Kodiak Chained Page 12

  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 unchanged 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 unchanged 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 unchange 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. “Le
ave 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.

  Ian confirmed it a moment later, a private sending to Ruger. ::We need to get her back to brevis.::

  ::I know. She’s not going to like it.::

  Ian’s gaze flicked to Mariska and back, the faint twist of his mouth allowing that he well knew it. ::Talk her into it, then.::

  ::Me? I don’t think so.:: Ruger forgot to hide his alarm and Mariska gave him a sharp look, her eyes narrowing as she gave the water a wary sniff, raising it for a drink.

  Ian said out loud, “Brevis definitely needs an update. I’ll go out and grab a signal. Sandy, you want to come?”

  “Sure, I’ll watch your back,” Sandy said, grinning—sending Ruger a knowing glance. “I need a chance to stretch my coyote, anyway.”

  Ian shot Ruger a look—you owe me—and said privately, ::I’ll save your cowardly ass and get brevis to request security on the amulets we’re shipping back. You can thank me later.::

  Ruger only scowled as the impact of his own reaction hit home. Much later. Because it meant she’d go, all right.

  And he didn’t want her to. No matter that he couldn’t and didn’t trust her.

  “Oh!”

  Mariska’s gasp stopped them all in their tracks—Ruger most of all, two long strides and he was at her side as she doubled over, the water bottle bouncing in the dirt beside her. He reached out to her without thinking—and stopped himself with effort, limiting himself to what he could feel of her, the faint echo of pain radiating from her belly.

  It was enough. He wrapped an arm around her waist, supporting her, and looked over at Ian with the grimmest of expressions. “She’s reacting to the infusions.”

  “But that didn’t happen before!” Sandy protested.

  Ian said, “The working wasn’t truly throughout her system before.”

  Mariska’s hand closed over Ruger’s at her waist, clasping his fingers. “Then you’re right,” she said, jerking slightly as pain shot through her belly; he felt the echo of that, too. Just enough of the healer left to know. “It’s from the amulet, and it’s—” She winced. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not bloody good,” Ian said, when Ruger only pulled her closer, wrapping his other arm around her to kiss the top of her head, trying to remember if he’d ever felt so helpless—and so desperate.

  Harrison was the one who said it out loud. “This is ridiculous. We’ve lost Jack, and Mariska needs help. We’ve got most of the amulets packed and we think we know what’s going on here. We need to call for extraction and get a strike team up here to find Forakkes.”

  “He’ll know they’re coming,” Mariska said, straightening cautiously, her hands still clamped onto Ruger’s arms.

  Sandy didn’t hesitate. “Then get the strike team on its way while we hang out as a distraction.”

  “Coyote,” Ian said approvingly. “If Carter takes this as seriously as he should, they can scramble a team up here within two hours. I have reason to know, don’t I?”

  “That’s how long it took when Forakkes sent that working after you last month,” Mariska guessed—proving once more that she did, in fact, do her homework.

  “Minute by minute,” Ian affirmed. “Think you can hang on that long, Mariska?”

  “Hell, yes.” She straightened a little more, not quite shrugging off Ruger’s arms even if she no longer leaned on him. “As long as I stay away from that potion.”

  “Someone ought to drink it,” he said. “It’s the last of the restorative.”

  She winced. “Sorry about that.”

  “There’s no way you could have known you’d react to it. I didn’t, did I?” He tightened his arm around her in brief reassurance, and felt her relax a little. He thought that once again, they were somehow where they were supposed to be with one another—this place of physical familiarity and comfort that had come to them right from the start. Only this time, he knew to expect the inevitable sense of betrayal; he knew it would come.

  It didn’t stop him from leaving his hand along the warm curve of her waist.

  Ian tossed the sat phone in the air—and for an instant, he looked like nothing more than a cat playing. “Sandy,” he said. “Let’s put out the call. Harrison, can you finish up this round of packing? We’ll place final wards when we get back in—and then we’ll see what’s left to us, depending on what Nick has to say.”

  Harrison headed for the amulet area; Sandy preceded Ian to the exit, her step light with the anticipation of taking her coyote. Mariska bent away from Ruger’s grasp, snagging his notebook and pen from the floor and wiping off the pages as she set it on the table. “Sorry about that,” she said. “It’s such nice paper, too.”

  His indulgence, that notebook, that pen. His nod to how much his profession meant to him. “It’s sturdy,” he told her. “That’s the point. I like sturdy things.”

  She glanced over at him, and her eye sparked a little brighter over her flush. “As it happens,” she told him, “so do I. And I feel better—I think it’s passed. How about if you let me go, and I’ll find the water bottle. You’re right—someone should take advantage of it.”

  “It’ll hold,” he said, although he released her nonetheless, stepping back from his lingering but token support. “The preservation spells carry over from the dry herbs. That might even have been what you were reacting to—we should try releasing those and see how it goes, if you’re up for it.”

  “Damn right I’m up for it.” She took it as a challenge, and Ruger grinned as she immediately bent to l
ook for the sport bottles, making no effort to avoid staring at the rounded shape of her ass. “Where the hell—”

  Thunder cracked above them; Mariska startled upright. “It’s too early for that storm—”

  Another crack, a rumble—the ground shook. Harrison yelped a warning as something crashed to the ground at the other end of the facility; Ruger crouched slightly, balancing himself against the unsteady ground. “That’s not thunder—”

  The arching Quonset roof groaned as something slammed down above them. Metal buckled; dirt trickled down to bounce off the worktable. Several of the little animal bodies vibrated off the table, and still another explosion ripped loose overhead. The shelving swayed, crates and cages clattering; Mariska jerked around, her eyes gone wide—but Ruger was faster, leaping between the shelves and Mariska and wrapping himself around her as they both went down.

  The shelving hit hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, a slicing pain mixed with the impact and chaos. Another explosion rocked the land above them; the facility screamed with twisting metal. They rolled free of the shelving with Mariska above him, shielding his face—shielding what she could.

  The roof gave one last wrenching groan overhead as one of the metal panels sheered away—Ruger saw it coming and flipped them over one last time, covering Mariska in whole as they came to rest under the worktable.

  The world rained down upon them.

  Chapter 13

  Curiosity was a small mouse rustling in grass; it was sweet berries dangling on a bush overhead. It was the cool gurgle of water in a monsoon-made stream.

  Ciobaka’s curiosity held nothing near such promise, but all the same...he unfolded himself from the back of his caging area and sat attentively by the door, his head cocked and his big ears scooped forward.

  Ehwoord looked good this day. There was less gray on his head, more movement in his step, even if his face stayed stiff and strange. “Wha?” Ciobaka asked when he couldn’t stand it any longer. “Wha?”