Visions of Heat

Interesting.



The Psy preferred to live surrounded by skyscrapers and city, each adult in his or her own personal box. Yet deep within that compound was a Psy, and whoever that person was, he or she was being protected by others of their kind. Rarely did a non-Council Psy qualify for such a privilege.



Curiosity aroused, he prowled around the entire perimeter, out of range of the monitoring devices. It took him less than ten minutes to discover a way in - the Psy race's sense of arrogance had led them, once again, to disregard the animals with whom they shared the Earth.



Or perhaps, the man thought within the beast, the Psy just didn't understand the capabilities of the other races. To them, changelings and humans were nothing because they couldn't do the things the Psy could with their minds. They'd forgotten that it was the mind that moved the body, and animals were very, very good at using their bodies.



Climbing onto a tree branch that would lead him over the first fence and into the compound, the cat's heart beat in anticipation. But even the jaguar knew he couldn't do this. He had no reason to go in there and put himself in danger. Danger didn't bother either man or beast, but the cat's curiosity was held back by a deeper emotion - loyalty.



Vaughn was a DarkRiver sentinel and that duty overcame every other emotion, every other need. Later tonight, he was supposed to be guarding Sascha Duncan, his alpha's mate, while Lucas attended a meeting at the SnowDancer den. Vaughn knew Sascha had agreed to stay behind reluctantly and only because she'd known Lucas could travel faster without her. And Lucas had only gone because he trusted his. sentinels to keep her safe.



With a last lingering look into the guarded compound, Vaughn backed down the branch, leaped to the ground, and started to head toward Lucas's lair. He hadn't forgotten and he hadn't given up. The mystery of a Psy living so close to changeling territory would be solved. No one escaped the jaguar once he was on their trail.



Faith stared out the kitchen window, and though only darkness looked back at her, she couldn't shake the feeling of being stalked. Something very dangerous circled the fences that kept her isolated from the outside world. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. And froze. She was Psy - why was she reacting like this? Was it the dark visions? Were they affecting her mental shields? Dropping her arms through sheer strength of will, she went to turn from the window.



And found she couldn't.



Instead, she pressed forward, lifting one hand to press against the glass, as if to reach outside. Outside. It was a world she hardly knew. She'd always lived inside walls, had had to live inside them. On the outside, the threat of psychic disintegration was a continuous drumbeat in her head, a pounding echo she couldn't block. On the outside, emotions hit at her from every angle and she saw things that were inhuman and vicious and painful. On the outside, she was breakable. It was far safer to live behind walls.



But now the walls were cracking. Now things were getting in and she couldn't escape them. She knew that as certainly as she knew she couldn't escape whatever it was that prowled the edges of her property. The predator hunting her wouldn't rest until he had her in his claws. She should've been afraid. But she was Psy - she felt no fear. Except when she slept. That was when she felt so much, she worried that her PsyNet shields would crack, revealing her to the Council. It had gotten to the point where she didn't want to fall asleep. What if she died again, and this time it was for real?



The communication console chimed into the endless silence that was her life. This late at night, it was an unexpected interruption - the M-Psy had prescribed certain hours of sleep for her.



She looked away from the window at last. As she walked, a sense of impending disaster seemed to cloak her, a sinister knowing that lay somewhere in the shadowlands between a true foretelling and the merest inkling of what might be.



This, too, was new, this heavy awareness of something hovering maliciously in the wings, just waiting for her guard to slip.



Schooling her face to show nothing of her internal confusion, she pressed the answer key on the touch pad. The face that appeared on-screen was not one she'd anticipated. "Father."



Anthony Kyriakus was the head of her family. Until she'd officially reached adulthood at twenty, he'd shared custody of her with Zanna Liskowski, with whom he'd formed a fertilization contract twenty-five years ago. They'd both had a say in her upbringing, though her childhood had been nothing anyone would ever label as such. At three years after birth, she'd been removed from their care, with their full cooperation, and placed in a controlled environment where her ability could be fully trained and utilized.



And where the encroaching tendrils of madness could be kept at bay.



"Faith, I have some unfortunate news concerning our family."



"Yes?" Her heart was suddenly a sledgehammer. She pushed all her strength toward containing the reaction. Not only was it unusual, it was the harbinger of a potential vision. And she couldn't have a vision right now. Not the kind of vision she'd been having lately.



