The man squirmed beneath that paw; the tiger’s lips lifted in a silent snarl of warning. He lifted his head to look at Katie—directly at Katie—and she felt an unexpected trickle of comprehension.
He wanted her to do the talking. To be the human.
She took a deep breath, hunting for the mantle of implacability she’d cultivated so assiduously during her training years. You don’t frighten me. This situation doesn’t frighten me.
She stepped out into the scattered pines and high prairie grasses.
But she’d taken only that single step when daylight flared into a sickly green light, a soundless explosion of corrupted Core amulet energy. She cried out, covering her eyes—ducking, as if it could do any good. Or as if it mattered at all at this distance—close enough to hear the tiger grunt, flinging itself aside to land crumpled, stunned—and human.
Amulet ambush. Just like the one in Flagstaff that had wounded Maks’s team, had sent him so deeply into a coma for so many weeks—
Please, let it not be that bad.
The intruder scrambled away, tossing aside the used amulet and jerking out a small gun from concealed carry—pointing it straight at Maks and pulling the trigger without hesitation in a sharp, short report. Maks’s body gave a little jerk.
Katie gasped—and then she was running, her legs swifter than she’d ever meant them to be, bringing her so close, so fast—close enough to see the startled expression on the man’s face, to see the gun as he brought it to bear on her. She froze, staring back, forgetting to breathe entirely—seeing his body tense, seeing his intent, his finger on the trigger.
But the man didn’t shoot her. He cursed, looking from her to Maks, and then he snarled in frustration—right before he bolted for the woods, his gait hampered by a new and definite limp.
He didn’t shoot me.
He didn’t—
Katie shook herself free from the shock of it and ran to Maks’s twisted form. She laid a tentative hand on his shoulder—feeling instant relief at the life throbbing beneath her healer’s hand. The Core working hadn’t been profound—the lingering stench of its energies told her that much—and the bullet hadn’t been instantly mortal. And that meant, given a Sentinel’s amazing constitution, it likely wouldn’t be.
Or so she thought, until she saw the steady pulse of arterial blood soaking the flannel shirt above his elbow. It shouldn’t be this way. Not with a Sentinel’s body, normally so fast to address such critical injuries.
But when she reached to stanch the wound, Maks snatched her hand in mid-reach. He rumbled deeply in a tiger’s warning, the snarl turning handsome features harsh, his gaze never focusing on her at all—nothing but wounded instinct, defensive and striking out. Her hand twisted back most cruelly in his grip; she bit her lip on a cry of pain.
Prey knew better than to make a sound of the wounded while in a predator’s grip.
After a frozen moment still punctuated by that tiger’s warning, she used the warm slickness of his own blood against him, twisting within his grip until her hand popped free.
He rolled over, hands clutching at his head, the rumble turned to nothing more than a man’s low groan.
“Ohh, no,” she breathed. “Get back here.” Even a Sentinel would fail to recover from bleeding out. But the amulet injury, no matter how mild, came first. Had to, with this man who was still recovering from the last ambush, or she could lose him before she even started. To judge by his vague and distant gaze, she had little time indeed.
Katie pulled his hands away from his head—oh, his blood everywhere—and replaced them with her own, fingers threading into the hair above his ears. “Maks,” she said, her voice low and barely quavering at all, her resentments and disappointments forgotten. “Look at me.”
Not that he could, with his focus dazed and shifting, a wrenching panic creeping in behind the wild green. The flutter of it bloomed to life between them, a stab in Katie’s own chest—his confusion, his instinctive urge to fling himself into the tiger and run from this threat. And then his fear when that, too, slipped away from him.
But Katie held him tightly. She slipped into the lightest of trances, grounding herself with his gaze—sliding into the same state from which she worked every day and then further, drawing on the healing potential that lived mostly untapped within her. Beyond the comfort for easing muscle, for generating the subtle knit of flesh that a vet might mistake for an exceptionally successful rehab. A deeper connection, reaching beyond body to soul.
