Oh, to be bear—full of strength, more nimble than she ever got credit for, her senses sharper than anyone ever assumed. Sight and scent and hearing, the strong swipe of a claw, the sprinting speed to rival any creature. She stretched hugely, yawned a great noisy yawn to shed stress and ambled straight to the nearest tree just to see how high she could mark it.
High. Satisfyingly high, little black bear.
For the first time since she’d triggered the amulet on herself, her headache faded; her skin no longer felt tightly hot.
She shook off with a flap of glossy pelt and headed out, stretching her legs—not trying to follow any given scent, but making note of them all...the tracks she crossed, the scent in the air, the skunk obscuring all. Nothing stood out; she found only the aimless, crisscrossing patterns of several men, calculated to confuse and annoy.
She shed the comfortable skin of her bear to grab the detection gear, but didn’t expect to find anything. None of the men had hesitated long enough to
do
anything, perhaps not realizing she could detect as much from the scent pools. They’d simply been on the move.
Only when she finished did she realize that the headache had returned, that her joints felt strangely rusty. Maybe that was why she had the growing urge to be back inside with the others. It was with relief that she met Sandy’s friendly greeting upon entering the facility. “All clear?”
“Looks like they were just messing with us,” Mariska said. “A whole lot of tromping around to do nothing and go nowhere.” She stowed her gear. “The clouds are building—I think we’ll get a good storm this afternoon.”
“Any rain is good rain,” Sandy said, the automatic response of a desert dweller. She nodded at Ruger, who had laid most of the little creatures out in rows on the worktable. Ian and Harrison were sequestered off in the amulet section, packing the amulets into sturdy, sectioned cases. “I’ve been helping Ruger, but Ian will need me to help ward those cases when they’re full. I’d swap with you if we could.”
The kind thought cheered Mariska considerably. “Thanks. I’m sure we’ll manage.”
“It’ll be fine,” Sandy said, lowering her voice to a confidential level. “Don’t you back off, either. Just because this is hard for him doesn’t mean you’re not right.”
Mariska found herself floundering for words—and by then Sandy had left her with a meaningful look and a sauntering gait, joining up with the amulet team. She smiled to herself—just a flicker of warmth at that camaraderie—and then headed to the grim scene at the end of the cavernous building.
Ruger handed her a thick, padded spiral-bound notebook, the paper smooth and narrow-lined. It was with some surprise she realized it was a journal—a healer’s professional journal. While she didn’t feel comfortable flipping through it under his scrutiny, she got glimpses of the contents as she hunted the next clean page—a bold, clear hand scribing case notes, surprisingly accurate and simple sketches of plants and notes about their unusual effects on Sentinel bodies, field notes on amulet injuries, Sentinel healing tendencies...and the occasional disgruntled editorial remark.
She felt as though she was holding Ruger in her hand.
If only she’d had the chance to read these notes before they’d met, maybe she wouldn’t have blundered so hard. If only she had the chance to read them now...then she’d be able to carry him with her wherever she went, no matter how things went between them in these next days.
He gave the book a meaningful glance—one that told her he’d prefer it if she didn’t pry—and handed over a pen of such perfect weight and balance that she knew it would glide more beautifully over the paper than any pen she’d ever used before.
She almost thrust the whole thing back at him. It felt too intensely
his
for her to be welcome there. But he’d already moved back to the worktable, and she closed her hand around the pen and smoothed the paper down, making herself look ready. Only then did she take a close look at the animals, and blurt, “He’s changed them
all.
How did he—? Right through the wards!”
“That’s one of the things we need to figure out,” Ruger said, and his tone was nothing but professional—no sign of lingering anger, no resentment. She relaxed, grateful—and a little embarrassed that she’d expected less from him. “Although I wouldn’t say he’s
changed
them. I’d say he’s
un
changed them.”
She looked at the untenable mutations laid out before them, fur and feather and scale, each of the animals missing something critical to its survival. The bird that had once carried fur everywhere but its wings now lacked all skin in those areas; the gopher with scales patterning its back and sides likewise looked skinned. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re right! I mean, of course you’re right, but...look. Nothing’s changed now except what he had already changed in them before, right?”
