Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

by Doranna Durgin

  Alone. And waiting. And, just as Lerche had intended, anticipating. Not only his own fate, but Ana’s—spread out there before him in the open case and its sickly gleam of metal.

  Spread right out before him.

  None of these amulets were silent; there was no need for it.

  Lerche, perhaps, didn’t understand the intuitive nature of Ian’s work with amulets. Didn’t understand that his strength, the thing he did better than any other, was combining that intuition with the logical process of deconstructing the things in the same layered, rote fashion of their construction.

  Didn’t understand, perhaps, that while even a Core expert required the cords, knots and braids to identify an amulet at a glance, Ian found them convenient but needed none of it—not so long as he’d encountered the basic elements of any given amulet in the past.

  Ian rolled his shoulders within the confines of the chair, and began to explore the amulets.

  * * *

  The big man facing Ana from the porch made a harrumphing sound. “If we want you,” he said, quite matter-of-factly, “you’re ours. You must know that.”

  She glanced from one to the other of them, utterly unable to think. The lanky man on the porch bench gave her a modest little shrug, confirming the big man’s words. Jet waited in readiness and Lyn stood back slightly as if leaving it to the others, now that her job was done.

  Fernie said, “Don’t you dare push her. We just turned her whole life inside out...and I don’t think she ever meant to hurt anyone in the first place.”

  The lanky man snorted. “If you say so, Fernie. That’s your thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Shea,” Fernie snapped at him, “it is. So have some respect. And remember that Ian—” She didn’t finish that sentence, glancing at Ana as she started another instead. “Remember that Ian thinks much of her. He’s no fool, our Ian.”

  But he’d been a fool to trust Ana, no matter that she hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.

  Fernie reached out to her again, palm up and fingers gently beckoning. “Ana. Let us help. We can keep you safe here—and you can help us help Ian. I know that’s what you want.”

  True enough. But a single clear line of thought broke through her confusion, and she grasped at it. She couldn’t stay here. Lerche would know something had gone wrong. He might well shut down the house, cut his losses and relocate.

  He wouldn’t leave Ian alive.

  “Start over,” Lyn said, very practically. “I’m Lyn Maines. I take the ocelot, and I’m a tracker.”

  “The tracker, you mean,” the lanky man said. “You don’t want to be a Sentinel on the run if Lyn is on your track.”

  Ana looked more closely at him, then, floundering in her assumption that Lyn tracked not those from the Atrum Core, but Sentinels.

  Lyn caught her expression well enough. “We do police our own,” she said drily. “As well as get them out of trouble.”

  The lanky man made a noise that Ana couldn’t quite interpret and said, “I’m Shea. I take the coyote and handle shielding.” Ana glanced around them somewhat warily, and Shea nodded. “Right. This whole place is shielded now. Including you.”

  “Jet,” said the wildest of them. “I am wolf.” She frowned, glancing at Fernie.

  “Yes, that’s a good way to say it,” Fernie agreed. To Ana, she said, “Jet was born wolf. One of yours got hold of her.”

  “Gausto.” Ana winced. She’d heard things—the Southwest drozhar gone rogue. And she knew how quickly Lerche had dissociated himself from the Southwest drozhar when things went bad—but also that he secretly admired the man. She’d never known details.

  “I’m Ruger,” said the big guy on the porch. “I’m the reason Fernie is up and walking around when she shouldn’t be.”

  “The healer,” Fernie interposed, more drily than was her wont. “And a very bossy one, too. Not in the best of moods, with Mariska newly brooding back home.”

  “Bear,” Ana guessed, looking at him—though she hadn’t quite meant to say it out loud.

  Ruger showed his teeth in a laugh. “Kodiak.”

  Ana said with some hesitation, “My name is Ana Dikau. I’m not anyone important to the Core. I guess...now I know why.”

  “You’re important to us,” Lyn said. “You can help us with this illness. Maybe help us find Ian.”

  The illness. The amulet. She glanced at Ruger.

