Sentinels: Lion Heart

He looked back at her, ready to offer a hand if she needed it. “Following my feet,” he said. “You’ve seen for yourself…they pretty much lead me to trouble. Today, I’m counting on it.”

Chapter 4

Alien and familiar at the same time, the alpine zone of the Peaks never failed to draw Joe’s awe, here on the rarified trails across the towering Agassiz Peak summit to the saddles and dips between the other five Peaks. Arctic tundra, right here in the Arizona desert, with lichens and a threatened groundsel species and even a variety of buttercup; on the gentler slopes of swooping tundra meadows there were enough grasses, sedges and moss to keep his nose twitching—not to mention a shrew or two.

But he wasn’t here for shrews today. He glanced at Lyn; she, too, looked out over the cold rugged landscape, her eyes bright and alert, her ears flicking in tiny, precise motions.

So very Lyn.

The wind ruffled her thick, rich fur, rippling down along the length of a truly amazing tail. What would fur like that feel like beneath a man’s hands?

You’ll never know, boy-o.

They’d followed the trail at first, passing out of Snowbowl turf into the Kachina Peaks Wilderness area, where they definitely didn’t have the necessary permit. And so as soon as they found a grouping of rocks big enough to hide the jacket, Lyn had taken the ocelot, and Joe had turned his face to the sun and let the cougar come out.

From here, the power pushed at him with an inner rumble and a strong directional flow. Unlike warders with their discrete lines and precision knots, Joe saw broad tides and flows, overlays of movement over earth and sky. Tides and flows couldn’t be tied into knots or moved with precision. Might as well try to herd a flash flood. Managing power on this scale took deep concentration, a sense of conviction behind clear vision of what should be…an utter belief in success.

Even if Joe still had that belief in himself, it seemed that brevis regional did not. And looking out over this natural magic of delicate ecosystem backed by a power so deep that every native nation within reach had considered it sacred, Joe felt the resentment of it. I’ve done a good job here.

Probably part of the problem. They probably had no idea of the subtle adjustments he made, the corrections to natural flows gone astray in the face of modern incursions. Even if they’d read his reluctantly submitted reports, they’d never truly comprehend.

He stopped, flicked a whisker, briefly flattened annoyed ears. He had sent that last report, hadn’t he?

Damned paperwork.

The ocelot looked back at him, silent. Had she been more simpatico, they could have communicated clearly in thought. Also not gonna happen, boy-o. Joe padded past her, heading them down into the scoop of the meadow and toward the tree line on the far side—aiming through the Fremont Saddle to pick up the Weatherford Trail. “If they’ve been here,” he’d told her before the change, “they probably came this way.” Pretty much the only way, on foot.

They being the Core, of course. Those for whom he’d already intended to look today. Not because brevis had warned him, not because consul Dane had sent him any message or his adjutant Nick Carter had bothered with a heads-up, but because anywhere things went amiss as profoundly as the recent power surges, it was worth looking for Core influence.

The tree line rose up around them in an amazingly abrupt transition, stunted and gnarled spruce, firs and pines. Something of a rodent nature rustled low in the grass off to the side; Joe ignored the catlike impulse to play toss the squeakie. He threaded through the trees, heading for the trail in an efficient line—leaping onto rock outcrops as though they were mere steps, bounding over water-worn mini-gullies in the fragile soil.

When he struck the trail, he gave it over to Lyn. They’d had no discussion of it, but it made sense. He could track with his nose, his whiskers, his common sense, but the best trackers could sense any faint trace of used power, including the corrupt presence of Core amulets, and he was betting his little ocelot—

Right. Not yours. Not a tame ocelot. Don’t forget it.

But he thought Lyn could do it.

She didn’t hesitate to move out in front of him. She stepped onto the trail and trotted easily along. The unwary might have said she wasn’t paying attention, but Joe saw the swivel of her ears, the alert, graceful posture of her neck…the slight kink of tension near the end of her tail.

