Sentinels: Wolf Hunt

by Doranna Durgin

  Nick meant to curse at him, to snarl defiance. He meant to give Gausto a personal demonstration of how, right before he broke free and ended the man’s life. But instead his head snapped back. His back bowed and his thighs strained and his wrists jerked against their restraints; the agony of internal fire spun through his limbs and gathered in his belly and shot up through his voice, a straining, gargled cry against clenched teeth.

  Gausto stroked him with that hot-cold metal, trailing it gently down his stomach as Nick twisted away, gasping for air against the choking restraint at his throat. His fingers scrabbled against metal, clawing for relief; his eyes rolled back. Oblivion sucked at him.

  Gausto leaned down to his ear. “Yes,” he murmured, an oily caress of sound. “Even a Sentinel dies.” And he smiled.

  Jet staggered down the hallway, the whip in hand, the chains around her collar slapping skin with her movement. Blood trickled down her cheek and a welt raised just beneath her eye…but it was the only new blow Vasilisa had landed.

  Maybe she would live. But Jet didn’t think so.

  A man shouted at her from the end of the hallway, startled to see her there—heading for her at a jog.

  She ignored him. Through these doors, that’s all she cared about. Through the doors and into this room where Nick cried out in raw agony, no longer sounding quite sane.

  In that instant, she pictured the room as it had been before she’d been taken away. The cabinets within, the rolling carts of supplies and food, the shelving. The wolf had seen this place too many times to ever forget it.

  Wolf or not, she was ready. Just Jet. Ready.

  She slipped through the door, instantly upending the nearest set of shelves—pulling them down in front of the door. She gave no heed to the shouting from those now blocked out, her attention wholly occupied by Gausto’s stage of torture.

  That, she saw. That, she snarled at. Ignoring Eduard’s startled shout, she heaved down another set of shelves to block the door, fury fueled—but she never took her eyes off Gausto.

  Off Nick.

  Nick, torso gleaming with moisture, floor splashed and puddled around the exam table. Nick, straining against the metal bonds of that table, body strung impossibly tight, only his heels and shoulders touching the table at all. Voice harsh and cracking and raw.

  Yes, he’d rejected her. Repudiated her. Insulted her and scorned her.

  But Jet knew what was right.

  Right was how she felt when this man touched her. Right was how she felt when she was with him. Right was what he was trying to do with his world…fighting the Core, fixing the bad things…even looking out for those simple-headed dogs.

  Right was what two wolves had seen in each other those very first moments they’d met.

  By then Gausto had turned to her; Nick went limp, his cry choked off, his breathing ragged…his head lolling to the side.

  “Jet!” Gausto cried, both accusation and command—both ignored. For Jet never so much as hesitated—and Gausto’s trank pistol lay where her memory had placed it, sitting on top of a rolling work surface also holding an open lab notebook, a scalpel, and a stained towel. Her hand closed around it—an unwieldy breech-loading thing with a long barrel. Gausto had often bragged on it—how even normal darts had a small explosive charge to inject the drug upon impact and how his were heavy-loaded; how a dart in the wrong place could break bone. How the small expanding broadheads dug in, ensuring drug delivery—because unlike most, Gausto wasn’t particularly concerned for the welfare of those on the receiving end of his pistol.

  But he was concerned for his own welfare. No doubt about that, with his scowl drawing down hard at the sight of her. Eduard eased away from the exam table, sliding a hand over a few amulets from the second table.

  Jet slammed the weighted whip against the rolling work station; wood cracked beneath the blow, and Eduard jumped. She pointed at him. “You. Stay back. Put those amulets away and stay back.”

  He held his hands up, empty; he backed away. It wasn’t what she had said, but she let it go for the moment. He’d have to separate the amulets—now in his pocket—before he could use them, and she’d see it coming.

  “Jet,” Gausto said. “What have you done with Vasilisa?”

  But simply Jet pointed the gun at him—steady, without qualm. “Move away from Nick.”

  “After how he used you?” Gausto shook his head. “You still need me, Jet. I can save you from those like him. I can save you from yourself.”

