Relief brightened Mariska’s expression. “Sure,” she said. “First thing.”
Good. Ruger didn’t need her crowding his every move. He didn’t need her there at all.
Just keep telling yourself that.
Through breakfast, through the ride into the woods...that was exactly what he did. Even as he stood waiting for Ian and his team to inspect the site for new amulets.
But it didn’t quite offset the rise of the sensible inner voice suggesting that while he didn’t in fact need someone watching his back, Mariska was here. And he was the one who could make it easier on both of them, or harder for everyone.
It made him cranky.
Cranky enough so he hardly noticed that Ian’s team had completed their sweep of the area, declared it undisturbed, and now waved them down to the entrance. Mariska made an offhand noise in her throat, a thoughtful little bear-hum, and Ruger pulled his attention back to the moment at hand to follow her in.
But the moment he entered the facility, he stopped short, wrinkling his nose. “I thought you warded those animals,” he told Sandy.
“I did!” Her expression of distaste said it clearly enough—she smelled the decay, too. Nothing so profound that a purely human nose would have detected it, but distinct to Sentinel senses. Ruger headed straight for the creatures Mariska had dispatched the day before—specimens, now—but before he’d even reached them, he realized he’d gone past the source of the odor.
Mariska had come to the same conclusion—turning slowly in one place, hunting the source of this new dismay. “They were all good when we left last night,” she said. “They had food and water and—”
“Over here.” Ruger found it—the beakless bird, motionless in the shavings below its perch. He pulled the cage from the shelf with brusque, no-nonsense urgency and placed it on one of the area’s worktables. The lid came off easily.
Mariska bent to watch as he scooped it out from the cage, the slight frown of her headache turning into something more profound. “What the hell? Ruger, it doesn’t have a...a face.”
Ian stood back far enough to stay out of the way, close enough to be in on the conversation. “Didn’t we know that?”
“No—I mean—” Rattled, she took a step back; Ruger reoriented the stiff little body in his hand. “Before, it didn’t have a beak, but it had a weird little flat face. Now—”
Nothing.
No beak. No eyes. No nostrils and no mouth. Just a round, closed little head covered in fine iridescent blue feathers, faint indentations indicating where those features would have been located.
Nothing at all.
* * *
Ciobaka curled up in the far corner of his cage, past his toilet area and into the dim section where the overhead daylight didn’t quite reach. He hid his nose under the tip of his brushy tail and left his ears flat against his skull.
“Still sulking?” Ehwoord asked, but not in the voice that suggested he wanted a response. “Failure merits punishment, Ciobaka. Tarras understands that.”
The day before, they’d gone out to find one of Ehwoord’s pack members dead outside the other buried structure. This morning Tarras had looked distinctly pale; he didn’t quite stand erect as he moved about his chores.
Ciobaka knew that what had happened wasn’t his fault. He knew that being unable to enter the other installation because its securities had failed wasn’t his fault, either.
“Fortunately, Yovan was successful in restoring the camera network.” Ehwoord adjusted his huge monitor, no doubt still obsessing over the flat, grainy moving images on it. “I’ll continue my work from here—in fact, I already have. I believe our friends are just now beginning to understand.”
“Is that—” Tarras hesitated, obviously looking for better words than Is that smart?
Ehwoord didn’t give him a chance. “Careful,” he said softly, and Tarras turned away.
Ciobaka turned away, too. Biding his time.
Chapter 9
Ruger looked at the deformed bird with sick disbelief—unable to voice any cogent remark, unable to come to any conclusions. Just frozen there in that horror.
Mariska’s hand came to rest on his arm. She gently removed the bird from his hands, adding it to the other specimens, and Sandy stepped up to apply the preservation warding. Only then did he look down at his hands, finding them fisted and shaking with tension. “When I find him...”
“When we find him,” Mariska said. She swiped the bangs away from her eyes and rubbed her forehead with two fingers, her eyes closed.
Ruger turned back to the installation as a whole, looking it over as if he might see some sign of Eduard Forakkes right here and now. “I thought this place was warded,” he said. “I thought it was supposed to be secure.”
