Chapter 10.

KALEB FOUND HIMSELF surrounded by chaos, screams shattering the early morning hush in Copenhagen. The rescue workers who'd already made it to the scene shouted for people to clear the area, their Danish rapid, fire crews rushing to stifle the flames. However, no one approached Kaleb where he stood in front of the apartment building that had collapsed in on one side from the force of the explosive device, clouds of dust lingering in the air as flames blew out windows to shower bystanders with splinters that sliced and cut.

The building was an ordinary one, filled with ordinary people-but for one thing. It was-had been?-home to a scholar working on a thesis that challenged the Adelajas' original theories and proofs on the value of Silence. The scholar's focus had been on the well-disguised disappearance of the Adelajas' twin sons, known as the "firsts," on which the couple had based their entire theory that conditioning emotion out of the Psy would save them from the insanity and violence that threatened to destroy their race.

Kaleb knew that because the NetMind and DarkMind told him everything that might impact the Net-as they'd told him of this explosion-but if this was a Pure Psy attack, then the fanatical group had far better sources of information, and more powerful sympathizers, than he'd guessed.

"Help! Please!"

Glancing up to locate the source of the thin scream, repeated in Danish and again in English, he saw a woman with an infant cradled against her chest in one of the seventh-floor rooms that hadn't collapsed in the initial blast. Judging from the thick gray smoke spiraling around her, he knew she and the child would be dead in minutes.

It took no thought to teleport up to bring mother and child to safety, the woman's coughing drawing the attention of the medics, though it was the child she thrust at them with frantic cries. Wrapping both survivors in a blanket, the medics began to check their distressed patients for smoke inhalation.

"I'll take this side," he said to the teleporter who'd arrived a second before in response to Kaleb's direct request that the Arrows render a.s.sistance. "There are people trapped in rooms we can't see from here."

Vasic nodded and disappeared to the back of the building. His partner, Aden, was already organizing the paramedics, including Arrow medics, with military precision. It was the first time in living memory that the lethal squad of a.s.sa.s.sins, their black uniforms marking them as some of the Net's most dangerous men and women, had so publicly stepped in to offer humanitarian a.s.sistance.

Leaving Aden to manage the manpower so that the right people were handling the right tasks, Kaleb zeroed in on the next trapped survivor. As long as he had a viable visual lock, he could get to them.

UNSETTLED by Kaleb's sudden departure, Sahara decided to walk through the house while she got her thoughts in order. As she knew well by now, it wasn't the spartan cube people might expect of a cardinal Tk. Instead, it flowed from level to level, each divided from the other by a single wide step, with the lowest featuring a small internal koi pond filled with bright orange fish and surrounded by foliage that thrived in the warmth created by multiple skylights that occasionally opened to let in the cooler outside air. The temperature in the pond itself, she realized today, was regulated by a separate system, to ensure it remained comfortable for its inhabitants.

It made her so happy, that pond, her eyes spilling over with emotion. "Silly girl," she whispered, wiping away the tears to kneel beside the jagged stone that bordered the water, emotion thick in her heart.

This place . . . this entire home, it felt so familiar, so safe.

It was a long, peaceful time later that she continued her walk through the airy, light-drenched rooms and wide hallways. Yet, regardless of its generous use of s.p.a.ce, the house wasn't so big that it felt impersonal. No, it was a home, with a hundred tiny details that denoted thought had been put into the design, with every room but for a limited few having wide floor-to-ceiling windows.

The windows on the level just up from the pond had been coated in something to protect the books that lined the shelves, hundreds of precious volumes sitting neatly in alphabetical order. The bent spines and worn covers told her the books had been read-or used. Many of them were nonfiction, the subjects as eclectic as those in Kaleb's study.

A beautiful room, the rug on the floor ruby red and creamy white, the chairs comfortable . . . and yet it felt unfinished. She knew in her bones that while Kaleb might use the books, he never sat in here. As he didn't sit in the breakfast area, or use the living room. He might sleep in his bed, but his study was the single room in the house that seemed to bear any imprint of the intelligent, lethal, fascinating man who was her captor.

Taking the wide step up to the next level, she looked out through the windows to see a haunting vista of empty gra.s.slands. "As beautiful and dangerous and lonely as you," she whispered, her mind filled with the image of Kaleb against the backdrop of the dunes.

Skin suddenly chilled, she wrapped her arms around herself and returned to the sunshine on the terrace. It was an automatic act to check the news sites on her organizer, her mind racing to fill in the gaps about this present that to her was an unknown future.

BREAKING NEWS! Bomb Blast in Copenhagen-Casualties Rising Immediately searching for live coverage, she clicked on a comm feed fronted by a human reporter, sadness and shock intertwining inside her at the carnage visible behind the ponytailed blonde: broken bricks, fallen timbers, thick black smoke from what must be a secondary fire, dirty and bleeding victims sitting sh.e.l.l-shocked on the road, medical blankets around their shoulders.

