Jaguar Night (22 page)

Time to tell me your secrets, book. Time to let me in.

Let me in.

Impressions of Meghan flowed to him—more easily this time, when he knew what to look for. All the things he’d sensed of her the moment they’d met—the strength, the determination, the intent to do right by those around her. The deep love of her life, her land, her chosen family…the deep bitter grief and scars from the circumstances of her mother’s death.

He’d read her from the outside in that first meeting, just like anyone would. Damned if he hadn’t fallen just a little bit in love right that very moment.

And he’d thought he could just walk away. He’d thought he could pretend he hadn’t been touched by all those things. Even after they’d shared memories…shared thoughts…shared bodies. He’d thought he could go on with the rebel’s life he’d chosen all those years ago.

Damn, Treviño, way to be wrong.

But feeling all those things, absorbing them and reveling in them…he had no time for that. He pushed his way through that emotional cloud, fully immersed in ward view. The tight, thick steel webbing of the protection around the
Liber Nex
gleamed back at him, pulsing softly in response to his presence.

Aeternus contego.
The Sentinels forbade such wards outside of personal items—and few personal items were so precious as to inspire them. Unbreakable, unviolable…

Or maybe not. A ward placed by a woman who didn’t truly know how, and read by a man who’d only seen it done once before…maybe they still had a chance to get around it. And if he could secure the
Liber Nex
and get it to safekeeping, then he’d be completely free to find Meghan.

His physical body forgotten, Dolan reached for one of the ward lines. Not a plump, pulsing artery, but a line that lay quiescent and unreactive. He traced it; he found the connections and the root
ligo,
and he pondered it. Wards could be manipulated and moved aside; they could be dissolved, line by line. But the single most effective way to perceive the exact nature of the ward was to read the root of it, the keystone knot where a single tug in the right direction would release it and a tug in the wrong direction would only tighten it down. Releasing this fine secondary ward out of order would gain him nothing…but he might be able to discern a sense of the whole from here.

He hovered in close, hunting subtle clues, listening for the ward’s purpose and quiet humming. Ah…this was the illusion. This one had been laid years earlier, by Margery Lawrence—woven and tied by a woman with experience and finesse. It had little awareness of the outer wards, the thick, angry and desperate lines—they’d swollen in response to his presence, but weren’t sophisticated enough to trigger when they hadn’t been directly challenged. He hadn’t tried to pick up the book; he hadn’t even tried to touch it.

And he couldn’t. Could he? Could he resolve this standoff simply by relocating the thing, hiding it again? An old, misplaced catalog…it would do, for now.

He could take the safe way, or he could test the book. Touch it. Take the chance that it was all just that easy after all.

A sudden frisson of impatience ran through his physical body, drawing him back to it—weighing him down with fatigue, a sudden awareness of gravity pulling
down on him and the earth pushing up at him. The sun had moved, the shadows around him significantly changed…his body stiffened. He drew back slightly, sneezed a tidy feline sneeze, and licked his whiskers down, staring at the ragged catalog before him.
How long have they had her now?

He could go back in and try to read the wards, but they were clumsy, reactive weavings, set with passion rather than skill; he could tell little other than what they were
meant
to do…not if they’d actually accomplished it.

Or he could—

How long?
Gausto could be torturing her already. Mind and body, making the puny scores across Dolan’s flank seem as nothing.
How long has it been?

Or he could—

Dolan slapped his flexed claws down on the book, and the world exploded.

They’d slipped another amulet over Meghan’s head as soon as they realized she was in communication, damn them—but they didn’t bother to blindfold her as they approached their destination.

As if I’m too stupid to figure out what that means.
No incentive to cooperate, that’s what. She’d get out of this if Dolan got her out. If the Sentinels got her out.

Yeah, right. The Sentinels who had abandoned her to this fate in the first place. So, if Dolan got her out.

For all of that, they were careful with her. They eased her out of the car into the brilliant sunshine under a classically beautiful blue desert sky, and they did what they could to protect her leg as it bloomed to shrieking life. They each put an arm over their shoulders and stood,
walking her inside with her feet dangling just above the ground—rushing her through the gravel parking area and onto the flagstone walkway.

