Blind Heat Read online

  The office door directly across from the lab had no security in evidence. Marcus nudged the lever-like handle down easily with a paw and gained access. A quick look around showed no cameras. He looked up along the ceiling, hoping a common air duct might give him access. Nothing.

  The room was lit by the soft glow of a computer screen. A screensaver flicked through images that appeared to be vacation and family photos. Marcus didn’t want to think about families, but as he paced the narrow space between desk and counter, it occurred to him whenever they were stumped by a problem, every member of his family under the age of three hundred turned to a computer for answers.

  Marcus didn’t trust computers and never had a desire to use one, so he did what he always did when forced to utilize one—called his assistant. The faintness of the telepathic connection, once established, suggested Jake was distracted.

  Jake? Where are you?

  Babysitting. Why do I suspect it’d be more interesting to know where you are?

  Marcus wished he could turn back the clock, visit his son Adam’s family with Jake instead of trying to lose his restlessness in the park. Helping care for the septuplets was the sensible, practical thing to do. What his son would do. Pain zapped through his body, as if he’d grabbed a live wire, and then was gone. A dim flicker of what the hybrid must be enduring, he knew.

  No time to chat, Jake. Look up something on the computer for me?

  Look up what?

  How to override a thumbprint lock.

  Shit!

  A long silence followed the expletive and for a moment Marcus thought he’d lost his link.

  Jake?

  Magus, wherever you are, turn around and leave. And make sure you leave alone.

  Marcus decided this was not a good time to remind Jake not to call him by his formal title.

  Jake, just do this for me without arguing. Marcus swallowed a king-sized chunk of pride. Please?

  There are a couple of reasons I can’t do that, Magus. One, there’s that little matter of the low profile we promised to keep. Two, I have a baby in each arm with eyelids at half mast.

  Fine. There’s a computer here in front of me. Tell me what to do.

  Now we’re back to that first reason.

  Marcus didn’t want to fight dirty, but he was running out of options. Using himself as a conduit, he linked the hybrid’s mind to Jake. The connection lasted a few seconds before babies wailed and Jake broke communication.

  That didn’t go well. Marcus hadn’t considered tension in Jake’s body would telegraph to the infants. He stared at the computer, certain it was the key, tried to remember what he’d seen Jake do to operate one. He nudged the mouse with his nose. The photo show disappeared and was replaced by a screen with tiny pictures of objects. Hmm. He didn’t have a clue what to do next.

  Jake’s thoughts broke into his. Maya is trying to reestablish calm in the nursery. She gave me five minutes, so we have to do this quick. Maya had escaped Pantheria to avoid a forced pregnancy when she refused to choose two males to join her in a traditional mating triad. Even Maya could tame her restless urges and impulses for the sake of family. Maybe the difference for Marcus was that as high magus, all beings were his family, their suffering his duty to alleviate.

  Tell me what to do, Jake.

  I said quick.

  You say that like I’m feeble-minded.

  I’m using Adam’s computer to research the locks. Pay attention. I can only tell you this once.

  Marcus had the info he needed in under a minute. The paperclip he required would take a bit more work, work that couldn’t be accomplished in leopard form. The constant shifting between states was draining his energy, but he had no choice—lock picking required an opposable thumb.

  Fortunately, medical labs came equipped with all the items he needed to keep from sprinkling his DNA everywhere, or leaving fingerprints. He started with a pair of latex gloves from the dispenser by the sink. He hesitated. There were cameras in the hall. More searching yielded scrubs and a lab coat, a medical mask and a paperclip. He pulled a little green cap over his hair and kept his head down when he stepped back into the hall.

  He tuned back into the guard, the voice faint but just discernible. “That’s it, baby, touch yourself. Push those pretty fingers deep into your pussy. Let me hear how much you love fingering yourself.”

  Marcus tried not to look, but the image was there in his mind unbidden, those slender fingers cupped over her sex, the languid look on her face, eyelids drooping. He heard every moan, imagined the slick, slurpy sound of female pussy tightening around thrusting fingers, the scent of her desire, the female tang against his tongue.

