Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  The unpleasant taste of an invoked working flooded Ana’s palate, making her blink and swallow hard. Ian made a sound she’d never heard before, an involuntary gasp filled with pain—she found him rigid, his fists clenched and every inch of his body straining against his bonds, as if some invisible force flooded him with nothing but pain.

  “No,” she said again, a little more loudly this time. “Hollender, you’ve won. You’ve got him. But he can’t tell you anything like this!”

  Lerche laughed. “My dear,” he said. “I’m not doing this to get information. That will come. I’m doing this because I can. And because I want to.” He spared her a meaningful glance, and she saw he was more affected than he’d let on by his close call, his face flushed and his expression not nearly as controlled as he probably thought. “And, Ana, dear—I very much hope you’re making notes.”

  Ana swallowed a sound of despair, her hands clenched around the clipboard as her pen and smartphone tumbled to the floor. As she bent to retrieve them, Ian moved his head just enough to catch her eye. His struggle to draw breath was a palpable thing.

  She understood that glance perfectly—the pain of it, the meaning of it and the intent still lurking behind it.

  It’s not going to be pretty.

  Chapter 9

  Ana hadn’t done him any favors.

  If she hadn’t interfered, Ian would be that much closer to useless as far as Lerche was concerned. That much closer to one escape or the other. Or that much closer to the point where Lerche would have to leave him to heal. Buying time.

  Sitting in this chair, bound at ankle and wrist and across his chest, Ian knew where things would lead now. He was helpless—damaged just as much as Lerche wanted and no more—as Lerche had so amply demonstrated by leaving him here to recover.

  No matter Ian’s intention, there would come a point where he would betray his people simply because he no longer had the control over his mind to prevent it. He would become weakened and befuddled and confused, and he’d mutter something important without even knowing it.

  He had to put an end to this before things reached that point, one way or the other. That meant pushing Lerche harder and faster...making him go too far.

  So Ana hadn’t done him any favors at all. But Ana still didn’t understand—not the way Ian had understood all too well from the moment he’d opened his eyes in this room.

  “Ian,” she whispered—not that there was anyone here to listen, or that he cared if they heard anything he might say to her.

  She might still think they had secrets, though. Or that they could have them.

  Her clothes rustled; the clipboard made a subtle sound as she set it on the small wooden desk. “I think you’re awake.”

  More than awake. Awake and still throbbing with pain, a gripping lattice of pressure around his bones and trickling along nerves. A low-impact working as far as the Core was concerned—one chosen purely to punish him and restore Lerche’s authority.

  He reached for his leopard with caution, found...

  Nothing.

  Frigging effective, that particular working.

  But it hadn’t stopped the healing. Slowed it, he thought. But not stopped it.

  “Ian, I’m sorry.” She reached him, soothing his nose with her scent and a tentative brush of her fingers in his hair. “I’m in so far over my head right now... I don’t know how to help.”

  “That’s a start,” he said tightly without opening his eyes. “Knowing this is complete fuckery.”

  She drew in a breath, holding it only an instant before acceding, releasing it with a sad sound. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

  He couldn’t restrain a snort, much as it pained him in all ways. “Babe,” he said, “It’s always like this.”

  She continued as if he hadn’t spoken, determination in her voice. Determination to be heard, if nothing else. “Maybe I can’t undo it, but I need you to know that I want to. If I could only turn this into what I thought I was doing—what I wanted to be doing...”

  “You never had that power.” He had no energy for anything other than blunt truth—barely that, as another shudder of the fading amulet effect gripped him tightly, scraping along rebroken ribs and forcing a desperate gust of air from his lungs.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, and this time she rested the back of her hand just beneath his jaw, the touch of a lover.

  The rush of quiet took him by surprise—his mind calming, the churning excess making way for peace. It hastened the retreat of the lingering pain, such a sudden surcease that he choked on it, struggling for composure.

  She seemed to understand. She gave him the time he needed. And when he finally opened his eyes, she gave him an uncertain smile. “Better?”

  He shook his head, not only unable to respond, but simply unable to fathom. The understanding of what they’d been together, what they somehow still were...

  Heartbreak.

  She seemed lost in her own thoughts. “I’m grateful that you aren’t...taking this out on me. I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “Hey,” he said, making no attempt to soften his harsh voice. “Don’t get me any kind of wrong. I’m mad as hell, and what you’ve done...” He shook his head. Carefully. “But I’m more than just Sentinel. I’m a whole person. With layers. I’m as complicated as anyone. So don’t go making assumptions about what I’m going to feel.”

  She bit her lip, blanching tender skin. “I really thought I was doing the right thing. A good thing.”

  It wasn’t a conversation he could have right now and stay sane. Ana, his lover, versus Ana, Atrum Core pawn. He forced himself to more practical matters. “It doesn’t make any difference. As soon as Lerche thinks I’m ready, he’ll be back for more. And I’m going to give it to him.”

