VISIONS OF HEAT

What if her shields cracked? Going into a seizure could cause major damage to her brain and leave her exposed in the most intimate sense. In the recording she’d seen, the F-Psy in question had almost bitten off her tongue. She’d also lost control of her mental processes for the duration of the seizure—even her shields against the vast public spaces of the PsyNet had come down. Faith couldn’t imagine anything worse. Every day of her life, the visions forced their way into her mind. She needed some sense of control, some sense of safety, some sense of being alone within the walls of her psyche, if nowhere else.

“Why did your parents let them take you away?” Sascha’s voice cut through the silence.

Faith didn’t want to talk about her past anymore. But that was irrational and she wasn’t an irrational individual. “NightStar has a long history of producing F-Psy. They knew I wouldn’t survive in a normal environment.”

“Or maybe that’s what it was useful for them to tell you.” Vaughn’s voice was a rough scrape over her skin. Impossible. Such an effect had no basis in the physiological responses of humanoid species.

“My family had, and still has, nothing to gain by lying to me.”

“Tell me, Faith, how much do you earn for the PsyClan?” Sascha’s voice was somehow different from every other Psy voice Faith had ever heard. It seemed to effect calm without the application of any discernible psychic pressure.

“I don’t keep records.” But she knew. “My family ensures I have everything I need.”

“I have some idea,” Sascha said. “You’re worth millions. And you’ve been worth millions since the first day they started training you to give them what they needed—forecasts in the lucrative field of commerce.”

“The visions can’t be halted.”

“No. But like Vaughn said, maybe they can be channeled.”

Faith didn’t answer and nobody said another word, but she heard their silence. No matter how hard she tried not to hear anything.





Vaughn felt irritable, as if his fur were being rubbed the wrong way. He glanced at the blindfolded woman less than an arm’s length away and knew she was to blame. But having checked his mind for possible traps—a trick Sascha had taught all the sentinels—he was sure that Faith wasn’t using any Psy powers on him.

The cat figured that made it okay to indulge.

He raised his hand to finger a strand of her hair where it lay against the back of the seat. Once again, he felt her go infinitesimally quiet. He frowned. Psy weren’t known for being that sensitive to physical stimuli, which only made Faith more interesting.

The car slowed.

Moving with catlike speed, he was out almost before it stopped moving. “We’re here.” Though he opened her door, he let her exit on her own.

Her movements were hesitant, but she was soon standing beside the door, back held in the poker-stiff posture patented by her race.

“Don’t,” he ordered when she began to raise her hands. Reaching around, he undid the scarf himself. The cat took the chance to roll in the rich sweetness of her scent, but the man remained on guard.

She blinked against the light coming off the porch—Lucas had turned on the single bulb—and he saw her eyes for the first time with the sight of a man and not that of the beast. They were just as unearthly, just as beautiful. Two pieces of captured night sky.

Faith looked up. And up. As she’d guessed from the feel of him at her back, the jaguar was tall in human form. His hair was a thick amber-gold, long enough to brush his shoulders, and his eyes . . . they were an odd almost-gold, the eyes of a cat made human. There was nothing soft about him, nothing tame. Yet she, a woman who’d never before understood the concept, found him beautiful. It was an inexplicable reaction, one her brain couldn’t accept, going as it did against every rule of Silence.

Her breath caught in her throat and she started to breathe faster than was optimal. She knew she was having a stress reaction, but she couldn’t stop it. Her heart rate started to speed up a second later. Remembering a simple anchoring technique, she clenched her hand on top of the open car door and squeezed. But the physical action had no effect.

Suddenly, there were big hands on her face forcing her to look up and meet those odd eyes. “Stop it.”

She lifted her own hands and tried to pull his off. Didn’t he know that he was making it worse? The pressure had increased a thousand times at the skin-to-skin contact. Heat, sensation, power, everything that was him seeped into her and threatened to short-circuit her already overstretched mind.

“Vaughn, let her go.” Sascha’s command was a gift. “She can’t handle that much sensation.”

“Yes, she can.” Those cat eyes stared down into hers.

She wanted to fight him, but had no idea how to use her abilities in a nonfatal attack. Starting to feel dizzy, she swayed. Her eyes locked with his. “I’m going to lose consciousness.” Starkly aware of the possible danger to her PsyNet shields, she was numb to the physical agony of nerves going haywire.

“No, you’re not. If you do, you’ll be helpless.” Vaughn didn’t loosen his hold. “Do you want to be at my mercy?”

She tried to tell him it wasn’t a choice she could make. Her body was shutting down. And then the last neuron flickered and went out.

Swearing, Vaughn caught Faith’s body before she fell and hurt herself.