Visions of Heat

'I shouldn't be seeing them in the first place.'

'Why?'

CHAPTER 8

Faith opened her mouth to reply and realized she had no real answer. She'd been taught that because of the Protocol, the visions would always focus on the narrow subject of commerce. But she'd also been taught that predatory changelings were uniformly violent creatures to be avoided at all costs. And she'd been taught that Sascha Duncan was a failed Psy, when the other cardinal's power was a vibrant blaze.

'Faith.' Sascha's voice was gentle, her eyes even more so. 'Maybe this was what you were always meant to see.'

She'd made the logical connections, but found herself hesitating to draw a conclusion. 'Why would they lie to me about that?'

'Because there's no money in stopping murder.' Lucas's harsh voice cut into the silence.

'No.' She brought the swaying motion to an abrupt halt. 'No one could condition that out of me.'

'They didn't. You're seeing,' Vaughn reminded her.

'I'm twenty-four years old. Why would the dark visions come now?'

'Maybe that's the point at which conditioning starts to break down in certain Psy,' Sascha murmured. 'I'm only two years older.'

Faith stared at the other cardinal. 'What did they condition out of you?'

'Everything.' Sascha leaned into her mate's stroking hand. 'They crippled me, told me I wasn't a cardinal. It almost drove me mad.'

Madness. The demon that stalked Faith's every waking hour, whispered in her ear, and awaited her at the end of her life. 'Is that what you think will happen to me?'

'If you don't embrace your gift, yes.'

'It's not a gift. It's a curse.' She didn't want to see horror and pain, terror and malevolence, didn't want to feel. 'It might drive me mad by itself.'

'You really think you're that weak, Red?' Vaughn's voice was a husky purr against her ear. 'You climbed that fence and walked into changeling territory without pause. We have teeth and claws and you took us on. Compared to that, visions should be easy.'

Faith turned and met those amazing wild eyes. 'The only thing you could've done was kill me. The visions might leave me one of the walking dead.'

'Why are you so scared of them?' Sascha asked.

'I don't feel fear.' Faith jerked to her feet. 'My PsyClan has always ensured I was taken care of. Why would they want to handicap me in any sense?' She knew, she could reason it out, but she wanted someone else to be the one to vocalize it.

Vaughn shifted and she caught the movement with the corner of her eye. 'You know the answer to that.'

She should've guessed he'd never let her take the easy way out. 'Money.' Her PsyClan had sold her out for money. 'Why am I the first to ... break?'

'Maybe you're not.' Sascha stood to face her. 'Maybe you're simply the first one who hasn't been found out and silenced.'

Faith saw the truth Sascha was too kind to point out. 'You mean rehabilitated, don't you?'

'Or perhaps worse, given your value. Any strange disappearances in your family tree?'

'My grandmother was last seen shortly after she gave birth to my father. And five years ago, one of my cousins vanished—Sahara was only sixteen.' She let herself think about what that might mean. 'You think the Council or the PsyClan might be keeping them captive, working them when they're lucid and letting the dark visions ravage them when they're not?'

'I don't know, Faith. I'm not an F-Psy.'

Faith felt Vaughn walk to stand behind her. Somehow that gave her the strength she needed. 'I am. And I know that even in the madness, there are moments of clarity. My paternal aunt is held in a care facility—she went conventionally insane during her sixth decade—but she continues to make million-dollar predictions four or five times a year. More than enough to pay for her care.' To make her comfortable in her madness.

The last time Faith had seen her aunt, it had been via a communication screen—Carina NightStar could no longer bear any kind of immediate sentient contact. What she'd seen would haunt Faith till the day she died. The icy Gradient 7.5 Psy who'd been one of her trainers, a woman with a record of almost eighty-five percent accuracy, had turned into a creature that no longer looked human. She'd chewed off her own lips and bitten and scratched herself so many times that they'd had to remove most of her fingernails and teeth. Her clothing had been torn, her hair matted. Something strange and wrong had skittered behind her eyes.

'But unlike my aunt, the ones who saw the dark visions could never be allowed to speak to the rest of us. It would bring the success of the entire Protocol into question. They'd have to be locked away, caged before they fell victim to the mental degradation.' Faith began to see the true inhumanity of what it was these changelings were asking her to accept.

'Caged Psy can still forecast. In fact, they'd be the perfect tools—machines no one knew existed, their treatment subject to no laws. And if certain other segments of conditioning were deliberately broken, it would leave them open to everything ... including visions of plots or rebellions that might come in very useful to those in power.'

'Faith,' Sascha began.

'I'm sorry.' She raised a hand. 'I need time to process everything I've learned so far.'

'You might not have a lot of time left.' Sascha's tone was anything but harsh.

'Will you see me again? I think I can get away in five days or so.'

'Of course.'

Faith wondered if in those five days she might make some sense out of the pack of lies upon which she'd apparently been raised. What was true and what was false? The changelings might be right in some matters, but who said they were right in everything? Their loyalties were different, their lives controlled by emotion.

Maybe they were wrong. Maybe her own people didn't only see her as a money-making asset. Maybe.

Vaughn escorted Faith to the edge of the trees. 'Will you be okay climbing the fence?'

'Yes.' She settled her bag carefully on her back. 'You'll be here in five days?' Her eyes were looking anywhere but at him.

'I keep my promises, Red.' He curved his hand around her nape. 'I may even pay you an earlier visit. Wouldn't want to undo all the good we've done.'

'Good?'

He rubbed his thumb over her skin. 'I like the way you feel under my touch.'

'Don't come, Vaughn. If they catch you, they'll hurt you.'

His beast heard something it liked in her tone. 'I never get caught, baby. If I can infiltrate the SnowDancer den without tipping them off, then this is child's play.'

'There are Psy guards, able to scan the area for signs of sentient life.'

'These forests are changeling territory—they have to know we're going to keep an eye on them. Don't worry about me. I'm a big boy.' But he was delighted by her concern, for that was definitely what he'd sniffed in the air.

'I simply don't want to mess up my next meeting with Sascha. If you're caught, they'll put me under tougher surveillance.' Her skin was soft, but her spine as straight as a rod.

He brushed his lips over her cheek. She gasped and moved away. 'Go, Red. The guards are at the optimal distance.'