The energy of it came through her in gentle waves, insinuating itself into the rhythm of her breathing.
Maks jerked away from her—or tried. He twisted uneasily; he closed his eyes and turned his head aside—or tried. But she held onto him with a strength well beyond the physical.
Breathing. Touching. Connecting...
His rumbled warnings faded, his breathing quite suddenly synched to hers.
Touching. Connecting. Understanding...
Wanting.
He blinked a few times, hard and fast, his eyes widening—and then he was looking at her again. Looking back at her.
The lingering buzz of connection should have faded instantly away; it didn’t. She floundered, decided to fake it...and when she smiled at him, he frowned in such befuddlement that she couldn’t help but laugh just a little. “There,” she said. “You’re back. Now just lie still a moment.”
He had no intention of it; she saw it in his eyes, and caught him just in time—a firm hand on his shoulder when he would have come upright. “You’ve been hurt,” she told him, a commanding, if understanding, tone. “And you’re not healing properly. Lie still.”
For the merest instant, he allowed it. And then alarm—the full awareness of where they were and what had happened—crossed his features. He rolled away from Katie, lightning quick—coming to his knees to search for the intruder, full of fierce and fury.
“He’s gone, but—”
Katie bit off her words as another kind of surprise passed over Maks’s face, waiting in both resignation and impatience. His eyes rolled back, his body went limp...he folded back to the ground with a boneless grace.
She glared down at his unconscious form and finished what she’d started. “But you’ve lost a lot of blood, so you’d better just...lie...still.”
* * *
Maks opened his eyes to an ultra-blue sky overhead, the upper branches from the wide-spread pines just barely intruding on his peripheral vision. His head rang with a strange and distant ache, his arm hurt like hell and an unfamiliar, comforting presence lingered in his mind, echoing through his body like an intimate touch.
Katie sat cross-legged beside him, matter-of-factly wiping her hands on a red-blotched towel. A rusty stain brushed one cheek, and her doubled-up ponytail ends had largely escaped to cascade over her shoulder, shiny and straight and in complete disarray. She dropped the bloody towel into a metal mixing bowl and picked up several others to toss in on top of it. Only when she leaned over Maks to reach for some wayward item did he clear his throat.
She jumped, snatching up yet another soaked towel as she jerked away.
“What?” he asked, although it didn’t come out very clearly.
She didn’t have any trouble understanding him. “A Core soldier,” she said. “He had an energy-blast amulet. It hit you pretty hard, but you’re okay now. And when were you going to tell me that you don’t heal like a Sentinel should? I mean, yes, more than human normal, which is why you’re still in my backyard and your bullet is in my mixing bowl.” She lifted a smaller metal bowl, shifting it so the bullet rolled. “But not enough to stop that arterial bleed on its own. Enough to recover from the blood loss, I hope, because getting you a transfusion would be a bitch.”
Maks closed his eyes, considering the circumstances—remembering what he could of recent moments. A blast of energy, painful and bright, insinuating itself into the very fissures of a damaged soul. The sense of retreat—the despair of familiar wounds.
And then...breathing.
Breathing, imposed over his...calm and anchoring...intimate. Healing. Bringing him back.
Some sense of it still lurked within him. Some sense of her.
He absorbed it all in silence, and then let out a deep breath to admit, “I didn’t know. Not about the healing.” When she frowned, her elbow on her knee and her gaze steady on his, he added, “No one thought to shoot me and see.”
She scoffed, flicking a hand out to lightly smack his shoulder—and then, looking a bit startled at herself, said, “Well, the bullet’s out, and I’ve protected you from infection, but...we need to keep an eye on how fast you heal. We need to know what you’re dealing with.”
Had they known? The Sentinel medics? Had they even suspected?
Then again, Maks had been well on his way to being perfectly recovered on the day they cut him loose. Only afterward had the fugues crept back in.
“Maks,” she said, a little too patiently—by which he knew his thoughts were still wandering and unfocused. “It’s important. Tell me you’re going to cooperate on this.”