  “It’s all I can do to stay ahead of it,” he said. “We’re all feeling it. It’s silent, isn’t it? And you know where it is.”

  She took a breath. A deep one, not caring how visibly it revealed her nerves and her lack of inborn courage. “I do,” she said. “I’ll get it. But not until everyone comes away from the porch.”

  Of all of them, Jet seemed to understand most readily. She moved off the porch and over toward the driveway, and seemed surprised when no one else did. “Come,” she said. “She is prey. She will not go past us to enter. And she will not enter if she thinks we’ll be waiting outside the door for her to come out.”

  Prey. Exactly so, in far too many ways and for far too many years. Ana crossed her arms and looked at those who hadn’t yet moved. Ruger made a sound deep in his chest, and she thought it might have been amusement. He followed Jet, and Lyn and Shea moved more reluctantly but still ended up beside the cars.

  Fernie held out her hand to Ana—most assertively this time, nodding at it. “We’re vulnerable, too,” she said. “We go together, you and me.” When Ana hesitated, she said, “Ana, I take no other shape. My blood probably isn’t all that much thicker than yours. At some point, we must trust.”

  “Follow the feeling,” Ana murmured. Ian, she trusted. Fernie had less reason to trust her than Ana had to return it, making her continued understanding a gift.

  She took Fernie’s hand.

  But when they entered the house and reached the kitchen together, Ana pulled away. “You should stay away, now.”

  “My kitchen,” Fernie said in dismay. “Of course, the kitchen. This is where you were, that first day.”

  “I didn’t know,” Ana said, unexpected bite in those words. “Not any of what I thought I did.” I didn’t know the amulet would hurt anyone, I didn’t know I would find good people here, I didn’t know I would follow one of them right into love.

  Fernie said nothing, her mouth flattened, the strong morning light and her recent illness making her face severe.

  Ana knew the feeling of being unforgiven. A familiar thing, now that she knew she could pin it on the way Lerche had never forgiven her murky heritage.

  Somehow, that feeling mattered more with Fernie. It mattered deeply with Ian.

  Maybe because this time, she deserved it. She hadn’t known what she was doing...but she’d done it. She’d deceived them all, and she’d deceived Ian, and she’d hurt them.

  And Ian was captive. Captive. In what world did that even make sense?

  “It’s a lot to take in,” Fernie said—and if she was upset, she was still understanding. At Ana’s sharp look, she said, “Oh, yes. That’s what I do. Empathy of a sort. Who else would manage a retreat for overworked, damaged and recovering Sentinels?”

  Ana hesitated beside the counter, suddenly panicked all over again. “If you could read my mind, you’d have known about this from the start.”

  Fernie laughed. “No, hija. I’ve known you to be troubled, and I’ve certainly known you were mistreated. But I have only the sense of your reactions. And Ian’s. Or did you think my defense of you was simply blind faith?”

  “I didn’t have much time to think about it at all,” Ana told her, and ran her hand along the underside of the counter overhang until she found the smooth button of the amulet. A simple twist of thought released the working that held it there, and it dropped into her hand. She held it out to Fe
rnie. “I’m supposed to return with this, but I can cover that if you need it.”

  Fernie wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Leave it there. Shea brought one of Ian’s warded isolation cases.”

  Ana gladly dropped it to the counter, wiping her hand along the side of her jeans. Jeans and minimalist cross-trainers and a waffle-weave shirt that would allow her to move.

  She’d come ready to run. Now she said, “Please. Make sure they’re still back from the door.”

  Fernie gave her a look that might have been pity. “Child, if they want you, they’ll take you.”

  She knew. But she held Fernie’s dark gaze anyway, and Fernie shook her head and went to clear the way. Once Ana left the house—cautiously, finding them all still clustered by their vehicles—she kept right on walking until she’d made most of the distance to the lane.

  “Wait,” Lyn said—a little closer than Ana wanted now, but not threatening. “Don’t go. We can protect you. We can help.”

