Sentinels: Wolf Hunt
Page 7
She shifted, then—right there in his hands, the energy coursing through him like a sudden shock, his hands on skin and then fur, his eyes blinded by the release of energy, so close. Clean pure essence of Jet and pure wild and moonlight over snow, the spurt of blood at night, the crush of bone and the exhilaration of the run—seared into him, seared through him, and howling in his throat. Her pants fell away; her shirt fell askew and off. Black fur so crisp and clean it shone even in shadow brushed the skin of his arms even as she clawed at him with her hind legs.
He gave her no time to orient—he shifted his grip upward, holding her on either side of her ruff, her hind legs still off the ground and her eyes furious and her jaws snarling. But he knew his grip—he knew better than anyone just exactly which grip to take. Just beneath her ears, up tight and close, thumbs bracing her jaws.
She couldn’t bite him; she could only flail at him with her paws—the claws of which would deal considerable damage, and so he threw himself forward, pressing in close.
“No,” he ground out at her. Golden-eyed ire glared back at him, those jaws so close to his face, the snarl unending—each breath in, each breath out. “This is my turf, Jet. And dammit, you owe me.”
The snarl eased to stressed panting; she never released her glare. Tough bitch. Alone in this city, on the run, and yet still fighting for retribution. Facing down a wolf so alpha he ran an entire region of shapeshifters.
Adrenaline ebbed; he braced his knees. He tipped his head beside those gleaming white, exposed teeth, murmuring in her ear, “Jet. You need me.”
In an instant, she went limp. And then, in an abrupt change that almost triggered his own shift, sending his breath hissing through his teeth as it invaded him so deeply—familiar this time, achingly and hauntingly so—she shifted back. He pressed up against her, holding her against the rough adobe exterior of the house…reeling from the glory of her.
And then he was glad for the rough nature of the adobe, for there went his knees. She ducked around to shove her shoulder beneath his, and drag-walked him back to the lounge, where she scooped up her pants and underwear, but made no attempt to put them on. “You need me.”
“Because of what you did to me.” Calm words. Controlled. As if he wasn’t still reeling from the touch of her. He handed over her shirt. She pulled it on, where it only served to accentuate what it was meant to cover. “And you know nothing of Sentinels. You know how to ride a bike. You know how to slip through a crowd, but not how to be part of it.” He shook his head. “You know something of Gausto, but not enough to anticipate his lies. So now you tell me—”
She interrupted him. “He taught me only the necessary things.”
He went very still. Something important hung in the moment, in the nature of her expression. A defiant sorrow. A look that said he would never understand, but that she wanted more than anything to find someone who could.
“Necessary,” he said, reining in his intensity with such effort he had little left over to spare, “for what?”
She gave him surprise. “To move between his residence and the place I found you. To other places he thought I might find you, until he was sure of that one. To use the amulet he gave me. To use the cell phone.”
Nick frowned. It made his vision go vaguely fuzzy; he rubbed his eyes in a weary gesture. “He didn’t just pluck you off the street. We keep better account of Sentinels than that…but you damned sure know the wolf.”
She looked down at him, those steady golden eyes. For an instant, she looked surprised, as if she’d thought he already knew. And then she said, “I am the wolf.”
Chapter 7
Surely if anyone could see her, truly see her, it would be this man. The one who knew the wolf from the inside out, but from the human perspective.
Not the perspective of a gangly adolescent bitch who, along with her pack, had been plucked out of the wilds of the rugged mountains far north of here and brought here with Gausto’s other prisoners. His experiments.
“We didn’t all survive,” she told him, watching his face for acceptance—searching for that understanding. Instead she saw only the struggle to fathom what she’d said.
Gausto had said Nick would shove her aside and stalk away. Gausto had said that Nick and his Sentinels would laugh in her face and then lock her up because she’d broken their rules simply by existing. But she’d always thought there was a contradiction in that assertion.