  She sat on the side of the bed in this tight space, still able to let her hand linger—this time on his thigh. The long muscles tensed involuntarily under her touch, but then relaxed into the bliss of it. She said, “I don’t understand. Or I hope I don’t.”

  He forced himself to relax his grip on the chair arms, flexing his fingers. “I mean that I’m not going to be a very good guest.”

  She gave the chair a meaningful look; he shrugged in response. Tied, he was. Utterly helpless, he wasn’t.

  She must have decided to let it go. “I’m to feed you,” she said. “And to stay here with you—observing—although I’m allowed to return to my own room to freshen up after you’ve eaten. Are you up to that now?”

  He was nowhere near up to it. But the better he ate, the stronger he was...and now, more than ever, he had to stay physically strong. So he said, “Go for it.”

  She fussed with the monitor on his wrist, straightening it. “When I get back, I can feed you.” She glanced up at him with some uncertainty. “Or I can release one hand so you can do it yourself. But—”

  Right. He’d just pledged to be a bad guest. And even if she’d always obviously known, deep down, the precarious nature of her position with the Core, now she was in the process of recognizing it out loud. “Ana,” he said, “I won’t ever do anything to make your situation worse.” But in all honesty, he had to amend those words. “Not directly.”

  She gave him a faint smile, the tension around her mouth relaxing. “Okay, then,” she said. “Let me go get a tray. And, Ian...” She faltered, glancing up at the camera as if reminding herself how closely they were watched. “If I find a way to help...”

  His words came out harder than he meant them to. “You want to help? Fine. Then promise me this—whatever happens here, once this is over, you break from these people. You don’t belong here, and you know it. They know it. Just get out of here and into the rest of the world where you can live your life the way it should be lived.”

  It startled her. She opened her mouth for a protest, and h
e shook his head sharply. “Promise.”

  She glanced at the camera again, doubt and fear evident. Of course she wouldn’t believe that she could; she’d been conditioned against it. Whether she believed that she should was something Ian couldn’t glean. She lowered her voice to near silence when she said, “I’ll think about it.”

  He hadn’t expected that much. It was a start. And convincing her of it might, in the end, be the only thing he had left to accomplish.

  * * *

  Ana made it back to her room with the neutral expression she’d learned to cultivate from childhood—never disapproving of anything she’d seen and never showing weakness.

  But once she closed the door, leaning against it as if that would ensure privacy, she tipped her head back and allowed the emotion to release—her mouth trembling, her face quivering out of control, and again, those tears. Silent tears, but tears nonetheless.

  For herself. For Ian. For what could have been, and for what she’d always thought had been.

  Because she wasn’t what she thought she was. The Core wasn’t what she’d thought it to be. The Sentinels...

  She had no idea.

  After a long moment and a gulping breath, she decided against trying to sort those things out. There was too much, and she had too little information to go on. She began to think she’d always had too little information to go on.

  But she’d been lucky earlier, when Lerche had been too busy to take true notice of her pleas to stop hurting Ian. She’d never seen him taken off guard so thoroughly—his authority challenged, his dignity lost. He wouldn’t like it when he had the time to realize her quiet witness from the corner.

  But that, too, she would face at another time.

  For the now, she simply had to get through the moments. She rubbed a circle on her temple, massaging the dull ache there, and pushed away from the door—headed for the shower with her mind’s eye full of the past hour.

  Never mind that Ian was Sentinel. She’d believed his promise not to give her trouble in a way she never would have believed one of Lerche’s posse members. She’d released one arm from the restraints and positioned the tray on his lap, eating her own meal beside him while lending him a hand as necessary—but allowing him to feed himself.

  The small things, she knew, made a difference. A grasp at the illusion of control.

  And now, with the weak shower sluicing water down her sides, she let her hands linger on her body—not pleasuring herself, but recalling the sensation of Ian’s touch, and how it had felt so natural. How she had felt so safe.

  Once out of the shower, the contrast struck her hard.

  She wasn’t truly safe in Lerche’s posse. She’d never been. Not since she’d arrived here in adolescence. Not truly before then, in the hands of tutors and a communal Core household where she somehow quite naturally ended up as the one to blame for whatever happened while her father took no strong stand for her and her mother remained absent.

  It was something she’d grown used to, until she’d felt Ian’s touch.

  She blotted her wet hair with a towel, rubbing her temple again. The ache had grown. In fact, when she took the time to think about it, it had never quite left.

  It made her think of Fernie with that weary look in her eyes, and of the others at the retreat, hiding in their rooms without ever realizing they truly had something to hide from. That the amulet Ana had planted was making them ill when they spent time in the kitchen.

  She faltered, looking around her room—a space no larger than Ian’s prison but more comfortably appointed, if with little in the way of personal touches. Her eyes fell on the closet door, and she tossed the damp towel onto the bed and crossed the room to open it.

  Because, of course, her blazer hung here—along with the clothes someone had already recovered from the vacation rental home. She slipped her hand into its pocket without removing it from the hanger, her fingers closing on the small button of cool metal she’d never bothered to remove.

