Tiger Bound

by Doranna Durgin

  But her hand never quite touched the bark, and the energy flared between wood and flesh, building to brightness at the pressure point.

  Physical shields. Shields the Sentinels had never been able to develop, no matter how they studied and tried.

  The javelina barked another challenge—more eager than before, a note of triumph in a sound that should have been nothing more than dumb threat. A note of laughter.

  And Maks realized he no longer had any shields at all.

  It made instant sense. The shields he had created for Katie were so profound, so impossibly, physically present...there was nothing left for a second, separate shield.

  To judge by her expression, her gestures, Katie realized it, too. Her mouth might have been clamped tight on the words that would give her position away to handler as well as to beast, but her face was eloquent enough.

  Maks had no choice—he couldn’t leave himself unshielded to an enemy who had shown himself to be exceptionally clever with amulets and workings. Still braced against the earth, he backed off on the energies he drew from it, damping down slowly until the distinct lurch of balance told him he’d gone far enough—and when he looked, he found her as before—protected, but not by the impossible. Impervious to workings, but not physical assault.

  Then no one gets that close.

  The javelina made a disgusted sound, a snort and stamp, and Maks understood that, too—his own shields had shifted back into place.

  “What the effing hell is your problem, Jacques?” The Core handler bent to prop his hands against his knees, breathing hard. The man had minion written all over him, in spite of his classic complexion, his hair drawn back into a tight, short club at his nape and one ear and several fingers adorned in heavy silver—all the signs of an active posse member. “Keep your tusks to yourself until we reach the girl. Forrakes is damned serious about that, and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to take the blame for your games again.”

  The creature snorted, a scornful noise, and tossed his head in a scooping gesture that needed no interpretation.

  “Keep that to yourself, too,” the man muttered, straightening to brush off his black T-shirt. “If he ever figures out you’re as smart as you are mean, he’s going to kill us both.”

  Not words said lightly. And words said by a man with no clue that they were no longer alone.

  Maks rolled a growl up his throat, settling into a couchant position, front paws flexing to dig claws into the ground. The man jerked his head up—locating Maks, spitting out a string of startled curses—and then turned a furious glare on the creature. It snorted in such a way that made its disdain obvious.

  But when it slanted a sly glance back at Maks, its expression was nothing but threat and promise.

  Chapter 20

  “He’s got a gun, Maks—you know he’s got a gun.” Katie pressed up behind her tree, frantic for Maks to hear her—and certain he wouldn’t.

  He’d know, though. He’d been in the thick of things with the Core in Europe. He’d been in Flagstaff, he’d been in Tucson. The Sentinel battle lines.

  Surely he’d know the man had a gun, no matter that he couldn’t see the lump of it at the man’s back.

  Just as surely he’d heard the dogs approaching...knew they were close.

  Why, then, did he narrow those green tiger eyes and lift his lips in a whisker-bristling snarl, focused only on the creature below?

  She thought about speaking out loud; she thought about tossing a pebble to get his attention, and pointing at the man in a ludicrous game of charades. She even gathered the pebble in her hand, feeling the faint frisson of energy in her shields as she tightened her fingers around it. Marveling at it, and at what Maks had done only moments earlier.

  No one made physical shields. No one.

  But she relaxed her hand, dropping the pebble and leaning against the rough, deeply scaled bark of the tree.

  He hadn’t brought her here so she could expose herself to the enemy, making his job all that much harder. She’d trusted him to take care of her...and he’d trusted her to let him do it.

  “Maks Altán, I believe,” the man below said, and this was not, could not be, the man whom Maks had scented in the coffee shop, the man who had been part of his early life. This man was too young, too much a foot soldier. Too blatantly eager to have made his way to the upper levels of the Core hierarchy and its pervasive Survivor-like society. “You’ve saved me a lot of trouble by showing up here.” Unbelievably, he put a companionable hand on the beast’s shoulder, impervious to the thing’s obvious disdain. “You’re going to make us look very good, indeed.”

