The force of Miranda’s emotions blasted through everything, the shield, the fire, the burning walls of the house, the very atoms of what remained inside, an almost visible wave of energy sent out by her to probe desperately inside that house. And the shattered shield or just the burst of energy jarred both of them nearly off their feet.

  Neither of them really noticed, then, that walls that should have burned longer collapsed, some inward and some outward, from a new force that did not come from Miranda but from inside the house, a desperate, untaught, wordless terror reaching. That the few unbroken windows shattered in unison, which should not have happened, that the fire itself wailed suddenly as if in agonized protest, an eerily human cry of torment.

  Miranda blasted through her shield and through nearly everything else until she knew for certain what they had already known.

  Until her normal senses were no longer muffled, and the extra ones came alive all in a rush with all the stunning sensitivity of raw nerves; everything she saw was painfully bright and in painfully bright colors; the noises of the fire, the wail of sirens and the distant cries of neighbors finally awakened, the acrid smell of the fire that made it difficult for her to breathe; until the world around them became crystal clear once again, until she could feel her husband’s arm around her, feel the very heartbeat pulse of the earth beneath her feet and feel the swirling energies in the air around them, almost all negative because ash residue was the awful waste product of the evil and horrific crime tragically committed here tonight.

  All that rushed at Miranda, stealing her breath for a moment, hurting her eyes, burning her nose. But she was experienced even in handling the deadliest of evil, and it was only seconds that she was vulnerable at all, until the dark energy could find no way into her, until her senses were all back to normal.

  Until she was whole, herself. Until nightmare imagination became all too horribly real.

  “Ah, Jesus, Noah, they left the girls.” Miranda’s voice was hard with the sort of iron control both had learned in unspeakable situations. “Deliberately. Nobody panicked. There was time to get them, save them—but that wasn’t the plan. At least three nonpsychics, the caretakers, probably drugged. The moms were all asleep in their beds, also probably drugged or conditioned to sleep through anything till morning. They didn’t have a chance.” Her voice was still hard, still controlled by an iron fist, because there had been so many horrors along the way, so many events they should have been able to prevent.

  Like this one.

  But this one struck a personal note for both of them, a deeply personal agony, because they had lost a child unborn not so very long ago, taken from them in violence, and such a loss could never be something about which they could ever again be impersonal.

  Miranda’s beautiful face was a mask of control, her electric blue eyes unusually dark, as dark as holes in the world.

  “All of them?” Bishop demanded hoarsely, his own abilities coming alive just moments more slowly than hers, muffled just a bit more, a bit longer by her powerful shield even after it was shattered. Until his mind and senses adjusted.

  “We counted a dozen two days ago. There are a dozen in that house. They were already burning in their beds before we got here. Already beyond help.” She looked at her husband with those dark, dark haunted eyes. “The babies too. Three were close to term, very close. They’re gone now. They’re all gone now. Noah . . . they were psychic. Not latents, not the babies. They were powerfully psychic already, especially the ones close to term. They would have been born with every ability they would ever possess. That’s how they knew . . . how they understood . . . what was happening to them. But they didn’t have the control, the knowledge, to stop it.”

  “I know,” he said. “I heard . . . the last of their screams.”

  Bishop took her hand in his, and for an instant they stood with their gazes on the inferno before them, bearing the searing heat that struck them in waves physically as well as the searing heartbreak and rage that struck even stronger blows.

  Perhaps if they had been on time . . .

  “Did they know we were coming?” Bishop asked her.

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that it was deliberate. That someone did this, knowing what they were doing. And that they aren’t here now, didn’t stick around to—to watch.”

  There was nothing else they needed to say. Nothing more about what had happened here. Nothing more about their overwhelming pain and grief. No discussion or debate about the decision to fade back into the darkness, and make their way, silent and unseen, past exclaiming and horrified neighbors, and the first responders, and the first of the media, before anyone at all noticed their presence.

  There was nothing they could do.

  Not here, at least.

  And not now.

  * * *

  • • •

  Tasha Solomon woke with a scream locked in her throat, her arms held out as if reaching for something that was now forever beyond her grasp. Her heart was thudding against her ribs, her breath rasping, and in her mind were the heartbreaking echoes of something more than a nightmare.

  What she felt had no language in her own mind just then, only pain, the worst pain she had ever felt in her life, tearing, ripping pain, a grief so overwhelming it was an actual physical agony, so much pain she wasn’t sure she could bear it.

  “Tasha?” Brodie was in the open doorway of her bedroom, wearing only sweatpants, his dark hair a bit ruffled from sleep but wide-awake as he always was in the need of an instant. He rarely slept much except for catnaps, her Guardian, and insisted on remaining on the comfortable couch in her spacious one-bedroom condo where he could be ready for trouble should any come, but there had been no reason to be on guard tonight, no reason not to expect a peaceful night.

  It had been weeks. Weeks of calm. No threat.

  Now the threat felt overwhelming.