Quickly enough, she stopped short, her ears trained forward—presenting him with a perfect view of the yellow spot on the back of each small, perfectly aligned ear. He came up beside her, watching her whiskers quiver. The quiver traveled through her whole body until she gave a quiet, disdainful little sneeze and shook it off with distaste.

Core. His pulse quickened. And if they were indeed on this trail…he knew where they were headed.

She opened her eyes and instantly stiffened to find him so close, so large; she was ten inches shorter than he and nearly a hundred and fifty pounds lighter. She hissed.

He immediately crouched, not in submission but remorse. Hadn’t been thinking, nope. Sorry, he said, an apology she wouldn’t or couldn’t hear. But when she flicked her tail and stepped out to move on down the trail, he didn’t follow. For that scent in this place…he knew where they were headed, and that meant he was no longer just out for a ramble in the high, free air beside a beautiful companion. Not now.

Now, he was predator.

Lyn scowled. It came out as whiskers tipped back, baleful green eyes glowering at him, ears slanted. A powerful look, used to good effect.

Ryan ignored it. He may have tried to say something to her. She had the uneasy sense of it, enough to make her skin twitch. She couldn’t hear him; she didn’t want to hear him.

Even if it meant watching him turn away to lope downhill with directed strides, slipping between the gnarled, sun-scented pines where the shadows turned long from the early-evening sun. She sneezed again—this time from pure vexation.

Trust him, then. She’d know soon enough if he was leading her into folly…and now that she’d been to this place, she could find her way back with or without him.

She didn’t admit to herself that it was a relief to return to his smooth trace, the baritone feel and the textured depth of it. Something she could sink her mental fingers into, but not a sensation that would ever turn boring. It didn’t matter that he was already out of sight, or that her nose could track him as easily as her eyes. She slipped onto his trail without benefit of either, indulging in an all-out sprint, tail undulating behind her, until she caught sight of him flicking through stunted trees. He paused by a conglomeration of jumbled rocks and gnarled miniature trees to let her catch up.

His whiskers quirked in quick greeting. And she realized, startled, that she’d allowed the feel of him to capture her senses. She instantly closed her eyes to filter him out, pushing the Joe Ryan awareness back to a trickle and casting the area for other influences.

Nothing. Just the feel of this place itself, a deep rumbling hum with a touch of discord and the uncomfortable random prickle of physical static. They’d have to go back to the trail and start again; he’d merely led them astray.

But when she opened her eyes, she found him…gone. She gave a startled mrp, full of sudden suspicion, thoughts racing—had he led her into a trap? Abandoned her here, thinking she couldn’t find her way back? Gone off to—

But by then she had opened herself to the feel of him again, and the baritone corduroy came flooding back with such intensity that she knew he was still close.

Claws scratched rock above her; she glanced up to find him comfortably ensconced on the outcrop, one massive paw outstretched, claws exposed to knead stone and a cat grin on his face.

She would have blushed, had she been in the human form—this, then, was the reason she could never work alone. Too vulnerable, when those moments of utter concentration blocked out all else.

The skin over her shoulder twitched—no doubt he’d said something to her. She scrambled lightly up those rocks to stand beside him; he withdrew his outstretched paw and tucked it beneath him, classic cat, eyes squeezing closed.

Good God, was that a purr she heard?

If so, it was brief and barely evident, but he remained settled. In his element. For the moment, not concerned about Lyn, or about what they might find here. Certainly not concerned about what she might expose of his activities here.

Another flash of uncertainty hit her. Either brevis had been wrong all along—she’d been wrong—or he’d simply led her so astray that he already had complete command of the situation.

She’d prove him wrong. And damn fast.

She settled herself on their perch and went deep again; she wouldn’t let it be said that she’d stinted the search. She filtered him out—harder this time, with his contentment now coloring his trace—and she hunted. The land gave her a trickle of something fresh and bright and near, and at the same time nudged her with the distant unrest of a developing storm cell. And there, at the edges…

Something bitter. Something corrupt. The faint traces of power ripped from its living vessel and stored away, as decayed as any corpse but still entrapped.

