Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

by Doranna Durgin

  He gave her a halfhearted disgruntlement of a growl, and she waved him off. “Whatever. I’m warm, I’ve got food and water, and I’ve got a map. You just go ahead and growl, see if I care.”

  “That was supposed to be impressive,” he said, digging into the bag of food.

  “And I’m sure it was.” She tore a bite from the energy bar and wrestled with its cold chewiness, bending over the open map. “Remind me to make some sort of suitable reaction later. Right now I want to find us the fastest way out of here.”

  The spoon hesitated on the way to his mouth. “It’s not that easy.” He cleared the rest of the ragged feeling from his throat and took that bite, swallowing—eating faster now. “They found us, Ana. They followed us.”

  Her tenuous cheer evaporated. “I don’t see how.”

  “The same way they always do. One of us is marked somehow.” He offered her the food, and she shook her head—knowing well enough that the accelerated healing took a toll on him. It was Core Education 101.

  He tipped the rest of the stroganoff into his mouth for a high-calorie chew-and-swallow and set the bag aside, pushing the jacket off his shoulders to check his pockets and coming up with nothing but lint.

  Ana quickly did the same, going so far as to check the rolled cuffs of her pants. “Nothing,” she told him—and then muffled a startled cry when he reached for her, patting her down as thoroughly as anyone could, hands impersonal as they traced the seams of everything from her shirt and pants down to her bra. Her face flared with a new and unwelcome warmth. “I suppose I deserved that.”

  He cast her a startled glance. “Deserve has nothing to do with it. Right now I think it’s safe to say that I know more about how the Core works its enemies than you do.”

  “Enemies,” she said, musing on it with a prick of hurt. She’d never done anything but try to be what they wanted...without losing herself in the process.

  “Don’t get tangled in it,” he said. “Isn’t that what we decided?” He rubbed his temple with a weary gesture.

  On impulse, she reached for his hand. They sat together for a long moment of silence during which she was ridiculously aware of the way his fingers overlapped hers, the faintly rough nature of his palm and warmth of it. His fingers twitched slightly, and she found a wince at the corner of his eye and reached to soothe it.

  Gratifying that he closed his eyes to rest briefly against her touch. Once he straightened, he said, “They tracked us somehow. We need to know how.”

  “Can’t we just make a run for it?” Ana asked, thinking herself sensible. “Surely once we return to the retreat—”

  “Don’t count on my people for help,” Ian said, more sharply than she expected. “Not if Lerche told the truth about seeding that place with silents—and triggering them.”

  “I thought...if your brevis is already on alert...won’t they send more help?”

  “On wings,” Ian said. “If they’re not here already. But they’ll be in crisis mode. And who knows if they’ll be able to shield from the damned silents, no matter how careful they are. Although if they can get Maks on the scene with his uber-shields...” He trailed off, stopping himself. “Never mind. The point is that they’re vulnerable. There’s no way I’m leading the Core straight back at them.”

  “Then you should rest.” The contents of one backpack sat on the ground before her, and Ana spread them out with one hand. A change of socks, a compass, a first aid kit, energy bars—and most importantly, in the middle of it all, a thick stack of chemical warmers, bundled together with a rubber band. “We’ve got what we need for now, if we’re careful.”

  His grim smile disabused her of that notion. He said, “We bought some space, but not much. Lerche absolutely can’t afford for me to live—once he doesn’t hear from those men, he’ll act quickly. He has too much understanding of what I can do, even if he has no idea I solved the silent amulet.”

  Ana reclaimed her hand, threading her fingers into her hair, head bent to look at the ground before her—the scattering of supplies from the pack, the coat that overlapped her crossed knees and then some. The evidence that they’d killed and fled and killed again. “I just can’t even believe this,” she said. “In what world does any of this make sense?”

  “No particular world,” Ian admitted, and recaptured her hand. “Look, Ana. You had the right of it. We can’t stop to make things make sense. We just have to trust. And to follow.”

  “Follow you, you mean,” she said bitterly. “Just like I followed Lerche for so long.”

  He sat silent for a long moment. Far too long. When she dared to glance at him, she found the weariness she expected, and the strain on his face. But she also found a less expected grief.

  He gave her hand one last squeeze and released it. “Not if you don’t want to.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, rotating his shoulders within the drape of the jacket. “But give me a chance to work out this tracking thing before you make up your mind.”

  Ana froze on understanding. He didn’t intend to make her do anything. He didn’t even intend to insist. He was hurt and tired and doing his best, and yet he was willing to let her walk away.

  She didn’t know whether the realization pierced her heart, or freed it.

  * * *

  Ian wouldn’t force her. Not after what she’d been through, and especially not because of what she believed him—the Sentinel—to be.

  In the end, he didn’t even know if he’d be willing to let her go her own way. But if he couldn’t stop her, then he’d damned well make sure she wasn’t carrying a tracker. Sure, he could have done with a little more time. He didn’t have it. So be it.

  He’d tasted the posse concussion amulets in spite of his illness and injury—he’d been able to perceive them from afar and been able to trigger them. So he trusted that he’d have similarly felt any tracker planted on Ana.

