Tiger Bound

by Doranna Durgin

  She found that she didn’t want to.

  “You have cookbooks,” he said quite reasonably, opening her refrigerator as if he’d become completely at home in her kitchen in such a short time—stowing the steak sauce bottle and the salad fixings...chewing a carrot while he was at it, a crisp crunch at each bite.

  Right. He’d cooked for her. Cared for her. She caught a hint of her vision, then—or maybe it had been dream, or borrowed memory. Lanky adolescent tiger, all flashing limbs and efficiency. Thrashing mule deer, kicking out hard to his ribs, but dying anyway. And the satisfaction—hunched over broken ribs, yet pleased. Providing.

  “Maks,” she started, meaning to ask—and stopped when she realized she’d been lost in thought long enough for him to pull a can of whipped cream from the fridge door, and that he now regarded it with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Seriously,” she told him. “What, have you been living in a cave?”

  His gaze jerked to hers. “Brevis keeps me busy.”

  As responses went, Katie recognized evasion when she heard it—but she set her salad down, took the whipped cream, and squirted a bit out on her finger, holding it up for brief display before she licked the finger clean and returned the can to him.

  Not that he was a slow learner. He upended the can, tipped his head back, and gave himself a generous serving.

  “Seriously,” she said again, but found herself grinning—and doubly so when he closed his eyes to savor the taste. She laughed, reclaiming her salad bowl, and picked out a chunk of dressing-drenched tofu as Maks had a second helping of whipped cream. Inevitably, her mind returned to the lingering taste of the dreamed memories.

  “Maks,” she said again; he swallowed and put the can aside, leaving a tiny smear of white at the corner of his mouth. She licked at the corner of her own mouth without thinking; he only stared at her. “Here,” she said, and rubbed her thumb over the spot. She saw the moment that understanding dawned. He ran his thumb over his lip, licked off the captured blot of cream and tucked the can away in the fridge.

  “Maks,” she said again, and maybe it was the interruptions that had loosened her tongue, but she didn’t even think about the potential impact of her words. “Back those years ago. That was you, wasn’t it? With the children?”

  He instantly stilled—and she knew she was right. “You let me think you were here to help rescue them, but that wasn’t it at all, was it? You were one of them. And you’ve been with brevis ever since—working there, living there...”

  He left the kitchen. Quietly, without fanfare; he simply turned and left. But the look in his eyes wasn’t anger, and the quality of his movement held no resentment—no stiffness, no anger.

  They were the expressions of a man looking at something too big to face.

  She ditched the salad and went after him. “Surely it’s not a secret? Surely people know?”

  He’d stopped on the porch, barefoot and jeans-clad and his flannel shirt tail loose, the sleeves rolled up...looking both utterly comfortable in his skin and as though he desperately wanted to shed it. His gaze locked on the woods; his hands locked over the old two-by-four railing.

  “You and your mother,” she said. “You were on the run...here, somewhere. But she was hurt, and she died, and you were left alone. You—” she hesitated, heard her own words for the first time. “You were just a very young boy. But you’d already taken the change.”

  He didn’t look at her. “Before we escaped. I had to. She had to sleep sometime. And they didn’t care about what a boy could do.”

  “But even a young tiger can leave a mark, and they knew it,” Katie said, wonder in her voice. “Oh, Maks.”

  He turned on her with a fierceness he’d never let her see before. “Don’t,” he said. “Just don’t.” And there behind the ferocity flashed hurt and confusion and conflict, until he spun away again.

  So she kept her voice as matter-of-fact as she could. “Then tell me.”

  For a long silent moment, it was only Maks in the darkness, palpably aching to be wild—holding on to the porch railing as if it was the only thing anchoring him to the human. “The Core took her. She was young...she took chances. She was perfect for them.” He managed to glance back at her. “They took her to impregnate, to study...to watch me grow.”

  “Your father?” she asked, still careful.

  Maks responded with a one-shouldered shrug. “No one knows. Is it hard to get a man’s seed, if you really want it?”