As if she didn’t already know where she was. As if there were so many ranch-run bed-and-breakfasts in the vicinity of this crossroads town and grasslands that she didn’t already know
exactly
where she was. The Sonoita Double B, a pricy private resort…and from the looks of the empty parking spaces and the utter lack of activity, the Core had it to themselves. Megan gave the property a desperate once-over—hunting the manager, hunting
anyone
among the guest lodges, the neatly trimmed xeriscaping, the cactus garden…she glanced at the road, a quarter mile away and it might as well have been a thousand with her feet not even on the ground.

One of the men made a sound of amusement at her futile efforts. They walked her swiftly to the main lodge, adobe and sprawling, luxurious with shaded alcoves and airy ceilings.

But she didn’t think they’d take her into luxury, and they didn’t. Right down to the basement they went, a hard-dug area still littered with the furnishings of what had once been a wine cellar for generations of wealthy Spanish landowners. Now it held a big worktable, and a cot with the look of the unused about it. Handcuffs waited on the dull green army blanket; off to the side stood a tall tray of medical instruments, a stainless steel bucket with a giant metal syringe the size of a rolling pin, a bright blue tarp still in its plastic package.

Meghan shivered. Maybe the instruments of her impending mistreatment were something she should have expected; maybe any Sentinel would have. Tor
ture was certainly all the rage these days. But she hadn’t grown up Sentinel—hadn’t been offered that life, hadn’t wanted it.

The two men paid no heed to her revulsion and—okay, face it, downright terror—depositing her on the cot with her leg stretched out. It still filled her jeans, swollen to shocking proportions. But the sight gave her a surprising hope; she associated such swelling with high-impact surface bruising. Maybe there’d been no serious damage after all…maybe she could force it to work, if she could only get it loosened up a little—

She suddenly realized there was a third person in the room. The two men stepped back to make room for him, and he moved forward to regard her with enough interest that she suddenly felt inadequate.

“I think you have the wrong person,” she said. “I’m not as important as all this.”

“You’d be surprised,” he murmured. Like the others, his dark hair had been slicked back; a single diamond earring winked in his lobe and his olive-hued skin had a ruddier look, his eyes were more obviously kohled. His expensive suit was wrinkled, hanging on to the remnants of a dust bath; he’d clearly taken a tumble. When she looked harder, she found bruising on his throat, and the crisp white collar wasn’t quite as crisp or white as those of his men. And the look in his eyes…a harder, colder expression—a certain obsession, a certain resentment. And something else, too—a hint of fear. Fear of what, she couldn’t imagine, but…

He realized her scrutiny and irritably waved one of the men forward. “Secure her. And cut off her pant leg. She wasn’t to be injured, I told you that.”

Right. Gotta have me in one piece before you take me apart.

“The horse fell on her,
Drozhar,
” the driver said in apology, quickly stepping forward to pull a plastic restraint cuff off the tray and bind Meghan’s hands, pulling her back on the cot and then stretching her arms overhead to secure them to the cot frame. “We have treated her most carefully since then.”

As if she could possibly feel more vulnerable, her body arching with the awkwardness of this position, her breasts and stomach exposed and chill in the basement air, one leg deadweight and the other…the only free limb she had.

Until the man cuffed it to the side of the cot.

Damn them anyway.
Dolan, come and find me, oh, please find me…
Resentment warred with terror; she twisted away, naked, naked, naked even though she wasn’t, and muttered an unkindness at them.

The
drozhar
looked down at her without concern. “Do you know why you’re here?”

That took her back. She couldn’t help but twist again, wishing she’d worn some big oversized T-shirt this morning instead of a snug ribbed tank. Wishing she’d worn a more substantial bra, so her nipples—tightened by cold, by fear—weren’t quite so obvious. She lowered her voice, trying to hide her uncertainty. “You think I know something. You’re wasting your time. The Sentinels never thought I was important enough to do anything but ignore, and they had the right idea.” Already her arms ached.