Amulets.

Her eyes popped open. She found Ryan watching her with such interest in those predator’s dusky hazel eyes that she felt a quick, ephemeral thrill of fear—it ran down her spine and just like that, puffed out the considerable length of her tail.

He blinked, drew back. Looked, if it was possible, embarrassed. He sat, turning away to look out over the land. For the first time she realized that on the other side of their approach, the rocks tumbled away in a V shape. They sat at the apex, and directly below them, from within the steep cleft of stone and moss, a seep of water eased out to fill the most modest of pools near the base of the structure.

Suddenly she was so very thirsty. And she thought, from the sly flick of his ear and the way he didn’t quite look at her, that he might be laughing again—that she’d been so caught up in the hunt she hadn’t yet realized that he’d brought them to water.

The birds alone should have alerted her, flitting so actively from twisted evergreen branch to lichencovered rock, or the light scent of the tiny white flowers so thickly scattered along the gentle slope below. She gave another inward blush, another acknowledgment of how very focused she became when on the trail of something. They should have sent me with a partner.

But they hadn’t wanted Ryan to feel threatened enough to act rashly. They’d wanted him just as he was—aware of Lyn but underestimating her. If that meant she needed to pay a little more attention…

Well, then, she’d do it. She’d had her warning.

And now she scrambled to catch up, because Ryan had moved ahead, descending careful step by step on the nearly vertical clifflet. Here, Lyn found herself at an advantage, light and swift; she reached the spring before him, lapping neatly from its fresh, cold water, then moving aside so Ryan could join her—noisier, not quite so tidy.

Men.

That the thought held humor surprised her, and she was still somewhat bemused as she padded out beside him, heading toward another, much lower rock formation. Except this time he gave her a little sideways glance, and it was but an instant later that the first wafting stench of it hit her.

She stopped short. Her eyes widened; she sneezed. Corruption filled her nose, her sinuses, her inner self. It brushed against her soul with Brillo-pad harshness; she slammed her defenses shut. Another sneeze and she dropped to rub her paws over her face, and that’s how the change caught her; she came to the human curled up over her knees with her hands over her face.

Dammit. Another weakness, and one of her worst. She hadn’t intended to change, but when the trace came on that strong…it didn’t matter whether she was human or ocelot, she found herself jarred into whatever she wasn’t.

But Joe changed right beside her, already crouching down to put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

She sneezed, one more mortifying time, her face still buried in her hands. “I’m fine,” she said, her words muffled even to her own ears. Even now, the trace was strong—but she’d adjust. She’d push it back until she could filter out the details, just as she had pushed back the feel of Joe Ryan.

Except now, with the corruption so strong around them, she gave in to sudden impulse—she let his trace wash over her, as textured and deep as she remembered. She took it into herself, absorbing it like a decadent balm, and then took a breath, clearing her thoughts, finding her own inner note of centered calm…pulled that centered space around her as if it were a cloak.

Ryan made a strangled noise. His hand clenched down on her shoulder—until he snatched it back to himself, sucking in a quick breath. Lyn looked up from her centered, peaceful place to discover him staring at her, darkened eyes wide and alarmed and something she couldn’t read, his withdrawn hand clenched and…

Yes. Trembling.

Chapter 5

Joe took another deep breath. What the hell had she done? That centering thing of hers, but something else, too—something that had grabbed him and folded him in and damn well caressed him from the inside out, touching nerves he hadn’t even known he’d had.

And she clearly didn’t have a clue.

At least, not to judge from those big, brown eyes aimed his way, puzzled and a little concerned—but more suspicious than not. So Joe took one last deep breath and counted himself glad for clothes, and he turned himself brusque and matter-of-fact. He tightened all those feelings down into his clenched fist and allowed himself that small crutch while the rest of him went on. “We can’t stay this way long,” he said, certain the cold wind already bit into her as it did into him. He stood, held out a hand and pulled her to her feet.

She tucked a strand of wavy hair behind her ear and gestured at the area. “How did you know?”

