Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted (Harlequin Nocturne)

by Doranna Durgin

  Lerche looked down at himself, the gun in his hand now. The sling obscured his torso, but the tang of blood in the air and the stunned look on Lerche’s face said enough. He’d been hit, and hit badly. And he knew it.

  When he raised his eyes, he pinned his gaze on Ana. “That’s a shame,” he said, his voice strained. “But you’re still mine.”

  Ana stood straight and tall—not very tall at that, and not very large, but with a fresh certainty in her voice. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

  A new car turned into the driveway, large tires on the gravel—and another, not making quite as much noise. Budian, now caught up between the two lingering interlopers, nonetheless had line of sight along the curve of the drive. “The drozhar,” he said, his voice pitched low to carry. “And more of their people.”

  Nick, dammit! I told you to stay away—

  Not that he’d truly expected it to happen.

  But he hadn’t expected the mad look that crossed Lerche’s face, the sudden hard gleam in his eye as a surge of blood soaked through his suit.

  He hadn’t expected the man to charge forward—at Ana.

  Ian leaped for him, too late—catching the back of his shoe, tearing out the back leg of Lerche’s trousers. And Lerche bowled into Ana, knocking her against the rail fence, flipping her over it to land hard on the dried grass of packed ground.

  Inside the amulet perimeter.

  “No one moves!” bellowed one of the interlopers, a man who no doubt now had Budian’s gun. Nick’s voice responded with calm authority, words unintelligible past the roar in Ian’s head, the sudden chaos of fear and understanding and complete and utter absence of Ana in his senses. His awareness narrowed down to that one single view—her attempts to scramble out from beneath Lerche, her cry of fear as Lerche’s body weighed her down and the amulet working sank into her, weakening her just that fast.

  “Ian!” she cried, hardly more than a hoarse, whispering shout, “I can’t—”

  The amulet. It gleamed newly exposed beneath the tangle of the fence.

  No shovel, no tech gear, no options.

  Ian pounced, scooping the thing up with a flick of his paw—feeling the instant drain of direct contact, his paw burning with a cold fire that ran along all the small bones to his wrist, hooks already setting into his forearm. The amulet settled between his toe pads and his heel pad and he closed his paw around it, tail lashing terribly as his whiskers drew back in a silent, terrible snarl.

  He meant to carry it to the other corner and instantly knew he couldn’t. He flipped his paw, clumsy now, and the amulet tumbled through sunlight toward the other back corner—redrawing the boundary and freeing Ana as it disappeared into the dry grass.

  Not too late. Please, not too late!

  But the house still lay within the field, there where Shea had worked so hard to shield his friends and Ruger had done his best to fortify them. Not too late! Please, not too late!

  Ian pounced on the amulet, defying the heaviness of his legs and giving the thing an expert flick into the far corner—redrawing the amulet boundary once more, this time to cut diagonally through the house. No way to tell where they are in that house...

  He fell to a brief crouch, panting heavily and drawing on every bit of what he was. Drawing on what Ana had taught him about quieting his thoughts to send out the finest, purest pulse of energy.

  It bounced back at him from right beside the first one—and once he’d found that again, he quickly saw its gleam, an uneven chunk of slightly darker metal.

  Leaden legs took him there, his pounce still quicksilver fast but taking the last of such speed from him. He scooped up both amulets in one swipe—tumbling back into the human as he rolled into the rough adobe of the far wall. Only then did he hear Nick’s astonished commands to stop the hell what you’re doing! and Ana’s weaker cry of dismay— “Ian, no! Ian!”

  And yet behind those protests lay the anguish of what Ian already knew.

  Without this, his friends would die.

  If they hadn’t already.

  He staggered upright and along the wall, his gaze focused on the spot where the interior courtyard met the wall—as far as he could go, and far enough so the amulet field would cut only across the very front corner of the house. The man in the front yard might yet lay within that brutally damaging field, but Shea would be free of it.

