Blaze of Memory

“Tell me the truth. Tell me what you found.”

Those fingers gouged mercilessly at her brain, shooting red fire that threatened to obliterate her very self. She couldn’t hold on, couldn’t protect them, couldn’t even protect herself—because through it all he sat, a large black spider within her mind, watching, learning, knowing. In the end, he took her secrets, her honor, her loyalty, and when he was done, the only thing she remembered was the rich copper scent of blood.

She came awake with a jagged scream stuck in her throat. “He knows.”

Brown eyes looking down into hers again. “Who knows?” The name formed on her tongue and then was lost in the miasma of her ravaged mind. “He knows,” she repeated, desperate that someone understand what she’d done. “He knows.” Her fingers gripped his.

“What does he know?” Electricity arced like an inferno beneath his skin.

“About the children,” she whispered, as her head grew heavy again, as her eyes grew dark again. “About the boy.”

Gold turned to bronze and she wanted to watch, but it was too late.

PETROKOV FAMILY ARCHIVES

Letter dated January 17, 1969

Dear Matthew,

At today’s meeting of government heads, the Council proposed a radical new approach to the problems we’ve been facing. I knew it was coming, but still, I can’t quite imagine how it will work.

The aim of this new program would be to condition all negative emotion out of the coming generation of Psy. If we could cure rage, what a boon that would be—so much of the violence could be stopped, so many lives saved. But the theorists have gone even further. They say that once we have a handle on rage, we may be able to control other damaging emotional events—things that cause the fractures that lead to mental illness.

I’m cautiously optimistic. God knows, this family has paid the price for its gifts one too many times.

With all my love,

Mom

CHAPTER 2

He knows . . . About the children. About the boy.

Having forced himself to wait till nine, Dev coded in a call to Talin with impatient hands, his shoulders tight with strain. The blonde woman had fallen straight back into unconsciousness after uttering those words, but Dev hadn’t needed anything more—his gut told him there could be only one answer.

“Dev?” Talin’s sleep-rumpled face appeared on the transparent screen of his computer, her yawn unsurprising given it was just hitting six in her part of the country. “I thought our meeting was at ten thirty Eastern.”

“Change of plans.” He considered his next words with care. Talin was pragmatic, but she was also very attached to her charges. “I need to ask Jon something.”

She made a face. “He’s not going to change his mind about entering a Shine school. But I make sure he reads everything Glen sends him, and the Psy in the pack are helping him train his abilities.”

“He’s settled in DarkRiver.” Dev had come to that conclusion after a personal visit to the leopard pack’s home base in San Francisco. “I think that’s the best place for him.”

“Then . . . ?”

“How many people knew about Jon in the Psy labs—after he was kidnapped?” The boy was—genetically speaking—over forty-five percent Psy and had been born with a unique kind of vocal ability. Jonquil Duchslaya could literally talk people into doing whatever he wanted. It was a gift many would shed blood to control.

Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of Talin’s eyes as her gaze sharpened. “Ashaya, of course. She was the head scientist.”

Ashaya Aleine was also now mated to a DarkRiver leopard, and would do nothing to put either Jon or other Forgotten kids in danger. “Who else?”

“No one alive.” Talin’s voice vibrated with the echo of purest rage. “Clay took care of Larsen, the bastard who was experimenting on the children. And you know the Council destroyed Ashaya’s lab after she defected, killing all her research assistants.”

Ice speared through his chest, cold, rigid, deadly. “How certain are you of that?”

“DarkRiver has contacts in the Net. So do the wolves,” she added, referring to DarkRiver’s closest ally, the Snow-Dancers. “There wasn’t even a hint of a survivor.”

But the Psy, Dev knew, were adept at keeping secrets. Especially Psy like Ming LeBon, the Councilor rumored to have been behind the destruction of the lab. “If I send you a photo, can you see if Jon recognizes the person in it from his kidnapping?”

“No.” An absolute answer, her expression as fierce as that of the leopards in her pack. “He’s finally starting to act like a normal kid—I don’t want to remind him of what he went through in that place.”

Dev had known Talin long enough to understand that she wouldn’t budge. “Then I need Ashaya’s number.”

“She was pretty broken up about losing her people.” A pause. “Just be careful with her.”

Dev heard what she wasn’t saying. “You afraid I’ll beat the answer out of her?”

“You’ve changed, Dev.” A quiet response. “Become harder.”

It was an accusation he’d faced many times in the past few months.

You heartless bastard! You put him in the hospital! How can you live with yourself?

Shelving the knife-edged memory, he shrugged. “Part of the job.” That was true as far as it went, but even if he stopped being the director of Shine tomorrow, his ability would ensure the spreading cold in his soul. Paradoxically, that very ice made him the best person to run Shine—he knew how the Psy thought.

“Here.”

He noted the number Talin flashed on the screen. “Can we postpone our meeting?”

A nod. “Let me know what you find out.”

Ending the call, Dev coded in Ashaya’s number. It was answered on her end by a gray-eyed child with silky straight black hair. “Hello. May I help you?”

Dev hadn’t thought anything could make him smile today, but he felt his lips curve at the solemn greeting. “Is your mom around?”

“Yes.” The boy’s eyes sparkled, suddenly more blue than gray. “She’s making me cookies for kindergarten.”

Dev couldn’t quite reconcile the idea of Psy scientist Ashaya Aleine as a mother who made her little boy cookies at six fifteen in the morning. “Shouldn’t you still be asleep?”

Before the boy could reply, a frowning female face filled the screen. “Who are you talking—” Her gaze fell on him. “Yes?”

“My name is Devraj Santos.”

Picking up her son, Ashaya hitched him over her hip. The boy immediately snuggled his head onto her shoulder, one little hand spread on the pale blue of her shirt. Intelligent eyes watched Dev with undisguised interest.

“The Shine Foundation,” Ashaya said, adjusting the collar of her son’s pajama top with the absent movements of a mother used to doing such things.