Slave to Sensation

“I’m afraid the experiments were a little taxing. They don’t like to let Psy into their minds. I had to damage them in order to gain an in-depth understanding.”

Horror stopped her in midstep. “You killed them?”

Lucas lunged at the walls of her mind, wanting to go for Enrique’s throat.

“Lab animals often die.”

If she’d been in her physical body, she would’ve thrown up then and there. It was crystal clear that Enrique was happy to tell her everything-his only audience-because he thought he had her trapped. He was closing around her like a giant pincer.

“There’s pressure on my mind.” She could start to feel it but it wasn’t dangerous, not yet.

“I’m at the end of my patience. Either you speak to me or I execute you. I assure you, the Council would back me fully for dealing with a defective Psy.”

It was the word “defective” that got her moving again. She wasn’t defective and the changelings weren’t lab animals. They were the most beautiful, most alive, most passionate beings she’d ever met. But before she broke away, she had to make sure she had the right evil, the right killer. “Why seventy-nine?” she asked softly.

“Nineteen seventy-nine, Sascha, 1979. It’s my little way of celebrating what I see as the true birth of our race.” He paused. “How did you know about that?” The crushing walls of his mind came to a standstill.

She used that moment to push through the hidden door and lock it behind her. Something slammed into it a second later-Enrique’s mind trying to shove into hers, destroy hers. Cracks appeared in the already fragmented shields around the doorway.

“Very clever, Sascha,” he said. “How long have you been hiding out here?”

She didn’t answer, trying to patch up the door enough that she could run into the second layer of her shields. Even so close to him, her senses picked up nothing of the deep-seated rage she’d expected from the murderer. Enrique didn’t feel. And yet he killed.

You’re a race of psychopaths!

Dorian’s accusation ripped open from some forgotten pocket of memory.

No conscience, no heart, no feelings! How else do you define psychopath?

The true horror of Silence hit her so hard, her inner walls shook. But there was no time to think. Enrique was close to breaking through. Slamming a temporary block on the door to her mind, she ran through the second layer of shields just as the block on the outer shields shattered.

He was inside her mind.

His power crashed into her, shocking pain into every synapse. Shaking, she threw everything she had into her inner shields and went even deeper, until she was behind a third layer. Enrique couldn’t violate these so easily. They were the natural walls of the mind-the walls he’d ripped open in the changeling women he’d taken. She had no doubt he’d tear her apart, too, if she gave him the time.

Fed by adrenaline, she found her mental link to the PsyNet. Even Enrique’s trap couldn’t cut that link. It went too deep, was too instinctive. She touched the lifeline for the last time and whispered, “Good-bye.”

Enrique hit her with another Shockwave of pain and at that exact instant, she sliced the link into two. Everything stopped for her. Her mind was silent. Alone. There were no stars in the darkness, nothing but emptiness.

Death opened its arms.

She screamed awake in Lucas’s hold. Excruciating agony cramped every nerve in her body and she could feel her mind desperately trying to re-create the link. Forcing herself to think despite the red-hot torture sparking through her, she cauterized the wound and shut down the instinctive reaching. It hurt. Like being shot point-blank in the face.

The agony was everywhere. Her skin felt as if it was being flayed off her. Her mind screamed and screamed, gasping for the feedback it needed to survive. She clawed at Lucas’s chest, unable to breathe. Claustrophobia closed around her, the darkness pressing down deeper than Enrique’s attempts at crushing her mind. She was going to choke to death. Alone. She was so alone.

Alone. Dark. Black. Cold.

Lucas was terrified by what he saw in Sascha’s eyes. All the stars had disappeared in a blink when she’d opened her eyes and now there was such deep ebony in the depths, he thought he could see eternity.

“Sascha!” He shook her, ignoring the others who’d run into the room at the sound of her screams. It didn’t occur to him that he knew the killer’s name, that he could start the hunt for vengeance. Only she mattered. “Sascha!” She didn’t respond. It was as if she couldn’t see him.