Closing his hand over hers, the tanned skin of his shoulders warm in the sunlight pouring through the window, he said, "Because you belong to me."

She shivered at the dark possession in the words, in those eyes of obsidian. "As those changeling women belonged to Enrique?" The words spilled out, b.l.o.o.d.y rain in the sunshine.

Shifting his hold to cup her hand, lift her palm to his lips, he pressed a kiss to the center that made her womb clench. "No." A hard answer, all razor-sharp edges. "They never gave themselves to him."

Her breath caught. "Did I?" Curling her fingers into her palm, she pulled back her hand. "Give myself to you?" She'd been sixteen, her conditioning never quite right, but the idea that she'd broken the biggest taboo of her race and shared her body with him had everything in her responding in a violent negative.

Yet the way she burned for him, it spoke of an attraction that had had years to ferment, to come to maturity. At twenty-two to her sixteen, powerful and dangerous, he would've been shockingly attractive to her senses . . . as he was now. The idea of those strong hands on her flesh, possessive and caressing, it made perspiration glimmer on her skin, even as she accepted that should he have taken advantage of a teenage girl, it would be an unforgivable act of trespa.s.s.

"I," he said, rising to move around and cup her cheek with his hand as he had at the start, "am a virgin."

Of everything he could've said, that was the least expected. Throat dry, she shook her head. "That doesn't answer the question I asked." Didn't tell her who he was to her, who he'd been . . . if he'd been anything at all. This raw attraction could well be nothing but a coping mechanism formulated by her fractured psyche, something Kaleb was smart enough to use to his advantage. No one became a Councilor at age twenty-seven without having a piercing level of intelligence. He'd use her susceptibility to his body as ruthlessly as he'd use any other advantage, the physical contact he permitted apt to be a calculated ploy.

"Whatever I tell you," he said, rubbing his thumb over her lower lip before releasing her, "you'll disbelieve. You don't trust me." With that blunt comment, he headed for the door. "I have to finalize some doc.u.ments, but we can go for a walk later if you feel rested from this morning."

Startled by the abrupt change in the situation, she nodded, her eyes lingering on the muscled sweep of his back as he left without further words. "This," she whispered desperately to herself, "is a predictable psychological response to the fact he holds me in his power." Her mind, however, flatly rejected that hypothesis. As proof, it offered memories from the start of her original captivity, when she'd still been in a small suite of rooms rather than a cell.

She'd had one main guard those first months. He'd never harmed her in any way, made sure she had extra blankets, reading material, educational games to ensure her mind didn't stagnate-though it had been dulled by the drugs they put in her food. Tall and blond, with aquiline features and sharp green eyes, he'd been cla.s.sically handsome and, at nineteen, only three years her senior.

He'd no doubt been chosen because of his projected appeal to a scared teenage girl with suspect conditioning, but never, not once, had she forgotten that he was her jailer, his aim to keep her content in her pretty cage. She certainly hadn't craved his touch, had in fact actively avoided even accidental contact. In helping to steal her freedom, he'd negated every other act of apparent kindness.

None of that seemed to matter with Kaleb.

Her body ached, her senses drinking in the lingering freshness of his aftershave until it was all she could scent, until the need to go to Kaleb, this stranger wrapped in darkness and painted bloodred, was a stranglehold around her throat. All she wanted to do was strip herself to the skin and wrap herself around him so close that nothing could ever separate them again.

Mad, she thought, face flushing, I'm truly going mad.

Shivers after the heat, a rush of tears burning the backs of her eyes, a staccato heartbeat that was in her mouth, in her ears, a roaring rush. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The world began to crumble at the edges under the rage of sound, the walls liquefying into pools of gleaming white, the floor a dazzling kaleidoscope.

Stumbling out of the chair, her balance lost in the trembling mirage that was the world, she banged into the counter in her attempt to get to the door, to escape the insanity eating away at her senses. "I need to breathe." Her throat was strangling, the air too thick to draw into her lungs.

The door shifted just as she reached it, breaking into pieces splattered with sticky red. And suddenly, her mind was filled with the scent of iron, hot and rich, a thin feminine scream echoing in her ears as a man with cardinal eyes sliced a blade into her flesh, the blood welling over the sides of the wound to run down her bruised and torn skin in a river of warmth that made him laugh.