  Marcus nearly moaned himself.

  “Now stop,” the guard demanded.

  Her eyes widened. Her whimper protested.

  “I said stop.” His tone carried a faint trace of warning.

  Marcus hauled his attention back on task. At the rate they were moving he could only count on them staying occupied another couple of minutes.

  Marcus shuffled across the hall and dropped to his knees. As promised there was a concealed override. He slid the decorative cover back, inserted a paperclip into the spot and the door clicked open. He held his breath, waiting to see if opening the door might trigger any alarm.

  If it had, the guy in the guardroom was oblivious. “If I was there, I’d rub that sweet honey from your pussy all over your nipples and lick it off.”

  The paperclip slipped from Marcus’ fingers and pinged against the tile.

  “Since I can’t do that I want to watch you do it. Such nice, big titties, I bet you can lick your own nipples.”

  Marcus swiped at sweat on his brow with his sleeve, forced his mouth closed and clamped his teeth down on his aching tongue.

  Move closer to the cam where I can see them. “Lovely, sugar. Lovely.”

  They were lovely. Her nipples filled the screen, but they were a shade darker than the nail polish that had first caught his attention. “Speaking of attention…” he muttered. There were other places his needed to be. With a last, longing glance at nipples rolled between fingers and thumbs, sticky threads of liquid glistening between spread fingers when she dipped back in for more “honey”, Marcus slipped into the lab and closed the door.

  A plaintive mew from the corner revealed the hybrid who’d called Marcus to her. The force of her personality had led him to believe she was bigger, close to his size. She was a small white domestic housecat—a long-hair with brilliant green eyes. She tried to get to her feet but a spasm of pain dropped her back into the straw on the floor of her cage. Her delicate frame strained to support a grotesquely distorted belly. He knew the source of her pain even before reading the chart attached to the cage. He should have known before now. That she’d managed to shield that from him was a skill both admirable and alarming. He tugged a towel from the box they’d provided for her birthing, nudged the hybrid onto it and wrapped her gently.

  He turned away from the rows of gleaming eyes watching from other cages. Ignored the snuffles and thumps against the bars to gain his attention. He couldn’t save them all, but he could not leave parahuman infants in the hands of experimenters. He projected calm and visualized simple images of a safe place, which he hoped the mother could understand. She offered no resistance when he gave her head a reassuring pat and gathered her in his arms. Her eyes met his and locked his gaze, communicating both trust and uncanny intelligence.

  Getting out wasn’t as complex as getting in, but more risky. He couldn’t take her down through the water. He chose the stairs again, though slower, he preferred them to being closed in the elevator. He never could separate far enough from his feline nature to be comfortable in an electronically controlled box. Hella, he decided as he bounded down the last set of stairs. The little hybrid had been a number in the lab, but he would give her a new name for her new life. Hella meant light, hope—there was little enough of that in her life up to now.

  She mewed softly
, her breath coming in short pants.

  Just hold those kittens off a little longer. His thought fell on a semi-deaf mind, but there was no way to explain. Her mind existed in a reality without the boundaries of hours and minutes. And while those things she had no conception of impacted her life, she had no framework to comprehend a simple phrase like, Give me ten minutes, sweetheart, and it will all be better.

  He moved from the stairwell back into the basement. Depressing the button to raise the loading dock door didn’t sound any alarms. Security rarely tracked people exiting buildings. Marcus jumped from the dock into the parking lot, and his knees buckled— a sign of just how far his energy had been depleted.

  He tried to reconnect with the guard but it was like seeing through fog, black silhouettes, distant and fuzzy, thoughts inaudible behind the buzz of pain in his body and Hella’s. He struggled back to his feet and limped across the parking lot into the woods. Once out of range of any outdoor cameras he stripped out of his clothes, bundled them around the cat for added warmth and forced his body into another shift. It was like trying to drive up a snow-covered hill, lose momentum and you slide back down. His energy shifted up and about a third of the way there plummeted earthward, leaving him naked, shivering, on his knees in the snow. He put a hand to the bundle containing Hella, nestled at the base of a tree. Her tiny pink tongue gave his finger an encouraging lick. Was he that pathetic that a laboring mother felt pity for him?

