Sentinels: Lion Heart

by Doranna Durgin

  Alone on a half-hour ski lift ride to the top of the tall peak, with nothing to do but contemplate the broad strength of the shoulders that had so easily pulled Ryan into the chair…Lyn thought of the sudden change of his presence when he’d focused himself on the girl’s lift chair, gone for it and caught it as resoundingly as prey in powerful cougar paws.

  To think, only moments ago she’d been wondering if really he had the grit to go dark.

  She laughed out loud, and if the man in the seat ahead with the girl clinging around his neck heard her, he gave no sign.

  The topside lift wrangler waited for them as the chairs glided toward the turnaround, radio raised to his ear, face tense and determined. Gusts flapped at his jeans and windbreaker; Lyn drew Ryan’s coat closer as that same wind buffeted her. Ryan hadn’t been exaggerating; high summer had turned sharply to fall.

  Abruptly, the chairs slowed in pace, giving Ryan a luxury of time to flip the safety bar up and disembark. The girl clung tightly as he half carried her away from the chair’s path, one arm wrapped around her waist.

  Lyn fumbled with the unfamiliar bar as she, too, reached the summit, ducking away and to the side as the lift wrangler’s radio drizzled static in response to his short comment. The chairs sped up again, and Lyn glanced down the long swooping lines of the cables in surprise; she’d expected them to call an all-stop until things were sorted out. But it didn’t take her sharp vision long to pick out the cluster of occupied chairs heading their way in double time—E.M.T.s, officials.

  She didn’t plan to be here.

  Ryan apparently felt the same; he’d transferred the teenager to the lift operator and now headed for the narrow trail leading uphill.

  “Hey,” the lift wrangler said, tangled up in the girl, “you can’t go…They’ll want to talk to you—”

  Ryan spun briefly around to face him. “Go where?” he asked, wry enough to make the kid laugh.

  Lyn took note. Not a lie, but misleading? Oh, yeah. Because she and Ryan had an entire extinct volcano over which to range—eighteen thousand acres of fragile, extreme Kachina Peaks Wilderness area above the more accessible trails.

  On the other hand…

  Don’t overanalyze. Of course he’d misled the kid. Of course he’d do whatever low-key thing it took to keep them out of any official reports of the incident, just as she was prepared to do the same. And it didn’t take as much as one might think. Already she could imagine the reaction to the description of Joe Ryan leaping to catch hold of that lift chair and pull the girl to safety. Skepticism, if not outright disbelief. Chalking it up to a natural inclination to exaggerate.

  Such skepticism served the Sentinels well.

  Ryan moved effortlessly up the tricky trail, maneuvering its short, zigzagging sections with ease. Lyn followed, custom-made boots finding purchase in spite of rolling cinders over rock-hard dirt.

  She’d thought he’d just keep going—get them out of sight and head into the woods. But instead, when the trail widened out to a viewing area perched at the edge of a rock outcrop, he hesitated. He wandered to the fenced edge, looking not at the drop before him but out at the re-forming thunderheads of the waning afternoon. Lyn realized, then, with a startling snap of awareness—this was the very spot his dossier picture had been taken.

  Yes, he knew this place.

  He might even consider it his, in some ways.

  He’d be wrong.

  She wandered over to the token handrail. Ponderosas speared up at her from the plunging slope below; off to the side and farther down, ski resort personnel bustled around the teenager. Scattered groups of tourists appeared in the distant chairs on the lift. Good. With more people up here, their own absence would be less noticeable.

  But while she tried to focus her thoughts on the power surges of the area, on the consequences of such surges, on her need to prove Joe Ryan a Sentinel gone dark, the gentle gusty wind snatched at her thoughts; the scent of sun-warmed pine beguiled her nose. The thin air slipped in and out of her lungs without leaving much impact, and her peripheral vision seemed ever so sparkly around the edges. Her fingers curled around the upper rail of the brown pipe fencing; she took a deep breath.

