It was Dolan who blinked. Dolan who wondered if in his pursuit of the big picture, he’d somehow become that callous…and if his ability to live in the moment hadn’t robbed him of another sort of big picture.
Dolan who knew it was probably true.
He set himself to the task of tearing down what remained of the lean-to and corral, setting aside usable wood and dragging the rest into the woods, arranging a deadfall that would delight the birds as it aged. He missed Meghan; his body missed Meghan, too, preternaturally aware of her distance and her absence. But reaching out to her accomplished nothing…only confirmed her determination to spend the day on her own.
How damned fast he’d gotten used to that connection. Too fast.
He worked it off, sucking down water and sweating into the dry heat, salt building up on his skin and damp hair falling across his forehead. He marveled at how well he felt…knew he owed that to Meghan, too.
Somehow he had to get her people through this mess without further trouble. The ranch activity had gone on around him today, the new arrivals ignoring his efforts—no doubt directed by Anica to leave him be, if only for their own good. A hay delivery, a young man named Chris working with Jenny, the farrier with his distinctive truck cap…they filled the background of his thoughts with their noises and their scents and their locations.
He was so immersed in the day, in the not-reaching for Meghan, that brevis took him completely by surprise, pinging a monitio with startling assertiveness, loud and invasive. He jerked upright, dropping the corral rail he’d just wrenched free, muscles stiffening down his spine. A warning, the monitio—probably straight from Carter, with whatever backup he needed to send so strongly. No words, no specifics—the monitio wasn’t meant for those. Just a warning.
Only the Core inspired such effort. The Core on the move, detected by brevis—with no one but Dolan to receive and act on it.
Dolan left the rail where it had landed and eased aside, backing toward the cover of the woods, personal wards reinforced. By the time he reached the scrubby woods, he’d dropped the overall straps off his shoulders and pulled off the borrowed shirt. By the time he’d taken full cover, he was ready to step out of the overalls.
Another step beyond that and he was jaguar, pacing this back perimeter of the ranch, scenting air…hunting from afar.
And then he knew. Moments before they strolled into the ranch yard, so terribly out of place with their designer suits and slicked-back hair and kohl-lined eyes, their vehicle just out of sight to make for this more dramatic entrance, he knew they were coming.
And he knew who they were.
Meghan! He expected nothing, got nothing, tried it again anyway. He’d been the one to tell her it was safe, to give her the room to experiment with her personal boundaries. Meghan, let me in!
For the wards were only designed to stop incantations and Core chantings. Physical trespassers might feel unwelcome and uncomfortable, but the Core was well used to that.
Especially their current drozhar, Fabron Gausto. Younger brother, surviving brother, to Tiberon.
A man with a grudge.
Dolan’s flank twitched in memory.
Meghan, beware…
I can do it.
She could keep Dolan out, keep herself in. And that meant everything.
It meant she could decide what she wanted to do, and not simply be swept along in it. She could allow their connection and everything that came with it…
Or not.
And also it meant she could finally, clearly perceive that the constant, nagging tug of awareness had nothing to do with Dolan at all.
She sat atop Luka high on the rugged terrain of the sky mountain, here where the snowmelt still trickled down in streams and the air felt noticeably crisp—just as Encontrados itself sat cool in the hills compared to the lower desert. Here, she was on national forest lands, riding narrow trails better meant for muleys and big horn sheep; the ranch land lay below her. The ranch itself had become a point of awareness…one so familiar she thought perhaps she’d always felt it and just never known. Down below and off to the west, it overlapped with the beguiling, enticing want that was Dolan.
And then, to the east, not nearly as far away…the come to me, come to me she’d been feeling since she and Dolan had made love in the wild night. The quiet siren call she had erroneously attributed to Dolan himself, but now suspected came from the old homestead.
Time to find out. She turned back down the hill. Luka mouthed the bit as he realized they were not, in fact, headed home, and then stretched his neck into the long rein she offered him, balancing his way down the slope with crouching quarters, controlled slippage and precise placement of his feet. Meghan moved with him, staying out of his way more than anything else…letting her thoughts stay in that place where she could feel what the land said to her.
