The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (121 page)

“Done!” the cat called out after him. “We’ll continue the search here, just in case!”

He was five minutes into the drive—too fucking slow—when his phone beeped. It was Nikita, wanting an update. “Councilor,” Max said, telling her where he was heading, “how many teleporters do you know?”

He didn’t expect help, not now that it was a human sociopath who’d taken Sophia, rather than another Councilor’s interference. But she said, “I’ll see what I can arrange.”

Sweat trickled down Max’s spine.
I’m coming, baby. Just hold on.

 

Sophia’s stomach roiled, nausea filling her mouth. Drugged, she thought. She’d been drugged. The Psy brain didn’t react well to narcotics. A moan whispered out of her as she was jostled about, her already battered body unable to stop its jerky movements.

“Sorry.” A smooth, charming voice with . . . excitement, yes, it was excitement that bubbled beneath the surface. “We’re almost there. This road’s the private one to my bungalow. Made to look like a natural pebbled road. They should’ve sealed it. At least the rain’s stopped.”

Sophia only understood about half of what he’d said. But she knew he’d taken her, and that he wasn’t a man she wanted to be alone with. He smelled wrong.

A laugh, almost amused. “I’ll shower when we get to the bungalow. Got a little sweaty and bloody saving your life.”

A snapshot of memory, her legs kicking out in futile panic, her limbs too heavy to do much damage as he cut away the straps that held her in the car, as he pulled her out. Rain on her face. Glass on her legs.

Reaching down, she touched her thighs, touched the damp material that covered it.

“You’re not injured,” the man with the wrongness in him said as he brought the vehicle to a stop. “A few cuts and bruises from the crash, but otherwise fine. Not even that wet. My arms got nicely sliced up coming to your rescue—I’m sure you’re dying to thank me.”

A buzzing in her head, a dizzying splash of words and images, her mind twisting out of control for a frightening instant as the drugs punched at her again. But she came to enough to flinch when the man exited his side of the car and came around to hers.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Lying, she thought, he was lying. “Don’t touch me,” she forced out through lips that didn’t work right.

His expression changed, becoming mean in a way she couldn’t describe. “I’m in charge now.” His hand clamped over her upper arm, and he lowered his head, as if he would kiss her.

Even in the depths of her narcotic induced state, she knew that if she told him the truth, it’d give him another weapon with which to torture her. But if she didn’t, he might inadvertently break her mind, kill her by making her relive the horrifying ugliness of his blood-drenched memories. And she had to survive.
Because Max didn’t know.
“No,” she whispered, swallowing the nausea inspired by his mere presence. “J. Can’t . . . contact.”

He stilled, his hand tightening on her arm. “You telling me direct physical contact can hurt you? Is that why you were always wearing those gloves?”

She tried to nod, but her head fell forward, and she had so much trouble bringing it back up. “Yes.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to be careful.” Unsnapping her safety belt, he lifted her out of the car and into his arms.

Her clothing protected her, but this close, her remaining telepathic shields shredded by the drugs, she couldn’t help but drown in the fetid evil of him. He appeared normal, human. But he wasn’t. He was so twisted up inside, so viciously mutated that he wasn’t even close to human.

A slam, her body being laid down on some sort of a soft surface, that handsome blue-eyed face going in and out of focus. Her stomach revolted at the same moment, and she pitched over the side of what turned out to be a sofa, her stomach twisting in agony.

“There, there . . .” He was wiping her face with a wet cloth, his voice solicitous. “I’ll clean that up. Let me take you into the bedroom.” A smile that made her blood chill. “That’s where we’ll be playing our games anyway.”

Max overrode his car’s safety instructions for the fifteenth time but knew he was going to be far too late. By his calculations, Bonner was almost fifty minutes ahead of him. Even if he made the journey to the resort in half the time, that still gave the Butcher an eternity too long to torment a confused and drugged Sophia.

