Tiger Bound (7 page)

“It’s been a while.” She’d relaxed a little, following his lead.

“I don’t think they’ll send anyone else here,” Maks told her, bluntly enough. “But we should be able to send the amulet to brevis.”

She nodded. “I’d like to know what it was supposed to do.”

“I’ll call them,” he said again. And then, because she’d said she had a client coming and he hadn’t yet scouted the area, he looked out to the craggy ridge of pines rising around her home.

It must have shown on his face. Not just the need to scout these woods, but the yearning for them. She came to her feet. “Where—?” And then, understanding, shook her head most decisively. “Oh, no. Not yet.”

“I won’t be long,” he said. “You’ll only be alone until your client comes.”

“I’ve been alone plenty,” she snapped at him, with perhaps more vehemence than she meant, because then she hesitated. “You really need to rest—we need to give your body a chance to build on the healing. Besides, I do my work in a room off the kitchen, and the couch is...” she eyed him up and down “...almost big enough.”

He looked out to the woods, breathing of them.

“Maks,” she said gently. “You can’t use that arm yet, man
or
tiger. And you lost a lot of blood.”

Maybe because she said it as though she understood—as though she regretted—he took a step back. But he didn’t look away from the pines, or from the forest rising into rugged ridge-and-swale beyond.

She moved up beside him. “Later,” she said. “We’ll set wards, and you can go.” And then, with an understanding that sent warmth through his chest, she said, “You grew up here, you said. It means a lot to you.”

“It was...” He shook his head, looked down to her. “Everything.” All he’d known. A life lived fast and lean...and
free.

“Were you born in this area?” she asked. “Do you still have family here?”

Father, unknown. Mother, buried in a shallow, unmarked grave. Birthplace...

Foul. Something to escape.

And he had. So now he said merely, “It was a long time ago.”

She laid a hand on his arm—so lightly, so gently. “Come inside. Let me get you the phone and show you the couch.”

He met her gaze, and felt the healing of her. He didn’t even think about it—he reached out to touch her hair, her jaw...rested a thumb lightly on her chin. No matter that it quickly fell away; she felt what he did, that swell of something meeting between them. Her eyes widened even as his narrowed.

For that instant, if only in his mind, nothing separated them at all. For that instant, he suddenly had this woman in his arms—and there, in his mind, she responded to him with a fervent enthusiasm. He felt the heat of it, the sweetness of it—and, startlingly, a rising stab of pain, far too easy to ignore for the rest of it.

When the moment passed, they were man and woman on the porch, deer and tiger, watching each other with the complete, stunned awareness of what just hadn’t quite happened.

* * *

“She needs someone else.” Maks’s voice reached Nick with an unusual edge, the phone lines between them doing nothing to dull it. “Someone who isn’t me.”

Nick’s response held the weight of responsibility, and the aftermath of
Core D’oíche
. “I know what I’m asking of you,” he said. “And of her. But you’re the best available agent for the job.”

Maks’s hesitation meant nothing in particular; the man chose his words carefully, and he chose few of them at all. “Then someone else should become available.”

“Let me rephrase that,” Nick told him, even as he propped the phone on his shoulder to type a few quick keystrokes into his desktop computer, pulling Maks’s file up to sprawl across the luxuriously large monitor. “Because nothing’s changed. You know that area. You can protect her. You can do—
there
—what no one else can.”

Another hesitation. When Maks spoke, it sounded as if the words cost him. “It might be too soon.”

“I’ll send someone up for the amulet,” Nick said, knowing there wasn’t anyone immediately available. His thoughts wandered to Meghan Lawrence, who knew nothing of amulets but who could weave a ward stronger than any Atrum Core working. Or Ian, who had been walking around the AmSpec lab gaunt and obsessed since they’d acquired a cache of the undetectable new “silent” amulets.
Yes...Ian.
“I’ll pull Ian out of the lab.”

Maks made a disgruntled sound, no doubt aware of just how long that might take. And then his silence became more uncomfortable, until it burst back into words. “This is bigger than you expected me to find—more aggressive. I shouldn’t be the one. There’s something—”

“Wrong,” Nick finished, as gently as he could, eyeing the file contents. “Something wrong with
you.
That’s what you haven’t been telling us, isn’t it?”

