Zero to Love (2 page)

He drove past the neighboring house with the big fountain and pulled in to their driveway. The lights from their father’s study slanted across the lawn, looking like doors sliced into the earth.

Elijah cut the engine and turned to face her. “You know I’m looking after you.”

Meeting her brother’s dark gaze, she recalled the reasons he was so protective. She was the only woman he’d ever had in his life. As children, their mother had disappeared one afternoon, and their father had picked them up from school to tell them she was gone. Killed, they were told, in a car accident. But shortly after that, strange people started showing up at their house for talks behind closed doors. More than once she’d overheard discussion of the Mindchangers.

Were her father’s and Elijah’s prejudices unfounded?

“You’re thinking of that thing again, aren’t you?” he snapped.

With a grunt, she snatched her scarf from the floor and shoved the door open. As soon as she stepped out of the vehicle, a vision of the Mindchanger’s eyes flashed in her mind. Dark, piercing. But maybe not dark in the sunlight.

Her heart tripped.

She could feel Monroe’s mind coming for hers right now like roots burrowing under the earth’s crust.

She jerked, and her teetering heels threatened to spill her onto the paver walkway.

Monroe
. She knew his name.

* * * *

“Mindchanger, what do you want from me? What are you really? Where can I find you?”

Monroe’s mind curved and broke around the woman’s thoughts.

Again her voice rattled around in his head, causing sweat to bead on his temples.
“Where can I find you?”

The only way to erase her thoughts—which he heard but hadn’t consumed—from his mind was to find food.

He spun toward the shadows and the group of people pouring out of the movie theater. Their brains were full of lust and sin—the theme of the movie and the theme of their lives. One couple was involved with wife swapping, and they wanted to get the other couple into bed.

He groaned and stomped past, sticking close to the dark areas of the sidewalk where the streetlights didn’t cast their bluish beams.

People skittered away at his appearance. Compared to the humans, he stuck out like an alien. Being dressed in black leather right down to his heavy boots gave him away as a Mindchanger before he even raised his gaze. He hunched his shoulders, and the upturned collar of his leather jacket brushed his ears. With his hands in his pants pockets, he fiddled with the miniature screwdriver he always carried.

“Where can I find you?”

No, he couldn’t dwell on one human. That was dangerous. If he was around her too much, he could drain her mind and leave her a vacant shell.

Except her mind is already empty
. When he’d probed her, he’d seen little. At some point she’d been the victim of a Free Will attack.

Bastards
. The rogue Mindchangers had banded together with the scheme to eradicate humans from the city, state…country. They devoured entire families, leaving bodies like so much rubbish. Some victims lay comatose for years before they were able to learn enough to function again.

But something about the woman’s mind didn’t indicate only a Free Will attack. No, there was something different about her.

Magda.

He’d seen her name in her mind as bright as a copper penny, as bright as her hair, which flashed like a beacon—a neon sign to a Mindchanger who mostly lived in the night.

He locked his jaw against the need to go find her again. He’d followed her home—could break in and get her. Rather than feast on her thoughts, he wanted to feast on her curvy body.

His cock swelled within his confining leather pants, demanding he follow his instincts and go after her.

And to send out his feelers and take from her even as he crushed his mouth to hers.

He turned down an alley. Dodging garbage cans and rubbish, he searched for a stray thought—any thought.

He swayed with weakness as the hunger took over. Instead of feeding on important memories and thoughts, he starved himself. Often he would grow so hungry he’d find himself stumbling blindly through the streets until he found an inconsequential thought to fill him.

The food he chose—
“pick up eggs at the store,” “get those tires rotated”
—was what he called “stupid food.” It never satiated, always kept him in a hungry state. But he just couldn’t take a mother’s memories of her child or a man’s intention to buy flowers for his lover.

Monroe froze. Off to the side, wisps of thought. Fragments.

Drill.

Bruise.

Sex.

He sent his powers across the inky space, snagged the ideas out of the air, and gulped them down.

A shiver coursed through him as the scraps of food provided energy.

With that fuel in his system came the unfolding of his mind.

