She’d promised him that. And if later, they needed her to stand sentry at the bunker, she would do that, too. Wolf again.
She only regretted that she was not
wolf again
with Nick, whose uniquely hoarfrost hair fooled people into thinking he was prematurely gray.
Foolish people.
They had only to look, and they would see it wasn’t. They had only to look in his eyes to see the gray wolf lurking there.
She saw the bear in Ruger easily enough. She’d spotted Mariska’s smaller bear right away. And no matter that they’d showered...they smelled of one another, and of lingering lust.
Mariska, she didn’t know. But she had never seen that hurt in Ruger’s eye; she had never seen him closed and angry...and yet still obviously wanting. It was the
wanting
that was the problem. It meant Mariska could hurt him again, if she wanted. Or even if she didn’t want, but didn’t pay enough attention.
Blunt,
Mariska had called her.
Jet’s teeth weren’t blunt. Not in the least. And if Mariska Banks wasn’t careful with Jet’s pack, she would learn just that.
* * *
Mariska stood behind Katie Maddox’s weathered log home and even more weathered old pole barn, looking out into the embracing forest—and even with the team and Maks Altán right there beside her, found herself so in the thrall of the place that she almost forgot why they were there.
Like Ruger, Maks was a big man—a Siberian tiger lurking visibly beneath, his eyes green and his hair white at the temples with darker streaks running through the deep chestnut. Like Jet, the wildness of his nature flaunted itself, running quiet but steady in every move he made. His uneven movement stood out in stark contrast—the hitch in his stride, the stiffness in his torso. Sentinels healed with astonishing swiftness—but only when it came to saving their lives. Beyond that point, they had to pull themselves together one day at a time, like anyone else.
Or at least, almost like anyone else.
On the surface, Maks didn’t hover over Katie, his slender love, and he didn’t evince any threat or subtle warning—but Mariska quickly realized that no matter how they shifted in conversation, he always stood between her and the team.
With good reason, at that. No Chinese water deer would find herself happy in the presence of so many predators. Ian’s two assistants were too light of blood to take a change form, but two bears and a snow leopard were quite enough.
All the same, Katie Maddox—long-legged, graceful, and touched by cinnamon in her hair, her eyes and even her faint freckles—didn’t look intimidated. She looked, in her way, fierce. Protective. And while Mariska puzzled over it, Ruger narrowed his eyes, traded glances between Katie and Maks, and said, “You two didn’t waste any time.”
Only when Katie looked at him in surprise, her hand touching her abdomen, did Mariska understand. She immediately accorded Maks another notch of respect for his quiet restraint, and took a step farther away from Katie.
Maks chose not to acknowledge Ruger at all; he lifted his head to the woods, drawing their attention west.
“We bought the neighbor’s land,” Katie said. “And there’s forest on all sides of us. So as long as you head out in this direction, no one will see you.” She ran a hand over the electronic ATV sitting beside her; four of the machines hunkered by the side of the old pole barn well behind the house. “You’ll be hooking up with an old logging road for most of the ride. Don’t be seen—nothing with a motor is allowed in this forest.”
“Then why use them at all?” Mariska was the first to voice the unspoken, although she tried to put humor behind it. “You didn’t think the bears could keep up with the cats?”
Maks only smiled, quiet as it was. “Up to you,” he said. “I’m riding.”
Ruger sent her a look, a thread of incredulous response reaching her from what was most likely a lingering result of their time together. Only then did she understand, even as Maks shifted the weight from his recently injured leg, and winced as she opened her mouth to apologize—except she couldn’t read the expression that crossed his face just then, a sudden dazed distraction.
“Maks...” Katie’s voice sounded odd, faint and distressed; her eyes had lost focus. If Mariska had had any doubt about the nature of their relationship, it would have disappeared before the sight of the tiger gone stupid and dazed beside her, caught up in whatever gripped her.
Ruger reached Katie just as her eyes rolled back, scooping her right off her feet, his legs braced but otherwise showing no particular effort—as though he could stand there forever.
“That’s a powerful thing for a
vague little seeing,
” Ian said, always that little sardonic tone behind his words.
