Psy & Changelings 02 - Visions of Heat

gone in a minute. Four followed. Five actually saw Vaughn coming and fired off a shot, but that was as far as he got. However, he’d warned number six. Instead of launching a psychic attack, the last Psy took off, zigzagging through the forest on an evasive path that would’ve eluded most humans. Unfortunately for him, Vaughn wasn’t human. He could’ve let the Psy think he was getting away, could’ve tortured him by playing with him, but that wasn’t who he was.
    He stayed in the shadows as he ran down the sixth assassin, knowing the Psy couldn’t attack him if he didn’t know where he was. Changeling minds were tough. Psy had to aim and focus to destroy them—a diffuse hit would never penetrate his natural shields. In the end, taking the man out was almost an anticlimax. The Psy had no idea what hit him. One second he was running, the next he was dead.
    The jaguar flipped him over onto his back and Vaughn shifted into human form to search the body for evidence of further plans. He found something in the left pants pocket. A small, flat, closed pad that he immediately identified as a long-distance remote. Flipping it open, he checked the computronic readout.
    The car was rigged to blow.
    If they hadn’t been able to capture Faith, they’d had orders to destroy her. He growled. It was a good thing these men were already dead. Shifting again, he took the pad in his mouth and ran back to Faith. There was blood on his fur, which would translate to his skin when he changed forms. That couldn’t be helped. But he was human and dressed in his jeans by the time he came to her.
    “Are you alright?” Her eyes flicked over every inch of him. “You’re bleeding!”
    “It’s not mine.” He watched her expression for signs of disgust.
    Instead, it was only relief that showed. “I got the sense that one of them got off a blast.”
    “He missed. Come on.” He brought her down from the tree.
    Her face remained white, strain lines at the corners of her mouth. “You had to kill for me.”
    “It’s what mates do.” He kissed her for several long minutes, grounding his beast in the feminine scent of her. By the time he drew away to pull the pad from his pocket, there was a healthy flush to her cheeks. “See this?”
    She took the pad. “It looks like a remote of some kind.” She placed it in the center of her palm, her curiosity apparently cutting through the residual shock. “Exceptionally compact and nothing that’s on the market at this time. I’d say it’s a prototype from Exogenesis Labs—they had me do some work last year.”
    “It’s to blow up the car.”
    Her head jerked up. “They wanted you dead.”
    Suddenly, he knew she was right. Faith was too important to kill. “ Wanted is the operative word. I assumed you could talk to Sascha—can you?”
    “I’m not sure about ’pathing, but if the Web works the same way as the Net, I can try to do it that way.”
    “Tell her to give Lucas a message: We need a cleanup crew. Five cats to our location.”
    “How will they know where to come?”
    “They know the general area where I left the car and they’ll track us the rest of the way by smell.”
    Nodding, she closed her eyes. “Okay, I’m trying a telepathic page. She’s not that far and I know her . . . there you go. She’s receiving me.” Silence for a few beats. “Lucas says they’re on their way. One extra man to take me back to the aerie.”
    “Fine.”
    She opened her eyes. “Why do I have to go back?” Stubborn, her forehead furrowed with lines.
    “Because you can’t drag one of these bodies where it needs to go.”
    She swallowed but didn’t admit defeat. “And where would that be?”
    “Nikita Duncan has the bad luck to live closest to us.”
    “I see.” She looked at her feet and then back up at him. “You felt no guilt at killing those men.”
    He waited, able to see her working something out in her head. Though he’d never admit it aloud, he was a little worried. She’d seen him at his most brutal. Now he waited for her reaction.
    “And yet, it was clean. You didn’t taunt them and you didn’t get pleasure from it.”
    “I will when I take down animal prey.” He wasn’t going to lie.
    “I think I can deal with that because it’s natural.” Ignoring the blood, she wrapped her arms around his waist, her fingers delicate points of heat where they brushed his skin. “I won’t say I wasn’t shocked by the way you dispatched the assassins so quickly,