  “Give it a few minutes,” Ryan said, giving her a quick, sharp glance before he returned his attention to the panorama before them. “You’ll adjust.”

  More so than the average tourist—an advantage of her robust shifter form, and one she’d gladly take. Plenty of travelers found the seven-thousand-foot altitude at the base challenging enough; Lyn hadn’t even considered it until this moment. She took another deep breath, suddenly overwhelmed by the very alien nature of the landscape—from the volcanic rock formations around them to the distinct sections of forest and high desert prairie spread out below and the slash of the Grand Canyon far to the northwest…this place smelled different, it sounded different…it even tasted different, pressing in around her with clear, rarefied air and the unique trace of those creatures who dared to live at this cold, dry twelve thousand feet.

  Perhaps that’s why she nearly missed it. Another rumble of power, a mere bass hiss of presence, tasting of Ryan and of deep green wild…Lyn found herself closing her eyes, leaning into it as she might a pleasant breeze on a hot day.

  Her eyes snapped open, riveting to him in accusation—but the words she gathered to fling at him died on her lips. He stood braced against the rail, a frown drawing his brows, nostrils flared with the impact of that faint surge…or with effort, she wasn’t sure. Even as she watched, eyes narrowed, he lifted his head—a little jerk of determination there—and turned to her.

  And then she couldn’t help it. Then the words burst out. “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that. Don’t tell me you didn’t taste yourself in that surge!”

  For an instant, he looked nothing more than nonplussed. And then his frustration snapped back at her. “No! It’s not—I—” A quick step, another, and he’d closed the distance between them, by then under better control. “Tell me, Lyn Maines…did you recognize your voice the first time you heard yourself recorded?”

  She blinked. “I…” Flashed back to that day, two children playing with an off-limits answering machine, her brother leading the way into trouble even then. The laughter at how they sounded, their insistence—that really is you!

  She didn’t get a chance to voice her answer; he turned away from her again, looking back out over the vista. It truly didn’t matter—they both knew her answer. And so the question became…did he not know why his trace was tangled with the surges? Or had he simply not realized it would be detectible?

  Voices muttered up from below as the next wave of tourists grew closer, the Snowbowl management and emergency personnel in discussion with the lift operator. “They’ll be looking for us,” Ryan said, but it came as an afterthought, an aside to whatever else ran through his mind.

  Lyn said, “If the Core siphons the energy of this place…if they store it in their amulets, if they use it against us…if they use it against the rest of the world—”

  He didn’t turn on her, but she got the impression it was only through strength of will. “Then this ancient place will change forever,” he said, his voice low. “Irrevocably. The people who revere it, who draw their spiritual strength from it…those nations would never recover. There’s no telling what would happen to the delicate ecosystem up here.”

  “And you?” she said, words that slipped out before she could think better of them. She tightened his jacket around her, realized suddenly that it was his, and pretended that it didn’t matter. “If you siphon energy?”

  He laughed—a short, bitter sound. “They think I’m that good, do they?” He gestured out over the slopes—hard red-brown cinders cropping up in dramatic patches between the pines, while above them the trees stunted down and gave way to lichens and scrub. “Look at it! Can’t you feel it, lurking here, as big as the world? What would I do with it all?”

  She shrugged, determined to be unaffected by his pa
ssion for this area. “Personal glory? A little something to make up for what you’ve lost?”

  No laughter this time, but he grinned, and turned so the gusts lifted the hair from his forehead as he looked back at her. “Don’t you think it’s all just a little bit bigger than I am?”

  “Well,” she said, taken aback at both the grin and the matter-of-fact nature of the response, “I do. But people who break rules usually think they’re the exception.”

  He nodded. “Okay,” he said, and turned to her, leaning his hips against the top pipe rail with an insouciance she could not have mustered, not with the fatal nature of the drop behind him. He nodded again, catching her eyes. The sharp shadows thrown by his own features turned his dusky hazel gaze to something darker. “Okay,” he repeated. “That’s good. You think like that.”

