“But they had no idea what was really going on,” Katie protested—even as Ian carefully kept his distance.
“You told them.”
“I told them,” she agreed, a kind of anguish briefly twisting her mouth. “But I’ve been holding back for years, Maks. For most of my life.” She glanced at Ian, including him in her confession. “I didn’t want them calling me into the field. So no one at brevis has any reason to take my warning at face value.”
A little piece of him, deep inside—beneath the waning throb of pain, beneath that clawing sense of reaching—turned cold and hard. “You knew of Core D’oíche?”
She nodded; her hands crept up until she hugged her arms. “But not like you’re probably thinking. I knew there was danger, and that it was widespread, and about when it would hit. And I told them, Maks, I did! But what could they do on the strength of such vague words?”
“What would they do?” Ian said, pretending he wasn’t in the middle of a very private conversation. “If they mistakenly believed your visions to be limited and localized?”
“Well, they are!” The words burst out of her. “Usually, they are! And as far as I can tell, whatever’s going on here is localized, too. It’s just...” She frowned. “It’s also not.”
Ian scraped a hand through silvered hair, turning its spiky style into something more random. “Local,” he said, “but rippling outward.” He gave Maks a pointed look. “I still have to talk to Nick.”
Report to Nick, he meant. But Maks found himself full of certainty. “Brevis can’t help me,” he said. “I am what I am. I might as well be what I am here in Pine Bluff.” Where Katie needed him.
“Helluva situation,” Ian said. “We’re all right, and we’re all wrong.” He dropped the tongs in his bag, picking up the bucket. “I can tell you more about this in a few moments. But there’s no way around calling Nick.”
Something about the way he said it caught Maks’s attention. “He sent you to check on me.”
“He told me to keep my eyes open,” Ian said, easily enough. “And you don’t get to stay alive in the amulet-handling business unless you’ve got an eye for detail.” He hefted the bucket at them in a sardonic kind of salute. “This thing’s a subtle son-of-a-bitch. I need a moment. Just a field estimate, but we’ll know the category and strength of it.” He glanced at Maks. “I’ll let you know what Nick says.”
Chapter 10
“He sees too much,” Katie said, staring at Ian as he headed for the car with the tactical bag slung over his shoulder and the bucket dangling from the other hand. Though she thought—she hoped—the man hadn’t been able to perceive what passed between her and Maks.
Or at least not all of it.
His expression turned aggrieved. “You pinched me.”
Katie bit her lip on a smile. “I did,” she said. Bold, bold deer. “And it worked, too—without setting up that feedback loop.”
Maks growled. For once, that trill of fear didn’t run down between Katie’s shoulder blades. Instead, she laughed.
But she sobered quickly enough. “I wish I knew why that happens,” she said, thinking of what she had felt in him. “You know. When I touch—”
“I know,” he said, cutting her short—twisting to face her without quite taking his attention from Ian and his work on the tailgate of his vehicle—or the phone he had sitting on the tailgate, a phone earpiece tucked into place at the side of his head.
She opened her mouth on doubts and confusion, then shook her head, settling on simpler words. “Oh, Maks, what if Nick calls you back in?”
So many things unsaid there. What if he sends someone else who makes me feel threatened? What if I can’t figure out what’s going on behind my visions?
What if I don’t want you to leave?
Maks made a quiet chuffing sound...a tiger’s noise. “I’m not going.”
After she’d had a moment to absorb those words, feeling them sink in past her skittery fears, he tipped his head toward Ian.
Katie understood it as loudly as words. Let’s see what he’s found.
Ian didn’t look up as they approached. He’d secured the amulet inside a Mylar envelope—one that, like the tongs, was presumably micro-shielded. The braided leather stretched across the tailgate, lying on a protective quilted pad that looked a whole lot like Kevlar. His cell phone sat off to the side, its deep red case sparkling in the sun, the earpiece beside it.
“This part’s easy,” he told them, wielding a pair of chopsticks—running them down that braided thong and the complex series of knots near the amulet. “It’s a passive working—nothing that would have literally blown up in your faces—but it’s also meant to have an effect on a specific target. It’s got a lot of layers...multipurpose. And it targets by proximity, but most of them do that.” He frowned at it a moment, gone thoughtful. “It reminds me a little of what we found up in Flagstaff at Joe Ryan’s place—the one that latched its hooks into his energy signature. That was a more active working, though.”
“That’s it?” Maks said, as disappointment washed over Katie. “Nothing more specific?”
Ian snorted. “You have any idea what it takes to decipher these things?”
Maks didn’t look repentant. He leaned over the tailgate, ignoring Ian’s raised brow of warning—but not, Katie noticed, going any closer. “I told Nick to send his best.”
“That,” Ian said, with neither humility nor hubris, “would be me.”
“You read all that from just the knots?” Katie wasn’t inclined to get closer, herself. It had been a long time since her basic amulet courses—and the Core, it seemed, had introduced a number of refinements since then.
“It’s a little like palm-reading.” Ian cast her a rueful glance, with something of an apology behind it. “The Core masters each have their own style...and the knots mean something just a little bit different for each of them. Their assistants tend to reflect that style, but...not exactly.”