“It is,” Sandy protested before Ian could do it. “Inside and out.”
Mariska looked at the shelves, full of Frankencreatures. “We should check the rest of them. Maybe whatever Forakkes did here, it’s still in progress.”
“Ongoing mutations?” Ruger shook his head. “Surely we would have seen some sign of it yesterday.”
“We had other concerns,” she reminded him. “We may have been here for a while, but we weren’t keeping that kind of eye on them. Who would? It’s not something any nominally sane person would even look for.”
The rage rumbled deep and hot, a counterpoint to the ongoing, subtle tug of arousal she invoked in him. “When I find him...”
“We,” she said automatically, and headed for the shelves.
“Breakfast seems to have been a big fail,” he said. “Let me do something for that headache.”
She shot him a wary glance. “But you can’t—”
Brief amusement lightened his mood. “Over-the-counter analgesic,” he told her, a smile twitching at his mouth; it turned into a genuine grin at her palpable relief. “Did you really think I spent all my time wielding mystic healing powers? Hell, woman, I trained for this. I even throw a pretty neat stitch.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “An aspirin would be nice. Maybe two.”
“Maybe two,” he agreed, and headed for the field kit. “But don’t feel obliged to make me prove the stitches.” He unzipped the canvas kit and poked through bandages and blood clotting sponges, antiseptic and sterile packaging—as ever, doing a silent inventory check on the way by. His fingers closed over a two-pack of aspirin, and he tugged it from its mesh pocket—and then froze, caught in astonishment at the faint scent of Core corruption.
“Ruger—” Mariska said, as Sandy came to abrupt attention and Ian cursed resoundingly. “You’d better— Oh, hell—”
She didn’t need to say anything else; she was already backing away from one of the cages, her expression not one of fear, but of horror.
“Ian,” Ruger snarled, “get this facility fucking secure.”
“It fucking is,” Ian snarled back, but frustration laced his tone.
“It is,” Sandy said, closing her eyes and adopting the peculiarly alert posture of a Sentinel in ward view. “I can’t see a damned thing!”
“Don’t tell me this is some new silent working,” Jack said, annoyance mixing with the alarm in his voice. “Hell. I don’t even want to know. I’m going to go after those hard drives while we still can.”
“Ruger—” Mariska said, but by then Ruger was there, and he pressed the aspirin into her hand just to get it out of his own as he tugged the affected cage out away from the others—a medium rodent cage containing a vole with bird’s feet.
He’d gotten there just in time. The little creature emitted an astonishingly loud squeak and fell over, thrashing wildly; Ruger set the cage on the worktable and crouched before it, trying to see amid the flurry of wood chips and limbs—until finally it lay still, its tiny chest heaving.
“It’s still alive,” Mariska whispered, bending over right there beside him.
He didn’t respond right away—too intent, and not quite willing to allow that the moment was over. But
the vole righted itself, tottering, and gave itself a quicksilver shake.
“Well?” Ian demanded—too impatient to stay quiet, for all that he’d held back to be out of the way.
Ruger shook his head. “I’ll be damned if I know—”
And then he saw it. That the vole no longer struggled to maneuver on bird’s feet, but that it tottered around on no feet at all.
* * *
Mariska gasped at the same time Ian swore; Sandy made a strangled noise.
And Ruger only stared, his grim expression making his features hard, his jaw so tense she expected to hear his teeth grinding.
“You can’t fix this,” she said, keeping her voice low. “You’re not here to do the impossible.” He didn’t respond; he didn’t look away from the unsteady little vole. Thank God it didn’t seem to be in pain. “Forakkes is up to something—Katie’s visions told us that much. The only way we’re going to stop it is to figure out what it is. That’s why you’re here.”
His mouth thinned briefly; something indefinable changed—a shift of his body, the degree of tension. Mariska heard Ian release a breath.
Jeckle screamed.
