Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

by Doranna Durgin

  No spitting back the words of accusation that on this day he’d been everything he’d ever accused the Sentinels of being. Or everything she’d learned from childhood that the Sentinels were.

  While Ian had never been any of it.

  “Good,” he said, and thrust her away from him, leaving her to grasp at the gaping edges of her robe, her mind spinning. “I might have left a mark at that. No matter. You’ve always healed so conveniently fast.”

  He spun on his heel and left before she could ask what he’d meant by that, not bothering to close the door and thus leaving her exposed to the sneering curiosity of the posse member who passed by.

  No matter. She pushed the door closed without haste, too stunned by events for her thoughts to do more than hover and clash.

  After a lifetime of wanting to be part of something—to do more, to be involved in more, it seemed that now she very much was. Just not nearly in the way she’d imagined it.

  And now she had to decide what to do about it.

  * * *

  The Sentinels’ compound was the last place Ana wanted to be. And the last people she wanted to be with.

  But morning found her here anyway, searching—and failing to find—the confidence to approach Ian’s friends. Knowing she’d been the cause of their illness and that even now she remained complicit in his captivity.

  Uncertainty left her just down the block from the retreat where the odious David Budian had dropped her off, and where he would pick her up again at her call.

  “Don’t dawdle,” he’d told her, his voice bored and bossy as she disembarked from the nondescript sedan he’d chosen.

  “I’ll take as long as I take,” she’d told him, no longer finding herself so automatically respectful of those in Lerche’s chosen posse—even if she’d once aspired to join it.

  Budian had merely grunted and waited for her to close the door before he pulled away from the dirt and gravel lane.

  Leaving Ana to gather herself and move forward.

  Each time she steeled herself to walk confidently to the door and innocuously inquire after Ian, she also thought of Ian himself—restless in the chair restraints, his body stiffening in leftover waves of pain while Ana pretended to sleep in the bed beside him.

  She’d wanted to kneel beside that chair and unbuckle every single restraint, kissing away the marks of them. She’d wanted to brush his hair from his eyes and take away his pain.

  Instead she’d done what she could, slipping a hand from beneath her light blanket and letting it rest on his wrist through the night. Giving him the peace he craved, and seeing the visible signs of how much more easily he rested.

  Come dawn she’d fed him and managed his needs, knowing he wouldn’t betray her even though she’d betrayed him, and knowing her presence here was Lerche’s way of reestablishing his control over her. She would pay for giving herself to Ian; she would pay trying to protect him.

  And Ian would pay, too. Lerche had never wanted her as a woman, and he’d never bothered to notice her brief, obligatory encounters with the Core members who’d shown any interest. But her intimacy with Ian had triggered something in the man.

  It was the first weakness she’d seen in him.

  The thought startled her. It meant that in her own way, she’d had control over Lerche—that his reaction made her important in a way she’d never understood.

  She didn’t truly understand it yet. But she’d use it, if she could. If only to bolster her confidence.

  She drew the deepest of breaths, shook her hands out and moved out down the lane with a confident stride. Armed with purpose and carrying only the one small protective amulet she’d slipped out of the amulet room.

  Ian’s motorcycle sat not in the barely visible driveway, but off to the side—out of the way of the two cream-colored SUVs in the driveway and the several economy cars behind them.

  The Sentinels were here, all right.

  One man sat on the porch, brown hair and bright eyes and jeans beneath a pale plaid button-up shirt. Not a large man, but a lanky one who lounged with what Ana considered remarkably alert insouciance. He lifted his chin in greeting as she hesitated, as if quite certain she meant to come into the yard.

  She did.

  “Mornin’,” he said. His eyes were brown and she thought they might just see right through her. “Ana.”

  She raised a brow at him in question.

  “We’ve been hoping you’d stop by. Fernie’ll be out in a moment.” He seemed to reconsider this. “Probably Lyn and Jet, too. Maybe Ruger.”

  Sentinels all, no doubt. But unless they’d already figured out who she was—what she was—why come out at all?

  “We’ve been worried about you,” he said—and she had the sense that he didn’t read her mind, no matter what horror stories she’d heard, but that he’d simply read her face, seen her confusion. Those eyes were too alert to miss much.

  Like Ian’s.

  They were all that way, she discovered, as two women pushed their way out of the house, followed by Fernie at a more sedate pace and by a looming form that remained just inside.

  “Fernie!” Ana said, relief spilling out. “You look better!”

  Fernie nodded back at the house, her gaze on Ana openly assessing. “Ruger has his ways. We worried about you, Ana. We’re worried about Ian, too. What can you tell us?”

  Ana looked at the other two women—one no larger than she was, graceful and petite and tidy, and the other a tall, lithe form with a dancer’s movement and wild whiskey eyes, her dark hair cropped short and mussed, her body clad in leather from snug black pants to a black vest and her bare arms strong with muscle.

  The shorter woman eyed her without any friendliness. “Where is Ian?”

  Ana’s heart kicked up a notch. She had no chance of fooling these people—field Sentinels, all of them. If they couldn’t read her mind, they’d read her body. And they obviously weren’t taking anything for granted.