And laugh.

Chapter 12.

STOP! YOU'RE HURTING me! Stop!

The scared, pain-drenched words crashed into Kaleb's mind in what had to be an unconscious telepathic cry. Cutting off his audio-only discussion with brutal abruptness, his mental state too unsteady for a teleport, he ran into the kitchen to see Sahara clawing at the door, her hair hanging around her down-bent face and her fingers b.l.o.o.d.y, her fingernails broken and torn.

No!

"Sahara." Gripping her shoulders, he turned her around to face him, the contact initiating the same dangerous response it had earlier; his Tk shoved at his skin, wanting to punch out, to break and shatter and savage. As he had then, he choked it into vicious submission. "Look at me."

She flinched at the cold command, her eyes wild, skittering. Those of a trapped creature. His breathing accelerated, his blood boiling under his skin as his mind clouded in a way that could be lethal. Shifting his grip to her right wrist, he pulled her now-rigid form to the alarm panel beside the door.

While she stood mute and barely breathing beside him, he input the voice code, then lifted her hand to place her palm on the scanner. "Sahara Kyriakus, full and unrestricted authorization."

A query popped up on the small screen below the palm plate. Authorization to include Krychek properties outside current location?

"Yes." Never again would she be locked in a cage.

The computronics hummed, a green glow lighting up the panel as Sahara's palm was scanned. Authorization successful, scrolled the message a second later.

Dropping her hand, he pushed open the door. She remained where he'd left her, that panicked, trapped expression slowly replaced by one he recognized as fear. Scanning the area for a threat, he saw only empty fields that sprawled to a dramatic blue horizon. He kept them that way to ensure his enemies had no place to hide, should they manage to skirt the perimeter security, but to her it likely seemed an endless blue-green sea.

Not leaving her side but staying silent to give her time to become used to the vista free of walls and fences, he wet a towel using his Tk and used it to wipe off the blood from her hands to reveal she hadn't done as much damage as he'd first believed. Still, he coated the torn and bruised sections with a salve before shifting into her line of sight until she could no longer avoid his presence.

"I saw things," she whispered, the dark, dark blue of her eyes drowning in confusion, "and now I can't remember." Haunting vulnerability, her skin translucent in the light. "Am I going mad, Kaleb?"

He could guess the memories she'd glimpsed, and from her response, it was clear her mind was in no way ready to handle the ugly truth. Thrusting his hands into her hair to hold her head, the contact arcing through his nerves, he said, "No," his tone coolly matter-of-fact because she needed him to be sane at this instant. "According to Psy-Med reports, flashbacks and blackouts are common occurrences in patients suffering from PTSD." For some it never ended, the scars too deep, but he had no intention of sharing that fact with Sahara.

Taking a shuddering breath, another, she shifted her gaze to the wide-open doorway. "No locks?"

"None." He'd made a near-fatal error in not disengaging them the instant she came to full consciousness. "You're an intelligent woman. You know you put yourself at risk if you leave the secured perimeter. However, that perimeter extends a mile in every direction." He'd bought out all remaining properties within that circ.u.mference six months ago, soon after discovering Sahara was alive. "You're safe inside that zone."

Throat moving as she swallowed, Sahara reached out to fist her hand in the fine cotton of the shirt he'd put on after leaving the kitchen. "Who are you?"

"A caretaker," he said, and it was a truth, if not everything.

Frown lines on her brow, her fingers flexing and clenching against his chest in a way that challenged his already unsteady control. "Of this house?"

"Yes." It was an anchor, a physical symbol of his search, of her.

"Who owns it?"

"You do." He'd had it built according to specifications she'd outlined at fifteen, watched over it all the years of her captivity, using lethal force to repel anyone who meant it harm. "Welcome home."

PSYNET BEACON: BREAKING NEWS.

*Copenhagen situation contained. One hundred and five confirmed dead, with number expected to rise once site is cleared for excavation by forensic teams.

Councilor Kaleb Krychek, and a team of unnamed operatives rumored to be from the Arrow Squad, responsible for ninety-five percent of rescues. None accessible for comment.

This feed will continue to be updated as further news becomes available.*

PSYNET BEACON: CURRENT EDITION.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

Your recent op-ed piece about the rumored disintegration of the Council sinks this highly regarded news bulletin to the level of a human tabloid.