Mariska whirled to him; only in that instant did she absorb what she’d heard the instant before—the quiet snick, the shoosh of a sliding metal mechanism. And still she couldn’t make sense of him, sprawled across the floor of the office area, entangled in something...blood spreading across the hard-packed dirt floor.
Heckle was the first to reach his friend, cursing a steady stream. “Jack,” he said, a desperation already edging his voice. “What the hell have you done?”
By then Mariska was there, fully able to see the scimitar-like blade impaling Jeckle’s torso, and the gap in the solid metal desk from which it had come. Fully able to see the stunned expression on Jeckle’s face—the look in his eyes as his blood poured out and his breath came impossibly short.
Ruger pushed past her. She made a grab for his arm; his shirt slipped through her fingers. “Ruger, no—” Only afterward she realized she’d been trying to spare him the impossible.
Sentinels didn’t die easily. But they died.
Heckle looked up from where Jeckle’s hand had closed convulsively around his. “Do something,” he demanded. “Dammit, do something!”
Sandy drew in a breath; Ian wasn’t as subtle. “Harrison,” he said, and shook his head, his tone one of finality. He nodded at Jeckle, his meaning clear. Tend your friend while you can.
Heckle sent Ian a glare; he sent Mariska a glare. He all but growled at Ruger, some lurking light-blood instinct coming to the fore. He turned back to Jack and said, “You dumbass.”
“Didn’t—” Jeckle said, his body trembling convulsively around the sleek metal.
“Just be still,” Heckle said as Ruger knelt on the other side of the downed man, big, competent hands already at work—shifting clothing, gently touching wrist, chest, neck. “Sentinels are harder than this to take down.”
No, they aren’t. Mariska swallowed hard. And Jeckle wasn’t a fully blooded field Sentinel; he not only didn’t take another form, he didn’t even come close enough to guess which form might have lurked beneath his humanity.
Jeckle shook his head with vehemence—more than Mariska would have thought possible—and turned to Ruger. “No,” he said, struggling for air. “Listen. Didn’t touch anything.”
Mariska got it first—looking at the tools scattered on the floor around them, at the angle at which Jeckle lay. He’d said he was coming after the hard drives. He’d come toward the desk with tools in hand. He’d touched nothing. There’d been no evidence of Core workings. And yet the computer tower now sizzled and smoked, the scent of hot metal in the air.
“They have eyes on us,” she said, her voice low and horrified.
Jeckle caught her eye with an expression of gratitude, his body relaxing around the blade...his breath easing out in one impossibly long sigh.
Heckle swore.
Only then did Mariska realize what Ruger was doing. As before—as with her—not even thinking about it, but reaching out. Looking to heal, where he no longer could, blood trickling from his nose, a thin stream of it from his ear, his face gone pale—
She hit him, a fast backhand slap to his upper arm—knowing it would take just that to save him from himself. “Stop it,” she said, fierce with her concern. He didn’t even rock with the blow. “Ruger!” She hit him again, this time closing her fist. ::Ruger!::
“Ah, hell.” Ian stepped in—or would have, crowding the already tight space, but Mariska didn’t wait for him. She grabbed Ruger’s shoulder, jerking him around and winding up for a good hearty slap, and then another—until suddenly he looked at her with startled eyes.
But only until they rolled back in his head, and he fell with enough impact to declare again his solid size.
Ian muttered a string of curses, his voice rising along the way until his precise, furious diction became completely comprehensible. “—ing son of a bitch.”
“What the hell?” Heckle demanded, disentangling his hand from Jeckle’s with a care that belied his expression.
“Be quiet,” Mariska snapped. She wanted to stay there beside Ruger, her hand resting on his chest to feel the steady rise and fall of his breath, her attention focused on the rugged lines of his face, she wanted to wipe away the blood and reassure herself that the trickle had stopped.
But she sat back from him, pushing herself to her feet.
“What the hell, be quiet?” Heckle said, his voice rising.
::She’s right,:: Ian said, loudly enough to make Mariska wince—but it got Heckle’s attention. ::They can see us—maybe even hear us.::
Mariska headed straight for her gear bag. This had been her assignment this morning—checking this installation for networks and electronic incursions—and instead she’d let herself get distracted.