She’d survive, he told himself. J-Psy were tough in every way. And his Sophie had proven her strength over and over. He’d find her. There was no other option.

He’d just overtaken a sedan going at exactly the speed limit when there was a slight
shift
in the world to the right of him. He had his stunner out and pointed to the head of the Psy who’d teleported into the passenger seat before the thought cleared his mind.

“That won’t be necessary, Detective.” A voice so cold, it was beyond ice, beyond emotionless. “Nikita asked for a favor. Where do you need to go?”

Making a split-second decision, Max lowered the stunner and crossed lanes to the blaring of warning signals, coming to a full stop on the verge. “To Sophia Russo,” he said to the man in the passenger seat.

Councilor Kaleb Krychek wore a razor-perfect charcoal gray suit and had eyes of pure black filled with white stars. But unlike Faith’s or Sascha’s, his eyes were remote in a way Max simply couldn’t explain. It was as if Kaleb had never felt, as if not even an echo of the boy he must’ve once been lived in his eyes.

“I need a lock,” the Councilor said, and they could’ve been discussing the weather, not the life of a woman who had fought for her right to live every second of every day. “I can only teleport to locations I’ve either seen or have a recent visual of.”

“Can you go to people?”

“Yes, with certain qualifications.”

Max held out his hand. “Take her image from my head.”

Kaleb didn’t touch him. “You have a natural shield.” His tone said that that made taking anything impossible.

Not giving in to frustration, Max quickly routed to the Internet using his phone. “There,” he said, bringing up an image of the beach resort. “Can you get me there?”

Kaleb brought out a slim device that appeared to be a high-end organizer and pulled up several more detailed pictures of the place. “Yes.”

There was no touch, no warning.

Max only just kept his balance as they appeared in front of the massive glass lobby that fronted the resort, the air heavy but clear of rain. The gaping doorman snapped his mouth shut. “Councilor Krychek,” he managed to croak out. “I wasn’t aware you had a reservation, sir.” Max went through the door before Kaleb, heading to the desk.

Slamming down his ID in front of the receptionist, he brought up Bonner’s photo—from a newspaper story—on his cell phone and showed it to the blond male on duty. “Which room?”

“Ah . . .” The man looked left, then right. “I have to ask my manag—”

“If she dies,” Max said with absolute intent, “you die next.”

Going sheet white, the receptionist shook his head. “I haven’t seen—”

“Single male, probably checked in within the past twelve hours, isolated bungalow.”

The blond began working his computer. “We’ve only had one arrival in the past twenty-four hours. But Mr. White’s—”

The ice in Max’s bloodstream turned to liquid fire at the sound of that name, a name the Butcher had no right to use. “Where!”

“Bungalow Ten, right at the end of the Eastern Route.” The receptionist brought up a holographic image of the resort without prompting. “We’re here. Bungalow Ten is here.” He pointed out the locations. “About a twenty minute walk.”

Max saw Kaleb walk in, turned to him. “Can you teleport there?”

“This image is representational—a 3D map,” the other man said at once. “I need a shot of the actual building.”

“I’m sorry.” The receptionist spread his hands. “I don’t have anything like that on hand. I could try our PR depart—”

But Max was already running through the doors.

 

Sophia rolled off the bed and began to stagger to the door. He hadn’t tied her up when he went to have his shower, and that was his mistake.

Her leg went out from under her after three halting steps, her knee hitting the floor hard enough to send pain shooting up her leg. Biting off her cry, she gripped the edge of the bed and pulled herself up again. It took too long. She could hear him whistling in the smoked-glass enclosure a bare few feet away, obscenely cheerful, a man without a care in the world.

The bedroom door swayed then stretched sideways, making her grip the end of the bed for balance. Forcing herself to let go of the anchor, she lurched forward, desperate to get through that twisting, stretched door. She could almost hear it laughing at her. “Stop. Stop.”

The laughter turned into chuckles. “And where do you think you’re going?” Damp around her waist, skin so close to her cheek. She flinched, trying to hide her bare hands under her armpits.

