by Nalini Singh
VASQUEZ’S PLAN WAS all the more terrible for its simplicity. It was too bad for the leader of Pure Psy that, at last count, the Arrows had taken down seventy-five percent of his lieutenants and were now moving on to the next layer. Even a multiheaded hydra needed some type of a command structure, and Kaleb had no intention of permitting the remaining lieutenants to set up any kind of a power base.
As for the weaker members—they might be troublesome, but only to the extent an insect is to a dragon. Eventually, they’d all be crushed.
“You would sentence your race to annihilation,” he said to Vasquez, and it wasn’t a judgment. How could it be when he had once considered destroying the PsyNet? No, it was a question, one Vasquez understood.
“We will rise as the phoenix from the ashes. Better, stronger, purer.” His eyes met Kaleb’s, the sclera red with burst blood cells. “You understand.”
“Yes.” And because he did, because he saw in Vasquez who he might’ve been but for Sahara, he crouched down to grip the other man’s hand so he did not have to go into death as alone as he’d been in life. Neither did he tell Vasquez that the plan he’d sacrificed himself to put in place would never come to fruition.
It was the only peace he could offer.
The leader of Pure Psy coughed up bloody froth, his voice a raw whisper as his blood-slick fingers tightened on Kaleb’s. “The Psy have always been meant to rule. When it is over, we will be the only power that remains.” A final rattling gasp, his eyes fading to stare out into the nothingness of death.
Andrea Vasquez was dead and with him, his dream of a world enslaved by the Psy.
Closing the man’s eyelids, Kaleb rose to pull Sahara close. “We may have won this battle, but now comes a far harder one—to rebuild a society that is so fundamentally broken it has begun to cannibalize itself.”
“Which you need to be alive to do,” came the furious response. “The bulletproof fabric did its job?” She was staring at his thigh as she repeated his earlier assurance.
Only to Sahara would he explain himself. “That was a later shot.”
Ignoring him, she twisted around as the first of the wider team cleared the level. “Judd can—”
“No.” He teleported them directly to a private medical facility staffed by those who would not dare betray Kaleb, not only because he paid them very well, but because the agonizing punishment involved should they speak his secrets would in no way be worth it.
Pushing back her hood, Sahara began issuing orders to the medics. Stay still, was her snapped telepathic command to him when the head M-Psy reached for a scanner.
Kaleb obeyed.
“Projectile weapon. Bullet hasn’t exited.” The M-Psy put the scanner aside to pick up a surgical tool. “Sir, you may wish to deaden your pain centers.”
Kaleb had done that when he was shot. “Go.”
The M-Psy began to work with an efficiency that was a silent testament as to why she was in Kaleb’s employ. Reaching out, Sahara went as if to brush Kaleb’s hair off his forehead, then dropped her hand after a quick look at the medic. Sorry.
It’s all right. There is no risk here.
Be quiet. Folding her arms, she stood stiff and silent and watchful as the medic put the retrieved bullet in a tray and used another piece of equipment to speed up the healing process.
“This procedure is complete, sir,” the M-Psy said some time later. “You may have slight tenderness in the area, but it shouldn’t last more than a day or so.” She looked up after putting down the tool she’d been using. “Are you wounded anywhere else?”
“Scan my upper left arm.” It was possible the impact of the glancing bullet had caused injuries of which he was unaware.
“No tearing or fractures,” the M-Psy said after the scan was complete, “but significant bruising. I can work on it—”
“No, that’s fine.” Kaleb barely felt the injury and he wanted to be alone with Sahara.
“Yes, sir.” Removing her gloves to leave them on the tray, the medic left without further words.
Noting from Sahara’s unchanged stance that she was in no mood to talk, he teleported them directly into what had become their bedroom at the Moscow house. He’d already discarded his torn and dirty sweatshirt into the same medical incinerator he’d sent the bloodied equipment the medic had used, and now ripped off his long-sleeved bulletproof top in preparation for a shower, after kicking off his boots and socks.
Not saying a word, Sahara picked up his arm to examine the place where the first bullet had grazed him. His skin was beginning to turn the mottled shade that denoted it would be a heavy bruise, but was otherwise undamaged. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she reached down to pull aside the fabric of his cargo pants where the medic had sliced it to work on the wound.
Delicate as air, her fingers danced over the spot. “Does it hurt?”
A strange sensation whispered through his veins now that she’d spoken to him again. “No. It wasn’t a bad wound.”
The look she gave him was murderous . . . but he saw her lower lip tremble.
At last he understood, realized he’d made her afraid. “I’m sorry.”
Swallowing, she rose on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck. He bent to make it easier for her to hold him, entrapping her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said again, remembering what it had done to him to lose her, and seeing in her response the same bone-numbing terror.
