With not even a flicker of new trace in her senses, she finally worked up the nerve to step inside, grabbing Michael by the shoulders of his leather jacket and tugging—only to discover that the friction factor of a solid Sentinel field agent against hotel carpet meant she hadn’t moved him an inch. She cursed, prepared herself for it, and let the ocelot flow into her, through her—and dragged his ass right out of there. She shoved Shea’s foot out of the way, closed the hotel door and plucked the dangling electronic gizmo free even as she surveyed them, piled around her feet in a tumble of limb and muscle.
They could be dying for all she knew. Or even dead, from the gray, waxen look of Shea’s features. But she had to get them out of there anyway. She nudged them, she pushed them…she called on the ocelot and hauled Michael to his feet, draping him over her shoulder. It didn’t quite work—even as the leanest of them, he was still too tall, and his feet dragged badly. She found the team’s SUV, tumbled him into the backseat and ran back to the others, all the while waiting for someone to take notice of them.
Glory be, there was Maks on his hands and knees. She should have known. Strong, scrappy…he’d come to Sentinel training late, with more determination than most. “Maks!” She helped him up—his back to the wall and hands braced against his thighs—but she found nothing of true thought or understanding on his face. She pointed him at the SUV and put command into her voice as she reached for Shea. “Get to the car. Now.”
Ruger was the last of them—the biggest, the heaviest, and nearly too much for even the ocelot to handle. She couldn’t begin to get her shoulder under his; she hooked her elbows under his arms and dragged him. Halfway there she heard voices and veered off next to a tree, throwing herself into the nighttime shadows and forcing her panting into fast, shallow breaths until they passed.
There was no way to get him into a seat, either. She pulled down the tailgate and rolled him into the back, pushing and shoving and grunting without the least dignity.
It was as she latched the tailgate again that she stopped thinking gotta get them out of here, gotta get them hidden and started thinking what the hell am I going to do now and is Shea even alive and oh my God, it’s only me now.
But it wasn’t.
She still had Ryan.
Annorah’s polite and pleasant chime sounded inside her head as she double-checked the tailgate; the other woman gasped in greeting. What happened?
Trap, Lyn said shortly. It’s just me for now. You can probably tell better than I what kind of shape they’re in.
A pause. Not good, Annorah said. I’ll IM Nick for an emergency response team—
Right. The Sentinel version of FEMA. Wait! Why did you—?
It doesn’t matter now. Nothing we can do. Annorah took a mental breath. Ryan went to follow the power down.
But he can’t see!
Said he didn’t need to. A shrug. Though I think his eyes have improved over the evening, so maybe— She cut herself off. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing we can do.
Oh, yes, there was.
Lyn looked at her wounded team, strong men shattered by insidious Core power—defenseless. Counting on her. Talk to them, she told Annorah. Stay with them. And come for them. Find Ryan’s keys and take his SUV and come for them.
Because she wasn’t going to wait. She hesitated long enough to touch each of them—on the arm, on the shoulder—and to speak a few words of encouragement.
And then she got into her little rental beside the team SUV, and she ran red lights on night-deserted roads, and she went back to the mountain to find Ryan.
Chapter 20
L yn abused the hell out of the little rental car, slinging it over narrow, uneven roads and rattling over the last section of dirt to slew into Ryan’s driveway—his car gone, Annorah gone, the empty house blazing with light.
She stood in the yawning entryway, the cathedral ceiling soaring above, the darkened loft bedroom mocking her. He’d done it…he’d truly gone up the hill. He’d gone to find the power tap he’d been so certain of all the time—the one he believed she’d missed, the implication she’d been too furious to contemplate.
Except now it seemed as though he’d been far too right. She’d caught only a whiff of trace at the hotel room before her entire team went down—Michael hadn’t gotten any more than that, not nearly enough warning. And if she’d missed that…if she’d missed the scent of the amulet anchor at the Elden Pueblo site until it went active…if she’d missed the scent of the amulet buried in landscaping gravel at the side of Ryan’s house…
Michael hadn’t come to any conclusions about that amulet; things had moved too fast. But the afternoon had only served to cement Lyn’s suspicions.
Two of Gausto’s men come looking for Ryan, but never pay him any obvious visit; later an amulet is found. Ryan comes down sick with a summer cold from which he never quite recovers. The power surges start, bearing his trace…and exacting a near-deadly toll on him.
They’d used him somehow, the Core had. Taken his connection with this mountain and captured it, twisted it, turned it into a tap to the mountain’s strength. And though the trail should have been blindingly obvious, she’d missed it. Even now, believing it, knowing it, she still couldn’t taste any part of it. She had only the faint trace from the top of the world, and now…
Now she reckoned she’d been damned lucky to find that much.
So now she’d do it Ryan’s way. Pretty much as she should have been doing all along.
That trust thing. Hard to come by.
And she’d start with that easiest of things…following him. Not his scent, but the trace she’d once taken into herself, even if she hadn’t fully comprehended that doing so also meant letting go. Of her past, of her obsession…leaving her with clear-eyed drive, leaving her with all her intent…but leaving her free to accept when it didn’t belong. Free to allow…
Right. The trust thing. Not just between her and a backup partner, or her and her teammates, but between her and the man she’d let into her heart.
