Sentinels: Jaguar Night

by Doranna Durgin

  And she had no warning. Not yet.

  “We’ve called the sheriff’s office,” the farrier said, standing uneasily between Anica and the men. “You’d best leave before they get here.”

  But they ignored him. They didn’t so much as glance at him. They brushed past him to the center of the yard as Anica, fear on her face, slowly backed toward the barn, not daring to take her eyes from them. She saw something in them that the farrier hadn’t or couldn’t—and she cried out in warning as he stalked up to the trio, reaching out—

  One of the sidekicks turned, spoke a word, thrust out his hand. Nothing more than that.

  The farrier crumpled. Dolan felt it clear and sharp and piercing as the man died. No fuss, no muss. Dead.

  What the hell? The wards should have stopped any object of power—and these men had no power of their own, no way to draw on this earth. Just as the Core shouldn’t have been able to find him at the old homestead…

  Jenny cried out and ran from the barn—Anica intercepted her, dragging her back to shelter. And this time when Carter pinged him in a more demanding, more personalized repetition of the first call, Dolan dropped the attitude, he dropped the waiting curse and he sent back the purest, strongest impression of alarm he could muster. The purest cry for help.

  For if the Core could kill with a touch, this was suddenly about so much more than Dolan or Meghan or this ranch. This was the Core gone amok—changing thousands of years of clandestine push-and-shove into outright war.

  Dead, while I hide in the woods…

  And then the man who’d killed the farrier faltered. A look of surprise crossed his face as he went to his knees; he said, “Drozhar—” and quite neatly pitched onto his face.

  Gausto did not appear to take notice. He stopped in the center of the yard, surveying it.

  But Dolan took close notice. Only two of them now. He had personal wards; they could not find him. They couldn’t know for certain he was here. They might look, but they would tire…they would drop their guard. Only two of them. He could end this right here and now—

  “Dolan Treviño,” Gausto said, a stage voice for the benefit of everyone else on the ranch—a ranch come to a standstill, with someone’s soft sobbing in the background and a hushed, urgent exchange in the barn doorway, Anica and Jenny holding back a young man whose face twisted with grief and anger.

  Gausto lifted one fisted hand and opened it—a tiny vial, almost invisible except for the wink of it in the sun. “Dolan Treviño, murderer! The time has come to pay for your crimes.” He closed his fingers back around the vial and admitted, much more conversationally, “Of course, it is a convenient thing, indeed, that we can also follow your trail to the Liber Nex.”

  Not yet, you can’t. And not ever, if Dolan could get there first.

  But that meant walking away from these people under siege to finish the job for which he’d come. For the first time, he wasn’t sure he could do that.

  Gausto gave the vial a little toss. “Do you think I’m out here talking to myself?” He handed the vial over to his remaining sidekick, who took it with a certain distinct, stolid reluctance. The man murmured a few words, just enough to shift his lips; his hand tightened around the vial.

  Dolan grunted with the sudden pain across his flank. Remembered pain, come alive again. Black, dappled jaguar skin twitched in response, involuntary and unwanted.

  Tiberon Gausto, sharp scalpel smeared with blood. Looming. Smug. Certain of his control and his victory.

  Just a little sooner than he should have been.

  Except now Dolan wondered if he’d been a little too certain of his own escape. It had been years—his capture while in search of revenge, his revenge while captured. His apparent escape.

  All the trouble he’d caused between then and now, and they’d been biding their time?

  Or maybe they just now had the tools to deal with him.

  Gausto nodded at the man, who muttered more words yet—and Dolan snarled silently at the tug of them, at the renewed pain. Gausto looked into the brush woods, his gaze unerringly accurate. “Come out,” he said. “I can find you wherever you go. If you leave, you sacrifice these people for nothing.”

  No. Not even with the Liber Nex at stake, with Meghan at stake.

  Dolan padded out into the bright sunshine of the day, just as he was—sleek and dark and deadly. Anica and Jenny already knew…and now the others would understand, too. They’d know to stay out of this battle, that it was far beyond their influence. That they could only die, as the farrier had died.

