He hadn’t yet replaced her, not in any of her capacities—but if Katie Maddox was malleable enough, she just might do.
But that meant that this pathetic, mundane civilian had to come through for him, and Eduard was beginning to have his doubts. “I feel the need to mention, Mr. Akins, how many times you assured me you could delay Miss Maddox for some period of time.”
Akins had the grace to look disgruntled, but it quickly passed. “I could have, too. She’s a skittery little bitch most of the time—easy enough to push her buttons. But you didn’t mention there’d be a guy with her. I had to improvise.”
A guy. Of course. The very Sentinel who had foiled Guyrasi. “Nonetheless,” Eduard said, eying Akins’s truculence and deciding the man’s eventual fate on the spot. “There are many ways to create distraction or delay—unless you found that particular man intimidating.”
Akins took quick and righteous offense. “I could have handled him,” he assured Eduard. “If that’s what I’d wanted to do.”
“And yet your failure put me in a difficult situation. I’m afraid our association no longer truly benefits me.”
“Shit,” Akins said. “Can’t you ever just come right out and say what you mean, instead of dancing around the words? What are you, gay or something?”
Eduard closed his eyes for a long moment. “Charming,” he said. When he looked at Akins again, it was with a little more of his inner Gausto showing. Indeed, Fabron Gausto had taught him much. “Mr. Akins, I was prepared to pay you a reasonable sum for what you so clearly want to do anyway—ruin Katie Maddox. Now, I’m afraid, I must insist that you simply stay out of my way.”
Akins scowled; his gaze flicked to Eduard’s men—correctly assessing their role here, to judge by the way he subsided. “Look,” he said. “That bitch is out to ruin me, and I want her to go down before she can—I want to be part of that. What I don’t get is you. You don’t live around here, you don’t do business here.... What’s it to you?”
Finally. An intelligent question. Eduard inclined his head. “It’s very simple, Mr. Akins. I need something from her, and it’s something she’s not inclined to give me. Therefore, I’ll tear down what she has until she’s desperate to save what’s left. To do that, I need information—which I was attempting to gather when your failure created a significant problem for one of my men.” He gave Akins a pointed look. “You had best hope you never meet my operative. He has no kind feelings toward you.”
Akins snorted. “Yeah, well,” he said, as if that was meaningful. “Still doesn’t explain why you need me.”
“You live here. You know this place and its people. You can accomplish more readily, more effectively, the things we cannot.”
Akins sat up straighter. “That’s right,” he said. “I can. But you have to be more straight with me, you know?”
Eduard took a deliberate sip of the latte and patted his lips with the cheap paper napkin, reminding himself that this was the outcome he’d wanted all along. Intimidate the man, pressure him...but ultimately position him to insist on helping. “I see your point, Mr. Akins.”
“So we’re good, then?”
Eduard couldn’t quite bring himself to respond in the affirmative. “We need to know more about the man from the bus stop. What he’s doing here, how long might he be there, and whether his presence is changing her habits.”
“You mean, like, is he screwing her?”
“A small matter in the larger scheme of things, but yes, that would be useful information.” Eduard eyed him. “The specifics, should you discover them, you may keep to yourself.”
Akins snorted. “You sure you’re not—”
Eduard’s expression went cold. “The details of her skills in that area,” he told Akins, equally coldly, “I intend to discover for myself.”
Akins stared at him for a short, surprised moment, and then grinned. “Edoo-ard, my man!”
Eduard couldn’t help it. He did roll his eyes. And he said, “Use your imagination as to how you proceed—but do it quickly. And if it amuses you to gratuitously harass her in some small ways, you may feel free.”
Akins’s grin grew wider. “My man,” he said, by way of enthusiastic affirmative.
Eduard only smiled tightly. And when she disappears, all who have seen you will know who to blame.
* * *
Maks shed the human to take his tiger at the first opportunity, slipping through the heavy pine woods with relief. These woods—or ones very close to them—had sheltered him at a time when he’d needed a home, and a time when he needed safety. He easily avoided the human footpaths, identifying them from scent, from the behavior of the birds and small creatures in those areas.
He found a high prairie meadow with intruding juniper, slipped through thickets of scrub oak, noted the game trails and human incursions, and let the old habits wash back through him.
Habits instilled young. Too young, some had said, doubting that he would ever truly be integrated into a more civilized world.
Maks had never doubted that he could, only if he would. His mother had taught him civilized; his early years had taught him discipline, and the ways of life and death.
Most of it had been as the tiger.
His foray into the world of Sentinels had suited him, in its way. It gave him the chance to explore what had been his mother’s life before she’d fallen captive to the Core. It gave him affiliations and company that the tiger had not even known the human had craved.
He had soaked up an education, troweling in manners; he had learned that silence was as useful in the human existence as it had been for the young tiger and those others under his early protection. He had even learned the ways of men and women, and readily kept himself satisfied in a community where such things were matter-of-fact and where sexual initiation with a Sentinel of power was a carefully planned event—the partners chosen, the resulting maturation of power nurtured and documented.