He shrugged. “I guessed.” He pointed back at the little spring. “Believe it or not, that one’s not on any maps—none of the trails go anywhere near it. I call it the top of the world. It’s a place where…” He hesitated, narrowed his eyes slightly—and decided maybe not. Not when she’d already decided he had a thing for power. So instead he asked, “What’s it like? The traces? What do they feel like?”

She looked taken aback, as she well might. It was a personal question, in its way. Probably too personal, and probably she wouldn’t answer, but—

“It depends,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself—cold at that. Her eyes still watered slightly from her sneezing and she hadn’t quite recaptured all her hair; a wavy tendril from her temple fluttered in the breeze. Reluctantly, she added, “They come as smells, mainly, but also as…inner sensations. The sneezing…the amulets are particularly pungent, in all ways. Corrupt. Like sticking your nose into a liquefying corpse.”

He recoiled. “Tell me I don’t do that to you,” he said, the words out of his mouth before he thought them through.

She reacted much the same. “God, no,” she said. “You’re—” and then she caught herself. “No, not at all. Don’t worry about it.”

All right. Yeah. He changed directions again, back to where he’d been. “What I feel,” he said, “is too big to fit inside me. Like being inside a slow wind that goes right through your skin. Sometimes it gets gusty and fussy, but unless someone’s messing with it—” like lately “—it’s pretty steady. Feels different, depending on the source. It’s…”

And there he ran out of words, for how could he explain the thrill of riding power, of having it fill him and pass on through, leaving the taste of wherever it had come from and where it had been along the way? Like jumping off a high cliff and soaring on thermals and bounding downhill and flinging himself wide open to all the possibilities of what might be, all at the same time—

Mistake, boy-o. She’d seen something in his expression…something, perhaps, of the words he hadn’t said. Her eyes narrowed. And so, totally lame, he pointed to the rock formation over the spring. “It’s a natural channel…easy to monitor the area from here.”

“Right there,” she said flatly, and then repeated words that somehow now seemed childish. “At the top of the world.”

He suddenly felt exposed, scraped raw right down into a silly, insignificant core. Hardest thing he’d done in a long time, meeting her gaze just then. But he did it, and he said, “Yes.” And he gritted his teeth together a moment or two, clenching jaw muscles he hadn’t had occasion to use in such a fashion since the days of pain and loss—his sister, his partner, his life—and then managed to add more casually, “Once you caught trace on the Weatherford Trail, I figured our Core friends had headed this way. They just didn’t know the straightest route to get here. They probably circled in on it…had some kind of detection device.”

“Fabron Gausto,” she murmured, and shivered, rubbing her upper arms. Maybe the cold, maybe the thought of the Core’s local sept prince.

And then he realized she wasn’t just referring to the influence of the local Core when she named the man. She meant Fabron Gausto.

She meant here.

Right then she looked at him, and said, “He’s been here, all right,” a pronouncement filled with both satisfaction and trepidation.

“Hold on,” he said, and his temper suddenly felt hot within him, a rare thing for a man who’d become so resigned to so very much. “You expected to find him? You knew that son of a bitch Core prince would be here? And no one’s told me? Warned me? Done so much as dropped sly damned knowing hints?”

Her hands stilled on her arms; she looked back at him, nonplussed. “Of course we—” she started, and stopped to frown. “Didn’t you—?” And then gave a giant shiver and hugged herself anew.

The cold wind cut just as sharply through Joe’s shirt, tugging at his hair, gusting away the last remnants of the startling sensations she’d roused. He badly needed to take the cougar, and even more badly, she needed to take back the ocelot. To bask in the sharp intensity of the high altitude sun, buffered from the wind by thick coats.

But not until she explained why brevis regional, the Southwest office to which he reported, on which he depended for updates on the millennia-long clash between the Atrum Core and the Sentinels, had failed to mention their intel on Gausto’s location.

