Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  “Go,” he repeated, more harshly this time. “Take care of Stephan, and clean the area. I’ll deal with Ian Scott.”

  And Ana Dikau will be mine again.

  * * *

  As if Ana intended to allow Ian to drive when he was bleeding again. Didn’t matter the confusion that lay between them, or the confusion that lurked so deeply within her.

  Love the man. Trust the man.

  Fear the leopard.

  Fear everything about a man who could become leopard.

  Even then, she knew better. He didn’t become. He was.

  And the rest of her world was upside down around him.

  Still, she knew how to drive. So she plucked the keys from his hand and did just that, taking Ian into the city where his friends were at such risk.

  Ian jerked, wincing, one hand going to his temple. “Annorah!” It sounded like both imprecation and relief, and Ana slowed, looking for and not finding a place to pull over as they wound through the foothills community and toward busier streets. Ian glanced at her. “It’s all right. It’s just...okay, a little hard to explain. A voice in my head.” He turned his gaze inward—and Ana was certain he spoke out loud for her benefit. “Turn it down a little, huh?”

  A voice in his head. Something Sentinel. Someone who could help?

  Ian snorted. “She says it’s always hard to break through to me and it always takes this volume, wants to know what changed.”

  Me, Ana thought. I did that for him. Somehow. Just by loving him.

  She did love him. She just couldn’t pretend she didn’t also fear him.

  Ian said, “It’s a long story, Annorah. And yes, I’m talking out loud, and I’m relaying. I’m with Ana Dikau. That’s another long story.”

  A pause, and he shifted, closing a hand over his arm—not the injury itself, but below it, as if he could rub the pain away from there. “She says she tried to reach me last night and couldn’t. No surprise there. Southwest Brevis felt the amulet bomb I set off. They’re sending help.” She wasn’t surprised when his jaw tightened on the last, and then he forgot to relay at all. “Nick’s coming? Warn him off, Annorah—warn him off right now. The retreat is under a working—I don’t know—just warn him off!”

  In the silence to follow, Ana asked, “Is she...gone?”

  Ian waited while she navigated a four-way stop. Closing in on the retreat, where Ana wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be.

  She’d liked those people. And she would never make assumptions about Lerche again—how far he would go. How many lines he would cross.

  She already knew.

  Ian rubbed his arm, his face pinched. “Yes. She’ll warn him.” He glanced at her. “Nick is our brevis consul.”

  “The Southwest commander,” Ana said. “Right. I’ve heard of him. Nick Carter. He’s a wolf.”

  “He belongs to the woman you met. Jet.” He took on a wry expression. “I use the word belongs with some purpose. Point is, he knows she’s in that house.”

  “She’s the wolf,” Ana said. “If Lerche used a Sentinel-specific working, maybe she’s all right.” She found herself hoping so. Jet had been frightening...but compassionate, and her eyes held an honesty that Ana had trusted.

  Ian cursed short and hard, and this time Ana did pull over, making use of a generous shoulder. “Is she back? Is there a problem?” She glanced in the rear and side-view mirrors, looking for any sign of the Core.

  “I didn’t tell her how to find the silents,” he said, self-recrimination written so clearly on his face that she couldn’t help but reach out to him, her hand over his and holding tight.

  “Call her back?” she suggested with no idea how it actually worked.

  “Can’t,” he said, hitting the word short and hard. “Some people can. I’m not one of them. Damn!” He hit the door armrest with explosive force, startling her—but he hadn’t moved his hand out from beneath hers, and she ran a thumb over his knuckles, the only comfort she could offer. “God, if only I’d gotten my head out of my butt earlier and gone active on the silents...”

  “Hey,” she said, a single sharp word that got his attention. “It’s only been what...a little over a year since that night?” The night they’d all learned about the silent amulets, when Fabron Gausto had launched an attack of such perfidy that even within the Core, it was spoken of in hushed tones.

  At least, among those who had worked at Ana’s level—those who had worried about the ramifications, perfectly aware of how deeply vulnerable Gausto’s attack had made the rest of them.

  “Something like that,” Ian said. “We lost so many...and then I got messed up when I went to help Maks.” He stopped, as if realizing she’d known nothing of it. “We got distracted by Eduard’s work...and then the situation in the Sacramentos.”

  “Wait,” she said, still catching up. “I don’t know about those things, but...wait. You were hurt? And then someone else from the Core went after you?”

  He gave her a look of such patience that he caught her attention completely. “Ana,” he said, “they’ve never stopped. Not since Gausto kicked things into gear. Meanwhile there’s someone else joining the party—someone who figured out we both exist and wants us both dead. And we’re too busy with stuff like this to figure them out.”

  It was her turn for patience—but she had none. “My point is, you were hurt! And busy! And now you’re all pissed at yourself because in the middle of all that you didn’t turn your thinking inside out when it comes to these silents?”

  He opened his mouth. Closed it. Muttered, “Pinging the things seems obvious enough now.”

  “It’s only obvious after you think of it.” She crossed her arms, bumping the steering wheel. “Not when you’re building on an entire history of never having to do it before.”

