Hostage to Pleasure

“They’re at our disposal, but things are a little hot for him right now—he doesn’t want to tip his hand if we’re willing to cover.”

Dorian nodded. “Council needs at least one sane member.”

“Yeah.” A grim look. “Our job is to keep Ashaya alive. Nothing else. Anthony might be family through Faith, but I won’t put my pack in the middle of an internal Psy war.”

Dorian raised an eyebrow. “That’s a load of shit. We’ve been involved from day one.”

Lucas looked at the woman sitting in the car. “You’re right. But this particular storm is all about them. We facilitate the transmissions—”

“That’s not involvement?”

“It’s the scoop of the century.” He shrugged. “It’s business.”

Dorian saw his point. “The fact that we get to irritate them is a nice bonus, but not one that’ll put us on their shit list.” Psy understood business.

“This time, they’re looking at their own.”

“She’s not theirs anymore.” The denial came out without thought, from the heart of the cat he was.

Lucas glanced at him. “Are you sure? From what I’ve seen, she’s got the balls to pull off a double cross.”

CHAPTER 18

Deep in the heart of the sunken city of Venice, six men and five women sat around a long, oval table. They were silent, their attention on a holographic recording playing in the center of the table. Patched together from a number of different sources, the recording was neither smooth nor continuous, but it provided the information they needed.

When it ended in a rush of white noise, the man at the head of the table switched it off, his cuff links glinting rose-gold in the artificial light. “I don’t think I need to explain our interest in Ms. Aleine.”

“She made a point of saying she destroyed the data.”

“She’s a scientist. They never destroy their work.”

Silence as they considered their options.

“We don’t need her, simply the data itself,” one of the women said. “The Psy might consider themselves the best at research and development, but we have people fully capable of utilizing the information.”

“Exactly my thoughts,” the man at the head of the table said. “Then I assume there’s no opposition to my motion—to send out a team to question Ms. Aleine?”

“She’s being protected.” A new female voice, liquid soft vowels and drawn-out syllables. “No one knows by whom, but they’ve hidden her.”

“The broadcast originated from a CTX transmitter in San Francisco.” The man with the cuff links leaned back, his gaze on the water that lapped at the edges of the mostly undersea habitat. “Could be DarkRiver and SnowDancer gave her a platform because they like to get in the Council’s face, or could be they’re the ones protecting her. But if she’s still in the city, we’ll know within a few hours.”

“What about her abilities? She may have aggressive ones.”

“We’ve got that covered,” the man next to her said. “It’s time the Psy learned they aren’t as all-powerful as they think.”

CHAPTER 19

When the psychologist suggested I keep a journal of my nightmares in order to better find a way to negate their effect, he inadvertently gave me a priceless gift. As far as anyone knows, that journal was closed the day I was pronounced stable. The truth, of course, is that I never recovered from the trauma and the journal was never closed.

– From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine

Ashaya lay in the dark, exhausted but unable to sleep.

Ekaterina was dead.

So were the others. All because they’d thrown their loyalty behind Ashaya. She wanted to believe that some had escaped, but she knew Ming LeBon. He would’ve struck hard and without warning. The entire lab had always been rigged to blow from the inside—a supposed precaution against the spread of a lethal bioagent.

Now Ming had utilized that “safety feature” and unless he’d pulled Ekaterina out because he had some use for her, she was dead. Even if he had done that, the woman Ashaya had known was as good as dead. Ming would’ve used his abilities to turn her into a mindless automaton. Ashaya didn’t want to think of Ekaterina being violated that way. Better that she’d died in a single instant.

Like the others. So many others.

Ashaya wanted to turn away from the brutal reality of all those deaths, but she had no right. Because no matter what Dorian had said, this was on her. If she hadn’t provoked the Council with that broadcast, Ekaterina would still be alive. What she couldn’t understand was why Ming had done it, killed so indiscriminately. He knew Ashaya only as the most perfect of Psy, without an emotional flaw that would lead her to mourn her lost colleagues. Had he done it for no reason other than to send her a message? Was he that coldly practical?

Yes, she thought, remembering what he’d said to her once.

You are necessary. I would never simply kill you.

No, he’d torture her, break her, first. Even if that meant he had to kill everyone who might have stood with her.

No survivors.

Wrong, she thought fiercely. There were survivors—scientists on the outside who had sided with her over the implant issue. They were the ones who’d made sure her note about Keenan reached Talin McKade—she hadn’t trusted Zie Zen not to stop her. As far as Ashaya was aware, she and Zie Zen alone knew the identities of those courageous men and women. Zie Zen would never be suspected of rebel activities. Which left Ashaya. She couldn’t let Ming recapture her. Because if he tore open her mind, more people would die.

More blood would stain her hands.

Oh, Ashaya, you’ve been very, very bad.

You’re going to be a mother to your son.

Ashaya curled into a fetal ball, telling herself she was merely thinking things over so she could plan her next step. But the lie was too big to swallow. The past was catching up with her, cracking the brittle wall of false Silence around her mind.

I thought you had a heart of fucking ice the first time I met you, but I never took you for a coward.

Dorian was right. She was a coward. Staying away from her son when all it would take to keep him safe from the worst monster of all was a single bullet. Keenan would never have to know the chilling truth once Amara was gone. All she had to do was look into eyes identical to her own, into a face she’d promised to protect, into a mind linked to hers since before birth, and pull the trigger.

Her stomach revolted.

Resisting the urge to throw up, she began to chart the cool certainty of DNA patterns inside her mind, giving herself a firm mental command for sleep. It didn’t come. At least not then. She lay awake, perhaps for minutes, perhaps for hours, and when exhaustion did finally suck her under, it was only to return her to the one moment she most wanted to forget… but that she relived every night with clockwork precision.

She was in a hole, hard-packed soil all around her.

A grave, her mind whispered.