Sentinels: Jaguar Night Read online

“Yeah?” Dolan’s voice slid down to a true growl. “Then it’s working. Finding that thing is exactly what I intend to do. As soon as possible.”

  “To lead them straight to it?” Carter asked coldly. “No need to ask how you are, I see. Classic Treviño.”

  “Classic consul,” Dolan shot back at him. “Leaving a Treviño hanging out in the field alone.”

  Carter didn’t respond directly. He noted, “The consul had good reason to believe you were back on your feet. As it happens, we also caught a surge in ward view from that area. I don’t suppose I need to tell you what it was—or that we can’t leave someone of that power out in the cold.”

  Dolan paced the room—strong, angry strides that took him from one side to the other with brutal efficiency. “You stay away from her, dammit. She wants nothing to do with brevis!”

  “That’s not an option,” Carter told him. “The team will be there soon, Dolan. Try to keep things quiet until then.”

  “For the consul’s convenience?” Dolan laughed, short and hard. “Tell him to—”

  Carter interrupted, his voice gone just as hard. “Don’t go there,” he warned. “No one here is in a mood to humor you.”

  “Then come out and stop me,” Dolan said, and hung up.

  “Coffee!” Meghan called into the back end of the house, putting the carafe back onto its heating plate as she snagged her brimming mug. Hot and black and as strong as possible—but not so strong that she wanted to face Dolan at the moment. Not after a phone call that went as badly as what she’d just heard.

  Or not heard, really. But the waves of anger coming from Dolan were loud enough. She didn’t fear him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use a little space. She left the house, letting the screen door squeak and slam so there’d be no mistake about it, and she hitched one hip up to sit on the porch rail and survey the damage from the night before.

  She hadn’t realized that hard caliche ground could scorch. Or that the flame devil had come quite so close to the house. And even from here, the sheep shed was a complete loss. She caught a flicker of movement, found Jenny’s dog trotting along the pipe corral runs adjacent to the barn, and soon enough caught sight of Jenny and Anica in one of the runs, discussing the horse between them. Jenny moved with a limp, but not a big one. Anica glanced over to the house and Meghan lifted her hand in a wave, but Anica’s nod of response was perfunctory, even at this distance.

  Anica would be more angered by the fact that Meghan had been keeping secrets than the details of those secrets; she’d hold on to that anger. Something I should have kept in mind this past week.

  A whole week since Dolan had come into her life. From their first encounter to this morning’s most recent, much more intimate encounter…it felt as though it had been a lifetime.

  She knew for certain that her life would never be the same. Even now she felt the trickle of his anger, the faint pain of abused feet…even his thankfulness for the coffee he was pouring. And even now, she felt the latent presence of the power newly available to her. The earth’s power, available at a volume she’d never even considered…right here, right now. If she reached for it.

  And she was tempted…but she also instinctively felt the wrongness of such a thing, to reach for power for which she had no purpose.

  She stretched again. The last twenty-four hours had used her hard, even though she’d considered herself strong with her active ranch lifestyle. And Dolan…he was still recovering from his near-death experience, as much as he seemed to take himself for granted at this point.

  She closed her eyes, tipping her head back ever so slightly to listen more closely to him—to see if he was as well as he pretended to be. The feel of him instantly broadened, giving her glimpses of his lingering pain, of muscles that still sometimes unexpectedly failed him. And there was something else, too—something new, a strange tingle in the periphery of her perception. Not alarming…not particularly meaningful at all. She lingered there a moment, and then moved away from it. One more new thing in her life that didn’t quite yet make sense.

  Like Dolan himself. Meghan wasn’t sure yet whether she regretted what had happened—the fierce lovemaking, the strength of what had happened so suddenly between them.

  She did know there was no walking away.

  Dolan emerged from the kitchen, wearing a damp shirt not yet buttoned, his feet clad where he might otherwise have gone barefoot. She knew why. She said, “Things okay?”

