Blaze of Memory (42 page)

“You, too.” He reached up to cover her hand with his own, holding it against his cheek. “Because if you die, so will I.”

A smile that held a spark of mischief, a bright new thing. “Will you pine away?”

“It’s no laughing matter.” But he was smiling, too.

“Dev, my Dev.” She rose to straddle him, her face glowing with happiness.

Placing one hand on her hip, the other on her lower back, he bent his head and let her press kisses all over his face, fleeting touches of love, of affection, of promise. “You saved me, you know,” he said between kisses.

A curious look.

“Everyone’s been worrying the metal would take me over.” He drew in the scent at the curve of her neck. “But how can it when you have a line straight into my heart?”

“Dev.”
More kisses, gentle touches. Then a whisper against his ear. “I’m afraid to look at your ShadowNet.”

He found himself whispering back, playing with her. “You? Afraid?” He slid his hand under the sheets to close over her thigh. “Not my Katya.”

“Will you hold my hand?”

“Always.”

Dev was waiting for Katya on the psychic plane when she opened the mental doorway of her mind and took the first step out into the shimmering chaos of a network of thousands of minds, millions of emotional connections. He felt her shock, but she held on to their bond and stayed in place, looking, learning.

“It’s . . .” He felt her wonder, her terror.

“You get used to it.”

“You do?” A laughing question. “Dear God, Dev. How do you navigate this?”

“Follow the threads.”

“But I only have one to you.”

“You can bounce off the threads of others,” he explained. “As long as you don’t actually try to hook into an emotional line without permission, no one minds if you use the threads as navigation points.”

“And this,” she said with a deep breath, “is definitely a place that requires navigation.”

“You’re wrong, you know,” Dev said, nudging her attention sideways. “You have got other threads.”

“But I don’t know anyone else in here.” She touched the thread. “It’s your grandmother!”

He felt her follow the thread, knew when she’d reached the end. “I see her, but I also see ... your grandfather?”

“Yes, you have a link to him through her. As you have a link to thousands through me.”

He could see her thinking that over. “When I form more connections, you’ll be able to access them, too?”

“On a certain level,” he said. “It depends on my own emotional bond with the individual. Look.”

She followed his finger to a sparkling silver-blue thread that glittered diamond bright. “Who is that and why am I linked to her?” Curious as a child, she touched her psychic hand to the silver-blue thread. “Tiara.” He saw her smile on the physical plane. “She likes me enough that this link’s formed.”

“She’s always been a lunatic.”

“I think she has excellent taste.” She played her fingers over the thread. “It’s very fine.”

“You’ve just begun a friendship. If you grow apart instead of together, the thread will fade, too.”

“I guess,” she murmured, “lovers in the ShadowNet always know where they stand.”

“If both are psychic,” he pointed out. “If a Forgotten forms an intimate bond with a human, that human is pulled nominally into the net. We can see the mind, but it’s automatically shielded—we think the ShadowNet does that because otherwise humans would be too vulnerable. But it has the side effect of blocking their access to the network.” A sound of frustration. “We never even considered that it would be otherwise with Psy, that the ShadowNet would recognize you as different.”

“You had no reason to think that,” she said, calming him. “The ShadowNet’s acceptance of me is a gift—but it’s only an answer to those who love.”

“Those who dare to love.”

“Yes.” Another pause as she scanned the multitude of intertwined and entangled threads around them. “This network is very, very complex.”

He smiled. “That’s my Psy.”

A playful mental slap came down the line as she began to figure out how things functioned. “It’s open, that’s what the difference is. Your ShadowNet is open to outside connections and influences—even shielded, those human minds bring something to the network.”

He took time to consider it. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

“But that also means,” she pointed out, “this network can’t retain information with the same efficiency as the PsyNet. Or can you still find data in this chaos?”

“Not without searching a whole heck of a lot. Easier to use computers.” He laughed at her expression on the physical plane. “It can be useful in that way sometimes, but mostly, the ShadowNet is about feeding our psychic need for connection, for family.”

“What about the biofeedback?” she asked, worry a jagged thread in her emotional signature. “I’m taking so much. If your network leaks energy—”

“It doesn’t matter. Look around. We’re overloading with it.”

“You are, aren’t you?” she murmured. “It’s because you feed things back to each other, somehow increasing the output. Love goes out, love comes back, and the energy grows with each exchange . . .” Another pause. “Dev, the psychic pathways are different. It’s as if my mind is slightly out of sync.”

He knew that, had hoped she’d be able to navigate them. “Can you move along them?”

“Not easily or instinctively, but yes.” Almost a minute of silence. “Actually, I think I’ll enjoy the intellectual challenge. There’s so much to explore.”

In spite of her intrigued comments, he could feel her beginning to overload with the intensity of the emotions in the ShadowNet. Making a command decision, he bullied her back down to the physical plane.

“I wasn’t finished,” she almost growled at him.

He held her close. “You’re exhausted.”

“It was just so much input.” She snuggled into him, tugging up his shirt to touch skin that tightened at the first brush of her fingertips. “The PsyNet is full of pure data—there are uncountable pieces flowing past every split second.”

The Shine director in Dev could see the appeal. “You’d be able to know what was happening every minute of every day.” That, he had to admit, would be highly useful.

“Yes. But it’s cold. Data is always cold—it just exists. But the ShadowNet—each thread tells a story and each carries a different emotional flavor. I want to touch every one, know every one!”

“That, my beautiful Psy rebel,” he said, speaking against the lush fullness of her lips, “will take at least a million years.”