“He tried dogs first.” She stepped into her underwear matter-of-factly. “He wanted to have his workings refined before he wasted any wolves. We’re harder to get, he said.”
“Much harder,” he said, deadpan. Still flushed and sick, but so clearly improving she could feel only relief when she looked at him.
“He tried dogs off the street, but they weren’t healthy and strong. So he started taking the breeds. Then he tried it with us, and…it didn’t work very well.” She looked away from him, realized she was still holding her pants, and stepped into those as well. “Until me. The others…maybe they were too old.” She didn’t think about those moments—the first turning for her alpha bitch, and what had come from it. Human screams and lupine screams and a twisted mishmash of body parts.
No, she didn’t think about it.
“He went back to the dogs,” Nick said, understanding crossing his face. “He already had what he needed…you. And he could afford to take time to return to the research.”
“He thought they might be easier to train.” She lifted her chin, her shoulders tall in a direct stare—and then felt her mouth go vulnerable, thinking of those early days and how Gausto had tried to break her.
But Nick…
Nick looked stunned. He looked at her with sudden, true understanding—and then he quite suddenly unfolded from the lounger, rising to stand toe-to-toe, face-to-face—and if Jet had grown accustomed to matching the height of Gausto’s men, she realized anew that she had to tilt her head to meet Nick’s gaze. She held her ground as he cupped her face in his hands.
“My God,” he said. “You—” He shook his head. He ran his hands over her shoulders, a hair’s breadth away from her skin—a reverent gesture—stepping closer while again somehow not quite touching her, a dance both erotic and respectful. He bent over her neck, scenting of her, his hands finally landing not at the small of her back but lower, where his touch tightened the skin all the way down her buttocks and the backs of her legs.
Jet let herself go in it. She tipped her head back and opened her neck to him; she bent back into his hold, arms relaxed and open—supplication, exhilaration. She gave to him that which he’d truly won out on the desert with their romp, when the instinctive connection between them had gone so deep.
A fine tremble ran across his shoulders and down his arms; his breath caught. But then something in him stilled. He stepped back, gaining just enough distance to look down at her face again, his hand touching her cheek, her lip…her brow. He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
She frowned, ferocity in this as in everything. “Be sorry because you back away, not because you came close.”
He laughed shortly, a sound with bite to it. “I’m sorry for what was done to you. I’m sorry that I want so much to compound it.”
“Gausto promised me the pure wolf again…but I don’t believe it.” She scowled at him. “Not for a moment do I stop living, waiting for it to happen.”
“The Sentinel healers—”
“No!” Jet said, and now she did step away from him. She stabbed a finger at Nick, and then at herself. “I am free of Gausto, and I will not then walk into the hands of your Sentinels.”
“Heart,” Nick said, “I am Sentinel.”
“You are wolf,” she said, certain of that. “I am wolf. Just that.”
He laughed—short and bitter. “There’s never been a time I wasn’t Sentinel,” he assured her. “I’m adjutant of a region whose consul hasn’t taken his javelina boar in years…do you understand that?”
G
austo had told her that Sentinels were a corrupt and powerful people. He’d said that Nick was driven to destroy Gausto’s people, and that Gausto needed the chance to talk past their misunderstandings—that he needed Nick separate from his Sentinels, simply so Nick would stop trying to kill him long enough to listen. To talk.
Then again, he’d told her the amulet wouldn’t be harmful.
So she didn’t answer Nick at all; she only looked back at him. He watched her wariness a moment, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “God,” he muttered. “Where am I even going to start?”
“Feed me,” Jet suggested.
He looked startled. “Hell, yes,” he said—and then looked around to the Beagles, all of whom had arranged themselves around the lounge with an attitude of attentive patience, except for the two who, with wild ferocity, wrestled over possession of an old plastic milk bottle. “And them, too.” He reached for the phone, seemed to remember it wasn’t working, and let his hand drop. “I’ve got to reach Darla, or she’s going to show up here in the middle of this.”
