be asking himself why she hadn't told him earlier.

"I didn't want to see," she whispered, so low it wasn't even sound.

One of his arms rose to wrap around her shoulders from the front and she knew he'd heard. "Never alone."

It was a promise, one she armored herself in, but it still took every ounce of Psy skill she had to keep her voice from breaking as she relived the horror. "I saw his reflection." A reflection cast in blood, a ruby-red mirror in the enamel house of that last vision.

"Then there's no question—Faith has to be present," Judd said.

"She might be present, but she's not going to stick out her neck and attract his attention." Vaughn's arm was pure steel around her shoulders, not the least bit hurtful, but also not the least bit movable.

"Vaughn." She kept her voice low, but guessed that Clay and Lucas could hear nonetheless. "I think we should go for a walk."

He released her from his hold and took her hand. "This won't take long," he told the others, but didn't say anything else until he'd brought them to a stop several meters into the woods. "I'm not letting you put yourself in danger."

"There's very little danger, almost none, in telepathy."

"Yeah, well, maybe this guy falls into the 'almost.' He's different—he was able to trap you into the visions."

"Perhaps," she agreed. "But that doesn't change anything."

He didn't reply, the jaguar very much apparent in his eyes.

So she spoke to the animal. "You once asked me about guilt. I said I didn't feel any. That was a lie." She forced herself to break another wall of Silence—to do and feel was easy compared to putting those things in words. "The guilt walks beside me from morning till night, from instant to instant. I'm an F-Psy, but I couldn't save my own sister's life. That makes me a failure."

"You had no way of knowing what it was you were seeing," he grit out.

"Logic doesn't work here, Vaughn! You know that more than anyone." She pushed him, asked him to remember the guilt he felt for Skye's death though he'd been a child himself.

He curved his hand around her neck. "There will come a time when I won't bend, won't be reasonable, won't act human."

She'd realized that in the first few seconds after meeting him. "But that particular point hasn't been reached."

"I want you with me at all times. The second anything goes wrong, you get out. I don't care if you have to turn his brains to jelly. Get out.”

"I have no intention of permitting him close enough to hurt me. I'll be a shadow and then I'll be gone."

The cat clawed at the walls of Vaughn's mind as they worked out the details with the others. "There's something else," he said, after they'd agreed on a simple plan.

"The Council." Sascha leaned forward. "They have to know she's defected by now. They'll come after her with every weapon they have. As an F-Psy, she knows far too much."

The animal in Vaughn wanted to eliminate the threat and take care of them once and for all—Psy with crushed skulls couldn't harm his mate—but the man knew it wasn't so simple. Currently the Council had six heads, but it was a multi-limbed monster. Taking out one head would cause two or three more to sprout in its place. The only way it could ever be totally destroyed was for it to be torn out by its very roots. And the only people who could invoke a change that deep were the Psy themselves.

Faith rested her body against his side. "There may be something that will stay their hand."

The beast calmed at the gentle heat of her. "You have an idea?"

"Less an idea than a knowing." Her voice was suddenly heavy with grief. "It's always bothered me why Marine was murdered. He has this sick excitement leading up to the kill he's planning to make tomorrow, but there was nothing like that with Marine. He didn't stalk her. The buildup was in how clearly I saw the end result—loss of breath eventually metamorphosing into total suffocation."

Her strength impressed him to animal pride. Shifting his hold, he leaned against the railing and pulled her into the cradle formed by his spread legs. She came without complaint, putting her own hands over the ones he'd draped around her hips.

"Could she have been a chance kill, taken because the opportunity was there?" Judd Lauren's voice made the jaguar want to snarl—the cat didn't understand the fine distinction between enemy and uncertain ally.

"No, there was no sense of him being rushed or unprepared."

Vaughn hated to hear the pain in her voice, but knew time alone would heal those wounds. Though they'd never disappear, they'd turn into scars and that was okay, because those scars made them stronger.

Sascha tapped her foot. "What did your sister do?"

"She was a cardinal telepath. A communications specialist for the PsyClan."

"While I was in the Net, I heard rumors that your PsyClan did a considerable amount of sub-rosa work for the Council."

Faith's fingernails dug into his skin. "And if she was 'pathing for them, then she knew everything that was being sent and received, knew every secret, every detail of every plan."

"A liability if she decided not to play the game." After all, Marine NightStar had been his mate's sister and Faith was too intelligent, too independent, too human, to have ever made a good Council cipher.

