Visions of Heat

CHAPTER 24

"If this works like I think it will," she said, "the second he feels me, he'll try to connect and that should give Judd the opportunity he needs."

"I can smell Judd. Tell him to make sure he's well hidden. He doesn't fit into this campus."

"And you do?" She relayed the message.

"I'm the rough type the good girl always falls for," he said, displaying a rare vein of humor. "That Psy just looks like he's here to take someone out."

Shaking her head, she sent out the first seeking touch. "Nothing."

Vaughn silently picked out a spot closer to the building that housed the intended victim and she repeated the scan. "Nothing."

Two more attempts produced the same frustrating result. Emotion definitely had a downside—an emotionless Psy would've continued scanning with mechanical precision until they achieved success. "Nothing, nothing, nothing!"

"I don't want you any nearer the prey. If you know what he looks like, he might have seen you, too."

"I hadn't considered that, but if he is an F-Psy, that may be a possibility."

"Whatever else he is, he's also a coward," Vaughn spit out. "They're always dangerous when cornered."

She agreed. Certain telepathic abilities could cause massive damage when used offensively. Judd was the perfect example. "Let me try one more sweep. I know he's here." Taking a deep breath, she spread out her senses. This one's for you, Marine.

And there he was.

The darkness recognized her, too. Homing in on her position with frightening speed, it scrabbled for purchase into her mind. Gut instinct came to her aid—she snapped her entire psychic self into a tiny ball, burying it deep within the bond with Vaughn. Changeling wildness locked around her and the talons of darkness slipped away without finding purchase.

It had taken mere milliseconds, but when she opened her eyes, she felt as if she'd run a marathon. Vaughn's body was so tense next to her that she knew he'd sensed the danger. "He's a telepath with attacking capabilities. Foresight might be a secondary talent."

She could see him now. He was standing a few easy meters from her, a tall male with Silent discipline stamped onto his handsome features. In his black suit and white shirt, he was just another anonymous Psy as he swept the area in an effort to find her. "Why doesn't he look like a monster?"

"They never do." Vaughn's claws pricked at her skin through her clothing.

Panic a knot in her throat, she closed her hand over his. "You can't go for him. Enforcement would love to get their hands on you."

"You're my mate."

She knew it was killing him to not be the one to ensure her vengeance. "I need you alive and with me. Vaughn, please. Please.”

"Tell the damn Psy." A growled command.

She did and shot by the killer's mind once more in a move calculated to break his concentration. It worked— Judd located him. Dropping his head into his hands all of a sudden, the killer began to whimper. But he wasn't yet incapacitated. There was too much intelligence in those black eyes as they searched the area for the source of attack. She wondered why Judd was holding back.

Then the Tp-Psy materialized to stand beside her. "Be sure," he said. "This is irreversible."

About to give an answer powered by fury, she forced herself to think, to consider the fact that this was a life. Going back over that last contact, she added them to the ones before. And came to a startling realization. "Something's wrong."

"Do I pull out?" No judgment, no worry; Judd Lauren was so cold he made her want to shiver.

"It is him, but... Vaughn, remember what you said about seeing darkness around me?"

"Not something I could ever forget." A voice walking the finest edge of rage.

She leaned more heavily against him, afraid the cat would take control and overrule his decision not to rip the man to pieces in plain sight. "Well, that used to coat him, too. In the visions when I was him, it was a cloak around us." It was why she'd instinctively called him the darkness. "But now it's gone. I can't see into his mind, but I know it's gone."

"Do we move on him, Faith?" Judd asked. "I've only got one shot at this—he's starting to recover and fight back."

She looked at the target again, this man who'd become so much a part of her life but was a stranger. Once more, what chilled her most was his ordinariness. It was too dangerous to try to enter his mind, so she had no idea what had driven him to murder. It was even possible that he'd been the pawn of a greater evil and was now purged, free like her. To order his death might be to kill an innocent.

She found herself frozen and in that instant, she saw the blood that would be spilled if he did not die. The darkness might've been sloughed off, but he remained a nightmare. "Yes. Go."

And that quickly, vengeance was hers.

Three hours later, she found herself sitting inside the alpha pair's aerie surrounded by Sascha and several changelings—Vaughn, Clay, Lucas, and a blond sentinel who'd been introduced to her as Dorian. There was something angry in Dorian's blue eyes when he looked at her, a cold rage she couldn't understand, not when he hadn't participated in the hunt. A changeling word. A changeling punishment. Delivered by a Psy mind. That Psy had disappeared afterward and she was glad. She owed him for what he'd done, but Judd had a tendency to push Vaughn the wrong way.

