Psy-Changeling [12] Heart of Obsidian

by Nalini Singh

  Sahara’s hand on his back. “You warned me to be careful,” she said with a confidence that told him the memory was crisp, clear. “You said I should never, ever be alone with that monster. Kaleb, you were bleeding so badly that day, I was afraid you’d cause serious damage to your brain—you fought the compulsions so hard for me.”

  Kaleb watched rocks tumbling down into the gorge and knew he was the cause, his rage seeking an outlet. “It wasn’t enough. Not when he dug deeper into my mind and realized your true ability—and how quickly you were learning to discipline it. It wasn’t simply that you might be capable of seeing all his secrets one day soon, but that you had the contacts to be heard.”

  Kaleb had begged Enrique not to touch her, the only time in his life he had ever begged. He’d been willing to give up the final ragged shreds of his soul if that was what it took, but Enrique had other plans. “He told me it was time he reminded me that he owned me.”

  Sahara wrapped her arms around him from behind. “He wanted you to hurt me.”

  Chapter 44

  KALEB CONTINUED TO stare out into the darkness, every muscle in his body locked tight, until he was made of stone. “You’ve remembered everything about that night.”

  “Almost,” she said, pressing a kiss to his back. “It’s been coming to me in pieces over the past twenty-four hours. I have most of it now.”

  “Why aren’t you afraid of me if you remember? Why are you still here?”

  “Because you’re mine.”

  The stone fractured, his hands rising to close over her own. “He knew if I hurt you, it would break the defiance that kept me Kaleb rather than his creature.”

  “Cut her.” The knife being pushed into his hand. “You’re like me, have always been like me. Do what comes naturally.”

  Sahara twisted around to face him, careless of her safety. When he pulled her from the edge with a sharp rebuke, she smiled and said, “I knew you wouldn’t let me fall.” Reaching for his left arm as her trust smashed the stone to pieces, she traced the mark on the inside of his forearm. “It’s almost like a brand,” she murmured. “Or a burn that was never treated, and the design, it’s familiar.”

  “It’s the insignia from the old-fashioned wall radiator in the hotel room Santano chose for that night.” He dared touch his free hand to her hair, felt the ice inside him melt when she turned her face into the caress, her lips pressing a sweet kiss to the center of his palm. “The room was cheap and isolated and hundreds of miles from your home. It was also covered in DNA by the time he finished. That’s why he set it on fire after wiping the entire place down with bleach.”

  Meticulous, the other Tk had been the worst combination of intelligence and deadly pathology. The fire that night might’ve been overlooked as vandalism . . . except after Santano teleported Sahara away to a secret location while choking off Kaleb’s ability to go to her, the leash yet holding, he’d teleported in the body of a changeling girl he’d killed three weeks earlier and kept on ice.

  “It amuses me to watch the rats chasing their tail,” he’d said with the arrogance of a man who had been getting away with murder for years, his victims scattered across every corner of the world. “Let’s throw them this bone and see what they do with it.”

  The fire damage to the girl’s body had ruled out DNA identification—Enforcement had finally identified her using dental records, thanks to the dedication of the detective in charge. That detective had also connected the murder to those of two of Santano’s other victims through the marks left on the bone by the knife Santano had used that year, and because at the time, the monster had been “experimenting” with decapitation.

  While the fact that it was Santano Enrique who’d been behind those three murders wasn’t public knowledge, enough people suspected his involvement in the still-unsolved crimes that there was a possibility someone, someday, would make the connection between the scar on Kaleb’s arm and that burned-out hotel room. The heavy iron radiator, after all, had been one of the few pieces that survived without any major damage. Its distinctiveness may have been the reason journalists repeatedly used the image when talking of the crimes, the shot having leaked from Enforcement files.

  It was why Kaleb never bared his forearm in public.

  He had no concern with being branded as apprentice to a serial killer. When he’d first joined the Council, it would have been problematic in light of Santano’s recent execution, could’ve led to a challenge from the others. He’d needed to be on the Council then. That no longer applied; nobody could touch him. Now he cared only about what public exposure would do to Sahara. No one had any right, even unknowingly, to push that nightmare in her face.

