Heart of Obsidian

Pure Psy





PSY UNIFORMLY CREMATED their dead. It was the most effective way to dispose of a corpse, and those of Vasquez’s race had no need for a grave where they could mourn. However, Vasquez hadn’t cremated Councilor Henry Scott’s ravaged body. He’d had Henry buried in an isolated location deep in the Tatra Mountains in Europe.

He hadn’t done it because he needed emotional absolution. His Silence was Pure. No, he’d buried his murdered leader so he could report back to Henry. He’d done so aware that many would consider such communication an irrational act, but with Henry gone, Vasquez trusted no one with his plans for Pure Psy. He felt more . . . stable speaking to the resting place of his lost leader than inside his own mind.

It might be, he thought now, looking down at the grave covered by a fine layer of new grass, the humans and changelings had a point on this one aspect of things. Vasquez had no argument with accepting the other races had certain qualities and strengths that might be useful to his own—however, they were not, and had never been, the equal of Psy.

His was the race with the ability to affect the very minds of the other races. Psy could enslave those minds if they so chose, crushing the autonomy of human families and changeling packs to erase their society itself. As such, the emotional races could not be permitted to ascend to the point where they believed themselves the rightful rulers of the planet.

It was also true that the fault for the baseless conceit recently evidenced by humans and changelings alike didn’t lie with them. That responsibility belonged to the weak ones in the PsyNet, the ones who had allowed the inferior races to claw their way to a power they could not hope to understand. In this, Henry had been wrong in his decision to attack the SnowDancer and DarkRiver packs so directly.

“They are animals,” he said quietly, his respect for his leader steadfast even in this disagreement. “They do not know the depth of the waters in which they play.” And the humans? Weak. Defenseless as babies. “We can enter human minds at will, alter the very reality of their existence.”

Silence was his only answer, but he felt the peace of knowing he was on the true path. “Our rightful place is as the caretakers of the lesser races, not as aggressors. Ill discipline must be punished, of course, but only to break them of bad habits.” Blood need not be spilled when the mind could be taught to fear pain. “In time, they will become what they have always been meant to be—our obedient servants, who know we only want that which is best for them.”

Before that state of grace could come to pass, however, Vasquez first had to redress the current power imbalance in the world. To do that, he had to destroy what had become a defective and decaying ruling structure, giving his race the gift of being able to begin anew.

Humans and changelings had been and would continue to be caught in the crossfire as their betters struggled for dominance, but that couldn’t be helped. This was a war for the survival of the Psy race. “Collateral damage,” he said, thinking of the operation that was about to put Pure Psy and the need for Silence on everyone’s lips from one end of the globe to the other, “is inevitable.”





Chapter 28





HAVING RESTED FOR a few hours after a night that had begun with an exhilarating climb, was shattered by an enemy intruder, and ended in Kaleb’s arms, Sahara woke just after two in the afternoon. The first thing she did was call Anthony for an update on her father, to be told he remained in isolation but that the doctors were increasingly confident of his recovery. Kaleb confirmed that status when she touched his mind . . . and it struck her that though Anthony was her blood, it was her dangerous lover she trusted not to lie to her.

Thank you, she said, almost able to see him in the Moscow office where he said he was finalizing a project in spite of the late hour there, a beautiful man in a handmade suit who might as well be a knife blade; a man so complex, she knew she understood only the barest pieces; a man who had survived hell as a child and come out of it a shadowy enigma.

He belonged to her in a way she couldn’t articulate, the bond between them unbreakable, but Sahara had no illusions about Kaleb. The scars of a lifetime tied to a monster could never be erased—and no one, not even she, could predict the decisions those scars would lead him to make. You need to rest, she said, a painful tenderness inside her. Because no matter what else he was, he was hers first.

Soon.