Magda
. Fuck, he needed to go to her. A few moments ago, he’d been too hungry to see it, but now it was apparent that her empty mind was a smear of honey to the Free Wills. Once they’d had a taste of a certain human, they would return to a victim again and again.

“Drop me at the house with the blue roof.”

He looked into the pedestrian’s eyes and devoured the errant thought. Then he fed one back into the mind of the giver.
She is a loving wife.

That precious snippet from the man provided Monroe with enough energy to throw out his feelers for more. He walked the city streets, not raising his gaze to the people but stealing the extras.

To look into their eyes was to drink his fill. And while some of his species fed evil or destructive thoughts to humans in exchange, Monroe and many others gave them good thoughts in return for their food.

He ran across a man with a head full of numbers. His wife’s checking account numbers, the amount of the water bill. Monroe hesitated for the briefest of moments before sucking them in. The human didn’t need them, not really. The numerals were on paper somewhere or locked into a computer.

The city park lay ahead, but he veered off toward the town square. Concerts were often held here on weekends, and the Mindchangers came out in droves to feed. He picked up the pace. If he didn’t fix the town square as his destination in his mind, he didn’t know if he could stop himself from going to Magda.

What was it about her? He’d seen tempting humans before. Beautiful women with eyes as deep as forest pools. He could dip into their minds and glut himself while skimming their curves and finally sinking into their bodies, gaining another kind of fix.

But he’d never hungered for someone this way. Even in the darkness, he’d seen the sapphire of Magda’s eyes. He’d plunged right into them, and for three heartbeats he’d lost himself in the sweetness of her mind.

But it was a white mind. Blank and open, filled with too little.

He scuffed a hand over his jaw, creating a rasping sound. The heavy beat of music from the outdoor concert struck him, but he reached beyond the surface noise.

Just as he entered the square, he felt it.

Mindchangers frozen.

“It’s a fucking smorgasbord, Monroe.” His friend Keefe appeared out of the shadows. “Good thing you came.”

Monroe’s mind zoomed right to the knot of Mindchangers who were in trouble.

Humm. Hummmdrummmmmhum
. The furious sound of too many thoughts plaguing his fellow beings. Angry, buzzing thoughts.

He threw himself into the midst of pulsating bodies. Humans scattered around him and Keefe. The blaring metal music and driving bass dissolved in his hearing as he focused solely on the Mindchangers.

Five of them were as still as statues, and a soughing issued from the backs of their throats as they mimicked bees. The food they’d consumed was out of control in their systems, droning on and on until the Mindchangers could no longer function.

It sometimes happened to the weaker of their race. They couldn’t handle the food and would be rendered frozen. Usually a stronger mind would step up and consume the buzzing thoughts until the information jam in their minds broke free.

Monroe was a beekeeper among his kind.

The clatter threatened his hungry mind. He was weaker than normal and would have more difficulty harnessing the thoughts.

At his side, Keefe plucked them out of the dancing humans, taking what he could as most Mindchangers did.

Monroe shot him a look when he took an important memory from a young man. Keefe shrugged as if to say,
So what?
But he stopped feeding.

Rooting himself in the middle of the frozen group, Monroe sent out his feelers. He pushed out each tendril, licking at the edges of the thoughts.

A yellow cab coming at you with a beautiful girl…

It’s a driving beat and gives the DJ something to mix to.

Won’t you take your medicine?

Sharper, more pointed thoughts hung around the Mindchangers. Important thoughts that Monroe detested. A public figure’s speech had been purloined, and a police officer’s quest gone from his mind.

But Monroe had no choice—the Mindchangers were frozen, and the thoughts must be dealt with.

He devoured them, suddenly no longer malnourished but almost reaching full strength.

Keefe flashed a white-toothed grin. “Full at last.”

The frozen beings slowly began to move, and Monroe hurried from the crowd. Keefe was two steps behind. “Where you headed now, man?”

Monroe kept walking right out of the town square. The bass of the music seemed to follow, as did too many thoughts. “Home.”