“You’re here because of Dolan.”

She didn’t understand it, but the cold burn of his
gaze told her it was true. The
drozhar
gave a little laugh, just as cold as his gaze. “He didn’t tell you, did he? I keep special tabs on him. He led me right to you.” He raked her with his gaze, spreading his hand over her belly in an oddly possessive gesture that Meghan found more disconcerting than anything he’d done yet. She stopped breathing, shrinking inwardly from him; his gaze shifting sharply to hers in a way that told her he’d noticed. “I found you because of him. And I took you because of him. Because of what you mean to him, as much as for what you know.”

“I—I’m not sure I understand.”
And I’m not sure I want to.

“At first I meant him to die knowing he had condemned you by association. But he escaped, and now he will live knowing your death—the manner of your death—rests directly on his shoulders.”

Her thoughts whirled, her brain unable to comprehend such malice—horrified at that thought that this man might yet get his hands on the
Liber Nex.
“Why?” she blurted. “How can you possibly hate him that much?”

His lips thinned; his nostrils flared. Not a handsome man, in the extremity of emotion. “He did this. He came sniffing around, years after his brother’s death. We caught him, of course…but my brother…
underestimated
him. Now my brother is dead—and now, until I kill Treviño, I’ll make him wish he was dead.”

“But…you—” and there Meghan stopped, for she couldn’t bring herself to speak so casually of men killing one another. All these years since her mother’s death, and she’d still thought of the ambush as a horrible
thing, an isolated thing. But this man…this man flung death around with a terrifying casualness.

“You truly aren’t of the Sentinels, I see. Treviño would understand…he knows where he crossed the line. His brother’s death wasn’t personal; it was war. A quiet war, but war nonetheless. When Treviño came after us, he made it personal. It shouldn’t have come to this. But Treviño doesn’t have a habit of acquiring weaknesses. This is not a chance I would have passed up even did you not have information I want.”

He doesn’t know about the book, Meghan reminded herself. He doesn’t know. He just suspects I might have an idea…

“I’m surprised,” the
drozhar
said gently, spreading his fingers over her belly, pressing down slightly in threat, “that he didn’t tell you. How negligent of him, to put you in such danger without informing you. Treviño is nothing if not aware of my interest in him.” With his free hand, he withdrew a small, leather-bound notebook from his inside jacket pocket, and caressed it with his thumb.

Meghan looked at the tray with its instruments; she looked at the little book, blinking at the fine miasma around it, a dried blood veil that made her look away again. The
Liber Nex,
it seemed, was only the next step in the Core’s use of ugly, tainted powers. She wondered how Dolan could have failed to warn her, could have failed to understand the target she’d become; she understood, suddenly, some of the memory flickers she’d seen. But she took a deep breath, hunting strength to put behind her words. “He probably didn’t think you were important enough.”

Score.
His eyes grew colder; he removed his hand from her stomach and she suddenly breathed more easily. “It serves me well enough that you are your mother’s daughter. Before you die, you’ll tell me what you know of her last days. All of it.”

Instruments of torture beside her…a book of dark powers in the hands of a cold, cruel man with a point to prove.

She had no doubt he was right.

Chapter 20

S
earing red internal explosion and well, Dolan, you really screwed up this time and Meghan needs help and the book…the book…

Dolan started to awareness at the touch on his shoulder, ready to attack, teeth already bared in a snarl.

A human snarl.

That jolted him…he didn’t remember shifting back. And it gave the man beside him enough time to say, “Lie still, Treviño.”

The book. He’d touched the book, desperate to find a way around the wards.
Stupid, stupid.
And now he lay sprawled some distance from the outhouse, his human self very much battered, blood dried along his side…

How long?
How many hours had Meghan been in Fabron Gausto’s hands? He tried to ask; it came out as a grunt.
Who the hell are you?
came as an afterthought,
and was enough to pry open his eyes. They wouldn’t focus, but he could nonetheless see several figures moving in the background, and one woman standing in stillness between him and the outhouse, her posture one of intense concentration and alert attention.