  The ground met Ian’s face with bruising force; he couldn’t remember falling. Back to his feet, his vision tunneled to include only the courtyard’s wrought-iron fence...falling...back to his feet again with one unfeeling foot clomping down in front of the other, his arm turned to stone and a shaft of volcanic cold making its way down the long bones of his arm to his shoulder.

  “Ian.” Nick’s voice came just behind him—full of understanding and full of inexorable command. “It’s far enough. Enough, Ian.”

  Another step and he’d fall against the wrought-iron bars, wavering so uncertainly before him. Ian held out his hand and stared stupidly at it, willing it to open.

  Dead dull flesh, nothing of his own.

  Nick moved in beside him, reaching for the hand—Ian turned on him, snarling him off. Impotent threat if Nick chose to ignore it.

  “Ian!” Nick snapped. “You know better. I can stop it!”

  Because Nick could. Nick, among them all, had the knack of focusing down on an amulet to burn it out in a flash. But it was a knack the Core knew nothing of and could never know of.

  Supposing the working didn’t leave Nick instantly incapable of any such thing.

  Ian had no words. He had only the snarl, the lift of his free hand in warning, fingers lifted to reflect the dagger-tipped spread of the paw beneath.

  “Then get rid of it!” Alpha fury underlined the snarl in Nick’s own voice.

  Volcanic cold, creeping through his shoulder, along his collarbone and tracing his ribs, reaching for his spine...

  Ian turned his threatening fingers on his own hand, prying at deadened, clutching flesh. Something snapped and he didn’t feel it, though Nick made a grinding sound of horrified dismay. Another snap and Ian clumsily turned his hand, the first spark of pain radiating down his spine as he shook his wrist to dislodge the amulets from his grasp.

  A single dull pebble hit the ground, bouncing into the mowed scruff.

  Ana’s voice cut through the roar of amulet-dulled senses—weak but coming closer, full of horror. “Ian!”

  “No!” Nick grunted with impact, and then snapped a curse over the ensuing sounds of struggle. “Dammit, don’t—!”

  But Ana’s hand landed on his back—ever so briefly, a stunning infusion of light and emotion and love before Nick wrenched her away.

  Ian sucked in a mighty breath and somehow managed to drop the last amulet from the crease of his palm. But a final lingering shard of fire lanced along his spine, arching him back and twisting him from agony down into darkness, leaving him only the final echo of Ana’s scream.

  * * *

  Ana blinked her eyes open to bright New Mexico sky. The sun tingled against her face and stubby dead grass poking through the back of her shirt, and she rolled over just enough to push up on one arm.

  “Ana, I presume.” The man crouching before gestured impatiently to those outside her view, commanding them to come on.

  He wore such an intensity about himself, such obvious other, that Ana gasped and flinched away from him—from his pale green eyes and black hair rimmed with hoarfrosted silver and from the very palpable effort to restrain all of it to human expectations.

  He didn’t seem to notice her recoil. “You fainted. Be still. There’s a lot going on, and if I have to manage you, someone else is likely to die. Maybe even Ian.”

  Ana could only gape at him—and realize instantly that his hard, no-nonsense words were ones she co
uld trust. Nick Carter. Brevis consul.

  And no wonder.

  “Mariska, the house!” Nick said, a command snapped across the yard to those who had come with him. “Report! Maks, get this place shielded—and no more of our visitors leave!”

  Meaning someone had already gone. Ana lifted her head to discern who remained, but there were too many figures in motion, and she wasn’t nearly steady enough to sort it all out.

  She looked for Ian instead.

  Nick’s attention snapped back to her. “I told you—”

  “I’m not going anywhere!” But she was tired of taking orders from those who hadn’t earned the right to give them, and she was tired of being afraid. And Ian...

  Sprawled beside her, his body limp but still reflecting that final wrenching cry before he’d collapsed. It hurt so much to look at his mangled hand, a thing of gray flesh and unnatural angles. Ana slung a defiant look in Nick Carter’s direction and crawled the few feet to reach Ian, her own limbs dull and heavy in the wake of even brief exposure to the amulets.