Such sensationalism can only lead to confusion and destabilization at a time when it is integral we remain calm and rational.

Be a.s.sured I will be taking my complaint to the News Media Oversight Committee.

R. Vrruti (Turin) Bravo to the Beacon for finally stating what many in the populace suspect to be true. If the PsyNet is to survive in the absence of the Council, a new ruling order must be anointed.

Pure Psy are clearly setting themselves up as a choice, but their mindless attacks against the anchors aside, their recent loss to the cobbled-up forces in the California region does not bathe their martial abilities in a competent light. And it is clear that in the current climate, our new leadership must be willing and capable of using force to ensure the peace and Silence so necessary to our survival.

Name withheld by request (Sioux Falls) If the Council is in fact no longer in existence, then war among the former Councilors is not a possibility, as per the op-ed, but an inevitability.

As they are some of the most powerful Psy in the world, it is certain that each will seek to gain control of a piece of the Net. Civilians would do well to stay out of their way-collateral damage is apt to be in the hundreds of thousands.

K. Ichikawa (f.u.kuoka)

Chapter 13.

WELCOME HOME.

"How can this be my house?" Sahara whispered, hotly conscious of the muscled planes of Kaleb's chest beneath her palm. "I was sixteen at the time of my kidnapping." Telling herself not to give in to the craving that lived in every cell of her body, a craving that had just led her into a terrifying fall into blackness, she took a deep breath . . . but didn't let go. Instead, she spread her palm over the cotton of his shirt and, tipping back her head, looked into the pitch-black of his gaze.

"It was a gift," was the frank yet unfathomable answer. "For your nineteenth birthday."

Sahara had no need to ask him who had given her such a lovely home as a gift, a home that seemed to have been plucked out of her very thoughts. Her heart a hugeness in her chest, she said, "Tell me," aware of a vast gulf beneath her feet, a storm of knowledge that pushed at her mind but couldn't penetrate. "Tell me you aren't evil." Please.

Kaleb's thumbs moved against her temples. "I'm sorry."

Shaking her head in a mute refusal to accept what he was trying to tell her, she lifted trembling fingers to his jaw. "What have you done?"

"Too much that can never be undone."

Crying in earnest now for a man she didn't know, and yet who was in the most secret part of her heart, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, just held on, all the while knowing that he might already have slipped out of her grasp.

His arms came around her, locked tight, his breath harsh against her ear. "I'm sorry," he said again, voice rough as sandpaper and body rigid, as if he'd clenched every muscle he possessed.

"It's okay," she said through her sobs. "It's okay." Cupping his nape, she murmured the words over and over, having no conscious knowledge of why she did so-but aware in her bones that while he might be the dangerous one in the room, right this instant, she was the strong one. "It's okay, Kaleb. I'm here."

And I won't let it be too late.

The silent vow a glowing brand on her heart, she was staring at the window over the breakfast nook when it fractured diagonally down the middle with a loud crack. The unexpected sound nudged loose another memory, one that had her struggling out of his hold. "I'm hurting you!"

Silence, she remembered too late, was built on a system of punishment for incorrect behavior, and while her conditioning might have been shattered out of existence, Kaleb lived within it. For him to touch her, hold her, was to lay himself open to an excruciating backlash of pain that had him wiping away a drop of blood from his nose, the color scarlet on the sleeve of his shirt.

"No, it's-" Whatever it was he might've said was lost as there was a flicker at the corner of her eye that wrenched his attention sideways.

KALEB didn't recognize the thickly muscled man who'd teleported into the room.

Flinging the intruder to the wall, he pinned the other man there with a telekinetic grip on his throat, sweeping out his shields at the same time to choke off the male's mind so he couldn't send any telepathic messages. The ability to stifle communication on that level wasn't one possessed by most telepaths; Kaleb had learned it from a monster. "Identify yourself."

The man's mud-colored eyes went to Sahara, blood beginning to bubble out of his mouth as he clawed at the invisible hand that had cut off his airway. When Kaleb turned his attention to Sahara, he glimpsed a sickening fear that had her taking a trembling step backward, her hands in bloodless fists at her sides. "This man hurt you?"

