Tiger Bound

by Doranna Durgin

Maks released a chuffing breath of surprise, slapped right out of his inward obsession—and only then heard Katie’s car door close outside the house. He clawed his way back to the human...and got no further before she took the steps to the porch. Her car keys hit the porch floor with a jangle; the soft thump of a cloth shopping bag landed beside them. “Maks!”

  Panic flared all over again—the awareness that he wasn’t himself, that he didn’t have the control he should. “Stay...back,” he told her, desperate words through gritted teeth that she never had the chance to hear.

  “I’m such an idiot!” she said, throwing herself down beside him, one gentle hand landing on his shoulder, the healing already flowing—gentle, soothing...skilled.

  Or meant to be. It collided with the turmoil within Maks, skidding instantly out of control; it flared hot and wild and surged into something too big for a human body to hold. Blue-white energies cut through the room, shards of light and shadow that left the tiger behind.

  For that instant, Katie froze in stunned fear; for that instant, Maks faced her with all the wild and none of the tame, his whiskers bristling and fangs exposed in a snarl. An instant long enough for Katie’s deer to flash terror and for her breath to stutter on a shriek of fear and reaction—for Maks to feel that fear slam into the already roiling energies that burned inside his chest.

  He threw himself away from her, finding his human even as he rolled up against the couch and to his knees, to his feet—and this time he made it as far as the porch before he ran into the post that subsequently held him up.

  But not alone; not for long.

  Katie’s hand shook as it landed gently on his back—none of her healing touch, all her energies tucked inside. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I should never have intruded that way. I was just so frightened for you—”

  “Not your fault,” Maks managed, scraping to find words at all. “I just can’t—” Can’t do that again. Can’t risk you.

  He heard understanding on her sudden intake of breath. “This is what you were afraid of earlier.”

  “Can’t risk you,” he said.

  “Because that’s not who you are,” she said, and her hand pressed with gentle persistence between his shoulders. “That’s not what you do.”

  He snorted without any strength behind it. “Right.”

  “This is my fault, Maks. Please let me help.” She must have felt his instant resistance, the stiffening of his back and shoulders. “Please. I’ll be careful. I won’t intrude. But you relax...if you just let it...” She hesitated, and he saw it coming. “Be.”

  He said nothing, but he lifted his head slightly, looking out into the blur of the woods, and she took it for the assent that it was.

  To his surprise, he felt nothing from her. Instead, after a deep breath, she said, “On the way home this morning, I talked to my neighbor. Larry Williams. He hunts a lot, and I know his friends run with Akins sometimes.” It didn’t make sense to Maks, but he listened, her calm tone pushing away his earlier fear. “Larry’s a good guy, and the way he dotes on his own dog, I figured he’d talk if he knew anything about Akins. I was right, too—except, like me, he only suspects. But maybe with two of us keeping our eyes open...” She let her words trail off, and after a moment, asked, “Better?”

  Maks lifted his head, surprised to find the woods in sharp focus. He looked at his hands on the porch rail as if they might be someone else’s; he looked back to Katie, his mouth open on words that didn’t come.

  “I got smart,” she told him, somewhat ruefully. Her hand still rested on his back. “What you need right now is less, not more.”

  Less. He sighed with the relief of it.

  “I couldn’t do that much,” she said. “I’m just—”

  He shook his head. “Katie,” he said, stopping whatever she had to say next. “It’s everything.”

  She flushed slightly and moved away from him—looking, as he had, off into the woods. “I cleared away what I could—what was coming from you. I can’t go get anything, not without—” She glanced aside at him, made her fingers into claws. “Rawr.”

  Maks choked on a laugh.

  “Seriously,” she said. “You need to take it easy. We’re waiting for someone to come for the amulet, right? Well, I’ve got clients this afternoon, too—I don’t need babysitting. So just rest. And buffer yourself. From that amulet, from incoming stuff, from...me.” And she was already flushing, but she bit her lip with that canine peeking out and managed to give the impression of doing it again.