  “But I should have—”

  “Ah!” She made it a scolding sound, freeing one hand to hold up a finger of punctuation. “Stop it. Get your head out of your butt now.”

  His eyes looked startled, bright blue and clear in the morning sun. His mouth didn’t quite close on his unspoken words.

  “I get it,” she said. “It would have been better if you’d been able to detect the silents earlier, and it would have made things easier right now if you’d had the chance to give that information to Annorah, but honestly—do you think anyone but you can do anything with that information in the next fifteen minutes? In the next day?”

  He frowned, but instead of irritation she saw uncertainty. Possibly no one had ever called him on his overblown expectations of his own genius before. Probably they’d never scolded him for it.

  Eventually he said, “No. Probably not.” He caught her hand, reaching across his body to do it with the arm that wasn’t injured. The other still bled—they’d made no effort to bind it—but she saw the flow of it had much reduced, and couldn’t help but wince at the memory of his bitter words. I’ll heal, right?

  He’d been right to think she’d been so indoctrinated in what the Sentinels could do that she no longer considered the extent of his pain, or what it took out of him. Out of any of them.

  Ian stroked her hand, turning it over to trace the lines of her palm. Still, she thought, taking something from that contact between them. He said, “The thing is, Ana, I’m going to save my friends now—or to damned well try. Whatever that means. Lerche could be there. The amulet field could be more than I can handle. I don’t have my gear, I barely have my brains, and my people are probably dying.”

  He hesitated on the next words, but she knew. Her response came out as a cry of dismay. “You’re not counting on getting through it!”

  He said with grim but careful words, “I’m not making assumptions.”

  Because Lerche would kill him if he got the chance. Ana didn’t doubt it—not any longer. Not in her heart or her mi
nd.

  And Ian was tired. She saw that clearly enough.

  Still, she found herself unaccountably annoyed. “Fine,” she said, and reached past him to flip the glove box open. “Write a note and leave it in the car. Or put it in your pocket.”

  “You can tell them,” Ian said.

  She froze. “What?”

  “You,” he said distinctly. “Can tell them.”

  She sat back. “You’re assuming that I won’t run like a rabbit. I don’t want anything to do with your Sentinels, Ian. I don’t want anything to do with the Core.” She realized the truth of the words even as she spoke them. “I want my freedom, and I want to find out who I really am, and what I really want.”

  He went as still as a hunting cat. “And if I’m around when this is over? What then?”

  “I’m getting the impression that ‘this’ is never over,” she told him darkly. “But I’ll tell you what. You stick around, and you’ll have a chance to find out.”

  “Hard bargain.” The corner of his mouth twitched.

  “I learn fast.” She put the car in gear, checking the rear and side view. “Faster than Lerche will give me credit for.”

  “Idiot,” Ian said of Lerche, muttering it. He rotated the wrist of his injured arm, flexing the hand. Keeping it moving, such as he could. “Let’s go for it, then.”

  She pulled away from the curb and they drove in silence—into the city, into the little greenway area and the surprisingly undeveloped land that ran alongside it. Driving with swift assertion and no idea what they’d do when they got there.

  “Pull over,” he said, abruptly enough so they skidded slightly in the dirt and gravel road in front of the retreat. They came to a stop beside the low adobe wall where she’d first met him, when she’d still believed this to be both nothing but a routine surveillance assignment and her big chance to advance in the Core.

  On the other side of the wall, a large man lay where he’d fallen, awkward and unmoving at the base of the porch stairs. Ana didn’t recognize him—and from the faint frown on Ian’s face, neither did he.

  But it was evidence enough that Lerche hadn’t been bluffing about amulet workings. Or that they were just as effective as he’d claimed—possibly against them all. Humans included.

  “Is he breathing?” she asked, unable to see it from the driver’s seat.

  “Can’t tell.” Ian flipped the door handle and hesitated with one foot out the door. “You should probably wait here. But it’s up to you.”

  She undid her seat belt, her hand already at the door. “Wait here because it’s safer, or because there’s not much way I can help even if I want to?”

  “A little of both.” He disembarked into the narrow space between the SUV and the wall, and stuck his head back inside. “A lot of both.”

  “Then I’ll wait,” she said. For now.

  But it didn’t last long.

  Three of them came at Ian as he moved toward the gate—not men she recognized, and to judge by his wariness, not men he knew, either. He stopped short, putting his back to the wall, his wounded arm held close. Ana slipped out of the vehicle without thinking about it, but hung behind the open door.

  They didn’t seem like Core—they wore jeans and cargo pants, T-shirts and button-ups under light jackets. Nothing black. Nothing silver. And their complexions varied from pale to dark brown, their eyes likewise.

  But their expressions, to a man, weren’t the least bit friendly.

  “Don’t know who you are,” Ian said, standing with deceptive quiescence, “but you’ll want to back off now.”

  “Don’t know who you are,” said the largest of them, big and burly—the darkest of them, and there was nothing of quiescence about him. “But you stink. Your car stinks. And the woman stinks.”

  “Then put some distance between us,” Ian said, and something sparked in his eyes. A man reaching his limit.

