Visions of Heat

the Council to the cats, notwithstanding her lack of any definitive knowledge, then she was in a sense giving away her loyalty to the Psy race. And they were her race. They understood what she was, what she could do, and the price that she paid. She was respected, more than respected. If Shoshanna's visit was any indication, she might climb even higher, the highest of any in her PsyClan.

If she did as Vaughn wanted and successfully dropped out of the Net, what would she be? Nothing. A broken Psy without race or family. She'd done enough reading to know that her inborn talent wasn't always respected in the human-changeling world. Many scoffed at the idea of foresight. There were some who went so far as to call her entire designation a fraud.

Of course, none of that would mean anything if her abilities continued to spiral into chaos. She had to find a way to exert control over the dark visions, even if she couldn't block them. Vaughn's fingers whispered over her cheek. She was unable to stop her reflexive movement. 'Yes?'

'We're here.'

As she removed the blindfold, the lingering sensation of his touch threatened to smudge the strength of her recent decision to regain mastery over her own body and mind. She knew it was hazardous to feel anything, that emotions could drive her over the edge, but that did nothing to diminish the temptation to engage with Vaughn on all levels—physical, mental, and emotional. Because she knew that if she succeeded in leashing the dark side of her ability and returned to her normal existence, she'd live the rest of her life without a jaguar who liked to tease in the most sensual of ways, who pushed her to face her fears, and who, quite simply, made her feel alive.

Leaving the blindfold on the dash, she stepped out and closed the door. Vaughn was already on the lighted porch, speaking to Sascha. Faith couldn't see Lucas, but assumed he was nearby—the alpha had appeared extremely protective of his mate. It made her speculate whether the Council had done more than put a simple prohibition over Sascha Duncan.

'Hello, Faith.' Sascha smiled and gestured to the chair beside hers.

'Hello.' Faith took the seat, but found herself unable to look at Vaughn. He asked too much of her by his mere presence and she didn't know what answers to give him.

'I'll be close by.' Vaughn walked off around the corner, and though it was impossible, she thought she felt him change.

'Where's Lucas?' Faith asked, instead of trailing behind him and indulging her need to see him as a jaguar once more. He was beautiful in either form, a lethal blade of a man, and she itched to stroke him. But she could justify it more while he was jaguar, tell herself it wasn't the same as permitting her fingers to trail over the human male's skin. Of course, quite aside from her confusion about which path to choose, she wasn't sure she could touch either man or cat without crumbling.

'My mate had some other business to take care of.'

The unexpected declaration wrenched Faith's attention to the woman beside her. 'He let you come alone?'

Sascha flicked her plait over her shoulder. 'I'm a cardinal of considerable strength. Why does everyone think I need a keeper?'

'I didn't mean any offense.'

'None taken.' The other woman shook her head. 'You're right, DarkRiver males are extremely possessive and protective. But you can't give in to it—you have to learn to take a stand or it'll end in disaster.'

Faith found herself intrigued by the chance to learn something about Vaughn's world. 'How?'

'Like all predators, the cats are very strong, physically and emotionally. If they don't receive the same kind of, what's the right word ... feedback, from their mates, they tend to become aggressive in the worst sense of the word.' Sascha shrugged. 'They try to dominate, but a dominated mate is not what makes them happy. Cats like seeing claws.'

Was that what Vaughn had been doing to her? Pushing her to make her show her claws? 'Can you tell me the changeling definition of a mate?'

'It's more than marriage, and far, far more than anything the Psy know.' Sascha's lips curved. With her hair braided tightly off her face, she was beauty cut in perfect lines. 'It's everything I never dared to dream.'

Faith wanted to ask so much more, but their time was limited—she had to be back inside the compound before dawn. 'The darkness is continuing to hunt me.'

'Hunt? An odd word to use.'

'But correct in this circumstance. Psychically, it feels as if the darkness searches for and locks on to me.'

'It almost sounds like a forced telepathic link, not foresight.'

Faith nodded. 'Yes, but it's not. I am seeing the future, but the visions are channeled through the murderer, so in actuality, I'm in two timestreams at once. In the mind of the killer as he plans and in the future where the actual events take place.'

'Go on,' the other Psy said after a long pause.

'Once it's—he's—locked on, and maybe there is a component of telepathic interference there,' she admitted, 'I can't find a way to break away, to end the vision. He decides when to release me.'

'But?'

'Vaughn can pull me out. By touch.' Memories of his lips on hers merged with the shock she'd felt at having his claws on the tender skin of her face. 'There's something else.' She wiped her hands on her jeans. 'I think I was having fragments of the dark visions as a child, perhaps before I turned three. So young, the memories aren't reliable, but I believe it to be a strong possibility.'

'Interesting.' Sascha leaned forward, elbows on her knees. 'The Protocol may begin from birth, but I've heard it said that it doesn't really 'take' until a certain point of psychological development—which point depends on the individual child.'

'I read a similar report a year ago. They're searching for a method to counteract that flaw in the Protocol— the consensus is that it's that period that produces the adult defectives.' Even as she said the word, she realized it had been used to define the woman by her side, a Psy who was anything but defective. Another lie. Another break in the wall of her confidence in her own people.

Sascha shook her head. 'I don't think it can be fixed. Very young children are far closer to their fundamental animal nature. Nothing short of rewiring the brain itself can alter that.'

'That was one of the possible solutions raised in the Psy-Med Journal.' Even then, months before her mind had begun to go haywire, Faith had found herself intellectually repulsed by the idea. The brain was the single thing that remained sacred among the Psy. To rewire that would equal the erasure of the individual, making the PsyNet a true hive mind.

'I want to not believe you, I want to be surprised and revolted.' Sascha forced her heartbeat to lower. After years of hiding everything, the freedom to feel sometimes had her tumbling headfirst into emotion. 'But I know the Council too well to believe they'd stop at destroying children's brains in an effort to consolidate their power.'

'The procedure hasn't been implemented. It's purely theoretical.' The words were crisply factual, but Sascha could feel the other woman's horror, a horror so deep that Faith, caught in the talons of Silence, was unaware of the fury of it.

Sascha understood. In any of the odher races, even a theoretical idea like that would've been considered heinous, a fundamental breach of the trust between adult and child. 'What's stopping them?'

'They're afraid of damaging potential psychic abilities.' Faith's eyes were an impenetrable field of stars. 'I can't see how they could possibly neutralize that issue.'

Sascha wasn't so sure. 'Silence, too, was once a theoretical idea.' She'd unearthed a lot of information about her race's history in the past few months and the majority of her research had found success through the most unusual of avenues—human libraries.

Trawling through those libraries dismissed by the Psy as outdated and inefficient, she'd discovered handwritten letters and documents that told of the beginning of Silence. The real beginning. It hadn't been 1979— Enrique had been wrong, his 'tribute' of seventy-nine precise cuts on each of his victims, a mistake. And that made her delighted in a sense only her bloodthirsty new family could truly understand.

'I thought it was initiated by the Council in concert with our most noted Psy-Med researchers.' Faith's voice drew Sascha back from the grim theater of memory.

'No,' she replied. 'It was initially raised by a cultlike group named Mercury.'

No one had taken them seriously at the time. However, two decades after publishing their idea, Mercury