“Now walk back . . . there you go.”

She knew she had to do what he said, because his semi-nakedness was on purpose, a threat. “Why?” It came out raw, but it was also from the center of her brain, the part that hadn’t been compromised.

He didn’t answer until she was sitting with her back braced against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her. “You fascinate me,” he said, stroking his hand down her thigh.

Nauseated, she tried to pull away, but he pinned her in place.

“When we talked before,” he continued in a calm, clear voice, as if they were close acquaintances having an everyday conversation, “I used to wonder what you were like beneath that Psy surface. I wondered if you were like other women or if you were more.”

“Drugged,” she said, her mouth full of cotton wool. “Not myself.”

Anger rippled across his features. “No. That’s rather disappointing. I want to play with
you
. It doesn’t matter—we have time.” He leaned in. “Your skin is so clear, so lovely.” His hand moved a bare centimeter away from the vulnerable flesh of her face. “I don’t want to lose my playmate too quickly, but after so long, I just . . . can’t resist.” His fingertip brushed her flesh.

Sophia fought the spiraling whirlpool, knowing that this time someone
would
come for her, her cop would come for her. All she had to do was survive.

 

Max made himself come to a full stop a few feet from Bungalow Ten, his lungs burning after the sprint that had brought him here.

Instinct urged him to slam the door open and blast in, guns blazing, but he took two deep gulps of air, settled his breathing. “We have to be careful,” he said to the cold-eyed Psy who’d run beside him with a lethal grace that made it inhumanly clear he was a telekinetic. “If he’s near her with a weapon, he could decide to kill her if we startle him.”

Krychek looked at the building, no change in his expression. “The windows are curtained. How will you know what’s happening within?”

“Bonner’s ego was always his undoing,” Max said, walking silently to the door and twisting the old-fashioned door handle with care. As he’d hoped, the monster hadn’t locked it—the possibility of escape a taunt to his victim. Pushing it back a fraction, he chanced a look. Seeing nothing and no one in the living area, he opened it enough that he could slide in.

Not sure what Krychek’s interest was in this beyond a cool intellectual curiosity, he left the Councilor to make his own choices as he toed off his shoes and sodden socks and crossed the living area on quiet feet, heading toward the semi-open doorway he could see on the other end. Pressing himself to the wall, he glanced in through the crack on the hinged side of the door.

She sat propped up against the headboard, her hair tangled, her face grazed and bruised. But it was the way she sat that worried him. Her head kept flopping to the side, and she seemed to have to force it back up. Her hands lay by her thighs, bare and unprotected from the monster who sat in front of her, his own hand stroking the air bare inches from her face. Torturing her.

Shoulders rigid with the need to put the stunner in his hand to Bonner’s skull, Max was about to chance a shot when Krychek appeared beside him. The Councilor gave him a single nod, and this time, Max was ready for the teleport. He found himself standing in front of Bonner, his stunner pressed to the Butcher of Park Avenue’s temple.

Bonner froze. “Detective.”

“Drop that hand,” Max said in a flat tone that left no room for doubt, “or I’ll press the trigger.”

Bonner’s blue eyes went wide. “You sound as if you mean that.” He jerked his arm.

Twisting, Max shot him through the palm of his fucking hand before he could touch Sophia again, exposing the whiteness of bone. Sophia wrenched herself sideways on the bed at the same instant. The situation under control, Max was about to shove the Butcher to the floor and cuff him when a screaming Bonner was slammed across the room to come to a crumpled standstill in one corner.

Max, having thrown his body in a protective curve over Sophia’s, raised his head. “He was no longer a threat.” He got on the bed, cradling Sophia to his side.

“He’ll be a threat as long as he lives,” Kaleb said, turning to watch Max and Sophia with a detached kind of focus that made Max wonder if he’d exchanged one killer for another. “It makes logical sense to get rid of him.”

“He’s not dead?”

“Close enough as makes no difference.”