Sentinels: Lion Heart

by Doranna Durgin

  Nothing right about that, either.

  The dark blot that was Onfroi moved up closer. A squatter blot than Gausto, and not nearly as graceful; no doubt his finger was already on the trigger. Joe settled into place, trying to look as innocuous as a furious cougar could ever look. His tail betrayed him, lashing out his fury…revealing his intent, if the man could but read it.

  Because Joe might be reeling and blind, but he could see one thing for sure—and he could see it more clearly than the Core goons, who were blind in an entirely different way. They hadn’t seen the firefly shrapnel; they hadn’t felt the distinct and startling results of two clashing powers. Feedback, he’d been thinking, in description of what he’d felt upon closing in the spring.

  Feedback, here, in the power he’d released.

  With the power surges that Lyn insisted tasted of his own trace.

  And the amulet at his house, and the illness that never went away, and the power that built up to scour through his system. He understood it now…that it was because of the trace, because of the similarities to himself. It was himself but not himself…and so it had triggered a reaction within, as if he’d suddenly contracted a bizarre autoimmune disease only a power-wielding Sentinel could expect to face. Feedback, indeed.

  Throwing his power out there within range of the tap had created the same manner of reaction…this time on the exterior. And Gausto’s men had absolutely no idea how much he’d learned from it.

  Not to extend any more power, that’s for sure.

  In fact…

  If he made this possible, if he somehow fed this power…

  Then he’d have to stop doing it.

  Somehow.

  Easier to stop breathing.

  Somehow.

  They had him.

  Lyn couldn’t tell just how. She only knew he crouched, immobile, while Gausto paced freely around him, his gestures taunting and the barely audible hints of his voice the same. Two men lingered within range; a body lay off to the side, near the spring—near where she’d once scented the mere hint of amulet corruption. Beside that, a small day pack and several flashlights, all of which they’d wisely chosen to set aside. Smarter to let their human eyes adjust to the partial moonlight as well as they might, than blind themselves with flashlights that could only cover a tiny area.

  Damn. She’d been hoping they weren’t smart.

  They hadn’t been smart enough to look up on this tower of rocks above the spring, anyway. At least, not yet. For although she’d come up on them on Ryan’s trail, she’d been too wary to come close; she’d circled around and settled in up here. Watching. Assessing. Trying to understand what held Ryan so thoroughly pinned, his ears flattened to his skull, his entire body flattened to the ground in misery.

  One of the men stood over him now, gun in hand, ready to shoot at any wrong flick of that black-tipped tail. But Ryan offered no resistance, and only the steady, heartbeat presence of his trace reassured Lyn that he breathed at all.

  Off to the side, Gausto crouched with the second man—Amulet Man—who had shaken out an array of metal disks strung on thick, broad ribbon. It was how they differentiated certain amulets, she knew—the type of cording.

  She’d never seen one on this ribbon before.

  “It’s the last time,” Gausto said, with the air of someone repeating himself. “Make it good.”

  “That’s why we’re doing this on-site again,” the other man said—with the similar overly patient air of someone who’d like to be irritated at repeating himself, but who knew better.

  On-site again. They’d been here once, then, to set it up—coming in by the trail as Lyn had tracked them. And now again, via the helicopter. But not between. No wonder Ryan hadn’t found signs of them when he’d hunted earlier this very long day—but he’d been right. The key had been here all along.

  Amulet Man arranged the medallions to his satisfaction, an equidistant array around the edges of the spring—and then made a second row, and a third. Enough to power a large city. Or destroy it. While Gausto watched, he dragged the man’s body to the uphill side of the spring, wedging it head-down between two of the amulets. Finally, he looked up; his face was as hard-featured as any of them, but it showed reluctance clearly enough. “Are you sure—”

  “I said it, didn’t I?” Gausto snapped at him.

  “Drozhar,” Amulet Man said, evidently a creature of much courage, “Arno is dead because the last surge was so very strong. I cannot say what will happen here if you mix in the blood magic. I had no chance to study—”

  Nor ever a chance to finish his thoughts, it seemed. Gausto interrupted him again, this time reassuring, all-knowing. “Arno is dead because he was careless and greedy. He thought he could take some of that power for his own. And I have studied the blood magic. Did I or did I not bring Meghan Lawrence back to life?”