  He came into her bedroom, turning the lamp on her nightstand down low, sitting on the edge of the bed, concern and something else in his sharp sentry eyes.

  They hadn’t quite figured out what was between them, not yet at least, even after weeks spent almost continually in each other’s company. Both innately guarded people knew, and accepted however warily, that there was something, a connection that had been forged weeks before, and right now all he was certain of was that she was suffering horribly and shouldn’t be alone.

  “Tasha.” He wasn’t even aware that his voice had changed, had deepened and roughened.

  She reached out before he did, unable to face this alone, blind and desperate for some kind of comfort, for the healing touch of someone else who understood, and he responded instantly, enfolding her in his arms, holding her tightly. He could feel her tears wet on his throat, feel the shudders racking her body.

  “They’re gone,” she whispered against his skin. “All of them. Oh, God. They screamed. I heard them. John, they screamed. The babies. The babies understood. They knew they were dying. They knew they were burning alive and couldn’t save themselves.”

  John Brodie had gone to great effort these last weeks, since becoming her Guardian, to keep his own mind quiet and still, to project the sort of shield he had been taught to protect his mind and his privacy, a peaceful surface that psychics tended to see as a calm ocean. Not because he feared any touch of Tasha’s—she had, in fact, already read him telepathically, and deeply enough that he still felt somewhat shaken by that unexpected intimacy—but because he was not a born psychic, was not sure even now what he was. Until he was certain of that he was unwilling to risk either the other senses honed to a deadly knife-edge sharpness necessary as a Guardian or any unconscious use of abilities he did not yet understand, far less control.

  Especially when any of that was driven by emotion.

  But he opened up just a bit in that moment, relaxing the ever-present guard because she was in such pain and it went against his very nature not to try to understand, to help.

  He stopped blocking the new, untested, and distinctly unsettling connection between them for an instant, just an instant, opening the door on his end just far enough. And in that one instant he knew what had happened, and how, and he felt the shattering grief not only of lives lost, of innocent lives and new lives brutally taken, but of vast, untapped power destroyed with the casual cruelty of an uncaring foot crushing beneath it something not even recognized as being alive.

  The jolt of pain he felt in her and shared with her was as powerful as a knife to the heart.

  Gone. They were gone.

  They were gone forever.

  “Tasha . . .”

  “I felt them . . . I felt them die . . . John . . . I don’t ever want to feel anything like that again. Ever.”

  “I know.” He held her, his hands stroking her back, trying to soothe, the heat of his body trying to warm the bone-deep chill of hers.

  He wanted to reassure her. Needed to badly. Not because she was his responsibility, his charge as her Guardian, but because she was more. Because these past weeks and a knowledge of each other deeper than words can ever be had made her more to him, so much more.

  Because they were linked, connected, bonded. Because even though he had not told her so, she had become more important to him than anything had ever been in his life, more important even than the war to which he had dedicated his life, and the much-loved wife whose murder had been the catalyst for that decision a decade before.

  She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him in the dim light, her normally pale green eyes darkened, wet, still suffering, and he would have done anything in his power to ease her pain.

  So he did.

  Without even thinking about it, he opened up the connection between them completely, opened the door he controlled all the way, instinctively sending through all the warmth and comfort stored for so long inside him. He sent caring and gentleness. He sent a strength she could lean on when she had to. He sent the utter certainty of an ultimate triumph even if that seemed far beyond reach right now.

  And he sent sorrow, for the soldiers lost along the way, those who had fought at his side. For the psychics lost, stolen from them, taken in dark secret and in open violence. And sorrow for these recent tiny souls lost, for the pitiful, damaged women who had never been granted the chance to bear their special offspring, and for the tiny new souls who had never been granted the chance to breathe and live and be.

  He sent to Tasha, shared with her, all that he was.

  Tasha wasn’t even certain he was completely aware of the gift he was giving her, or whether he would later regret it, but for now she accepted it gladly. The awful pain eased as much as it could. All the dark, cold corners of herself began to lighten, to warm, to feel less empty, and she was so grateful.

  She had been alone for so long, alone for most of her life even when her adoptive parents were alive and had loved her very much. Alone because she had always known she was different and yet had to pretend to be like everyone else. Alone and with no one to share the pain and loneliness of being different.

  Tasha would never have believed he would be the one, when mere comfort and understanding were not enough, who truly reached out, physically as well as psychically. She was almost afraid to believe it now. But he was holding her in his arms, first only to comfort, she knew that, to share her pain and do his best to ease it.

  But, somehow, when he opened fully the connection between them, when he felt and shared the agony she was nearly drowning in, the screams of unborn infants with whom she felt an odd kinship, something changed.

  For the first time in his life, John Brodie saw into someone else’s soul.

  And what he saw moved him unbearably.

  Tasha was, dimly, aware of that. Of his surprise. Of the complex tangle of emotions he didn’t try to hide from her. But then one of them or both of them took that last step separating them. There was a different kind of reaching, a sudden awareness when the moment of comfort became something else entirely.