  A scowl lingered behind his eyes, in the set of his jaw. “Just delays,” he said. He took a sip of the coffee, looked at her as though he might say something else and then didn’t. “How about out here?”

  “I need to go check on them.” She nodded at the barn. Her two friends had removed the horse from the run-out and now walked it out, studying its movement. Even from here, Meghan could see the limp. “After that, can we get started on repairing the wards? I want this place safe from those people.”

  He caught her gaze, held it. “Repairing the wards won’t necessarily do that. They want that manuscript, and they know your mother is the last to have seen it.”

  “Because you led them here.” She flattened the words, trying to squeeze away any blame. It didn’t work.

  “Probably,” he said, just as flatly. “But I’m not sure brevis is secure any longer, and neither is the adjutant—that’s one reason I didn’t wait for the team. Besides, they always suspected your mother had last possession of the book. She and Jared would still be alive if that weren’t true.”

  Meghan lifted her chin. “My mother was the best at warding and hiding. The Sentinels never should have wasted her as they did. Only a coyote, you know.”

  “She wasn’t only anything,” he said shortly. “She laid enough trails to convince everyone that she’d passed the manuscript off to some unsuspecting mule. Both the Sentinels and the Core gave up on this area long ago.”

  “Then what changed?” Why come back again now?

  “Time,” he told her. “Our techniques. We’ve refined them.” He took another sip of the coffee, obviously appreciative. Meghan enjoyed watching him enjoy it, enjoyed the play of the breeze in his open shirt and the glimpses of skin it showed her. Scars, too, in this bright daylight—smooth, tight scars, well healed but significant enough to have hurt like hell. Thin, precise lines that didn’t make any sense to her.

  She might well have asked had he not stiffened, his attention leaving the conversation to center on the woods past the charred sheep pen, the little spit of flatland that curved around the rising mountain. That was warning enough; that he set his coffee on the porch rail was even more so. Meghan put her own mug aside, sliding off the porch rail to her feet.

  But Dolan relaxed slightly before Meghan had even heard what got his attention, and when he turned to her it was with a grin. It startled her, that grin—genuine, carefree and for the moment, injecting lightheartedness into what had become a persistently grim situation. It was then she heard the cadence of hoofbeats.

  Luka.

  She barely caught her mug as it slipped on the porch rail, and then quickly set it at her feet, heading for the steps as Luka cantered into view through the woods, shying wildly at the charred sheep pen and kicking out at it on the way past. Right into the yard, as Jenny’s dog caught sight and came charging up, barking a scolding at the wrongness of a loose horse.

  And what would you have done with a flame devil?

  Died, that’s what.

  But the quick grim thought didn’t keep her from grinning like a fool at Luka’s return, not even though his entire body spoke of his alarm—tense muscles, neck flung high, nose tipped to the sky, eyes rolling and ears canted back. His sleek grayed coat was marred with stains and one scrape along his shoulder, hair peeled away and skin raw, and never had Meghan understood more than at that moment: this was a creature bred for war. His hooves thundered against the ground, and at that moment she believed what Luka had always believed—that whatever stood in front of him, be it fence or h
ouse or mountain, it would damned well get out of his way.

  But Dolan saw it, too, and lost his grin; he moved to step in front of her, not knowing—how could he know?—and Meghan reacted both out loud and silently, No! and “No!” making a double hit against Dolan, slowing him enough so she could push him back onto the porch. And although Dolan, too, was also clearly the sort who believed men and mountains would move before him, he allowed it—and she followed up quickly. “Not now. He killed a man, once. He was being beaten, but it’s part of him now.” Once sure he had heard her, she looked over to Luka—frozen in place, trembling, waiting for something to send him off or calm him down. Asking for her help, with the courage it took to overcome the stench of death and the flame devil and his wild night just to stand there at all.

  Hands low but a little open, obvious enough so they wouldn’t startle him if she reached out, she stepped off the porch.

