"Because," Ashaya murmured, "the violent, angry emotions are ones we're conditioned most strongly against."

Faith nodded. "When I defected, I was hunting a killer. He was tainted with a malignant darkness. That darkness is a marker of the DarkMind's psychic control - it uses these already mentally unstable individuals to give itself a voice. It's not only feeding off their evil, it's effectively nurturing the worst serial killers on the planet."

Ashaya didn't seem shocked by Faith's revelation. "Silence cuts us off from a fundamental aspect of our psyche. It makes complete sense that that would be echoed on the psychic plane." Her back suddenly went ramrod straight. "My twin," she said to Faith. "You saw the darkness wrapped around my twin."

"I don't know how I knew it wasn't you," Faith said, "but it's like that sometimes in a vision - I just know things. And this time, I knew that the woman I was watching wasn't Ashaya Aleine." A pause. "She was doing terrible things... killing, torture, blood."

Vaughn put down his coffee and moved to press a kiss to Faith's temple. The F-Psy leaned into his hold but her eyes stayed on Ashaya. "Was it backsight?"

Ashaya didn't hesitate. "No. She's never murdered, never spilled blood."

"Are you certain?" Vaughn's question was a challenge.

Dorian didn't tell the other sentinel to back off. He didn't need to. The cat growled in silent pride as Ashaya met Vaughn's eyes. "Yes," she said, "I'm sure. I'm connected to my twin on a level beyond the PsyNet. The second, the instant, Amara became a killer, the knowledge would bleed into my mind. She hasn't crossed that line."

"I believe you," Faith said softly. "But she will if you don't change the future."

"Perhaps my defection is the thing that pushes her over the edge." Ashaya's shoulders slumped. "I've always known that the more unstable my own emotional state, the worse her episodes."

Dorian wanted to haul her to him and order her to stop hurting. Gritting his teeth, he glanced at Vaughn. "That it?"

"Yeah." The other sentinel put down his coffee and stood, tugging Faith up with him.

"Wait," Faith said, eyes locked with Ashaya's. "Was I right about your sister? Is she...?"

"Disturbed?" Ashaya supplied. "Yes. Smarter than most people on the planet, but broken in some fundamental way."

"I understand." Faith's eyes held the knowledge that, in the PsyNet, all F-Psy eventually ended up clinically insane. "There was something else - there's no way to prove this, but maybe your twinship is the reason you and your sister are so different."

Dorian understood before Ashaya. "A direct reflection of the twinning in the PsyNet, one good, one bad?"

"No," Ashaya whispered. "It's not that clean-cut, not yet. I have fragments of badness and she has some goodness."

Nobody said anything to dispute that, but they all knew that even if she was right, Faith was an F-Psy who never saw an untrue future. If steps weren't taken to prevent it, her vision would one day come true.

And Amara Aleine would bathe in the blood of innocents.

Five minutes later, Faith stared at the dull green of the paint on the landing as she and Vaughn made their way out of the building. She found herself torn over whether or not to share a different vision with Vaughn. Usually, it wasn't even a question, but this one was so riddled with emotional land mines, she wasn't sure she wanted the weight of it on his shoulders...

Then he made up her mind for her. "Spill it, Red," he drawled as they emerged onto a street drenched with the smell of the salt water coming off the bay. "I can hear you thinking."

"I saw something about Dorian a while back," she admitted, "around the time we mated." She'd glimpsed him as a leopard, a creature with eyes more green than blue and dark facial markings. "I never told him because it was a distant knowing. Years, I thought... and the future can change."

"You going to tell me the details of the vision?"

Having come this far, she couldn't retreat. She told him. "I didn't want to give him false hope - what if it never came true?"

"Hell of a thing," he whispered, shaking his head. "You really think he might be able to shift one day?"

"I used to." She blew out a shuddering breath. "That vision is gone, Vaughn. Something's changed."

"What do you see now?"

"Nothing." She gripped his hand. "I see nothing at all around Dorian now. I don't know if it's because his future is in flux - "

" - or because he has no future." Vaughn's jaw was a brutal line. "Aleine might get him killed."

"He's made his choice," Faith said, though her heart was a rock in her throat. Sometimes she hated the price her gift demanded. "Like we made ours."

"That was different."

