Part 20 (1/2)
”I told you, Sahara, I will never hurt you.”
Fingers trembling, she placed her free hand over his heart. ”Thank you for keeping your promise, for coming for me.”
His response was to tuck her hair behind her ear, the action as possessive as it was gentle, his face so darkly handsome as to steal her breath. No man should be as hard, as beautiful as her Kaleb.
”There's something else,” she said, voice husky. ”You can release me from your s.h.i.+elds-mine are now operational.”
Kaleb stilled, the primal creature that lived in the void rigid in its attempt to maintain control. ”Your Silence is broken. You'll become a target for Pure Psy the instant you reappear in the Net.” He would never permit her to be so vulnerable.
Sahara's hand spread on his heart. ”Take a look at my s.h.i.+elds.”
He did so and beheld a mind so Silent, it had not even the finest of hairline fractures. Intrigued, he examined it from every angle and could find no errors that might give her away, nothing that would make anyone take a second look, the lie told with flawless skill.
”This isn't your work.” Sahara was gifted in many things, but advanced s.h.i.+eld mechanics of this complexity was a highly specialized field that required years of practice. ”Sascha Duncan,” he said, and saw from Sahara's wide-eyed surprise that he was right.
Councilor Nikita Duncan's daughter was not only a defector and mated to the alpha of DarkRiver, she was the best s.h.i.+eld technician Kaleb had ever seen. He had acquired some of his most useful tricks by covertly monitoring her while she'd been part of the Net.
”She's enhanced her technique.” Unexpected, given that Sascha Duncan was infamously no longer in the Net-or perhaps not. This region had seen a significant rise in the number of Psy with fractured or suspect conditioning. Those individuals would need a way to hide in plain sight.
Leaning to his right, Sahara put the gun on the window ledge, and he could tell she was uncomfortable with the weapon. As long as she used it when necessary, that didn't matter.
”It's not a s.h.i.+eld but a sh.e.l.l,” she told him, her hand sliding to his waist as she straightened, ”its sole function to mask my broken Silence. My natural protective s.h.i.+elds are hidden beneath, and they're tougher than most people's. They always were.”
Yes, her natural s.h.i.+elds were formidable, a side effect of her ability-but she'd been sixteen and already compromised by severe trauma when taken captive, while Tatiana had been an adult in full control of her scalpel-sharp telepathy. An inequitable contest from the start. ”Total restoration?”
A nod that sent her hair sliding over the hand he'd curved around the side of the slender column of her neck, the strands cool and heavy. ”Yes, faster than I predicted. It helped that no one was tearing away new growth before it could take root.”
Kaleb decided he needed to increase the misery of Tatiana's punishment. Perhap he'd introduce insects into her environment. It was amazing how much terror such small creatures could cause.
”What are you thinking?” Sahara's eyes were suddenly acute, as if she'd glimpsed the darkness that lived in him.
He told her, felt her flinch. ”I managed to kill all the insects,” he said, thinking of the tiny, lightless closet in which he'd once spent three days for no reason but that Santano wanted to remind Kaleb who held the power, ”and I was only ten.”
”No.” Sahara cupped his face, her own grim with an anger he knew wasn't directed at him. ”You do not do this, you do not become that monster's legacy.”
”You are my legacy.”
”Tatiana is evil,” she continued over the chill sound of memory, ”and she'll do more evil if she's free, so I won't argue against her imprisonment, but no torture. Not of the physical kind and not of the mental. You're strong enough to tie up her mind without isolating it as you've done now.”
Kaleb thought of the seven years he'd been alone in the dark, of the horror of a sixteen-year-old girl forced to imprison her own mind to survive, and said, ”I'll consider it.” In deference to Sahara's request, he wouldn't torture Tatiana as he'd been deliberating, but seven years would have to pa.s.s before he'd review the state of her mental imprisonment.
Sahara shook her head, her expression fierce. ”Do you think I don't see you?”
”I know you do.” It was the greatest, most inexplicable gift of his life that she saw him and didn't turn away. ”This one thing,” he said, ”I won't give you. This vengeance is mine to exact.”
Sahara pressed a lingering kiss to his jaw, a single tear escaping her closed eyelids. ”What would we have become if we'd been free?”
Kaleb didn't know the answer to that whispered question, couldn't imagine an existence other than the one that had shaped him, but there was one request he could honor.
Chapter 31.
THE OBSIDIAN s.h.i.+ELDS around Sahara's mind slid away to leave her exposed to the PsyNet. She hadn't been on the psychic plane for so long that the sheer vastness of the mental network made her pulse roar, her mouth dry.
Sahara. Starless eyes connecting with her own as her lids flew open. I can reinitiate my protection if you aren't ready.
No. She took a trembling breath, her hand spreading on the tensile muscle of his chest. It's overwhelming . . . but it's also freedom.
Freedom can be intoxicating. Be careful.
You won't abandon me?
This telepathic channel will never be closed. ”Slow and easy,” he said aloud, his fingers playing with the eagle charm on her bracelet. ”You need to strengthen your wings before you can fly.”
Holding on to him, she looked into the Net again, each mind a glittering point of light in the psychic network that connected millions of Psy around the world. In the s.p.a.ces in between flowed fine silver streams-data shared by those minds-until the landscape was a sea of sparkling silver, the waves ebbing and flowing in a beauty that closed her throat.
Another strand of memory worked loose of the vault.
”Why does everyone call it a starscape?” She frowned. ”That doesn't make any sense.”
”'Path me an image of what you see,” Kaleb said, his face young, the line of his jaw not yet refined to masculine hardness.
Sahara did so, her feet hanging off the high branch of the tree at the back of the NightStar compound.
When Kaleb turned to her, his eyes held a wonder that was so rare it made her go motionless. ”I don't see what you see. I don't think anyone does.”
”Do you want to travel through it?” Kaleb asked, and the fine thread of her past wove into a present where that beautiful boy with a healing gash on his cheek had become a powerful man, his hand spread protectively on her lower back.
”Can I do so anonymously?” she asked, even as a section of her mind continued to disentangle the memories inside her, desperate to unravel the mystery of Kaleb before she asked the question no part of her wanted to ask. ”Tatiana and Enrique both probably h.o.a.rded the truth about me, but just in case.”
A set of telepathic instructions flowed into her mind, and two minutes later, she drew what was effectively a cloak around her roaming mind and stepped out into the PsyNet.
Would you like to see something interesting? Kaleb asked almost an hour later.
Drunk on the pleasure of being free on the psychic plane, Sahara had to be careful not to surf the data streams with too much abandon, lest she give herself away. Yes!
Can you see me?
Yes. His cloaked presence was a shadow she could barely make out through the psychic filter he'd instructed her to build into her own cloak. Now he took her deep, to a part of the Net devoid of stars, but no less alive for it, the silver thick and calm, as if she and Kaleb stood in a bay.
Delighted, she dipped a finger in the sea and came away with streamers of information wrapped around her psychic skin. The filaments waved as if in a breeze, each one a random piece of data. Astonished by the sight, she sent Kaleb a snapshot. I couldn't do this before!
Outside the aerie, his hand clenched on the back of her top, the fabric a fine green knit. It's been a long time since I saw the Net through your eyes.