  “Move away from him.” And then, because Nick hadn’t so much as twitched. “If you have killed him, you will die, too.” Her voice broke slightly, but steadied.

  Gausto made a disparaging noise. “Dear Jet, your hero has but fainted. Nothing more.” He lifted the amulet. “I can get his attention for you—”

  Jet snarled, but she checked herself—she knew a feint when she saw it. A verbal human feint, but a feint nonetheless, designed to prod her into hasty action.

  Eduard’s composure proved less sturdy; he took another step back. “Drozhar!”

  “Steady, Eduard,” Gausto said, his tone a threat.

  “Get into the cage.” Jet pointed with the whip.

  “Only one shot, Jet, and two of us. I have no doubt you can take one of us down—and it will be painful, but not fatal. And then what of the other of us?”

  “I know where the blood flows,” she informed him. “I know all the places it comes close to the surface. I know where your breath flows, and how to stop it. I have known those things since long before I ever met you.”

  “Drozhar…” Eduard glanced at the cage, his meaning clear.

  “Be still, Eduard. Or did you really think I had left myself without a weapo—no!”

  He’d been careless, he’d made assumptions, he hadn’t kept his distance, and Nick—

  Not so fainted after all.

  The amulet, torturous and threatening, brushed past Nick’s hand; he snatched it out of the air, making a fist around it—closing down hard. Eduard shouted in alarm as power flashed through the room—visible power, too big to contain—it blasted past Jet, singeing against her skin; it made Gausto stagger backward. It whitened the room and reverberated around them, leaving Jet tingly and her ears hollow and her vision momentarily washed out.

  When Nick opened his hand, hot ash trickled out.

  Gausto swore, grabbing the cage for support. “No one can—” But he wasn’t so stunned that his hand didn’t dip inside his jacket, heading for what surely would be another weapon.

  But Jet was already moving. Her feet slapped lightly over concrete; she ignored the trank pistol and set herself at Gausto. His hand cleared his jacket; his gun cleared his jacket—but then she’d slammed him, shoulder-checking him with wolfish ease…spinning him into the open kennel door. The gun clattered across the floor, caroming out of sight; the trank pistol did the same.

  Behind her came Nick’s great shout of effort; she clanged the kennel door closed, couldn’t lock it…snatched a leash from the dog kennel, swiftly wrapping it around the door bars. It wouldn’t stop him, but it would slow him…and then she would stop him.

  When she whirled, she discovered Nick with one hand free, the metal restraint blackened by power; he’d bent aside the restraint at his throat as well. And now Eduard’s coat hung from his outstretched hand, the exam table teetering in the wake of his effort to snatch the man himself—he who had thrown himself at an obscured exit Jet had not even known existed. Half-height door, set low, obscured by stone facing.

  Eduard…tail between his legs, running. She let him go. She threw herself at the table—threw herself over Nick, settling the table down. She kissed his jaw; she kissed his mouth. He gasped, “Jet—”

  And she said fiercely, “I don’t care. You don’t have to want me. It doesn’t change what I feel.”

  “I tried to tell you—I tried to reach you—”

  She drew back to look at him, ready to demand explanations. But she found the answers ready for
her—right there, pale green eyes holding her gaze—full of his want, full of regret, full of apology. Pain lingered there, as well, and she knew she couldn’t stay here, reveling in his gaze.

  She slid back to the floor, yanking the borrowed shirt down to cover her bare bottom—mindful of Gausto in ways she had not been before. “We must escape this place.” She pulled the restraint pins at his ankles as he fumbled to free his remaining hand and sat, rubbing red wrists. “We release my sisters and then we run.”

  “Escape,” Gausto snorted, standing back from the cage door in disdain. “That’s not going to happen. Maybe if you could both take your wolf forms—but oh, that’s right. You can’t do that, Jet, can you? Did you plan to run the desert in bare feet? Or did you think the motorcycle is still where you left it?”

