Eduard needed Katie Maddox.
Sentinel though she might be, it was her touch that had left the injured shepherd mix so attuned to itself and its own nature that it had quite nearly made a successful transition to human. And that transition, complete, would be the first step to erasing any hint of Sentinel advantage.
Eduard’s lips pressed thin. Back at Gausto’s stronghold, Eduard had come much closer than this. He had created the woman Jet, pulling her out from her native wolf shape. She had been stable, had learned to change from one form to another; she had been trained and active in the Core’s employ, before Nick Carter had stolen her away.
But now Eduard was starting anew—knowing that the intricate foundation pieces must be redesigned to find a better balance. His subjects needed enough tenacity to survive the process, but enough bidability to be of use once successfully transformed. He now snatched dogs from the reservations, grabbing up the copious strays.
And now, he began to see that he would be unable to perfect the process without Katie Maddox to heal and prepare these often battered animals.
Once he had the process perfected, he could begin to reverse it. He could give the Core what it had always lacked—a means to meet the Sentinels at their own level.
If he succeeded, the Core would laud him for it. And he would quite abruptly no longer be working in a dark underground Quonset structure with far too many smelly animals crowded into far too little space.
A strong odor invaded his concentration—that of the little side project he’d put together to help himself define certain of the project’s foundational elements. If the smell hadn’t warned him, the dogs would have—half of them cowering, half of them bristling.
“The creature is not to be brought into this work space,” he said, not bothering to turn around.
“Jacques is hurt.”
Afonasii, with his faintly sentimental streak, had insisted on naming the thing. Eduard turned from his work to survey both the transformed javelina and the man. The giant peccary stared back with its all-too-knowing human eyes.
I made you too smart, he thought at it.
Just as well he’d implanted it with the same kind of controlling partner amulet that had once held Jet in thrall, making it so easy to invoke pain and compliance. He slipped a hand into one of the many extra pockets of his lab coat, closing fingers around exactly what he wanted—the controller. Afonasii winced in sympathy, but wisely said nothing—and the peccary stood stock still as Eduard approached.
He realized with some surprise that the creature’s injury was in fact significant—for there was nothing in these woods to challenge a peccary of this size, never mind one imbued with the intelligence this one now possessed. “What—” he started, and then stopped himself, lifting his gaze to pin Afonasii with accusation. “Maks Altán,” he said. “The tiger. You allowed him into our territory?”
“No, I—” Afonasii shut his mouth—shut it hard, as he looked for some answer he dared to say. “I thought you might be able to heal Jacques.”
It was no answer at all, but it was enough to guess at the truth. “No? Then you must have again allowed this creature to push the boundaries of our territory.”
“He works best for us when allowed to fulfill his curious nature,” Afonasii said, his voice as toneless as possible. Defeated. He knew what was coming.
“Nonsense,” Eduard said, his voice crisp. His fingers caressed the controlling amulet. The creature’s handlers had controls of their own; they knew how to apply varying intensities of correction. “Correct him now, at an appropriate level, or I will.”
Afonasii’s mask broke. “But Mr. Forrakes, he won’t understand—”
“Don’t be absurd.” Eduard looked straight into the peccary’s too-human eyes. “He understands every word. Do it yourself, now, or leave it up to me—and you can most certainly be assured I won’t hesitate to use optimal levels.”
Afonasii reached into his pocket—his movement without commitment, his eyes on the preternaturally placid javelina.
“Afonasii,” Eduard said, his voice a silk that made the man jerk to attention. “You allowed this creature to encounter our most significant enemy.” No one else would pursue the Core like Maks Altán...and no one else was as suited to find them here. “As a result, I’ll have to step up my plans to acquire Miss Maddox—and at the same time, to eliminate this Sentinel who has in the past eluded us with annoying ease. Do you understand the significance of these facts? Of the depth of your failure here today?”
He thought the man did. Classic swarthy Core skin tones didn’t pale easily, but when they did...
Most satisfying.
Chapter 11
Katie sat in the rocker on her front porch, the yellow cat in her lap, the afternoon of this very, very long day waning into early evening. A salad waited in the fridge, along with a slab of steak and a nice batch of raw spinach that she would convince Maks to eat.
When her phone trilled, she jerked out of her reverie, fumbling to grab it off the porch railing without knocking it over the edge.
“Catch you at a bad time?” Marie asked her knowingly, hearing that fumble come through in Katie’s somewhat breathless voice.
“Just lost in thought,” Katie said. “And clumsy.”
Marie snorted, not bothering to be genteel about it. “As if there ever was a day you were clumsy,” she said, as a spate of barking sounded in the background.
“That doesn’t sound like Rowdy.”
“It’s not,” Marie said. “I’m at the vet clinic. Mr. Rowdy is getting a precautionary X-ray.”
“He—what? Is he all right? He seemed fine yesterday.”
“You know Rowdy,” Marie said darkly. “I’ve been watching him like a hawk and never saw him get into anything, but he’s off today and he’s got a little temperature, so we’re just being cautious. Especially with those surgical stitches barely out. But that’s not why I called.”
Katie paused to absorb this. “Then...?”