  She got the impression that he had a pressing need to look very good indeed. The tension in his body, the fact that he’d been sent out here by himself, on foot, with only this beast at his side—it spoke volumes. The fact that Maks focused his attention on the beast and not the man...that spoke volumes, too.

  She looked down at him, this man who had come for her, and at the monstrously huge creature that accompanied him—the jutting curve of its tusk, the gleam of malice in its eye, the quick movement of its feet as it settled itself before Maks, more nimble than any creature its size should ever be.

  Lord, it stunk—the normal javelina musk mixed with bitter Core energies and a hint of the corrupt putrefaction behind any Core working.

  But normal javelina had poor eyesight. This one...

  This one was looking straight at her.

  * * *

  For an instant, chaos swirled around Maks—new awareness, new power, new sensations. The local hunters moved in, splitting up as the dogs grew increasingly agitated. The distant figures moved closer on their dirt bikes; the creature’s companion tried to look menacing and only came off as a man with too much to prove.

  The creature looked straight at Katie, having found her with eyes and nose no less preternaturally sharp than Maks’s. It took a step in her direction—tossing its head until it slung slaver onto its companion, and if it couldn’t reach her, it could still endanger her—simply by revealing her presence.

  Maks shoved all the rest of it out of his mind and leaped. The man stumbled back, cursing in a human snarl; the javelina sprang forward.

  Maks had barely landed when he leaped out again, all the strength of his powerful haunches driving him into the beast with the bone-jarring slam of two heavy bodies.

  They rolled across leaf and pine needle litter while Maks closed massive jaws around the beast’s shoulder, ducking in under those tusks. His body took the brunt of sharp hooves as he curled his hind feet up, hunting for purchase to deliver a disemboweling thrust.

  They slammed up against a tree and Maks sprang away, out of reach of the deadly tusks. The creature scrambled to its ungainly feet, legs absurdly delicate for its bulk but well protected by the length of those tusks.

  He gave it no time to recover, but leaped again, angling for its back and a grip on its stout, short neck—and then he twisted wildly aside as it whirled to meet him with head tilted and tusks foremost.

  A canine bellow split the surreal silence of their battle, and as Maks tumbled aside and back to his feet, three huge white dogs charged into the space. They surged around the Core handler to charge at the creature, blithely harrying it as they would any peccary—expert teamwork at haunch and neck and shoulder, trying to close jaws over flesh that was simply too bulky to offer a grip. One dog latched on to a hock, only to be kicked away; another lost its footing near the beast’s head and instantly flew through the air, blood spraying behind it.

  Humans thundered onto the scene an instant later, and by then Maks had invoked the change to human form, too deeply conditioned to reveal himself to the hunting party.

  At the sight of the dogs—one crumpled against the outcrop, another against a pine, and the third hanging from the jaws of the creature—the foremost hunter cursed shortly and brought his rifle to his shoulder, with no apparent awareness that the Core handler stood off to the side, or that Maks was only ba
rely outside of his sights.

  The man managed a single shot before the Core handler shot him in the back.

  A third hunter hung back—the big guy from the parking lot, shouldering his rifle with quick efficiency to fire a quick round into the creature. The sharp report echoed around the mountainside and kicked hard against the man’s shoulder, but the impact barely staggered the creature. The handler took a shot at the hunter, missed—and lost his chance, for the hunter flung himself back behind the largest of pines, his curse hanging in the air.

  Maks, the protector. Maks, stuck as human, as frail as any of them against a creature of such size. Maks, watching men die...

  He picked up a sizable rock, the same as any human; he flung it with the strength and accuracy of no human. It bounced off the creature’s rump, bringing the thing spinning around, eyes narrowed with hatred and jaws dripping bloody slaver.

  * * *

  Oh, my God, what are you doing? What are you doing? Katie dug her fingers into the bark of the pine that hid her, anchoring herself—wanting nothing more than to scream out at Maks—to stop him.