  No point in answering the obvious. The Sentinels were, on the whole, hardly repressed when it came to their sexuality.

  “You got away,” she said, and the raw terror of that escape flashed through her mind—half memory, half coming in fresh from Maks, no matter that it shouldn’t have gotten through to her so readily. “But she was hurt.”

  “She lived for a time,” he said. “And then I buried her.”

  She stopped herself from going to him, from wrapping her arms around him. He didn’t want that. Not right now. “How old?” she asked, keeping her voice level. “How old were you?”

  Another shrug. “The medics decided to say four years. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Four years old,” she said. “And alone. And running from the Core.”

  “Four years old,” he said, “and tiger.”

  Of course. Too young to survive as child; too young to survive as tiger. But as both...

  “They never found you?”

  “They thought us dead.” He glanced back at her again. “They knew we didn’t make it to brevis. There was no other reason we wouldn’t.”

  No. Of course not. Had she been able, Maks’s mother would have gotten her child to safety—and if she had, the Core would have known it.

  He added, “Later, they realized. But it was too late, then.”

  “You couldn’t be caught.”

  He shook his head. In the wash of light from the doorway, his nostrils flared; his voice sounded strained—the memories crowding him close. “And I had others to take care of.”

  “The children,” she breathed.

  “Runaways,” he said. “Like me.” His memories slipped free, giving her impressions of children in mismatched stolen clothes—children raiding gardens, children huddling in a natural lava tube cave on a chill night, children hiding in an empty vacation cabin as snow fell outside.

  “For how long?” she asked.

  He shrugged again; it didn’t seem nearly as casual as it once had. “I don’t know.” He glanced only briefly away from the woods. “Brevis called me fifteen, when they found us.”

  That made him around thirty now, given the local memory of when the children had quietly been gathered up.

  Maybe.

  “Maks—” she started.

  He didn’t let her finish. “Those things then,” he said, “made me what I am now. But now...I just am, Katie Rae.”

  “What any wild thing knows,” Katie said softly. “Just be.”

  He didn’t lift his arm to invite her closer. But she heard the invitation anyway, and she responded to it. He made a space to tuck her close to his side, and she wrapped her arms around him as his chin settled on the top of her head.

  * * *

  With both of them weary and both of them needing to be held...

  It was no surprise that they ended up in the guest room, wrapped up in one another and sleeping hard, counting on Ian’s wards and Maks’s boundary lines to protect and alert them.

  When Maks jerked awake, it was with full awareness of his entanglement, both physical and emotional. And it came with full awareness of the need to resolve the threat to Katie—to figure out the new threat to the Sentinels.

  What the Core was doing here in the first place, he still didn’t know. They’d abandoned the area completely fifteen years ago when the Sentinels found Maks, revealing the full nature of the Core’s presence and their history of activity in this region.

  But by then, Maks had been too long gone from the strange, giant cave of his capt
ivity—and at age fifteen and on the run for most of his life, he hadn’t exactly been cooperative with those Sentinels who had gathered him up. Wherever that Core facility had been, it likely remained.

  This time, Maks would find it.

  For now, Maks breathed into the darkness, waiting for some hint of what had woken him.

  ::Maks.:: Annorah’s mental voice sounded breathless, no matter the physical impossibility of it. ::You’re awake.::

  He sent back a wordless affirmative.

  ::Ian just sent out an adveho,:: she told him, tense with concern.

  Adveho. No wonder Maks had woken. No Sentinel could ignore that cry for help.

  Maks pulled his arm out from beneath Katie and sat, pulling his thoughts into focus. Ian had the silent amulet the Core had set out for Katie; Ian was overnighting in Pine Bluff.

  The Core wanted to keep its secrets.

  He sent back a query, no more than a mental question mark—when?—glancing at the bedside table to the alarm clock. Three o’clock in the morning.

  ::Just now,:: Annorah told him. ::At the La Quinta. We’re sending the chopper, but—::

  Right. No chopper would reach this tiny mountain town in time—not if Ian had reason to send out an urgent Mayday.