  “A whole lot more now that we won’t be fighting that amulet,” Shea said, tipping his head at her—eyes narrowed, as if trying to figure her out. “And we need your help to find Ian. We know that matters to you.”

  “I’ve stayed too long,” she said. It was truth. “And I’m already returning without the amulet. Lerche will suspect something, if he doesn’t already. He’s had someone watching this place all along.”

  Shea coughed into his hand and nodded at Jet.

  Jet said, “The wolf likes to run in the greenway. It was a good chase.”

  Ana’s eyes widened. “You didn’t—”

  Ruger interrupted her with a snort. “He’s downstairs, nice and tidy. And you should stay. Help us find Ian. We know him best from his lab and his work. You know him best here. Now. With what the illness has done to him.”

  She found it hard to breathe, facing reality all over again. “I can’t,” she said, struggling to say the words. “Lerche... Lerche has Ian.” The pronouncement brought the Sentinels to a tightly strung alert, and Ana shrank away. “If I don’t return, he’ll shut down the house. He’ll hurt Ian—he’ll kill him, if he can’t control him.”

  “He can’t begin to control a field Sentinel,” Ruger said tightly. “Not Ian.”

  “Where is he?” Lyn moved closer—too close. She might be no bigger than Ana, but she was Sentinel, faster and stronger and dangerous. “Where’s the base?”

  “It’s got to be a big house,” Shea said. “They always are.”

  Ana shook her head, a quick and nervous gesture. “No,” she said. “You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’ll do. I don’t think I knew what he was capable of until these past few days.”

  “We know he’s cruel,” Lyn said, and tipped her chin at Ana.

  Ana clapped a hand over bruises old and new. You’ve always healed fast, Lerche had said. Now she knew why, and how he had taken advantage of it. “Yes. He’s cruel. He’s been cruel to Ian. And I think he had a man killed just to convince me that Ian was as awful as I was supposed to think he was. That you all are. You have to believe me—if you push him, he won’t hesitate to make Ian pay.”

  “Ana,” Ruger said, and that deep voice of his, that size of his, that unassuming lurking strength of his as he, too, moved closer—

  It was too much. Too big, too close, too Sentinel.

  Ana fled. She wasn’t as strong as they were or as fast, but she was fit and ready to run, ready to take the chance she could reach the end of the lane and witnesses before they caught her.

  Lyn’s sharp command followed her out. “Let her go! I can follow her anywhere, now that I have her—”

  No, Ana thought, sprinting hard—driven by the need to return to Ian, no matter how little control she had over Lerche. She made it to the corner, turned sharply north to cross the bridge over the greenway canal and plunged abruptly into the pedestrian population of Santa Fe. No, you won’t.

  She found the silent shielding amulet in her pocket and gave the necessary twist of will to invoke it.

  I’m sorry, but you won’t.

  Because if Lerche saw them coming, Ian would be dead.

  Chapter 11

  Lerche ignored the bustle of packing to focus on the security camera feeds on display in the mansion’s dining room. Half a dozen views showed on the large-screen monitor, but only one was enlarged. Ian Scott.

  The man seemed to doze, impressing Lerche in spite of himself. Conserving energy was indeed the smart thing to do, but Lerche hadn’t thought the man had it in himself to tame his own restlessness.

  It wouldn’t do to give the Sentinel too much recovery time. Especially since Lerche had decided to use another, possibly more effective weapon against the Sentinel’s silence.

  Ana.

  Lerche couldn’t countenance the loyalty Ian Scott had shown to the woman. She’d thoroughly betrayed the Sentinels, and quite specifically betrayed Ian Scott himself. And Lerche had no sense that Scott had taken that betrayal lightly.

  But he knew, without qualm, that Scott would be more affected by threats to Ana than he would to the ones aimed at his own person.

  Stupid Sentinels. They could never, ever be trusted to use their powers properly. Far too emotional, all of them.

