Lynx Destiny (20 page)

“Why,” Kai asked, closing his bloodied hand around hers, grabbing her attention with the intensity of his grip, “do they want this land?”

“Finally. Someone asks the right question.” Arshun’s voice took them both by surprise, along with his presence at the edge of the clearing.

Regan shot Kai a look of concern, startled that anything, anywhere, could take this man by surprise...but especially in this forest. Even wounded, she’d somehow expected his untamed nature to warn them.

“Core,” Kai said, and offered that little snarl of lip.

“Sentinel,” Arshun said, and his returning smile seemed more genuine that it should. “Bless my heart. A little lost sheep of a Sentinel, with no idea what he’s gotten into. I’m even sort of sorry about killing you.”

“Not,” Kai said, “dead yet.”

Arshun said equitably, “Give it time.” And then, to Regan, “You really should have talked your father into selling this place. His particular injury was one of our more subtle achievements, but there’s a limit to our patience.”

Regan took a wary step back from him—and only then realized he wasn’t alone. Hantz and Aeli from the gas station were there, and Marat from the dry pool who’d been managing them and the disposal of the strange dull metal disks.

Core. Sentinel.
She suddenly realized how very little she knew about any of this—how very stupid she must look, indeed. She took a step back from Kai—from the others. “My
father?
” She couldn’t stop her horror from showing.
“What have you done?”

“Much less than we could have,” Arshun said briskly, giving Kai an annoyed look. “Fortunately for you, we truly don’t want to draw attention. If it wasn’t for your little stray Sentinel, none of this absurd drama would have been necessary at all.” He scowled at the man who’d managed the metal disks they’d called amulets back at the dry pool. “It still shouldn’t have been. For God’s sake, Marat, it’s a stinking little log cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

Marat didn’t seem discomfited by Arshun’s annoyance. “And unlike the other homes in this area, it’s almost entirely self-sustaining and off the grid, surrounded by land that remains a completely untapped resource—and in an area the Sentinels have left entirely to its own devices.” He smiled darkly. “There aren’t enough people in this area for them to hide themselves, and aside from our
little stray Sentinel,
they wisely know it—but it was their mistake to think they could effectively monitor the area from a distance, wasn’t it? So we’ll do well here, once we acquire the place. Her father is being taken care of as we speak, and by the time we’re done today—”

“No!” Regan said, panic creeping into her voice. Panic, the way any sane person would panic under these circumstances.

Was she still—?

Yes. Completely and totally sane.
The voice of the land whispered in her mind no more than it had ever done—and maybe the only thing in this moment that was truly familiar at all. And so she took another step away from Kai, and he lifted his head to look at her not with the wild in his eyes, but his pain—a wounded expression, pleading for understanding.

But she didn’t understand. Not at all.

My father.
“You leave him alone!” she snapped at Arshun, and she didn’t mean Kai. “You leave
us
alone.”

Arshun shook his head—more relaxed, more matter-of-fact, than when he’d been playing the role of Realtor. “That’s not going to happen. But don’t concern yourself. You won’t remember any of this—not this encounter, not what you think you’ve learned about the land...or about yourself. No more hallucinations, no more nightmares. No more Kai Faulkes.”

“Not,” Kai said, though his voice lacked force, “Dead. Yet.”

But his pulse beat rapidly at his neck, and the blood spread down his tunic, and Arshun merely looked at him and said, “Soon.”

Hantz made a sound of satisfaction through his broken nose and glanced at Arshun, who nodded permission.
Permission for—?
And Regan realized only far too belatedly, as Hantz reached for her. Presuming, assuming, overconfident—

Kai pounced.

The wild in him broke loose, splashing through the land to slap up against Regan—to stun her for that instant in which Kai reached the man, her mind filled with images of flashing canines and a narrowed feline eye, whiskers lifted in snarl, claws slashing—

When she blinked out of it, the broken-nosed man was going down and Kai rotated over him, around him, freed from gravity and the constraints of civilization but his hands still caught in the jerking twist of motion that had wrenched the man’s neck into snapping.