  “She is already frightened,” the dark-haired woman observed. “You just made it worse.”

  “Stop it,” Fernie told them. “This woman is important to Ian. She’s our guest.” She came down the porch steps to take Ana’s hand and give it a comforting pat. Today she wore her hair in a bun again, and her square features looked more relaxed. “Are you well, Ana? And yes, we need to know—have you seen Ian?”

  Ana was supposed to say I’ve been ill. I left early yesterday to look for him and had to go home to bed. Haven’t you found him yet? She was supposed to make her way into the kitchen—not so hard to ask for a glass of water in this climate—and quietly reacquire the amulet.

  But when her mouth opened, the words wouldn’t come out.

  And the words that wanted to come out would probably get her killed. By these people, or—

  She thought suddenly of the man on the trail—the one who’d been bait for the amulet-enraged mountain lion, and for Ian. The one who’d died without garnering any attention from local authorities.

  Because the lion hadn’t killed him and Ian hadn’t killed him. But Lerche’s posse...

  They could have done it. They no doubt had. Because, no doubt, it had served Lerche to convince Ana of Ian’s perfidy.

  That man had been assigned his role as a consequence of his failure in the field. If Lerche had discarded him for failure, what would Lerche do to Ana if she...

  Betrayed him?

  Even if he had betrayed her first. In so many ways. Controlling her, lying to her, shaping her...

  She couldn’t think. She took a step back. Another. Her hand fell from Fernie’s, and only then did she realize how long the Sentinels had watched her—silent, waiting.

  “You see,” the leather-clad woman said, her whiskey eyes wise and wild. “She is prey.”

  “Jet!”
the other woman said, and the man on the porch smothered a laugh. “That’s not appropriate. And she’s more than prey. She’s...” The woman trailed off, taking a step forward—which Ana mirrored by taking a step back. The woman wrinkled her nose, held up a finger...and sneezed.

  From the giant shadow behind the screen door, a voice rumbled. “She’s Core.”

  Ana froze. Jet’s whiskey eyes narrowed. Fernie made a sound of dismay. But the woman only looked thoughtful. “She’s certainly been exposed to their workings,” she said. “But there’s nothing active here.”

  Ana’s knees went to water. She stiffened them, bracing herself—readying herself. She would never outrun them, but surely it was better than not even trying—

  But she didn’t run. And no one pounced on her.

  They didn’t have to. They could afford to bide their time when she had no chance of escape in the first place.

  But the smaller woman circled to the side, frowning—and then quite surprisingly closed her eyes, while the others just as surprisingly—and obviously—waited on her.

  Finally the screen door opened, and the man who stepped through was every bit as big as his shadow had suggested. Tall and rugged and full of shoulders and a hint of pure brawn. “Lyn?”

  The smaller woman shook her head, opening her eyes. “Don’t ask me to explain it. There’s Sentinel blood here.”

  No. No there wasn’t.

  The woman Lyn gave Ana what seemed to be a sympathetic look. “Not much,” she said, glancing back to her friends. “But it’s there.”

  Ana took yet another step back. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t begin to understand, and yet so many things suddenly made sense. The outcast nature of her parents; the way she’d been taken from them just a little bit early—and the way no one had ever expected her to amount to much anyway. The way Lerche treated her.

  The way Ian had responded to her.

  Lerche had known.

  She touched trembling fingers to the side of her head, where the ache still lingered. The amulets. The ones that were only supposed to be spy amulets, and yet were so much more.

  He’d known they’d sicken her. Maybe he’d even looked forward to it—taking the opportunity to assess how strongly her Sentinel blood ran.

  “Ana,” Fernie said, reaching out to her with a look that warned Lyn back. “Let us help.”

  “No!” Ana said, not rejecting Fernie so much as the entire situation, the overwhelming waves of understanding—her life rewritten in whole. She took a step back, and another. “Stay away from me! All of you!”

  Chapter 10

  Ian sat silent before the camera, waiting with the patience of the big cat.

  Even aching and battered from the inside out, he heard things they probably hadn’t meant him to hear, drew conclusions they likely hadn’t meant him to draw.

  They were packing up. Preparing to withdraw and relocate.

  It meant that brevis was coming. Was maybe even here.

  It meant Lerche wouldn’t have as much time as he probably wanted—and the man would cut his losses rather than risk moving Ian.

  But not until he’d wrung as much as he possibly could from the situation.

  In the midst of the bumping and thumping of the packing, Ian easily heard when Lerche approached—knew there were three of them altogether and that Ana wasn’t with them.

  She’d been gone for hours.

  The door opened to reveal Lerche and his soft-sided amulet case. He put it aside on the creaky little desk and faced Ian with some satisfaction. “It’s time for a little blunt conversation.”

  “I hadn’t noticed any particular niceties so far.” Ian flexed his wrists against the restraints, finding them as snug as ever. He didn’t waste energy on shields. His had never been profound, and Lerche had already demonstrated he could dispense with them at will.

  “Nonetheless,” Lerche said, “Ana has a propensity to interrupt, as you’ve seen.”

