Ian fell free of the working, his gasping groan holding that same edge of dark laughter. “Ohhh, yeah,” he said. “That hurt.”
“What kind of man am I?” Lerche said, and his voice held a cruel edge that seemed all too sharp to Ana after years of pretending it wasn’t that bad, or that she deserved it when it was. He laughed just as darkly as Ian had. “Of all people, you should know that.” He took two swift steps in the small room and crouched before her, taking her jaw in that cruel grip over bruises still tender to the bone.
“Leave her,” Ian said, words that scraped in his throat. “Leave her alone!”
Lerche paid him no mind, giving Ana’s face a little shake. “And you would know, if you weren’t so unrelentingly dense about the bold tactics needed to manage these beasts. Your mother was allowed to have you for far too long, little Ana. She damaged your thinking beyond what I could repair.”
“Lerche,” Ian said, his voice louder. “I am about done with you—”
The bodyguards shared a laugh over that one. Lerche smiled, fingers grinding into Ana’s jaw. Her knee slipped over the object beneath it and she suddenly knew—the pen. She felt herself break from terror to anger to I. Have. Had. Enough!
She groped for the pen, found it, fisted it and jammed it into Lerche’s thigh, years of defiance crammed into a single instant and driving the sleek metal deep.
Lerche roared with surprise and fell back from her, the pen embedded halfway up the barrel. He scrabbled at it as the bodyguards swooped in, snatching Ana up one on each arm and yanking Ana to her feet. Ian made an inarticulate sound of frustration, jerking within his restraints, and Lerche scraped his fingers across the floor to sweep up the amulet, glaring at Ana with an intent so clear he might as well have spoken it.
“—Goddam sonnuva bitch—” Ian snarled, fighting with an animal intent, and she wanted to cry out no, don’t wear yourself down but there was Lerche, thrusting the amulet right into her face while she lifted herself up in the grip of the bodyguards, kicking out at him—
Only delaying the inevitable, the first electric slice of pain down her arms, down her legs and scattering into branches of lightning through her limbs. And the last thing she saw before her vision flashed into white and red and stark bright bursts of light was the satisfaction on Lerche’s contorted face, and the last thing she heard was Ian’s rising shout of demand, his chair crashing over—
And the screams in her own throat.
Chapter 12
Ian’s shouts rang impotent to his own ears, eclipsed by the sight of Ana strung between the two bodyguards—her body taut, her screams strangling in her throat.
As if Lerche hadn’t done enough to her already.
The restraint chair lay on its side, trapping him just as thoroughly. He’d missed his chance to divert the amulet from Ana—he’d underestimated Lerche’s cruelty, had been too stunned at Ana’s explosion of defiance.
The lower restraint shifted against the floor, grabbing his attention. The stiff buckle jabbed against the carpet, pushing back at the buckle tongue. He grabbed the hint of room it gave him, twisting his wrist and jamming the thing down again—doing it again and again, gaining space until a final twist and his wrist slipped free, his fingers stiff and clumsy.
A quick glance showed him no one had noticed—showed him, too, that Ana no longer strained against the working but dangled limply. And still Lerche plied the amulet, the bitter, broken taste of it a thick corruption of the very air around them.
Dammit. He plucked at the stout leather around his other wrist, stiff fingers slipping and making no headway. Dammit it to—
His gaze fell on the amulet case. The amulets he’d so carefully explored the evening before, learning of the tools Lerche would ply against them.
Do it. Take them.
Lerche hadn’t expected that Ian could redirect the amulets; he hadn’t yet figured it the cause of those failures.
Or realized that Ian could trigger them, as well.
Do it.
But triggering them from a distance wasn’t easy—even Lerche needed them up close and personal. And triggering them from a distance and then directing them with any precision...
Do it.
If he didn’t do it right, he’d kill them all. He’d send every bit of power raging through his body and through Ana’s, including the workings that would shred his very nature.
But what a grand bright beacon it would create for Lyn, for any Sentinel within the region. What an unmistakable warning, and a neon-bright cry for help.
And if he didn’t do it, Ana would die. If she wasn’t already—
Lerche stepped into her, taking her jaw in that favorite grip of his, shaking himself out of his own satisfied reverie to check in with Ian—to revel, too, in that.
“Yeah?” Ian said, his upper lip stiff with dried blood and his body tensed with the understanding of what he was about to do and what it was about to do to him. “You think that’s impressive? Suck on this, why don’t you?”
He couldn’t shield; Lerche had seen to that. Hell, he could barely think. He just knew. And he followed the moment to the only conclusion left, wrapping the amulet case in his awareness, touching each and every one of those cold metal disks, the buttons, the miniature tablets...
Twisting.
The room flooded with the thick taste of ichor. Lerche flung him a look of astonishment—an utter awareness of what Ian had done, his expression giving away his instant understanding of Ian’s earlier interference. “You imbecile—!”
Ian lifted a lip in what was left of his snarl—and braced himself.
