ShiftingHeat (24 page)

“I thought you were, for a moment back there. You succumbed
to my suggestion very quickly.”

Serena sat on a chair in a typical hotel room. A flat-screen
TV stood on the vanity across from the bed and another, empty bed stood between
the one he occupied and the window, over which the drapes were drawn. It could
be any room anywhere, although from the coffeemaker he surmised they were still
in America. His mind worked far too frantically. He couldn’t control it at this
rate. His heart beat too fast—he didn’t like this, something was wrong.

“I doubled your dose,” she said, as if he’d spoken aloud.
Which, he supposed, he had, to her. “I will increase the cephalox and retain
your other drugs. You will take them or I will make you.”

He knew she could. With one thought she could do it. He
searched his mind, found the deepest corners and relegated his inmost thoughts to
that place. Chase Maynord had taught him a few tricks. So was layering a more
innocuous train of thought over it. Not that it would help right now, but it
might benefit him in the long term. If he had a long term. “You got me to take
pills while I was unconscious?”

“I did.” She got to her feet and strolled to the coffeemaker.
“In case you were wondering, you’ve been unconscious for five hours, you’ve had
one dose of pills, doubled to ensure your continued condition, and we have left
New York.”

Terrible news. He couldn’t use telepathy to contact anyone
he knew. Likely she had blocked this room off, anyway. He couldn’t rely on his newfound
powers to get him out of this. If he was going to get out of this.

No, he couldn’t think that. He
would
get out of this.
He had to.

“What do you want from me?” And why, he wondered, was he
still here? Why hadn’t she sold him? If she faked her own death it was because
she was involved in the venal trade of selling her own kind to people who would
torture them in the name of science. Venal. He liked that. Obviously loving a
professor of literature was having a positive effect on his vocabulary.

“The same as the others. I’ll move you on to someone else,
when the time is right.”

“When will that be?”

She smiled and turned her attention to the coffeemaker.
“When I think it’s right.”

A significant word, that.
I
, she’d said. It could
signal that she was in control of the whole operation. Or that she was working
on her own here. Or both. “You don’t listen to your bosses?”

“I have no bosses.”

The first one then. But that didn’t rule out the second.

She brought him the coffee and put it on the nightstand
between the beds. He reached out, touched her and, in that instant before she
suppressed it, felt a surge of something he shouldn’t have felt, not in this
Sorcerer. Emotion. He couldn’t discern what kind, but it didn’t feel dispassionate.
Far from it.

He had something he could use. Now to find out what kind of
emotion. She stared at his hand but didn’t move. “Let me go.”

“I’m not stopping you moving away.” He had to take great
care now. She wouldn’t believe any sudden declaration. It might take time. “But
unlike you, I need human contact sometimes.”

“You know nothing.”

“So tell me.”

She shrugged.

With difficulty, because the extra drugs had increased the
stiffness and pain in his body, Andros sat upright and shoved some pillows behind
his back for support. He tried not to wince and fought to control his
dizziness. “What’s it like being a Sorcerer, cutting yourself off from human
emotion?”

She stared at him. “I’ve always found it quite easy.”

“You don’t get to talk very often, do you? Just talk.” He
guessed that was part of her problem, and wondered if she’d recognize the right
word if she heard it. Lonely, she was lonely.

“I talk to many people.”

But not socially. He had a hunch. “Were you brought up in
one of those isolation schools we hear about but never see?”

“What’s it like being ordinary?” she countered.

He blinked. “I was never ordinary. Well, not for long. I was
diagnosed with Becker’s in my teens.” Until then he’d been what she’d consider
as ordinary, though. “I went to a regular high school, managed to graduate, had
a few girlfriends. Lost my virginity at sixteen,” he said, not without a touch
of pride. He’d done it with a girl who he’d thought at the time he’d spend the
rest of his life with. It had lasted only two years, but it had been a good two
years. He should get back in touch with her, just to see how she was doing. If
he got out of here, that was. When. He meant
when
, not
if
.

“Some would-be virgin Sorcerers go mad. They are treated so
they recover.”

“How?”