  Ana saw it, and she had no doubt the three men saw it, as well—and in their way, heeded it. Standing out of reach and on the balls of their feet, never mind that they all three outweighed him, standing taller and broader. She searched them for what she saw so easily in Ian—the sense of coiled strength, the hint of other in his movement and carriage.

  Maybe it was there. But she didn’t see it. So maybe these were Sentinels and maybe not—because according to Ian, a third faction had developed, an interloper group trying to dispatch both Core and Sentinel. Fully human and unfettered by the need to hide their most basic natures.

  What they could get away with, they no doubt would.

  She slid back into the car and rummaged for the nearest pack—and then rummaged within it, her hand closing around the crosshatched surface of a cool metal grip. But after she withdrew the pistol, she rested it beside her, one foot on the ground and the other on the running board, propped against the seat and waiting.

  If anyone noticed, they gave no sign of it.

  Ian was done waiting. He turned back to the yard without completely turning from the men, holding his hands out just a little, one higher than the other but the blood no longer dripping at all. Searching. As if he’d extended all his senses, and not just the invisible awareness that Ana had never quite fathomed. The uniquely Sentinel perception of the world.

  “Hey,” said the palest man, apparently also no stranger. “Hey. He’s gonna—”

  They moved as one—but only a single step. Ana straightened, both feet on the ground...a perfect line between her position and the three men, right through the triangle of space separating the curve of the metal door and the car body, the gun at her side.

  They still failed to notice her. They stopped because Ian turned back on them, teeth slightly bared. Not in a way that looked dramatic or faked, but an entirely natural, completely effective threat.

  If they had guns, they didn’t reach for them.

  The Core would have guns out already. The Sentinels, she thought, would respond as Ian had—and would respond to him.

  That meant these men were from the third party. The unknown, inviting themselves into this conflict.

  “People are dying in there,” Ian said, his eyes dilated to darkness and revealing the wild. “You must know that. Your friend is dying.” Not quite complete thoughts, distracted by the amulets as he was. “I can help them.”

  “You’ve done enough.” The big man stood with fists clenched, muscles bunching, his restraint writ large across his body. “If it weren’t for your kind—”

  “Really?” Ian snapped. “You want to go there? Because I know who you are. And if it wasn’t for your interference in the Sacramentos, this might not have happened at all!”

  Yes. The third party. Ian believed it, too.

  The big man laughed. “Nice,” he said. “We wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for you and your counterparts.”

  “That’s what our counterparts said two thousand years ago, and look where it’s taken them.”

  Ana pressed a hand over her mouth at the truth of his remark. It smelled of gun oil and powder, sharp scents that only reminded her how the weapon had already been used this day.

  By her own people.

  The ones who’d begun just as Ian said, but who now seemed able to justify far more than monitoring the Sentinels and stopping their bad behavior. Who now simply persecuted them.

  As these men would inflict themselves on her. On Ian, as he strove to save lives.

  Ian bit off a curse. “I don’t have time for this. Either come and get me or leave me alone.” He turned back to the yard. Searching, as she’d known he would, for the working that threatened his friends. Or that had already killed them all.

  Of course, the interlopers didn’t leave him alone.

  But they didn’t attack all at once, either, and even Ana knew that to be a mistake. The middle
man, the one with Middle East coloring and second largest in size, broke first.

  She jerked the gun up, realizing then how little use it was. She could never bring herself to shoot a man in cold blood, and she wasn’t good enough to hit them without hitting Ian. Not cold enough to do it, even knowing Ian would most likely survive.

  He’d been hurt enough at the hands of her own.

  But Ian didn’t need her help. He was ready—he was waiting. And injured or not, he was so fast that Ana barely followed what happened as he moved—ducking under the man’s attack, rolling in behind to box his ears, kicking his knee away and landing on his chest, just barely pulling a mortal blow to the neck.

  As leopard, that blow had torn out the side of a man’s throat. As human, even pulled, it left the man gasping for air, a bruise rising around critical blood flow.

  Ian crouched beside the man, ruffled but with a stillness that Ana had come to understand presaged a preternatural alertness. Ready to move.

  “Ana,” he said, not looking at her, “tuck the gun away and see if there are extra cuffs in that car. And an ice pack in the first aid kit. These men will wait quietly for the moment, if they want their friend seen to.”

  Ana straightened, startled; the men seemed to see her only for the first time.

  Ian had known about the gun all along, for all that he hadn’t even seemed to notice. And he’d made sure the men knew about the gun, too, now that he’d asked her to come out in the open.

  She tucked the weapon into her back waistband and did as he asked, quickly scaring up a set of restraint cables and the vehicle’s first aid kit. She gave the two men a wary glance on the way by, going all the way around the SUV so she could approach Ian from along the wall.

  “Ice his neck,” Ian said, moving away once she got there, taking the restraints with him. “And sit on him.”

  Ana did just that, taking Ian literally as she was meant to. He whipped the restraints into place, threading them through the man’s belt to keep his hands pinned there, and stood aside, looking at the men from beneath his lowered brow—a gaze that only underscored what Ian was. What he could do.