::I
never
—:: she snapped at him, but stopped short. She hadn’t; she never would have. What was so complicated about it all? She’d wanted to meet him; she’d hoped for his interest. She’d hoped for everything they’d had together. It had nothing to do with position on this team.
Nothing.
Except she hadn’t told him about it.
::Yeah, you played him,:: Ian said, bent to his work as if they weren’t having a conversation at all. ::Now give the big guy space, okay?::
She sent him a reluctant assent. Give Ruger some space, okay. Or as much as she could, considering she was supposed to watch his back when he was distracted by work.
She had to admit he hadn’t been distracted by work out on the hillside when he’d taken on the Core minion. He’d spotted the man first, even though he’d been actively probing the installation—even though he’d clearly struggled for doing so.
None of those thoughts made the hurt go away. If anything, it came closer to the surface, making her eyes swim—making her think about how he’d been with her the night before. How could he have been so...
involved...
so fiercely tender...and now turn on her so strongly?
Because, little bear, he
was
so very involved. So very tender.
Because he’d let himself care, just that fast.
She hated it when her little voice was right. Even if some part of her was just as pleased by it. Even if that part of her wanted
more.
Right. Give him space.
She slanted a glance his way, hesitating outside the office area. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was tagging those animals who needed immediate mercy euthanasia. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and entered the office area.
Cr-aack!
The packed dirt floor lay hard beneath her back; the solar tube circles danced brightly overhead. Ruger’s voice echoed strangely in her ears. “Mari! Don’t move!” And Ian’s voice joined it, tangling their words together. “Amulet—don’t move—be okay—
Mari...
”
The next thing she knew, someone’s pack propped her up; a vile-tasting drink trickled down her throat without her permission, and Mariska choked and coughed and spat it out with vehemence.
“She’s awake!” Heckle called, although Mariska barely dared to squint her eyes open.
“I thought so,” Ian said—not from anywhere nearby, and deep in concentration. “I’m going to say I called it—a sentry working, triggered when she passed the threshold.” His voice grew slightly louder. “Mariska, dear, when did you hear any of us clear that area?”
Oh, hell.
“Never mind,” Ian continued. “Trick question. We didn’t.”
“It’s okay,” Heckle said, leaning in closer—a big fuzzy face in her vision. “You just got a bad shock.”
“Just,”
she managed, her tongue thick.
He shrugged. “Relative to what it could have been. Now drink the rest of this. It’s horrible, but it’s one of Ruger’s—and that means it’ll help.”
“Ruger,” she said, somewhat stupidly.
“Drink,” Heckle said, tipping the sports bottle to her mouth and filling her mouth so it was either swallow or spit. She chose swallow, but wasn’t convinced she’d do it again. He looked over her head. “Did you find anything else here?”
Ian made a noncommittal noise in his chest, and Heckle leaned in, a confidential posture with his voice low. “That means they’ve been tricky.”
“There’s something here to protect,” Mariska said.
“Yeah.” Heckle wrapped her hand around the sports bottle. “Drink this. Or I’ll get into trouble.” Even as she thought,
No, I will not,
he leaned even closer and muttered, “He’s right
here.
”
Great. Mariska drank a few more swallows that were thick and gritty and tasted like dirt. Or worms. Or both. But with each swallow, she felt the warmth spread through her numb body, bringing it back awake. A familiar warmth, a familiar trickle of energy.
She lifted her head, still squinting slightly in the too-bright light, and found Ruger not far away. He sat with his back to the wood plank divider of the amulet station, his arm resting over one upraised knee and a dazed expression looking back at her, his mouth not looking quite right. She squinted a little harder and then was sure of it—the glint of bright red smeared over his upper lip and dribbled over a well-formed mouth to drip off his chin.
Her eyes must have widened. He blinked, swiped a hand over his chin, and swore resoundingly as he caught sight of his smeared fingers. A minute of rummaging, and he pulled the bandanna from his back pocket to mop up his face.
Familiar, that bandanna. He’d already pulled it once, as they stood outside this installation. How convenient that it was already a
red
bandanna. “Ruger, what’s going on?”