Faith suddenly gave a violent shake of her head. "This isn't getting us anywhere. A knowing doesn't usually give me details—we'll have to wait and see if we can scan the killer's mind. Even if the Council comes after me, it won't be before we incapacitate him."

Clay crossed his arms across his chest. "How do you know?"

"I know.'' Her voice was haunted and very, very certain. "We have that much time. The answer will come to us tomorrow."

"And if it doesn't?" Sascha asked quietly.

"Then at least Marine will have been avenged." The bone-deep fury in her found an echo in the heart of the jaguar. "I want him to pay for what he did."

The males looked to each other and understanding passed in a current. Three predatory changelings and a Psy who might be a trained assassin, they found nothing wrong with Faith's rage. It was real, it was true, and it would be satisfied.

"He will." Vaughn spoke for all of them. "Even if I have to crush his skull myself."

"Vaughn." Faith stood beside her mate as he worked on a sculpture. Dressed in nothing but a pair of faded blue jeans, he was pure muscle and heat, amber-gold hair tied carelessly into a queue.

"What is it, Red?" He put down his tools to run his knuckles over her skin. The touch was tender, the look in his eyes anything but.

"Why are you doing this now?" She smoothed her hand over one marble curve. "Come to bed. We both need to mentally prepare for tomorrow."

"I'm not Psy, baby." His voice dropped. "I don't need to calm my mind."

She suddenly understood. "I'm ready."

"Go to sleep." He picked up what looked like a chisel. "I'll be there soon."

She took it from him and put it back on the workbench. "You're afraid of hurting me." Such a thing was wrong between mates, she knew that without having to be taught. "You're scared I'll cascade like I did yesterday."

"What we did yesterday was perfection, but you're not ready for another round. And I don't have gentleness in me right now." Rough, harsh, blunt.

She put her hand on the golden skin of his chest. "You're never going to be truly gentle."

He flinched.

"I didn't mean it like that. I like your wildness, your passion, your demands." She swallowed at the molten heat in his eyes. "You make me feel alive."

"I can sense the way you hurt when your mind breaks."

"But I get stronger with every loving." Something she was now starting to understand. "If you try to contain yourself, you'll shortchange both of us. I need to satisfy you in the same way you need to touch me."

"I won't be tied down this time, and what I demand from you, you might not be ready to give. I'm in no mood to play."

Because, she realized, he was in the grip of a possessive protectiveness that left no room for half measures. She could feel the dark red of his hunger through the mating bond, feel his passion, his wildness. "Show me," she whispered, pushing aside her own fears. If the Council did come for her tomorrow, she wanted to look at them with the confidence of a woman who'd broken every rule of Silence and done so in the most unquestionable way. "I won't cascade." A vow. To both of them.

The T-shirt she'd meant to sleep in floated in shreds to her feet—Vaughn's claws had moved so fast she hadn't even had time to take a breath. Heart in her throat, she watched him retract those razor-sharp weapons, excruciatingly aware that he hadn't left a scratch on her. Eyes locked with hers, he slid his hands down her back and under the waistband of her panties to cup her bottom.

She gasped as her breasts rubbed against his chest, full and aching. When her panties disintegrated off her body, she barely felt it, so stunned was she at the pure sensuality that spread across Vaughn's features. He'd been scared of physically harming her yesterday. Today he was in full control of his strength... but not of his hunger. Notwithstanding her confident talk, she wasn't positive she could handle his demands.

He smoothed one hand to the front of her body and the roughness of his skin rasping over her navel had her holding her breath. The tips of his fingers touched her curls. She clenched her hands on his shoulders.

"So soft," he murmured, and drove his fingers through the curls to cup her intimately.

Her scream reverberated off the stone walls.

When he rubbed the heel of that possessive hand against her, she rubbed back, starving for a sensation she'd never thought would be so exquisite. He liked that, a very male smile curving over those sensual lips. "More," he demanded. "Give me more."

She rose on tiptoe and his tormenting hand followed, spearing through her softness to capture her most sensitive flesh in a hold that threatened madness of a new kind. Pressing her thighs together, she dug her nails into his shoulders and tried to reach his lips, but he wouldn't cooperate. So she bit at his chest, scratched lines down his back.

"Cat," he said, and it was a pleased statement as he squeezed his fingers and rocked a shudder through her body. "I'm going to take you like I dreamed about."

Images of her bent over in the most submissive of positions, her bottom shamelessly upturned and her thighs spread in welcome. She didn't fight the erotic onslaught, luxuriating in the psychic seduction. "You have to—"

Sliding two fingers inside of her without warning, he palmed her breast with his free hand, a rough brand that set fire to her skin. "I have to what?"