Jet felt an instant flash of jealousy; she didn’t try to hide it. Nick had accepted her attentions in the desert; he’d taken that which she offered—if not all of what she offered—here in his yard. He was hers.
He grinned ever so slightly in response—it looked predatory, that grin—and said, “The woman who comes over to feed the dogs if she can’t reach me around this time every afternoon. Never mind. She’ll see your motorcycle.”
“Cell phone,” Jet said. “I have one of those. But it only calls Gausto.”
Nick looked briefly nonplused—and then his mouth set in a grimmer line. “I’m sure that’s what he told you. I’m also damned sure that if he gave you a cell, he’s got the means to locate it.”
Quick anger surged through Jet, raising hackles that didn’t exist and coming out as a small growl deep in her throat.
“Yes,” he said, fulling disengaging from her—putting real space between them. “Destroy it.”
It was the work of moments to return to her bike, flip up the saddlebag flap, and pull out the phone. Another moment to find a significant rock and grind the phone to pieces beneath it. Jet tossed the rock aside, and returned to Nick’s backyard.
He wasn’t there.
The dogs greeted her with their steady wagging tails; the lounge still held the indentation of his body…his scent. She closed her eyes, breathed it in…wondered if she had done right to come here with him, to stay here at all. He had his own history with Gausto, and his own plans. He seemed willing to interfere with hers.
She’d keep it in mind.
A muffled sound from within the house caught her ear. With some hesitation, she opened the door and slipped into that back entryway—keeping her glance oblique, her head tilted slightly down. Acknowledgment of his turf. She followed the sound away from the private denning space and toward a bigger, brighter area. High ceilings, tile accents, another skylight…the kitchen. Nick stood by the sink, kitchen machinery in front of him as he poured something goopy and thickly scented from a tall container into a mug. “It’s not food,” he told her, so matter-of-factly that she lifted her head, accepting her welcome. “But it’s a start. Protein. I made enough for you, if you—” He stopped at the sight of her cell. “Thorough.”
She moved closer; he handed her the glass. She brought it to her nose, took in the thick, spongy odor of it, and returned it.
He grinned. “I don’t blame you. Steak, then? Raw to rare?”
Gausto had tried to feed her raw steak. Jet had never convinced him that this human side of her preferred something with a crusty singe on the outside and lingering pink on the inside. “Burnt,” she told him, waiting for the resistance. He only opened the refrigerator door and pulled out two steaks, so, she added, “Not all the way burnt.”
“We’ll get it right,” he said easily.
“You feel better,” she observed, circling around the kitchen to touch the counters, the cabinet handles. With Nick as the center of her movement, she explored, tasting with her fingers and eyes. Pale wood cabinets, natural tile countertops, pale stone floor.
“I found a quick-acting Excedrin,” he said, somewhat ruefully. “Food will help.”
“Food always helps,” Jet said, which is how she found herself embroiled in the very practical chore of helping Nick Carter fix dinner. From the salad with spring greens and walnuts she couldn’t stop nibbling; corn on the cob, so satisfying to her teeth, and steak, so satisfying all around. With Gausto after them both and her pack needing rescue and Nick still recovering, they sat in a sun-washed alcove and ate what he told her was a perfectly normal meal.
She liked it. As restless as she was, her backside in this chair when her four feet wanted to be running free in her home territory, she let herself wallow in the small moments—his murmured directions where to find the dinnerware, the spatter of the cooking steaks in the broiler, the scent of it filling the kitchen. Her very own steak, burnt around the edges and still pink inside, because for the first time someone had listened to her.
She liked the crunch, and then the tenderness.
She also learned about corn on the cob. Treacherous stuff, spurting juices and dripping butter and setting her off into rusty giggles. And then, in the middle of the most wondrous ice cream, her questions bubbled up again. “So one woman had two different men? And that started it all?”