But in this place, on this day, with the scent of Katie Rae Maddox lingering in his very being, Maks Altán began to suspect he really knew nothing about any of it after all.
::Maks.::
He lifted his head in an unconscious gesture as Annorah’s soft mind-query plucked at his attention. He sent back no words—his attention and perked ears of response were enough for Annorah, the communications hub for brevis; she’d know he was listening to her spoken thoughts.
She was much changed from the woman who had gone to Flagstaff with his team, in over her head and too busy proving herself to fit in—an attitude that had ultimately contributed to his injury. She was well into the period of extra supervision and training she bore in consequence, but she still felt a certain responsibility to Maks—to all of the team members injured in that single, damaging blow.
In a strange way, they were both survivors of that moment.
He wasn’t surprised to hear from her now, or ever—she was one of very few agents who could reach out and tap another Sentinel on the shoulder—wherever they were, wherever she was—even as she juggled central communications there at brevis.
::Maks,:: she said. ::Are you all right?::
He thought in tones of affirmative, considering it so. The wound would heal. And the fugue had no grip on him for the moment. That his presence here had stirred it, that he found himself tangling with Katie Rae in ways physical, emotional, and metaphysical...
Well, that was something he’d figure out. Given time.
::Maks.:: Her thought-voice came chiding.
Maks released annoyance—a flip of his tail tip, his ears canting back slightly. Not at Annorah. Just...circumstances. ::I’m all right.::
::Ooh, he speaks!:: Her laughter was a brief glitter in his mind, along with the surprise that he’d bothered to form words for her—words no one else had ever been able to perceive. ::Things don’t feel well with you.::
::Eavesdropping?:: he asked her.
::Hey! I do not—:: But she stopped, and allowed him to feel a trickle of h
er admiration. ::Nice redirection. People don’t give you enough credit for being sneaky, just because you stand around being quiet and capable. But that’s not going to work on me, mister. Something’s up.::
Maks thought about mentioning the effect on him of being near this Chinese water deer—how it stirred him, and how he couldn’t separate the natural connections forged by a healer-seer at work from what rose between tiger and deer, man and woman.
He thought about Katie’s concern that he wasn’t healing at a Sentinel’s rate, and about the blood trickling down through his fur even now. He thought about the way the fugue had caught him at the bus station, and how it had slowly insinuated itself back into his life.
And with all those words on the tip of his tongue, mental or otherwise, he said nothing.
::Maks?::
The concern in her voice pricked at him; the hurt in it stung. She knew he was holding back on her.
His tail lashed. To tell Annorah would put her in conflict—by duty, bound to report him. By friendship, bound to keep his confidence.
Either way, she’d suffer the consequences. Maks forced his concerns into the background, and replaced them with his tiger’s immersion in the moment—the faint increase in humidity as darkness fell, the rising scents of pine and acrid soil.
And he lied to his friend.
Not in words. But in effect. Giving her only that moment, through a tiger’s eyes.
::Yeah,:: she said, not particularly convinced. ::I get the idea. But if you need anything...::
A tiger’s rumble of a purr cut briefly through the silence, and she heard that, too, and sent him back affection, closing their connection and leaving him in privacy.
She couldn’t know that he’d already asked for help, in the best way he knew how. Not telling Nick all the details...that had been a choice. If Nick had no one to send, no one who could help...then Maks wasn’t about to target himself for a recall.
When Katie had what she needed, then Maks would be able to walk away.
At least, he’d thought so.
Now, with the aftermath of her touch still singing through his body, he wasn’t so sure.
He lifted his head to the faint breeze, dropping his jaw to drag in the full scent of it, his whiskers lifting in a silent abbreviation of a tiger’s curse. Humans approached—rushing, no doubt, to get out of these woods before dark.
And Katie no doubt waited for him...no doubt worried. And, just possibly, had gleaned enough information from her own seer’s journeys to offer some suggestion about how they might proceed—at least until they truly understood what her visions meant.
Maks padded down a trail of his own making, a stately trot that ate up ground at a surprising rate. No wandering this time...no inspecting. He reached the edge of the woods before it hit him—a wave of disorientation so subtle that he almost didn’t notice it. A second wave hit as he hesitated there, checking for cyclists. He sat to make the change, glimmering stark blue energies a brief but disorienting blur in both eye and mind...and then he knelt as man, hands braced on his thighs, head bowed.
Warmth trickled down his arm and crawled over his knuckles.
Maks the man made a tiger’s expression of a silent curse, and climbed to his feet. It occurred to him, belatedly, that if he’d truly underestimated the severity of his failure to heal, he’d be no good to Katie anyway.
He headed for the porch, the fugue licking around his edges. The early rise of the waning moon created clear shapes and shadows, all of which pulsed in time to a heartbeat now speeding up, shifting into a spectrum of sickly greens and orange. His vision doubled, cleared...and left him standing with one hand clenched around the rustic wood pole of the handrail, the other unto itself.
