CHAPTER 5 #2
She walked to stand in the circle of his arms. “It’s like she’s encased in a shell, more so than other Psy.
Everything’s so tightly contained, it isolates her in a way I can barely imagine.
” His heartbeat was a steady rhythm under her hand, but what brought her a feeling of such safety could well kill Faith.
“This woman has had literally no contact with any race other than her own, and you heard the extent of even that limited contact. We’re overloading her senses and the only way she has to cope is by shutting down.”
“The seizures—do you think they’re a real possibility?”
Sascha took a moment to think. “I don’t know for sure. The F-Psy rarely fed data into the PsyNet when I was connected, because in most cases, what they learn has been paid for by someone. But my instincts say she thinks they’re real, that she’s been taught they’re real.”
“So she could subconsciously bring one on?”
“Yes.” Sascha had once believed she was a cardinal without power—she knew exactly what it was like to live a lie for so long that it became the truth. “Faith has no concept of a life outside of the world in which she was raised. That she’s here at all is a testament to the strength inside of her.”
“Good. The weak don’t survive.”
Vaughn felt the woman in his arms stir. Her eyes blinked open almost immediately. “Breathe deep,” he instructed the instant she started to freeze up. “If you pass out, we’ll have to go through this again.”
“Please let me go.”
There was no vulnerability in her tone, nothing that gave away her emotional temperature. Then again, she was Psy—she had no feelings. Frowning at the jaguar’s demand to continue holding her, he allowed her to sit up on his lap. When she pushed at his arm, he dropped it so she could stand.
She rubbed her hands over her pants. “Where’s Sascha?”
“I’m here.” Coming out of the kitchen, Sascha handed Faith a glass of water. “Drink.”
Faith did so without argument, then put the glass on the table in front of the sofa.
Vaughn watched and waited as she looked around for a place to sit.
Lucas had already claimed the armchair and now pulled Sascha to sit across his thighs.
Faith was left with the option of sitting beside him or in an armchair on the far side of the room.
She took the sensible alternative, but tried to put as much distance between them as she could.
“How’re you feeling?” Sascha asked.
“Fine. But please tell your pack members not to touch me. I have no capacity to process the stimulation.”
Vaughn ran a finger down her cheek. She whipped around to pin him with a look. “I said don’t touch me.”
“When we first met, you’d have threatened to go to pieces with that one touch.” He raised an eyebrow. “Now you can deal.”
She looked at him. “You’re saying you’re desensitizing me.”
“No, Red. I’m sensitizing you.”
Faith looked into those cat eyes and wondered at the intent in them. “I don’t understand you.”
A curve to his mouth, Vaughn leaned back and slung his arm around the back of the sofa.
She realized that if she rested her head against the seat, his fingers would brush her hair.
It should’ve made no difference to her, but she found herself leaning forward as she began to speak. “I need to learn to stop the visions.”
“Why do you think we can help you?” Sascha asked.
Faith tried to think past her awareness of the changeling beside her.
He might’ve decided to act civilized, but that could change at any moment—she had to complete her self-appointed task before he went cat on her.
“I don’t. All I know is what I said before—that you won’t turn me in to the Council. ”
“How long have you been having the visions?”
“About three months. They’ve been coming on little by little.
At first it felt like . . . a heavy weight pressing down on me.
” It had crushed her until she’d taken to sleeping in her bed and not the monitored chair.
“I began waking up with night sweats, my heartbeat racing so fast I should’ve called the M-Psy, but I didn’t.
” Fingers whispered along her hair and she realized she’d somehow leaned backward without being aware of it.
“Sounds like fear to me,” Vaughn said.
“I’m Psy. I don’t feel fear.” Pulling away, she angled her head to face him.
His focus on her was so intense, she felt stripped bare. “Then what would you call it?”
“A physiological reaction to unknown stress factors.”
The slightest hint of a smile played about his lips. “So, what other physiological reactions did you experience?”
She thought he might be laughing at her but had no way of judging the veracity of that conclusion.
He was completely unlike any other creature she’d ever come into contact with.
“The night sweats deteriorated into what are termed night terrors. I would wake on the verge of screaming, convinced the dark visions had followed me into my waking life.”
When she felt Vaughn’s fingertips threading through her hair once again, she didn’t shift and break the contact. He might be dangerous, but right this second, he seemed to be on her side. And she thought he might be dangerous enough to hold off the visions, unreasonable as that was.
“I don’t know what you see normally. Were these different in more than content?” Sascha rested her head on her mate’s shoulder, lines of concentration creasing her forehead.
Faith nodded. “Usually, my visions are very focused. Even if they don’t start out that way, I can fine-tune them.
But these . . . I couldn’t do anything. I would compare it to being in a vehicle with someone else at the wheel.
” That had been the most disturbing part.
“They were out of my control, but not chaotic.”
Vaughn’s hand slid under her hair to cover her nape. She jerked, but didn’t move away. He was right—she might not be able to beat back the visions, but she could strengthen her capacity to withstand physical stimulation. “But no more,” she said very, very quietly, meeting his gaze.
She was practical enough to realize that she was far from being able to handle everything.
For all she knew, her current immunity to the heavy heat of Vaughn’s hand was being fueled by adrenaline.
When the inevitable crash came, she could seize worse than she might’ve done if she hadn’t pushed herself.
“We’ll see,” he said as softly, and there was a look in his eyes that she couldn’t decipher.
Perhaps it was challenge, something she’d read about in the endless books she’d devoured in the aloneness of her cottage.