  Not that they hadn’t searched her—and him—thoroughly enough.

  It meant that if they were being tracked by amulet, it was a silent one. Silent and so well hidden that there was no point in continuing a physical search.

  He was about to put his new system to the test.

  Not ready.

  Not physically, when he still burned from the inside out, his thoughts slippery and his bones sore. Not skill-wise, either. No finesse, no established parameters—only a blind fling of energy. “Just give me a moment,” he told her as grimly as before. Not that she’d leaped to her feet. She was, he thought, still processing the fact that her choices from here were entirely her own.

  Not a situation in which she had practice.

  Besides, he still held her hand. In fact, he drew strength from it—knowing, if not understanding, why it made all the difference in the world. Enough so he was able to close his eyes and find one small, quiet, still place inside himself. From that he drew the purest note of energy he could find—a fine-tuned thing of highest clarity.

  He sent it out in a single smooth pulse.

  Chaos instantly pushed in on him, and he held it off—listening from that same quiet place, the only place from which he had the faintest chance of hearing—

  That.

  The response bounced back at him so quickly he almost missed it—and then again, three quick pings tumbling over one another at not quite the same strength.

  He lost hold on the quiet, shuddering faintly as the chaos slammed in around him again.

  “Ian,” she said, bending close to him, the scent of her hair a soothing spice and her breath warm against his neck.

  He opened his eyes to find her there. That close, with the daylight reflecting into the deeper honey glow of her eyes and the faint freckles completely revealed, concern written all over her face.

  She had no idea.

  And they didn’t have time to soften the news.r />
  “It’s you,” he said. “And them, for what it matters. But mostly it’s you.”

  She understood immediately.

  Almost.

  Her hands flew to her blouse, leaving him to fight the impinging chaos alone. “I’ll change,” she said, glancing down the hill where three men lay still clothed. “If we can’t find the thing, I’ll just leave it all behind.”

  He put his hands over hers, stilling them—getting a frown of response. Cold still blushed her cheeks and nose, but behind it her complexion had pinked up to a healthier warmth. No point in getting her cold all over again. Especially not when he was pretty sure it wouldn’t do any good.

  “I mean,” he said, “it’s you.”

  She looked at him with a distinct horror. “What do you mean, it’s me?”

  “In you,” he said. “I’d bet on it. Just as Fabron Gausto did to Jet.”

  “I don’t—” Her confusion said it all. Ian knew more about the activities of the deceased regional drozhar than she did. Knew more about the Core altogether—if not about how those such as Ana lived within it. Or about how the Core managed them.

  Although he was getting a pretty damned good idea.

  “Ian,” she said, pulling her hands away and tucking herself inside the absurdly oversize jacket. “My very own people are using me—they’re trying to kill me. And now my very best ally, my lover, is the enemy I’ve always known couldn’t be trusted at all.” She worked herself up to a glare. “I’ve had enough. So you just come right out and tell me what you’re talking about.”

  He blinked at her. Felt amusement welling up and didn’t try to hide it. “When you put it that way, babe, it does seem only fair.” He rotated his shoulders again, taking the stretch through to his torso—testing his ribs. Wincing at the scrape of pain but nonetheless lifting his arm to brace against the tree trunk. Testing himself. Limbering himself.

  Because now it was about to get ugly in a way he hadn’t anticipated.

  And she was waiting.

  “Short version,” he said. “From scratch. Gausto was developing a working to force a shapeshift on non-Sentinels. He wasn’t getting anywhere, so he worked it from the other direction—forcing the change on animal subjects.”

  Unexpected understanding crossed her face, a startled distaste. “Jet,” she said. “The woman I met yesterday.”

  “She’s here?” Ian felt a surge of hope. “Excellent. Lerche’s workings aren’t likely to affect her the way they’ll affect the others.”

  Ana took that in with a nod, but not without vexation. “What’s that got do with me?”

  Ian released a gust of impatience. “God, my head is a mess. The point is that once he had Jet, he used her—but she was and is a wild thing. So he found a way to keep track of her that she couldn’t thwart. He implanted an amulet.” The amulet had been a multitasker, full of less benign workings, but Ian left that part alone.

  Ana froze, looking down at herself with renewed horror. “In me,” she said, suddenly understanding. “Oh, my God, he can track us just because I exist!”

  “Unless,” Ian said gently, “we can do something about it.”

  “I don’t—how—” But she froze, understanding. “Take it out. You want to take it out. You want to cut me open and—”

  She jumped to her feet, clumsy in the cold and the jacket, and Ian made no move to stop her. He could hardly blame her. Even if he wasn’t Sentinel, even if she wasn’t wrestling with her whole world flipped inside out. She turned her back on him and took the three stumbling steps to the edge of their little scoop of shelter, and he didn’t try to stop that, either.

  He said, “I’ll be back in a few moments.”

  She made a muffled sound he didn’t even try to interpret as he stood and slipped his arms into the jacket sleeves—slowly, carefully, unwinding muscles stiff from the night and protesting all the abuse they’d taken along the way.