  And the jaguar would remind Gausto that walking out into the open was far from giving up.

  “Very showy,” Gausto said. “Now be respectful, and dress yourself for polite company.”

  Dolan offered nothing but a silent snarl, bright whiskers tipping back. He circled Gausto, lowering himself into a slink to make his intentions clear. Stalking his prey. He smelled bright blood and didn’t understand it, ignored it.

  Gausto nodded at his companion. The man’s reluctance broke through to the surface, coming out in wary eyes, the infinitesimal shake of his head. Abruptly, Dolan understood: the Core’s unexpected new abilities came with a price. With one man dead, this man, feeling something, was unwilling to risk more.

  Except that Gausto smiled tightly and said, “Do it. Bring him out.”

  Big and brawny, muscled by exercise and drugs both, the man nonetheless had to steady his trembling hand with the other, clasping his wrist as his knuckles whitened. He went gray around the lips and Dolan, stalking them both, at first felt nothing.

  And then the pain ripped down his side, striking deep with remembered pain as well injury anew. He snarled again, no longer soundless, as his back leg collapsed beneath him, losing strength with the shock of—

  Again. And again. And Meghan, dammit, let me in, let me warn you, and Dolan suddenly twisted right out of the jaguar and back to his human self—still graceful in movement, still powerful in intent, straightening to stand against the pain while the hot sun beat against hot blood, sheening down his bare torso to obscure the deep stripes of opened scars beneath. From the barn came exclamations in a teen’s breaking voice; a horse called out.

  Gausto’s sidekick wavered, staggering slightly. Gausto took the vial from him, prying it brusquely from his hand; Dolan found himself still on the prowl, still circling the men—and found his gaze drawn to the vial. He slipped into ward view and saw…

  Nothing. Nothing around the vial, nothing lingering around the man. No wonder they’d come right through the wards with this new power, flinging death around Encontrados. There’d been nothing to detect, nothing to stop. And no wonder they’d found him at the old homestead. This was no ordinary object of power, no predictable storage vessel. This was—

  “Your blood,” Gausto said.

  Dolan flicked his gaze up to Gausto’s, as if he could find answers there. Power drawn from blood? It was a myth left undisturbed, condemned as too heinous even for the Core’s power-driven goals.

  A myth.

  But his flank ran red, old wounds burning with more than just the slice of skin.

  “We found some intriguing new toys while looking for the Liber Nex,” Gausto said. His sidekick stepped back, a muscleman trying for the unaccustomed—to be as unobtrusive as possible. To fade so thoroughly that Gausto wouldn’t think to thrust that vial back into his hand. “Pretty little things, indeed.”

  Dolan gave the man on the ground a pointed look. “Those things obviously come with a price.”

  “His own clumsiness.” Gausto shrugged. “He lacked control. And, as you’ve seen, it’s so much easier when one has a sample of the intended victim’s blood.”

  Dolan would have snarled, if he’d had the right body. He almost did it anyway—nostrils flaring, a twitch of his cheek—but clenched his jaw around it and swallowed it down. “Victim,” he said, disdain for the blithe assumption. “Your brother made that same mistake.”

  Gausto’s oli
ve skin went ruddy, his slicked-back hair emphasizing the angry distortion of his features. “My brother didn’t have this.” He clenched his fist a little tighter. “With this, you have no chance. And your blood is going to run thick, indeed, before the end of this day. We have questions we’d like answered. It’s just a shame we seem to have missed the little Lawrence bitch, or we’d have answers already.” He slanted a knowing look at Dolan. “You should have those answers by now, Treviño. It’s not like you to go soft on a mission.”

  No. It’s not. But the realization didn’t bother him. “I’m good with that,” he said, gave it another moment and nodded. “I’m damned good with that.” For Meghan, it seemed right. Was right.

  “Then you’ll be content when you die,” Gausto said dryly.