  Pride swelled in his chest, pushed him past his own misery and back onto his feet. Before the cold gnawing at his bones could steal his power he snapped to the shifting plain and reappeared as a leopard. A slightly drunk leopard. Shifting so many times in such a short span had thrown off his sense of balance, destabilized his mind-body connection.

  It took three tries to gather the corners of the towel in such a way that he could carry Hella in a sling with the towel between his teeth as if he were a feline version of the stork.

  A stretch of woodland at the fringe of a public park was all that lay between him and his truck now. Hopefully there’d be enough energy restored by then to allow him to shift one last time and drive Hella to safety. Dawn light was slowly peeling back the cover of night. He needed the speed of four legs, the power of haunches that allowed him to leap streams, fallen logs, bound between rocks and hills. He managed a staggering lope.

  He had just started across the trail winding between him and the pond when the sound of someone coming down the trail froze him in place. That he wouldn’t have been aware of that approach from the time he stepped out of the lab so stunned him that he went still at the shock of it, costing precious time. He mentally sent Hella a warning, tucked her into a somewhat sheltered spot in the shadow of a bush and flattened himself in a patch of light and shadow pooled at the path’s edge. A leap to denser cover would likely have ended in a graceless belly flop that would attract the attention he sought to avoid. He went motionless, his caution telegraphing the seriousness of the danger so that Hella remained still and silent as well. The soft swoosh of shoes in snow grew in volume and a slender runner appeared at the bend in the trail.

  He closed his eyes to thin slits, worried some light reflection of the liquid surface might give him away. His black and white coloring should mingle with the snow-patched ground, render him invisible. It didn’t.

  The runner slowed and then stopped a few feet from him. His body taut, ready to dash for it, he watched her. She was dressed in black running tights and a long-sleeved gray shirt. No hat, scarf, gloves. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and her cheeks were flushed from her run. He could hear the up-kick in her heartbeat, already fast because of the exertion.

  She murmured, squinted and he guessed she was trying to decide if she really saw what her eyes were telling her she saw. He could only guess, because her thoughts remained shielded. A skill rare in humans and usually exhibited only by those who’d suffered such great trauma that they had mastered the trick of concealing their own thoughts from themselves, locking away ugly memories. He wondered what evil had touched one so young. He doubted she was twenty-five years.

  She took a step closer, her heart revved up another notch, her breath fast little puffs in the frosty air. “Not real,” she was muttering, “a new sculpture. Heck of a place to put it.”

  She took another step toward him, her hand outstretched. Hella, thank the mother of all, stayed quiet.

  A curious vibration washed over Marcus, a soft lulling hum, almost a purring that seeped through his skin and into his bones. He wanted to be closer to her, lose himself in that delicious sensation. His eyelids snapped up and he gave her a thorough look, the light was coming up. Dark hair, fair skin, green eyes. She was definitely not his kind. Even if he overlooked that a female, unescorted, wouldn’t be in a human-controlled territoryPantherians didn’t have green eyes. His senses were so skewed by his depleted energy he couldn’t trust what they told him.

  As much as he wanted to feel those slender fingers run through his fur, as much as he longed to roll onto his back and have her scratch his belly, he had to discourage her from touching—discovering the nose her fingers reached to touch was cool and wet and attached to a living, breathing leopard.

  He resisted her pull with a rise in his own energy, his body fading as the vibration quickened and he was gone from her sight, fading away with the rising sun. He didn’t have the energy to shift, so he had to hope fading away would be enough. He hoped she would move on quickly, staying in the shifting plane was like holding your breath under water. He might be able to hold himself shapeless longer than the average Pantherian, but in his exhausted state he felt as if his mind was losing its cohesiveness, the essence of who he was separating and scattering like air from a balloon. How far could bits of himself scatter before they were too far apart to reunite?