"H-have to get me there first," she challenged, unable to stop her hips from plunging up and down on the hard intrusion of his fingers.

He chuckled and spread those invading fingers just enough to intensify the pleasure. "You should know never to dare a cat."

"Meow," she teased, even as she felt her body begin to gather itself for a storm.

"Come for me," he demanded. "I want to taste your surrender." His fingers moved in a faster rhythm, stroking her so intimately that she had no defense.

The pleasure swept her under and it was lighting and fury, heat and hunger. But it wasn't a cascade, the overload shooting down the mating bond to the wild heart of a jaguar more than able to handle the influx of sensation. When she came down from the rush, it was to find herself held against him as he withdrew his fingers from her body. The musky scent of her filled the air, rich, heady, and ultimately female. And though his erection was a hard flame between them, she somehow knew that her surrender had only increased his sensual patience.

Lazy, sated, she didn't protest as he carried her from the workshop to the bed and stroked her onto her hands and knees. She arched into his touch, enjoying the feel of him running his hands down her back, over her buttocks and down the insides of her thighs. Spreading her for him. When he pushed down between her shoulder blades, she remembered his erotic fantasies and, bending her arms at the elbows, she lowered her head to the sheets and tilted up her bottom.

Her mind was pure lightning by this stage, but she refused to give up. Instead, every time the pleasure threatened to sweep her under, she gripped tight to the mating bond.

"Good girl," Vaughn murmured, one hand on her buttock. "I think I know what you're doing. I can feel you holding on to me deep inside."

That he was pleased wasn't even a question—she heard it in the indulgent sensuality of his tone. Not really considering the consequences of success, she sent an erotic request down the bond simply to see if she could.

His hand squeezed. "Baby, I can't see an image, but I think you just read my mind."

That was the only warning she got before he ravaged her with his mouth, pure demand and rough heat. She screamed at the first touch and orgasmed at the second. Ten minutes later, she was shuddering almost continuously, her body held up by Vaughn's hands on her hips. The man was relentless. But still she didn't cascade, her mind soaking up the sensations like a starved thing.

"Hold on." A dark whisper, a breath of air across exquisitely sensitive flesh.

She whimpered... and he used his teeth to capture the engorged flesh of her clitoris. A wave of black crashed into her. The pleasure was so acute, so piercingly sensual that she sobbed as she shattered, clutching at the bond with desperation armored in sheer need.

That was when he took her.

Hot, hard, dominant, nothing that came before could compare to this claiming. She felt branded on a level that went beyond sex and heat, claimed, owned.

Both ways. It was a thought from her mind to his, a feeling that required no words to be understood.

"Oh, yeah, baby. I'm yours." Hot breaths against her neck as he bent to kiss her pulse before rising up, tightening his grip on her hips, and riding her to ecstasy.

Even then, she didn't cascade, didn't go mad ... didn't break.

Only hours later, Faith stood beside Vaughn's tense form as they waited in the courtyard of the private university where she'd placed the target. She couldn't see the others through the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses, but knew they were there, silent shadows to ensure justice was done.

Anticipation simmered in her blood, veins filled with the most physical energy she'd ever felt, Vaughn's wildness mixing with her own on a level beyond telepathy. She was becoming a tiny bit jaguar with each contact and that was fine with her. Claws were sometimes necessary. Today, those claws were helping her withstand the impact of so many unshielded minds within receiving distance.

Looking at the gently leafy campus, at the students walking alone or in groups, Faith felt her resolve harden into granite. If they failed, an innocent woman would lose her life, this campus would be forever tainted by a darkness no amount of soap or water could wash away, and Marine's ghost would find no peace.

So they would not fail.

"We'll get him." Vaughn's voice was husky in her ear.

"How do you always know what's on my mind?" she asked. "I wasn't sending you anything." They'd spent some time after last night's tumultuous loving working out that while Vaughn couldn't hear her words, he could read the emotions she sent with unerring accuracy.

"There are other ways of knowing and I'm going to have fun introducing you to all of them." A thread of steel underlay his teasing words. The jaguar wasn't in charge right now, but it was very, very close to the surface. Because she might be in danger.

"Vaughn, I'm not weak. I can protect myself." She wouldn't die on him as his sister had, but neither would she hurt him by referring openly to an event that had scarred him so violently. However, she could try to address those scars in an oblique way. "I didn't cascade yesterday and once I would've believed that impossible. My strength is increasing day by day." Perhaps being Psy hadn't taught her about emotion, but it had taught her about strategy. That skill could be put to use for good as well as evil, couldn't it? "Vaughn?" she said, when he didn't respond.