“Not that I’ve seen.” Ruger looked at the skink curled stiffly in his palm and gently set it aside, giving his attention to Mariska instead. “What are you thinking?”
She rested the notebook against her hip. “Sandy’s never seen any sign of workings slipping through her wards, right? What if that’s because he’d already changed them once? What if he established some sort of connection with them? The working wouldn’t have to get through the wards, not really. It would more or less already
be
here.”
Rather than responding, Ruger looked out into the installation. “Ian, you hearing this?”
“Hell, yes,” Ian said. “I’ve never heard of any such thing, but when have we seen this sort of experimentation before? You just keep thinking out loud, Mariska.”
“Well,” she said, looking at the animals and flipping back to the previous day’s notes—Ruger’s clear hand and clinical descriptions of what had been done to the animals, “I think what you’ve been doing is compiling details—what these animals were when we got here, what they are now...”
“That’s where I’m starting,” Ruger agreed, and the earlier relief she’d felt at his neutral tone faded as she understood the price it exacted—the distance it had put between them.
Loss constricted her throat; her thoughts stumbled.
It doesn’t mean I’m not right. It doesn’t mean I’m not doing what’s best for him. For the team.
She took a breath and persisted. “I’m wondering, what’s the point? He changed them, and then he
un
changed them without actually restoring them. So what’s he
really
doing? In the big picture?”
“Being insane,” Heckle muttered as he hauled a heavy packed-and-strapped amulet case to sit by the exit.
Sandy snorted, but Mariska had eyes only for Ruger’s reaction—the wary understanding behind his expression. “Whatever he’s doing,” Ruger finally said, “the end goal is to help the Core—probably by hurting us, but not necessarily.”
Mariska closed her eyes, thinking back to the reports of the raid on Gausto’s compound—the massive beast he’d become, the havoc he’d wreaked—and the horror of his death when the amulet failed. “He’s already seen how badly it goes when the Core uses amulets to change their own nature.”
“Total suckage,” Heckle said on the way back to the amulet section.
Mariska touched the fur on one stiff little body. “So if this is about hurting us, and it’s about changing but not about changing
Core
—”
“God,” Ruger said. “He changed them not to prove he could—he’s known that for a while. He changed them so he could
un
change them. That’s what this is about—
unchanging
us. It’s about
taking away what we are.
”
“Katie’s vision,” Mariska whispered.
The wild, yipping howl of a bereft wild dog, the wash of a vile stench, tasting foul in her throat. A hollow huffing sound, followed by a clacking, the surge of fear...a tremendous explosion. And then an entire chorus of grief, animal skins fluttering to the ground like sodden laundry. Wolf and bear, panther and boar, wildcat and stoat and deer. Crumpled up and discarded, and a nation of grief splashing in to wash it all away—
She saw in Ruger’s eyes the same horror she felt—the same understanding. She found herself reaching for his hand, not even thinking about it—just craving the strong warmth of it, the ease it might give to the sudden increased throb between her eyes and the strangled feeling in her throat.
Maybe he noticed. Maybe he didn’t. He didn’t close the distance between them; he didn’t look at her at all. He looked out across the installation, his gaze not focused on any of it at all. “He’s out there somewhere,” he said, and his pale brown eyes were haunted with understanding. “And he’s figured out how to kill us all.”
* * *
Ruger walked away from the worktable—walked away from Mariska, from her bereft expression and the hand she’d held out to him.
Maybe he was a bastard for not reaching back—not when they faced something that made their personal differences irrelevant, not when he so deeply shared that which she felt.
But he had nothing to give her. Not when it took everything in him to resist going straight at her—an all-out confrontation as bear, head to head, to resolve their conflict once and for all.
Or when it took just as much restraint to keep from sweeping her up, throwing her across that table, and making her cry out again and again—making her quiver and moan as she had in his arms the very night before, making her lose control as they both had on the night she’d brought him home.
