“Oh, dear,” Katie said, as if it had all been nothing. “I thought I’d taken care of that. Just a little kick-back branch from the chainsaw. You know how men are. I could hardly get him to stand still long enough to put something on it.”
Sentinels were, if nothing else, adept at hiding their other natures. And at making light of even significant injuries, lest their rate of healing become cause for question.
Maks let their voices drift away until they were no more than the occasional lilt of laughter and amused tone. The pain of his arm followed him into deeper sleep, and so did the indistinct murmur of Katie’s voice...no, not her voice. Her presence. Whatever subtle healing she worked on the dog lapped gently through the house...touching him and skimming along his body like a breeze made of her essence.
He breathed deeply of it, at first relaxing into it—and then reaching for it, leaning into it as he might lean into a touch. Sweet warmth and comfort, scented energies...they caressed him, soaking in. He shifted on the couch, found a new ache coiling deep and yearning. And though the injured arm had ceased its pile-driving throb, the clenching tension spiked a renewed bolt of pain through his body—enough to wake him back to a light doze. Enough to recognize a hard-on even jeans couldn’t disguise, as sprawled as he was.
Maks turned toward the couch, constructed the lightest of shields, and fell asleep to regret.
* * *
His mother’s voice came as remembered words on a sigh. Maks...my boy...so proud of you...
He gripped her hand, too young for the words he needed, awash with the need to protect her. To make things all right. To mend her bones and the things broken within her.
Ssh, not your fault...
Of course, it was his fault. His job to protect her from those who seemed ever determined to hurt her; his fault that she’d managed escape just so he would grow up free of them...
Don’t let them find you...
The scent of her, her tiger lingering in the air, her human overlaying it, her wounded nature tingeing it all.
Be safe...safe...safe...
Grief was the color of brown dirt and scattered red cinders, the scent of torn roots, the sensation of bruised pads and tired young limbs. It was not breathing and not wanting to breath, of fear and panic and bereft confusion.
It was running, a gangly young tiger not meant for distance or speed, hunger gnawing deeply, ever aware of the hunt—and of fear growing so great, a great big ball of it taking up all the spaces within him and pressing outward...and finding, suddenly, purpose.
Live. For her.
Protect what he could, when he could. For her.
That grief flailed through one reality to another, with the murky darkness closing in around him, flashing shadows and fear. Terrified screams drilled into his awareness, the dreams tangling with then and now and—
A hand landed on his shoulder.
Maks exploded out from the couch, a snarl on his lips and his shirt twisted, his arm a shriek of pain, ready to—
To—
The main room spread out before him, quiet and undisturbed. A woman stood frozen not far away, distressed and frightened and unfamiliar.
Maks slowly straightened, cradling his arm. He could say he’d been having a bad dream; it was true enough. He could make excuses that she’d startled him—also true enough. But excuses only drew attention to the unusual nature of his reaction...and she was the one who had trespassed. He let that truth fill the silence.
She didn’t resist that silence long, easing back a step—late thirties, sturdy and plump, her pleasant face now flushed red. “Katie,” she said, pointing toward the kitchen, her voice as urgent as her expression. “There’s something wrong with Katie. I wondered if you knew...”
“Did you scream?” Maks asked, his sleep-roughened voice abrupt as he looked past her to the undisturbed front door, to what he could see of the kitchen. He straightened, tugging his shirt back around. “Did she?”
Baffled, the woman said, “No, she just—she froze. And she looks...frightened. She never mentioned, but—does she have some kind of weird epilepsy, or—”
But Maks was no longer listening. He didn’t question that the screams in his sleep had been real—if not out loud. And he didn’t need to ask where—the tug of it called to him, and he headed barefoot through the house as if he’d always lived there, into the kitchen and through it to the open door along the south side of the house.
The little room might once have been a pantry or a long, narrow breakfast nook. It held a stack of dog crates at one end; the largest crate was full of amiable dog. And in the other end, a high, padded table stretched lengthwise, with just enough room to move around all four sides.
Katie stood clutching the far end of the table, just as frozen as the woman had described.
The woman moved up behind him now—but not too closely, not this time. “We’d just finished with Rowdy,” she said, and the dog waved his plumy tail at his name. “And she made a funny noise, and she...” The woman made an expansive gesture, visible in the corner of Maks’s eye. “This. Do you know—?”
“No,” he said. “And yes.” He closed his eyes, taking a quick scan of power in the room, the house, the yard. Looking not for specifics, but signs of Core intrusion. Finding nothing—not even the amulet he knew to be lurking.
He did what he should have done earlier, placing wards around the house. Not the usual intricate knots and energy labyrinths, but with his hands raised, palms out...a little push of his inner strength outward, he created a circumference through which Core individuals could not pass undetected and Core workings could not pass at all.
The woman made a startled noise. From the porch, the cat yowled and fled, knocking over a crockery flowerpot on the way.
Katie gave no sign at all.
Maks eased past the table, and then between Katie and the wall, closing in behind her.
