Hostage to Pleasure

Something pricked her elbow. She looked down but there was nothing there. The medical personnel around her were starting to ask her questions at sharp volume, attempting telepathic contact that she deflected with manufactured confusion. Her mind was functioning fine, though her breath was starting to catch, her eyes to close. Even then she knew that this might all be for nothing-for her plan to work, they had to move her.

The PsyNet was a psychic construct, but it had a physical component-a Psy in Europe didn’t occupy the same section of the Net as a Psy in the Philippines. If she was far enough away from her last known location when she woke, the link would be made in an area not under blackout by Ming’s troops. However, the instant she came to full consciousness, her mind would try to resettle her back where she “belonged.” But not if things went according to plan… except what…

Her brain was fuzzy, unable to deal with complex psychic concepts. She became aware she could no longer feel her body, no longer feel the air going into her lungs. Perhaps she might have broken Silence and panicked at that instant, but it was too late.

Ashaya died.

Deep in the Canadian Rockies, Amara dropped a glass vial. It shattered into a thousand vicious points, but she heard nothing, her head echoing with absolute and utter emptiness as Ashaya blinked out of existence. No!

Glass cut into her palms, her side, and she realized she’d slumped to the floor. Her blood, she thought, was very red.

Dorian lay Keenan down in a bed located inside the home of DarkRiver’s healer, Tamsyn. The original plan had called for the boy to be taken up to the SnowDancer den, located deep in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But with him in the Web of Stars, Judd had suggested he should be closer to DarkRiver.

Which was how Dorian found himself at Tammy’s. Situated roughly an hour out of San Francisco, the house was isolated down the end of a long drive and backed onto a heavily wooded area, but it was still nowhere near as safe as the SnowDancer den. “There’s more chance of him being seen here.” His cat didn’t like the boy being so exposed.

Tammy tucked a soft blanket around their charge, hands gentle. “Talin wanted to take him since her and Clay’s place is harder to find, but Sascha said no.”

“Sascha said that?” The Psy renegade who had mated with DarkRiver’s alpha, Lucas, adored children.

“We don’t know what the boy can do,” Tammy reminded him, “and Talin’s got Jon and Noor living with her. Jon would probably be okay, but we’re not sure how well Noor can safeguard herself. Keenan could influence her telepathically without even meaning to.”

Dorian nodded, his leopard retreating. Keenan was now his to protect, but so was little Noor. “Right.” Changelings had rock-solid mental shields; but Noor wasn’t changeling, and though she carried some Psy DNA, most of her was vulnerably human. “What about your boys?”

“I’m sending them to stay with their grandparents for a bit.” She brushed Keenan’s hair off his forehead. “Poor baby’s so small-how could anyone have hurt him?” Her tone was on the dangerous side of feral.

He walked over to take her into his arms. “Shh, we’ve got him now.”

“I’ll gut anyone who tries to bruise this boy again.” She tucked her head under his chin, letting him soothe her. “I don’t know who Ashaya Aleine is, but she did something good in getting him out.”

Dorian’s heart kicked.

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

“Is Sascha on her way?” he asked, ignoring the flicker of memory. It was far harder to erase the image burned into his brain-of an icy stranger silhouetted against the night sky.

“She should be arr-” They both heard it at the same time. The sound of a car coming down the drive. “That’ll be her.”

“Hope she can help the kid cope.” It wasn’t a vain wish. While Tammy was a healer attuned to changeling leopards, Sascha was an E-Psy, an empath, born with the ability to sense and heal emotional wounds.

Tammy drew back, kissing him on the cheek in thanks. “Sascha said he’s connected to you. How?”

Dorian had been thinking about that. He raised his hand and showed Tammy the cut on his palm-it was already close to healed. “Blood oaths are powerful things and I promised him he’d be okay. Maybe because of that, when my blood mixed with his, it gave him a choice as to where he wanted to go.” And he’d chosen to trust Dorian. It was a trust both leopard and man intended to honor.

Sascha came in at that instant, tall and with worry in her cardinal eyes-white stars on black velvet. “That’s as good a guess as any,” she said, walking over to stroke her hand gently over Keenan’s brow. “He’s in the Web, but only through you. You’re his lifeline.”