Heart of Obsidian

stable, so you were useful.”
Useful.
The most beautiful thing in his life had been useful to Councilor Santano Enrique. “Because of me, he knew you existed.”
    Sahara’s hand on his back. “You warned me to be careful,” she said with a confidence that told him the memory was crisp, clear. “You said I should never, ever be alone with that monster. Kaleb, you were bleeding so badly that day, I was afraid you’d cause serious damage to your brain—you
fought
the compulsions so hard for me.”
    Kaleb watched rocks tumbling down into the gorge and knew he was the cause, his rage seeking an outlet. “It wasn’t enough. Not when he dug deeper into my mind and realized your true ability—and how quickly you were learning to discipline it. It wasn’t simply that you might be capable of seeing all his secrets one day soon, but that you had the contacts to be heard.”
    Kaleb had begged Enrique not to touch her, the only time in his life he had ever begged. He’d been willing to give up the final ragged shreds of his soul if that was what it took, but Enrique had other plans. “He told me it was time he reminded me that he
owned
me.”
    Sahara wrapped her arms around him from behind. “He wanted you to hurt me.”

Chapter 44

    KALEB CONTINUED TO stare out into the darkness, every muscle in his body locked tight, until he was made of stone. “You’ve remembered everything about that night.”
    “Almost,” she said, pressing a kiss to his back. “It’s been coming to me in pieces over the past twenty-four hours. I have most of it now.”
    “Why aren’t you afraid of me if you remember? Why are you still here?”
    “Because you’re mine.”
    The stone fractured, his hands rising to close over her own. “He knew if I hurt you, it would break the defiance that kept me Kaleb rather than his creature.”
    “Cut her.” The knife being pushed into his hand. “You’re like me, have always been like me. Do what comes naturally.”
    Sahara twisted around to face him, careless of her safety. When he pulled her from the edge with a sharp rebuke, she smiled and said, “I knew you wouldn’t let me fall.” Reaching for his left arm as her trust smashed the stone to pieces, she traced the mark on the inside of his forearm. “It’s almost like a brand,” she murmured. “Or a burn that was never treated, and the design, it’s familiar.”
    “It’s the insignia from the old-fashioned wall radiator in the hotel room Santano chose for that night.” He dared touch his free hand to her hair, felt the ice inside him melt when she turned her face into the caress, her lips pressing a sweet kiss to the center of his palm. “The room was cheap and isolated and hundreds of miles from your home. It was also covered in DNA by the time he finished. That’s why he set it on fire after wiping the entire place down with bleach.”
    Meticulous, the other Tk had been the worst combination of intelligence and deadly pathology. The fire that night might’ve been overlooked as vandalism . . . except after Santano teleported Sahara away to a secret location while choking off Kaleb’s ability to go to her, the leash yet holding, he’d teleported in the body of a changeling girl he’d killed three weeks earlier and kept on ice.
    “It amuses me to watch the rats chasing their tail,”
he’d said with the arrogance of a man who had been getting away with murder for years, his victims scattered across every corner of the world.
“Let’s throw them this bone and see what they do with it.”
    The fire damage to the girl’s body had ruled out DNA identification—Enforcement had finally identified her using dental records, thanks to the dedication of the detective in charge. That detective had also connected the murder to those of two of Santano’s other victims through the marks left on the bone by the knife Santano had used that year, and because at the time, the monster had been “experimenting” with decapitation.
    While the fact that it was Santano Enrique who’d been behind those three murders wasn’t public knowledge, enough people suspected his involvement in the still-unsolved crimes that there was a possibility someone, someday, would make the connection between the scar on Kaleb’s arm and that burned-out hotel room. The heavy iron radiator, after all, had been one of the few pieces that survived without any major damage. Its distinctiveness may have been the reason journalists repeatedly used the image