  She pulled it out, turning it over in her fingers. The sleek, barely marked object had once struck her as elegant in design, unfettered by any lanyard with its braided or knotted cord. Easy to invoke and endowed with the ability to cling if pressed against a surface at the moment it was activated.

  But it was poison. It had poisoned Fernie, and it had made Ian deathly ill. And that, she knew now, had been the point. To kill Ian. His capture here had been a change of plan, a moment when Lerche had seized opportunity. If Ana had a headache now, it was only just—even if this amulet couldn’t possibly be affecting her.

  The polished brass button evoked sudden revulsion in her—the impulse to fling it across the room and as far from her as possible. Instead she closed her hand around it and before she could think twice, strode back into the bathroom and dropped the thing into the toilet, flushing not once but twice.

  Sudden trepidation trembled through her as the empty toilet stared back at her. There were always consequences for such small rebellions and misbehaviors. One day soon, Lerche would ask about the location of the amulet, and she’d have to say she lost it.

  She made herself breathe slowly, lifting her shoulders back to completely fill her lungs. Then she snagged her robe from the door and slipped into it, wrapping it snugly to ward off the sudden chill chasing goose bumps along her arms.

  Footsteps outside the room door gave warning—a man’s footsteps, the tread slowing at the last moment. She pushed the uncombed hair from her face and made it to the bathroom doorway before Lerche entered.

  He never knocked.

  At some point during the afternoon, he’d taken a minor blow to the side of his mouth—as likely from his collision with his bodyguards as anything else. Ana found the sight of that insignificant abrasion gave her some small, mean satisfaction. It was enough to provide her the strength to stand here before Lerche in a short, light robe that offered not nearly as much coverage as she’d felt when she’d slipped it on.

  He said, “Tomorrow you’ll return to the Sentinel retreat and retrieve the amulet you planted.”

  It was the last thing she expected. The last thing she wanted.

  She wanted to be here with Ian—if not able to stop what was happening to him, at least knowing. At least here, so if opportunity arose...

  She’d learned to think like Lerche in that, at least.

  But she knew better than to challenge him, so she did what she so often did, and offered confusion. “I don’t understand. I thought it served a purpose there.”

  He scowled at her, his eyes raking over the vulnerability of her exposed neck, the easy handhold of her tangled hair. “Ana, I begin to despair that you will ever understand.” He didn’t sound despairing. He sounded disgusted.

  He sounded as if he believed her and as if he’d always believed her—never understanding just how much she’d always managed him.

  Maybe that, too, would be opportunity.

  But now he only looked at her with his patronizing, disapproving mien. “On the whole, it isn’t necessary that you do understand. You will simply carry out my orders. But in this case, it happens that I’m removing evidence. It wouldn’t serve me for you to be caught, so be forewarned—Sentinel reinforcements have arrived at the retreat. Field Sentinels in truth, unlike the laboratory squint you were able to fool. Do not play with them.”

  “No,” she said, fervently enough to convince anyone. “I would never.”

  “They’re looking for our guest, of course—they won’t find him, although they’ve already found his motorcycle. We spread obfuscation workings all over that trailhead, and we’re fully surrounded by them here.”

  She nodded, struggling with the understanding that he’d been ready for this—this completely forbidden direct move against the Sentinels.

  Because the Core, as a matter of course, didn’t take
action against the Sentinels. Not directly. They worked only to prevent their egregious use of the Sentinel power that no one else had.

  So she’d been taught.

  Lerche evinced no sign of noticing the whirl of her thoughts. “Get in on the pretext of looking for Ian—tell them you, too, have been ill.”

  “Misdirection,” she said. “So they won’t think it’s a working aimed at them.” As well as explaining her absence after she and Ian had connected so strongly, so quickly.

  He gave her a sharp look. “Exactly so.” His gaze scraped her up and down. “In truth, you aren’t quite looking yourself.”

  She stopped herself from narrowing her eyes at him. He wasn’t one to notice the subtleties of her disposition unless it suited him somehow. “I have a headache,” she said, and didn’t miss the satisfaction in his eyes. “I’m sure I’m just unused to the intensity of this day.”

  “No doubt.” He dismissed her well-being with a flick of his hand—and then closed the distance between them with swift purpose, grabbing her jaw as he so often did, pushing her up against the bathroom door frame. “I am not pleased with your interference at the trailhead,” he said, grinding the back of her head into wood. “You would have no doubt of this if it wasn’t necessary to leave you unmarked for tomorrow.”

  Ana gasped at the brute ugliness of his grip, and the escalation of his threat. Never had he handled her so much before, so cruelly—so frequently. Bruises on her arms, yes; the red welt of a slap on her cheek, the hot, puffy feel of an inside lip bruised against teeth. Rarely something she found so hard to cover. His hold muffled her words, but she managed them anyway. “I understand.”

  No excuses. No explanations. No crying out that he’d lied to her and taken her by surprise, and how could he expect her to be a team player that way?