“They are given orgasms.” She stared at him.

“How?” His stomach churned at the thought that children were
made to come. But it was either that or lose their minds. Orgasms reduced a
Sorcerer’s power to manageable levels.

“In noninvasive ways. Vampires are often used.”

“That’s not much better. But maybe that’s the mortal
talking. Before I met my brother-in-law I had no idea vampires really existed.
Although I hoped.”

“Why?”

He grimaced. “I thought they could convert me and cure me. I
was desperate for a cure.” He needed to draw her in, confide in her, make her
trust him. If he could somehow avoid taking the cephalox, in twenty-four hours
he could shape-shift.

It would take too long. He could be dead by then.

“Why do you want me?” He swallowed and made sure she saw his
nervousness. Sorcerers weren’t always adept at body language. “Why not just
kill me?”

She nodded. “Reasonable questions. Two reasons. You interest
me. I want to strip your mind, find out what it means to have a disability one
moment and be cured the next. I don’t have to do it that way, but it’s faster
and easier.” And from the spark of triumph he saw in her eyes, he thought she
might enjoy rendering him helpless. “I’ll be careful—I’ll make sure there’s
something left for the scientists. And that’s the other reason. I can get a
good price for a dragon.”

“Does betrayal of your own kind mean nothing to you?”

She regarded him, her face as blank as if she’d been shot
full of Botox and collagen. “I have no ‘own kind’. But I have a need to make
money so I can live adequately.” She shrugged. “It’s a rational decision.
Regrettably, I’ll have to cut the university connection, but I have other
outlets.”

He had no idea if Daria had the power Ann intimated, but he
hoped so. Otherwise he was fucked. Though perhaps not. Ideas crowded the back
of his mind, thoughts he pushed down so she couldn’t read them unless she
forced herself in. He put a gentle thread of attraction in the front of his
mind, let it wind around his other thoughts. Nothing too much, overkill would
drive her away, he was sure.
Careful.

She responded. Just a gleam of interest in her eyes. “You
know the first person I took was a vampire. He tried to seduce me.”

Shit, oh, shit.
She’d noticed. He’d decided to attack
her in the place where she had least experience and, being a virgin, that had
to be personal relationships and sex. He didn’t like her smile. If a serpent
could smile it would look like that. “You think I can seduce you?”

“You can try.”

Oh yeah, he got it now. Arrogance often reaped its own
reward. Did he take her on, accept her challenge, or did he give in and just
wait to be rescued? Or, as seemed more likely, killed. Well one thing was for
sure. He wasn’t going to just take whatever she chose to do to him. “So what
will you do?”

“The workings of your mind interest me. You will doubtless
give me an opportunity to explore it.”

Yes, he would. He’d leave a gap, a space that she could get
through but let her think she’d forced her way in.

She bared her teeth in that awful simulacrum of a smile
again. “Do you wish to turn this into a game? Try to seduce me and I’ll allow
you to try. For each failure, I’ll take a little part of you away, explore that
part of your mind. A duel, of sorts. Would you want that?”

What were they waiting for? Why didn’t she just do it and
have done? Or did she enjoy torturing her victims?

“Can we eat first?” he asked.

“Sure.”

She picked up her cell phone from the table by her side and
pressed a speed dial number. Fuck, he’d hoped to see the keypad, or even get
her to use the hotel phone that stood opposite him. If it was the kind that
made noises, he was in, because he knew keypad sounds. She saw his glance. “I
disconnected it. Don’t even try. And I threw your cell away. Doubtless they’ve
put a tracker in it. So STORM should waste an hour or two discovering where I
left it.”

His heart leaped. All he needed was time. She hadn’t cut
him, hadn’t discovered the tracker deep in his body. He’d inserted it six
months ago, an experiment in planting undetectable trackers on agents in the
field. Ann would remember it. She had to. He’d left the receiving equipment in
his office at STORM. It couldn’t be tracked by conventional equipment. If it
even worked anymore.

While she ordered sandwiches and fresh coffee, Andros
thought hard, worked a few things out, concentrating on her. What did she want?
To prove her superiority. To taunt him, no doubt.