  “What’re you—” But Dolan watched the horse, too, and stopped himself—both his words and his attempt to stop her—as Luka’s head raised even higher, his front feet coming off the ground in warning. He hovered there a moment, instinctively imitating the levade he’d never been taught—until Dolan stepped back. “I damned well hope you know what you’re doing.” Hard words…but there was worry behind them.

  “I damned well do,” Meghan said between her teeth, a soothing singsong tone. “Luka,” she said, crooning the name and ignoring the concern that beat against her back. “Brave boy. You’re safe now.”

  Convince me, he seemed to say—to plead for it, in fact. Meghan made it okay in the only way she knew how…by making it perfectly normal. By walking right up to him and putting her hand on his shoulder—stroking it until he suddenly bobbed his head down, until his ears flicked at her once before pricking forward toward Dolan. For Luka, there was only one thing that truly made things right…and she gave him that, too, grabbing his mane and swinging up to his back—a little bit of jump, a little bit of twist, a lot of trusting that her legs would wrap around more than air.

  He lifted up to meet her, another half rear, and came down poised to run.

  “God, Meghan, what if he—”

  “Then I’m gonna get dumped on my ass,” she said, stroking Luka’s neck. “Won’t be the first time, will it, Luka? And then you’ll come back and ask me what the hell I’m doing on the ground when I so clearly belong on your back.”

  “He killed a man,” Dolan repeated, lifting a brow at her, waiting for confirmation.

  She nodded, keeping her eye on the board-stiff muscles of Luka’s neck beneath the veil of his mane. They were the key, those muscles; they told her Luka’s mood exactly. “The man deserved it, of course. But that still makes Luka a killer…it took a lot to earn his trust. Or did you think our work here was all fluff and light? In come the cute animals, and Anica fixes them. Not like me, big clumsy wannabe with herbs, but subtly.”

  Dolan snorted—though he kept it low for Luka’s sake. “There’s nothing subtle about that woman.”

  “And there’s Jenny—always knows just what’s behind their behaviors. Half the time their history’s wrong, so she never pays attention to it. Never needs to. By the time the public sees our rehabs, between the two of them, no one ever knows how bad it ever was. They never really understand what we start with.”

  “That’s their mistake.” Dolan had taken on the cadence of her words—the calm, for Luka. “As it happens, I think your work here might be more important than even you know.” And though his concern lingered, it came with something else—something new. Pride. Right there between them, a warm breeze across the yard, caressing her. Lifting her, and somehow filling her.

  And Luka’s neck abruptly relaxed, his ears pricking into that emotional breeze. He lowered his head, arching his neck coyly as he stretched toward Dolan, lips twitching in invitation. He couldn’t quite reach, so he took a step, and then another, and stuck his head in over the porch rail so Dolan couldn’t help but lift a hand to rest just behind Luka’s ears, gently massaging his poll.

  “Well, huh,” Meghan said. “That’s one miracle down. Should we go work on the wards?”

  Chapter 14

  Before they tackled the wounded wards, Meghan hesitated by the barn to speak with her friends. An awkward moment, and one that clearly made her miserable. They weren’t ready, yet, to let go of their hurt and confusion.

  “Give them time,” Dolan told her, as hypocritical as he could possibly be…If anyone knew that time didn’t always heal, he did. But he kept such feelings away from her, pressed his hand to the small of her back in a consoling gesture and took them out to walk the ward lines.

  She turned out to be her mother’s daughter, oh, hell, yes. Once he took her to ward view again, her sure touch made quick work of things. She had little finesse—how could she?—but it was there. It was waiting. And meanwhile he showed her how to smooth the damaged spots, and how to weave the wards anew as they walked the ranch in two different worlds.

  “It’s much easier this way,” she admitted to him once, although she still struggled with knowing when to reach for outside power—still had a tendency to use herself up. “Looking at it all from here.”

  He couldn’t hide his surprise. “No one does this work outside of ward view.”

  Her expression closed, both inwardly and outwardly. “Only those of us who were deemed too insignificant to teach.”

  “Their mistake.” But—

  She dropped out of ward view to put her hands on her hips and stare at him in demand. “This is all hard enough without knowing you’re not saying things.”