She covered her face with her hands, taking a deep, steadying breath—accepting the truth of it. Our men, Mrs. Rosado had said to her, seeing it with her wise eyes long before Lyn. “All right,” Lyn said softly, dropping her hands. “Mrs. Rosado, you’re right. It’s time we worked together on this thing.”
She only hoped it wasn’t too late.
Joe’s paws ached, stubbed more times than he could count. Once he’d misjudged memory and put a confident foot out onto thin air, scrabbling backward in shock. A few moments of crouching in safety to realign his memory of the terrain, and he set off again—the slopes becoming steeper, the air thinner, the trees fading away into gnarled bristlecone.
When he broke above the treeline, he stopped, flanks heaving, his breath lightly misting the brisk air. Here, the partial moon washed the high slopes with unimpeded light…or maybe, finally, his eyes were improving. Now he moved out with more confidence…and now he thought he knew. He rarely approached it from this direction—it was a hard way to come—but he very much suspected that the top of the world was waiting after all.
Except as he grew near, grew more confident, the power trail changed, buzzing into obscurity. He stopped, pacing back and forth on the edges of it, and finally, perplexed, retreated to think. For the power had never changed in nature, regardless of how it had surged and waned over the days. It was his luck that he hadn’t been mowed down by another flash flood.
Because the Core had been busy laying the attack in Flagstaff?
That depended, didn’t it? On whether they were truly triggering the surges, deliberately unleashing waves of power when they were ready to harvest—or whether the events were as random as they’d felt.
They’d gotten more profound, there was no denying that. Joe couldn’t imagine the amulet that could capture the flash flood that had killed his friend and neighbor, that had pitted him against the Sentinels—effectively, against Lyn—for one final time.
B
ecause he didn’t fool himself. They wouldn’t trust him after this. Not if this new sensitivity was permanent. Not when Ruger reported Joe’s casual ability to tap into power—to hand it over to another.
His best bet was to run.
Except they’d probably send Lyn after him…and he couldn’t do that to her. What worse betrayal for a woman still struggling with the damage done by her brother?
Getting ahead of yourself, boy-o.
Because she could have been right in the middle of that blast he’d seen. She could have been there, wounded, waiting for backup…waiting for him. She could be—
No. Not that.
Do this thing, and go find her.
Well. Supposing he made it through.
Just do this thing.
He headed into the power again—and ran smack into that unsettling buzz once more. A retreat, some tail lashing…he paced a careful arc, triangulating, more certain than ever that he headed for the top of the world. It was the place to which his gut instinct had first taken him; it was the place where Lyn had detected the first and only signs of Core presence here on the mountain. But whenever he crossed the line of the broad arc he’d created, the power trickle disintegrated into a low buzz that made his teeth ache.
Too close?
That hardly made sense. The closer he got, the sweeter it should turn, the purer.
One way to find out, really. Just do this thing. Stop the mountain from boiling over, stop the vulnerable from dying in the path of the power, stop the Core from harvesting it for their mysteriously silent amulets. Find his way back to Lyn.
Do you hear me? I’ll be coming for you.
Of course she didn’t. Not able, not willing.
Lyn wasn’t as big as Ryan’s cougar, but she was light and swift, and she followed the strongest of traces.
Not to mention that she could see perfectly in the light of the partial moon, especially as she approached the tree line. A clear view of the alpine meadows rose above her—including the incongruous round bubble of darkness with moonlight glinting off its rotors.
She hesitated behind a particularly gnarled tree, instinctively concealing herself. A helicopter? Here?
Ryan must have rubbed off on her; her first reaction was a quick wince for the damage being done to the delicate high-altitude plants and soil. And her second was a tangled bundle of what the hell and it must be Gausto and does Ryan even know?
She doubted it; this trail was upwind. And there was no way he would have seen it. The Core was here and he didn’t know it—unless they already had him.
She lowered into a hunting crouch, contemplating the man within the machine. Pilot? If she took him out, she could cripple the rest of them—trap them here. Even a feral house cat could rip a man to shreds, and Lyn’s ocelot could do much worse. It wasn’t the Sentinel way; no, the Sentinels tried to downplay the powers that had led to the original conflict a thousand years earlier. Stun guns and clever ploys and the occasional truncheon, with most transgressors turned right back to the Core for justice—which they usually got, for the Core was not merciful with those who failed, or with those who bumbled enough to draw attention to their activities.
Gausto had plenty of reason to be wary of his own people…plenty of reason to push this gambit to the limit. But still she didn’t move, aside from the twitch at the very end of her long and graceful tail. Because reason enough to restrain came with thought of Ryan, who didn’t know of this chopper, or of Gausto’s presence. Or else might already be in the hands of his men. If only she could warn him…
She reached deep, pushing against her own boundaries. Ryan! Ryan, beware! Gausto is here!
Nothing. Nothing but the dull flat echo of her own words within her own mind. She shook her head, hard—small ears flipping, luxurious fur rippling. Tried again. RYAN! Watch your back! Gausto—
Nothing. Trapped words, going nowhere, just as they always had. She’d never cared; she’d never wanted to. Team communications had always been enough.