Katie couldn’t help the disappointment in her voice. “Then you won’t really know for sure until you neutralize it.”
“Not for sure,” Ian agreed. He ran the chopsticks down over the cord one more time, as if simply feeling the pattern of the knots would tell him something. “I’ll get back to the Tucson lab tomorrow. As soon as I know, I’ll give you a call.”
“A couple of days?” she guessed.
“Depends what else comes up,” he said, glancing at her as he stood, wrangling the cord and the chopsticks with absent-minded skill. “I can tell you this much. We found a lot of amulets in this style at Gausto’s stronghold. No big surprise—anyone in this area would have fallen under his influence. And whoever planted this one has both skill and power to play with.”
He sealed the bucket and turned around, arms crossed. Under his scrutiny, Katie eased back a step, struck by pale gray eyes edged with black lashes. Snow leopard. He told her, “You should come in.”
She mutely shook her head. She wasn’t ready to return to brevis, where once again she’d be trapped and surrounded. Not that anyone would mean to intimidate her, but...
As Maks might say, it was what it was.
“Nick said you wouldn’t come.” Ian spoke with resigned acceptance. “I brought a couple of detectors for you—it’s the best we can do, if they’re using silent amulets. And we’ll set wards before I go. Just the house, but it’ll give you a safe zone.”
Katie breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” she said. “Maybe it’ll give me the chance to figure out what’s going on here.”
“Or what’s about to,” Ian said, that single sardonic brow lifted. Dark, like his lashes, in spite of his silvered hair.
Maks lifted his head, as if something in the mountains had called to him. “I should go look,” he told her. “I should find this creature your friends spoke of.”
“Do tell,” Ian said, most politely.
The look Maks cast him wasn’t as polite as all that. “Local talk. If I find anything, I’ll rep
ort it.”
“You may not have the chance.” Ian indicated his phone. “It doesn’t take long for Nick to decide what he wants. We talked; he’s calling you back in.”
Maks just looked at him.
“Right,” Ian said, not slow to get that message. “Well, then—my job here is done, wouldn’t you say?”
“Tell Nick,” Maks said suddenly, “to send us backup. That amulet wouldn’t be here if Katie wasn’t a threat to someone. The creature wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something going on. What she’s seen is important, even if we don’t know why yet.”
“I agree,” Ian said easily. “Someone with Core skills clearly doesn’t want an active seer in this area. And the rest of the precinct isn’t likely to be happy about another independent—Gausto’s bad behavior embarrassed the hell out of the Core’s Septs Prince. They’re not going to be careful about collateral damage, if it comes to taking out their rogue.”
“They would have been glad enough if Gausto had succeeded,” Maks said, little more than a growl.
“If you hadn’t taken down his Fortress of Solitude, you mean,” Ian said. “You do realize that you earned your lifetime keep right then and there, don’t you? There’s no reason to jeopardize yourself here if you’re not ready.”
Maks said, “There’s every reason,” as if that ended the conversation. And maybe it did, for with a glance at Katie, he added, “I won’t be gone long.” He turned toward the woods, and didn’t go far before taking the tiger.
Ian sighed, catching Katie’s gaze with his own. “Nick said he wouldn’t come back in.” He shook his head. “You know he’s messed up, right? I mean, if I could feel it...”
“I know.” Katie’s voice felt like a scratch in her throat. “He should never have come here.”
And then what would I have done?
Ian shook his head again. “Here, then,” he said. “Let’s get the house warded, and these detectors set up.” And then he looked straight at her and added, “Think about going back in to brevis. Because until you come in...he won’t.”
* * *
Maks pushed the pace for several miles, heading westward without conscious decision.
Home.
For those first few miles, he let himself be. Tiger, ghosting through the high pines, absorbing the sights and sounds and scents. Tiger, letting himself be absorbed by it all in return.
Eventually he let more human thoughts drift to the surface. There’s no reason to jeopardize yourself, Ian had told him—not wasting words in doing it, and not pretending he couldn’t see that which Maks had managed to keep hidden until he’d come here. Until he’d come home.
But staying here was about much more than home, and about more than Katie. It was about sensing a wrongness, as well as knowing he had to resolve his own inner plight before he ever made it back to brevis.
Because that wasn’t going to happen while he was trapped in brick and steel. He’d been there, done too much of that. Only in those stolen moments when he’d thrown himself into the raid at Gausto’s stronghold had he felt anything but restless...anything but driven.
He was a protector. Denied that, he was...
A tiger with nowhere to go.
The woods rolled out before him, welcoming him...letting him think, even as he hunted. When he recognized the first dip of land, the first trickle of a rare high-country creek, he stopped—lowering to his belly, letting his tail twitch.
Here he was.
Enough years had passed that familiar trails had wandered and the foliage had shifted. Some trees were bigger; some trees were gone—it changed that first visual imprint.
But his bones knew this land.
And he’d known, when he’d heard of the creature, that this was the first place to look.
He spent a few moments panting by the water—taking intermittent laps and letting old memories come closer to the surface.