  He stood at the edge of the small, lightly forested area beneath the outcrop, a second rock in hand, the challenge clear in his expression, his stance, his intent.

  Or so Katie thought. But that second rock didn’t bounce off the creature’s tough, grizzled coat at all—it hit the Core handler’s thigh like a bullet, taking the man down in a cry of agony.

  The creature roared in offense, a thunderous squealing battle cry. It flashed tusk and eye in fury, charging straight at Maks.

  “Look out, man!” The hunter’s cry echoed and so did the shots from his rifle, a quick one-two that did nothing to stop the creature. One shot sprayed bark from a tree behind the creature; the other must have hit it in the haunch—but its stumble was only momentary.

  Deer rifles, Katie realized. Deer rifles on an animal worthy of a big-game double rifle. And a creature so thick, so muscled, so quick... “Maks,” she breathed, unable to hold back at least that much, even as another rifle shot cracked through the air, this one kicking up dirt. The Core handler snapped off a careless shot, driving the hunter back.

  But Katie should have known Maks would be just that quick, bare feet bounding effortlessly over pine needles and granite as he scooped up another of the outcrop’s fist-sized rocks and whipped it at the creature’s head, hitting it hard between the eyes. The thing stopped short, pawing awkwardly at its head with a sharp hoof, and by then Maks was rearmed—but running out of space against the outcrop. When the creature charged, he sprinted to the side, running lightly along the outcrop—cat-like in his progress across nearly vertical rock, tiger-like in his power. The creature instantly reoriented—Katie held her breath, seeing then that Maks had the perfect vantage from which to fire another rock right down on its head, directly at its eye.

  Instead, he jerked his head up to look at her, narrow-eyed—no, not at her, just to the side of her, and even as she flinched away with shock that he had betrayed her position, she realized that wasn’t it at all.

  I’m not alone.

  She froze against the tree, making herself deer-still...deer quiet. She caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye—

  Another shot rang out, this one from below—the handler!—she couldn’t help but flinch, and then to gasp as Maks jerked, his expression gone startled, the wild eye of an animal wounded. Only for an instant, as blood bloomed low along his side—and an instant was all he had, for the creature was upon him.

  And still Maks twisted aside, slamming the rock down between the creature’s eyes, rolling...leaping up again to latch on at the side of the its neck like the tiger he was—with one very human hand snagging the stubby javelina ear, using it to cling tight while the other hammered the rock against face and eye and even tusk. The creature screamed in protest, blood streaming—

  Movement, from the corner of her eye...

  Core. A Core posse member, dressed in his woodlands camo T-shirt and pants, oblivious to her presence as he took stance with his semiautomatic pistol, one hand steadied over the other, the aim deliberate and confident.

  Maks.

  Katie shrieked, an inexperienced battle cry, and dove for the man—Sentinel in strength, deer in agile speed, woman protecting her own.

  The man went down before her, and her advantage faltered, giving way to expertise as she scrambled to take possession of the gun. She ended up tussling in her own defense, rolling through prickly scrub oak, jamming up against a tree with her teeth bared and her feet kicking out at him, lightning-swift strikes while she scrabbled for the gun in the pine needles.

  He snatched at a leg, lost it, snatched again—got it, fingers gripping tightly around her ankle as he braced himself and yanked her away from the tree. She bumped over the ground—and felt herself astonishingly airborne as he whiplashed them around to launch her over the outcrop, the gun clattering right out with her.

  Airborne all too briefly, before the ground came up to meet her.

  * * *

  A tusk broke beneath the rock in Maks’s hand; his breath came in panting gulps as his flank quivered in growing pain and heat. His leg gave way, muscles too shocked to function. But the creature still stood spraddle-legged beside him, a thing of massive muscle and unnatural strength stunned into brief acquiescence.