She heard the phone against Marie’s cheek, the jangle of the bells on the clinic door, and then the day’s stiff breeze scraping across the phone pick-up. “Sorry,” Marie said. “I should have come out here before I made the call, but the waiting room was empty when I pulled the phone out.” She didn’t wait for Katie to respond before barging ahead. “Katie, I’m hearing things that have me worried. I don’t believe them, trust me, but the way people gossip...”
Katie blinked, her quiet, tired calm washed away by stirring anger. She forgot to stroke the yellow cat, and he bumped her hand with his head. “Akins, I’ll bet. Does that man have nothing else to do?”
“Problem is, he’s convincing,” Marie muttered, as if she didn’t want to say it at all. “If you don’t know that he’s got a grudge against you—and most of these people don’t—then he’s damned convincing. And...”
Katie heard the reluctant tone in her friend’s voice, gave her the push she needed. “And what?”
“Too many people saw that cat die in your hands the other day, that’s what. They don’t think any further—except to repeat the rest of Akins’s crap. It makes for a whole bunch of people who don’t know a thing and who suddenly think they know everything.”
Katie tucked her lower lip under a slightly pointed canine, biting back exasperation. “I don’t know what I can—”
“Get a lawyer,” Marie said, as blunt as ever. “Get a lawyer now. I am not kidding, Katie Rae.” Her stern voice made it clear she wasn’t anywhere near kidding—but then her tone changed. “Oh, hey, I think the vet tech is looking for me in there. Call you later, okay?”
“Let me know about Rowdy,” Katie said numbly, and heard only dead air. She looked at the phone a long moment, thinking black thoughts about Akins’s timing, and slowly set it aside—no longer peaceful here in her quiet early evening.
And no longer alone.
Her deer spotted the tiger before the rest of her truly saw him, there at the edge of the trees—
move and pause, move and pause, assessing the area for hikers and bikers. And while the deer in her stiffened in instinctive response, the rest of her felt a welcoming warmth...a relief.
The shadowed trees shimmered with his change, blue light tumbling over itself and shot through with strobing bolts. Maks strode out from the trees as he’d left her, flannel shirt over jeans, tough feet bare. He walked with an easy strength that made her think of the tiger—grounded to earth, the power for speed when needed and the patience to rein it in when not.
Only when he got closer did she see the fatigue in his expression—and then, as he shifted angle, the slashing cut across his cheek.
But the smile he gave her wasn’t that of a man on his last legs. Katie felt the satisfaction of that, seeing how well her healing had taken. Thinking, too, that he could use another session.
By the time he reached the foot of the porch steps, she’d slipped the cat off her lap and gone to the top step, surprised by the swell of that little warm spot. “I’m glad you’re back,” she told him, giving way to it.
His eyes were dark in the shadow of the ridge; sunset came early to this land and dusk lasted approximately forever. “Has there been trouble?” he asked, swiping at his cheek. “Ian—?”
“Everything’s fine.” She leaned against the porch post. “Ian left a little while after you did. I’ve been shifting appointments and working on next week’s kennel club presentation.”
His face twitched at a new trickle of blood. She reached out to wipe gentle fingers across his cheek, and instantly plunged into an intensity of seeing—pungent scent...flash of green and spinning, grizzled gray...slash of wicked white tusk...
Power. Surging strength, self-aware prowess...the coil and stretch of muscles honed to perfection, reflexes sharp.
Katie found herself looking into eyes of tiger-green, her breath coming fast, her cheeks and body flushed. This, she realized suddenly, was what it was to be predator. What it was to be Maks.
“Katie Rae?” he said, and his voice was calm amid all that wild. Controlled.
Because, she realized, he was comfortable with it. With it and with himself.
“Fine,” she said, if somewhat breathlessly, still bemused by the vision and still bemused by the fact that it had hit her at all—still captured by its effect on her. “Maks, I—”
He wasn’t so oblivious as all that. He lifted her right off the porch to him, the one arm giving way ever so slightly, and when he said, “Katie Rae,” again, his voice was entirely differently. A little lower. A little catch that she could hear from the inside out, the feel of it a delicious scrape against her senses.
“I wish I understood—” she said desperately, clinging to his shoulders and swamped in that rise of warmth, reveling in it...confused by it. Knowing Maks would likely pay if she acted on it. “I don’t know you,” she said. “Not really. So what I felt when I saw you in the woods...was that real? Or is it driven by what I see? What I’ve seen?”
“Is that how the sight does things?” His hands lingered at her waist, settling lower so his thumbs caressed her hip bones while his fingers curved around behind, gently and unmistakably possessive. “Because why, then, would I feel it too?”
She sucked in a breath at the sharp pull of him. “For a man of few words,” she said, “you sometimes choose them damned well.”
His smile curved a little. “I try not to need them at all.”
She groped for balance. “You’re hurt again.”
“Yes,” he agreed, and didn’t move. He merely stood there, with her, his hands quietly possessive of her—until she realized, with some surprise, that it meant something to him. Just this.
“You’re being,” she said, voicing the surprise.