A swallow, a jerky nod, one hand rubbing absently over the upper part of her other arm. And he knew that arm had been broken. Slamming the intruder's head against the wall once more, he walked over to finish the execution by manually gripping the male by the neck and beginning to squeeze the life out of him. Eyes awash with panic begged for him to stop, never realizing that some things were unforgivable.

Sahara came to sudden life behind him. "Kaleb, stop."

The man hanging on the wall in front of Kaleb was now unconscious, most of his bones shattered from the way Kaleb had thrown him against the wall, blood pouring out of his ears, his nose, his mouth.

"Kaleb!" Sahara cried, hearing another bone snap in the body of the man who had once tortured her until she'd gone so deep into the labyrinth, she'd felt no pain, no touch, nothing, the numbness absolute.

The look on Kaleb's face when he turned chilled her blood. He was in a place of such darkness, it had not even a hint of light. "No," she whispered. "No." Haunted by the depth of his fury, and terrified at the price he'd pay, she dared put her hand on his forearm.

"Go." A cold, hard command. "Get out of this room."

"Not until you come with me." She would not abandon him, absolving herself of all responsibility.

The darkness glided through his eyes, a living ent.i.ty. "Such soft bones you have, Sahara, so easy to break."

It was meant to scare her. It did. Oh, it did. "Tell me why. Why kill this man? What reason could be good enough for this torture?" she whispered as he allowed the intruder to rise to consciousness before tightening his hold again.

He raised a hand, and she barely stopped herself from flinching, deadly certain the action would push him over the fine edge on which he currently stood. But he didn't hurt her, his finger breathtakingly gentle as he traced the curve of her cheekbone. "This was broken once."

A flickering montage of snapshots, the hazy years when she'd been pumped full of drugs and put in environs designed to shatter her spirit: -blackness, a room without light or air -being treated with a false solicitousness -the sound of bone breaking, and pain, such terrible pain when she didn't retreat into the heart of the labyrinth fast enough -lights even brighter than the white room from where Kaleb had taken her -cruel cold on her naked body "I . . . I think I remember." No matter the ugliness of the memories, she couldn't move away, couldn't break this painful, intense connection that tied her to the deadly Tk with eyes of obsidian.

Kaleb traced her cheekbone again. "He used a baton on you." A whisper so soft, it was a creation of purest rage. "He shattered your cheekbone, left you unconscious. The memory is at the forefront of his mind. I only had to punch through the first level of his shields to get to it. A pity his mind is now destroyed, his other memories shredded."

Nausea roiled in her stomach, flooded her mouth at the detached remoteness of that last sentence. "No," she said, the echoes of the past dulled by the pharmaceuticals they'd dosed her with at the time, but the now terrible. "No, Kaleb. He was no one, just a guard. There were-" She caught herself before she made a horrible error.

The cardinal with one hand crushing another man's airway kept tracing her cheekbone with his free hand. "Others. There were others. They'll all die, one by one." Then he turned, taking one look at the limp man in his grasp, and it ended.

The guard's neck snapped, his body falling to the floor, a discarded bit of trash.

Sahara fought the urge to throw up, to back away. "Why?" she asked again, a shivering cold in her chest. "Why take vengeance for me?"

His hand dropped off her cheek, his eyes continuing to roil with a sinuous darkness that spoke of hidden places of madness and death. "He wanted to steal you." And you belong to me.

A sharp pain in her chest at the dangerously possessive telepathic coda, the cold escalating to turn her blood to ice . . . because even faced with the b.l.o.o.d.y, broken reality of who he was, she wanted only to lay her face against Kaleb's chest, wrap her arms around him, and forget the world. Never had she felt as safe, as real, as when she'd held on to him, the peace in her a contradictory tempest of emotion. It was as if he were her own personal madness.

Swallowing to wet a throat as dry as bone, she tried to focus on something practical, something that didn't make her question her sanity. "How did he even find me?"

"His Tk was like mine; he could lock on to people as well as places." Kaleb's tone made it clear he'd taken that information from the guard's bruised and bleeding mind before that mind crumpled under the pressure of the brute-force intrusion. "However, he was much weaker on the Gradient, with a severely limited teleport range. It means he had help tracking you to this immediate area."

Teleporting in a scanner, he began to run it over her body before she'd connected the dots. The slim black device made a high-pitched beeping sound when he pa.s.sed it over her lower back. "I need to push up your shirt."