by Nalini Singh
“No.” She shoved everything she had into rebuilding those walls. Her fear of rehabilitation was so great that it momentarily dampened the heat between her legs. Only momentarily.
The instant she walked into Lucas’s home, it shot through to inferno levels. She could see his silhouette behind a Japanese screen that looked to be separating the large room into living and sleeping areas. He was taking off his T-shirt and she couldn’t help but watch. Her fingernails bit into her palms.
“Sascha? Do you mind starting the hot water? I’m going to take a shower to wash off the sweat from the run. Promise I’ll be quick.”
She was almost certain that he was deliberately trying to torment her. “Where is the control?” Her statement was very precise, because she was having trouble thinking past single words, her eyes riveted to his shadowy form.
“Straight ahead and to the left.” His hands went to the top button of his jeans and his body began to turn to present a profile. She almost ran from the room. The section he’d directed her to was a small kitchen, the controls for the water on the wall.
His setup was understandably old-fashioned. She guessed it was powered by hidden eco-friendly generators. No changeling would choose any other method this deep in the wilderness. Pushing the appropriate button, she called out, “It’s done.”
“Thanks, darling.”
She heard him moving and a few seconds later, the sound of falling water, so the shower had to be located off the sleeping area. Relieved to have a few minutes to calm herself down, she placed her hands to her cheeks and took a deep breath. The scent of man and forest infiltrated her mind like the most forbidden of drugs. She remembered the sharp glint of his claws as he’d climbed, and felt not fear, but a kind of awestruck wonder.
“Oh, God. Stop, Sascha, stop.” She stared at the physical things around her in an effort to fight the repeating loop of pleasure and fear, sensation and cold terror. Even the threat of rehabilitation wasn’t standing up against such intense proximity to Lucas.
The kitchen was small and compact, having a simple cooking/heating unit and very few other appliances. She noted a coffeemaker on the counter and moved to switch it on. Coffee wasn’t something the Psy drank and though she’d tried it, it had never appealed to her. Since Lucas obviously liked it enough to have a high-tech machine, she started some before walking back to the living area.
It was wide and open, with several windows looking out into the forest. Given the fact that his lair had to be well protected, she guessed they were treated so as not to glimmer in the sun. Vines crawled along their surfaces, almost bringing the forest inside.
From the moistness in the air and the glimpse she’d had of a few water-loving plants she recognized, she guessed they were near a river, possibly close to one of the rare wetlands. Like most of his species, it appeared that the alpha of DarkRiver was adaptable to the extreme.
Looking away from the windows, she allowed herself to examine his living room. The light from the two motion-sensor lamps on the floor was soft, but then again, she thought, remembering those night-glow eyes, Lucas could see in the dark. The only other illumination came from a tiny red power light on the communication console set into the wall nearest the door. A closer look told her that it also functioned as a receiver for entertainment programs, though she had a feeling Lucas liked his entertainment far more physical… far more personal.
Flushing fever-hot, she moved away from the panel to look at the rest of the room. On the opposite side from the windows was a huge cushion, half of it propped against the wall, the other half on the floor, turning it into a de facto sofa. Lengthwise, it was more than enough for a leopard to stretch out on. Three smaller “sofas” were placed around the other walls.
A lot for one man but not for the alpha of DarkRiver. It was likely his packmates visited often. Only packmates? She shook her head. She wasn’t that naive. A man as sexual as Lucas would have more than his share of lovers. Lovers who were at home with their sexuality, open and wild enough to take him on. He had no need to seduce a Psy who’d never kissed a man in anything other than her dreams.
The shower shut off. Funnily enough, she was calmer. Throwing the cold water of reality over her fantasies had proven a far more effective counter to her hunger than any Psy trick. When she heard him moving into the sleeping area, she walked back to the kitchen. Another teasing shadow-play might undo everything.
The coffee wasn’t done. “What would you like to eat?” she asked without shouting, cognizant of his superb hearing. “I can start it.”
