Hostage to Pleasure

“All I know is that as soon as the PsyNet was closed to him, his consciousness arrowed away from me and toward Dorian. I can’t see your network, but my guess is that he’s linked to you”-he nodded at Dorian-“and through you, to your web. I could try to cut that bond,” he continued, his reluctance open, “and force him into our familial net, but it’d only traumatize him again.”

Dorian looked down at the boy and felt the trapped leopard inside him rise in a protective crouch. “Then I guess he stays with us. Welcome to DarkRiver, Keenan Aleine.”

Miles away, in a lab located in the bowels of the earth, Ashaya Aleine staggered under the backwash of a devastating mental blow. A sudden cut and he was gone, her son, the link she’d had without knowing she had it.

Either Keenan was dead or…

She remembered the first of the two notes she’d gotten out through the lab’s garbage chute the previous week, a note that would have been transmitted to a human named Talin McKade by those who were loyal to Ashaya rather than the tyrannical ruling Council.

I’m calling in my IOU.

The best-case scenario was that Talin McKade and her friends had come through. Ashaya’s thoughts traveled back to that night two months ago when she’d put her life on the line to free a teenager and a young girl from the lethal danger of the lab-before they became the latest casualties in a series of genocidal experiments run by another scientist.

It was as she was returning to the lab that he’d found her, the unnamed sniper with a voice as cool as any Psy assassin’s.

“I have a gun pointed at your temple. I don’t miss.”

“I saved two innocent lives. You won’t kill me.”

A hint of laughter, but she couldn’t be sure. “What did you want the IOU for?”

“You’re male. Therefore you aren’t Talin McKade.”

“I’m a friend. She has others. And we pay our debts.”

“If you want to repay your debt,” she said, “kidnap my son.”

With her note, she’d set that very event in motion. Then she’d cashed in every favor owed to her and put psychic safeguards in place to protect Keenan against recapture through the PsyNet. But now Keenan was gone-she knew that beyond any shadow of a doubt. And no Psy could survive outside the Net.

Yet, another part of her reminded her, the DarkRiver leopard pack had two Psy members who had survived very well. Could it be that Talin McKade’s friends were cats? That supposition was pure guesswork on her part as she had nothing on which to base her theory or check her conclusions. She was under a psychic and electronic blackout, her Internet access cut off, her entry to the vast resources of the PsyNet policed by telepaths under Councilor Ming LeBon’s command. So she, a woman who trusted no one, would have to trust the sniper had spoken true, and Keenan was safe.

Head still ringing from the shearing off of that inexplicable bond, she sat absolutely frozen for ten long minutes, getting her body back under control. No one could be allowed to learn that she’d felt the backlash, that she knew her son was no longer in the PsyNet. She shouldn’t have known. Every individual Psy was an autonomous unit. Even in the fluid darkness of the Net, where each mind existed as a burning psychic star stripped of physical limitations, they encased themselves in multiple shields, remaining separate.

There were no blurred boundaries, no threads tying one consciousness to another. It hadn’t always been that way-according to the hidden records she’d unearthed in her student days, the PsyNet had once reflected the emotional entanglements of the people involved. Silence had severed those bonds-of affection, of blood-until isolation was all they were… or that was the accepted view. Ashaya had always known it for a lie.

Because of Amara.

And now, because of Keenan.

Keenan and Amara. Her twin flaws, the double-edged sword that hung over her every second of every day. One mistake, just one, was all it would take to bring that sword crashing down.

A door opened at her back. “Yes?” she said calmly, though her mind was overflowing with memories usually contained behind impenetrable walls.

“Councilor LeBon has called through.”

Ashaya glanced at the slender blonde who’d spoken. “Thank you.”

With a nod, Ekaterina left. They knew not to speak treasonous words within these walls. Too many eyes. Too many ears. Switching the clear screen of her computer to communications mode, she accepted the call. She no longer had the ability to call out. The lockdown of the lab had been ordered after the children’s escape, though officially, Jonquil Duchslaya and Noor Hassan were listed as deceased-by Ashaya’s hand.