"Your sibling, Marine, is deceased."



Her mind went blank. "Marine?" Marine was her younger sister, a sister she'd never really known, but had kept an eye on from afar. A cardinal telepath, Marine had already climbed high in the family's interests. "How? Was it a physical abnormality?"



"Fortunately not."



Fortunately, because it meant Faith was in no danger. Though having two of the rare cardinals had made NightStar a line of considerable power, it was indisputable that Faith was the biggest NightStar asset. She was the one who brought in enough income and work to place the entire PsyClan above the masses. Only Faith's health was truly important -  Marine's death was a mere inconvenience. So cold, so brutally cold, Faith thought, though she knew she was as cold. It was a matter of survival. "An accident?"



"She was murdered."



The blank that had been her mind buzzed with white noise, but she refused to listen. "Murder? A human or a changeling?" she asked, because the Psy had no killers, hadn't had them for a hundred years, ever since the implementation of the Silence Protocol. Silence had wiped violence, hate, rage, anger, jealousy, and envy from the Psy. The side effect had been the loss of all their other emotions.



"Of course, though we don't know which. Enforcement is investigating. Get some rest." He nodded in a sharp physical period.



"Wait."



"Yes?"



She forced herself to ask. "What was the mode of murder?"



Anthony didn't even blink as he said, "Manual strangulation."



Chapter 2



Vaughn Jumped up onto the outer platform of the aerie Sascha shared with Lucas, having passed Mercy on her way down. He wasn't pleased to see Sascha outside - the platform might be high off the ground, but it was well past midnight and the Psy Council would like nothing better than to see this particular cardinal dead.



"Hello, Vaughn. Why don't you shift and keep me company?"



He let her know what he thought of that idea with a coughing roar unique to his species.



"Yes, I'm aware that I should be sleeping, but I can't." She leaned back in the chair she'd apparently dragged outside. "Mercy played chess with me." In the darkness, her night-sky eyes were lit with white pinpricks. Her fingers tapped constantly on the wooden arm of the chair.



Responding with a growl, Vaughn walked into the house. He shifted in the bedroom, then grabbed a pair of jeans and an old black T-shirt from the trunk where all the sentinels kept a change of clothes. When he walked back out, Sascha waved at the empty chair across the small folding table from her. He raised an eyebrow and perched instead on the railing that ringed the platform, hooking his legs around the posts.



"I'll never get used to the way you cats do that." Sascha shook her head and rubbed her bare feet on the wooden floor. "Do you realize you could fall and break every bone in your body?"



"Cats always land on their feet." Vaughn sniffed the night air and found everything as expected, but did a visual scan to confirm. Even in human form, his keen eyesight remained undiminished. "Are you always like this when Lucas is gone?" She seemed jumpy, agitated, though she was usually a calm pool in the midst of the predatory turbulence that was DarkRiver.



"Yes." She continued tapping her finger. "Were you running?"



"Yes." He looked at his alpha's mate, able to understand Lucas's fascination. Sascha was beautiful and utterly unique. It wasn't the night-sky eyes or the face, but the essence of her. She glowed from the inside out and that was to be expected. After all, she was an E-Psy - an empath, able to sense and heal the most damaging of emotional wounds.



But though he understood Lucas's fascination, Vaughn couldn't imagine feeling the same. Sascha was Pack. As a sentinel, he'd lay down his life for her, but he'd never have mated with her - because the concept of mating was alien to him. He didn't understand how the leopards could tie themselves to one person for the rest of their lives. It wasn't that he was promiscuous. He was very choosy about his lovers. But he liked his freedom, liked knowing that no one else was emotionally reliant on him.



His death wouldn't tear the soul out of anyone.



"I never know what you're thinking." Sascha stared at him, tilting her head slightly to the side. "I'm not even sure you like me."



The cat enjoyed being seen as inscrutable. "You're Lucas's mate." And therefore had his loyalty.



"But what about me as an individual?" she persisted.



"Trust takes time." Though she'd earned a good chunk of it the day she'd almost died trying to save Lucas's life. The other male was the closest thing Vaughn had to true family, a blood brother in the most brutal sense.



"There's something about you - you're less ... civilized than the others."



"Yes." There was no reason to deny it. He was far more animal than most predatory changelings, had had to become so to survive. As Sascha had had to become Pack. "Do you ever miss others like you?"