“It’s early. There was a function at the university. I’m sure there are a lot of—”

Monroe spun on Keefe. In a flash, he twisted the front of his friend’s leather shirt in his fist. He thrust his face close to Keefe’s. While they always had each other’s backs, Monroe’s friend did not share his ideas about their food.

Keefe’s eyes loomed close, dark with annoyance. He gripped Monroe’s wrist and squeezed until the bones flexed. Trying to pry Monroe off would do no good. Even at his weakest, Monroe could usually outstrip any Mindchanger in strength.

“Stay away from the university,” Monroe grated out. Thoughts of Magda were fresh in his mind—too close to the surface.

And as expected, Keefe plucked them out easily.

His eyes slanted like those of a cat licking cream. His grin spread over his face, a crack above the dark goatee he wore. “So it’s like that.”

Monroe gave him a shove and whirled around, eating up the pavement with his long legs. Was it “like that”? Yeah, it fucking was.

Monroe’s throat tightened.

“Shit.” Keefe’s deep voice irritated Monroe as he kept pace with him. “You want her.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“You’re pleasant and friendly as always, I see.” They crossed the street and turned down a dark alley. Keefe stopped talking when a man stumbled out of the side door of the bar. Smoke wreathed his head, a cloud bigger than the inebriated thoughts in his small brain.

Keefe caught the man’s gaze and drank.

“Enough,” Monroe said, his voice harsh as if he’d guzzled more whiskey than the human.

Keefe stopped. “Don’t you ever get tired of being a good guy?”

“No.” Monroe increased his pace. While he and Keefe often spent all night roaming the streets of the city of Helgedom, Monroe just wanted to be alone with his curvy, red-haired fixation.

He shook off thoughts of Magda and threw out his mind. Drinking in the atmosphere, he detected the places where most people congregated. Clubs, parties, concert, lecture hall. The city was quiet tonight.

When the Mindchangers had made this city their center, it had seemed appropriate to settle in a location so heavily populated with humans, a place where they’d never starve. Helgedom meant “shrine.” Mindchangers always kept in mind that their food stores vanished if the humans did.

“Let’s hit the clubs. You can’t have had your fill back there.” Keefe leaned against a Dumpster and folded his beefy arms over his chest. At six-one with black hair trailing over his shoulders, and decked out in dark leather, he looked like evil personified. Only Monroe knew his weakness—mothers. He wouldn’t touch a mother, old or young, with a single feeler.

“I’ve had enough to hold me,” Monroe said. He walked to the end of the alley. “You go into the clubs, but stay away from the university. And the Hill District. You understand?”

Keefe’s chuckle followed him out onto the street. Monroe kept walking, but he easily caught his friend’s thoughts:
“Smart little thing. Pretty thing—your
Magda.”

Shaking his head, Monroe quickened his pace. After drinking from the frozen Mindchangers, energy flowed through his limbs, and it felt so good he briefly considered going with Keefe. Why
did
he withhold from consuming the powerful human thoughts? If he could sink his teeth into their emotions, he’d never be hungry again.

But even when he could have tasted Magda’s surprise, her rising excitement, he’d held back.

No, he always chose the gray, bland food, though he craved a feast.

Chapter Two

Nick pressed his length against Magda’s back, allowing her to feel every aroused inch. He buried his nose against her nape and inhaled deeply. “Damn, you smell so sweet. What is that you’re wearing?”

“Just my bodywash,” she returned, wriggling out of his hold. Public displays of affection weren’t in her comfort zone, especially with the guy who was supposed to be her boss. It was bad enough they were a cliché—professor and assistant—but flaunting it in front of the entire staff at the university dean Robert Calum’s party wasn’t happening.

Magda pivoted on her favorite silver teetering heels, careful not to lose her balance and fall against Nick’s chest. Because that would be infinitely worse.

“Well, it smells good enough to eat,” he said, his eyes as dilated as they were after he roared his release and collapsed against her, sweaty and sated.

She gulped the rest of the champagne in her fluted glass. The alcohol hit her system and went straight south, but didn’t warm things enough to make her lose her inhibitions. If she wanted to teach at this university—or any other, for that matter—she required a good reputation.