“Thanks. Why don’t you heat up some of the pizza Rina left last night? It’s in the cooler.”
Her jaw set. Rina? Had she met that leopard? What did it matter if she had? So what if the other female had been in Lucas’s home? Finding the cleverly camouflaged cooler, she grabbed several slices of pizza and put them in a special container before placing it on the heating unit.
The thought of Lucas with another woman coated her with another icy layer of control. So much so that by the time the freshly washed scent of him invaded the air of the kitchen, she was back in the prison of her mind, back behind the walls she’d learned to put up before she could walk. “I’ll wait for you in the living room,” she told him, when she turned to find him facing her.
He let her pass with no trouble. “Thanks.”
Lucas watched Sascha walk away, his eyes narrowed. Something had changed. Her body was stiff and if she hadn’t been Psy, he’d have said she was angry. But her race were known to adopt stiff postures in their efforts to turn themselves into robots. The heating unit flicked off and he reached out to transfer the pizza onto a big plate.
Rina had brought too much. Even with two other soldiers there wolfing it down, they’d ended up with almost a whole pizza left over. The three had come over to talk to him about security for one of the safe houses but Rina had stayed behind to discuss Dorian. She was still young and seeing the sentinel almost lose it had shaken her.
Lucas picked up the plate and only then noticed that the coffee was ready. Sascha. She kept surprising him. Carrying the plate into the living room, he put it on a low table that sat in one corner of the room, before dragging the table to the cushion that Sascha had curled up against.
The cushions had been designed by Tara, a packmate. Meant to accommodate leopard bodies as well as human, there really was no way to sit stiffly in them.
Pleased by the liquid softness of her limbs, he smiled. “Grab a piece. I’ll get the coffee.”
“No coffee for me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t… require it.”
“Water?”
“Thank you.”
As he poured the coffee, he thought back over that small hesitation. Had she been about to say that she didn’t like the taste of coffee? Or was he trying to convince himself of things that didn’t exist in order to justify this inappropriate attraction?
He was alpha, used to putting the pack above everything. This hunger for Sascha was a threat to that loyalty, a temptation that might lead to sleeping with the worst sort of enemy. But walking away wasn’t an option—he’d never been a quitter and he was determined to find out what lay beneath that hard Psy shell.
All their lives might depend upon it.
Sascha was sitting in the same position when he returned. Putting her water and his coffee beside the pizza, he took a slice and deliberately collapsed on the same sofa she’d chosen, letting his body lie loosely against the cushion a scant couple of inches from hers. “Give it a try.” He raised the slice to her mouth.
She hesitated and then took a small bite. “What flavor is this?”
He shrugged. “Mexican, I think.” Taking a big bite, he watched her face as she analyzed the textures. Or was she savoring them? He raised it to her mouth again. “Bite.”
Those eerie eyes seem to flash. “I’m not one of your pack to be given orders.”
Temper, temper, he thought, the panther in him intrigue
d by that hint of fire. “Please.”
After another small pause, she leaned forward and bit. This time she took more… and confirmed every one of his beliefs about her. Demolishing the rest of the piece, he picked up another one. She ate a good third.
“Enough?”
“Yes, thank you.” She reached for her water. “Do you want your coffee?”
“Thanks.” The mug was warm in his hands but it was the heat of her that he could feel most strongly. Her body was alive. Her body felt. Her body knew sensation. The crucial question was, was her mind strong enough to overpower her animal instincts?
They sat quietly until Sascha put down her water and turned to him. “Tell me about the murders.”
A chill cooled the heat of his body. Getting rid of his own empty mug, he dropped his head against the cushion back. “We’ve tracked down seven confirmed victims in the past three years. Kylie was number eight. And Brenna, the SnowDancer who was taken, will be the ninth if we don’t find her in time.”
“So many?” It was a whisper.
“Yeah. But my gut says we haven’t tagged all of his past kills—he’s too good at this.”
“Are you sure it’s a man?”
He clenched his fists hard enough to hurt. “Yes.”
“Why haven’t you done more to track him down?”