  As if he, too, wasn’t thinking about the previous night, waking in her lap and in the thrall of something far more primal than either of them had been able to resist.

  But it didn’t make him flush. It made him want. Regardless of how the wanting had ended last night on this porch.

  * * *

  Katie dropped another roll of elastic sticky bandages into her shopping tote and eyed a green tin of antibiotic ointment charmingly illustrated with a cow.

  It had, in the end, been Maks’s suggestion to come here for supplies. “Small town,” he’d said, and she had understood. If she stocked up on first aid supplies at the drugstore, how many people would check on her before the day was out?

  But shopping at the local farm store would raise few questions for someone who spent so much of her professional time with dogs, and who often came here for bird seed.

  Maks looked much improved in the two days since his injury. He’d spent the time sprawled on her couch, sleeping fitfully, waking to prowl the grounds and grumbling when she backed him down every time he wanted to set rudimentary wards. Recovering as well as a restless tiger could.

  He kept the arm close to his side but the weakness wasn’t obvious. Maks himself looked rested but still wan, his color less robust than normal...his energy quiescent.

  Katie should have felt the same. Deep healings often took a toll on her, but this morning...no. This morning she found herself smiling, as if in being needed by Maks—challenged by him—something within her had remembered how to reach out to the rest of the world...and liked it.

  Old Mike at the counter didn’t miss it as she spread her items on the counter to be rung up. “You look fine and happy this morning, Katie Rae.”

  Katie looked out into the bright sunshine through the open door and then back to Mike’s lined face and shock of thick white hair. “I suppose I am.”

  Not that she didn’t still have the visions to deal with—to understand. Or that Maks didn’t have mysteries dogging him, and a worrisome tangle of energies eating at him from within. But for the moment—this moment—she would smile and enjoy the day.

  She glanced over at Maks, found an echo of her smile at the corner of his mouth...found him breathtaking. Tall and powerful even in repose, flannel shirt sleeves rolled up far enough to obscure persistent blood stains but not so far as to reveal the bandage, rugged features with an honest gentleness around those green eyes—

  She caught her own thoughts and blinked, surprised at herself. Gentleness, in the predator who had so overwhelmed her just the day before?

  A glance at Mike told her he wasn’t seeing gentle. That in his own way, he recognized the tiger. So she said, “Mike, this is Maks Altán, a friend of the family. He’s helping me with my firebreak.”

  Mike’s face cleared somewhat, though his expression remained wary. “It’s about time you had that taken care of. This all you need today?”

  And then the day stopped smiling. Katie’s first warning came through Maks—his faint smile, gone, his relaxed posture becoming focused. This was the Maks who had first frightened her, and who now ignited all her tightly keyed senses.

  When Roger Akins sauntered around an endcap of fly traps, she could only meet him with disbelief. “Roger,” she said. “For a man who doesn’t like my company, you certainly do seem to find me.”

  He offered an insincere open-handed gesture of innocence. “Just shopping,” he said. “Picking up some dog food, like plenty of other p
eople on a nice summer day.” He glanced at Maks, a gratuitous disdain briefly crossing his features, and then looked at Katie’s purchases. “Is that all for you today, Katie Rae? Or maybe you need to pick up some drugs, maybe some woo-woo herbal stuff? Maybe some little potion of mercy? Or is it all in your touch?”

  “No call for that, Roger,” Mike said, scooping the purchases out of sight into Katie’s reusable bag without ringing them up. A spare, sun-leathered woman with a horse halter in her hand came from the back of the store and stopped short at the sight of their tense little cluster.

  Akins snorted. “People ought to know,” he said, unrelenting. “They ought to find a way to put her out of business.”

  “They’d need to base their concerns on facts, first,” Katie said, coolly enough. Just like I’ll get the facts that convict you. Sooner or later.

  Akins eyed Maks. “Aren’t you quiet today,” he said. “Isn’t it about time for you to threaten me? Again?”

  Katie was surprised to see Maks’s mild amusement. “Katie Rae,” he said, in the rough-edged voice that made something quiet bloom within her, “doesn’t need my help to deal with you.”