  ::Be careful,:: Annorah said. ::This is about more than muscle. And you—::

  ::Also more than muscle,:: Maks said, putting the effort into those few distinct words.

  ::I was going to say, you’re not well, and we all know it. So, yes, be damned careful!:: Annorah put bite into long-distance words better than anyone Maks knew—but then her presence abruptly diminished. ::There’s Nick. I’ll check back.::

  He didn’t bother to acknowledge her; she was gone. And Maks was already reaching over to touch Katie’s shoulder. She blinked her eyes open without comprehension, but her gaze quickly sharpened. He told her, “Ian. The Core. The La Quinta.”

  She swore, and rolled out of bed—already awake, already graceful. “My shoes,” she said. “What did you do—never mind.” She snagged them from the floor near the closet. “Keys,” she said, a mutter to herself. “My field kit. You?”

  “Ready,” Maks told her.

  She glanced at his bare feet, opened her mouth...shook her head. “The keys are in the kitchen. The kit’s in the workroom. I need to hit the bathroom.”

  He found the field kit for her and left it on the kitchen counter so she wouldn’t waste time looking for it. And then, because any attack on Ian might well be no more than a diversion, he went outside and checked the wards, walking the perimeter of the house wards and then running the perimeter of his boundary alarm—strengthening it, and strengthening his ties with it.

  When he returned to the car, she was waiting, zipping a hooded sweatshirt against the chill night air.

  “Sorry,” she said as he squeezed down into the car. “I really did mean to rent you something bigger.”

  He pulled the door shut and tugged the seatbelt past his shoulder. “Is it far, this La Quinta?”

  “Not much. Is the house safe?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then hang on.” She hit the gas and bounced the car down the dirt road, accelerating into the night as no non-Sentinel would dare, her deer’s reflexes and night vision making the darkness irrelevant. They met no one else as she peeled around the corner of the dirt road to the asphalt feeder road and then onto Pine Bluff’s single broad main road—blowing red lights, ignoring the speed limit, and deftly avoiding the small-town potholes while she was at it.

  Maks muttered under his breath and snagged the grab handle over the door.

  “Almost there,” Katie said, not looking at him.

  But when she pulled into the hotel parking lot, spotting Ian’s little work-capped truck and slanting into the two spaces beside it, Maks put a hand on her arm to keep her in the car. “Wait,” he said, and released his own seat belt.

  “But—”

  “Wait.”

  She subsided with visible impatience. “Maks—”

  “Do not,” he told her, opening the door, “remind me that I am not well.”

  She closed her mouth.

  Maks stood beside the car, senses wide open, thinking the intent of it at her. Listen.

  She must have heard him; he felt the quality of her attention change. His skin tingled at the faint sensation of her energies sliding over his, and outward—the taste of a healer, reaching out in her own way—discerning the night. She whispered, “Desperation...”

  Maks sifted through the sensations of the place, his head lifting slightly to take in the scents, his gaze sifting through the interference of artificial lights to hunt any sign of physical Core incursion.

  Nothing.

  “Wait here,” he told her, bending to look into the car. “Shield. Ward the car—can you?”

  “Not well,” she answered.

  He scowled. “Stay quiet inside yourself, then. If there’s a working, it has to be a seeker.”

  Understanding made her grim. “They couldn’t use an on-site amulet—Ian would have found it, even a silent one. You’re right, it must be a seeker. But those take a lot of skill.”

  Not news. Maks double-checked the immediate area, judging Katie’s safety, knowing that Ian had already waited far too long for backup. He reached out to prod Annorah—once, twice.

  ::Busy,:: she told him briefly, even as Katie leaned across the seat to look at him.

  “What about you?”

  “It’s a seeker,” he reminder her, and the acrid stench of the working now wafted through the air to make his nose wrinkle. “Doesn’t want me. I won’t give it reason to. Wait.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Katie said tightly. “Go help Ian—and then call me, because he’s going to need healing.”

