Allegiance of Honor (36 page)

From the private diaries of Father Xavier Perez

June 11, 2077

Nina,

I’ve acquired a second Psy friend. It turns out my two friends have known each other longer than I’ve known either one of them—but to induct me into their inner circle was a matter of trust that couldn’t be rushed.

Having glimpsed the war they’re fighting, the lies hidden beneath more lies that they seek to expose, I understand their caution. This second man, he’s far more suspicious than my first friend and impossibly more dangerous.

Somehow, I have become the voice of reason. Don’t laugh too hard. I find that the more I minister to my parishioners, the more I learn myself.

But nothing will ever change my heart. It bears only your name.

Love,
Xavier

KALEB WAS AT
home with Sahara when she got the comm call from Ivy Jane, with Sascha Duncan also looped into the discussion. He and Sahara had been on the deck of their home on the outskirts of Moscow, Kaleb running through a martial arts routine, while Sahara did the yoga that made her so graceful.

Darkness had fallen on their side of the world, and the stars had been bright overhead as they moved quietly on the deck lit only by the delicate metal lamps Sahara had set out. She’d bought those lamps in a market in Istanbul when he took her there for dinner one night, both of them in disguise.

“So we can act as young as we are,” Sahara had said to him with a grin, wrapping her arms around his neck. “No one watching, no one expecting us to behave.”

They’d eaten at a tiny café hidden deep inside the markets, surrounded by locals who’d looked at them sideways until Sahara pulled her favorite trick and spoke to them in their own language—right down to the subdialect used in the market area. By the time they left, she was fast friends with half the clientele and was well on the way to charming the other half. He’d just watched her laugh, watched her sparkle, and been happy.

She’d fallen in love with the metal lamps sold at what felt like half the shops in the markets, had scooped up four for their deck. Then she’d bought him a glass “genie” bottle for his study, the color of the finely blown glass a mix between red and cerise. He’d come home one day to
find the bottle filled with blank “wishes” that he was permitted to write on and redeem at will, with Sahara acting as his genie.

And that bottle, it never ran out, no matter how many wishes he redeemed.

Dance for me,
he’d written on more than one.

Watching Sahara create music with her body was a gift of which he never became tired. He’d been planning to ask if she’d dance a little tonight after she finished her yoga, but then had come the call from Ivy Jane.

He would’ve stayed outside while Sahara took it in privacy, but she popped her head back outside to say that Ivy and Sascha wanted him to listen in. Teleporting himself a towel, he rubbed the sweat off his face, then left the towel around his neck as he joined Sahara in front of the living room comm screen, on which she usually programmed images from her favorite dances.

“You might as well know.” Lines of tiredness marked Ivy’s face. “I’ve already told Vasic and Aden. At some point, we’re going to have to go public.”

When she began to speak, what she told them made too much sense. In particular, the near-total lack of human connections was the
one
thing that made the post-Silence PsyNet different from the Forgotten’s ShadowNet.

Unfortunately, she was also right in her understanding of the current state of Psy-human relations. “The majority of humans will happily watch the Psy race collapse into oblivion,” Kaleb said to Sahara once the other two women had signed off. “And the majority of Psy think humans are beneath them.” The latter was pure stupidity, but Silence had fostered an arrogance that was going to take decades to ameliorate.

“I don’t know,” Sahara murmured, a look on her face that meant she was strategizing. “Maybe it’s simply a case of giving humans and Psy reasons to interact. The heart will do the rest.”

Kaleb raised his eyebrows. “All such situations will do is give them endless opportunities to ignore each other. That is, if they don’t try to kill one another.”

“Don’t be so cynical.” Scowling, Sahara tugged on the ends of the towel to hold him in place. “You know you believe in love.”

“I believe in loving you.” Always he would love her.

She rose on tiptoe. “I love you back more.”

“Impossible.” She was his life, his heart’s blood.