“Kylie was murdered six months ago. At the time, we didn’t know it was a serial and, given the clear evidence of Psy involvement, we thought Enforcement would quickly close the case. We gave them no problems regarding jurisdiction—we wanted blood but we didn’t want war with the Psy.
“We were willing to settle for an Enforcement prosecution.” It had nearly ripped the hearts out of them but they’d done it for the sake of their young. Dorian’s rage hadn’t been so great that he’d forgotten the vow he’d made simply by being born—to protect the vulnerable. “We understood that one monster didn’t define a whole race. Even changelings sometimes spawn serial killers.” Though they had them in the fewest numbers of the three races.
“Everyone believed the Council would launch a hunt on the PsyNet and hand over the culprit. With your psychic skills, there’d be no question of his guilt. Until then the Council had done some questionable things, but no one thought they’d protect a killer.”
Sascha’s body seemed to curl up further, as if she were trying to hug herself. “What have you learned about him since you started searching?”
“He hunts widely. Of the kills we’ve tracked, the first two were in Nevada, the third in Oregon, the remaining four in Arizona. The last was Dorian’s sister.” He would never forget the coppery smell of innocent blood, the darkness of the splatters on the walls, the metallic stink of the Psy.
“He left bodies to find?”
He sat upright, arms crossed over bent knees, one hand grasping the wrist of the other in a punishing grip. “The bastard takes them, tortures them, and then returns them to some place that should’ve been safe.”
“I don’t understand.” Sascha’s voice was nearer, as if she’d moved forward when he had.
Looking over, he met those night-sky eyes head-on. “He delivers the killing blows in a place familiar to the women. Kylie’s throat was slashed in her apartment.”
Darkness crawled across Sascha’s eyes, destroying the stars and almost succeeding in shocking him out of his fury. He’d heard that Psy eyes did that when they were expending huge amounts of Psy power but he’d never seen it happen. It was like watching the wings of the night close out the sun. The strange thing was, the hairs on the back of his neck weren’t tingling in awareness. If Sascha wasn’t using her powers, why were her eyes going midnight?
“He’s very sure of himself,” she said, shoving him back from fascination to fury.
“Of the other seven women,” he continued, “one was murdered in her home, one at her place of work, another in her family crypt.” Anger for each senseless death rippled through him. “The other four follow the same pattern.”
Sascha wrapped her arms around her knees. The panther noticed the mirroring and filed it away. “Why didn’t the other changeling groups do anything?”
“Several reasons, the major one being that this was buried so deep, no one had any idea it was a serial until we started digging.”
“The other reasons?”
“A combination of the choice of victims and Enforcement complicity. The first woman wasn’t part of a defined pack—her parents went to the authorities but got nowhere.” He knew exactly why. “The second two belonged to fairly weak groups. None are dominant in their area and they simply didn’t have the physical or strategic strength to push for answers when doors were slammed in their faces.
“The fourth was blamed on a rogue and since he was already slated for death by his pack, the case was termed to fall outside Enforcement jurisdiction and closed. The fifth and seventh were loners—there was no one left to fight for justice. The sixth victim was killed at the same time that a human serial killer was preying in the region and even her pack wasn’t certain she hadn’t been one of his victims. But when you set it beside the other Psy kills, there’s no question it’s the same predator.”
“Then came Kylie.”
“She was his first mistake.” Lucas felt his claws pressing against the inside of his skin. “The second we put together the pattern and unearthed the other forgotten women, we started to hunt. We also got a warning out to every changeling group we could reach.”
Sascha didn’t speak. Not quite sure why he felt the need, he turned his body until he was facing her, one of his legs behind her, knee bent. The other he dropped loosely to the ground, crossed under the raised leg, before picking up her braid to play with the end.
He needed touch. Contrary to what Sascha believed, not just any touch would do. Usually only packmates were able to give him the peace he craved. Usually. “We’re not weak,” he began, pulling off the tie that kept her braid together.
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.<
br />
“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?”