The bodyguard farthest from Ian cried out, his face twisting horribly and his skin sagging, squirming as if a colony of bees swarmed beneath it. He threw himself away from Ana to writhe on the carpet, his flailing legs tangling with Lerche’s so the amulet went flying and Lerche staggered away, hands slapping at his body one moment, then twisting terribly, unnaturally, in the next. The crack of bone came at the same time the second bodyguard cried out, and someone else in the house shouted in surprise and then screamed in agony, and the wall across from the open door split from top to bottom while dust sifted down from the joints and seams above them and—
And Ian saw nothing more, because not all the workings took direction. Some of them simply sought targets.
Sentinels.
The leopard twisted within him, robbing him of sight and sound and pouring chaos into his mind. Dark agony ripped along his limbs, filling his ears with an insensate yowl. He felt claws ripping through carpet and tail lashing, teeth bared and whiskers bristling.
Screaming filled what was left of his mind and he had no idea from whose throat it came. He lost track of the world and of himself in it. Just a swirl of motion, sensations sweeping over him, most of them scraping through with jagged edges and stinging hints of insanity.
A blink of reality swam before him—Ana at his side, tugging on his hand, urging him into blinding sunlight, the mansion creaking into a new tilt behind them. Gone, and he stumbled, but at least felt himself do it before he fell away into bright darkness again. Another blink and he slammed up against a tree, the rough bark a familiar comfort and the scent of pine strong in his nose. The ground rose steeply before him, unmarked by any trail. Fingers closed around his arm and he jerked himself to freedom, turning on the perpetrator with a snarl. Striking out and hearing a woman’s cry and then falling away...
His mind tumbled. It grasped at the clarity and brilliance he once knew to be his, seeing just enough of it to know it had been there but now was not. Reality turned shivering in darkness, still moving, still climbing. The night should be awash with the scent and color of moonlight, a Sentinel’s unique vision of the world after sunset—
But it wasn’t, and it continued to tug and roil and snap at him until it use
d him up. Until he heard nothing but a steady groaning that came with each exhalation, and each inhalation sounded like a forced thing, a thing to be endured instead of a thing that came as naturally as life. Endless running, endless movement, endless pain and confusion.
Endless...
A twig snapped, echoing unnaturally in his mind. A hand touched his shoulder, and he felt it to the bone. A whisper of comfort scraped against his ears. The air felt stifling against his face, scented heavily with sap and musty old needles.
This is real.
The groans were his. The whispers were hers. The night belonged to the mountain, cold and crisp and alive around them.
“Ian?” she said as if she somehow knew he’d emerged.
“For now,” he managed, and fell asleep.
* * *
Ana jerked awake with the dawn—not that she’d ever truly slept.
She barely remembered escaping that horrible house she’d once called home. She’d come to her senses to find the bodyguards dead and Lerche moaning into the carpet, and her own body barely responsive to her demands.
She’d thought Ian dead at first, too. He’d sagged limp in the chair, on his side—one hand free and still clenched around the restraint for the other, his wrists and ankles chafed into ragged, bloody abrasions and blood at his mouth and fresh from his nose.
My God, Ian, what did you do?
She had no idea. Her senses rang, her body echoed with pain and trembled with weakness. She’d not given any thought to her actions—she’d only done them. She’d pulled herself over the strangely squishy body of one of the men beside her, reaching Ian to tug and scrabble at the remaining restraints—freeing him and rousing him and tugging on him until they made their way out of the house, quite instinctively heading for high, wild ground.
Their progress had been more of a mutual tumble than flight. Ian had struck out at her without warning, connecting more than once. He’d snarled at nothingness, and he’d fallen into trees. There’d been no sanity in his eyes. No sign that he’d seen Ana, no sign that he knew her. And still they ran, because she’d rather be with Ian in this state than anywhere near the organization to which she’d once been so loyal.
To which she’d subsumed herself and for which she’d doubted her sense of right and wrong, allowing others to devalue her for simply being who she was and burying the small, still lessons of her early years.
At least now she knew where those values came from. And why.
Ana shivered in the brisk fall air. She’d had the sense to snatch a blanket from the bed, wrapping it around her shoulders. Still, a blanket was no match for high country fall, and even the warmth pouring off Ian—an unnatural warmth, as though his body fevered itself with healing—had been unable to hold the cold at bay.
She had no idea where they were, only that this mountain was plenty big enough to get lost in. The sun gilded the slope across from them, painting the thick forest a glimmering tint of gold over green, the shadows still deep. She and Ian had tumbled beneath an overhang; a giant tree had lost its grip on the earth to slant above and beside them.
For the moment, Ian slept on. His silvered hair stuck out in disarray. Dried blood smeared across his face and down his chin, and she remembered what Lerche had said about the first working—the one that weakened all the small vessels and thinned the blood.
Please, not his mind. Not the brilliance and compassion and essential Ian.
Or maybe he’d just run headlong into a tree during their flight. He’d certainly had the opportunity.
Ana shivered again, tucking herself back in beside Ian. When he woke, when they could move, they would find some sunshine and let it blaze against them.