Hands on her hips, he lifted her into his kiss. When she hooked her legs around him, it was instinct to move forward, press her back against the wall. Then his eyes landed on the wall that was his destination.

He stopped.

Following his gaze, Sahara smiled. “Our wall of memories is filling up.”

“Yes.” The photograph that had stopped him in his tracks was from a time when he’d teleported into DarkRiver territory to pick her up from Faith’s and discovered Judd had come by to say hello.

Kaleb hadn’t seen Sahara take the photograph, but it was of him and Judd in conversation, the rogue Arrow smiling faintly while Kaleb stood with his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, his head slightly angled in a listening position and his shoulders relaxed under the plain white of a long-sleeved business shirt.

He looked . . . open, unshielded against a man who was lethal should he want to be. But then, Judd was also the man who’d fought for Kaleb when even Kaleb didn’t believe in his ability to hold firm against the darkness.

Some friendships were set in stone.

“I love that photo.” Hugging her arms around his neck, Sahara kissed his jaw. “The backdrop of firs, your body language and his. It’s obvious you’re friends. Good friends.”

“We need one with Xavier, too.” The priest was the only other man Kaleb considered a friend. “When he’s back.” Father Xavier Perez was currently in a remote and mountainous part of South America searching for his Nina.

Kaleb and Judd had both offered to teleport him to the woman they believed to be the lover for whom he searched, but Xavier had made it
clear he needed to fight this battle himself. In the interim, Kaleb had discovered it was difficult to practice patience while one of his closest friends walked alone in the wilderness. It made him understand why Judd and Xavier had been so concerned about him in the years before he broke Sahara free from her prison.

“You walk in aloneness, my friend,” Xavier had said one day not long into their acquaintance, the other man’s expression holding a peace that came from deep within the soul.

Kaleb could still remember his response. “There is strength in being without vulnerability.” A false response even then, because he carried in his heart a vulnerability he would never give up, for to give it up would mean giving up Sahara.

She tried to lower her legs now, laughed and stayed in position when he refused to release her. “We’ll get a photo with Xavier as soon as he returns with Nina.”

Kaleb went silent.

“What is it? You’re thinking deep thoughts.” Dark blue eyes holding his as she reached up to brush strands of hair off his forehead, the charms on her bracelet catching the light.

“I’m wondering how so many people became entwined in my life.” He was used to thinking of himself as a lone wolf but for Sahara. Only he had Judd and Xavier, too.

And then there was Leon.

Sahara’s father continued to call him “son,” continued to treat him with an absentminded paternal affection that Kaleb didn’t know how to process. He’d been beaten and tormented by the only father figure he knew. He’d always understood that Leon was different, that the man loved his daughter, but Kaleb had never expected that paternal warmth to be turned in his direction.

“These people are in your life because you made the choice to be their friend.” Sahara rubbed her nose gently against his. “You chose not to betray their loyalty even when it might have been expedient, and to stand with them when they needed your help.”

“You make me sound good.” He wasn’t, she knew that.

“You know how to be loyal, Kaleb.” A whisper, her breath kissing his lips. “How to love.”

He had no rebuttal. He’d been hers since the moment they met. “Because of you.”

“Being loved by you . . .” Her eyes shone like jewels as the psychic bond between them blazed with that glorious light that touched even the twisted heart of him.

He loved,
was
loved.

Kaleb needed nothing else.

“You still occasionally covet world domination, though,” Sahara said with a grin after catching the edge of his thoughts.

“A small thing.”

Shoulders shaking, she squeezed her legs around him. “If you can love that deeply, that passionately, why not humans and Psy?”

“A hundred years of hatred and distrust and arrogance.”

Sahara waved a hand. “A small thing.”

And though they were discussing the possible and catastrophic end of the Psy race, Kaleb felt his lips curve. “Of course. You believe the heart will conquer all.”

She pushed at his shoulders. “I’m going to have the last laugh, Kaleb Krychek, just you wait.” After which, she kissed him, the wrong thing to do if she wanted to condition him to change his opinion.