So he’d take the high road. Submission or gentle, sensuous
seduction wouldn’t work with her. Unless he tried the submissive, then switched
before she realized what he was up to. He’d had orgasms, she hadn’t and that
might take her by surprise. She’d try to fool him. And right now, he was a
cripple, so he couldn’t move, couldn’t hold her down. But if he made her come,
that would weaken her, maybe take all her Talent away and then he had a chance.

He felt sick. He so didn’t want to do this. He wanted Faye,
didn’t want anyone else. He wasn’t even sure she’d understand.

But he began his campaign. “Do you have any sexual
experience at all?”

“A little. I can stop. Most people can, they just have to
put their minds to it, that’s all.” Her carefully lipsticked mouth quirked.
Serena’s appearance was immaculate, her crisp cotton top just the right shade
of light green to complement the darker color of her perfectly cut pants. She
wore small, gold earrings, gleaming in the subdued light in the room when she
turned her head. Nothing of the flyaway about Serena. He reflected on the
glorious lights in Faye’s hair, even better when mussed than when she’d just
brushed it and parts flew into the air, drawn by static electricity.

Perfect. She liked perfection. Another clue. “What don’t you
like about sex?”

“The messiness. I can’t understand how people would
voluntarily get into that state. Yes, I’ve seen porn films. I watched them to
test myself.”

He was right. She was curious but arrogant about her ability
to control her urges. “Do any of the kinks appeal to you?”

“No.” Something flickered across her mind.
Score.
She
had to feel strongly to let even that touch escape her. He took care to hide
the fact that he’d noticed.

Oh, but something interested her about the porn she’d
watched. Maybe being the only female in a group of males, having them all
worship her. Or sex in the bath, one of his personal favorites. Exhibitionism,
maybe. She’d hate to be a sub to a Dom. Andros could perhaps simulate the
relationship in some way. It wasn’t one of his things, but he understood that a
sub was given permission by her Master to fly free, to own the relationship.
He’d bet his last keyboard Serena didn’t understand that. So he began to talk
to her. “I’m only talking now. When I touch you, the challenge will begin, but
I need that food to keep up my strength. You want to give me a fair match,
don’t you?”

She nodded. “The food will arrive in about twenty minutes.
You can take your next dose of pills, then we can get down to business. You
will not win, Andros. Understand that.”

He did. He doubted he could win, but he couldn’t see any
other chance. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious or where he was. He
could be on the other side of the country, in which case tracking him wouldn’t
be a possibility, since GPS tracking devices wouldn’t work.

He leaned back against his pillows. “Even in my condition
I’ve had some sexual experiences in the past. Some girls like a helpless male.
I’ve been known to exaggerate a little if it gets me laid. Whatever you have,
you use.”

“Charming.”

“I’ve never coerced a woman, never done anything except give
her what she wanted.” Before Faye, he’d enjoyed variety. Sex seemed to make
anything better. And since he had a reduced lifespan anyway, he’d taken some
risks maybe he shouldn’t have. He wanted to give her a bit of flesh, but
removing his clothes would declare the contest on. Then, he had no doubt, she’d
destroy him. She meant only to play with him, and if he got close, she’d crush
him, destroy parts of his mind as she’d said she would. Once, when he’d been
testing a security camera in an iso room, he’d seen Chase Maynord dissect a
man’s mind, slice through the layers. Chase knew he was watching, but continued
with his ruthless examination of the man who had murdered teenagers because he
thought them beneath his notice.

Andros tried not to shudder. Afterward, he’d heard Chase vomiting
in the nearest men’s room. Serena would have loved it. “You’ve never
experienced intimacy of any kind? No cuddling or caressing?”

“What’s the point? Isn’t the whole idea of recreational sex to
have an orgasm?”

He gave a superior smile. “Not at all. It’s the intimacy too.
For mortals who don’t know how to use their telepathy, it’s the closest they
can get to merging with another person. For Talents, it’s a way to merge, blend
minds and combine that with physical closeness. It’s also a lot of fun. Some
people use it politically.”

She raised a brow. “Tell me more.”