Everyone else was considering how to keep her safe, but she was thinking about that morning's events. She'd ordered the destruction of a mind, a decision that should've filled her with guilt. But though she felt sorrow, she also felt a sense of rightness. Marine could now rest in peace, safe in the knowledge that no other woman would die at the hands of the darkness.

Vaughn walked over from where he'd been standing talking to Clay. "Up."

"What?"

Scowling, he simply lifted her up off the large cushion on which she sat and settled back down with her in his lap. She curled into his warmth, conscious of the others sitting or standing mere steps away, but not caring. Cats lived by different rules and she was adapting.

"Sometimes," Vaughn said, "blood has to be spilled."

She could still hear the raw anger in his voice and it worried her. "But I can't not think about it. That would make me a monster, too."

He just held her as she made her peace with what she'd done. Some time later, she was about to join in the conversation going on around her when she felt a prod at her mind. Instead of reacting with a defensive strike, her ability took over and opened a telepathic channel.

Hundreds of images of flowers waterfalled through that narrow band.

"Oh." Faith's hand clenched on Vaughn's upper arm.

Her cat was instantly on the alert. "What is it?"

"Shh." She closed her eyes and tried to figure out a way to send her reply without affecting the others, but couldn't. "Everyone who can receive Tp thoughts, ignore this." Then she shot back a single flower, layering it with sheer joy and excitement.

A complicated set of images answered her.

Deciphering the message, she endeavored to tune her mind to the right frequency, one so unusual, she knew no other sentience that used it. "Sascha, can you see this?" She sent out a test image.

"No."

But the NetMind had seen. It sent her another flower. Smiling at having worked out how to broadcast to it without telling everyone her thoughts, she considered the best way to ask her next question.

An image of the PsyNet, with a bridge connecting it to her.

The image came back devoid of the bridge.

Frowning, she sent confusion.

The PsyNet. Her. A night sky-colored glow passing from one to the other.

"Of course. You don't need a bridge," she whispered. "Because this is what you were born to do." Trusting her instincts and putting more than her own life on the line, she showed it a snapshot of the Web of Stars.

What came back made her gasp aloud.

She understood. She told it so. It gave her back sunshine. Happiness. But then it followed with rain. Sadness. Images of the PsyNet with rivers of unrelieved darkness running through it, places where it could not go. In the darkness, she saw nothing alive. Death ruled.

She sent it a teardrop to wash the darkness away.

In response, it sent her images that made no sense ... until she realized they were the memories of a child, but one who was more ancient than she could imagine—pictures of the PsyNet as it once was, rainbow-hued and alive. Then it showed her something else, something that stunned her into silence.

Barely able to think, she answered its good-bye sunshine with a flower, and opened her eyes. Vaughn was holding her, but he was relaxed.

"I felt something touch you." He frowned. "It wasn't bad. Like a cub isn't bad. But different."

"The NetMind." Her answer set off a cacophony of questions from the others.

"How—?"

"—a leak?"

"—Council?"

"Is it—?"

"Quiet!" Vaughn cut them off with a roar. "Go on, Red."

She laughed and, to everyone's surprise, kissed him on the lips. "I love you."

His growl vibrated along her nerve endings, the most intimate of caresses. "Hell of a time to tell me."

The tension diffused from everyone but her jaguar—she felt his continuing anger through the direct connection of the mating bond. She wanted to soothe, to stroke, but for that she needed privacy and right now, the others were waiting for her to speak. "I'm assuming everyone here knows about the NetMind?"

"I tried to explain it," Sascha said, "but I think you're the expert. You speak to it in images?"

"Yes. It looks like we've managed to work out a number of pictures that translate as the same every time—sunshine is happiness, rain is sadness."

"It feels?" Sascha whispered.

"Yes." And that signaled a precious hope.

"How can it contact you if you're not in the Net?" Lucas asked from his position against the window ledge.

"It's a sentience that finds it natural to live in networks of minds," she said, bursting to share what she'd learned. "If there is a network, it can travel to that place."

"The Web of Stars." Sascha walked to stand in her mate's embrace, back to his chest. "I've never felt it there."

"I'm saying this wrong." Faith tried to order her thoughts. "It won't come into a different network, perhaps not unless it's invited—I think I did that by thinking of it after I dropped out of the PsyNet—because each network has its own NetMind."

Everyone went completely silent.

"It seems as if each time a network—a web—forms, it sows the seeds for the creation of a new sentience. The NetMind in the Web of Stars is a baby, a mere thought. Do you know of any other webs?"

Lucas narrowed his eyes. "Tell us what you saw first."

Able to read changeling aggression to some extent, she knew it wasn't a display of distrust, but an unwillingness to color her perception. Her Psy mind appreciated that. "I saw several small networks, but it showed me one other in particular made up of five Psy minds. And if our NetMind is a baby, theirs hasn't even been born."