  He was just as glad Ruger wasn’t here to tell him what he’d done to himself with that explosive release of amulets. Or to tell him what he was doing to himself by interfering with his body’s attempt to heal.

  He ducked out beneath the massive tree trunk and made his way downhill to where the two posse members lay—sans their jackets, their bodies already taking on that peculiar stillness of death. The concussive amulets, released from such close proximity, had left them splayed as if trying to escape themselves, resulting in an instant rigor that must have resisted the removal of their jackets and now made searching them even more of a challenge.

  But before he searched, he circled them—alert for the stench of amulets that might have gone untriggered when he’d targeted the concussive workings. Perceiving nothing, he steeled himself, slipping around the edges of the necessary focus to ping them for silent amulets.

  Come on. Get it together!

  But he didn’t and couldn’t. Not until he extended his awareness back up the hill to where he’d meant to leave Ana her privacy—not intruding so much as reminding himself of the peace she’d always given him. From that first moment in the retreat yard, in the kitchen...even in those moments when she’d been planting that first lethal amulet.

  She was right. There’d be no untangling this mess between them. There’d only be allowing what they felt and seeing where it took them.

  Where it took him now was into the quiet zone. A brief respite, and just enough to ping for silents, sending that faint pulse out and away.

  From the men, he got three faint, damaged pulses.

  And from Ana, he received the same quiet response he’d felt before.

  Just frigging awesome.

  Ian made short work of his remaining tasks—searching and finding the men’s more conventional weapons. Two handguns, about which he knew little other than the fact they were semiautomatics. A Leatherman multitool and two combat knives of modest length. Their phones, which might come in handy if he and Ana ever found a signal.

  He stuffed the bounty into the various pockets of his newly acquired jacket and let his mind drift as he circled a little farther out, found a moment of privacy behind a cluster of little junipers, and slowly made his way back up to Ana.

  She greeted him with eyes reddened but dry, delicate features pinched with both the cold and resolution. “Okay. Then how do we find it?”

  “The amulet?” He barely waited for her nod. “We can try to triangulate. Don’t know if I’m up for that, honestly. It’s a kind of fine work I’ve had no practice in, and my ability to concentrate at that level is fractured at best.” He gave her what felt like a lame grin and no doubt was. “On the other hand, even with healing workings, it should have left a mark. We can just look. Starting with here.” He touched her neck, slid his hand down beneath the jacket to stop at the grace of toned muscle where her neck met her shoulder. “This is where they put Jet’s.”

  Her eyes widened; her hand raised to cover his. “There’s a spot there...” she said. “It always itches. Since right before we came here...”

  “Don’t tell me. Right about then you had some sort of twenty-four hour bug.”

  She gave him a skeptical look. “You couldn’t know that.”

  Ian laughed without humor. “I know how the Core works, babe. I know they made you sick so you wouldn’t notice the clues that they’d done this thing. Probably just a day or so, but pretty miserably so.”

  “I had an awful headache—it lasted two days.” She closed her eyes, struggling with the reality of it. “I’m not prone to them. I should have—”

  “No.” He said it with such vehemence that it shocked her into looking at him—unguarded, eyes wide. “You can’t blame yourself. They were very careful to make sure you never had reason to suspect what they could and would do to control you.” He stepped closer. “What they were doing all along. Don’t ever forget that, A
na.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment, then sighed. Acceptance. “Fine,” she said. “So now...?”

  Ian couldn’t help his grim look. “Now,” he told her, “we get it out.”

  * * *

  Easier said than done...but done as quickly as Ian possibly could.

  He raided their acquired first aid kit, not surprised to find disposable scalpel and hemostats. And with Ana’s jacket and blouse open and pulled aside far enough to expose her bra strap and the swell of her breast, he found the faintest hint of a scar. The stroke and prod of his fingers located the tiny lump of an implanted amulet.

  She drew back in alarm when he produced one of the combat knives, but settled back even before he reassured her, curling her fingers into the exposed roots at the base of their shelter.

  “Silly,” he told her with much affection, and bounced the knife pommel against the old scar fast enough to set up a vibration and long enough so she frowned at him again.

  “What—?”

  “Now,” he told her, and made the quickest of incisions, feeling the faint bite of metal against the blade and swapping the scalpel for the hemostats. Ana squeaked with surprise and jerked, biting her lip hard, and by then Ian had the thing.

  He swabbed her shoulder and made swift work of the butterfly bandages, placing a gel skin bandage over that and leaving Ana with a stunned expression on a pale face.

  “You’re done?” She ran her fingers over the thin and flexible covering.

  “Aim to please,” Ian told her. “It might need stitches when we get past all this, but no big deal.”

  “I’m not even sure I felt that.” She laughed, if not quite convincingly. “You and your bouncing knife.”

  He held the nubbin of an amulet up for her inspection, and then flicked it down the hill toward the dead men. “Just in case they have any trouble finding their own.”

  “Goodbye, Lerche.” Ana’s words should have held finality, but Ian heard a sadness there, too.