  While he was formless, he had no hearing or sight. Those features required ears and eyes. He waited, knowing time was running out for both him and Hella. When he couldn’t hold it a nanosecond longer, he re-formed. The force of his return scattered snow in plumes of powder. He sucked air into hungry lungs and braced himself for a female’s scream. Silence.

  The world around him snapped into focus. The woman was gone, back the way she had come. The sound of another runner, male, approaching from the opposite direction had him cursing. He dove for Hella, but she was gone, along with her towel and the borrowed scrubs. The woman must have taken her, and tracks to the hiding place bore that out. Marcus’ weary brain scrambled for a plan.

  The man was getting closer, his thoughts—easily read—centered on beating a buddy a few yards behind him. Marcus didn’t have the strength to stand. Frustration rumbling in his chest, he had to abandon Hella and crawl on his belly into the underbrush.

  Chapter One

  Allie selected and copied faces of three coworkers from a group photo. She pasted each image as a separate document, converted it to grayscale, and hit print. She rubbed her eyes and pushed tangled hair back from her face, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn while the first image took shape on the page. She rechecked her notes and the website to ensure she wrote the correct name on the back of the image and pushed away from the desk while she waited for the next image to print.

  Her one-room apartment was lit only by the soft glow of the computer screen. The other side of the window beyond her bed remained stubbornly black. Still too dark to be safe. She glanced once at the rumpled bed, then away. She’d find no rest there in her current mood. She took the first photo, read her boss’s name aloud from the back, and let Elaine’s name repeat in her mind, a silent mantra. Without taking her eyes from the photo, without losing focus on the name belonging to the face, she opened her desk drawer, grabbed a scrunchie, pulled her long hair back in a ponytail, and dropped back into her chair. She selected a layout pencil from her sketch box, opened her sketchbook to a clean page and went to work.

  By the time she’d drawn that same set of features three times, the window had gone from black t
o a square of pale silver. Allie didn’t feel any closer to her goal. When she closed her eyes, tried to bring up a mental image, the center of the face remained a blur. She couldn’t recall details beyond the pointy chin and hairstyle.

  She pushed away from her desk, avoided looking at the bed and went to the window. Restless dreams had driven her from bed hours ago and she’d tried to pass the time until dawn working on her project. Snippets of erotic dreams flashed in the back of her mind as she worked and probably had much to do with her lack of progress.

  Every inch of her screamed for the touch of a lover’s hands, but there was no lover, only dreams, misty phantoms. Rain, the sound drew Allie to push back the translucent curtain and peer into the gray mists. The ache inside her drove her need to get out, to go out, to run hard enough to leave her demons behind.

  She grabbed the cutoffs and t-shirt waiting on the foot of her bed and fished her running shoes from underneath it. A long run in the storm would cool the fever a night of dreaming had fueled.

  A twinge of pain pulsed in her head, just above her right ear, and then stopped. It had started a few days ago, becoming more frequent, more intense with each episode. A humming sensation followed, washing over her body the way pins and needles prickled in a limb that had gone to sleep from sitting too long. Now she remembered that prickling had been with her through the night, keeping her half in and out of sleep just before dawn.

  She laced her shoes, making no attempt to recall the content of the fantasies that had her breasts feverish for the cool kiss of rain, and a moist heat soaking her shorts. Dreams, hers at least, were best left to float forgotten, back into the fog that spawned them.

  Outside, a blast of wind swirled around her. Rain soaked her clothes before she was out the front gate. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t bothered with a jacket, loving the cold rivulets streaming over her bare limbs. She didn’t have to head for the woodland trail at the edge of the park to find solitude, but she chose it anyway, drawn there by the beauty of trees bending and twisting in a dance with the storm. It was as if the woods were a huge magnet pulling her closer, promising she would find escape.