  Activity at the house entrance caught his eye, and he discovered Ana on approach—not with Budian, who had escorted her to the retreat, but emerging from a taxi, after which she hurried up the long ornamental walk to the house. As she grew closer, her harried expression and disheveled state became evident. She stopped at the door and attempted to finger-comb her tousled hair back into place, straightening her colorful tank top. One of his favorites, the way it exposed the delicate sweep of her collarbones and the graceful rise of her neck.

  She had always been a pretty little thing. Too bad she couldn’t have been more useful in other ways.

  An interior camera caught her slipping through the entryway, avoiding several of his posse on the way—shrinking away from them, as she well might. They thought no more of her now than they ever had.

  He assumed she’d look for him—coming to report. It took him a moment longer than it should have to comprehend that she was heading toward the opposite wing of the house.

  Ian Scott.

  He watched with rising anger as she entered Scott’s comfortable little jail, her back to the camera, her expression hidden from Lerche. She glanced over her shoulder, a moment of trepidation that told Lerche she knew someone watched, and then knelt beside the restraint chair, her hands folding over one of Scott’s.

  It took the Sentinel a moment to rouse. She reached up to stroke the side of his face, a visage no longer satisfactorily covered with bruises, once-deep cuts healing. Scott’s eyes fluttered open—Lerche was pleased to see that groggy response, at least.

  She spoke urgently to Scott, as aware of his state as Lerche was, and sent another, more urgent, glance back at the camera.

  She had, somehow, surmised that she and Scott had little time left. She had, somehow, actually learned something on her little mission to retrieve the amulet.

  That she rushed to Ian Scott’s side to give him this news first only sealed her fate.

  Righteous anger suffused Lerche’s body, stiffening his back and bringing warmth to his face. Lerche pushed the chair back from the security desk, full of intention to show her just how gravely she’d erred—and then stopped himself.

  He was not, after all, a man to pass up opportunity.

  These moments she spent with Ian Scott would be a bittersweet final reminder of what she’d come to mean to the Sentinel, no matter how she’d betrayed him in the end.

  And then Lerche would interrupt them. He’d learn what Ana had discovered, and more.

  After which they could die together.

  Lerche stood, straightened his sui
t and strode toward his office with great purpose. Budian was still out in the field, and Lerche hadn’t sent him unprepared. Now that Ana had removed the evidence of his illicit Core strike, Lerche could buy that time.

  Not with the subtle amulets that Ana had used, but with those that Budian had been planting along the retreat perimeter.

  Silent, strong and just waiting to be triggered.

  * * *

  Ian sank deeply into meditation—giving his body a chance to heal itself, such as it could. Preventing the endless and exhausting spin of his mind.

  Hunkering down to wait.

  He was slow to come back to the surface, floundering off balance as the effort of maintaining his quiet gave way to an effortless silence of internal clamor.

  “Ian.” Ana’s voice came in a whisper. “Wake up. We need to talk—quickly, before Lerche sends someone to join us.”

  “I’m awake,” he said, making it so and opening his eyes to her concern, to her brows drawn, her lip caught between her teeth. “I’m good and awake. Means I remember very well what’s happened between us.” Love and betrayal. Loss.

  “I know.” Her features took on an intensity of determination he hadn’t seen before. “I get it—you can’t truly trust me. But you know what else I know? I’ve been a pawn all along the way. Around here, truth seems to be a moving target. So I figure I’ll forgive myself if I miss it now and then.”

  She had his attention. Not so much her words, but her manner. Anxious, yes. Definitely aware of the precarious nature of her words here deep in Lerche’s private little lair. But no longer a woman waiting to see what might happen.

  Just maybe a woman who was about to make things happen.

  He worked his jaw a little, getting moisture to his mouth. “What’s going on?”

  “Lerche sent me to retrieve the amulet I planted at the retreat. I ran into your friends.”

  “Who?” he said, shifting in the chair as if he could sit more upright—but he was too restrained to do any such thing.