Sentinels: Leopard Enchanted

by Doranna Durgin

  She’d taken a sip of her tea, and nodded. “The lemon is always good. But I need to know that you heard me. We’re counting on you.”

  A stab of pain caught him behind one eye, and he winced, rubbing it. Fernie didn’t fail to note it. “And if this isn’t just some virus?”

  He stared at her as if he’d suddenly forgotten how to think. Maybe he had.

  “Ian,” she said, buttering her muffin with quick, impatient movement, “I’ve been managing this retreat since my Manny passed. He had no Sentinel blood at all, you know. So I know what a virus looks like, and I also know what it looks like when we light-bloods get hit with one. You think this would be the first time?”

  Ian pulled her robe off the back of a wooden chair and draped it over her footboard so he could flip the chair around and straddle it. “And this doesn’t look right to you?”

  She lifted one shoulder, sipping tea. “It doesn’t look familiar. Even here, we don’t take things for granted.”

  He thought about the working he’d felt at the overlook, the mere ripple of corruption in the air. It hadn’t been a thing of significance—a passive detection spell, unless he missed his mark, and he wasn’t that far off his game. And members of the Core were everywhere, just as the Sentinels were. Clustered, yes, but always with plenty of individuals moving freely between.

  “I see I’ve got you considering it, at least.”

  “I’ll take a look around,” he said, tapping absently on the back of the chair. Slowly, to reflect the speed of his thoughts. “Once I’ve checked on the rest of us.”

  “Leave that to me.” She pushed a strand of graying hair from her face. “I feel much better. If the others are anything like me, they simply went to bed last night and decided against getting up. It’s more of a tiresome thing than anything else.”

  Ian rubbed the spot between his eyes. “Damned headache,” he said. But the aspirin must have been kicking in, because it seemed to be easing. “Okay. I’ll check outside. If I find anything...well, I don’t have my gear, but we can improvise. A kitchen isn’t so much different from a lab, when all is said and done.” He gave her a meaningful look. “But you’ll call me if you need help.”

  “If it makes you feel better about going out there, then, yes.” She reached for another piece of the muffin. “But you, Ian—I hope you felt well enough to enjoy your time with Ana yesterday evening.”

  He grinned. “Now you’re just prying,” he said, standing back from the chair. “Let’s just say I felt better when I was with her. And,” he added, before she could ask, “she’s coming over around lunchtime.”

  “Because if this is a virus, she’s been well and exposed to it.” Fernie looked decidedly better now, that twinkle back in her eye.

  “Now you are prying,” Ian said. He put the chair back where it had been and bent over to kiss her cheek, ignoring her surprise. “You’re right. We won’t take it for granted. I’ll check in after I take a quick look around, and then go back out for a second sweep.”

  “Good,” she said. “Thank you.”

  But what Ian didn’t say, and what they both knew, was that if the Core had targeted the grounds with a silent amulet working, Ian had no more chance of finding it than any of them—and that was no chance at all.

  Chapter 5

  Ana arrived at the retreat to find Ian prowling the grounds—a lean, sunlit figure in constant motion. He’d clearly showered and shaved, and now wore a pale, lightweight shirt over faded jeans. The jeans fit perfectly, hanging off his hips and snug over the strong curve of his butt, but the shirt had only received haphazard attention to the buttons—as if he’d been interrupted when he’d barely just started.

  She had the feeling that the interruption had come in the form of his restless nature, but a second glance at the intensity of his expression made her think twice.

  He wasn’t just prowling. He was searching.

  She stood back and watched for a long moment. Considering him. Still able to feel his hands on her skin, to see the care in his eyes. And to see so clearly his expression when she’d touched him back, and how it had affected her.

  It had made her realize that until Ian, she’d never made love. She’d made sex. She’d had sex made with her...and to her. Her previous partners, limited as they were, had been Core. Had been expected of her. And after so many similar experiences, she’d thought the fault, if there was one, to be hers. Or she’d thought simply this is the way it is.

  She’d been wrong. Ian had shown her that. He’d given her more of himself in one evening than all of her previous partners put together. And he’d shown her that it wasn’t about what one could take...it was about what one could give.

  Surely, if this man—who offered such clear care to her, and to the woman named Fernie, and even to Ana when she’d still been only a stranger under attack by a mugger—was a Sentinel, then it should be possible for the Core and the Sentinels to find common ground. To work together. No matter what she’d always been told.

  But she’d need time to prove that. She’d need Ian’s trust. And she’d need space from Lerche’s interference.

  He won’t bother me if I’m with Ian.

  The thought came out of nowhere, striking her as true as anything could. Lerche wouldn’t bother her if she was with Ian—he wouldn’t bruise her or intimidate her or push her. Because he knew as well as Ana that Ian wouldn’t allow any of that.

  Ian hadn’t seen her yet, which startled her—it seemed to her as if he generally saw everything in his world. But this intensity, she suspected, was also uniquely Ian. So focused, so immersed in his work that he’d closed out everything else.

  Though what was he doing?

  Prowling.