  Maks, man of few words, sometimes knew just the right ones to use. Katie ducked her head and bit her lip on a smile.

  So many of the Sentinels assumed that the deer meant weakness. Sometimes, Katie herself did just that. But somewhere in the last twenty-four hours, she’d started to challenge that thinking. It seemed Maks had always known.

  Mike thrust the shopping bag at her. “Here you are, Katie.”

  She cast him a grateful look. “I’ll bring you a list and settle up,” she said, tucking her wallet away into her old leather shoulder bag.

  “Can’t take the heat, Katie Rae?” Akins crossed his arms, shooting Maks a look of growing confidence.

  Katie ignored him. “Ready to clear some ground?” she asked, and Maks tipped his head at the entrance. If he had been thrown by her cover story, there was no sign of it. He looked like a man ready to clear ground.

  But when Katie turned for the door, Akins grabbed for her with a snarl. “Don’t you turn your back on—”

  But by then, Katie, swift reflexes and long legs, was out of his reach.

  And by then, Maks had clamped a hand on Akins’s shoulder. No more than that, and Akins jerked around, his fisted hand rising for a sucker punch.

  “Hey!” Katie shouted—but Akins didn’t heed it and Maks didn’t need it. He met the punch with the palm of his hand, stopping it short...holding it there. His fingers closed over Akins’s, squeezing. A hint of a growl filled the air and Katie didn’t know if she heard it or felt it or just knew it.

  “Aw, hell,” Mike muttered.

  Akins swallowed visibly, his arm trembling with effort—until he realized that he couldn’t finish the blow, couldn’t wrench himself free, and couldn’t begin to save face. He quit trying and Maks instantly released him—but not from his scrutiny. His eyes narrowed, his upper lip just starting to lift—it was still a human expression, and still unmistakable.

  Akins cleared his throat. He took a step back, then two more. “Don’t really like the company you keep, Mike. I guess I’ll shop elsewhere from now on.”

  Mike lowered his voice just enough to pretend it came under his breath. “I guess you’d better.”

  As Akins cleared the entrance, the woman with the halter hooked the crown piece over her elbow and applauded politely. “That man needs to be muzzled.” From behind her, a weathered man with a battered cowboy hat and bowed legs cleared his throat, a meaningful sound. “Pfft.” The woman dismissed him. “After forty years, it’s far too late to be hushing me now.”

  “Something to that,” Mike told the man, with enough respect to say he knew the woman well. “Let me ring that halter up. You need any feed today?”

  And while the men did their best to discuss beet pulp pellets and compressed hay, the woman turned an appreciative eye to Maks. “It’s just as well you’re not alone out there,” she told Katie. “What with that creature on the loose.”

  “Creature?” Katie repeated, but she knew what was coming. Marie had spoken of it the day before—half joking, half believing, before Katie had been taken by her vision.

  “Creature,” the woman repeated, while her husband assumed an expression of practiced tolerance. She poked him. “Watch yourself, mister. John Baird saw it, and John is hardly a man given to flights of fancy. He even asked me to look up chupacabra on the internet. Kind of a giant dog...or boar...but he swore it rose right up on its hind legs like a bear.”

  “I’ve heard about that thing,” Mike said, punching register buttons. “Took a goat right out of the Tsosies’ back yard.”

  “Coyotes’ll do that,” the husband said, a blandly unconvinced offering.

  “Coyotes,” said his wife, “don’t unfasten gates. Why, it’s as bad as when those wild children were running around just west of here all those years back.” She gave her husband a peremptory poke.

  Katie realized that Maks had moved up behind her—a big presence, warm and still and practically vibrating with...

  She didn’t know what. Not curiosity; he was too intense for mere curiosity. Not scorn at the legend. Watchfulness. Wariness. The energy of it washed against her. Without thinking, she eased back a step and put a hand on his arm.