  In the growing tunnel vision of his determination, he heard the shriek above him; he heard the scramble. He heard, too, that one of the hunters had gotten the drop on the Core handler, shouting a demand of surrender.

  Only when Katie’s slender form twisted through the air did he understand the shriek, the scuffle from above. Only as she landed, crying out with the impact, did he see the black shape of the gun clatter down after her and understand what she’d done...why she’d done it.

  His own shields had kept her from warning him any other way. And now she was down in the thick of it, the bullets flying and his strength compromised and the Core handler desperate—

  He clung to the side of the creature’s neck, gore splattering his hand and the rock it held, sweat stinging his vision into a blur, hot blood running down his side—and he knew he couldn’t protect her. Not like this.

  Reaching down to the root of his newly channeled power came more easily now, and he did it now without second thought—pulling his strength from that place, spinning it into a shield...forming the shield around Katie. Already she tried to rise, hunched over the injuries from the fall, but her ankle instantly gave way beneath her.

  The shields buffered her fall. At first she was too panicked, too deep in the deer to notice—or to hear the cry of one of the hunters urging her to stay down. She flailed back up to her feet and went down again—but this time, she realized the shields had changed. This time, she pushed away the panic of a crippled prey animal and flung her head up to look at him, her hair a flow of cinnamon-sparked movement in the sun. This time, she caught his eye—and he didn’t need to hear her with ears or mind to read the expression on her face. Oh, my God, Maks, what have you done?

  Because he couldn’t protect her with these new physical shields and still protect himself with any shields at all.

  It didn’t matter. He told her as much, clinging to his stunned opponent with a slipping grip—he fought brute strength, and needed no shields. It didn’t matter, because she was everything, and protecting her was what he was.

  His leg quivered beneath him; the hunters shouted at him. Or he thought they did, wanting him away from the thing so they could take it down—but for that instant, he had eyes and ears only for Katie Rae Maddox, waiting to see that she understood. Needing to know it.

  Because six hundred pounds of raging Core monstrosity wasn’t something a wounded tiger could take on.

  And the monstrosity knew it. It roared to life beneath Maks, one side of its head battered to pulp and the other still full of fury. Instead of trying to toss Maks away, it reared up, suddenly wrenching itself around to slam Maks again
st the rock base of the outcrop. Maks saw it coming, twisted in midair to take the impact with bent legs...and the weak leg slipped out from beneath him, skidding down the rock and leaving him vulnerable to the impact.

  As quick as that, the beast was upon him, tipping its ruined head to clamp down on his shoulder—tusks shattering his collarbone, slicing through flesh and out again. Maks froze in the shock of it, stunned into instant, cold, clear knowledge of a mortal wound.

  Gunfire rang out, spattering the rock over his head; the hunters cursed in disbelief. The dark, bitter taste of a Core working told Maks what the hunters couldn’t possibly understand.

  The Core rogue was here. Here, and armed in his own insidious way, protecting his creature with workings that spoiled human aim and human intent.

  As a man, Maks would die. His shields around Katie would die. The hunters would all die, and Katie...the rogue would have Katie.

  As a man.

  He reached for the change. Not painless, this time, as the energies surged through his body, changing torn muscle, reforming broken bone. The hunters’ curses of shocked surprise came to him as though from a great distance; the creature reared back, understanding its great danger.

  The tiger now raged beneath him—still shot, still wounded, but possessed of great, raking claws, possessed of massive teeth and powerful jaws.

  Freed, Maks rolled to his feet and launched himself at the creature in one swift move, clamping his jaws at the base of its skull..

  The creature staggered under his weight, equal to its own.

  The creature renewed its efforts, clattering across the rocky base of the outcrop, aiming to swipe Maks against stone, against tree—

  Gunfire rang out, a meaningless assault with the hunters under sway of the Core working—except the creature jerked with it. Its handler cried out in fury and threat; another shot abruptly silenced his voice, even as several more slammed into the creature, their combined effect finally bringing it to a stop.