“Get her out of here!” Arshun snapped at Marat.

Regan skipped back, slipping out of the day pack and wielding it at Marat just as Aeli slammed his rifle at Kai, using it like a club—missing and jerking it back to use in a two-handed defensive position when Kai turned on him.

Marat ducked against Regan’s flailing pack and snatched her arm; Regan shrieked fury and kicked out at him, always skipping backward, not quite able to take her eyes from Kai—

Kai, leaping at his enemy and grabbing the rifle with both hands not to jerk it away but to twist around it like a gymnast around a bar, raising himself up,
up
and over, slamming his knees into the man’s back, his elbows on either side of the man’s head—and then riding the man down to the ground, grabbing the rifle and flinging it far into the woods.

Marat swore, losing his grip on Regan, hesitating—leaving her to help with Aeli.

“No!” Regan cried, and threw herself on him— wrapping over his back to cling and beat at his head and face.

“Control her!” Arshun snapped at Marat, stepping into the fray as Kai rolled away from Aeli, briefly crouching in a gathering leap for Arshun—

But Arshun got there first. As Marat rammed Regan back against a tree, jarring her loose, Arshun stepped in to land a simple, brutal kick to Kai’s ribs, right below the spreading stain of blood.

Kai rolled away from the force of it, came back to a crouch—and stopped short, astonishment on a face gone utterly pale, the veins distended at his neck. He coughed hugely, spattering blood across his lips, and gasped air in quick, heaving effort.

Arshun stepped back in satisfaction as Kai lifted his face to Regan, a dazed look.
“Run,”
Kai said, though there was no sound behind it. Only pain and the awareness of her rejection, the desperation of the situation.

Run...RUN...

Regan caught her breath on a sudden sob and turned away, losing the pack to sprint into the woods.

RUN!

Marat’s heavy weight came down across her legs, a tackle driving her into the ground, grinding her face into the needles and trapping one hand beneath her body while she shrieked in anger and protest and fear.

And behind her, a gunshot rang through the trees.

Chapter 18

K
ai fought in a wild rage of desperation, the lynx struggling to break free—the sensation of claws pushing at his fingertips, ears flattened, tail lashing. He fought with Sentinel strength, agility impossible to even the most deadly of humans. He left one man dead and another man dying and he did it with a poisonous Core working lodged in his body.

But his blood streamed down his side and tasted sharp in the back of his throat, and even a Sentinel needed blood. And air. And to be able to see when the world started to go gray around him.

Run, Regan. RUN!

But he heard her shriek of fury, gone muffled in struggle, and knew she hadn’t made it. And when he turned to Matt Arshun, one last man to kill after a life dedicated to preservation, he saw the gun.

But it was just a gun. No workings, no poisons.

And Kai, too, knew how to run.

For now.

* * *

Regan fought them every step of the way. Marat hauled her up and clamped a cruel hand above each elbow, shoving her in front as they headed toward the cabin—but she didn’t make it easy.

Her face had taken the brunt of her fall, and blood trickled from a split lip and the sting of myriad little cuts along one cheek; her knee throbbed where she’d hit a rock. And then she thought of Kai, fighting for his life—for
her
life—and felt none of it, twisting and fighting until Marat released one arm and cuffed her so severely that her ears rang and her vision jumbled.

And in her mind she heard nothing but that final report of sound, the shot in the woods behind her.

And the silence that followed.

When she could see straight again, tears blurred the cabin before her—and the giant dark form of the dog on the porch, his tail stiff and his head low, his warning unmistakable even through tears.

“Don’t you hurt him!” she cried as Marat stopped, spitting a curse in her ear. “He’s just an old dog!”

“He’s got teeth,” Marat said, which was a point. Bob had teeth and knew how to use them. “You don’t want him dead, you do something about it.”

Regan drew a shaky breath. “Bob,” she said, trying to sound reasonable. “Get off the porch. Go on. Go check out the woods.” She made a restricted half gesture at the trees, jerking against Marat’s grip in annoyance. He gave her a little more latitude to do it again. “Go on. Go check out the woods!”