  She didn’t know what changed in that moment.

  She didn’t care.

  From the cold agony of tragedy and loss, Tasha felt more than comfort and understanding begin to fill her being. She felt herself changing. His mouth was on hers, seducing even though it didn’t have to, driving away the coldness and the pain.

  He was who Tasha needed, what she needed, and everything inside her, every sense, every instinct, told her so. Her mouth was alive beneath his, her body straining to be closer to him. All their senses reached out, their minds, touching and twining and settling into place with an ineffable sense of belonging.

  Still, she had to hesitate one last time, had to ask and to ask aloud, uncertain, fearful of more pain.

  “John . . . are you sure?” she whispered.

  “More sure than I’ve been of anything in my life.”

  “We don’t know what it’ll be, what we’ll be after this.”

  “We’ll be together. Stronger together. Better together.” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly as though releasing burdens he had not even felt until that moment. “We’ll belong together.”

  “I’m not the woman you lost,” she had to say.

  “You are the woman I love. There are no ghosts between us, Tasha. No regrets. You are not second best to me. We were meant to be together. And you know that as well as I do.”

  I love you, and I couldn’t bear it if it was just comfort.

  It isn’t.

  “It’s more. It’s so much more.” His arms tightened around her, and his mouth covered hers again, this time with utter certainty.

  Tasha had not known what to expect. Not because no man had kissed her with desire, with longing, but because Brodie had not. It was so much more than she had ever felt in her life. His strength flowed into her being, his gentleness. His ruthlessness and his compassion. His loneliness and the comradeship found here and there along the way. His rage and his sweetness. His pain and his joy. His commitment to his cause . . . and his utter and complete commitment to her.

  He was right. It was so much more.

  She was barely aware of her sleep shirt removed and flung aside, or his sweatpants following. Barely aware of the bed beneath them, covers pushed away. Of the lamp-lit room that showed them just enough soft light.

  Tasha would have said Brodie was the most controlled man she had ever known, just as she would have said she was the most guarded of anyone she had ever known. But that night, in the last of the darkness outside and dawn’s promise only beginning to lighten the sky, she discovered how wrong she had been. About both of them.

  He was not controlled when he touched her. His mouth burned and his hands shook and his body trembled. His heart hammered in his chest, and his breath came as quickly as her own did, because her guard came crashing down at the first touch of him.

  He touched rich curves, his fingertips and his lips exploring silky skin with a hunger answered instantly, without thought, by her own fiery need.

  She felt a hard body beneath her probing fingers and lips, firm skin over hard muscle earned in a lifetime of physical work that owed nothing to a gym. A powerful body marked here and there by the scars of battles past, by close calls in deadly encounters. She cried without meaning to, her lips pressed to each scar old and new, as if her love could heal those marks on his flesh and in his soul.

  She gave as fully as he did, offering up everything she was to him. The triumphs and tragedies, the good times and the bad ones, the aching loneliness of a life lived apart from others and the joy of finding others who understood.

  The utter joy of finding him.

  Their connection, not one initially forged in love but in life-or-death need, grew in those moments. Evolved. It became more, stronger, surer, once-gossamer threads uncertainly linking their two minds becoming threads of something stronger than steel, something that could never be broken, weaving a more stable, permanent, immutable bond and anchoring it deeply inside both of them.

  And along with all that was something new.

  Something neither had planned and both needed.

  Something that would change everything.

  THREE

  It was still before dawn when Duran made his final patrol around the periphery of the downtown Charleston area they had (over his objections) settled on as their base. For now, at least. There were two locations in the area, one familiar to Murphy and her people because Duran had used it before, and the real base, the new one, well hidden and designed, despite his misgivings, with more permanence in mind.

  There was too much complacency, he thought, too much arrogance in their self-certainty, in their belief that they had the right to do this. Any of this. Even with battles lost to Murphy and her people, even with valuable psychics lost, they were still convinced theirs was the superior force, still convinced they were right, more than right.

  Entitled.

  Duran was no longer sure of that. He had not really been sure of that, he knew, for quite some time now. He had seen too many mistakes made by those on his side, and knew of a great many others before his time. Too many assumptions that turned out to be wrong. Dangerously wrong.

  Too many experiments with unwilling subjects and results all the records clinically referred to as “unsuccessful.”

  Duran thought of them as tragic.

  He doubted Sebring thought of the matter at all, except to immediately turn her attention to locating and obtaining more psychics for more experiments. Because that was her job, and because she was dedicated to men who were obsessed with a cause she still believed in.

  As for the other side, Murphy’s side, they were a people to whom freedom and the right to control their own destinies as well as they could represented a very, very large part of who they were, perhaps even stamped in the very cells of their bodies, embedded in their DNA. Many had died over the years at the hands of his own people rather than submit, concede, and be mastered.