  Ian had held them. Carried them.

  She rested a hand on his shoulder, finding it cold. Rested her forehead beside his hand, trembling there. Reaching out to him in the way she’d learned and finding no sense of a presence in return, no impression that he heard her. “Ian,” she said, shaking him ever so slightly, and then more insistently. “Come out of there and follow me!”

  A woman’s voice called from the house. “Alive! Nick, they’re alive—all of them! But they’re weak as hell—Joe, get your ass in here!”

  Nick jabbed a short gesture at the house. “Do it,” he said, voice raised for the distance. “Stabilize them and get back out here.”

  “Healer?” Ana said, watching in dismay as a big man in a flannel shirt and jeans broke away from the cars and ran to the house, hopping over the fence to reach the gate the woman Mariska had unlocked. “But Ian—”

  “Not our healer,” Nick said shortly. “Someone who can give them back some of the energies they lost.” He lifted his chin to indicate the approach of someone from behind, and Ana twisted to find a slender woman with large eyes and an uncertain demeanor, a gear bag slung over one shoulder. “Katie, see what you can do for Ian until Joe gets back out here.”

  As Katie went to work, Mariska jogged up to them—short and sturdy and athletic, her deep complexion full of brown tones and her eyes rimmed with darker coloration, her hair darkest black and pulled back into a short French braid. “Jet’s as good as any of them,” she said, her mouth thin with strain. As she looked back to the house, her silhouette showed the slight rounding of early pregnancy. “Ruger is pretty rugged, and so is Shea. They tried so hard to protect everyone. Fernie... I really don’t know. She and the others had been through a lot before the Core set off this particular bomb.”

  “Fernie!” Ana said in dismay.

  Mariska looked at her with a ferocity that sent Ana flinching away. Another field Sentinel, this one, and furious to boot. “Yes,” the woman snapped. “Imagine. We’re people, just like you. Ruger is mine, and if anything happens to him, I will never stop coming for you. Never.”

  “Mariska,” Nick said, but his tight voice spoke volumes, and he caught Ana’s gaze with those pale green eyes. “We’ll figure out Ana’s story before we condemn her.”

  “And if Jet—”

  “She won’t!” Nick snapped. “Lyn is in there, too—Joe will find a way to give back what they’ve lost until Katie can figure out—”

  But Katie interrupted him in turn, her voice grimmest grim. “I’m nowhere near Ruger’s league with this stuff,” she said. “I don’t know if I can reverse whatever this working did. I don’t even know what it did.”

  Words fell from Ana’s mouth. “Then let me help.”

  Nick regarded her with narrowed eyes. “How?”

  Ana lifted her gaze to the clump of figures milling by the cars. If Budian had been correct, one of those men was the region’s most recent drozhar. Budian would know what the working was...and the drozhar could command him to talk.

  “I know how they think,” she said. “I know how to talk to them. I can learn what we need. Just don’t—” she faltered, looking down on Ian; it seemed to her that even in these last moments, his color had worsened, her sense of him diminishing. “Please. Don’t let him die.”

  Katie had unzipped the gear bag, digging efficiently into pockets to pull out vials and shake them vigorously; already she unscrewed the top of one to withdraw its full eyedropper. “It’s not my intent,” she said. “But I need a clue, and I need it fast.”

  “Mariska,” Nick said. “Go with her. Don’t let them intimidate her.” As if he somehow already understood that they would.

  Mariska bared her teeth. “No fears.”

  But the Ana who could be manipulated by the need to belong to these people no longer existed. She’d already lost everything she’d hoped to have with them...and she’d already gained so, so much more in return. She would get the information they needed, and she’d get it fast.

  She gave Ian’s shoulder a final squeeze and climbed unsteadily to her feet, grateful for Mariska’s helping hand. “Oh,” she said, remembering her promise. “Ian...he told me to make sure you knew. He figured out how to find the silents. I know how he does it. If it comes to that... I can explain.”