  She must have registered her surprise. He grinned again. “Thinking like that will find the truth. That’s fine by me. That’s not the same as already having made up your mind, and coming here with some old grudge already in hand.”

  Lyn’s jaw dropped; she groped for words. Her temper filled the void. “How dare you even suggest—”

  He cut her off with a snort of a laugh. “What have I got to lose?”

  And that stopped her temper cold, floundering; she was unable to do anything but search his eyes. From below came filtered conversation—clear to any Sentinel, if not the average person. The lift wrangler said, “They’ve got to come down soon.”

  “We should go,” Ryan said, dropping her gaze. He pushed away from the railing and then quite suddenly froze, and the hint of natural burnished color in his face paled away. His step faltered to the point that she reached for him—and that’s when she felt it herself, another angry aftershock of power, whispering through her veins and briefly clouding her head. Only the merest of grumbles, but here, so close to the source…

  An instant of panic skittered down her spine, fluttered in her chest. So much power, and we’re sitting right on top of it…

  What if she hadn’t even thought of the worst of the possibilities? What if brevis regional had missed it, too? Because…what if whoever had disturbed the mountain hadn’t done it right?

  If the area had been unbalanced, destabilized…it could be on the verge of an eruption such as the world had never seen. Not magma, but pure power…

  Take a breath. She did just that. Get a grip. Not quite as easily done. She took another breath, deeper…slower. She gathered her own energy, what little grasp she had of it. She was no Joe Ryan, to perceive and impose himself on the world’s deepest powers, but she could damn well control her own. She pulled it into herself, found it tainted with her fears, and hunted the inner note that had always cleared away such things…a silent hum. It grounded her…centered her.

  And when she opened her eyes, she found him there—right there—his hand reaching for the side of her face, his expression equal parts intensity and wonder. “How…?” he said. And, “I thought you were a tracker….”

  “I am,” she said, the calm lingering; she didn’t so much as blink to find him so close, though she couldn’t help but lift her chin slightly.

  He shook his head. “Whatever. Damned fine job of…” He shook his head again. “It wasn’t shielding, or even just centering. Nicely done.”

  She shrugged. “Are you all right? You looked—”

  He waved off the rest of the question. “I had a bug earlier this week. I’m fine.” But he glanced down slope and took her arm, escorting her back to the trail and moving a little too quickly for her comfort.

  She shook his hand free. “Where now?” she asked, and she lowered her voice in deference to those who were looking for them. She and Ryan were vulnerable now—silhouetted against bare rock and sky until the trail rounded the next hump of ground.

  He looked back at her, ready to offer a hand if she needed it. “Following my feet,” he said. “You’ve seen for yourself…they pretty much lead me to trouble. Today, I’m counting on it.”

  Chapter 4

  A lien and familiar at the same time, the alpine zone of the Peaks never failed to draw Joe’s awe, here on the rarified trails across the towering Agassiz Peak summit to the saddles and dips between the other five Peaks. Arctic tundra, right here in the Arizona desert, with lichens and a threatened groundsel species and even a variety of buttercup; on the gentler slopes of swooping tundra meadows there were enough grasses, sedges and moss to keep his nose twitching—not to mention a shrew or two.

  But he wasn’t here for shrews today. He glanced at Lyn; she, too, looked out over the cold rugged landscape, her eyes bright and alert, her ears flicking in tiny, precise motions.

  So very Lyn.

  The wind ruffled her thick, rich fur, rippling down along the length of a truly amazing tail. What would fur like that feel like beneath a man’s hands?

  You’ll never know, boy-o.

  They’d followed the trail at first, passing out of Snowbowl turf into the Kachina Peaks Wilderness area, where they definitely didn’t have the necessary permit. And so as soon as they found a grouping of rocks big enough to hide the jacket, Lyn had taken the ocelot, and Joe had turned his face to the sun and let the cougar come out.