"Yeah?"

"Not everything about the Psy is bad, is it?" It caused a tearing pain inside of her to think that everyone she'd ever known, that her father, her sister, had been nothing good.

"Hell, no. You're not."

"I'm not talking about individuals. The Psy as a race have done some good, haven't they?"

"They were once the most amazing people on this planet." His response was a surprise. "Take your gift. Without it, civilization might've been destroyed a thousand times over."

"That was before. What about now?"

"They create more jobs than their own race can ever fulfill, employ millions of humans and even some changelings."

"But all at low-level positions."

"Sometimes that position is the only thing that stands between a life and starvation. And changelings aren't any different in that sense—high-level jobs in our businesses are always held by Pack."

"But," she said, "it isn't so much, is it?" She saw the truth in spite of his uncharacteristic gentleness. "Changelings have kept the Earth beautiful and pollution free, and it's mostly humans who've hung its walls with art and filled its corners with music. What's the Psy legacy—endless steel towers of pure function, businesses that deal in emotionless currency ... and Silence?"

The knowing that came to her was unexpected and as clear as the bright light of morning. "If we don't change, the Psy race will one day be forgotten." And that would be a tragedy. No one who'd seen the beauty of the PsyNet, the potential in it, the stunning energy of life even in Silence, could doubt that.

"Then change the future, Faith. Change the Psy."

An extraordinary task for a renegade from the Net. "Will you be with me?"

"I can't believe you asked that question," he mock-growled, throwing an arm around her neck and dragging her to him. "Of course I'll be with you, and so will the rest of the pack. We're family."

"Family." A bittersweet word. "Always?"

He bit the side of her neck. "Beyond always."

"He's coming." The words fell out of her mouth without conscious thought.

Vaughn drew back from her and gave a very low growl that she didn't actually hear, but which made every hair on her body stand up in attention.

"What—?"

"It's a signal," he whispered, pretending to nibble on her earlobe. From the way she'd seen women looking at him ever since they'd entered the campus, she was probably the focus of considerable feminine envy. Something primitive in her was pleased by that, by the fact that this wild and magnificent creature was hers. He wasn't, and never would be, tame, but he was willing to play nice for her sake. And no one else's.

"Can you feel him?" The quiet question broke into her thoughts. She was shocked at how distracted she'd become from something so important. Vaughn did things to her she couldn't control.

"The knowing works with my ability. It's a kind of vision on a very deep psychic plane. I'm not telepathically connected to him." That horror only happened during actual visions.

"Then how are you going to find him?"

"I'm going to send out my telepathic senses. I'm a Gradient 6 telepath." Very powerful, though nowhere near where she estimated Judd to be. "If I brush up against other Psy, I'll withdraw before they can get a lock on me." She didn't mention that some of those minds could track her very, very quickly.

"But if I touch him, I'll attempt to pinpoint a physical location. It doesn't really matter if I can't—Judd can take the mental signature from my mind and use his stronger Tp abilities to zero in on the killer's position."

"I don't like that damn Psy being in your mind."

"Neither do I." Faith didn't think Judd was out to harm her, but he was an unknown, a rebel Arrow with undetermined loyalties. "It'll be a surface link, a simple data transfer."

"If he tries anything, use the bond."

Her heart skipped a beat at the welcome reminder that she'd never be alone again. "I will. I'm going to begin the search now." She 'pathed the same message to Judd.

I can see you. The masculine voice was so clear, her suspicions about Judd's status on the Gradient solidified into certainty. The man might not have the night-sky eyes, but he had to be near cardinal strong. If you keep the scan radius small, I can pinpoint him almost immediately after you.

Faith whispered the suggestion to Vaughn. "We'll have to change position and go out farther into the open as I scan. But it'll give us an unmistakable target when we do find him. Judd won't have to enter my mind, either."

Vaughn's answer was nothing she could've predicted. "Faith, this is your world. What option do you think will work best?"

"You won't try to overrule me?"

"Only if your choice puts you in unnecessary danger." The cat was in his voice, low and husky. "I can't protect your mind, but I sure as hell will keep your body safe."

She figured that was as good as it was going to get with her jaguar. "Then let's do it. If I start to feel we're getting too close and I can't find him, we'll stop. I don't want to paint a bull's-eye on myself." For the first time in twenty-four years, she was truly alive, and she had no intention of changing that.