  Nick stood to look down on her. “If they find out you just told me that—”

  “Oh, yes,” Ana said. “They’ll kill me. But then...what’s new? I’ll get what we need to know—I can do it.” The drozhar would have to learn about Lerche—his activities, how he’d compromised them, how the Core could position themselves to blame the man and minimize his damage. Budian could tell him nothing without damning himself—but Ana could. She had exactly what she needed to get what the Sentinels required. “And then you help Ian. Help the others.”

  “You get it, and I will,” Katie promised fiercely—but she, too, glanced over her shoulder at the detained drozhar and his evident temper.

  “They can’t hurt me anymore,” Ana said—and then laughed a little with the true understanding of it—of her freedom to hand. “And they can’t have me anymore. Besides, I choose my own people.” She looked down at Ian, crouching to cup his face one last time before facing all her fears at once. Defeating them. Ian Scott, dark lashes shadowing his cheek, silvered hair in charming disarray, lean strength captured by injury but the other...

  The other still lingered there, making him everything that he was. Snow leopard. Human. Lover.

  Hers.

  Epilogue

  Ian beat a quick drum tattoo against the standing height worktable in his home lab—one of a series of such tables, with a single token chair tucked away beneath stacked gear. Steinman rolled out over the speakers, all drama and operatic rock, as Ian bounced between scowling at an amulet case design and his ongoing text chat, where two of his AmTechs struggled with a streamlined approach to teach the new silents detection method across the whole of Southwest Brevis.

  Or at least, to those who had even the faintest ability to manage it.

  Start with bouncing off something loud, he typed.

  Although in actuality, the message read Strt w smthng looud, because even fingers raised on a keyboard couldn’t type well when encased with plaster. Or whatever they’d used in this particular cast.

  It turned out that bones broken in the thrall of that particular deadly working didn’t heal any faster than anyone else’s. Slower, in fact.

  But he was alive.

  Ana was alive.

  Fernie was alive, and Ian’s friends were alive, if all just now recovered these weeks later. Katie had been filling in for Ruger until recently, augmented by Joe Ryan. The man’s deft skill with undefined earth energies allowed him to replace—slowly, carefully—what the working had stolen.r />
  Joe had had plenty of incentive. Along with Ruger, Joe’s partner Lyn had been nearly consumed by the working.

  But now Lyn was back at work, Ruger was splitting his hours between brevis and preparing for fatherhood, Shea was out shielding the unwary, and Jet was off visiting her former pack. Only the very human interloper who’d stumbled into the working was just as dead as everyone had thought him to be.

  His three partners had left quite smartly during the immediate aftermath of the convergence of the three factions. It had been Nick’s decision, Ian gathered, to let them go. There’d been enough to deal with already, between the injured, their shortage of manpower...and the Core’s regional prince, the drozhar, to manage.

  The text pinged back at him. Start with something loud, what?

  Gahhh. Ian typed, intro thm to prss dammt procss w big honkn loud aml dammt am.;/ fck!

  Let them chew on that for a while. He was done typing. Such as it had been. He returned his attention to the work case design, and most importantly, to the swatches of buffering material on one workbench. Experiments to do, oh, yes. He turned up the music.

  A draft of moving air signaled invasion of his AmTech turf.

  Ana. She stood in the door, still dressed for what passed as winter in Tucson, her arms crossed and a wincing amusement on her face.

  Ian scooped up the sound system remote and hit the mute button. “Hey,” he said. “Soundproofing!”

  “The house still vibrates after a certain point,” she said drily, tugging off her gloves and unzipping her jacket.

  Hmm. Maybe so.

  “Anyway, I wanted you to know I was home.” She only entered the workroom by a few feet, always respectful of this space.

  Not that she didn’t have good reason. The activity here was, on some days, the equivalent of defusing bombs in the basement.

  The text screen bleated a plaintive request for clarity. Ian dropped out of the chat with a click of the mouse and put his back to the worktable, propping his casted hand on the forearm of the other. It was as close as he could get to crossing his own arms. “How’d it go?”