  Lyn’s whiskers crimped. Right, after Meghan had sacrificed herself rather than let him use her to find the Liber Nex. And Gausto had had his little blood magic cookbook right by his side. Blood magic. Did he really intend to bleed the dead man straight into the pure, clean stream at the top of the world?

  “Do it,” Gausto said. He handed the man an object—glass, Lyn thought, but couldn’t be sure.

  Amulet Man took it as he stood, groping in his pocket to come out with a knife—nothing more than a pocketknife that he pulled open with a practiced flick of his fingers, but it was enough to do the job. He knelt beside his dead companion and flicked the blade precisely beneath the slack jaw.

  Lyn smelled the blood before she saw it, nothing more than a sluggish dark trickle; it dripped slowly into the spring. She growled, deep within, and had to contain herself—they still didn’t know she was here. She glanced at Ryan, expecting some reaction…but he hadn’t moved. His layered, reassuring trace surrounded her, but Ryan himself…Are you in there?

  But of course he couldn’t hear her.

  The man at the spring stood, holding the glass out to Gausto. A vial of blood, for Gausto and his blood magic connection. Gausto sealed it with an expression of anticipation, his face turning into something just a little bit less than human. Lyn’s tail puffed up without her permission. Even Amulet Man turned away, using the excuse of exchanging the knife for one final amulet. He let it dangle in the air from its cord, twisting back and forth, his hesitation evident.

  “Do it,” Gausto repeated.

  Amulet Man closed a hand over the amulet. He might have squeezed it; he might have muttered something. Unlike the other, somehow silent amulets, the stench of this one immediately flooded the area.

  But otherwise? Nothing.

  Neither Amulet Man nor Gausto seemed surprised. Gausto, clutching his vial of dead blood, added a layer of thick, tarry essence to the spring. Lyn flicked her whiskers, trying to rid herself of the taste of it, her black-edged nose wrinkling, her snarl silent but too reflexive to quell entirely.

  And then she thought she tasted it, that extra layer of Ryan’s trace, that initial buzz of swelling power. For the first instant, she leaned into it. Almost instantly she realized that whatever she felt, Ryan must feel a hundredfold. Right here at the source, with the power welling up right beside him—and tainted, she could suddenly taste that, too, the blood magic oozing in, stinging her nose, singeing her whiskers. In an instant she pulled her shields into place, tight and close. Because she didn’t dare extend them to Ryan, even if they could withstand the strain. Holding back her sneeze, blinking watering eyes…for the first time in her life, Lyn suddenly wasn’t sure her shields would protect her.

  Such concerns quickly went background as Ryan’s guard stepped back, gun raised; he looked over his shoulder to Gausto, hunting guidance. For Ryan snarled, but at nothing in particular, his claws scraping long furrows into the earth, but he threatened no one; mingled, his blood touched the air. Still the guard tensed, his second hand coming up to steady the gun. “Should I—?”

  That’s when Ryan slammed his own head into the ground
. Once, twice. The guard relaxed, laughing. “The Sentinel’s lost his mind.”

  Gausto glanced over. “Not entirely surprising,” he said, while Ryan stilled, apparently having dazed himself.

  Lyn’s claws flexed into rock; her eyes closed into slits of restraint. Not yet. Surely there would be a moment when she knew to act, when she knew just what to do…

  Gausto took a few steps closer, looking down on Ryan—flanks heaving, lips drawn in a reflexive snarl, eyes glassy. “It’s been quite satisfactory, watching him decline. For him to be so close to the power tap, even as it only just opens…” He looked over at Amulet Man. “Do tell me this is only the beginning for him.”

  Amulet Man cast a grim unto desperate look at his drozhar and indicated the amulets arrayed around the spring. “If you cannot feel it, watch them.”