  “I’ll get it removed tomorrow,” he said, and knew it was time to admit his failure. “I couldn’t do it until I found you, until I protected you as I didn’t then.” She’d been hurt right in front of him, over and over again.

  “Enrique did something to the radiator,” Sahara murmured, her fingers gentle on the raised edges of the burn. “With his kinetic energy. It glowed red-hot—” Her head jerked up. “He held your arm against that insignia so long that your arm stopped working, the burn was so deep.”

  “It didn’t hurt.” Dulling his pain receptors, he hadn’t made a sound, not willing to give Santano the satisfaction. “Nothing hurt except being forced to watch him cut you and not able to move so much as a muscle.” Santano had made him helpless to come to the aid of the one person who was his everything, the one person who had never once let him down, the one person who thought there was something good in him.

  That had broken him . . . then it had made him a nightmare.

  It wasn’t the result Santano had intended.

  “Kaleb.” Sahara kissed the mark on his forearm, her lips butterfly soft. “You know what I see when I see this? I see a man who fought so hard for me that he scared a monster. You know I was meant to die that night.”

  Sahara could hear Enrique’s voice whispering in her ear, ugly and excited as he told her of his plans to have Kaleb take her life. Except Kaleb had refused to buckle under the compulsions Enrique had planted in him. “You hit him with a telekinetic blow, hard enough to crash him into the wall.”

  “No,” Kaleb said flatly. “I didn’t do anything to stop him.” His hand shook where it touched her hair. “I hurt you—I can still hear you screaming at me to stop.”

  “You hurt Enrique, not me!” Sahara grabbed at his upper arms, unable to bear that he’d believed such a soul-destroying lie for seven long years. “You came close to killing him.”

  Seeing total incomprehension in the eyes of endless black that had lost their beautiful obsidian sheen, she cupped his face and sent him the images—nuanced, real—from her memory. Having been locked inside the vault within the vault where she’d hidden her sense of self in an effort to protect it from the ravages of the labyrinth, the memory was pristine, every detail of that nightmare room picked out in intricate detail.

  * * *

  SAHARA tried not to scream as Santano Enrique dug his blade into the upper curve of her breast, knowing her pain was savaging Kaleb. The monster had pinned him against the wall using invisible telekinetic manacles, forced his head toward the bed so he couldn’t miss seeing Enrique torture her.

  Kaleb could’ve closed his eyes, shut out the horror, but he didn’t. She’d known he wouldn’t, even when she silently implored him to look away. Her Kaleb would never leave her alone with a monster.

  The scream broke out of her in spite of her every attempt to contain it, her body unable to fight the pain after so many cuts that her skin was a slick of red in the light of the two bedside lamps that spotlighted Enrique’s evil. He waited for the scream to fade before continuing to cut. “Do you know why I chose this place? Cheap as it is, the rooms are all soundproofed—and even if they weren’t, there are no other guests at this time of year.”

  Sahara had worked that out long before. “Please stop,” she rasped out, her throat raw.


  Enrique dug his blade in deeper. He thought she was begging for surcease. She wasn’t. Her words were for Kaleb, her beautiful, strong Kaleb who held her gaze with a violent silence that was a black rage, his own eyes bleeding as he fought to break the compulsion that leashed his powers, fought to come to her.

  She knew he was putting deadly pressure on his brain, but he wouldn’t listen to her—and she couldn’t reach him with her mind, Enrique having done something to both of them to block their telepathy. He just continued to fight with a brutal intensity, his face a mask of blood.

  “Stop,” she whispered again, trying in vain to reach for him with hands Enrique had bound with Tk. “Don’t.” She couldn’t bear to see him hurting himself, couldn’t bear to think he might do fatal damage. How could she exist in a world without Kaleb?

  “Begging will do you no good,” the monster said. Playing his hand desultorily over her brutalized flesh, his fingers smearing wet blood over dried, Enrique leaned in close. To her, his breath was fetid, repulsive as his mind, as he whispered, “You mark his final rite of passage. It will be the sweetest kill of his life, a high he’ll forever attempt to re-create.”