  “You don’t hear much about them these days,” she observed—as much for Maks’s interest as her own—for she knew the stories. More like urban legends in the rugged mountains than anything else. The woman shrugged, handing Mike a twenty-dollar bill and snagging the halter up off the counter. “I can tell you this—buncha people came in, back then. Quiet, but they made an impression. After they left...” She shrugged. “No more sightings or thefts.”

  “So,” her husband said, in a flat tone of patent disbelief that sounded as if it was a token cover for affection. “A secret team came in to grab up the wild children.”

  “Oh, you,” the woman said, and poked him again. “We got enough homeless folk camping out in the woods. What’s so hard to believe about a bunch of kids ganging together?”

  Mike said, rather unexpectedly, “I heard they were runaways. Except there were—” He hesitated, finding Maks’s gaze on him—full bore intensity, with something new added. Katie recognized it as a dare, and one that made no sense at that.

  Mike didn’t seem inclined to take it. “Nah,” he said. “Buncha foolishness. This creature’ll be more of the same.”

  Katie rested a surreptitious hand on Maks’s wrist, not surprised to find it tense. The healer in her instantly reached out, sending a soothing tendril of energy.

  Maks glanced at her with confusion, as if he could feel the energy but couldn’t quite figure it out. And then he seemed to recognize his own stance, his intensity...his distinctly powerful demeanor.

  Just like that, it was gone. Katie found herself looking twice—but there was no mistake; everything about him had dialed down a notch. Even Mike relaxed, although he seemed baffled about what had just happened.

  Katie wasn’t baffled. She’d seen the tiger, bright and clear. What she hadn’t expected to see was Maks’s ability to shed it. It seemed he protected others even from himself.

  Katie lifted the shopping bag at Mike. “I’ll catch up with you later on these things,” she said, and followed Maks from the store. He stopped once he was out in the full sunshine of the parking lot, lifting his face to the warmth.

  Katie felt more than saw the depth of the breath he took—the deliberate shedding of the moment. Sunshine struck the gleam of white at his temples; it washed over the line of his cheekbones, the strength of his brow, sparked a gleam of green from his eyes. And though he deliberately quashed the simmering tiger, his pure physical presence—shoulders that broad and legs that long and a torso that tight and lean—could not be downplayed. Not in the least.

  Katie swallowed, and flushed. And then she quite unexpectedly heard the echo of the woman’s words in her mind. Buncha pe
ople. Quiet, but they made an impression. She saw again Maks’s reaction to the words.

  “They were us, weren’t they?” she asked abruptly. “And those runaways were real. Did you help bring them out?”

  For a moment, he didn’t react at all—or at least not outwardly. After that moment, when he lowered his face from the sun and turned to look at her, a tiger looked out from those eyes.

  She swallowed again, determined to keep talking in spite of that gaze. “Who better to track down refugees in a rugged area like this? And it would be a great place for a batch of runaways to make a go of it. All the vacation cabins, all the seasonal visitors...” She shook her head. “City kids run to the streets when home isn’t safe. Maybe, for a little while, the White Mountains gave our runaways a place to go, too.”

  Maks waited until she was done, and confirmed simply, “I was there.”

  She already knew him well enough to hear the rough quality of his voice over those few words. A job like that would make an impression on a young agent.

  “You don’t like to talk about it,” she said.

  His expression turned fierce, his words hard and sudden. “They deserve privacy,” he said. “They deserve to go on with their lives. They can’t do that if people think they’re something to track down, to find and interview and put on display.”

  She met that green gaze with all the courage she had, feeling the prickle of the protective tiger roused. She managed to say, “Then it’s a good thing brevis handled it so quietly.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. After another long moment, he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, tipping his head in a quiet stretch. Then he said, “Let’s go work your firebreak.”

  “I didn’t mean—” To put him on the spot. To ask any more of him than he was already giving.

  His quiet grin was back. “No help for it. Small town.”

  Right. And someone was bound to talk if her firebreak guy didn’t actually work on the firebreak. “But your arm—”

  “You can do all the heavy work,” he assured her. When she scowled and poked him, he grinned, caught her hand, moving faster than she’d expected.