Visions of Heat (33 page)

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.

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 charnel 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 multilimbed 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.