  Lyn found her gaze drawn to the amulets—found herself staring in fascination at the first, faint hint of a glow. That same sickly yellow-green she’d seen at the hotel, this time tinged with a ruddy red. Ryan snarled again, a weaker sound; he slammed his head into the ground again, a weaker movement. Oh God. Not yet. Surely there would be a moment…

  Right. Up here at the top of the world. Alone, aside from a man who had trusted her and who had asked for nothing but that trust in return—but whom she’d left, following protocol instead of his good instinct, following orders instead of fighting to back him up. How could she expect a moment of inspiration, of knowing what to do? She’d already missed that moment, and now Ryan lay dying here at the top of what had been his world.

  Amulet Man gave an exclamation of surprise; Gausto cursed. Lyn tore her gaze away from Ryan to search the spring, hunting for the problem, not finding it. She saw nothing but the men at the spring—Amulet Man’s desperation, Gausto’s fury and the dead man’s blood slowly dripping into the sullied water, swirling and slowly drifting toward the rocky little stream to soak into the earth…the flickering amulets…

  The flickering amulets.

  “No!” Gausto said, and he whirled away from the stream, stalking swiftly to Ryan, who lifted a weak and wobbly head to offer a token, soundless snarl. “Stop! Whatever you’re doing—” Rather than finish the sentence, he turned back just enough to jerk the gun out of his own man’s hands, startling the man back; he emptied two rounds in quick succession, into the earth beside Ryan’s head—so close beside that one round furrowed through a golden cheek, adding new blood to Ryan’s face.

  Lyn found herself up in a stalking crouch, ready to leap. And do what? She was a tracker working alone, the rest of her team sorely wounded, the man who should have been the foundation piece to that team lying in the clearing before her….

  Gausto must need him alive. It came to her suddenly, as he neatly sidestepped a slow-motion swipe of Ryan’s claw without reacting to it. He wasn’t afraid of what Ryan could do to him, not now. But he was afraid about something that Ryan could do…was doing…. He glanced over his shoulder, found those amulets still flickering. Lyn, too, could suddenly perceive the failing nature of the power surge—no longer building, no longer steady.

  Gausto raised the gun again, sleek dark semiautomatic—pointed it, and then, with a sneer of disgust, let it fall aside. Instead of blowing off another useless round, he walked right to the cougar and with no hesitation in his stride, slammed his foot into those heaving ribs. Then another, behind a shoulder blade, and another, in the vulnerable flank. “Whatever,” Gausto said, and punctuated his words each with another mighty kick. “You. Are. Doing. You. Will. Stop!”

  Ryan managed to curl around, his hindquarters dragging, to wrap a long front limb around Gausto’s leg. Gausto grunted in pain and peeled himself free, but his face bore satisfaction—for the amulets glowed more brightly than ever, and Ryan flopped back to the ground in battered defeat. The power rose, swelling around them—and quite suddenly the ground trembled.

  “Fortun,” Gausto said, leaving Ryan without a second glance, his voice a warning gone deep. “You said the volcano would not awaken with your methods.”

  “I don’t know!” Amulet Man said, his eyes gone a little wild. “The blood magic changes things—this might not be the volcano at all!”

  Above, Lyn clutched at rock; bits and pieces of her perch broke away and rolled down, bouncing along the grassy slope below. The spring burped giant bubbles of air, spitting stained water and slopping over its banks. Lyn spat a feline curse, unable to stifle it—but no one heard her over the rumble of uneasy earth.

  Only Ryan appeared not to notice the quaking. After several attempts, he rolled to his chest, couchant again, his head barely clearing the shaking ground. He coughed, spitting blood. His eyes slitted closed—not with defeat, but with concentration.

  Lyn felt it this time. The withdrawal of his trace, the cessation of his interaction with the world. Not shields, not boundaries, but a siphoning off of everything that was Ryan—leaving her suddenly empty, quite suddenly bereft. The alarm at the instability of the earth beneath her abruptly turned to something deeper, something sharper. What the hell was he doing? Was it something he should even try? Was it something he could survive?

  She realized, then, that the grumbling earth had tamed to mere shivers, that whatever he was doing…whyever he was doing it…

  It was working.

  The spring calmed…the top of the world seemed to take a deep breath into quiescence.

  Gausto, for all he couldn’t sense power or changing trace, knew well enough that the amulets dimmed, one of them flickering cold. He cursed, loud and sharp, and whirled back to Ryan, ran back to him, drawing his leg back to deliver a blow worthy of a field goal kicker. “A rock!” he shouted to the man who’d once held the gun. “Get me a rock!”