Soon enough they hit the nearly flat feeder trail, the one running around the slope. She nudged Luka into a ground-eating trot, posting in perfect, unthinking rhythm. It wasn’t so very long before she drew him to a stop in the old clearing—and for the first time, she slipped into ward view to see it with new eyes. Luka shifted beneath her and perked his ears in the direction of the stream, taking first one illicit step and then, when she didn’t stop him, another.
Meghan sat on him in wonderment, watching ward lines slip past, watching them shift aside and then glide right over Luka’s head, his neck, her own shoulders—caressing and welcoming, not warning. Home, they said to her. Home, home, home. She thought she heard her mother’s voice; she thought she felt her mother’s hand on her hair, brushing aside the inevitable strands escaped from her ponytail and hat. Luka eased through a stand of ponderosas to the nearly vertical stream sheening down through a minor earth crack, and found a slight dip from which he could drink his fill. There, Meghan dropped lightly out of the saddle, mixing worldview and ward view and reaching out to stroke one of the old lines, hunting her mother’s touch again.
Welcome, welcome, welcome, the ward whispered in her mind. Finally, finally, finally.
And then there was that tug, now back behind her, squarely in the homestead they’d passed, Find me, find me, find me…
She tugged Luka away from the water, her hands familiar on the lead rope looped around his neck. She loosened its knot, made sure the rope was still securely clipped to his bridle-halter headgear and tied him off to a tree—all in a trancelike state, the whispers of the wards in her mind, the prodigal daughter called back to home…
An instant of regret intruded, that Dolan was not here to see this, to share it with her. But only an instant, because this was her past, not a Sentinel moment. This was her legacy, a secluded gift from her mother, just waiting for her skills to grow enough to perceive it. For the moment, Meghan ignored the implications—that her mother had known how deep Meghan’s skills would run when initiated. That she’d even expected the initiation to happen…which meant she hadn’t expected the Sentinels to cut Meghan off so completely.
She could regret that she hadn’t found the truth of this place sooner. She couldn’t regret her isolation from the Sentinels. Not from what she knew, or from what Dolan’s memories had taught her.
She stood in the center of the old homestead yard and lifted her face to the sun, letting the sensations wash over her…soaking them in. For once she felt no pull from Dolan at all; the homestead overflowed her senses, blocking out everything from outside.
And then, slowly, the overwhelming nature of it subsided, the layered whispers retreating; Meghan again felt the tug that had brought her here. She closed her eyes, shifting entirely to ward view, and turned a slow circle, surprised at how easy it was to recognize the structures by their warding. There was the old homestead itself, with an odd dead space in the fireplace area, the house wards somewhat tattered by Dolan’s original intrusion. A fine spiderweb of wards crisscrossed the roof, holding it together long past the time the old tiles should have cracked and fallen away. Off to the side, a gen
tle dome of protection hazed out the shape of the lean-to that had once been there. And set away from it all was a little house warded from black widows.
Meghan frowned, looking closer. A small anomaly flickered in and out of view, skidding away if she looked too closely. She had to ease up on it, soften her approach…almost let it come to her, waiting for the land to welcome her in that one final way. And then she could see it—a casual assortment of lines in a small package, looking careless but set with too much strength to be any such thing.
Slowly, Meghan approached the object. Only as an afterthought did she drop out of ward view—how natural it felt there already!—leaving only a faint overlay of the wards over her normal vision. The little house turned into a leaning shack of an outhouse, the door crooked but mostly closed—still latched, out of someone’s long habit, long ago.
She put a hand on the door, hoped very hard that the black widows had indeed been kept away and tugged. It didn’t come easily, at least not until she got it halfway open—at which point the top hinge broke and left the door canted permanently aside. Meghan winced. “Sorry,” she said to no one in particular.