It was clear enough, if you read between the lines of Maks’s clearance interview—conducted by a medic too reliant on test results and not discerning enough of subtleties.

Then again, Maks could stymie anyone. And when he chose not to talk, why...that was just
Maks.

After a silence, Maks said, “I thought if I went active, it would help.”

Dammit, if Maks was even having this conversation—

Not good.
And Nick couldn’t afford to lose another field Sentinel. He couldn’t afford to lose
Maks,
so often taken for granted because of his silence—a man who blended into any team, and who protected them all with a focus no other could match.

Nick cleared the file from the screen. “If you’re in trouble, we’ll pull you. Katie can come in for a while.”

“She—” Maks didn’t finish the sentence. It didn’t matter—Nick knew of Katie Maddox and her reluctance to be near other Sentinels, never mind an entire brevis of them. Maks made a noise that Nick couldn’t then interpret. “No, we’re not in trouble. She just needs better—a whole team.”

And Nick knew, with the intuition that had gotten him this far, he
knew
that Maks was lying. “Maks,” he said, a warning. “Talk to me.”

And Maks said simply, “I’m here.” It meant a plethora of things, but Nick understood the most important of them. Maks heard him; Maks chose, for the first time in his active field duty career, to do as so many of these headstrong Sentinels did on a regular basis—to push back. And when he added, “I believe her,” Nick knew something else, as well.

Maks, in his silence, had seen something that the rest of them were missing. The little deer had, somehow, gotten through to the tiger.

“Send someone for the amulet,” Maks said, and hung up.

Nick found himself giving the dead phone a resigned and contemplative look.

Maks in defiance. And the Core—or at least an individual within the Core—was evidently now targeting a healer of no dramatic talent, a seer of questionable skill.

Or not so questionable.
There had been too many signs that Katie Maddox downplayed her abilities. She’d been one of few to tender warnings about
Core D’oíche
, and if she’d had few details, she’d been genuinely distressed that she couldn’t offer more—
desperate
to offer more.

“I believe her, too, Maks,” he told the dead phone line, and then reached within his mind for the polite ping that would catch Annorah’s attention and subsequently let Ian know he was wanted in the consul’s office.

But I’m not so sure I believe you.

Chapter 6

M
aks dozed more than slept, with one leg propped on the padded couch arm, one leg dragging off the side, a pillow under his shoulders and his fingers curled through his belt to keep his sore arm in place.

He was aware when Katie’s client arrived at the front door, speaking of recently missing livestock and a glimpse of something huge in the woods. He absorbed it when that excited tone lowered to talk about Akins and his sly commentary about Katie. “He uses the word
Kevorkian,
” she said, nearly whispering. “And
angel of death.
”

He was aware, too, when Katie eased through the room with a big dog of quietly goofy nature; he knew when the dog’s owner stopped and whispered, in a manner she probably thought to be quiet, “Katie Maddox! What have you got sleeping on your couch, and did you bring enough to share?”

“A friend,” Katie had murmured, humor in her voice. “He’s helping me clear out a firebreak.”

“I could use a firebreak,” the woman said, somewhat wistfully. But her voice changed as she said, “Is that—on his shirt, is that
blood?
”

“Oh, dear,” Katie said, as if it had all been nothing. “I thought I’d taken care of that. Just a little kick-back branch from the chainsaw. You know how men are. I could hardly get him to stand still long enough to put something on it.”

Sentinels were, if nothing else, adept at hiding their other natures. And at making light of even significant injuries, lest their rate of healing become cause for question.

Maks let their voices drift away until they were no more than the occasional lilt of laughter and amused tone. The pain of his arm followed him into deeper sleep, and so did the indistinct murmur of Katie’s voice...no, not her voice. Her
presence.
Whatever subtle healing she worked on the dog lapped gently through the house...touching him and skimming along his body like a breeze made of her essence.