He pushed himself to his feet, stuffing the cloth away and gesturing at the bottle in her hand. “Watch you don’t spill that stuff. There’s a limited supply.”
“I’m fine now, thanks,” she said sharply, as he turned his back on her to head for the animals.
He laughed, short and humorless. “Little bear,” he said, “I know exactly how you are. Just because I can’t
heal
doesn’t mean I can’t feel it.”
It took a moment for the realization to hit, and then she was up on her knees, staring after him—staring out to the end of the installation where the crates and cages sat. “You mean—”
“Every one of them,” he said.
Oh, HELL.
“Hey,” Ian said, stepping back from his amulet and workings search to stare at the mundane matters of routers and Ethernet cabling. “These computers are networked out to somewhere.”
“Touch those machines and I’m not going to fix you when Nick finds out,” Ruger said without heat.
“Give me some credit,” Ian said. “But I’m sure as hell going to pull the cable. If Forakkes wants access to this setup, he isn’t going to get it.”
Mariska scrambled to her feet, leaving the amulet team inspecting the computer area. She took one last swig of the gritty brew, pushed the spout closed and followed Ruger back to the animals.
“You might as well finish it,” Ruger said, not looking away from the cages to meet her eyes. “It doesn’t keep once it’s mixed.”
“But it’s—” she started, then pulled back on the words.
He looked at her again for the first time since she’d woken—directly at her, his light brown eyes disconcertingly perceptive. “Right,” he said. “It’s from before, when I could add something to the value of the herbs and restoratives.”
She held it out to him, feeling a stubborn mood settle in. It was better than humiliation. “Do you need some, then?”
Perceptiveness darkened to a glare—but then he looked away, schooling himself back to something approximating neutral. “Healer, heal thyself? Sorry, it’s been tried. In theory it’s doable, but when you’re feeling it from both sides, it gets a little dicey.” He shrugged, a restless gesture. “That’s assuming the healer can tap that energy in the first place, which I can’t.”
“But this is already made up. And...you didn’t look well. You were
bleeding.
” She still held the bottle out; she could hold it out all day if she had to.
He took it with an abrupt snag, caught the spout with his teeth to open it, and tossed back the contents as easily as he’d tossed back the whisky they’d shared. When he returned it, it was empty.
“There,” she said, somewhat defiantly. “Not so hard.”
He made a noise in his chest. “Persistent, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “That should have been obvious from the start.”
He made another sound she couldn’t decipher—and then lifted his head to eye the tunnel entrance. Embarrassed warmth washed across Mariska’s cheeks.
She
was the one who should have been the most attentive to noises and clues and signs of intrusion. By the time she located Sandy at the entrance, Ruger had already relaxed and turned away.
Maybe he’d been right all along. He was a healer, but he was also a warrior—and he had spent years in active fieldwork. While Mariska had years working personal bodyguard to those from the mundane world—sometimes clandestinely, at that.
Not the same at all. No matter how she wanted it to be.
* * *
“Outer wards are set,” Sandy announced, coming into the structure to eye the cages. “What the hell is this little freak show?”
“You know what we know,” Harrison said from inside the office. Ruger stepped back from his work, waiting to see if he needed to wait on interior wards. He was in enough trouble with his healer mojo—he didn’t need to work through additional ward-setting interference. Harrison poked his head out to gesture vaguely at the areas they’d cleared. “The amulet station, the animals, and this area are good to go, but we haven’t checked the far end yet.”
“No problem.” Sandy rocked back on her heels, her hands clasped behind her back. “I can wait right here. The last thing we need is some unwitting clash of new wards with old workings.”
Fine. Good. Ruger rubbed the flat of his hand across his cheek, still feeling the bare strangeness of it, and turned back to the animals.
He’d already started assessing them—pulling out those in such irreversible misery that they needed immediate release. Even through the faint ringing in his ears and the lingering thump of exaggerated pulse in his head—his reward for the stupid, instinctive attempt to pour a healing into Mariska—he had no trouble discerning which of the caged creatures before them still lived only because it hadn’t yet figured out how to die.