  Dolan only growled. Blood power or not—

  The sidekick cleared his throat. “Drozhar.” Respectful but insistent, a man with something important to say. News. Dolan gave him a narrow-eyed look. The wards should have stopped any direct communication—and the Core had even fewer tools than the Sentinels when it came to distance contacts.

  But when Gausto glanced aside, the man held up the BlackBerry he’d had tucked away. “They’ve found her. They’re in position to acquire.”

  Gausto looked purely annoyed. “We have no further need of Trevino, then.”

  But the exchange told Dolan more than they’d ever intended. They had Meghan in their sights, but they didn’t have her yet. And the annoyance…that meant Gausto’s little trip to this ranch hadn’t been sanctioned—that he couldn’t finish this the way he’d prefer. It meant Gausto had come here on his own, flinging around forbidden power, revealing Core secrets. He’d been charged to find the Liber Nex, not to play revenge games while he was at it. Possibly he’d even been warned against such distractions.

  For the Gausto family did like their games.

  “Tell them to assess the best opportunity and take her,” Gausto said—and then glanced at Dolan. “Tell them not to put so much as a scratch on her. That privilege will be mine.”

  Dolan stiffened. “Son of a—”

  Gausto smiled. “I see that you understand. I hope you’ll consider those to be worthy dying thoughts.”

  Meghan needed protection. The Sentinels—they needed to know about this new manipulation of power, that which they now faced in the field. And if the Core got their hands on the Liber Nex…

  Screw dying. Dolan had things to do.

  He dropped into hunter mode—changing nothing but attitude, barely shifting his stance—but Gausto saw it. His bodyguard sidekick saw it, hastily stuffing away the BlackBerry in search of his gun. But the forbidden workings had drained him, and he fumbled—

  And by then Dolan was upon him, ripping the halfaimed semiautomatic out of his hand and using it to bash up under the man’s chin. No finesse, just power and speed against an opponent who hadn’t stood a chance of facing the jaguar within Dolan.

  But as the man went down, Dolan followed. Agony doubled him over. Grit shifted beneath his hands, beneath his knees; his body clenched, banded in pain and fighting to breath. Only as his vision grayed did he finally gasp air into his burning lungs. Just that fast, a pointed boot in his ribs drove that precious air out in a grunt; he rolled away from the blow, grinding grit into the stigmata of old wounds. A looming shadow told him that Gausto had followed.

  Damned well not gonna happen—Dolan barely made it to his feet, a low crouch from which he launched himself with a jaguar’s wiry strength—straight into the arc of another kick, one he took in the junction of crossed wrists to flip Gausto over on his back. Dolan threw himself down on the man, jamming his forearm over Gausto’s throat and fumbling inside that expensive suit coat for the baby semiautomatic lurking there. Finding it, Dolan flung the gun aside—far aside.

  He sat back on his heels as Gausto scrabbled away, hunting the pistol—in no great danger of finding it, with Anica’s hand already closing around it. He wiped dirt from his chest, winced as his hand crossed the open stripes of wounds and spat grit as he climbed to his feet. “We’ll see who reaches her first,” he said, and turned away.

  He’d half expected it; it hit him no less hard for that. The blood power washed over him, wringing out a deep groan; the knee on his weak side buckled. But he caught himself, and he whirled around…glaring at Gausto’s fisted hand, knowing the vial rested within. He said, “Two choices. I can come and get it, or you can let me walk away.” He lowered his voice. “Do you think you can take me out before I reach you? Do you think you can do it without killing yourself?”

  Gausto looked to his men—a quick, reflexive glance, his mouth open as if he might actually command a dead man to act, or an unconscious man to give up the rest of his life.

  “You shouldn’t have played with me,” Dolan said. “You used them up.”

  He saw the reality of the situation reflected on Gausto’s face—the gun in Anica’s hands, one man dead, the other unconscious. But even then, defeat was no part of the man’s posture.

  Dolan knew why. He lifted his own gaze to Anica, meeting her gaze across the yard. “Let them go,” he told her. He didn’t even need to see Anica’s surprise turn to stubbornness—and he didn’t blame her. But they could do nothing with Core prisoners. “If you turn him over to the cops, the Core will come for everyone here.”