Inside, she found the classic one-seater, cracked and splintery. As a luxury, the sturdiest of the walls held a little shelf, and the shelf held a thick old catalog—
No. Surely not.
Meghan took a step back, switched into ward view, confirmed what she’d seen a moment earlier. All the times she’d been up here, all the times she’d idly studied the protections her mother had laid over this place, and she’d never been able to perceive what she did now…the subtlety of protections on this catalog. The steel silk strength of the wards involved.
Dolan hadn’t seen it, either. Dolan had gone straight to the fireplace—to Margery’s decoy.
Meghan looked again at the catalog. Old, yellowed, but otherwise fairly well preserved. A goodly number of the pages were torn in half, already used for the purpose of old catalogs everywhere, once upon a time. “Mama, you didn’t.”
But she already knew the answer to that. She already knew that Margery Lawrence damned well had.
That the Liber Nex, indestructible manuscript of power coveted by the Atrum Core and desperately sought by the Sentinels, sat in this old abandoned outhouse…disguised as toilet paper.
For some reason, Meghan thought of her mother’s smile. Of the wicked glint often hiding behind it. Until now, she’d associated that glint with other memories of her mother—like when the hardware store owner thought he could sell a woman substandard wood without notice, and Margery let him load every piece of it before “discovering” she’d left her wallet at home. Or the pious preacher’s wife who’d dropped by in ostensible friendliness to pass judgment on their single-parent home, and left with the bemused intent to call back for advice about certain personal matters. Or the—
All of them. Any of them. Meghan understood now that her mother knew how to play the game in both large and small scale. That her courage had been bigger than Meghan ever suspected. Her eyes stung with the unshed tears of it, the pride…the new recognition of what she’d lost.
But only for a moment—because then the fear hit.
She was looking at the Liber Nex.
It was the book her mother had died for; the book Dolan’s brother had died for. The book that Dolan himself had nearly died for. What the hell did she think she was going to do with it? She couldn’t even bring herself to touch it.
Leave it here. Turn around and ride away. Let Dolan know where it was…let Dolan handle it. What did Meghan know about games on this scale? She was happy enough with her own corner of the world, always had been. With her made family, her life’s work. Dolan was the hero, the Sentinel…the one with the strength to deal with such things.
She took a step backward. She planted her heel, ready to pivot away.
And she hesitated.
What if in finding the thing, she’d inadvertently exposed it? At the least, given the Atrum Core a place to start looking?
She turned back to the outhouse, to the door that wouldn’t ever go back in place just right—that would clearly look disturbed. She took a step toward it, and another, and by then she felt the book itself—the pure quagmire darkness of it, the tendrils of its hate, oozing out in response to scrutiny. An unfathomable and bottomless swamp of evil, straining to touch her…staining the inner wards and making it instantly clear that the crystalline steel of those wards was there to protect the world from the book as much as the book from the world.
And still she moved closer, until she stood on the threshold and could lean inside and reach for it—never intending to touch it, not even sure why—
Because it wants me to. She snatched her hand back, clutching it tight to herself. Revulsion touched her; she swallowed hard against nausea.
And yet again, the book spoke to her.
No. The wards spoke to her. The wards recognized her just as the land had recognized her. They knew her mother’s daughter. Finally, finally, finally, they said, and then a wistful directive: hide me, hide me.
But Meghan knew what was really behind the subliminal impression they pressed upon her. Hide me better than this. Or destroy me.
Or you, too, could die trying.
Chapter 17
Dolan lurked at the edge of the woods, flattened to the ground in sinuous, contained fury. To involve civilians this way…to expose both the Core and the Sentinels…
Fabron Gausto, prince of the local Core sect, must be out of his mind. His people must be out of their minds to allow it…and in the monarchy-like structure of the Core, where court intrigue and power plays were a constant grumbling in the background, it would be astonishing if they allowed it for long.
Unless Gausto came back with the book. If he accomplished that, no one would challenge him. And if the book’s powers were his to wield, anyone who challenged him would quickly die anyway.