"Christ. It's the Laurens." Lucas's statement shook her— she hadn't known that Judd was part of a group. A family. And yet he'd chanced helping her. "Does this make us vulnerable to the Psy?"

"No. The NetMind is no longer bound by the Council, though they don't know it."

"What? How?" Sascha tugged her plait from Lucas. He just lifted it back up and dropped a kiss on the curve of her neck.

Faith watched Sascha melt and understood. These predators were impossible to resist when they played nice. "In our terms, it's a teenager now," she answered. "It can think beyond what it's been told, understand the bigger picture." Sadness flowed into her. Vaughn's nuzzled kiss was a welcome burst of sensation, of hope. "It showed me evil in the Net, badness that's infecting everything. If that evil isn't stopped, it'll kill the Net itself."

"A rot." Sascha voice went heavy with sorrow that sank into every person in the room.

The sentinel named Dorian walked over to pull her into his arms. Lucas allowed the embrace though Faith had expected him to react with possessive violence. Another facet of her new family, one that would take time to become accustomed to. Such open affection was disconcerting to a mind fresh out of Silent bondage.

"Anything else?" Clay asked.

She nodded. "I think the killer was possessed." Everyone looked at her in blatant disbelief. "Maybe I should think about it a bit more."

Vaughn kissed her forehead. "Possessed, Red?"

"Do you think the mental degradation's taken root?" It was an attempt to make a joke out of her greatest fear. She might have cut free from the Net, but she was still an F-Psy, her mind more fragile than others.

"I think you're beautiful for a crazy woman." His hungry kiss brought the lightning to life, but when they separated, the others' expressions hadn't changed.

"The NetMind showed me something the first time we spoke." She explained the images. "I think the starry woman represents the good side and the one empty of stars, the bad."

"What about the Web of Stars?" Sascha asked from within Dorian's embrace.

Faith wriggled to a more upright position. "It's a single entity. Same with the LaurenNet."

Vaughn wrapped his arms around her neck and pulled her back against his chest. The wall of fire was a sweet benediction. "So what makes the Psy NetMind different?"

"Emotion." Sascha's eyes had gone pure black.

Lucas reached out to tug at her plait and Dorian released her to her mate. "Talk to me, Sascha darling." He ran his finger down her cheek.

"The Psy have cut off emotion, tried to suppress it into nonexistence. So if the NetMinds are created when a net is created, then the basic material is provided by the net in question."

Faith saw where Sascha was going. "Our Web is fed by everything—love, hate, fear, joy."

"So is the Laurens', probably because of the children." Sascha tangled her fingers with Lucas's. "The PsyNet, however, is fed mostly by emotionless Silence."

"But the NetMind is good. It feels joy." She was convinced of that.

"Yes, but the aim of Silence was to wipe out violence. The core of the conditioning says that any kind of darkness is bad. It must be contained, caged, kept separate from everything else."

"And that's become amplified in the twin NetMinds." Faith suddenly understood what the empath had seen at once. "A DarkMind for everything negative while the NetMind is pure goodness. It's so vulnerable."

"I'm not so sure about that," Sascha said. "If it's aware of the DarkMind, then perhaps it's aware of everything its other half knows. You did say it's fooled the Council."

"Yes." Some of Faith's concern faded. "But even if the twins function as a team, their separation has to have a consequence."

Sascha's eyes met hers and there was such grief in them. "Until the DarkMind and the NetMind are merged again, the Psy will continue to produce the most vicious serial killers on the planet."

"Killers without an ounce of mercy." Faith thought about what she'd seen. "The DarkMind is using them to give itself a voice. Maybe it can't speak like the NetMind can, because it's been Silenced, but it can communicate with its acts of violence."

"A child screaming its existence." Sascha's words gave emotional force to the cold facts.

The image chilled Faith. So much death, so much rage, all because of a child's need for acceptance. "Until Silence ends, the only thing we can do is try to stop the manifestations of darkness."

"Killers." Vaughn's beast prowled in the energy of his skin.

"Yes."

"Why does it speak to you?" Sascha asked, after a small silence.

"Maybe because I speak to it and I'm a Psy who has emotion. I think it needs that contact, needs to know that such Psy are possible."

Sascha's sadness softened into hope. "Can I speak to it, do you think?"

"It adores what you are." Faith felt her own lips tilt upward in the faintest of smiles. "I think I might even be jealous."

"Why?"

"How do you think you escaped detection in the Net as a child, before you were old enough to hide your rainbow mind?"

"The difference didn't appear until I was a teenager."