“If the bullet had hit your femoral artery, you’d be dead.” Trembling voice, tears wet against his skin. “A quarter of an inch to the—”
“No,” he said, needing to make this right. “I would’ve teleported immediately to the medics in that case.” Changing his hold, he carried her to the bed and sat down with her in his lap, uncaring of the dried blood on his pants.
Tightening her hold, she buried her face against him. He didn’t know what else to do, how to comfort her, so he simply held her, held the only person in the world who had ever cried for him.
The first time had been six months after their first meeting, when she’d noticed the blue-black bruises on one of his arms after he’d forgotten about them and pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Having no idea what to do, he’d warned her she’d be in trouble if she was caught crying, but no matter what he said, she kept crying silent tears and patting at his arm.
“I can’t fix you. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
She was patting him like that again, her hand gently caressing the hurt spot on his upper arm. So he said the same thing that had finally stopped her tears that day. “Please stop crying. If you do, I’ll make you fly.”
“I’ll make you fly.”
Memory powered through Sahara in a single slamming punch, and all at once, she was sitting on the edge of a small, hidden pond in the farthest corner of the NightStar grounds, colorful koi moving lazily beneath the clear surface and the taste of salt on her lips.
“What?” she whispered to the boy who sat a foot in front of her, his arm telling her a story his voice never would.
“See.” He held up the beautiful blue pebble she had given him after finding it in the small box of stones her father had given her as an educational tool. He’d told her to look up the properties of the stones, but Sahara had also read about the nonscientific meanings. Lapis lazuli, the text she’d accessed had said, was a stone meant to represent friendship.
Now the blue stone rose high into the air. “Like that.”
Smiling, Sahara caught the stone, wiping the backs of her hands over her cheeks, and memory segued into reality.
Drawing back to look into eyes gone ebony, she cupped his face. “That was a fun day, wasn’t it?” He had made her fly, after they stole away into a secluded section where no one would see them.
“You wanted to sit on the highest branch of the biggest pine in the woods.”
Sahara laughed through the remnants of her tears. “You let me.” Delighted, she’d sat up there without a care in the world, legs hanging off the sides as she waved to Ka
leb. “I think you were terrified I would fall off.”
“I may have been . . . uncertain of your balance.”
Sahara’s laughter faded as other memories came into clear focus, other times he’d been hurt and tried to hide it from her. “How,” she whispered, “did you manage to contain all that power as a boy without the pain controls? Why was the monster never afraid you’d strike out at him?”
Kaleb went motionless, and she wanted to call back her words, stifle them as she’d done before, but some secrets were poisonous, and it was time they faced the bloody night that had scarred them both. And that night began in a childhood that had been a nightmare of pain and loneliness and horror.
“Together,” she whispered, telling him he wasn’t alone in the darkness, would never be alone. “Now and forever.”
Eyes of impenetrable black in that beautiful face, but his arm slipped around her waist, his palm warm on her lower back even through the sweatshirt. “Santano placed the telepathic equivalent of a choking leash in my mind,” he said at last. “As a cardinal himself, he could constrict that leash at any time to cut off my power.”
Sahara kept a vicious grip on her anger. “You broke it as an adult?”
“It was more a case of the leash disintegrating under the force of my strength as my abilities matured . . . but not fast enough.” His hand fisted on her back. “And even when I thought I was free, I wasn’t; he could always make me watch.”
Sahara could erase those memories, heal his pain that much at least, but in so doing, she’d forever taint the indefinable trust between them. “He tried to break you,” she said, fierce in her pride, “but you didn’t only survive, you thrived to become a power unlike any the world has ever seen.”
Kissed by the passionate fury of this woman who loved him enough to fight his demons, Kaleb knew he had to finish this, had to tell her everything. “Don’t you wonder how he found out about you? When we were so careful?” When Kaleb had been dead certain he’d built a secret compartment in his mind that Santano couldn’t reach.
Sahara didn’t flinch, didn’t turn away. “A child has no shields and he was a cardinal,” she said, the deep blue of her eyes an endless midnight. “There is no blame.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What?” Hand over his heart, she said, “That he did to me what he did to so many changeling women?”
He froze, every cell as hard as ice. “Yes.” With that brutal confirmation, he put her gently aside, rose, and shoved open the doors that led to the terrace.
Outside, the sky was black with rain heavy clouds, the air gray, the chill wind slapping against his bare upper half. Walking to the broken metal railings, he began to rip them out with methodical precision, piling the remnants in one corner of the terrace. He was aware of Sahara standing in the doorway, eyes on him, but she didn’t say anything until he’d finished demolishing the fence he’d put in place.
Stepping to the very edge of the terrace, he stared out into the darkness. “It turned out Santano knew about you for years,” he said, the padding of her feet on the wood as she crossed to him hammer blows against his ribs, “but he didn’t interfere. He later told me you kept me stable, so you were useful.” Useful. The most beautiful thing in his life had been useful to Councilor Santano Enrique. “Because of me, he knew you existed.”
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.