It made her smile. "The Council tried to kill you, too." The memory still made her entire body burn with a violent mix of rage and fear. "We made it. I have faith Dorian will, too." Even if his future was a formless darkness filled with complete and utter emptiness.

Chapter 31

Amara couldn't see him, but she knew he was there. Ashaya had never managed to keep her out for this long, not when Amara really wanted to get in. But he was doing something, making Ashaya turn her back on her sister.

That wasn't allowed.

As she tried again and again to break Ashaya's shields, her eye fell on a small pressure injector filled with a lethal dose of narcotic.

"So easy," she whispered. A simple, permanent solution.

Chapter 32

The temptation is a physical ache. Now that I've seen him, met him, kissed him, my mind won't stop bombarding me with images of my body intertwined with his, his golden hair brilliant against my skin, his hands powerful against my breasts, his tongue flicking over the damp heat of me. My hands tremble as I write this. I can't sleep. I can't think.

What is happening to me?

-  From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine

Dorian walked around to sit beside Ashaya. When she made no move to acknowledge him, he growled low in his throat and tugged back her head using her braid.

"Dorian!" she snapped, her shell cracking. "Faith's information means I have to maintain - "

"Shut up, Shaya." He wrapped her braid around one hand, gripping her jaw with the fingers of the other. "Yeah, your sister sounds like a serious problem, but fuck it, she's going to come after you sooner or later. Let it be sooner because I refuse to let you bury yourself for her. We stand and we fight."

Ashaya didn't reply, didn't say a word. If he hadn't already begun to sense her with a part of him he'd never thought would awaken for a Psy, he wouldn't have picked up the distress behind her implacable mask. "What is it?"

She pressed her lips together. Damn, stubborn woman. Eyes narrowed, he thought over what he'd said, coupled it with her vulnerabilities. I refuse to let you bury yourself for her.

"You were buried in a quake." Close, he thought when her lashes fluttered down for an instant before rising resolutely. "But you dealt with that. Hell, you worked in an underground lab for months. So it's not the idea of burial that scares you... it's the idea of being buried by Amara."

"Stop it." A harsh whisper. "Let me go and stop it."

"Oh, no, Shaya." He released her chin but maintained his hold on her braid. He was careful of his strength, but implacable. He knew she'd refuse to talk unless he made her. "This is how it's going to work," he said. "You tell me what the hell your crazy sister did to you, or every time you try to flick me off - or tell a lie - I'm going to kiss you."

Her eyes widened, then grew hot with the blinding fury of a temper she'd never before shown. "Dorian, despite what the Psy Council likes to release via its propaganda machine, you're not an animal. You're a civilized being who understands the rule of law."

He'd already given her a warning. So now he just kissed her. Her mouth was open and he was oh-so-tempted to sweep his tongue inside, to savor what he craved with every hard inch of him. But, though she might not believe it, he was trying to be good. She had no idea how good he was being.

The second their lips parted, she took a deep, shuddering breath that did all sorts of interesting things to her breasts. He looked down and realized he had plans for those breasts, such sinful plans. "Talk," he ordered.

"Even the Councilors couldn't make me talk," she taunted. "What makes you think you can break me?"

He smiled, slow, sensual, pleased. Finally, she was playing with him. "I don't want to break you, sugar." Giving a chuckle, he dipped his head and licked at the jumping beat of her pulse. "Hurting women isn't my style. But I do want to handle you" - free hand smoothing down her arm - "pet you" - the slightest brush of his knuckles against her generous breasts - "devour you." He closed his teeth over the fullness of her lower lip and nearly forgot about his good intentions.

Color rode high on her cheekbones when he released her after a stolen kiss, but she met him eye to eye. "You pointed a gun at me. You told me you'd kill me if necessary."

"You weren't a woman then, you were a Psy scientist." A feline answer, full of a cunning Ashaya realized could get her into very hot water very fast if she wasn't careful.

She could feel her breath coming quicker as he began to place suckling kisses along the bared line of her neck. "That's against your own rules." She didn't know why she'd said that. It was blatant encouragement, no two ways about it.

His teeth grazed her pulse as he spoke against her neck. "I said I would kiss you. I never said where I would kiss you."

Of course Ashaya knew about the mechanics of sex, though it was an act the Psy had phased out as soon as technology allowed. But, she now realized, there was a giant hole in her knowledge - practical application. "A kiss between two people is, by definition, on the lips," she argued.