The woman moved up to the doorway, watching with both concern and no little wariness. “What did you—”
“Ssh,” Maks said, paying little attention to the woman, speaking only to Katie. Fine tremors shivered through her frame; the energy of it reached out to touch him, trickling to raise invisible hackles. It invoked his silent snarl—a tiger’s gesture of lifted head, just a hint of a lifted lip.
He pushed his way past it, settling his hands at the base of her neck; they curved gently to cup her shoulders, his fingers marking the graceful curve of collarbone. He looked again into the energies surrounding this place—hunting for any sign of attack—and found only that which seemed to resonate from Katie herself.
He had little experience in saving others from themselves.
But if nothing else, he was a creature of instinct. He moved closer to wrap his arms around her, hands resting flat against her slender, toned midriff, damp heat trapped beneath his palms. He pulled her in against his body, ignoring the quick flare of reaction...expecting it. A man’s body, doing what it would. He focused instead on the energy remaining deep in the center of himself, that which he had not yet pushed out to protect the house—and he sent that out, too.
Right through her.
She gave a little cry and flung her head back, banging his chin and very nearly his nose, brown and cinnamon hair brushing his face. For an instant, she seemed to push back at the forces he’d sent through her—pushing back at him, with glimpses of glinting metal and splashing blood, a blur of startled green eyes, a muted roar and a cry of pain. It rocked him, and he released the faintest undertone of a snarl. Then she gave way, going limp in his grasp—head drooping, legs wobbling.
“Ssh,” he told her again, a not-quite usual rendering of the comforting sound he’d heard from his dying mother’s lips long before he’d ever heard it in its more customary form. He lowered his head, his cheek against the side of her face. And so he stood, holding her—holding her up, and holding her close.
From the doorway, her friend drew breath to speak, stopped her words on the edge of sound, ne
ver quite voicing her concern or question—never quite intruding.
Katie stirred; she put her hands over his at her stomach. “What...?” she asked, lifting her head.
“You saw something,” Maks told her, quite simply.
“Katie!” the woman let her words explode on a breath. “I was so worried—what on earth—?”
It was Maks who brushed the loose hair from her face, one hand scraping it aside even as she realized he was there—right there—and glanced aside at him in surprise, still too dazed to protest. “A nightmare,” he told the woman. “A waking memory. Gone now.”
Katie’s laugh had an edge of tears in it. “A nightmare,” she said. “Oh, God, Maks, you were—”
Splashing blood, startled green eyes...
Maks’s own eyes.
But Katie was pulling herself together fast, straightening within his grasp, not leaning on him quite as hard. She found her friend. “Marie, I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just so relaxed working on Rowdy...it snuck up on me. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Never mind that,” the woman said, dismissing her fears with a wave. “As long as you’re all right. You will be all right? Are you getting help with...this?”
Katie’s response rang with an honesty that surprised Maks, considering the words. “I’m getting help,” she agreed. “I just started, in fact.”
He understood then. She meant him. Whether or not she truly believed in him or trusted him. It shouldn’t have filled him with so much warmth. Or so much relief.
Marie risked a glance at Maks, but persisted. “This...it doesn’t have anything to do with what Roger Akins is blathering about, does it? He doesn’t really have something on you, does he?”
Roger Akins. Maks’s hands tightened against the soft skin of her abdomen; her hands settled on top, light and cool and not nearly large enough to cover his. She shook her head at Marie. “Akins is just looking for a way to dodge the consequences of his own brutality.” A shudder ran through her, the energies still fluctuating around them; she tensed with the effort of hiding it, silently nurturing her intent to gather evidence so she could call the local authorities. “It’s got me on edge, that’s all. Anyway, I guess we’re done for the day—but this one’s on the house, Marie.”
Marie dismissed that with a wave, too. “It most certainly is not. Rowdy is clueless, as usual, and I’m perfectly fine. But don’t you worry about it just now. I’ll leave a check on the counter on my way out. You,” she said, and she looked directly at Maks, as if he’d never exploded out of sleep at her, never showed her his snarl, never pushed a basic shield right through her. “You take good care of her, then.”
“That,” said Maks, “is why I’m here.”
* * *
Katie dimly realized that Marie had left, taking Rowdy with her; that Maks still held her, letting her recover as slowly as she needed. She had been so taken by surprise, the vision so much stronger than expected, so much more real and immediate...
The healing she’d performed on Rowdy’s rock-inflamed digestive system and surgical repair—deeper than usual, more personal than usual on this day of fear and danger and surprises—had somehow left her open.
Vulnerable.
And now she stood with Maks’s arms around her, surrounded by the sharp layered scents of man and tiger.
It should have felt threatening. Maybe, in a moment, it would. For this moment, it came as a comfort. His arms, his breadth, and his strength.
Glinting metal and splashing blood, a blur of startled green eyes, a muted roar and a cry of pain—
“Oh, be careful!” She cried it aloud, turning in his arms. “Maks, be careful!”
“Ssh,” he said, the word not quite right. “Let go of it, now.”
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. She didn’t see like this; she never had. As much as her recent intuitions had driven her to call on brevis, this was so much more than her usual impressions of activity, her flutters of borrowed emotions and expectations. It was all of that—the sensations that spoke to her of dread, and of dangers looming large—but it was full of details that had never been hers to see.