  Jet had no idea. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Any chance is better than being here.” But she caught the grim look in Nick’s eye, and dread tightened over her matter-of-fact determination.

  “Backup from brevis is out there,” he said. “We won’t be alone for long.”

  Gausto crossed his arms, leaned back against the bars…crossed one ankle casually over the other. “I would well know if that were the case.”

  “The consul’s office doesn’t know my teams,” Nick told Jet.

  “Anthony makes it his business to know.” Unperturbed, Gausto merely shrugged.

  Jet moved in close to Nick. “We need the wolf,” she said, voice low. “If we are to survive until your people find us…and beyond, when we can find my pack.” Scattered in the unfamiliar hills, waiting for her call. She put a hand to her low back, just above her hip. Over the scar. Her own voice came dimly to her ears. “You must cut it out.”

  His expression came on incredulous and hard.

  The suggestion amused Gausto, however. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Let’s try that. Never mind that such interference will trigger the amulet permanently. Let’s talk about how deep it is.”

  Jet ignored him; to her relief, so did Nick. He swung his legs over the side of the exam table—legs that in wolf form would have carried him endless miles or driven him in short, tremendous bursts of power, but which in this moment buckled as his feet hit the floor. His eyes widened; his knuckles whitened around the edge of the exam table.

  She understood, then. What that first amulet had done to him…what the drugs had done to him…what Gausto had done to him…

  But mostly, what he had taken out of himself to destroy that last amulet. That incredible surge of power—so strong that even Jet, blind to him without her wolf, had felt it.

  Her face must have shown her dismay. He shook his head, a mere shift of his chin. “We’ll make it,” he told her. “There are teams coming.”

  Marlee looked at the stun gun in her hand. “That’s it?”

  “That’s all you get,” Lyn agreed.

  “But—they use guns.”

  “They do.” More agreement, so congenial, as they disembarked the SUV and Treviño went back to flip the tailgate up, pulling out not the impressive and manly weapons Marlee had hoped for, but small field binoculars and belted water bottle packs. They’d gotten close…but now they’d travel on foot, because the property they’d found was gated and fenced.

  “And wards…they won’t stop a bullet?” Marlee shot an uneasy look around the gathering.

  “Meghan warded us heavily,” Treviño said, brusque as ever, handing her a water bottle belt. “We’re safe from workings. But bullets are what they are.”

  “That’s why the flak vest,” Lyn reminded her, buckling on her own water. She settled the twin bottles into balance at her hips and gave Marlee a patient look. “It’s not safe, Marlee. No one ever said it was. And the Core is always happy to harvest your dying energy for a special amulet or two.”

  “But the detente accord—” The agreement, both spoken and unspoken, that said they would take no action that might reveal either faction to the world at large. Their Prime Directive.

  She should have known they would just laugh.

  Jet leaned in close, her breath warm on Nick’s chilled skin. Behind her, the pounding at the door changed to a syncopated slam, complete with shouted threats. “We need to be the wolf. Both of us.”

  His hand closed over the smooth skin of her flank, tightening there, his thumb resting just over her hip, his fingers settling in above the base of her spine. Cut into that, hunting for an unknown lump of metal? If he hadn’t already been in a cold sweat, the thought of it would have brought it out.

  And yet…

  She was right.

  “Do that, and she’ll never see wolf-form again,” Gausto said, with evident satisfaction.

  Jet’s hands tightened on his arms—pulling him closer. “He does not always tell the truth,” she whispered in his ear. The brush of her lips against the side of his face drew his skin tight; the thought of what she was asking sent cold hard dread down his spine.

  Knowing she was right…

  He closed his eyes, struggling with it.

  Gausto couldn’t resist; the kennel must have felt as much refuge as cage. A smug sneer lifted his lip. “Don’t tell me you can live with doing that to her.”

  Couldd he live with himself if he didn’t?

  The door shook and rattled beneath the onslaught; soon enough it would come awry on the hinges, and Gausto’s minions would pour into this place. If they were to have any chance at all…

  Ah, Jet.

  “Come closer, Heart,” he said to her, as if she wasn’t already pressed against him from top to bottom. “This is going to hurt.”