Dolan gave a silent snarl, whiskers tilting back, ears flattened. By coming here, Gausto had raised the stakes beyond measure. He no longer dared back down. That meant there was no telling how far he’d go, how many more lines he’d cross. The trio had been spotted now. Not because of Jenny’s dog, who wisely slunk around the edges of the yard, perceiving the taint of the inexplicable on these men. No, Dolan was willing to bet that Jenny had felt their arrival—that she’d alerted Anica, who now came out to greet them. Her manner was friendly enough, but Dolan saw the tension in her back, heard the hard note in her voice. She might have no idea who these men were, but she knew enough to want them gone.
“Can I help you?” she asked, and it really meant please leave this place.
“We want Dolan Treviño,” Gausto’s sidekick said, not even trying for pleasant. He and the other man were pure muscle and more…To be by Gausto’s side, they were whip-smart, accomplished with amulet and wet work both.
Anica shook her head. “He’s not one of our volunteers,” she said, admirably evasive. “Meghan might know who you mean. If you leave a number, I’ll have her call you.”
Gausto said, “Meghan Lawrence,” drawing the words out as if he were trying them on for size—and his tight smile said he liked the feel of them.
Anica took a step back, and even from his hiding place, Dolan could see her giving him the wary eye. Good for her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re a working ranch, and this is a heavily scheduled afternoon. If you leave your number, I’ll have Meghan—”
The sidekick gave no warning. He snatched Anica’s upper arm in a movement so fast it blurred even to Dolan’s eyes; he frowned, tail twitching, ears still flat, snarl still silent. The Core members were as human as anything else. Such preternatural speed was not theirs to command. Not normally. Not when it was the very physical dominance of the Sentinels that inspired the Core’s attempts to dominate them. “Treviño,” the man said, his voice a malignant warning. Dolan dug his claws into earth, holding himself there by dint of will—it would do none of them any good if he flung himself int
o the hands of the Atrum Core, leaving Meghan unprotected. Leaving this ranch and its people unprotected beyond the moment.
“Asshole,” Anica snapped. “Let go of me. You think someone’s not dialing 911 right now?”
The man backhanded her—oh so casual, and yet with the force to send her spinning away and down. The other sidekick looked around the yard, raising his voice to carry. “Treviño!”
And Dolan flexed his claws, holding himself. Not yet. It hasn’t come to that. Not with the Sentinel team delayed who knew how damned long, leaving Meghan on her own without Dolan. Not yet. He had to wait…wait until there was nothing else for it…
With typically abysmal timing, a deep ping rang in his head—a query from brevis regional, a wordless what’s happening? He sent them his strongest possible message, in terms they couldn’t misinterpret. Fuck you, he snarled back at Carter, snug and happy in Tucson, withholding the help they needed. The words might not make it through…the meaning behind them would. Dolan’s fury that he had been hung out to dry, that civilians had been left exposed. Carter, damn you, do something about this.
It had to be Carter. The old man hadn’t emerged from his cave for such day-to-day matters as this for nearly a year now. Had become so ineffective that someone beneath him had leaked Liber Nex intel to the Core in the first place.
Anica climbed back to her feet—and kept her distance. She visibly fought and lost the impulse to look around—looking for him. Hiding in the brush…and how is that different from brevis?
No. Not yet. Not quite yet—
“Hey!” A male voice, offended and protective and a little hot. Dolan winced, sinking down against the earth. Damn, damn, damn. The farrier jogged out of the barn with long, heavy hoof nippers held like a weapon; Jenny ran out after him, one arm outstretched as if to stop him, but not nearly fast enough to do it. “Whatever welcome you had is gone, fellas.”
Not so close—! Dolan rose a few inches, restrained himself. Reached for Meghan…found her unapproachable—no longer closing him out, but simply so full there was no room for him. What the hell? Another impulse tore at him—to go find her. She was all that mattered. She could still find the book. She could still weave this land back together. No one but Meghan…
Sentinels: Jaguar Night Page 14