But they also needed water. Dehydration came quickly on a desert mountain no matter the green around them, and free-flowing water was a scarcity. She and Ian needed such things as civilization could offer—and Ana had no idea which direction would lead them home.
Or if they were safe to go.
Lerche had not been dead, after all. Hurt, most certainly—but still alive enough to cry out threats as she’d fled.
Another shiver, one that rattled her bones. She ached right down to the heart of herself, and couldn’t tell what of that discomfort came from her treatment at Lerche’s hands and what simply came of being so cold.
Ian moved not at all. He breathed lightly but not quite steadily, with an occasional exhalation that verged on a groan.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him with nothing to offer but her presence and a ragged blanket. She wrapped herself around him, soaking up his unnatural heat and letting herself fall into memory. In memory he’d lost his breath in pleasure, not pain, and the lines of his body had been hers to explore. Muscle layered tightly over ribs, all long lines and grace and that sense that he could, at any moment, put his body exactly where he meant it to be. Precision and brilliance wrapped in power and masculine beauty.
He had been the one to grin at her, as irreverent as a man could be, and talk about following the attraction between them—faster and further than she’d ever expected. He’d been the one to treat her so tenderly, so respectfully, that she’d let herself go, taking chances with her heart and with her fate.
If I could do it over again...
Who was she even fooling? She’d do it just the same. She didn’t have the courage to give up the things he’d offered her—the look in his eye as he made himself vulnerable to her touch. The hint of surprise at her effect on him, and the deep gasps of his response. And there, too—the way his expression grew just a little bit fierce when he offered the same back to her, drinking her cries with a greed she found as arousing as his touch.
Ian.
She pulled the blanket more tightly around them both, resting her head on his shoulder while his body heat radiated into the chilled lump of her torso, warming her from the outside while memories warmed her from the inside.
But they couldn’t stay this way forever. If he didn’t wake soon, she’d have to find some way to mark this spot—and then she’d have to find her way out of these mountains, with no idea what awaited her once she did.
Or she would die here, and Ian would die here, and the Sentinels at the retreat would die under renewed attack, never knowing Ian’s secret to finding the silent amulets.
And Lerche would have just what he’d wanted all along.
* * *
One broken arm. One dislocated shoulder. Three badly wrenched fingers, and one badly bruised kidney.
Those things had come from the mass release of the amulets—but his ferocious headache came from the intrusion into his space. From the loss of so many of his posse, and the rebuilding to come.
But opportunity remained. In the wake of his report—the “unwarranted attack by Ian Scott gone rogue”—there were Core reinforcements on the way. An investigation of the Sentinels to come. And plenty of work to do so they all got the story straight.
Ana, a low-level support admin, had a chance meeting with Ian Scott, and none of the wiles to recognize how he used her. He wooed her. He conquered her. He discerned the location of Lerche’s safe house, and somewhere along the way his mind snapped—he was, after all, in the area for enforced R & R due to the strain he’d been under.
No one had realized how far gone he was, however, and it allowed him to launch an attack the likes of which no one had realized was possible—triggering amulets in bulk from afar. Ana had then tried to stop him the only way she knew how, by seeding amulets at the retreat.
Such a shame the rest of the Sentinels would die before anyone realized what she’d done. Or that Ian had given way to his beast, taking Ana deep into the mountains to kill her.
With the few men he had left—with the final card he’d already put into play—Lerche would make certain of that. And if his story had some weak spots,
there would be no one around to naysay it.
He’d already ascertained that the retreat amulets—one at each corner of the property—had done their work well. The Sentinels at the retreat had quickly fallen ill. The tracker, Lyn Maines, had finally given up on locating Ana and returned to the unnatural silence of the house—wary, he’d been told, but not wary enough to save herself.
No doubt there were reinforcements on the way—this time, in likelihood, a team that would make no bones about its presence. There would be no playing nice from the Sentinels at this point.
But they’d have no means to contradict his story.
Because they’d be too late.
* * *
Ian burned.
He burned hot and then he burned cold, and the jumbled sensations of his escape and his journey to this rough shelter had faded into a dully overwhelming throb of pain that silenced all else.
“Ian.” That was Ana’s whisper in his ear.
Come to think of it, that was her body pressed up against his, soft where it should be soft, yielding where it should yield—but nonetheless shivering with the cold.
It was a cold that hadn’t penetrated further than Ian’s fingertips, held at bay by the burning.
“Ian,” she whispered again, this time her hand closing over his shoulder. Agonizing spikes of fire spread from that touch. He didn’t mean to groan, or to curse, but he apparently wasn’t in control of such things just yet.
“I’m sorry!” But she still whispered. “I won’t do that again. But, Ian, you have to wake. They’ve come for us.”
“Killed the bastards,” he muttered.
She released what might have been a sob of relief, touching her forehead to his back. “Not all of them,” she said. “Not Lerche, I don’t think. And there were others—men who weren’t in the house when you did...whatever you did.”
She wouldn’t know, of course. She’d been insensible when he’d triggered all those amulets.
Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted Page 17