  Pain wracked Sahara, her heart breaking for the boy become a man who had done everything in his power to keep her safe since the day they’d met. “It’s all right,” she whispered so low that Enrique didn’t hear as he got off the bed and moved to Kaleb.

  But Kaleb heard, he understood, his eyes black pools of nothingness, hard and dead, and of rage.

  “It’s all right, Kaleb,” she repeated again, but those stone-hard eyes repudiated her words, the blood beginning to drip from his ears as his brain was crushed between the twin forces of his incredible will and Enrique’s malevolence.

  “Cut her,” Enrique ordered, thrusting the bloody knife into Kaleb’s hand and forcing his fingers to close over the instrument of so much pain. “You’re like me, have always been like me.” A sly look over his shoulder at Sahara before he turned back to Kaleb. “Do what comes naturally.”

  Kaleb’s fingers flexed in a jagged spasm, the blade falling to the carpet with a dull thud.

  The change in Enrique’s face occurred within a split second, the slyness replaced by something Sahara knew was pure evil. It lived within the monster always, was hidden by the facade of faultless Silence. There was no facade now, no barrier between Kaleb and the ugliness that was Santano Enrique as the monster said, “You think you can defy me?”

  Sahara cried out as Kaleb was slammed down to his knees so hard the bed vibrated from the impact. An instant later, his shirt-clad arm was pressed to the old-fashioned radiator on the wall next to him. At first, she didn’t understand what it was she was seeing. . . . then the radiator glowed red-hot.

  “No! Don’t!” she tried to scream as the metal melted through his shirt and into his flesh . . . and blood began to drip from his nose. “Kaleb, stop!” He was killing himself in front of her. “Please, Kaleb. Please!”

  Her voice was all but gone, but his eyes locked with her own, his head moving in the slightest negative shake. She didn’t need telepathy to understand him, understand what he was asking her to do. Of everything that had happened that night, this was the hardest, but she swallowed the tears that burned her eyes until they became a painful knot inside her chest, and she stopped talking.

  If Kaleb could be silent as the scent of burned flesh filled the air, and his blood dripped onto the white of his shirt, then she could keep her tears from falling. Santano Enrique might have drawn their blood, might even take their lives, but the monster would get no more of their pain. It battered and bruised her heart when Enrique kicked Kaleb in the chest with a booted foot, hard enough that something cracked and Kaleb coughed blood, but she kept her face turned toward Kaleb so he wouldn’t be alone, and she didn’t cry, even as her vision began to waver from blood loss.

  That was when Enrique glanced back at her . . . and the radiator stopped glowing, Kaleb’s arm hanging limply at his side. “Since you’ve rejected my offer,” the monster said, “I’ll have the pleasure of ending your Sahara’s life—and the time, it appears, must be now. She’s growing weaker and it would be such a waste if she didn’t feel her death.” He picked up the knife. “A pity our little party could not continue for longer.”

  “Stop,” Kaleb said, coughing up more blood to draw in a hard-won breath. “I’ll give you anything you want if you set her free. Complete obedience, no defiance.”

  He was bargaining his soul for her life. Sahara wanted to tell him no, that she would never accept that bargain, but she was having trouble forming words.

  “Everything?” Santano asked. “Would you crawl? Become my compliant pet?”

  Kaleb answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

  The monster’s laugh was a harsh sound that scratched her mind. “How touching.” Wrenching back Kaleb’s head with a telekinetic hand, he said, “But this time, I’ll decline. I told you—it’s time you remembered that I own you.” Shifting on his heel, Enrique faced the bed. “I’ll cut her up piece by piece while you watch.” A look back at Kaleb. “It’ll be much more satisfying to break you to the choke than to have you submit.”

  So weak now that the world threatened to fade in front of her eyes, Sahara bit down on her tongue to keep herself from unconsciousness. That might equal an easier death, but she would not leave Kaleb like this, would fight to the last beat of her heart, the last gasp of air in her lungs.