He said, “Yes. The healing. I’ll let you know.”
She snorted, a feminine sound. “I think I’d best keep an eye on it myself.”
A complete contradiction, Katie Maddox. One moment timid, the next bursting out with matter-of-fact confidence. And even on the heels of the thought, she startled him again, frowning. “He didn’t shoot me,” she said, as if it puzzled her.
Shoot her? The Core agent? But Maks had left her in a safe place—at the house, at a distance. He sat up—if slowly, leaning hard on his good arm; the lingering weakness didn’t soften his voice. “What do you mean, shoot you?”
She flushed, wiping her hands against the sparse and stemmy grass. “I wasn’t thinking,” she said. “When he triggered that amulet, I ran in to—well, I don’t know what I was going to do. But I was here—and he wanted to shoot me, he really did. But he didn’t do it.”
Maks had no words for that. For what she’d done—for his horror at it. But she saw it on his face, clear enough.
“I wasn’t thinking,” she repeated, defensiveness creeping into her voice. “And I’m okay. I just—it seemed strange. Why not pull the trigger? And what was he doing here in the first place?”
That, indeed, was a most excellent question. “We’ll find out,” he told her, and untangled his legs to stand.
“Oh—hold on...” Katie reached back to grope at the ground, impossibly graceful in that awkward position. When she straightened, she’d retrieved a scarf—a decorative thing, long and narrow and awash with artfully smeary green. “You’ll want a sling, I think—at least until we can see how fast you’ll heal.”
And broadcast the weakness? He shook his head. “I’ll be careful.”
Her hand tightened around the scarf, knuckles just white enough to give away her frustration. “Maks,” she said, and the next words seemed to get stuck for a moment. But not forever, though she had to look away from him. “I thought I was going to lose you. Just so you know.”
He drew in the sweet scent of her, tasting the sharp lingering edge of her fear—and he wanted to say, I’ll protect you, Katie Maddox, even though it made no sense inside this conversation at all.
So, instead, he simply rose to his feet, a sharp grunt escaping him at the fiery pain twisting down his arm.
“Oh,” Katie said, so casually. “Didn’t I mention? I’m pretty sure the median nerve took some damage. Probably lots of inflammation there. A sling might help, though.” She let the scarf dangle from her hand. “You know...like this one?”
Maks stared at her a moment, and then gave a snort of helpless laughter. No, Katie the deer wasn’t nearly as timid as she thought she was. He tucked his thumb into his waistband to keep the arm still, and held out the other to pull her to her feet.
She reached for it, gave him a knowing flash of a glance, and changed her mind to stand smoothly on her own.
He knew it then—she, too, had felt all of that which had passed between them. And she was either more frightened by it than Maks...or else she was smarter.
Probably both.
Chapter 4
Didn’t he just look like hell, Katie thought as she gathered her impromptu surgical supplies with sharp movements. She tucked the little medical field kit under her arm, pretending she wasn’t affected by Maks’s pale, strained face—or that she wasn’t wondering how brevis could even send her this man so clearly still wounded from his previous battle.
But maybe she didn’t pretend all that well. Because he hesitated, jaw tensed, and he looked away from her before he managed to say, “Don’t tell them.”
“Don’t—?” she said, stopping short, and not quite understanding.
“Brevis.” The words were hard to say, to judge by the strain in his voice. “Don’t tell them how it is.”
She gave a short laugh. “If I did, would they send someone else?”
He met her gaze with a direct if reluctant look, the turmoil still evident. “Not right away.”
Not that she hadn’t done that herself—downplaying her ability to discern the visions and what they meant, finding subtle ways to prod people into action if action was necessary—which it rarely was. Distancing herself from the skepticism she’d simply rather not fight.
Then, obviously uneasy, he added, “But it would change things for me.”
She got it, quite suddenly—brevis didn’t have any idea how affected he was. And if they found out, it would change everything for him. They’d call him in from the field, they’d call him back into medical...they’d take the tiger from the wild green—from the freedom and the action.