“Could be the pregnancy,” Ruger said, carefully shifting so Katie’s lolling head found support against his shoulder. “Could be she’s been hiding this much from us.”
Maks took a staggered step forward, caught his balance, and shook off whatever had gripped him, looking far too vulnerable for a tiger. His voice came a little rough. “No. This is new.” He reached for Katie with purpose, but it was too late; she stirred in Ruger’s arms and then made a startled, frightened noise, stiffening against him.
“Katie Rae,” Maks said, but he didn’t crowd them; he only put a hand on her leg. “Ruger is safe. Let it be.”
“Maks,” she said uncertainly, clutching at Ruger’s shirt as if that would hold the world still, too.
“Let it be, Katie Rae,” Maks said again. “If he frightens you, I’ll have to hurt him. And we need him right now.”
“Oh,” Katie said—still breathless, but no longer quite sounding frightened. “Okay, then.” But then she hesitated, looking up at Ruger as if she saw him for the first time—reaching to touch his face with a sympathetic empathy that took Mariska by surprise. “Healer,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”
Mariska fought a shock of envy at the way he received Katie’s touch, accepting both it and the sentiment she offered. He set Katie gently on her feet, relinquishing her to Maks.
Katie held tightly to Maks’ hand. “Just like before,” she said, her gaze still a little distant. “This foreseeing has always been about more than Maks’ presence here...that was just part of it. The
first
part. But...there’s a foreboding...there’s terrible grief, there’s—” She stopped and shook her head. “Can I try to show you, please? My seeings have never translated well to words.”
“Can you do that?” one of Ian’s assistants asked. Mariska hadn’t seen them at the meeting, hadn’t ridden with them in the tidy little BMW SUV, and now, with some resignation, simply thought of them as Heckle and Jeckle.
“I can try,” Katie told him. “But I need hands.” She extended hers, and Maks put his over it. Ruger, too, and that left Mariska and Ian and Sandy, exchanging glances with a mutual reluctance but finally adding their hands to the physical nexus along with Heckle and Jeckle.
“Ready?” Katie murmured. “Here it comes...”
But Mariska wasn’t ready.
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—
Ian swore under his breath, jerking his hand from beneath Mariska’s and sending her tumbling back to reality. Tumbling back
in
reality, as she struggled to reorient and found herself steadied by a pair of familiar hands—familiar and big, and a touch her body knew instantly.
Not until she’d blinked and recovered her equilibrium did he step away, leaving an ache where his warmth had been.
“You see,” Maks said, glancing at Katie. “You see why it matters.”
“Yes,” Ian said, and his words sounded a little strangled. “Whatever that was, it sure as hell matters.”
“That sound,” said Heckle—short, bandy-muscled, and not strong enough of Sentinel blood to take the change. He cupped his hands over his mouth to imitate what words couldn’t quite convey.
A hollow huffing sound, a clacking...
“What
was
that?” Jeckle asked, but not as if he expected to get an answer. Like Heckle, he likely saw little of fieldwork, but he was a solid sort, old enough to have a wealth of experience behind him.
Mariska exchanged a glance with Ruger, looking for and finding the wince of awareness that told her he’d recognized it, too. “Bear,” she said finally. “Frightened black bear, with teeth and breath.”
Heckle gave her a skeptical look. “What frightens a bear?”
Ruger said flatly, “Not much,” and Mariska realized she was chafing her upper arms, chilled to the bone in the rising warmth of the late-summer day.
“Great,” Ian said. “Now the bears are spooked.”
“Good,” Katie said, her tone unexpectedly practical. “You should be.”
Ruger made a rumbling noise; Mariska thought it might have been dark humor. Katie shot him a look. “And maybe you’ll all be
careful.
” She shivered, giving the woods a wary look.
“The boundaries are up,” Maks told her. “I’ll know if anyone approaches while we’re gone.” He sent a look Ruger’s way that Mariska interpreted as a warning.
And once I take you in, you’re on your own.
Chapter 4
T
he ATVs moved along in eerie silence, and the old logging road unrolled in uneven waves until it slipped along the side of a more significant ridge. By then they’d hit their first Core-imposed obstacle, the thick layers of determent workings that filled Mariska first with the impulse to turn aside and then a rising anxiety.