But Sahara didn’t think that way. Neither did he. Not when he was with her.

“Let’s shower,” she said against his lips. “We’re sticky from the exercise, and I’ve got to start plotting how to get humans and Psy to look at one another not as enemies, but as potential lovers.”

Whatever their disagreements on racial politics, being naked with Sahara was one of Kaleb’s favorite things. He loved sliding his hands over her skin, loved having her mind linked to his while he caressed her in different ways until he knew exactly what gave her the greatest pleasure. Of course, she did the same to him.

Kaleb didn’t mind. He was hers to do with as she wished.

Tonight he pressed his hands to the tile above her head as she laughed and stole kisses and continued to argue with him as the water pounded down on his back. He met her arguments with his own even as he pressed more heavily into her, his rigid erection shoving impatiently against her abdomen. Shivering, she rubbed against him, and when she kissed him this time, her smile sank into him, her hand stroking up to curve over his nape.

He loved the way she held him, so possessive and demanding.

Kaleb.
She closed her fingers over his stone-hard penis.

His body jerked but it wasn’t in rejection. He was simply never ready for the jolt of pleasure that was Sahara’s touch.
When am I going to be used to you?

Maybe if we cause a few more earthquakes.

I think the seismologists are confused enough as it is.
He could control his violent telekinetic power during sex, but only by punching it deep into the earth. It had certain repercussions.

Nibbling at his jaw, Sahara said,
Want to stop?

Never.
Kaleb moved one hand down to fondle her breast, cupping the warm silken roundness, then running the pad of his thumb over the hard nub of her nipple. Moaning in the back of her throat, Sahara released him, nuzzled her way down his neck. “I need you.”

Lifting her with his hands under her thighs, he slid his erection through her delicate folds before pushing deep into her. She was so tight around him, but they fit; they fit perfectly. Gasping at his entry, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs already wrapped around his hips. “I love how you feel inside me.”

Kaleb shuddered at her words, undone.

He rocked slowly into her, and when she tugged down his head and demanded a kiss, he opened his mouth over hers and they danced in love. Slow and gentle, skin sliding against skin and breaths mingling as the water ran down his back.

The earthquake was inevitable.

As was their solemn conversation after the shower, when they lay
tangled in bed. All jokes aside, the PsyNet was in serious trouble. It wasn’t critical, not yet, so they had a little breathing room, but that room wouldn’t last forever. “You’re never going to be at risk,” he told Sahara. “If need be, I can haul the clean sections of the Net together, create a small but functional network.”

Sahara rose up beside him on her elbow, her eyes troubled. “You made a promise.”

One hand curving around her throat, he said, “I’ll keep it. I’ll fight to save the PsyNet and the Psy race.” For her, he’d save instead of kill. And for her, he’d build instead of destroy. “But I won’t flounder in a doomed network, and never will I leave you in danger.”

Not even you
, he telepathed,
can force me to watch you die when I can stop it.
He’d been made helpless to save her once. Never again.

Furious emotion filled her eyes. “I would never do that,” she whispered, her voice raw. “I would never hurt you that way.”

He realized he’d made her angry rather than desolate. “Then walk with me into this,” he demanded. “Tell me you won’t fight me if I ever make the call. Tell me we’ll do it together.”

Her eyes held his own and he knew his gaze was obsidian, devoid of stars. “I trust you with every tiny particle of my being and every corner of my soul,” Sahara said. “If you ever say there’s no hope, that it’s time for the last throw of the dice, then I’ll be right there beside you.”

Shifting his hold to grip her jaw, he kissed her hard. “Now that we’ve settled that, let’s figure out how to fix this so we never have to throw those particular dice.” Because while he knew he’d save her, Kaleb also knew the loss of millions of other lives would devastate his Sahara.

To keep her whole, he’d have to ensure the PsyNet did not fall.