  Eyes stinging from the pain of the self-inflicted hurt, she brought the world back into sharp focus to see Kaleb staring at Enrique as the other Tk walked to the bed. The tendons in Kaleb’s neck stood out in stark relief, the bones in his face pushing white against skin, the bloody tears that dropped from the corners of his eyes thicker now, more viscous as he breathed in shallow gasps through broken ribs.

  Reaching her, Enrique got onto the bed, careful not to touch her skin. “I think,” he murmured, “I’ll cut off your lips fir—”

  The older cardinal was suddenly thrown across the room to smash up against the door. A bone snapped with an audible crack, and she thought it might’ve been his ulna coming into contact with the doorknob. As he struggled up, he was slammed back again, his head thudding against the wood, the sound hard and wet at the same time.

  Her telekinetic bindings came free.

  So weak she couldn’t feel her legs, she tried to crawl off the bed, the bracelet Kaleb had given her coated in shades of bloody rust where it lay warm against her skin. If she could touch any part of the monster’s body with her own . . .

  But Enrique, his shoulder hanging in a way that told her it had been dislocated or broken, shoved out his good hand and suddenly her body was being bent backward in half, her muscles and bones wrenched to the breaking point. Her knee popped, tendons tore, and darkness beckoned on the horizon, her scream a silent agony.

  “Sahara!”

  No, she wanted to say to Kaleb, don’t let him distract you! But it was too late. Sucking in breaths of jagged glass as Enrique released her back onto the bed, she watched in horror as Kaleb was slammed up into the ceiling, then back down, both his legs shattering on impact and blood pouring out of his mouth. He convulsed for a hellish five seconds and when he stopped, she knew the monster had won the bloody psychic battle, caged her strong, smart, beautiful Kaleb again.

  She tried to go to him, but only her fingers twitched, her heartbeat so sluggish, she knew she was dying.

  “Don’t!” Kaleb yelled, crawling to her in spite of his broken legs and shattered ribs, in spite of the fact that his eyes were a sea of red as he fought the evil thing the monster had done to his mind and his ability to come to her, his every movement a testament to his will. “Don’t you give up!”

  Her fingers inched toward his on a last, stubborn surge of strength. “I won’t,” she promised in silence as her vision began to fade. Anything else would hurt him and she would never hurt her Kaleb. “I won’t.” The very tips of his fingers brushed her own as he gripped
the edge of the bed, his blood sliding against her own.

  Then she was being lifted up and away from him with brute telekinetic strength, and the monster was saying, “I’ve changed my mind,” through harsh, whistling breaths. “I think I’ll make her into my pet in your stead.”

  “Sahara!” A rage of sound. “I’ll come for you! Survive! Survive for me!”

  They were the last words she heard before her mind went black.

  Chapter 45

  “DID YOU SEE?” she asked. “He was having trouble breathing, Kaleb. You broke something inside him and the only reason he was able to grab control was that you tried to protect me.”

  Kaleb didn’t reject her memories, but said, “I can hear you scream, feel the knife against my palm, the blood smeared on my fingertips, see Santano picking you up and teleporting away. There’s nothing in between.”

  “You told me he had back doors into your mind,” Sahara said, fighting for him to believe the truth. “He was clearly able to do something to make you forget the most important part of that night.”

  Continuing to hold his face between her palms, she said, “You scared him.” She vividly remembered the tone in Enrique’s voice that night, the shock that anyone had the power to cause him harm. “That is the only reason he decided to let me live.” With those words, she understood the terrible, painful truth. “He used me as an extra leash to make sure you stayed in line, didn’t he? As long as you didn’t fight the compulsion, as long as you remained his audience, he wouldn’t arrange for my death.”

  When he didn’t answer, she tried to shake him. “Talk to me!” But on this point, Kaleb wouldn’t open his mouth. She didn’t need him to. She knew. She knew. “You allowed that monster to rape your mind for years to protect me—even when you had to know it could all be for nothing, that I could already be dead.” Dashing away tears with an impatient hand, she said, “How dare you say you didn’t do anything! You did everything.”