". . . amazing! I've never seen anything like it!"

The reporter's inappropriate excitement had Sahara frowning . . . just as Kaleb appeared in front of a medical van with a child in his arms, his shirt covered with soot, streaks of black on his face. He was gone a second later, the screaming toddler safely pa.s.sed to a paramedic.

"As most of you will recognize, that was Councilor Kaleb Krychek," the reporter said out of frame as her cameraman scanned for the next teleport. "He, with the help of a number of unnamed Tks dressed in what appear to be black combat uniforms, has ensured that the cost of this tragic and unprovoked act of violence will remain limited to those who died in the initial blast."

The camera zoomed in on the side of the building that had collapsed. "According to unconfirmed reports coming out of Australia," the reporter continued, "this is the second time in the past two weeks that Councilor Krychek has been involved in a major rescue."

The camera halted on the seated form of a woman wrapped in a blanket, a field bandage on her right hand. "Ma'am"-soft, sensitive-"you were rescued by the Councilor, were you not?"

"Yes." Sahara caught the trembling of the woman's fingers before she hid both hands in the blanket. "I'd be dead now if not for him."

"You are Psy, but did you have any reason to hope for telekinetic a.s.sistance, particularly from Councilor Krychek himself?"

Tugging the blanket more tightly around herself, the woman shook her head. "Councilors don't waste their time on such 'small' incidents . . . but he did, and I don't think anyone in this city will ever forget it."

Sahara froze.

What Kaleb had done today, actions that had the reporter hailing him as a hero, didn't line up with either his reputation or his unmistakable l.u.s.t for power-unless he was ruthless enough to have planned the entire exercise.

No, no, no.

Ignoring the shaken voice in her mind, she scanned more reports, saw that Pure Psy had claimed responsibility for the attack, but that knowledge did nothing to melt the ice in her veins.

What better partner for a man widely believed to be aiming for a total takeover of the Net than a group whose every action led to further cracks in the structure of Psy society? Cracks that left plenty of room for a "hero" to step in and clean up the mess.

As for the lives lost, they'd be written off as collateral damage.

KALEB returned home without speaking to the news media. It wasn't necessary-he knew word of his actions had gone viral across the world, the images of him with survivor after survivor in his arms far more powerful than anything he could've said. Unb.u.t.toning his shirt as he walked down the corridor to his bedroom, he entered to find Sahara sitting on the edge of his bed.

She jerked up to her feet, her eyes going to his chest, back up, color on her cheekbones. "I'm sorry, I didn't think. I was waiting for you."

The latter words were a punch to the solar plexus, an echo across time, but tasting the fear beneath her embarra.s.sment, he kept his distance. "We can speak after I shower." Smoke and grit coated his every breath.

The color on her cheeks still hot, she said, "Of course," and slipped out.

Closing the door, he stripped and stepped under the pounding spray of the shower to wash off the scent of smoke and flame that seemed embedded in his very cells. The bomb had been expertly placed to do maximum damage, the resulting fire a bonus for Pure Psy. At least a hundred and five confirmed dead, with fifty-seven unaccounted for.

Chances were good that a percentage of the missing had already left for work and would get in touch with the authorities as the news spread, but there was also a high chance that there'd been people inside who weren't on the building manifest. Until the forensic teams were able to get in to scour the building for victims, the final death toll could not be predicted with any certainty.

Scrubbing at his body and hair until the water ran clear, he got out, dried himself off. It was as he was about to put on a suit in preparation for the meetings he'd had Silver postpone that he remembered the way Sahara's gaze had fixed on his bare chest, her breath hitching as her skin heated.

He knew he had a physically attractive body-changeling and human females had made that clear with the silent invitations they sent him on a regular basis. None of them ever approached, realizing who and what he was, but he'd known that should he decide to accept one of those invitations, he wouldn't hear the word "no." His very coldness seemed a lure for certain women, and though he had paused to consider if they would scream in terror when faced with the reality of him, he had never tested the theory.

To him, his body was a tool, and the women who'd sent the invitations had nothing to offer him that would've made it worth his while to put that tool to intimate use. Sahara wasn't one of those nameless women with a heat in their eyes that reminded him of the fever in Santano Enrique's at the moment of the kill. Given that link to blood and torture, Kaleb wasn't certain he wouldn't have snapped the women's fragile necks had he accepted their invitations.

That wasn't ever going to be an issue with Sahara. She fell into a unique category of her own. More, he needed her to bond with him. And regardless of the fact that physical contact caused him acute discomfort, and s.e.x would require him to push himself inside Sahara's body, the primal act was known to create a bond far stronger than any chain. As if the sweat and heat of s.e.x melded the couple together.