For although the simmering conflict between the Core and the Sentinels rarely exploded even on the most local of levels, Fabron Gausto had recently changed all that. A regional septs drozhar going against his own Continental septs prince, his own advisors, and the wisdom of every generation since the two organizations were both founded from the same family—by two brothers with the same Gaul mother, but fathers from two different nations—Gausto had broken rules that hadn’t been challenged for hundreds of years.

Early enough, the Druidic-born brother and the Roman-born brother had realized that whatever their clashes, their survival lay in their clandestine nature. Never mind that the Roman-born brother, finding himself completely without the inborn ability to manipulate earthly powers—including his Druidic brother’s amazing faculty for taking the form of a wild boar—turned early to darker, cruder options, justifying his actions as necessary to police any unsavory act his brother might commit. And never mind that the Druidic brother quickly set about refining his abilities, and set upon his descendants the obligation to continue his work. Vigilia, the Sentinels had been called back then—and, wisely keeping the strong, prepotent nature of their lineage to themselves, they thrived and grew and expanded…they spread across the continents, learning, growing…becoming sentinels of the earth.

The Atrum Core had taken their name from the Vigilia…Dark to the Core, they’d been called, and then Dark Core for short. It wasn’t supposed to be a compliment. No one ever expected them to take the name for their own. And while the Core ran itself on stolen power, half monarchy and half dictatorship, broken down into regional septs, the Sentinels had a more developed structure—more democratic.

Or so they liked to say. And so Joe had used to believe.

He’d given her too much time. She said, “You were told. Just as you were specifically asked to deliver your most recent report—the one that’s so late—and never did. That looked really good for you, by the way.”

“I—what?” Now it was his turn to stand and stare, until the next gust of wind hit him and he turned his back to it; he didn’t miss the way she angled around to use him as a wind break. Too cold, too high, too remote, with rain building up again in a little western thunderhead that might or might not dump on the mountain before it dissipated into evening darkness. No, humans didn’t belong up here. “Hell, it’s late…it’s always late. What’s the big deal?”

Dean used to rag him about that…his casual disrespect for paperwork. “You’re gonna get nailed, boy-o,” he’d said, more than once dropping forms on Joe’s desk or leaving sticky notes on his monitor. And with Dean around, the paperwork had, somehow, always gotten done on time.

Not so much since Dean’s death—nor since Joe had been both officially cleared of and unofficially convicted of causing it.

Lyn Maines snorted; it turned into half a sneeze, left her eyes watering as she said, “The big deal is that Nick requested it—he needed it to assess this situation. When he didn’t get it, all we could do was guess what’s been happening up here.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maybe you’ve gone dark…maybe not. But letting down brevis because you just don’t care enough to do your job—?”

Joe recoiled as if she’d hit him. Hell, she had hit him. He’d never not cared, he’d never given this job—this life—less than everything he had. Being a little slow with the reports was one thing…ignoring a direct request for information, something else entirely. Lives depended on fulfilling such requests. “I never—” he said.

But suddenly it had the same old familiar feel to it. Not me. I didn’t do it. There’s been a mistake. And so he turned from her, quite abruptly taking the cougar—a quick, hard transition that found him already bounding back up to the top of the spring upon completion—and this time, if she’d had anything left to say, he was the one who wasn’t listening.

Lyn thought she’d never get warm again.

She took another sip of coffee from the simple machine in Joe Ryan’s barely detached casita—nothing like the home-ground beans from his own kitchen, just your basic Mr. Coffee and grounds from a can. Still, she was grateful for it, even with the bitter aftertaste going down.

Rather like her entire day. Definite bitter aftertaste there.

She hadn’t expected to end up here, in this little studio structure so common to Southwest homes—open kitchenette, full bath and a daybed. He’d offered it to her when they’d emerged from the Snowbowl woods at his car, and she couldn’t decide if he was trying to prove he had nothing to hide or if he just didn’t care. His words told her nothing; his eyes held dark secrets and a bruised soul.

Someone else might think it a sign of his innocence, that hurt. She found it less than convincing. The most dangerous were those whose hearts went dark because they felt justified…felt the world owed them something.