If he’d had his skills, he could have shown them the way. Not an active euthanasia so much as opening a door to offer the choice. Quiet...peaceful.
But he didn’t. And he didn’t have a C02 chamber, and even if he had the necessary drugs, he had no idea where to find a vein on these twisted pieces of nature.
Nor did he realize Mariska had left his side—until she returned, hefting a—
He gave it a double take.
Hatchet.
“You shouldn’t have to do this,” she said simply, tossing aside the gear pack from which the hatchet had come.
He couldn’t quite look away from them—less
Island of Doctor Moreau
and more
Frankenstein.
“I can’t heal them,” he said. “So I owe it to them—”
“You couldn’t heal them no matter what,” she said. “Some things can’t be done. And we
all
owe it to them to fix what’s been done here.”
“I should...” He let his words trail off, wondering when he’d lost his matter-of-fact grasp on the obvious even as he rued the rest of the obvious: even though she was right, he still should have been able to offer them some relief, some surcease from the misery their existence had—
“Stop that,” she said, and hit him—a short, sharp backhand rap of her knuckles across his ribs. “Your nose.” She tugged the bandanna from his pocket and pushed it into his hand—and then she crouched beside the first cage, removed the water-breathing squirrel with a firm but gentle hand, and placed it against the dirt. “I am so sorry,” she told it. “This isn’t the least bit fair.” And with a quick, assertive stroke, she ended its suffering.
Ruger must have made some sound; she looked over her shoulder and told him, “Sandy might have some preservation warding we can use until we can deal with disposal. Go ask her, and leave me to this.”
Astonishment warred with guilt. This wasn’t a job he could rationalize away...definitely not something he could just leave in someone else’s hands simply because he no longer had the means to do it as he otherwise might.
“
Stop
it,” she said again. “Don’t you get it? I’m damned well going to do what I came here to do, even if it means I’m protecting you from
yourself!
”
He turned away before she could reach for the next cage. “I’ll be outside,” he told Ian on his way past. “Come get me if you need me.”
* * *
The team wouldn’t be long; Ruger knew that much. Just long enough for him to stretch into his bear. He should have been thinking about what they’d seen inside; he should have been thinking about the best way he could contribute, or pondering Forakkes’ intent—or whether the man had any intent at all, or was simply completely and entirely out of control. He should have—
He was beginning to hate the word
should,
that was what.
So he did none of those things. He sat beside the shirt he’d removed rather than destroy because it wouldn’t change with him thanks to its plastic buttons, and he groomed an itchy spot between his massive toes, and he sifted back through impressions and sensation.
Mariska.
Warm and strong and incredibly responsive, so full of life it practically burst out of her and right through him, so full of honesty that she hadn’t shied from what they’d found together the night before.
Mariska.
A mere twelve hours later, and already she had the power to wrench his emotions with her casual betrayal. She’d gotten what she wanted, all right. In all respects.
Warm brown skin and flashing eyes and the heady scent of arousal, soft in all the right places and muscled in all the right places and the sweetest damned cry of release—
Ruger grumbled a low groaning growl and stood, shaking himself off with a massive roll of fur and muscle—pushing away the pure physical yearning.
Honesty and betrayal combined...it was a dangerous, dangerous combination.
One he wanted more of...and one he didn’t dare.
Chapter 7
M
ariska stood on the crest, looking back down on the installation with the rest of the team—thinking of what they’d found there, what had happened there, the faint ache of her head in the wake of the amulet slap...Ruger’s need for some space from it all.
From me.
“Wards are good,” Sandy said, her gaze veiled as she slipped into ward view to double-check their work. “Just in case this place isn’t as abandoned as we thought it was.”
“
Some
one’s been feeding the animals,” Mariska reminded her, more absently than she should have—looking over to the opposite hill, where flashing blue-white energies marked the moment of Ruger’s transition from the bear to the human as he came to join them. “It might not be active, but it’s not abandoned.”