On the other side of the screen, the marmalade cat regarded him with wise round eyes and the twitch of a tail around its seated haunches. The lingering scent of broiled meat drifted onto the porch...welcoming. Music played from within; Katie’s voice, sweet and low, picked up on the chorus of something with a ballad feel to it.
It occurred to Maks to call out to her, but his voice was buried somewhere deep inside him...still back with the tiger. So he took another step, and another, and he made it all the way to the door.
But he didn’t make it any farther.
Chapter 7
Katie sang along with Keith Urban, letting the music take her away from things she didn’t want to think about while dinner waited on Maks. A ballad here, a feel-good rowdy tune there...
She knew her carefree mood was nothing but illusion. She knew she had to face the vision she’d seen, and learn what it meant. She had to allow herself to feel its clarity...its intensity.
But the seeing was a facet of herself she’d long downplayed, after learning early to evade unwanted attention. She didn’t mention the visions unless she had to; she ignored them completely when she could. She slid aside from them when they came upon her.
But there had been no sliding aside from this. And she didn’t know if that had come of Maks—if the way he’d rattled her had caused her to lose that fine control—or if it was a result of the danger driving the vision in the first place. Either way, she’d have to look—really look—for the first time in...
Forever.
She stopped singing.
Katie wiped her hands on a towel and slid the plated steak from the table, poking it into the fridge. He’ll be back.
Of that much, she realized, Maks had utterly convinced her. He was here to keep her safe.
She just didn’t know if he could.
“This is stupid, Katie Rae,” she told herself, and in no uncertain terms. “No brooding allowed.”
And as soon as she said it, she realized that her uneasy sensation wasn’t coming from within at all. That she’d been perfectly happy, singing along with Keith, puttering in the kitchen.
Something had changed. Something from which she’d slid away, as had become habit—except this time she couldn’t afford that weakness. And then she realized she’d gotten so good at sliding away that she wasn’t even sure how to look any longer.
Or maybe she did know, if she could face that, too. Because healing, too, started with finding. And she thought it no coincidence that she’d been working a modest healing on Marie’s big malamute mix when the recent vision had snared her.
The one that had been full of Maks and violence and the taste of Core corruption.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She muttered away that particular guilt and, still standing by the fridge, did what she’d successfully avoided for so many years.
She went looking.
In an instant, she found herself surrounded by sensation, a fog edged with confusion lapping at her awareness, a despair of conflicting energies clashing to create a static of interference. It mingled with a hint of a clean, clear and vulnerable connection, and tangled with the sense of faltering strength.
“Maks?” The word startled out of her mouth—she stood, for the instant, deer-frozen, all her senses on alert. Keith Urban poured into her ear with his usual exuberance; she dashed over to slap the stereo off, listening into the silence.
Not quite silence.
Someone’s breathing. Distressed, filled with pain, and not far away at all.
She ran for the screen door, flipping off the glare of the entry light—and then just barely saw him there, a dark form blocking the door.
“Dammit,” she said, as close to a snarl as she ever came. “While I was singing.” But she didn’t try to push her way out. Instead, she raced through the darkened house to the double doors off the guest room, and flung herself outside to run, fleet and barefoot-agile, through the tufty grama grasses along the side of the house. “Maks,” she said, taking the porch steps in a heedless bound and coming to rest beside him, a single fluid motion. “What happened?”
It should have been obvious. She smelled the blood; she saw it. Her first touch on his arm landed on sticky, clammy flannel, dark and ominous against the cheerful plaid. But t
he flood of sensation she received from him...that wasn’t about blood loss, or pain, or any injury at all. It was static turned loud, energy churning against itself. Her vision pulsed and doubled; her skin tingled with a vague fuzziness; it dissolved, leaving her gasping.
She wrenched herself away, closing herself off, and for a moment could do nothing but gape at him. “How did brevis even let you go?”
Just as well he couldn’t answer. She had a feeling that the brevis medics knew nothing of this. And though she frowned in instant frustration at the understanding that Maks had concealed such a weakness from them, she stiffened when truth hit; she had done nothing less.
In truth, she’d done more. She’d hidden herself so brevis wouldn’t put her in the field or assign her to the city. Maks had merely hidden himself so he could come here and help Katie.
“God, I suck.” She drew her hands over her face, pausing to press the heels of her palms against her eyes. “Suck, suck, suck.” What’s worse, she was wallowing in it when he needed her.
Oh, she didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to make herself open to him, to the tooth-and-claw strength of him. She didn’t want to make herself vulnerable to the visions. She didn’t want to reveal those parts of herself that he would surely perceive, given how deep this would take her.
Being deer doesn’t mean being weak.
Maybe being deer meant being stronger than they ever suspected she’d been.
Which is how Katie found herself wedged up against the stout metal screening of the security screen, Maks’s weight tugged onto her lap. It took awkward moments to prop his lolling head, to shift him so she could reach the injured arm, and so her crossed legs kept the rest of him stable and her hands free.
And then, just for a moment, she indulged. She bent over his neck and breathed in the scent of him—the scent of a man after a day of work, tinged with stress, overlaid with blood, but nonetheless...
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