VISIONS OF HEAT

“I’ll be close by.” Vaughn walked off around the corner, and though it was impossible, she thought she felt him change.

“Where’s Lucas?” Faith asked, instead of trailing behind him and indulging her need to see him as a jaguar once more. He was beautiful in either form, a lethal blade of a man, and she itched to stroke him. But she could justify it more while he was jaguar, tell herself it wasn’t the same as permitting her fingers to trail over the human male’s skin. Of course, quite aside from her confusion about which path to choose, she wasn’t sure she could touch either man or cat without crumbling.

“My mate had some other business to take care of.”

The unexpected declaration wrenched Faith’s attention to the woman beside her. “He let you come alone?”

Sascha flicked her plait over her shoulder. “I’m a cardinal of considerable strength. Why does everyone think I need a keeper?”

“I didn’t mean any offense.”

“None taken.” The other woman shook her head. “You’re right, DarkRiver males are extremely possessive and protective. But you can’t give in to it—you have to learn to take a stand or it’ll end in disaster.”

Faith found herself intrigued by the chance to learn something about Vaughn’s world. “How?”

“Like all predators, the cats are very strong, physically and emotionally. If they don’t receive the same kind of, what’s the right word . . . feedback, from their mates, they tend to become aggressive in the worst sense of the word.” Sascha shrugged. “They try to dominate, but a dominated mate is not what makes them happy. Cats like seeing claws.”

Was that what Vaughn had been doing to her? Pushing her to make her show her claws? “Can you tell me the changeling definition of a mate?”

“It’s more than marriage, and far, far more than anything the Psy know.” Sascha’s lips curved. With her hair braided tightly off her face, she was beauty cut in perfect lines. “It’s everything I never dared to dream.”

Faith wanted to ask so much more, but their time was limited—she had to be back inside the compound before dawn. “The darkness is continuing to hunt me.”

“Hunt? An odd word to use.”

“But correct in this circumstance. Psychically, it feels as if the darkness searches for and locks on to me.”

“It almost sounds like a forced telepathic link, not foresight.”

Faith nodded. “Yes, but it’s not. I am seeing the future, but the visions are channeled through the murderer, so in actuality, I’m in two timestreams at once. In the mind of the killer as he plans and in the future where the actual events take place.”

“Go on,” the other Psy said after a long pause.

“Once it’s—he’s—locked on, and maybe there is a component of telepathic interference there,” she admitted, “I can’t find a way to break away, to end the vision. He decides when to release me.”

“But?”

“Vaughn can pull me out. By touch.” Memories of his lips on hers merged with the shock she’d felt at having his claws on the tender skin of her face. “There’s something else.” She wiped her hands on her jeans. “I think I was having fragments of the dark visions as a child, perhaps before I turned three. So young, the memories aren’t reliable, but I believe it to be a strong possibility.”

“Interesting.” Sascha leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “The Protocol may begin from birth, but I’ve heard it said that it doesn’t really ‘take’ until a certain point of psychological development—which point depends on the individual child.”

“I read a similar report a year ago. They’re searching for a method to counteract that flaw in the Protocol—the consensus is that it’s that period that produces the adult defectives.” Even as she said the word, she realized it had been used to define the woman by her side, a Psy who was anything but defective. Another lie. Another break in the wall of her confidence in her own people.

Sascha shook her head. “I don’t think it can be fixed. Very young children are far closer to their fundamental animal nature. Nothing short of rewiring the brain itself can alter that.”

“That was one of the possible solutions raised in the Psy-Med Journal.” Even then, months before her mind had begun to go haywire, Faith had found herself intellectually repulsed by the idea. The brain was the single thing that remained sacred among the Psy. To rewire that would equal the erasure of the individual, making the PsyNet a true hive mind.

“I want to not believe you, I want to be surprised and revolted.” Sascha forced her heartbeat to lower. After years of hiding everything, the freedom to feel sometimes had her tumbling headfirst into emotion. “But I know the Council too well to believe they’d stop at destroying children’s brains in an effort to consolidate their power.”