  And doing it with an expression that should have alarmed her, dark brows drawn over piercing eyes—shadowing them. Utter concentration on his face as he paced the latilla fencing, gaze sweeping every inch of uneven vertical poles. Once he crouched, a stunningly simple display of the graceful leopard hidden within, and Ana found herself holding her breath—appreciating not just the beauty of it, but anticipating the outcome.

  After a moment he merely stood and went on, his head cocked slightly as if he was listening for some inner voice.

  Ana resumed breathing, her pulse still rocketing. How well she understood this man after only two days. How well she understood what his presence could do to her.

  She swallowed hard against sudden fear in her throat, caught in fragile crystalline understanding. Lerche would kill her.

  He would call her weak and corrupted and traitorous; he would call her a failure. And wouldn’t tolerate those things, on top of years of barely accepting her in the first place. He would eliminate them.

  But Lerche wasn’t here. And he wasn’t the entire Core. If Ana could prove to them that Ian’s respectful nature was representative of the Sentinels, if she could broker a breakthrough in communication...

  She’d be more than accepted. She’d be safe.

  She released a deep and steady breath, settling her mind to it all. Putting herself back in the moment, where reaching her goal and simply spending time with Ian amounted to the same thing. Especially now that she’d put the second spy amulet into the pocket of her light blazer...and activated it.

  That time, he heard her. Lifted his head and saw her. For an instant, he looked stunned—and she immediately understood.

  He’d forgotten all about their date.

  She ought to feel hurt. She ought to feel resentful. Instead she blurted out, “What’s wrong?”

  Relief crossed his features, but only briefly. “Fernie,” he said. “The others...not so much. But Fernie.”

  “Hey,” she said. “I’m outside your brain. I need more words.”

  At that, he laughed and seemed to shake something off. “I think I should b
e frightened,” he said, and stretched in a way that made her ache to touch him. “Do you know how long it takes some people to deal when I get stuck inside my head?”

  “Then they aren’t paying attention.” She said it haughtily, deliberately lightening the moment. “But seriously, Ian. What’s going on?”

  He glanced back at the house. “Probably just a weird virus. The others aren’t doing too badly—they stayed in bed—but Fernie is pretty sick.” He frowned. “She seemed better this morning, but it didn’t last.”

  She put hands on hips, tapped her foot a couple of times. “So Fernie is sick and you’re worried, but you’re not taking her to a clinic...you’re out combing the yard?”

  “Ah,” he said, straightening a little. “Right. Actually, the company has a medic on call, so we’ve talked. This is just a precaution. Sometimes people throw things over fences.”

  It took her a moment, and then she understood. “Poison?”

  He shrugged. “People get frustrated with the neighborhood cats.”

  She nearly laughed out loud, full of the double meaning of that sentence. But Ian had no idea she knew he was actually one of the neighborhood cats, so instead she said, “That’s awful. Do you want some help looking? Do you need any help inside? We don’t have to do the museum today—”

  He shook his head—looking down at himself as if to check for dirt or grass stains. “We’ll go. If our guy thought there was a real problem, he’d have come up to check things out himself.” He rotated his shoulders, stretching again—completely unselfconscious, and completely unaware of the impressive display of lithe strength. “Besides, I’m doing okay. You?”

  “A bit of a headache,” she admitted, realizing it for the first time. “If you have an aspirin, I’d take it. And then we can be on our way, if you really still want to go.” She glanced in the direction of the museum without thinking about it and caught sight of a figure hovering at the tree line of the greenway. Lingering.

  Ian followed her gaze.

  If the man hadn’t frozen—hadn’t so visibly thought about ducking to hide—nothing would have come of it.

  But he did.

  And Ian muttered, “What the hell—?” and hopped over the fence, striding toward the man.

  Who took off.

  Posse. It had to be. And Ana wanted to kick the man. What was he thinking, to lurk where a Sentinel could see? What was Lerche thinking, to send him out to watch after he’d already put Ian on alert with that drive-by at the overlook? He’d blow her cover if he wasn’t more careful, and she knew exactly who’d get the blame for that.

  There was no way Ian wasn’t going to catch the guy. He ran full out, his strides long and swift, his movement effortless—

  Except even as he closed in on the man, he stumbled. His movement grew choppy, his strides uneven. The man pulled cleanly away as Ian came to an abrupt stop, his hands braced on his knees. Staggering.

  Ana ran to him, feeling not relief that the posse member had gotten away, but concern for Ian. Knowing exactly how lucky the fugitive had been. “Ian!” she said, reaching him just lightly out of breath, because the Core made sure she was as fit as anyone could be. “Are you all right?”

  He straightened, his expression full of puzzlement—and something more. A wounded look, as though his body had betrayed him. “I’m okay,” he said—and at her sound of disbelief, flashed her a wry look. “I guess I’m not quite back to myself.”

  “No kidding. And just what did you plan to do if you caught that guy?”

  “Ask him questions,” Ian said, more grimly than he probably meant to.

  “What? Like why he thought he could get away with relieving himself on that tree?” Another lie, another misdirection. But she couldn’t afford for him to suspect the man as Core. She couldn’t.