  The man stared at him, blank-faced, until Gausto raised the gun, staring straight down the sights. “Get. Me. A. Rock.”

  As the man scrambled to obey, heading for the base of Lyn’s perch, Gausto delivered another solid kick into Ryan; the earth trembled as if in response. “I need you alive,” he said, his voice as cold as anything Lyn had ever heard, “but not for long. But I don’t need you conscious. Ever again.” He looked over toward the man. “A big rock.”

  Lyn growled deep in her throat. Ryan! she cried, as the man found a rock, a big rock, and hefted it with both hands, returning to Gausto. RYAN!

  If he’d made this possible, if he somehow fed this power…

  Then he’d have to stop doing it.

  Somehow.

  Easier to stop breathing.

  Somehow.

  Gausto’s blows made little impact, not the second time around. Not with the fiery power of the nearby tap scorching through his blood, slamming into his thoughts until there was room for only the one. Got to stop doing it, boy-o.

  Or maybe for two. For overriding it all came regret, and sorrow, and the overwhelming need to send out an apology. I’m sorry, Lyn, that I didn’t do this better. That I didn’t Make It Happen for us. But if he did this thing, she would be safe. They would all be safe.

  So he fought past the lingering pain of the latest blow, up close behind his shoulder blade and damned if he hadn’t heard a rib crack. He fought past the encroaching gray edges at his mind, half enticing and half nothing but agony. He focused on the thing to be done—that which he’d never done, had never considered doing…had never believed could be done. He didn’t shield himself from the outside…he shielded the outside from himself.

  He pulled himself within, and since he knew no walls that would keep that power there, he simply kept pulling it into himself. He drew it smaller and tighter and deeper, and the top of the world settled beneath him, relaxing. Without Joe’s trace—tagged and tainted—it had nothing to lure it from its deep lair within the Peaks.

  Triumph was short-lived; the cougar trembled around him, a distant sensation that seemed far too remote. So now he knew. Easier to stop breathing, boy-o. The cougar’s paws drew up in a spastic manner, posturing in a neurological cry for help…or maybe jus
t an outward sign of damage already done while Joe hid deep within, still pulling at his own essence.

  He barely felt it when Gausto came after him again—true insanity this time, to pistol-whip a cougar face-to-face.

  Or not, because Joe did little more than lift cold lips in a partial snarl; couldn’t afford to distract himself, couldn’t afford to return to the place where he’d feel any of it. Stay deep within, hold himself bundled in tight…constantly, endlessly drawing himself in so he couldn’t be used.

  “The rock!” Gausto cried, all but incoherent. “Bring that damned rock!”

  The rock. The damned rock. To slam on his head. He had to live only long enough for them to feed their amulets, a giant glut of power that would do more damage than Gausto seemed capable of understanding.

  Because none of them would live long enough to see that done. The top of the world had told him as much, with its furious tremblings and deep-rooted anger. Gausto had tapped too deeply, too strongly; had disrupted the stability of even this most beneficently stable place on earth.

  Yeah, boy-o, ready to blow.

  And here was Joe, stuck inside his own head, pulling in power for all he was worth, just to keep it from happening. None of which would do a bit of good if—

  “The rock,” Gausto demanded, as someone grunted in the background. An instant of panic seized Joe, the cougar’s body tightly postured, his back arching, his head arching back. Nothing he could do, nothing from the outside with that damaged and wounded body, nothing from the inside without opening himself to a connection with the top of the world all over again…

  More than an instant of panic. A big, fat, ham-handed glut of panic, forcing a weakened snarl from his throat, forcing his eyes open just enough to see the looming shapes above him—

  Ryan!

  His legs, he discovered, still worked. At least, in reaction to Lyn’s never-heard voice in his mind, shocking him into action. Clumsy, flailing action, but enough to deal, momentarily, with men who’d come to take him for granted; caught in the sweep of his claws, they went down, a substantial rock thudding to the ground beside them. In the background, Fortun gave a cry of delight; the ground rumbled with fury; stones and pebbles clattered around them, tumbling from above.