* * *
Then. This was the place in which he’d learned to live. The place in which he had found others like himself—fully human, far too young, but also on the run. And under Maks’s protection, no one was ever beaten in an alcoholic haze, battered in rage, or touched in places that should have remained private.
Now. This was no longer a benign place. Whispers of Core corruption eddied across the land, pooling west and north.
His woods had been invaded. And, these years later, the invaders had grown smarter, more subtle. The territorial workings imbued into this area would affect any man, Sentinel or not. Keep away go home something’s wrong...a running thread of impulses, all designed to keep this area free from interference.
Not nearly as effective, once recognized.
Maks released the growl into a short, coughing tiger’s roar and snarl.
Across the creek and up the hill, something whuffed back at him; it held the cavernous sound of something profoundly large. The faint breeze shifted, bringing with it a musky, skunk-like scent.
Javelina.
Except...not. Not with the size of whatever had made that sound.
Head lowered, Maks padded across the creek and into the land that had once been his, but was now tainted by Core presence.
The musk grew stronger; the breeze carried a low grunting noise that made way for the rapid-fire chatter of tusk against tusk.
Warning.
He got a first glimpse of it through the trees. Grizzled gray coat, hackles spiking over its neck, tusks long and gleaming...
And three times larger than any javelina ought to be.
It rattled another threat, rearing briefly and inexplicably to its hind legs before dropping back down and looking straight toward Maks.
Not deep-set little poor-sighted piggy eyes. Eerie, horrible human eyes.
Maks abandoned all pretense of stealth, breaking into a heavy, padding trot—tail stiff, head low, ears back and whiskers disapproving—weaving quickly through the intervening trees to take the measure of this thing more directly.
It stunk of Core. More than just javelina musk, but an overlay of the dead, dark energy routinely stolen and twisted by the Core for its workings, a sharp and stinging scent. Maks lifted his lips in a silent tiger snarl of disdain, circling to the side of the creature with a sideways cant of his head. Watching, always watching.
The javelina turned in place, keeping Maks before it—tossing its head in a mime of slashing tusk, once again offering its deep bark—but not without a gleam of intelligence, and just maybe, a hint of amusement.
There was, however, no fear.
Maks stopped his circling, lowering to a crouch; he coughed out another roar in challenge, his tail flicking behind him.
The javelina stuttered forward, bouncing off its front legs, jaws gaping and tusks fully exposed—and then it charged, those eerie human eyes laughing.
Maks crouched even lower, held ground—and sprang to the side as it passed, swiping out with one massive paw, claws sliding through the coarse hair and just barely snagging flesh. His claws dug into earth, scattering thick pine needles and musty dirt as he sprang after the creature, both front paws spread and reaching—
It whirled, meeting him with a maw of sharp and slashing tusks; he tumbled aside, rolling and coming back onto his feet to spring away—and quite suddenly alive, as immersed in the tiger as he could ever be and glorying in it, understanding how much he’d missed it over these past years—
He dove back into the fight, paws batting lightning fast, catching the giant peccary a solid blow to one haunch with the satisfaction that came of claws sinking into meat.
It wheeled with a squeal of fury, slashing past his face and diving at his flank. He twisted aside, avoiding that disemboweling blow with a wild leap, coiling back around—
The air split with a startlingly unnatural sound—part airhorn, part vuvuzela—and for that instant, Maks froze.
For that instant, so did the massive javelina. It took a step back, its head lifting and its mouth gaping...and its eyes again laughing. And th
en it quite calmly trotted away, grunting with each step—blood gleaming on its haunches and scenting air already redolent with musk.
Maks swung around in an instant bound forward—
Keep away go home something’s wrong...
And this time he listened.
He stood, poised, not a little bit stunned at the implications of the encounter—how deeply the Core had insinuated itself here, how far beyond the bounds of decency they’d gone.
A creature not nearly human...but no longer anything close to javelina. Trained, responsive...deadly. And though it had so far restricted itself to livestock, Maks had no doubt it could kill humans—that it would, if it wasn’t stopped.
But running headlong toward the Core handlers who had blown that horn wasn’t the way to stop it.
With a final silent snarl in the direction of the fleeing creature, Maks turned and picked his way across the sullen summer creek flow, his ears flat and the very white tip of his tail twitching.
Because these past few moments weren’t truly about finding a creature, or even about killing it once found. They were about the depth of what the Core was up to here—the lines being crossed, where no Core presence should be here at all.
And no one knew better than Maks just what that might entail.
* * *
Eduard spread the amulets on the table before him, lining them up before his primary power source amulet. The one fueled by the death of so many lives along his long journey, not to mention the trail of pines turned brown, the soil gone sterile...
Eduard well knew his work surpassed that of any previous Core technician.
It certainly surpassed that of any Sentinel. Sentinels, so limited, each with their own set of skills. Eduard could be any of them; he could be all of them.
But exacting science drew its price. The elements of will had to be combined...
Just so.
And if not, there were consequences. Such as the one now collapsed into a heap of muddled flesh before him.
“Take it away,” he said, in some disgust. A drone in a tight black T-shirt and black slacks moved forward to scrape what was left of the stray mutt into a disposal container.
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