  Maks took the tiger, right out there in the deep night parking lot. What he had scented faintly as the man, he found instantly as the tiger—Ian, already a familiar spoor, three doors down from the man’s truck.

  ::Yes,:: Annorah said, popping back into his thoughts to confirm the location. ::Protect yourself, Maks—don’t assume—::

  He sent a mental growl at her, chasing away the distraction and—once outside the hotel door—knew better than to take the silence as an indication of faltering urgency.

  He didn’t take the door as any impediment, either. He reared up, claws digging into wood—the door crashing down before him.

  He found Ian backed into a corner in his snow leopard form, small ears flattened against his skull, whiskers pulled up in a hissing snarl...pale eyes just a little bit crazed. The Core working buzzed around him in a dark cloud of malevolence—slick nits of evil, pressing down, slipping through the shields to sink right through fur and skin. Even as Maks crouched, tail lashing, wishing fiercely for something into which he could sink his claws and teeth, Ian’s snarl faded away. He sank down, pressing his belly to the floor, his gaze taking on the unfocused look.

  Maks pushed his way through the vibrating nits right into the leopard’s space, ignoring Ian’s feeble snarl for what it was—a big cat objecting to the tiger’s presence with no cognizance behind the reaction.

  Ian was beyond such things.

  Maks moved furniture with his passage, walking right up to Ian’s faltering leopard, right over—twice Ian’s size, four times his weight...putting himself between Ian and the cloud, as if physical intervention would make any difference at all.

  It wouldn’t. But Maks, too, had shields. He expanded them, pushing right through into Ian’s own shields...layering over them—adding to them, strengthening them.

  The working’s intensity stuttered as it lost its grasp on Ian—stuttered again as Ian took advantage of the moment and rebuilt his shields, leopard crouching beneath tiger, claws digging into cheap carpet.

  Maks ducked against the tiny vibrations of ugliness, an instinctive reaction not diminished in the least by the fact the working wasn’t aimed at him.

  Wasn’t aimed at him.

  It w
as aimed at Ian—but how, then, did the Core target him?

  Either they know him, or...

  Or they weren’t targeting Ian at all. They were going after whoever possessed the amulet.

  ::Maks—:: There came Annorah’s voice, as if she’d been eavesdropping all along. ::Do it another way!::

  Maks snarled back at her, knowing she’d receive the message, and swept his gaze over the room.

  There—there was the amulet bucket, on the floor beside the desk. There was the tool kit, and the warded Kevlar blanket, and a worn grimoire-like book with crisp old vellum pages, sitting with precision on the corner of the protected desk.

  No sign of the amulet.

  Only one sick leopard, crouching in the corner...

  Maks moved to the side, breaking the connection of their shields; the leopard spat weakly in protest. Maks paid him no heed. He squinted against the nits—weightless energies that bounced away without impact—and using one broad paw, rolled Ian over to his side. Ian snarled with renewed vigor and tried to claw himself upright and back over newly exposed treasure: the amulet, tucked away in a warded Kevlar bag.

  ::Maks, no—!::

  But Maks was no fool. Not even an amulet specialist would throw himself on top of a live piece without protection, which meant the warded Kevlar bag was solid. And when not spread thin over two people, when not caught unprepared, Maks had personal shields to equal those of any Sentinel.

  Even as Ian stretched a paw toward the amulet, claws unsheathed to snag the bundle, Maks flicked it out of Ian’s reach, pouncing on it with ponderous grace. He pulled his shields in fur-close, bracing himself—hoping he was right—hoping he hadn’t just abandoned Ian to die.

  For a very long moment it seemed as though he had done just that. The nits buzzed around Ian in renewed fury, darkening the air as they sensed the leopard’s vulnerability. Ian flailed, absorbing that dark power as his shields evaporated. His long, heavy tail beat against the wall; his claws scraped carpet away from the cement slab beneath.

  But the onslaught quickly faltered, withdrawing to spin aimlessly around the snow leopard, sheened with the oily reflection of the overhead light.