Psy & Changelings 02 - Visions of Heat

might overload into a seizure at the fury within him. That was unacceptable to either half of his self. He’d marked her and he would have her, even if he had to coax her kiss by slow kiss. Cats were good at coaxing. It was only a more sensual aspect of their favorite game—stalking.
    The jaguar covered the distance between his watch and her home with the efficient confidence that came from being the most dangerous thing in the forest. But tonight he had no interest in the small creatures that darted into the shadows at the sound of his approach.
    Because tonight, he was hunting pleasure.
     
    Faith’s instinct was to fight the sucking edges of the darkness, but as she’d learned in the weeks prior to Marine’s murder, the more she struggled, the harder it would hold on. So she let it—let him—take her under and bring her into his world.
    His darkness churned with faint hints of red. The blood hunger was reawakening far more quickly than she would’ve guessed—Marine’s murder hadn’t sated this creature, it had simply whetted the edge of his appetite.
    He released her when there was no longer any chance of escape. Now she would watch and see, now she would be his audience and his disciple, for he was a great being and expected others to pay homage. That she was the solitary individual aware of his genius was a source of great anger, which he took out on her by forcing her to bear witness to his every malevolent act. They hadn’t yet come to pass, but while in the twisted coils of a vision somehow linked to the killer’s mind, they were her reality.
    A violent swirl of red sliced her thoughts in half as he shoved into her mind. She lost all sense of self, of being a cardinal named Faith, and became a creature of pain and fear. The darkness pushed her to the raw edge of madness, threatening her with the very emotions she’d been trained not to feel, or to even admit possessing. Her helplessness made the killer laugh. He grabbed her with his teeth, shook her hard.
    He wanted her to not only watch, but understand his sick desires. That she didn’t, couldn’t, enraged him. Surrounded by the vicious thickness of murderous fury, Faith did the sole thing she could to protect herself. She surrendered the civilized thinking part of her mind and retreated into the walled inner core of her psyche, curling up around herself like a child going into the fetal position.
    Still, the darkness battered her. He was amused by her inability to deal with him, playing with her as a cat might play with a trapped mouse. He didn’t want to kill her. No, what he wanted was to flaunt his power until she stopped resisting and let him rape her mind. Then he’d be free to show her all his desires, every one of his planned future acts, an endless reel of horror.
    Too deep inside the most animal heart of her psyche to remember that she wasn’t supposed to feel fear, Faith began to struggle with everything in her.
    And failed to break out.
     
    Vaughn landed silently on the soft carpet of Faith’s bedroom. His feet were bare but his legs covered—he’d cached a pair of jeans in the forest earlier that day, not wanting to scandalize Faith any more than she was already going to be scandalized. Of course, he was still looking forward to seeing the surprise in her eyes when she found him there for the second night in a row.
    However, his senses went on red alert the second he took a step toward the bed. Her blanket in a heap on the floor, Faith lay curled into a tight ball, breath shallow and heartbeat sluggish to the cat’s keen hearing. The scent of something that shouldn’t have been there, something that didn’t belong , was pungent in the air. When he narrowed his eyes in the semidarkness, he picked out a more extreme blackness around Faith, just as he’d done at the cabin.
    Convinced the darkness would grip her tighter if it knew Vaughn was about to intervene, he got onto the bed in silence. His next move was lightning fast. Picking her up, he crushed her against him, physically blocking the darkness with the way his body curved over hers. Logic argued it wouldn’t work—whatever was attacking her was doing so on the psychic plane. But instinct said it would. And instinct was proven right.
    He felt the cold emptiness of sheer evil brush over him as the darkness was ripped in two by his body. It was unable to cling to anything in him because he was too different, too animal. Vaughn allowed a growl to rise up in his