SLAVE TO SENSATION

She blinked and her body tensed but all she said was, “No, you’re not.”


Was she trying to be gentle with him? He looked into those infinite eyes and wished he could read her mind. “And we’re not going to stop searching because the Psy want us to. Brenna will be saved and the killer will be executed. If DarkRiver is taken down, the SnowDancers will continue the fight. When they fall . . . there are others.”

The world was changing and sooner or later, the Psy were going to come face-to-face with their worst nightmare—the relegation of their emotionless race to nothing more than a footnote in the history of man.

“How can you be absolutely certain it’s a Psy?” she asked. “I won’t betray my race on the basis of a suspicion.”

Springy, silky curls began to overflow his hands as her braid started unraveling on its own. The panther was delighted by the texture and life in his hands. But it wasn’t enough to make him forget blood and death. “I was with Dorian when he got the feeling that something was wrong. We must’ve arrived at Kylie’s apartment on the killer’s heels.” What he’d seen there had been enough to make him believe in evil as a living, breathing entity. If Sascha wanted proof, he had it, seventy-nine precise pieces of it, all covered in blood and horror.

Those mysterious eyes looked at him with what he wanted to believe was sympathy. “That’s why Dorian is so damaged. He thinks if he’d only been that much faster . . .”

No longer surprised at her understanding of the emotions that drove people, Lucas nodded. “When we got there, Kylie’s body was warm to the touch but she was gone and so was the killer. However, he’d left behind a scent, one that’s unmistakable to us.”

He’d also left behind a faint psychic vibration in the air, something that Lucas alone had picked up. He knew the ability stemmed from the same sense that warned him when Psy power was being used. It wasn’t something he was ready to share with his Psy, though he was almost certain that she was far more akin to him than she was to the people she called her own—almost wasn’t good enough for an alpha.

“Is that the best evidence you have?”

He stopped playing with her curls. “He cut her. Precisely. Neatly. No mistakes. No hesitations. No cut deeper or shallower than the others. No cut shorter or longer. He cut her exactly seventy-nine times.”

“Seventy-nine?”

“Just like in the last four kills.” The Psy had been unable to bury that fact, because though the Arizona medical examiner was human, one of her older cousins was married to a changeling. They were a very close-knit extended family—something the Psy hadn’t taken into account, crippled as they were by their inability to understand the bonds of blood. Dr. Cecily Montford had been so disturbed by the careless way her reports were being treated that she’d been more than willing to break confidentiality and talk to DarkRiver.

“Tell me, Sascha,” he asked, not letting her look away, “can you think of any other race on the face of this planet with the control to do something that heinous and keep exactly to a set pattern?” His voice dropped an octave, the craving for vengeance bringing out the beast.

“He didn’t make a single deviation in the length, depth, or width of those cuts across the five bodies we were able to get information on. He sliced them like they were lab rats. None of those cuts was fatal except the last.”

Rage was powering him, making him push her in a way that he would’ve never pushed any other woman. He was used to protecting but Sascha’s calm evaluation of the violent deaths of eight women—women who’d mattered, who’d been loved—had turned him savage. “Oh, and the autopsies showed that their minds were literally mush though their skulls hadn’t been damaged. Who can do that aside from the Psy, Sascha? Who?”

She made a quick rising movement. He was faster. He trapped her with his body around hers, his leg at her back and his arms around her torso. “Where are you going?”

“You’re letting emotion control you. Perhaps we should continue this when you’re calmer.”

The words sounded right, sounded like something a Psy would say, but he could hear an almost subvocal tremor, something no one but a changeling could’ve detected—a changeling who’d been marked as a Hunter since birth. Remorse thrust back the clawing anger of the beast.

“I’m sorry, kitten. That was uncalled for.” He ran the hand on her back into her curls and to the nape of her neck. “I’m taking my anger out on you.”

“It’s understandable.” She pushed at the arm holding her to him but not with enough force to make him think of it as a serious protest. “I represent the race you hold responsible for the death of your packmate and Dorian’s hurt.”