He breathed deeply of it, at first relaxing into it—and then reaching for it, leaning into it as he might lean into a touch. Sweet warmth and comfort, scented energies...they caressed him, soaking in. He shifted on the couch, found a new ache coiling deep and yearning. And though the injured arm had ceased its pile-driving throb, the clenching tension spiked a renewed bolt of pain through his body—enough to wake him back to a light doze. Enough to recognize a hard-on even jeans couldn’t disguise, as sprawled as he was.

Maks turned toward the couch, constructed the lightest of shields, and fell asleep to regret.

* * *

His mother’s voice came as remembered words on a sigh.
Maks...my boy...so proud of you...

He gripped her hand, too young for the words he needed, awash with the need to protect her. To make things all right. To mend her bones and the things broken within her.

Ssh, not your fault...

Of course, it was his fault. His job to protect her from those who seemed ever determined to hurt her; his fault that she’d managed escape just so he would grow up free of them...

Don’t let them find you...

The scent of her, her tiger lingering in the air, her human overlaying it, her wounded nature tingeing it all.

Be safe...safe...safe...

Grief was the color of brown dirt and scattered red cinders, the scent of torn roots, the sensation of bruised pads and tired young limbs. It was not breathing and not wanting to breath, of fear and panic and bereft confusion.

It was running, a gangly young tiger not meant for distance or speed, hunger gnawing deeply, ever aware of the hunt—and of fear growing so great, a great big ball of it taking up all the spaces within him and pressing outward...and finding, suddenly, purpose.

Live. For her.

Protect what he could, when he could. For her.

That grief flailed through one reality to another, with the murky darkness closing in around him, flashing shadows and fear. Terrified screams drilled into his awareness, the dreams tangling with then and now and—

A hand landed on his shoulder.

Maks exploded out from the couch, a snarl on his lips and his shirt twisted, his arm a shriek of pain, ready to—

To—

The main room spread out before him, quiet and undisturbed. A woman stood frozen not far away, distressed and frightened and unfamiliar.

Maks slowly straightened, cradling his arm. He could say he’d been having a bad dream; it was true enough. He could make excuses that she’d startled him—also true enough. But excuses only drew attention to the unusual nature of his reaction...and she was the one who had trespassed. He let that truth fill the silence.

She didn’t resist that silence long, easing back a step—late thirties, sturdy and plump, her pleasant face now flushed red. “Katie,” she said, pointing toward the kitchen, her voice as urgent as her expression. “There’s something wrong with Katie. I wondered if you knew...”

“Did you scream?” Maks asked, his sleep-roughened voice abrupt as he looked past her to the undisturbed front door, to what he could see of the kitchen. He straightened, tugging his shirt back around. “Did she?”

Baffled, the woman said, “No, she just—she froze. And she looks...frightened. She never mentioned, but—does she have some kind of weird epilepsy, or—”

But Maks was no longer listening. He didn’t question that the screams in his sleep had been real—if not out loud. And he didn’t need to ask
where
—the tug of it called to him, and he headed barefoot through the house as if he’d always lived there, into the kitchen and through it to the open door along the south side of the house.

The little room might once have been a pantry or a long, narrow breakfast nook. It held a stack of dog crates at one end; the largest crate was full of amiable dog. And in the other end, a high, padded table stretched lengthwise, with just enough room to move around all four sides.

Katie stood clutching the far end of the table, just as frozen as the woman had described.

The woman moved up behind him now—but not too closely, not this time. “We’d just finished with Rowdy,” she said, and the dog waved his plumy tail at his name. “And she made a funny noise, and she...” The woman made an expansive gesture, visible in the corner of Maks’s eye. “This. Do you know—?”

“No,” he said. “And yes.” He closed his eyes, taking a quick scan of power in the room, the house, the yard. Looking not for specifics, but signs of Core intrusion. Finding nothing—not even the amulet he knew to be lurking.

He did what he should have done earlier, placing wards around the house. Not the usual intricate knots and energy labyrinths, but with his hands raised, palms out...a little push of his inner strength outward, he created a circumference through which Core individuals could not pass undetected and Core workings could not pass at all.