  Understanding wilted her. Only for an instant, and then her mouth tightened and her gaze narrowed. “All right, then. We’ll stay here in the barn until they’re gone. As long as they leave us be.”

  Dolan eyed Gausto, waiting for the acknowledgment that would free him to leave. The nod that meant Gausto accepted the terms, and would live up to the Core’s own odd honor over standoff deals struck when it meant avoiding official notice. He spat again, discovered that somewhere along the way he had acquired a fat lip.

  But the nod didn’t come.

  Dolan tilted his head, eyeing the sullen inflexibility of this man. “I’ll do it,” he said softly. “We’ll both die. You know that.”

  Fury burned behind Gausto’s dark expression. “Then I’ll wait for the next time.”

  Dolan knew that fury…he felt it. His voice barely made it to a whisper. “Yeah. Next time.”

  And he took the jaguar and bounded away, dripping blood and ire in equal measure—already reaching for Meghan, calling out in spite of the her absence, her lack of response.

  ’Ware, Meghan! The Core is here.

  Nothing.

  He’d just have to find her in time.

  Chapter 18

  Meghan found herself mounted upon Luka, moving out at a pace brisk and snorty enough to suggest that if Luka had his way, they’d be moving along even faster. Where—?

  For a moment she was mired in utter disorientation, not sure where they were or how they’d gotten here. How she’d gotten here. The pines surrounded her without context; she knew she was high above the ranch, but had no idea where. She’d been plunked onto a hillside on the back of her horse and—

  Her fingers tightened around the reins, stopping Luka; she squeezed her eyes closed, searching for some distinct moment to pin to her now, to rebuild the past hours. And, without thinking, she reached out for an anchor. Dolan.

  Her stomach turned cold and heavy. There was no response from Dolan…there was no echo of her own thoughts. Dolan, are you there? But the words thudded dully within her own mind, going nowhere.

  On impulse, she opened herself to ward view.

  Nothing.

  What the hell had happened?

  Luka swung his head around, reaching back to nibble in question at her foot, equal parts impatience and concern. She patted him, opening her eyes to search the trail. All she needed was a familiar rock, a downed tree, an unusual twist in the trail…then she’d know where she was. It wasn’t a matter of getting home—Luka would take her there without hesitation. It was a matter of knowing what had happened, these past hours.

  Such things were no longer to be taken for grant
ed. Whatever she’d been up to, she knew damned well it wasn’t a simple trail ride in the high pines.

  Her gaze fell upon a split pine; relief washed over her. As fast as that, the terrain fell into place, resolving into familiarity. She knew where she was; she knew what lay ahead—and what lay behind.

  The old homestead.

  Wards and buildings and the book, the book, the book—

  She’d found it.

  She’d found the book.

  Fully initiated, barely trained but brimming with natural talent, she’d finally been prepared to hear its wards. But in finding it, she’d made a trail for others.

  So she’d had to re-ward the thing.

  For now, having touched it, she understood. She knew why Dolan had been so single-minded about his pursuit of this manuscript, and why her mother had been willing to sacrifice her life to hide it. The faint, lingering taste of its howling darkness still clung to her, washing through her in a wave of vertigo. She clutched the saddle while Luka shifted uneasily beneath her.

  The Liber Nex, disguised as an outhouse accessory. And she’d left it there. There was no fixing the door, so she’d used the facilities, creating a reason for the disturbance. And then she’d wrapped her awareness around her mother’s wards and painted her own over them, tapping the earth for unfettered, unfiltered power. She’d felt the difference in what she was doing, not understanding it until too late—until she’d given those wards something of herself, something that wrenched free from deep within, settling into the wards with a slight sizzle.

  Power and swells of emotion and a startling shock of pain and—

  And here she was. Finally coming back to herself in the wake of it—having tapped herself dry. For good?

  The doubt came with sudden panic. Never to feel Dolan’s presence again? Never to hear his silent words?