BlindHeat (2 page)

The hybrid wailed, a childlike sound, so human and devoid of
hope that if Marcus could have clawed his way in he would have. This door,
again unlike the others, had a thin sheet of metal over the wood base. Her
cries magnified his frustration. How could he defeat a fingerprint reader? He
needed more time. He needed someplace where he could think, someplace out from
under the gleaming eye of the security camera at the end of the hall.

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 territory−Pantherians
didn’t have green eyes. His senses were so skewed by his depleted energy he
couldn’t trust what they told him.