  From here, the power pushed at him with an inner rumble and a strong directional flow. Unlike warders with their discrete lines and precision knots, Joe saw broad tides and flows, overlays of movement over earth and sky. Tides and flows couldn’t be tied into knots or moved with precision. Might as well try to herd a flash flood. Managing power on this scale took deep concentration, a sense of conviction behind clear vision of what should be…an utter belief in success.

  Even if Joe still had that belief in himself, it seemed that brevis regional did not. And looking out over this natural magic of delicate ecosystem backed by a power so deep that every native nation within reach had considered it sacred, Joe felt the resentment of it. I’ve done a good job here.

  Probably part of the problem. They probably had no idea of the subtle adjustments he made, the corrections to natural flows gone astray in the face of modern incursions. Even if they’d read his reluctantly submitted reports, they’d never truly comprehend.

  He stopped, flicked a whisker, briefly flattened annoyed ears. He had sent that last report, hadn’t he?

  Damned paperwork.

  The ocelot looked back at him, silent. Had she been more simpatico, they could have communicated clearly in thought. Also not gonna happen, boy-o. Joe padded past her, heading them down into the scoop of the meadow and toward the tree line on the far side—aiming through the Fremont Saddle to pick up the Weatherford Trail. “If they’ve been here,” he’d told her before the change, “they probably came this way.” Pretty much the only way, on foot.

  They being the Core, of course. Those for whom he’d already intended to look today. Not because brevis had warned him, not because consul Dane had sent him any message or his adjutant Nick Carter had bothered with a heads-up, but because anywhere things went amiss as profoundly as the recent power surges, it was worth looking for Core influence.

  The tree line rose up around them in an amazingly abrupt transition, stunted and gnarled spruce, firs and pines. Something of a rodent nature rustled low in the grass off to the side; Joe ignored the catlike impulse to play toss the squeakie. He threaded through the trees, heading for the trail in an efficient line—leaping onto rock outcrops as though they were mere steps, bounding over water-worn mini-gullies in the fragile soil.

  When he struck the trail, he gave it over to Lyn. They’d had no discussion of it, but it made sense. He could track with his nose, his whiskers, his common sense, but the best trackers could sense any faint trace of used power, including the corrupt presence of Core amulets, and he was betting his little ocelot—

  Right. Not yours. Not a tame ocelot. Don’t forget it.

  But he thought Lyn could do it.

  She didn’t hesitate to move out in front of him. She stepped onto the trail and trotted easil
y along. The unwary might have said she wasn’t paying attention, but Joe saw the swivel of her ears, the alert, graceful posture of her neck…the slight kink of tension near the end of her tail.

  Quickly enough, she stopped short, her ears trained forward—presenting him with a perfect view of the yellow spot on the back of each small, perfectly aligned ear. He came up beside her, watching her whiskers quiver. The quiver traveled through her whole body until she gave a quiet, disdainful little sneeze and shook it off with distaste.

  Core. His pulse quickened. And if they were indeed on this trail…he knew where they were headed.

  She opened her eyes and instantly stiffened to find him so close, so large; she was ten inches shorter than he and nearly a hundred and fifty pounds lighter. She hissed.

  He immediately crouched, not in submission but remorse. Hadn’t been thinking, nope. Sorry, he said, an apology she wouldn’t or couldn’t hear. But when she flicked her tail and stepped out to move on down the trail, he didn’t follow. For that scent in this place…he knew where they were headed, and that meant he was no longer just out for a ramble in the high, free air beside a beautiful companion. Not now.

  Now, he was predator.

  Lyn scowled. It came out as whiskers tipped back, baleful green eyes glowering at him, ears slanted. A powerful look, used to good effect.

  Ryan ignored it. He may have tried to say something to her. She had the uneasy sense of it, enough to make her skin twitch. She couldn’t hear him; she didn’t want to hear him.

  Even if it meant watching him turn away to lope downhill with directed strides, slipping between the gnarled, sun-scented pines where the shadows turned long from the early-evening sun. She sneezed again—this time from pure vexation.

  Trust him, then. She’d know soon enough if he was leading her into folly…and now that she’d been to this place, she could find her way back with or without him.