Heckle stood to glare at her, his hands fisted by his sides, his fury palpable. ::You should have—::
::Stop it,:: Ian said sharply. ::Yes, she should have. And Jack should have waited for an all clear before heading for such a critical area. This is Core turf, dammit, and we need to act like it!::
Sandy’s mind-voice was softer than her physical voice, and much less certain. ::Forakkes can see us,:: she sent, still trying to fathom it. ::He triggered that attack remotely. He took out the hard drives...::
Ian said nothing, waiting for Mariska—and Mariska pulled out her full-range wireless camera detector and paced down the center of the cavernous installation.
It only took a moment before the scanner slowed, tightening in on an exact frequency—and then another moment to pick up the feed, duplicating it on the diminutive screen in the handheld. Mariska found herself looking down the length of the installation—Ian’s lean form, Heckle’s lingering fury and grief, Sandy off to the side and Mariska’s own short, sturdy self standing closest, studying the device in her hand. “Here,” Mariska said, and traded the scanner for a smaller device as Ian came up behind her. And there it was, blinking back at her as she peered through the small viewfinder—the tiny red flashing light of a networked camera.
She held the detector up, carefully maintaining its orientation, and Ian muttered, “Got it.”
Way too high to reach.
::We’ll have to find the point-to-point wireless bridge,:: Sandy said. ::If we even can. And I doubt we came equipped to jam that— Oh.::
For Mariska went to the gear bag, pulled out the first small, hefty item she came to, and whipped it at the camera with pinpoint accuracy.
“Okay,” Ian said, returning the detector, the corner of his mouth lifted in a hint of the dry humor that so suited him. “So much for that one. But if there’s one, there’s more. Find them.”
Mariska glanced over at Jack—and over at Ruger, who hadn’t yet stirred.
“Find them,” Ian repeated, but he gentled his voice. “And then we start thinking this thing through from the top.”
Mariska went
to work.
* * *
Ruger’s arm hurt. So did his face, stinging along the newly exposed surface where maybe he shouldn’t have shaved his beard after all. He grumbled to himself, bearish sounds of dissatisfaction.
“Ruger.” That single word held relief and maybe a little bit of something else. Sorrow.
He cracked his eyes open to find he was leaning against the office partition with Mariska kneeling beside him. He gave her a bleary and suspicious look. “You hit me.”
“I did,” she said promptly, and still the sorrow hid behind her eyes. “Don’t make me do it again.”
He remembered, then—how natural it had been to respond to the crisis by sinking into that healing trance. He couldn’t remember what had happened then, but he could guess. The skin of his upper lip felt cool and scrubbed; his neck itched beneath his ear, and when he touched it, his fingers came away damp with almost-dried blood. “Hell,” he said. “Maybe I do need protection. From myself.”
“Maybe you do,” she told him, but she looked no less sad. “Ruger, I’m really sorry. I feel like I keep saying that, but...this is different. I get it now. Watching you work—”
“Try to work,” he said, and couldn’t hide that bitterness.
“Watching you,” she repeated. “Seeing what you’ve lost...” She shook her head, dark-chocolate eyes full of regret. “And I came in and yanked the rest of it away.”
“Don’t,” he said, more harshly than he meant to—simply because she hit too close to home, and he couldn’t deal with it. Not here, in the middle of an active operation, the team all around them and Jack dead not far away. He pushed back at the twist of pain in his throat.
She took a breath, almost said something...sat back on her heels. “I can’t fix all that now. I can only do the job I was sent here to do.” She made a face, sent him a slantwise look. “And I will stop you the next time you do something like that.”
“You’d probably better.” It should have been the end of the conversation—Ruger with his thoughts still dazed, Mariska with the headache that obviously wouldn’t quit, Ian and what remained of his team muttering in the background. But neither of them moved, and after a moment, Ruger reached out to put a hand over hers.
Kodiak Chained Page 9