  Yeah. So much for his ability to keep things from her. “They might try to rectify that situation.”

  Her laugh was bitter. “Screw them. I have a life, and I made it without their help. They aren’t getting a piece of me.”

  “Later. Don’t let it distract you.”

  She gave him an annoyed glance, but returned to the matter at hand—the worst of the damage from the night before, where a gaping, wounded hole tore through all the layers of the old wards Margery Lawrence had once laid around this ranch. From the outside, it was invisible—just another spot along the hillside, very near to the trail where Luka had not so long ago brought Dolan home. On the inside…

  Meghan eyed it with trepidation. “I don’t think I can…Look, I know I have to learn this stuff, but maybe you should start this one. Let me follow your lead.”

  He wanted to urge her to try…but he saw, then, that she was tired. And he brought to mind her headlong rush into the darkness to reach him at the old homestead, and her willingness to find him again in the woods below the house, and her courage in the face of Luka’s wild ire.

  This was not a woman who backed lightly away from challenges.

  So he stepped in. He drew from the earth and he started the tracing, easily visualizing the pattern in his mind, the perfect tangle of symmetrical lines, the particular reflection of the earth’s needs in this particular spot—

  And suddenly he was on his back, coughing in big whooping gasps with darkness sparkling in every layer of vision he had, and Meghan kneeling by his side. Not that he could see her, but her hands were demanding on his shoulders, on his chest, cupping the sides of his face. Small but sturdy, completely capable hands. “Dolan,” she said, pushing his hair out of his eyes, touching his neck. “Dolan, dammit—”

  “I’m here,” he said, a strangled-sounding response; he coughed on it. “Hell, there goes my air of mysterious infallibility.”

  She released a gust of air and sat back on her heels. “Dammit,” she said again, but without much in the way of vehemence. In fact, she sounded tired and small.

  He struggled up to his elbows. “Your land isn’t interested in my attention,” he said, still coughing on words. “It’s woken up right along with you…and it’s damned opinionated at that.”

  He expected her to make a face, or turn away from him, or create a derisive noise. Instead—

  “Ok
ay,” she said, and damned if he didn’t think she was on the edge of tears.

  “Hey—” Alarm drove him fully upright, fast enough so he almost knocked heads with her. “You weren’t—”

  “Hurt?” She shook her head—but her eyes were suspiciously bright. “I just…this is all happening so fast. All these things, suddenly in my life. You. How can I feel this way about you after a week? What just happened to me inside when the land knocked you down…how does anyone deal with that?” She gestured helplessly between them, and let her words trail away.

  He didn’t need them. He knew exactly what she meant. He leaned in toward her—that sharp chin, hair kept in check only by the cap she wore, the scent of sunblock tickling his nose. It was a moment before the words came. “Just let it happen,” he said. “Don’t worry about what it might be. Live in the now.”

  Her eyes narrowed in challenge. “Is that what you do?”

  Yes. He didn’t say it out loud; he didn’t need to. She would have read it in his face if she hadn’t felt it.

  “Convenient,” she said. “No real commitment to anything, just follow your nose.”

  The words brought a crush of pain at the base of his throat—pain he hadn’t expected. “You’ve seen enough of my life to know better,” he growled. He had commitment above and beyond…had given his life to his work.

  Playing nice along the way wasn’t necessary.

  Meghan rubbed her closed eyes, focusing on the gritty feel of the painted porch post between her shoulder blades—quite possibly the only thing holding her up at all. But the wards are set. Her people were protected…as protected as anything in this world today. Dolan, looking as wiped as Meghan felt, had wolfed down a sandwich for dinner and gone to walk the land one more time, staying out of Anica’s way.

  No. Out of my way.

  Didn’t matter. She could still feel him. She knew exactly where he was, stalking the land black and sleek, indulging in the jaguar. Too damned fast, she’d gotten used to that feeling.

  Odd, though, that it didn’t quite coincide with the tingling sensation that now constantly nudged for her attention.