His hand flexed, clenched, his body hardening in response to images he wasn't consciously aware of forming. It was a problematic development. While his body was in prime condition, the fact was, he shouldn't have responded-that he'd done so with such faint provocation spoke to deep issues with his control that he'd have to fix before he laid hands on Sahara.

As it was, any such thoughts were premature. Sahara wasn't yet at a point where he could initiate the most intimate level of physical bonding. For now, he'd use her attraction to his body to keep her off balance, allow it to eat into the fear that colored her eyes whenever she looked at him . . . a fear that made his Tk wrench at the reins, ready to break free and destroy everything around them.

Discarding the shirt he'd picked up, he pulled on only a pair of the lightweight black pants he wore while running, his upper body bare. His eye caught on the mark on his left forearm as he threw the towel over the railing in the bathroom. Though Sahara had seen it multiple times by now, she hadn't asked about it.

She would. It was inevitable.

As inevitable as what had taken place seven years ago, what he had done. A boy who grew up with a monster had no choice but to become another monster just to survive. Redemption was an impossibility, a mirage flecked with blood.

Sahara knew that better than any other person on the planet.

SAHARA made it to the kitchen before collapsing against one of the walls for a long, shuddering minute, her heart in her throat. She'd gone to Kaleb's room with some vague idea of confronting him with her suspicions about his involvement with Pure Psy while he was tired, his guard presumably lowered.

Then he'd walked in and her neurons had gone haywire. The sight of him with his shirt unb.u.t.toned to the waist had been an electric kiss to her body, a physical response so deep, it was as if it had had years to take shape, not simply a matter of days. And while the sight of his muscled chest and abdomen had dried up her throat, made her skin burn, it was the intimacy implied by seeing him half-dressed that had her heart stuttering in the most erratic of rhythms.

Fisting her hand against her stomach in a vain attempt to control the strange fluttering sensation within, she forced herself to move and prepare the nutrient drink he preferred, as well as a cup of hot chocolate for herself. The sweet drink had rapidly become something she a.s.sociated with care, with safety.

The fact that Kaleb had given it to her the first time wasn't lost on her.

After a second's thought, she made several sandwiches using a high-calorie spread she found in the cooler, and put the plate on the table, along with four bars of dark chocolate. All of the items were designed specifically for Psy, the tastes muted, and would help Kaleb refuel his body after the ma.s.sive amount of energy he'd just expended.

The task was complete all too soon, leaving her grappling with the same clawing desire that had gripped her by the throat in the bedroom. "I'm unsteady," she whispered, her skin aching with a sense of acute antic.i.p.ation. "My judgment is impaired. I was sixteen when I was captured."

"A very mature sixteen," said a familiar masculine voice from the doorway. "You made a meal. Thank you."

She couldn't look away from him, his skin a sun gold that belied the cool lack of expression on his face. If he'd kept his distance, she might have resisted the temptation that had been riding her since the bedroom . . . but he crossed over to her, didn't say a word when she ran her fingers over the tensile warmth of him, her nipples tight points against the thin fabric of her sleeveless lilac shirt.

His own hand was big, warm against her cheek as he cupped her jaw. "Don't be afraid of me, Sahara." Bending his head, he spoke with his lips against hers, the contact igniting a thousand tiny lightning strikes in her blood. "I'd line the streets with bodies before I'd ever hurt you."

Chapter 11.

I'D LINE THE streets with bodies before I'd ever hurt you.

The violence of his promise tore apart the misty cloud around her mind, made her aware of how intimately she'd pressed herself against him, his body pushing into her abdomen in a way that screamed of broken conditioning. But his eyes, those cardinal eyes, they were watchful, calculating.

Jerking away, she stumbled into a seat at the table. "What's happening?" The whispered question was for herself, her actions inexplicable to her rational mind. This, after all, was the man she suspected of being unconscionable enough to partic.i.p.ate in a plot to commit ma.s.s murder in order to gain a stranglehold on power. And yet, even now, she hungered to go to him, to touch, to caress, to hold and be held.

Kaleb braced himself against the table with one hand, reaching out with the other as if to tuck her hair behind her ears. Halting when she flinched, he said, "The door is always open," his voice causing the tiny hairs at her nape to rise in a combination of crushing need, confusion, and fear.

Watching him as he went to take a seat on the other side of the table, his every movement imbued with the lethal elegance of a man who held death in the palm of his hand, she suddenly remembered what he'd said before the madness that was her craving for him had clawed through her senses. "How do you know," she asked, voice husky with the desire that even now lingered just below the surface of her skin, "that I was a mature sixteen-year-old?"

A slight pause that could be explained by the fact he'd just taken a bite of one of the sandwiches she'd prepared. "Your Psy-Med reports," he said after swallowing, "indicate you were at a level of psychological development closer to that of a young woman than a girl."