  A huge dog streaked away to the side of the house on which Marlee closed in, bringing up the rear of their small expedition and already limp from the heat and double-time approach. She clutched Maks’s arm—but only long enough to realize what she’d done. “Did you see?”

  In response, Maks merely jerked his chin off the left, and then slightly ahead of them. Marlee didn’t get it at first…until then, suddenly, she did and wished she hadn’t.

  The first wolf might have been Nick Carter. She’d never seen him as wolf, after all, so what would she know? But the second…and the third…and then were they surrounded? She made a small, strangled noise.

  So preoccupied was she with the wolves that she didn’t notice when Treviño slipped away—and might not have noticed him returning if he hadn’t spoken on approach. “Two of them, tromping around after the wolves. They’re down.”

  Marlee bit down on a gasp. “You didn’t—”

  Annoyance flickered over his features—already so imposingly dark, with his black clothes and black hair and piercing blue eyes and most of all the constant brooding vibes. “Stun gun, Marlee. That’s what they’re for.”

  “And these.” Lyn held up an odd little sheaf of tabs, splitting some from the group to hand to Treviño. “The stun guns take them down, these little chill tabs keep them down. Transdermal sedation. We won’t be dealing with the same guys twice.”

  “Whatever’s up with the wolves, those guys weren’t dressed for hunting or tracking,” Treviño told her. “Something’s taken them by surprise.”

  “Nick.” Lyn smiled in grim satisfaction. But an instant later she stiffened, looking immediately to Ryan—who nodded.

  “Annorah’s cut off,” he told Marlee. “We’re on our own.”

  Jet drew a sharp breath; she came willingly into Nick’s embrace. She may have thought he meant to comfort her before going to work on her—right then and there, in this chamber of horrors—but she found out otherwise when his arms snugged her in tight and kept her that way. For an instant, she tensed, fighting it—but then relaxed against him. Giving herself to him. Gausto said something from his prison—an alarmed tone, going toward demand. Nick didn’t even bother to decipher words. He didn’t bother with the slamming at the door, either.

  But he took the time to center himself, pulling in his thoughts and his focus. He didn’t know if he could do this; he didn’t even
know if it could be done. He damned sure didn’t know if could be done by a man who’d already expended every reserve to destroy that last diabolical amulet.

  An amulet dedicated to causing pain. As if there weren’t enough ordinary ways to do that already.

  Jet stirred in his arms, her unease palpable. He kissed the top of her head. “I need a moment, Heart. I’m played out.”

  Her fingers tightened into the muscle of his back, so careful to avoid the shoulder that burned and throbbed. “You need.” Her voice came muffled against the side of his neck where she’d tucked her face. She licked the join of his neck and shoulder, a small and tender gesture. “Take from me,” she said, as Gausto sputtered some protest in the background; the cage bar rattled. “You can do that?”

  He couldn’t. Few of them could.

  “Think of me,” she said. “Think of us. Think of running in the desert. Think of this morning. Maybe I am still enough.”

  “Heart,” he said, “you will always be enough.”

  “Stay with us!” Lyn snapped. “It isn’t safe to separate!”

  “It’s not safe anywhere!” Marlee wailed, cowering in the hallway of the house into which they’d bludgeoned their way.

  She thought she’d understood about the Sentinels. She thought she’d known.

  She’d been wrong.

  The strength she’d just seen…the quickness. The efficiency, working as a team to locate the guard between them and the house entrance, the brutal expertise with which they dispatched him.

  He’d barely seen them coming. He’d certainly never had a chance to raise the gun he’d held.

  Two more went down in the early hallway, their bullets discharged into the wall and one across Maks, which only seemed to annoy him. Just a scratch, he’d said, glancing down at his arm and the deep furrow that bled freely but indeed didn’t seem to slow him down.

  It took a lot to slow a Sentinel down. She’d heard that—heard them joking. She suddenly had a new appreciation for those words.

  Maks had put himself in the path of that bullet to protect Marlee.