Husky feminine laughter, playful fingers dancing along the waistband of his jeans. “I guess I’ll have to take it one kiss at a time.”

CHAPTER 1

Elena gripped the balcony railing and stared down at the gorge that fell away with jagged promise beneath. From here, the rocks looked like sharp teeth, ready to bite and tear and rip. She tightened her hold as the icy wind threatened to tumble her into their unforgiving jaws. “Where are we?”

A sprawling city of marble and glass spread out in every direction, its elegant lines exquisite under the razor-sharp burn of the sun. Dark-leafed trees provided soothing patches of green on both sides of the gorge that cut a massive divide through the city, while snow-capped mountains ruled the skyline. There were no roads, no high-rises, nothing to disturb the otherworldly grace of it.

Yet, for all its beauty, there was something alien about this place, a vague sense that darkness lurked beneath the gilded surface. Drawing in a breath laced with the biting freshness of the mountain winds, she looked up . . . at the angels. So many angels. Their wings filled the skies above this city that seemed to have grown out of the rock itself.

The angel-struck, those mortals who were literally enthralled by the sight of angelic wings, would weep to be in this place filled with those they worshipped. But Elena had seen an archangel laugh as he plucked the eyes out of a vampire’s skull, as he pretended to eat, then crush the pulpy mass. This, she thought with a shiver, was not her idea of heaven.

A rustle of wings from behind her, a squeeze from the powerful hands on her hips. “You’re tiring, Elena. Come inside.”

She held her position, though the feel of him—strong, dangerous, uncompromisingly masculine—against the sensitive surface of her wings made her want to shudder in ecstasy. “Do you think you have the right to give me orders now?”

The Archangel of New York, a creature so lethal that part of her feared him even now, lifted the hair off her nape, brushed his lips across her skin. “Of course. You are mine.” No hint of humor, nothing but stark possession.

“I don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of this true love thing.” He’d fed ambrosia into her mouth, changed her from mortal to immortal, given her wings—
wings!
—all because of love. For her, a hunter, a mortal . . . no longer mortal.

“Be that as it may, it’s time you return to bed.”

And then she was in his arms though she had no memory of having released the railing—but she must have, because her hands were filling with blood again, her skin tight. It hurt. Even as she tried to ride out the slow, hot burn, Raphael carried her through the sliding doors and into the magnificent glass room that sat atop a fortress of marble and quartz, as solid and immoveable as the mountains around them.

Fury arced through her bloodstream. “Out of my mind, Raphael!”

“Because, as I’ve told you more than once, I’m not your puppet.” She grit her teeth as he laid her on the cloud-soft bedding, the pillows lush. But the mattress held firm under her palms when she pulled herself up into a sitting position. “A lover”—God, she could still barely believe she’d gone and fallen for an archangel—“should be a partner, not a toy to manipulate.”

Cobalt eyes in a face that turned humans into slaves, that sweep of night dark hair framing a face of perfect grace... and more than a little cruelty. “You’ve been awake exactly three days after spending a year in a coma,” he told her. “I’ve lived for more than a thousand years. You’re no more my equal now than you were before I Made you immortal.”

Anger was a wall of white noise in her ears. She wanted to shoot him as she’d done once before. Her mind cascaded with a waterfall of images on the heels of that thought—the wetly crimson spray of blood, a torn wing, Raphael’s eyes glazed with shock. No . . . she wouldn’t shoot him again, but he drove her to violence. “Then what am I?”

“Mine.”

Was it wrong that sparks sizzled along her spine at hearing that, at seeing the utter possession in his voice, the dark passion on his face? Probably. But she didn’t care. The only thing she cared about was the fact that she was now tied to an archangel who thought the ground rules had changed. “Yes,” she agreed. “My heart is yours.”

A flash of satisfaction in his eyes.

“But nothing else.” She locked gazes with him, refusing to back down. “So, I’m a baby immortal. Fine—but I’m also still a hunter. One good enough that you hired me.”

Annoyance replaced the passion. “You’re an angel.”

“With magic angel money?”

“Money is no object.”

“Of course not—you’re richer than Midas himself,” she muttered. “But I’m not going to be your little chew toy—”

“Chew toy?” A gleam of amusement.

She ignored him. “Sara says I can walk back into the job anytime I want.”

“Your loyalty to the angels now overwhelms your loyalty to the Hunters Guild.”

“Michaela, Sara, Michaela, Sara,” she murmured in a mock-thoughtful voice. “Bitch Goddess angel versus my best friend, gee, which side do you think I’ll choose?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?” He raised an eyebrow.

She had the feeling he knew something she didn’t. “Why not?”

“You can’t put any of your plans in action until you can fly.”

That shut her up. Glaring at him, she slumped back against the pillows, her wings spread out on the sheets in a slow sweep of midnight shading to indigo and darkest blue before falling into dawn and finally, a brilliant white-gold. Her attempt at a sulk lasted approximately two seconds. Elena and sulking had never gone well together. Even Jeffrey Deveraux, who despised everything about his “abomination” of a daughter, had been unable to lay that sin at her feet.

“Then teach me,” she said, straightening. “I’m ready.” The ache to fly was a fist in her throat, a ravaging need in her soul.

Raphael’s expression didn’t change. “You can’t even walk to the balcony without help. You’re weaker than the fledglings.”

She’d seen the smaller wings, smaller bodies, watched over by bigger ones. Not many, but enough. “Where are we?” she asked again.