  Ian looked not at Lerche but at the two walking walls he’d brought for backup. Not a bad thing, perhaps, to have the man so wary of him that he brought muscle even under these circumstances. “What is it about her, Lerche? Why keep her so close, when you don’t think much of her at all?”

  “I see she did this particular job well, if nothing else.” Lerche smiled in a way that made Ian want to hit him. Hard. Nothing of the leopard behind it, and everything of the man. “She betrayed you in the worst possible way—she continues to betray you—and still you care. One of your Sentinel weaknesses.”

  “I consider it a strength.” Ian spoke as evenly as he could. He didn’t defend Ana. No matter how impossible her situation, or his belief that she’d been misled and used...

  Her choices had been hard, but she’d still had choices. She was still responsible for them. And the ones she’d made still hurt like hell.

  “As you will.” Lerche unzipped the case, flipping it open. Amulets gleamed more brightly than the limited window light should have allowed; a sickening ochre taste oozing out into the room. “Although the truth about Ana might amuse you.”

  Ian doubted it. He flexed his fingers, his ankles...tensing and relaxing the long muscles of his legs as he’d done all morning. Tied he might be; willing to let himself stiffen, he wasn’t.

  “Once upon a generation or two ago,” Lerche said, running his fingers over the amulets with appreciation, “one of our drozhars met one of your Sentinel bitches and found he had a point to make. The incident resulted in a child. Naturally, he couldn’t allow such a child to remain in Sentinel hands, so he took it, and kept its mother on hand until the child was raised far enough along to be interesting.” He glanced at Ian. “If you had a chance to check, you’d find your records back this up.”

  “If,” Ian said. Not believing, not disbelieving. Just filing away the words for another time. Trying to keep the impact of them from rousing emotion. Anger. Desperation.

  “As happens from time to time, we found it convenient to have Sentinel blood for experimentation,” Lerche said. “We allowed the child to breed, in a limited fashion—and we kept the bloodline ignorant of its heritage.”

  “To control the experiment,” Ian said, finding in Lerche’s satisfaction a convincing truth. One that churned inside his chest as he understood, all over again, how deeply and perversely the Core had continued to work against them. Generations earlier, the Sentinels had thought the detente successful and had focused on protecting their world from the burgeoning environmental costs of industrialization.

  “Ana is the end of that line,” Lerche said. “The blood has become too thin to remain interesting, while still thick enough to render her deeply flawed for our purposes.” His face flickered with annoyance. “I had hoped the spy amulet would deal with her, but her blood is apparently too thin for that. A shame she hesitated on triggering the second working.”

  “Bummer for you,” Ian said, trying to still the clamor of his pounding heart.

  “Still, it gives me the chance to play with her a while longer.” Lerche seemed genuinely cheered by the thought. “Make no mistake, Ian Scott. You might have temporarily had her body, but she remains mine.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” And he couldn’t. Not when Ana had been the one to snug his restraints back to the tightest setting. Whatever the pain on her face as she’d done it, her regret didn’t begin to echo what that decision had done to him. “As long as we’re gloating, you want to tell me where we’re going with this? Because my people are coming, and I’m guessing you won’t leave me behind as a welcome gift.”

  Lerche made a noise that Ian couldn’t quite read. Derisive, perhaps. Amused, maybe. “As you wish.” He patted the soft briefcase as if it were a pet. “Fabron Gausto once thought he could create a working that would eliminate your various bestial advantages.”

&n
bsp; “Right. As I recall, he simply turned himself into a monster. And then he died.”

  Lerche made a dismissive gesture. “He wasn’t looking at the situation from the correct perspective. Why change us, if we can change you?”

  Of course. All of the recent amulet developments had focused on destroying the Sentinel other, from the bullets that had poisoned Kai Faulkes over the summer to the very working that now held Ian’s leopard at bay.

  He hadn’t meant to clench his fists against the restraints, but of course Lerche noticed it. “You,” he said, lifting a shoulder that in no way offset his smug expression, “were an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I had hoped to wrest more information from you—you’re really quite the prize—but...” Lerche shrugged. “As it is, I’ll simply focus on permanently peeling you away from the beast you call your other. Being the first to accomplish that will be equally as rewarding.”

  Ian fought for composure through throbbing head and aching ribs and fury. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that after those interlopers crashed our party outside Ruidoso this summer, we’d be better off working together? Because they’re after us both, and I can tell you right now we don’t know crap about whoever was behind that.”

  “I’m sure we have people working that situation,” Lerche said. He nudged the amulet case into the exact center of the desk. “In any event, Ana will be back soon. I care little whether you tell her any of this. Her fate is sealed regardless.”

  “I’m not sure why you even bothered to tell me.”

  Lerche smiled. “You’re smarter than that, Ian. Obviously, I knew it would distress you.”

  Ian grit his jaw on the snarl rising to break free, the tension of it aching down his spine.

  Lerche only laughed. “I have things to do,” he said. “When Ana returns, I’ll be back to play.” He gestured at the open case, laughed again, and swept out the door with an exit worthy of an evil overlord. Ian glared after his back, then glared at the muscle who had never deigned to notice him in the first place—and then found himself glaring at the closed door.