Until now.
Ryan!
Joe lowered his head and pushed past the line he’d paced, ears flattening as the power grated against him. He clenched wicked big-cat carnassials, squinted eyes that couldn’t see much anyway, and felt his way toward the top of the world, lichens and delicate ground cover beneath his pads, summer grasses brushing his belly. Ahead loomed the rock formation; before it, the spring, burbling with winter snows and recent monsoon storms. The buzz shredded into feedback reverberations; he sank lower into the grasses, stalking the power…breathing only in the lightest, shallowest breaths, lest it disturb the tenuous hold he had on the power root. One step…another…
There came a moment when he realized he was no longer moving. That he hadn’t taken that next step. That it was all he could do to hold his ground.
That he was no longer alone.
“So. The great Sentinel finally figured it out.”
If he hadn’t been already frozen in his internal struggle, the astonishment of hearing those sardonic tones—here where only the hardiest hikers managed the official trails during daylight hours—would have done it. He forced nigh useless eyes open in spite of the discordant feedback shivering its way along his bones, hunting them—how many, how well armed—and knew that he had, as Lyn was also wont, allowed himself to become buried too deeply in his power-tracking riddle. He might not be able to see them clearly—even now, just dark, man-shaped blots in the night—but he could smell them. He could hear them. He should have.
But he hadn’t, and now he was surrounded.
One of the men dumped the dark form of a body beside the spring, straightening with evident relief in his posture and tone. “You really want to—?”
“I might not have the ancient texts any longer, but I remember enough.” That voice held command and self-assurance—perhaps a little too much of both. Still flattened to the ground, Joe nonetheless tipped his head in that direction. Gausto himself? And surely he wasn’t referring to blood magic. Not here. Not at the top of the world. Not to sully this spiritual place. He couldn’t help but paw at his eyes, desperately wanting to see—to know the details. Who had died? And how? Surely not one of the Sentinels—surely these men couldn’t have made it up here from the explosion he’d seen, not so quickly.
“Ah,” said that same man he’d thought to be Gausto. “Is that the problem, then?” He circled Joe, long, measured steps—just out of reach, with Joe still hugging the ground, out of balance and battered by noisy power. Weakened by it, he realized—not as dramatically as with the power surges, but more insidiously. More consistently.
Gausto stopped in front of him again. Joe knew him from reports and photographs, could easily fill in his features—the olive-dark skin tones, black hair slicked back and caught in a silver clasp, bold silver earring, strong features. Not unhandsome features, were it not for the habitual expression riding them, arrogance stamped clear. It came through strongly in Gausto’s sudden hard laugh. “You can’t see worth a damn, can you?”
Figured that out all by yourself, did you?
Someone outside the circle said, “That last power surge—I told you someone interfered with it. We’re lucky it killed only Arno. This thing has gotten out of hand, drozhar. We need to pull the tap and get out of here. We already have more amulets powered up than we ever imagined, and with the way this method allows us to tune to—”
“Shut up,” Gausto said, flat and cold.
The other man shut up.
“You have the blanks?” Gausto asked, that same quiet, deadly voice.
“I have the blanks.” Very careful now, oh yes. “The pilot informs me the chopper has passed high altitude pre-flights and is ready to go.”
“Then you may continue to shut up. Unless you can offer suggestions about using this particular Sentinel to our advantage.”
Hell with that. Joe pulled up a cautious thread of power. Not something he could form, because forming power wasn’t something he’d ever done. But the r
ight power, pushed at the right time, could interfere with whatever Gausto had planned. The right power, at the right time, could even plug the tap they’d made. All he had to do was find it—and the power itself could do that, sweeping out before him until it reacted.
All right, boy-o. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s a plan. And it was better than sitting here blind and stuck while they figured out how to use him. So Joe pulled up his wee thread of power, and he cast it out before him.
He expected it to snag on something, to tug forward. He expected an attraction of power to power, with his own thread as a dowser.
He didn’t expect the area to erupt in a sparkling of inanimate fireflies, sharp slivers of power glowing sickly yellow-green. He didn’t expect his senses to erupt harsh, roaring feedback, startling him into a yowl of pain and surprise. He instantly lost his grasp on the faint thread of power; it dissipated, leaving him panting against ground that no longer seemed solid, flanks heaving in a quick pattern of distress.
Gausto laughed again. “Didn’t work, did it? You can rest assured—whatever you tried, whatever you try next, it’s not going to work.”
Joe snarled. This was his place, his turf. Not their playground, not their plunder.
Abruptly, Gausto walked away from him. “Onfroi, watch him. I will prepare the blanks—and we will bathe the amulets in his blood as they absorb the gift of power he has released for us.”
There were so many things wrong with those words. Bathe amulets in his blood? The gift of power he’d released? No, no. No way.
Gausto crouched in shadows impenetrable to Joe’s eyes, and added, “We need him alive until the last surge has been triggered, but don’t take any chances. Shoot him if he moves. Just don’t make it a killing shot.”
Sentinels: Lion Heart Page 21