He looked at her in surprise. The food had revived him considerably; aside from a feverish gleam in his eye, he looked much the man who had found her that morning. Jet looked at that gleam and thought his energy would not last, but it made her think of the day to follow…the things that needed to be done.
He returned her regard and said, “Something like that. Is that what Gausto told you?”
“He said that it was many years ago. Generations.”
“A couple thousand years, if that means anything to you.”
“No.” She tended the ice cream. “It’s too big.”
“And nowhere near here. Overseas—”
“Also too big,” Jet said, for she had seen maps.
Her feet on the ground, that made sense; her toes digging into the soil on the run…that made sense, too. Following scent over the earth, defining territory by that scent as much as sight or touch…
But not looking at a flat piece of paper and calling it a map and pretending it represented her world. Not supposing that so much of it was deep water. Salty water. She thought Gausto had been lying about that.
“It doesn’t matter.” Nick slouched back in his chair. Along the way of making dinner, he’d also fed the dogs, and now here they were. No phones available to reach Nick’s people, no computer Internet connection. Nor could he reach the woman named Annorah with his thoughts, which didn’t surprise Jet in the least. Who could do that, anyway? “What else did he tell you?”
“This woman had two sons by two fathers. One son was sired by a druid. He could make himself a boar, and he killed people’s dogs so they couldn’t hunt for food, and then he killed people, too.” She gave him a darkly sardonic smile. “Fewer people might work out well for my kind.”
“This was back when there weren’t so many of us,” Nick said, and though his jaw had hardened with annoyance, she knew it wasn’t at her. “And that’s not exactly how it was.”
“The other father was sired by a Ro-man—”
“Roman,” Nick said, coming out of his annoyance at Gausto. “It’s all one word. It’s not a type of man—it means where he came from and who was his pack leader.”
She liked that. How matter-of-factly he made it clear to her. How he didn’t give her that superior little look that slid onto Gausto’s face so easily. “The Roman was a warrior, and he taught his son to protect the people. He tried to stop the boar, and he is still trying to stop the boar.”
Nick snorted. He stood and picked up their plates, waving her back when she would have stood with him. “Do you believe him?”
“I don�
��t know what happened then,” Jet said, sinking into the seat cushion of the iron-backed chair. “In now, Gausto stole my pack from their land and put them into locked rooms and cages so far away from home we can’t even smell our territory on the breezes. He killed some of us, and he changed me. He lied to me. Now I wait to see what to believe.”
“His basics are right,” he said, sliding the dishes into a slide-out rack that already held dirty items. He refilled his glass, dropping ice cubes into the water with a careless splash. Jet followed suit…just a little bit of water and a whole lot of ice.
Gausto had laughed when she’d tackled her first glass of ice water by fishing out the cubes to crunch them down. He hadn’t laughed when she’d fastened those same strong teeth on his arm as he reached to take her ice water away.
She’d paid for that moment. But she still thought of it fondly…a day when she was still naive enough to do what came naturally. What he deserved.
Nick ran the glass over his forehead—it was flushed again, as if the amulet’s poison came in waves. He leaned a hip against the counter in a casual slouch—a deceptive slouch. Gausto had spoken of Nick as though he spent his days indoors, sitting and passive. Jet looked at this man and saw through the slouch to the wolf running in freedom and power.
She looked at him and she wanted to be next to him, touching him. With him.
If he saw any of that, he didn’t let it show. Cool pale green eyes, crisp-cut silver-skimmed hair askew, hanging over his right eyebrow. He said, “The druid’s son realized his great skills, and began to use them for the good of the people—which in those days, meant using them to defend Gauls from Romans. The Roman’s son was determined to prove himself in his father’s eyes, and to his mother. He began to gather power—but he did that by taking it, because he had none of his own.” The run of words had the sound of rote to them; they did not sound like Nick’s own. “So the druid and his family—for by then they each had family—protected the earth from what the Roman was taking. And the families grew, and the Roman side claimed they acted only to keep the Druids in check, and the Druids had their hands full cleaning up after the Romans.”