And it had been full of Maks. Subtle hints of a desperate flight, a violent past merging into a violent present...right through to a violent future. Maks fighting and Maks losing—she was sure of it. Just as she was sure that if she looked through her notes and her memories, she would find him tangled in those earlier warnings, too subtle to pick out until she’d actually seen those green eyes, run her hands through that dark chestnut hair...felt the warmth of him against her and rinsed his blood from her fingers.
She framed his face with her hands as though it was hers to touch, as though it always had been. “Maks,” she said desperately, still adrift in what she’d seen, and deeply adrift in the flavor of him that had come with it, “there’s something...” Desperate flight and violence...past tied to future...
She searched his expression, found his eyes gone dark, his mouth grim. She touched his lower lip—a different Katie Maddox, caught in the grip of the vision’s undertow. Unfettered by the deer’s caution, and living in a moment where she knew this man, had always known him. She found his mouth soft and firm and serious...and silent as ever. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
And there must have been, because those eyes grew more shuttered, and she felt the familiar flicker of hurt. But he responded to her touch as though he, like she, had been caught in the grip of the vision, the thing that made them strangers no more. His hands tightened on her shoulders as he closed his eyes to breathe deeply of her, leaning into her touch.
“Maks,” she whispered again. “There are things you’re not telling me...”
But there was plenty he was, right then and there. He dipped his head, touching his forehead to hers; his breath came in a gust against her cheek, his mouth barely open...she could all but feel the touch of it. Her hands roamed—fingers tracing his neck, feeling the planes of his chest, the strapping muscle of his abdomen. They curved around his flanks, fingernails scraping against tough jeans, pulling him against her.
Maks made a desperate noise in his throat, just the hint of a growl. He ducked his head, and his teeth lightly scraped the side of her throat.
Reality flooded her. A thrill of fear tightened the skin on her exposed throat and all the way down her back.
Maks froze. He stopped breathing for that moment—like Katie, jerking back to reality. He stumbled back the few steps he could, looking at her with all the desire still writ large on his face and all the realization of how close to out of control they’d gotten. When he opened his mouth, it formed the beginning of one word, and then another, and finally he just closed his eyes and shook his head.
“I—” she said, and found herself no more coherent than he. Every inch of her skin felt exposed; every inch of it ached for the feel of his hands—and still she felt his teeth on her throat, knew herself not brave enough to reach for what she wanted. She slid around the table, freeing them from forced proximity, dragging her focus back to the soothsaying—to what it meant for them all. “I saw—”
What she realized then was that he was in no condition to talk about this, to think about it. That he looked as wild as she felt, and just as inclined to bolt.
She said, “I don’t know what I saw. I have to think about it. I’m...I’m sorry.” She retreated all the way to the crates, giving him a clear shot to the exit.
He took it, quickly enough to generate another tiny stab of hurt. At the last moment, he turned in the doorway, caught in such imminence of motion that she caught her breath on it—seeing for once not the predator to be feared, but the magnificence behind that presence. He finally managed, “The woods. I need to know them.”
She nodded, recognizing the brevity that seemed to overtake him at times, and was completely unprepared when he turned upon her a gaze of the purest intent and said with no hesitation at all, “I will keep you safe.”
And left.
Katie stood, stunned, staring after him—and for that brief instant, she first believed that he could.
That he would.
* * *
Eduard would have preferred to meet in a private place—a secluded place with no windows, one entrance, and silence around them. Deep night rather than late afternoon.
But there were few such places in this former timber town, and insisting on such a spot would have given Roger Akins cause to wonder.
Also, none of those places had this coffee.
Iced white chocolate latte lingered on Eduard’s tongue. He took a bite of his gooey cinnamon bun and wiped his fingers, gazing out the window at the main street of the town.
Akins swung through the shop door twenty minutes late, full of swagger and full of himself; more than one gaze flicked from the day-old Phoenix newspaper that had been left spread companionably across the tables.
But no one bothered to look long. Only the barista, and that particular look wasn’t the least bit fond.
Akins pulled a chair out opposite Eduard, flipping it around to straddle it with his arms propped over the curving wood back—his elbows sticking out, his knees sticking out, and altogether proclaiming himself worthy of the excess space he took up. He didn’t wait for Eduard to speak, and he made little effort to lower his voice. “I tried, but you didn’t give me enough information.”
Uncivilized, this man; he’d lacked the Core to mold him. But Eduard wouldn’t mention it. Men such as this weren’t even to guess at the Core’s existence. Nor of the Sentinels, for that matter—for the security of one faction ensured the security of the other. After two thousand years, this man was hardly worth the risk.
So Eduard tolerated him, and Eduard used him. And, if necessary, Eduard would then have him killed.
Akins frowned as Eduard sipped his latte. “You’re the one who asked me to come here. Do you want to talk, or what?”
“Simply being thoughtful,” Eduard said in a mild tone—the one his men had learned to fear. He set the coffee down and flexed his wrist—the one broken, not so long ago, and still barely healed in spite of his ongoing personal restorative workings. Once, Vasilisa would have seen to his healing needs, but he had fled Gausto’s workroom without her, and had since learned of her death at Jet’s hands.
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