He made an agreeable sound from deep in his chest. With some hesitation, she closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of his body, breathing lightly of his mixed scent, the pines still hot from the sun. She allowed the underlying tingle of trepidation from the deer; she found the delighted little quiver of response in his presence and didn’t judge it or try to do anything about it.
There was no vision, no healing in process, no trickle of connecting power. There was just them. Her heart beat faster, kicking up a notch.
Maks made another little sound in his chest...satisfaction. Katie’s eyes fluttered open so she could see his face and absorb that, too. She had the impulse to run her fingers across his mouth—to feel its warmth and definition.
Maks smiled faintly. It struck tender little sparks across her body, and he must have discerned that, too, for his smile widened—
And then he stiffened, the breath turned to a sharp, swallowed inhalation, his eyes flying open to green and wild and—
Frightened.
Confused.
She felt it, too—the tight pull of fear, the tangle of not understanding, being jarred out of the sweetness of the moment into—
She felt that, too—just a hint of it. His pain. Again.
::Maks?:: she sent him, instinctively reaching out in a way she’d so far avoided. So personal, the mind-voice, so hard to hide the truth of what one was.
In response, she felt a quick buffet of denial, a strong impression of dismay; she gasped at it. Maks gave her a startled look, closed his eyes on the wild green, and stepped back. One step, so deliberate and purposeful.
The pain faded; the sense of him muted.
“What—” she said, barely more than a whisper.
He shook his head. Blood trickled down his slashed cheek, and though his brow drew from the faintest of frowns, she knew it wasn’t directed at her. She took a deep breath...and let it go, if only for the moment. She made her voice matter-of-fact. “What happened out in the woods?”
“The Core.” Short words, hard-spoken. His glance went out to the woods. “They’re back.”
Darkness and the stench of corruption and suffering—
She pulled herself away from memories—still haunting him, still trickling through to her—steeling her voice and her restlessness. “You found them?”
His expression darkened. “I found what they have made.”
“It’s real? The creature?”
The look on his face was answer enough.
“I’d convinced myself it wasn’t,” she admitted. “It’s not like people haven’t been hunting it—that they haven’t taken out dogs and tromped the woods.”
He said simply, “I knew where to look.” He barely gave her time to absorb the implications of that statement before he added, “The Core has workings.”
Understanding bloomed. “Keep-aways,” she said, thinking of what Ian had said about a Core rogue. Not playing by the rules. “No dog would cross that line. No human, either—they wouldn’t even recognize it.”
Frustration crossed his features; he shook his head. “Exactly where they hide...” He let his voice trail away, and simply shook his head. “I never did know.”
Sorrow assailed her again, coming to her from him no matter that he’d stepped away, glimpses of a woman gaunt and fierce, not so very much older than Katie was now. Running as the woman, running as a tiger—not so massive as Maks, wounded...determined. Someone else’s blood streaking her pale throat.
Strong, throat-clamping grief—there and gone again.
Maks turned away.
She cleared her throat—still not asking. Not yet. “I know that you’ve got to report this...you’ve got to eat—”
He interrupted with a shake of his head, barely perceptible.
She said faintly, “You grabbed something to go, I take it?”
“And I already talked to brevis.”
“How—?”
“Annorah,” he told her. “On the way back. She listens for those of us in the field.” He waited for her to take it in, then added, “She wants you to know that they understand—there, at brevis—that this is bigger than they expected. They’re gathering a team. Until they come...we stay quiet. I’ll keep you safe.”
“Nick s
till wants you back in Tucson, I bet.”
Maks didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
Katie buffed her hands over her arms, feeling the tingle of her own distressed energies—gathering them up, flicking them off her hands like water. “Maks,” she said, “I need to understand what happens between us when I touch you—”
Except then she instantly blushed with annoying intensity as he raised his eyebrows in a very clear Don’t you?
“I mean,” she told him, “the other thing that happens. The energy I feel, the distress it seems to cause you. I want to try a healing—a controlled one. I have no intention of letting that cheek scar for lack of treatment, for one thing—and I want to see...” She trailed off, bit her lip, and hunted for the words that would say what she meant. I want to see if I get caught up in you. I want to see if I end up kissing you. I want to see if I can manage myself.
Maks made a noise that didn’t quite sound like laughter—closer to the chuffing sound the tiger might make. “If you touch me,” he said, “I’m going to want you. You know that.”
She lifted her chin, and her smile was less a smile than the faintest baring of her deer’s tusks.
Not that those, in the best of times, were anything to fear.
He nodded at the woods. “Be with me, then. Work on the tiger.”
Her whole body froze at the prospect. In the woods. With the tiger. With the night falling softly around them and the air scenting up with a hint of dew.
“Run with me,” he said, and he was utterly serious...genuinely hopeful. As if for a moment, he didn’t get it. Didn’t understand that her reaction came from the thought of being deer beside tiger.
But he’d defied brevis for her. He’d fought for her. He’d touched her and let himself be touched by her.
She took a deep breath, acquiescing. “The edge of the forest?”
He held out his hand. This time, he waited for hers.
This time, she gave it to him. She came with him when he moved away from the porch, barefooted in the scruffy grass and inevitable prickly weeds.
Tiger Bound Page 12