Hostage to Pleasure

Then Ashaya said, “She’s my baby sister, born a minute after me. I’ve been looking after her my whole life.”

His heart just about broke. Because he knew about baby sisters. He knew about the kind of love that bond engendered, how it was set in stone, how the thought of harming that precious life was anathema. You forgave little sisters for things you wouldn’t even consider forgiving others. But… “If she came after Keenan,” he asked, “what would you do?”

“You know.” A shattered whisper. “I would kill her. And it would destroy me.”

That’s the real reason why she ran, he thought, not because she was scared of Amara, but because she was afraid her sister would back her into a corner from where the only escape would be over her sibling’s dead body. One hell of a mess. “How, Shaya?” he found himself asking. “How is that you’re you and she’s-”

“-a monster?” Ashaya completed. “I don’t know. Don’t humans believe in a thing called the soul? Maybe that element comes hardwired. Maybe we were just born with different kinds of souls.”

Hearing the shredded heart she was trying so desperately to hide, Dorian wished he could reassure her that it wouldn’t come down to sister against sister. But he’d lost his illusions a long time ago. Sometimes evil did win. Sometimes, baby sisters did die.

The image of Kylie’s brutalized body was so fresh in his mind that when the dying woman staggered onto the road in front of him, he thought he was seeing a ghost. “Jesus!” He and Ashaya were both slammed forward against their restraints then hauled back as the car’s sensors picked up the obstruction and brought the vehicle to a shuddering halt.

Dorian recovered in less than a second, pushing up his door and running out to catch the woman as she collapsed. Her eyes were already filming over with the haze of oncoming death, her plain white shift so bloody it stuck to her slender frame. Flashes of ravaged flesh showed where the fabric had been torn by whatever it was that had cut through her body with such lethal ferocity.

“Hold on,” he said, bending to gather her into his arms so he could drive her to the nearest hospital.

“I can’t get her to respond to telepathic messages.” Ashaya’s shock was vivid enough to escape even her incredible control.

“Keep trying.” He picked up the woman, even though he could hear her heart beginning to stutter. She stared up at him but he knew she didn’t see him. “Who did this to you?”

The answer came out strangely clearly. “My father.”

She had soft brown hair, gilded skin. And the pitch-black eyes of a Psy in the death throes. Then those eyes faded to gray, her body going limp against him. He felt his arms clench, his heart twist. But the memories evoked by the sight of this girl’s body could wait. Leopard and man both had only one priority right now-to protect the woman who stood beside him, one hand clasped around the lost girl’s. “Leave,” he said.

Ashaya looked up at him. “Dor-”

“She’s dead. A Psy team will be sent out to investigate within the hour.” Sascha had taught him that-death alone was an acceptable excuse for leaving the PsyNet. All Psy who dropped from the Net without explanation were searched for, a search that didn’t stop until a body was found, or death confirmed. “It might be sooner if she got out a telepathic mayday. You can’t be here when they arrive.”

Ashaya didn’t release the girl’s hand. “What about you?”

He met her eyes. “I won’t leave her alone in the dark.”

“A silly emotional choice,” Ashaya said, but her voice shook. “One I find myself wishing I had the freedom to make.”

He shook his head, his leopard clawing at him in angry panic. “Go, Shaya. I keyed the car to you and the route’s preprogrammed. Set it to automatic and get the hell out.”

She withdrew her hand slowly from around the girl’s. “This was a frenzied attack. She was cut so badly that she can’t have come far.”

“Go!”

His snapped command made her give a stiff nod and run back to the car. A minute later, she drove past him as he carried the girl off the road and through the stand of manicured trees that lined the road. The line of greenery acted as a fence for the complex of homes behind it. Small, contained buildings no predator would live in, but that suited the Psy. It was obvious the girl had come from the nearest house.

The door stood open and even from the bottom of the drive-way, he could see the bloody handprint on the door. It was stretched, as if she’d slipped. More blood lay drying on the steps leading down from the entrance hallway, on the white cobblestones of the drive, on the ground inches from his feet.

Carefully skirting the last of her lifeblood, he carried the girl’s body back up to what had once been her safe haven. Like the site of Kylie’s murder. The scent of an abattoir hit him as he neared. There was a sick miasma to the smell that he knew he’d never be able to explain to anyone who didn’t possess the same acute sense of smell. Something had gone terribly, violently wrong in that small white house.