  “He was what?” Ian said in surprise, looking off after the man—long gone now. Ana held her silence, letting him work it through. “I’m sorry. I thought—” He shook his head. “I guess I’m on edge.” He bounced on his toes a time or two, recovered from whatever instant of weakness had caught him—more like the man she’d seen upon her very first glimpse of him. “I’m still working out this relaxation thing.”

  “So I see.” She offered her hand. “Let’s grab an aspirin and a snack, and see what the walk to the museum does for you. We can take the greenway almost all the way there.”

  He took her hand, but the faint gathering frown at his brows didn’t fade as they returned to the retreat porch, both of them warm in the wake of exertion and the beat of the midday sun. She pulled off her blazer when he went inside to grab them some water, dropping the coat over the back of a wrought-iron porch chair without a second thought—at least, not until they were walking away.

  Only then did she realize that the second amulet had been left behind in her blazer and how Lerche would respond to her error. But amazingly, with her hand back in the warm and careful grip of the Sentinel who had trusted his body to her the night before, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  She was, at the moment, right where she needed to be.

  * * *

  Ian’s feet moved of their own accord, taking him through the beautifully spare hallways of the O’Keeffe museum; he only vaguely heard Ana’s voice. His eyes were full of beauty under the museum spotlights in this stark adobe hallway, gaze drawn by paintings of sublime and subtle color and sweeping lines. And his mind was full of...

  Frustration.

  Ana moved in beside him, nudging his shoulder. “Where are you?” she asked. “I’m not sure you’re quite here.”

  He pulled himself out of his thoughts to look down at her—there, where she’d so expertly covered the evidence of someone’s damned fingers.

  He was well aware that her whole story hadn’t been told. Not with the not-so-random mugging, or the man he’d scared off that morning. But he was beginning to fill in the blanks.

  This was not, he thought, so much of a vacation as it was an escape.

  He’d find out. But not now—here, in this museum, with her concern looking up at him. So he told her the truth, without much thinking about it. “I can’t make sense of it.”

  “Your people? Are you still worried?” She took his hand—just enough hesitation to let him know she wasn’t used to reaching out, and just enough confidence to reflect the startling nature of their fast-solidifying connection.

  Quiet floated over his thoughts like a blanket, leaving him room to think. “More than that.” He hesitated over just how much to say, O’Keeffe’s winter cottonwoods drawing his eye back to the hazy brown sweep of branches emerging from misty beige and muted ochre. “The pattern of things just doesn’t make sense. We feel fine...we feel terrible. And then we’re fine again.”

  “Like you last night,” she observed, rubbing a thumb lightly across his knuckles in a fashion that focused his thoughts in an entirely different way, thank you very much.

  “And Fernie this morning.” He didn’t mention how badly he’d felt before he’d gone to the yard to hunt amulets; he didn’t mention that it seemed to be harder to shake the illness off today than it had been yesterday. To clear his thoughts, which had blundered around in their usual overactive state—only now they seemed just as blurred as O’Keeffe’s winter trees.

  Abruptly, he turned away from the painting, moving along the stark adobe hallway to the exit and out from under the track lighting to the tight, unpretentious grounds where the building rose like an assortment of adobe blocks behind them.

  She kept her hold on his hand, following without hurry. “Are you all right now?”

  “When you touch me?” he said. “Never better.” He made a quick, wry face, without explanation. “You give me a peace I haven’t felt before.”

  She presented him with a dubious look, and he laughed. “That wasn’t supposed to so
und corny. It was supposed to sound...” He hesitated. “Real.”

  She looked away, her face dappled by the shade of the trees lining the street and sidewalk, groomed landscaping sand and gravel crunching under their feet. “There’s a lot going on with me. You should know that.”

  “I already know it.”

  She flicked a glance at him and then away. As if she couldn’t quite deal with meeting his gaze. “It’s not anything I expected to get into with such a short time together. It’s not anything I want to get into.”

  “Then, don’t. You don’t owe me anything.” Why that brought a sheen of tears to her eyes, he didn’t know. “Look. I came here because I was ordered to. Things at work have been intense, and I don’t know how to slow down at the best of times.”

  Now she did look at him, intrigued—and guessing. “And it hasn’t been the best of times.”

  Understatement. So many dead, so many attacks barely thwarted. Unless the Sentinels could detect the silent amulets, their field agents would continue to die, and their families would always be under the threat of another Core D’oíche.

  Unless Ian could detect the silent amulets.

  “No,” he said. “It hasn’t been the best of times. The only time I’ve been able to take a mental breath...” Is with you. He didn’t say the words out loud but wrapped his arms around her, resting his cheek on the sun-warmed tousle of her hair.

  His mind settled. His thoughts quieted. He took a deep breath and absorbed her—how she felt sturdy and delicate at the same time, how her breathing synced with his, how she enveloped him not with strength but with caring. The warmth of his response rose not like the previous evening’s lightning but as a gentler thing. A more lasting thing.

  In that quiet clarity of his mind, his thoughts settled—a brilliant clarity of overlapping understandings.

  Like the fact that he had no intention of letting this woman just go. Of walking away from this week—of walking away from him. That he wanted to scoop her up right here, let her wrap her legs around his waist as he carried her back to the retreat, back to his bed—to claim her, and let himself be claimed.