Either way, it was a very good reason for him to not be here at all. Or for her to not be here at all. It mattered little how right she was in any given moment if her presence disrupted the team so badly that he couldn’t function.
Except he had.
No,
they
had. Together, they’d skipped hours, maybe days of painstaking notes, and gotten to the heart of the situation.
Eduard Forakkes was creating a working that would strip Sentinels of their
other.
Ian without his snow leopard, Sandy without her coyote, Harrison without whatever slight vestige of
other
he carried buried within.
Mariska without her bear.
He tried to imagine being without that part of himself...couldn’t. In his heart, he knew they wouldn’t survive it—not any of them.
He’s figured out how to kill us all.
Without turning around, he raised his voice and asked, “Can we counter this?”
“Not in time,” Ian said flatly, the only one among them who could answer at all. “Not without losing lives to the process.”
“Then we have to stop him.”
“We have to
find
him,” Sandy pointed out.
“We have to tell brevis,” Mariska said, and her voice sounded odd, strangely breathy.
At that, Ruger turned, giving her his healer’s eye—reaching out in a way he’d been avoiding, if with more of an edge than behooved the process. Sandy, too, had turned to Mariska, standing on the edge of that amulet work area, her mouth open on words yet unvoiced.
But Ian glanced overhead at the arc of the ceiling and the layers of dirt and foliage over that. “Not even the sat phone will get a signal from here,” he said. “I’ll go make a call. Mariska, would you—” He stopped, frowning. “You all right?”
“It’s just the shock of it,” she said, not the least bit convincing. “Thinking about it. I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Ruger said, hardly considering his words as he strode back toward her. “You’re flushed. You’ve
been
flushed.”
“Stop it.” Her voice was low, holding just a bit of a desperate growl—she skewered him with a look as if she thought this was personal. “Leave it alone. It’s a bug or something, and I’m just not used to it. None of us are.”
“There’s a reason for that.” Ruger’s response didn’t diminish her defensive anger in the least. “We don’t get
bugs.
”
“He’s right.” Ian reached the middle of the cavernous space with long strides, grabbed up Ruger’s field kit, and passed it over like a basketball. “I’m thinking less bug and more amulet.”
Ruger caught the kit and dropped it onto the table with a solid thump, already rummaging for the last of his restoratives even as he assessed her. If he’d been able to reach out fully to her...even her reaction to a more active healing energy would tell him so much more than he knew now.
But no; he could do little more than any other Sentinel, connecting to feel the uncomfortably feverish sensations in her body, the ache in her bones. He could help the symptoms, but he couldn’t address the causes of her malaise. He couldn’t do the subtle exploration that would allow him to figure it out.
He couldn’t take away the suddenly frightened look in her eye.
“More
amulet?
” she repeated, her voice thinning a little. “I thought that was just a stun amulet. I thought I just needed a day or two to get over that. Are you saying that the working is still
in
me?” She looked down at herself in horror, her hands brushing at her body as if it crawled with insects.
“Not actively,” Ian said, with no reassurance in his voice at all. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t start something that’s still in process.”
“Ruger?”
He stopped rummaging long enough to meet her eye, but with no more reassurance than Ian. “I’m sorry,” he said, making himself face the words. “Whatever it is, I can’t just make it go away.” He found the vial of restorative and added reduced infusions of yarrow and basil, both preserved and enhanced by the energies he’d once been able to control. “Let me have your water.”
Mutely, she pulled the sport bottle from her belt; he dumped the vial into it and closed off the top to give it a vigorous shake. “This should help until we figure out what’s going on. It may even be enough to carry you through.”
She took the bottle as he held it out to her. “You don’t believe that, though.”
He shook his head. “I’m not making assumptions, that’s all. If I could still feel what was happening, I’d tell you.” But Ruger glanced at Ian, knowing what Mariska didn’t—that she’d asked the wrong Sentinel. Ian was the one who knew amulets—and Ian was the one who didn’t believe.