But Maks led them steadily forward, and the effect faded. Eventually, Maks took them off the trail to a little hollow, and they huddled the machines together and cut the engines. By the time Mariska dismounted and grabbed her gear bag, Maks had already snagged the waiting camo net and flipped it over the ATVs.
Heckle and Jeckle were the last to get out of his way, fumbling their heavily padded amulet storage bags. Maks gave the net a final flip and it settled into place. Rather than heading down the road, he circled aside to move slantwise along the slope of the mild ridge they’d just passed by, his limp more pronounced with the marginal footing—a cautious approach.
“I thought this bunker was abandoned,” Mariska said, keeping her voice low as a matter of course with the assumption that someone—anyone—might be in these woods close enough to hear.
Maks looked back at her with some surprise, leading them upward. “This is
Core.
”
“He means,” Ruger added, “we don’t take anything for granted.”
Mariska gave herself a little kick.
Of course not.
She simply wasn’t in step with this team yet.
Wouldn’t be, if she didn’t stop second-guessing her own decisions.
Maks took them over the crest of the ridge. “I don’t know if anyone remains,” he told them, a note of apology there. “The scents are strong enough. But I didn’t go in.”
Ian’s voice held some hint of exasperation. “I should hope not. We’ll need to sweep for amulets before we so much as touch the damned door. Tell me you knew that.”
“I knew that,” Maks said, mild in response. Like Nick, Mariska thought—with enough confidence so he had no need to bristle back. But let someone threaten Katie...
She wondered, quite suddenly, what it would be like to have someone at her back so fiercely. Not because she needed it. Just because of what it would feel like.
Maks led them around the jagged stump of a fallen pine and tipped his head at the cut of ground breaking way before them, though there was no structure evident. “There,” he said, and crouched—started to, at least, until the one leg buckled, and he put his knee on the ground with the compensatory grace inherent in all the big cat Sentinels. “The bunker.”
The ground dipped halfway down the ridge and rose even higher on the other side; otherwise, it was unremarkable. Just a rocky little swale covered in stubby, twisted scrub oak and the ancient skeleton of another fallen tree.
But Mariska wasn’t going to be the first one to say there wasn’t anything there. Instead, she moved into position beside Ruger, turning her senses to their surroundings—even if that meant no more than noting the pine siskins
fweet
ing overhead and a singular squirrel rustling around in the pine needles some hundred feet away. The local energies were quiet—no scent of Core amulet corruption, everyone’s personal shields drawn tight. Maks’ was the loudest of those, his shields so much stronger than she ever would have expected, even knowing of his personal strengths.
“Ah,” Ian said suddenly. “I see it now. How the hell did you ever find it?”
“It stinks of Forakkes,” Maks said, and his voice was no longer casual at all. “And others, once close.”
And still Mariska didn’t see it—not until she quit searching the details and instead looked at the little swale as a whole. The slight convex curve of the ground, the occasional hard-edged shadow, immune to the sway of the breeze. This time she couldn’t stop herself.
“How—”
How had he buried this structure, and left so little sign of it on the surrounding environment?
“It’s been there a long time,” Ian said, with no trouble following her line of thought.
“The old logging activity would have been a perfect cover for its construction,” Jeckle observed. “The question is, how do we get
in?
”
“In the rocks across from us,” Maks said. “I didn’t try it.”
“Smart,” Ian said again. He glanced back to Heckle and Jeckle. “Let’s drift on over there, boys. Stay quiet on your feet, and when I say to hang back, then damned well hang back. No one’s asking you to be field Sentinels overnight.”
Maks looked over to Ruger. “Don’t underestimate him,” he said. “
Forakkes.
He is a man without soul.”
“I know what he did,” Ruger said grimly, and Mariska got the impression that they were alluding to something other than the events in the operation field reports—the details of Forakkes’ amulet workings from the time of Core D’oíche, including those that had caused the ultimate if inadvertent demise of the former local Core prince, the
drozhar,
of this area. Forakkes had gone on to create the monstrous javelina-creature Maks had battled at so great a price—and he’d nearly succeeded in his intent to kidnap and enslave Katie Maddox.