Come...safe...

Maybe Bob, too, had some sense of the voices. He stalked down the steps, never looking away from Marat, a deep grumble at the curl of his lip—not trusting, but obeying.

Regan barely had time for relief. Arshun came striding out of the woods, and his face looked like hers felt—one side of his mouth puffy, his brow split, his cheek scraped. Bits of bark stuck to his face, and she realized with sudden hope that Kai had flung him against a tree.
And escaped?

That hope must have shown on her face. Arshun appropriated her arm on the way past, never slowing—dragging her when she stumbled. She didn’t catch her balance until they’d topped the stairs to the porch, and he didn’t stop moving until he’d yanked her through the screen door that Marat hastily jerked open before they reached it. Arshun hauled her right into the house and flung her at the couch, where she bounced once and came to her feet.

He was ready for her—he shoved her back down. Then he took several quick strides to the little hall nook to scoop up the phone with one hand and hold the handset up with the other, pointing it at her so she could hear the stutter of the dial tone at the earpiece—the indication of a voice mail.

Even as she absorbed his familiarity with the cabin, he replaced the phone with a little jangle and returned to stand in front of her. “That message is from your father. It seems that his injury is worse than suspected. The doctors don’t know how they missed it, but he’s going to need surgery to fuse some cracked vertebrae.” He gave her a meaningful look. “It’s a surgery that usually goes quite well. But sometimes not.”

The blood drained from her face in a prickling rush as his voice faded. After a moment she realized she sat with her head shoved between her knees and an impatient hand at the back of her neck, steadying her. Her mind whirled, her body ached...her heart ached. “Get your hand off me,” she said as distinctly as she could.

The pressure disappeared. She sat upright, pushing loose hair from her face. Marat stood uneasily by the door as if to block her escape...or warn of approaching trouble.
Kai? In spite of it all?
Arshun stood before her with legs braced, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to dab at his split brow. Now she could see that his suit was torn, his knuckles bruised...his face truly battered.

Good.

“Kai got away,” she said, finding the words a comfort. A faint susurrus whispered across her mind, a sense of satisfaction. Kai’s name, curling around her mind.

Arshun sent her a sour look. “He won’t survive.”

She sent him a stubborn look. She didn’t understand their enmity, but she understood that it somehow went deeper than one encounter over boxes of waste metal. And she didn’t understand Arshun’s purpose here, his need for this land, but she knew the threat he represented—to her, to her family, to the land itself.

She knew if Kai lived, he would be back to stop them.

If he lived.

Arshun gave her a perceptive look. “We shot him twice,” he said bluntly.

“And still,” she said, looking at his face, “he did that to you.”

His expression went sour.

“He heals quickly,” Regan offered, and knew that to be true, too—beyond all fathoming, his skin already whole and unblemished beneath the bandanna he now wore simply because he wanted to.

Because of her.

“Generally,” Arshun conceded. “But not this time.”

And she remembered, too, Kai’s reaction to the gun—calling it poison, and how he’d so emphatically taken it, hidden it. She remembered his expression from the woods—more than just a man shot, but a man struggling against that poison’s effects.

“Kai Faulkes is no longer of concern to us,” Arshun said.

“Liar,” Regan muttered, and knew from his expression that she’d scored a hit.

He didn’t acknowledge the interruption. “You need to think of yourself right now. Of your father. We don’t want to hurt either of you. It would draw too much attention to your home, and to this pending sale, and we prefer...
subtlety.
” He looked at her, reading her expression—letting his words slide home. “So he still has the chance to survive this surgery with no impairment.... He can return here and use our generous settlement on this property to purchase a modest home closer to town, more appropriate for his situation.” He dabbed again at his trickling brow, sending her a meaningful look. “Or the surgery could go very badly indeed, and he’ll never return to these mountains again.”

She didn’t faint this time. She’d seen it coming. She fisted her hands where they rested against her thighs and forced her voice into some semblance of normalcy, drawing on the confusion of memories from the woods. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me any of this. You said I wouldn’t remember this.”