"No, Sascha. It was always there. Think about it—our basic abilities are something we're born with." Faith shook her head. "It showed me a thousand hidden minds exactly like yours, protected by something other than their own shields."

The look on Sascha's face was priceless. "The NetMind knows about us?"

Us. The E-Psy. The designation Faith had barely begun to understand because they'd been slated for deletion from the Net. But they'd survived. Because, Faith now comprehended, they had to exist. If they didn't, the Psy would cease to be human, cease to be sentient. All sentient races had a conscience. Take that away and what you were left with was something horrifying.

"Yes. It's been protecting you for decades, ever since it started to understand what Silence was doing to you. Maybe that's when it started to think on its own. I don't know. All I know is that we're dealing with a life form that has a heart and that heart is made up of a thousand E-Psy. The NetMind will never be evil so long as those minds exist. In contrast, its twin will be absolute evil."

"Your NetMind might be good, but it's not the only one who knows where you are," Clay reminded them.

The conversation turned once again to the question of how to protect her from the Council. Someone brought up a recording—one that apparently showed the confession of a Psy killer.

Clay shook his head. "We play that card, we have to be prepared for war."

"None of our reasons for not going public with it have changed," Lucas added. "Let's save it for a last-case scenario. Vaughn?"

Vaughn grunted and it was agreement.

"They won't stop hunting her." Dorian spoke for the first time, his voice so coldly angry that she wanted to hide from it. "Murder is what they're good at."

"Anybody dares touch her, I'll eviscerate them." Vaughn's words held the calm confidence of a beast that knew it was the most dangerous of predators.

"Well, there is that," Sascha said. "If she keeps her mind heavily shielded, they'll have to get close to attack her. DarkRiver can take care of them before they reach her."

"How long can I live like that?" Faith shook her head, frustrated that her earlier knowing had faded into mist. "There must be some way to keep them from making an example out of me."

Vaughn's hand was on her nape, a possessive grasp. "They'll never get that close, Red."

She believed him.

"We have a walk-through at the site with Nikita tomorrow," Lucas said into the pensive silence. "Let's see if they're open to a deal—Faith's too valuable for them to do something stupid and risk getting her killed."

The meeting ended soon afterward.

Vaughn had driven to the meeting as far as he was able, then run the rest of the way with Faith riding his back. But as their feet touched the ground after leaving the aerie, she asked to be put down.

"Let's walk awhile." Her eyes were more black than he was used to.

"I'm at your command, Red." Taking her hand, he led her through the trees until they hit a pathway almost completely hidden from sight.

"What do you see?" she asked him. "I could have never located this path."

So he showed her the marks, the clawed parts of certain trees, the subtle positioning of rocks that appeared randomly strewn. "It's a code, a way of speaking to each other that doesn't rely on words or on telepathy. We can read these signs in either human or cat form."

She traced a pair of claw lines with utter gentleness. "A language the Psy don't even know exists."

"My Psy does."

She let him lead her deeper into the forest. "Lucas is right; if the Council comes for me, it won't be to kill me."

"You're worth too much alive." His gut burned. She was so much more than a moneymaking machine. She was a woman of spirit and courage with a gift that had the power to change the course of the future itself.

"I didn't say anything to the others, but I don't think Nikita is going to agree to a deal. There's nothing to deal with. We don't have proof that Marine's murder was a setup."

"Like Lucas said, it's a last-case scenario, but we do have Enrique's confession on record." He told her about the former Councilor's crimes and his punishment. Vaughn had been there that night, had taken vengeance on Lucas's behalf because his alpha had been locked in an attempt to save his mate's life. "He gave us everything." Before they'd ripped him into a thousand bloody shreds.

Face pale, Faith squeezed his arm with her free hand. "You agreed with them that you couldn't use that."

"We won't. Not unless we have no other choice."

"No, Vaughn! Not ever. If you back the Council into a corner, they will come at you with everything they've got. And they'll kill your most vulnerable, the children, first."

His vows as a sentinel slammed up against his unspoken vows to her. "You're my mate." A loyalty that overshadowed any other.

"That's why I'm asking you to never use that recording on my behalf." Stopping, she looked up into his eyes. "I need to know that I didn't bring death into this new family. I need to know I'm something good."

"You're everything good." He enfolded her in his arms. "Don't worry. We have the capacity to take them on—we had to devise a countermeasure after Sascha's defection. The cubs will be safe." Exposing them to danger had never been a possibility.

"But how many adults will die in the fight?"

"You're Pack." And Pack stood together. He'd bled for them and they'd do the same for him.

"I can't have their blood on my conscience." She hugged him hard. "Promise me you'll never use that recording in a fight for me. Not even as a last-case scenario."

"And if I don't?"