She’d left them for her solitude; he gambled for the freedom to hunt. Nothing alike, and yet not so very different at all.
Before she could react out loud, he added, “I’ll call them. This—” he nodded to the back of the house “—is bigger than anyone thought. But until they do send someone else...I will take care of you.”
She didn’t throw angry words back at him—especially not the all-too-easy like just now?
Truth was, he had protected her just fine. That she’d looked down the barrel of a gun was her own fault.
So she let the whole thing go. “But listen to me about that arm, okay? Maybe I’m no Ruger—” Ruger, the ultimate brevis healer—he took the bear, he took care of others and he took care of himself “—but I’m a healer. I’ve had training, I’ve worked in the field. I’m here because I choose to be apart from brevis, not because I couldn’t pass muster.” She made a little face. “I’m a little surprised they didn’t call me in after Core D’oíche.”
He shrugged, a one-shoulder gesture. “Many of those who were untouched...they chose to leave untouched. Doing their same work. It—” He made an impatient gesture—an encompassing movement, and she had a sudden impression of strength and wholeness.
“Kept us as a foundation?” she guessed.
He looked at her in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected her to understand, and nodded.
“I warned them, you know,” she told him, unable to hide the tinge of bitterness in her voice. “A month before it happened. But ‘the bogeyman is going to get us’ isn’t much of a starting place. I can still feel that...the darkness from that vision.” She buffed her arms in spite of the day’s warmth. “But compared to what the field agents have been through—and before that, you and Ruger—”
“And Michael,” he said, looking away from her with an expression gone tight. “And Shea. Because I opened that door.”
She tried to hide her surprise—that Maks had been with the legendary Ruger when he’d been injured, that Maks considered himself responsible for what had befallen them all. That he’d so quietly taken up such an important role, and so silently borne it. “Your field file is need-to-know about a lot of things like that,” she said. “Are...are the others recovered?”
“Still trying,” he said. “Like so many of us.” He nodded at
the house. “Our friend dropped something.”
A blatant change of subject. Katie let him have it. She was too busy absorbing the fact that Maks had been on that Flagstaff team. Too busy realizing what it said about his nature—about his place in the Sentinels.
Brevis may have sent her a wounded tiger. But they hadn’t sent her just any wounded tiger.
And watching him from behind, she saw clearly what he was—all of what he was: a big man of perfect proportions, his shirt soaked with blood and his arm tucked to his side, his stride powerful and at the same time not quite steady. His tiger strong and close to the surface—and yet his energies damaged.
Strength in need.
Ohh, Katie. What have you gotten tangled in?
She caught up with him, easy strides that bore little resemblance to her deer’s delicate movement. Not for the first time, she wished herself born into a shape of more nobility than a Chinese water deer—an elk, a strong whitetail, even a mule deer. She ran her tongue over her teeth, feeling the sharp bite of those slightly elongated canines. At least her deer had a little token set of tusks.
She overtook him, jamming her first-aid supplies under the rail of the side porch to meet him near the window, moving nimbly among the unused flowerpots that lined the back of the house. The same pots that had, no doubt, tripped up their intruder in the first place. She crouched at the window, poking among the sparse grasses—and recoiling at the sight of something black and oily, a sheen of unearthly metal.
She started to reach out, but Maks moved faster than she’d thought possible and caught her arm, pulling her back. She squeaked a protest—she’d hardly been about to touch the thing. Before she could say as much, he gentled his hold; by the time his fingers left her arm, it felt more like a caress.
“Amulet,” she said grimly. Of course, an amulet—what else did the Core do but leave their little missives of evil? Amulets that eavesdropped, or that induced slow, subtle malaise...those that disrupted wards, disrupted talents. But they had to be triggered first...and surely this man hadn’t had the time to do that? Not if he was still holding it when they found him? She shook her head. “I haven’t seen one of these since training. What—?”
Tiger Bound Page 4