Her reading speed and voracity meant she had an incredible amount of knowledge on a multitude of subjects.
But it was knowledge without context. Especially where humans and changelings were concerned.
Choosing the prudent option, she returned her attention to Sascha.
“After a few weeks, the dark visions began to get more detailed. I started to see flashes, images in pieces, parts of a jigsaw.” Another hobby that kept her sane.
Or as sane as any F-Psy ever was. “But it was still out of my control because I couldn’t put the pieces together. ”
Vaughn’s thumb rubbed against her skin and she turned her head. “Yes?”
“Why did you wait so long to come to us?”
She was caught by the demand in his voice.
That, she recognized. People often demanded things from her.
“Because until Marine was murdered, I had no way of knowing whether these visions were real. I thought my mind was disintegrating—it’s something that happens to all F-Psy, but generally not until the fifth decade or so of life.
I believed my decline was beginning early. ”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Sascha whispered.
“That’s not surprising. The PsyClans don’t want to be known as producing defective Psy and by the time we deteriorate, we’ve accumulated enough wealth to ensure discreet medical care during our decline.
” She tried not to think about what was coming, tried not to imagine herself being unable to speak in coherent sentences or tell the difference between foresight and reality.
But that didn’t mean she was ignorant of the inevitability.
It was why certain NightStar telepaths had trained in the specialist area of blocking.
When F-Psy crashed for the final time, it was the blockers who kept their madness from leaking out into the PsyNet, providing the shields the fractured F-Psy could no longer maintain.
“I think that’s a load of bullshit.” Vaughn’s hand tightened a fraction, but it felt like a full-body hug to her senses.
The only thing that kept her from an overload reaction was her concentration on his words. “To what are you referring?”
His touch gentled though she’d made no verbal complaint, that stroking thumb coming to a halt. “They had Sascha convinced she was going mad just because she didn’t fit into the mold they’d created for her. Sounds like the same thing.”
Faith looked at Sascha. “He doesn’t understand.”
“What?” Vaughn’s tone was more growl than sound.
It was Sascha who answered. “The F-Psy had one of the highest rates of mental illness even before Silence.”
Lucas’s arms came around his mate in a tight hug. Faith wondered what Lucas had heard that she hadn’t, because from the look on Sascha’s face, it seemed to have been exactly what she’d needed. “But highest doesn’t translate to all, does it, Sascha darling?”
Faith found her eyes following the movement of Lucas’s hand over Sascha’s curls.
Until Vaughn’s thumb whispered over her skin again.
She stiffened, caught off guard to find that he’d moved closer.
But she couldn’t speak, even to tell him to back off.
Perhaps she’d exhausted her ability to deal with the amount of new material she was being forced to process.
“Don’t believe everything you’ve been told, Faith.”
It was the first time he’d said her name and he made it sound interesting, as if it were more than a useful tag to call her by, made it sound . . . She didn’t know to describe it, but she knew it was something she’d never before heard.
“The Psy Council is expert at spinning lies to further their own ends.”
She stood without warning and headed for the door, her steps unsteady but determined. “I need to breathe.” Walking out into the night, she grabbed the railing around the porch and took several gulps of cold night air.
It was no surprise to feel Vaughn’s heat beside her a bare second later. He leaned his back against the railing so he could look at her. When he raised a hand, she shook her head. “Please, don’t.”
He paused. “You’re stronger than this.”
“No, I’m not. If I were strong, I would’ve faced those visions instead of running from them and my sister would still be alive.
” There, it was out, the truth she’d been hiding from since the moment her father had told her about Marine.
“If I were strong, I would’ve understood what it was that I was seeing.
” She stared into the darkness of the forest, a darkness that was a gift and not a curse.
“I’ve seen things since I was a child. Benign, useful things.
I see when the market’s going to go up or down.
I see if a new invention is going to catch on so businesses can invest money at the outset.
I see if a start-up venture has the potential to succeed.
” Her hands clenched on the wood of the railing and she felt a sense of chaos beating at the back of her mind, a threat from within her own psyche.
That was how the madness began—with the inability to control physical reactions.
“I don’t see death and blood. I don’t see murder. ”
“F-Psy used to.” Vaughn’s voice was a deep purr that rubbed against her insides in a way that was disturbingly intimate. “They used to see disasters and murders, pain and horror.”
She finally looked at him. “No wonder they went mad.”
“Only some of them.”
But these days, all F-Psy eventually faced that fate. She saw what he was trying to say, but couldn’t accept it. Too much. It was far too much. “I need time to assimilate everything.”
She expected him to push her as he’d been pushing her since the instant they’d met. But he nodded. “Go on.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Sascha’s making up a bed for you in one of the rooms.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Ask.”
“Sascha and Lucas—how?” She couldn’t fathom how a cardinal Psy could’ve survived the severance of the Net link, much less entered the changeling world.
Vaughn’s face underwent a subtle shift. “Do you see this?” He lifted his right arm and she saw the tattoo on his biceps for the first time.
Three jagged slashing lines, they were reminiscent of the markings on Lucas’s face.
“I’m a sentinel. My loyalty is to Sascha and Lucas. And you might yet be a threat.”
She wondered why that caused an odd sensation in her chest. “You really would kill me if necessary.”
“Yes.” Those cat eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. “So play nice.”
“I don’t know how to play.” She couldn’t ever remember doing such a thing. “I’ve been working since I could form any kind of understandable sentence.”