Heart of Obsidian

The tiny hairs on her arms rose in shivering warning, though the sun shone overhead. “I can’t think here,” she said, the glinting shards of glass continuing to catch her eye, the bars around the terrace suddenly stifling. “The beach. Will you take me to the beach?”


She kicked off her shoes the instant they arrived at the isolated stretch of water, the endless horizon unlocking the chains around her ribs. Sucking in gulps of the sea air, she rolled up her jeans and waded into the shallows, her thoughts calming and settling with each lap of the waves against her shins. It was a long time later, her decision made, that she came to sit beside him on the sun-warmed sand, taking care to make certain their bodies didn’t touch.

As she’d learned in the house, the ice that encased Kaleb wasn’t indestructible. And if he crashed through it again, she’d fall with him. Regardless of her reasoned, rational thoughts, one thing she’d accepted as she stood in the water: Kaleb was an addiction so visceral, she could never hope to control it. Not while the past that connected them remained a smudged mirage.

“I want to ask you for something,” she said quietly. “But first, I need you to tell me what’s happening in the PsyNet.” It was critical she have that information if she was to enter the psychic network on her own in the near future.



*



KALEB had been primed to deal with the fallout from his significant loss of control, but this was one question he hadn’t expected. However, he didn’t even consider shielding her from the truth. Sahara’s strength was indisputable—she had survived seven years of captivity and, before that, she’d survived a monster and his apprentice.

“It’s being attacked on two fronts,” he said, the walls of his mind scrolling with images of a chipped blade as it sank into soft feminine flesh. “Pure Psy is the first and obvious aggressor, but the more dangerous one, long term, is a disease that’s causing the psychic fabric of the Net to rot and die.”

Seeing her interest, he gave her the full details, before adding, “In a Psy host, infection leads to mental degradation, including outbreaks of violence and, eventually, death.”

Expressive, her face hid nothing as she worked through the ramifications. “It’s us,” she said, her intelligence as acute as it had always been. “The Net is created out of the minds of our race, and we’re broken on a fundamental level.” Sadness lingered in the midnight blue. “If it’s a Netwide problem, it must be manifesting in more subtle ways even in areas that appear free of infection.”

She had understood in a single minute what others had not seen after months of exposure, even people who should know better. “There are those who are becoming more and more innocent”—almost childlike—“while others are turning twisted and dark to the extent that their future rampages will eclipse the insanity and serial killing that made Silence seem the better choice.”

Sahara hugged her arms around her raised knees. “That’s bad, but not as bad as what the infection is doing to the psychic fabric of the Net.”

Kaleb said nothing, his attention on the scent of her hair as the wind swept the strands across her face and over his arm.

“If the rot creates enough points of weakness,” she whispered, “the Net will fragment and eventually collapse. Everyone will die.”

“It won’t fragment, won’t collapse.” If it did, Sahara would die and that was unacceptable. “I have the power to ensure it maintains its integrity.”

Sahara had already begun to understand what drove Kaleb. “You plan to seize total control.” She knew she should be horrified—Kaleb was an avatar of darkness, in no way the right man to trust with the fate of an entire people. But she couldn’t argue with his reasoning; his power was vast. He might be the only one capable of saving their race from the day of reckoning coming ever nearer with every infection, every inch of rot. “What will you do with it?”

“That has yet to be decided.”

Beads of cold sweat rolled down her spine, and suddenly the declaration of possession she’d taken as a sign of an obsession that could entomb them both in black ice was something else altogether. “That’s why you want me, isn’t it?” she said, her pain so deep, it had no name, no ending. “You know what I can do.”

Kaleb stared out over the water, his profile limned by the sun. “I’ve always known what you could do.” Had been aware of the vast potential locked within her slender frame since she was a child. “I won’t use you or hurt you.” The promise was one he’d made long ago, one she could no longer remember . . . though she’d kept her own promise.