SLAVE TO SENSATION

Lucas’s flame was pure heat, pure light. He’d trusted his mind to her but she didn’t go in, couldn’t face what she might see. His emotions for her might destroy her. Instead, she gently merged into the upper layer until her thought patterns began to echo his in a subtle way that didn’t change them but altered their psychic feel.

Letting Lucas’s heartbeat soothe her, she opened her mind’s eye. She was still behind her shields, still protected. If she wanted, she could pull back without betraying anything.

Brenna’s screams reverberated in her mind.

No, she could never pull back. First, she checked that the truth of her healing, rainbow-bright mind was hidden deep. Then she manufactured a flaw in her shields, something that looked natural. In a way, her plan was blindingly simple . . . if you were a cardinal E-Psy forced into becoming a genius of multilayered shields, and if you were able to link with and so easily mimic changeling minds.

She’d realized sometime last night that her ability to touch changeling minds was part of her gift, because the nature of empathy made it impossible for one to turn evil and do harm to an open mind. When they’d crushed the development of empaths, the Psy had destroyed the growth of their conscience.

“This one’s for us,” she said within her soul. It was for all those E-Psy who’d died tortured deaths in the transitional phase, all those who’d gone insane under Silence, and all those who’d buried their gifts so deep they thought they were broken.

After a lifetime of feeling as if she’d failed at being Psy, she was winning at being everything she was capable of being. And if the changelings alone ever knew of her victory, then that was good enough for her. More than good enough. Because they remembered. Unlike the Psy, they didn’t systematically erase those who didn’t “fit.”

Using the flaw she’d created, she allowed vague tendrils of her Lucas-influenced thought patterns to filter through. She shaped the outgoing whispers based on Rina’s mind. Rebellious, headstrong, loyal, independent, and sensual, these were the traits of the women the killer had taken. The altered blend of her psychic signature was very carefully tailored to appeal to him.

Most Psy would have no idea what was unusual about it. Some might notice but they’d see her cardinal star and put it down to some odd talent. Only a Psy who’d ripped open a changeling mind would recognize this scent for what it was.

Fifty known operators.

Sascha refused to let herself think about failure. She had to trust in fate and the killer’s hunger for this particular breed of prey.

As the thought patterns filtered through, she slipped out a hidden doorway built into her outer shield and into the starry night of the PsyNet. It was the same trick she used while ghosting. But this was even more dangerous.

Today, her mind was trapped inside her shields, because it needed to maintain the contact with Lucas and feed the false illusion. When she went ghosting, she left behind an illusion mind, while her consciousness, her self, traveled the Net. In a sense, she split herself into body and mind.

A variation on the same thing occurred when she “met” someone on the PsyNet. Because she usually needed to continue functioning on the physical level, she sent out a roaming piece of herself. For the time it was on the Net, that piece acted as a separate individual apart from her, almost as if she’d copied herself. There was vulnerability there on account of the underlying connection to her inner mind, but it was so low most Psy never worried about it.

The part of her on the outside today was connected directly to the core of her mind. She couldn’t use a roaming piece of herself because the NetMind would pick it up and so would other Psy. To create the illusion that she wasn’t in the Net at all, she had to be outside but fully connected to the core. However, if someone took control of her here, they’d have unhindered access to her brain—mind control on the most intimate level.

However, she couldn’t worry about that possibility—she had too much else choking up her throat. Already, the currents of the Net were spreading her bait. All she had to do was wait and watch. Hidden against her own mind, her presence was almost impossible to detect. This was such a dangerous maneuver that most Psy would never think to look for it, but she had to be outside her shields to see the killer’s mental face.

Even if she didn’t recognize him, she’d have enough to ID him from the PsyNet databases. So long as the rainbow of her true mind stayed hidden, she’d be able to use the resources of the Net.