Cupping her hands around the mug of hot chocolate, though her palms cried out for living heat, she said, "You're lying to me," so certain it hurt.

"I would never lie to you." Eyes of starless night locked with her own.

Breath catching, she held that cardinal gaze so brutal with power she couldn't imagine how he remained sane. "Then you're not telling me the whole truth."

No answer, his face without expression, a sculpture gilded gold by the sunlight.

"How about you?" She sipped at her hot chocolate in a vain effort to warm the increasing cold within, her body aching with a deep sense of loss for which she had no name. "Were you ever a child?" Ever without the vicious restraint that turned him into a man of ice even as his body burned?

"Of course." A toneless response.

One that didn't answer the question. "You know what I mean."

He drank half of the nutrient drink, ate another sandwich before speaking again. "Childhood is an impossibility when you have the potential to kill anyone in your path."

The unvarnished honesty of his words had her halting with her mug halfway to her mouth, her heart a drumbeat, a sudden "push" at the back of her mind-as if something important was struggling to break free. "When did Santano Enrique . . . take you?" she asked, and it wasn't the question she'd meant to ask, her subconscious seizing the reins from her grasp.

"I first remember meeting him at three." Nothing in his voice or face gave any hint that he was disturbed at discussing the murderous psychopath who'd been his trainer. "That was when I was placed in a facility meant for potentially dangerous children; most were earmarked for the Arrow Squad."

Sahara had seen something about the Arrows on the conspiracy site. "They're a covert unit of highly trained soldiers and a.s.sa.s.sins?" At his nod, she said, "I read that they were formed at the inception of Silence, and that their central aim is the continuance of the Protocol."

To be an Arrow, it had been stated, is to be Silent. The squad is composed of men and women with the most violent and dangerous psychic abilities on the planet, psychic abilities that cannot be permitted to slip out of their conscious control.

"The Arrows keep their own counsel," Kaleb said in response to her question, "but there are signs they're rea.s.sessing their goals in light of the current situation in the Net."

Even with her memories in fragments and her knowledge of the world yet shallow, Sahara understood that Kaleb and the Arrows had to be linked in some form. There was no way the most powerful cardinal Tk in the world wouldn't have come to the attention of the squad-and vice versa-particularly given his childhood. "You grew up with them."

To her surprise, Kaleb shook his head. "I only spent four years in the facility. Santano moved me to a separate location when I turned seven and it became clear the ferocity of my abilities made me a threat to the safety of the other children."

That made no sense-all of those children had to have been dangerous. And yet the monster had taken only one . . . bringing Kaleb, alone and vulnerable, into a nightmare. Horror choking up her throat, she clutched at straws. "Your parents-they came with you?" Psy did not abandon their young, for children were a genetic legacy.

"I never saw them after I was placed in the Arrow facility." Black ice in every word. "They were unequipped to cope with a cardinal offspring and were handsomely compensated for renouncing any future claim on me. It would've made no financial sense for Santano to train me if he didn't have ownership of my skills."

Her heart wept for him, this dangerous man who'd once been a small boy. If he was a monster now, then the seeds had been sown in his childhood-no child should have to grow up knowing he'd been sold because he was too much trouble to handle. He must've been so scared to be left behind at the facility, so confused, before the cold truth was hammered into him by instructors who had no reason to be kind.

To be aware so young that he was unwanted, to grow up with no one who was his own, even in the cold way of their race . . . the scars would've been brutal. Because while love was anathema in the PsyNet, family-or at the very least-genetic loyalty was part of the bedrock of their race.

Swallowing her feelings, knowing they would not be welcome, she said, "Why aren't you an Arrow?" The words came out unexpectedly taut, until she realized she'd stopped breathing under the intensity of the eye contact she couldn't remember making and yet that held her captive.

"Santano had other plans for me." With that flat statement, he ate his way through the last sandwich with the methodical pace of a man for whom taste meant nothing, food only a source of fuel; then he unwrapped a chocolate bar. "Why don't you ask?"

"What?" It took effort to keep her voice even when a slow-burning fury raged within her veins, her anger directed at the people who had brought a strong, gifted child into this world, then abdicated all responsibility for him.

"Exactly how much of a protege I was to my trainer."

Frost digging into her heart, jagged and brittle. "Because I'm not ready for the answer." She might suspect him of the most terrible crimes, but if he admitted to helping the dead Councilor torture then murder his victims, it might snap the fragile clawhold she had on reality.

Kaleb's expression didn't alter, and yet she had the haunting sense she'd given the wrong answer, that she'd hurt him in some inexplicable way. Another sign of the madness that had her body aching for his no matter what he might've done, how many moral lines he might have crossed, how much blood he had on his hands.

Flexing her own hand on the table until her fingertips brushed his, her eyes seeing her actions but her mind repudiating her orders to withdraw, she whispered, "Why are you holding me?"