Tiger Bound Read online

He tried not to feel the sting of that—the accusation.

  Or the truth of it.

  Although maybe not for the reasons she thought it.

  She must have seen it anyway. She bit her lip, a single canine briefly peeking out, and looked down at her hands, fingers brushing over the calluses. “I’m sorry. But you must see it. You’re a tiger. And me, I’m...” She shrugged, hands tightening around each other as she looked out her side window. “I’m a deer. A Chinese water deer. I’m what you might eat for lunch, if I wasn’t—”

  She didn’t have to say the words; he knew what she was. Sentinel. Borderline seer. Most times human.

  Her mouth took on a tight set. “I told myself I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I knew they wouldn’t take me seriously—and they didn’t. They sent a man who’s barely off medical. Who’s going to spend all his effort fighting the instincts we all have.”

  He made a noise of protest, wanting to say that he was off medical and that he’d gotten his instincts well tamed long ago—

  Except he’d already come to the same conclusion about his assignment here and he knew better about his field status.

  She didn’t notice the protest, too wound up in her own words. “Instincts I’ve had my fill of already, or I wouldn’t be way out here trying not to get visions and using my healing on people’s dogs!”

  Deer. Small, dog-size deer, at that. What had it been like for her, growing up among young predators? Jostling her, crowding her, making comments and insinuations...

  Maks couldn’t guess. He hadn’t had the chance to be among them at all.

  “Katie,” he said, trying again—and earned a sharp glance for invoking her name. “Maybe you’re right.” That slowed her down, all right. “Maybe I’m all they had to send. Things are bad there since—”

  Core D’oíche. The night that death and destruction had unfolded throughout the Southwest region at the hands of the Atrum Core—only a month ago at that. Maks had been barely recovered enough from the earlier Flagstaff attack to do his part.

  And Katie, gentle healer with seer’s eyes, had been so spared by that night that she didn’t truly understand. Had she even dreamed it, marginal seer that she was?

  He shook his head. He took a breath. “I’m all they could spare,” he repeated firmly. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, darkening the cinnamon with shadow.

  “I know this area. I know it, in ways you can’t—” He stopped, closed his eyes. Drew breath—the pines, the cedar, the blur of time and memory. Tried again. “This is my place, these woods. I can keep you safe while you figure out the things you’ve seen.”

  She watched him with eyes that remained unconvinced. She watched him as a creature on the edge of flight—emotional, if not literal. Far too aware that he skirted the edge of things that mattered deeply, but unable to interpret his emotions. And not knowing, after all, how seldom he came to such truths with others.

  Maks grumbled—disgruntled, wordless again. It often happened that way; always had. He’d spent too much of his life without words at all.

  A flicker of movement reflected in the passenger side-view mirror—Maks focused on it, found a man in a garish orange-and-lime shirt hesitating behind them on the road, one leg bracing his mountain bike. Found him, and reacted to him.

  Just as Katie reacted to Maks, recognizing instantly that his inner timbre had changed—moving away from him and up against her door. “I told you...people use this road.”

  Maks kept his gaze on the mirror. “Do you know this man?”

  She shrugged. “Lots of people ride here. My neighbor—Williams—he comes this way all the time.”

  He glanced away from the man just long enough to find her gaze—the faint annoyance there, the fears. He felt his own annoyance rise to meet it.

  “I don’t have any special side talents,” he told her, patience thinning. He returned his attention to the man, who had peeled off into the woods onto what must be a rough deer track. “I do one thing—I’m a protector. And I do that well.”

  She hesitated. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I—”

  “You just want me to do this your way.”

  Her hands closed over the calluses again. “I just...” She shook her head. “I just want to believe. I want to know that someone hears me.”

  He turned on her, a surge of frustration and ferocity, held back until it came through only his expression, a blow he didn’t pull when she caught her breath. “That’s why I’ve come. That’s what I do.”

  The man on the bike disappeared from sight, his outrageously flashy shirt no longer peeking between the trees. Maybe just a man with attitude, triggering Maks’s innate response. Maybe related to Katie’s vision, maybe not.

  One way or the other, Maks would find out.

  That’s why I’ve come. That’s what I do.

  * * *

  Katie took a deep breath as she slipped one foot out the open car door and onto solid ground. Don’t antagonize the tiger.

  And, just as sensibly, don’t antagonize the man who’s here to help you.

  Maybe he was right. It didn’t matter exactly what he believed of her. He had his own reasons for working with her.

  An object thudded lightly against the bumper, moving up the back hatch window in a blur of motion followed by tiny skittering sounds on the roof.

  Maks reached for his door handle in response; a touch on his arm stopped him. She nodded at the windshield, where the marmalade yard cat stalked to the bottom of the windshield and plunked down, curling his tail around his body to offer them a unique perspective. “Maks,” she said, more than relieved for the change of focus. “Meet my cat’s ass.”

  Maks gave the cat’s ass an unreadable look.

  “Used to be a tom, when I moved into his yard,” she said. “Still pretends he is.” A glance. “You’re not going to squirm, right?”

  His growl was as eloquent as any glib word. She laughed.

  And stopped short as she recognized just how quickly she’d dropped her guard.

  The realization froze her breath in her chest. She’d been living here away from Sentinels too long, and she’d forgotten how to protect herself from them—and now the most Sentinel of them all was right here.

  Maks turned green eyes on her, hampered by the way he filled the seat, his legs cramped in the foot well. There was no sign of what she’d seen at the shuttle bus depot—the hesitation, the faint confusion...the faltering. It changed his face entirely, bringing out the strength of eye and brow and jaw.

  “Katie,” he said, as directly as was his wont. “I said...you are safe with me.”

  And he took her hand.

  It seemed an absent gesture. It didn’t stay that way. Not with her hand cradled in his, his thumb brushing the calluses, his fingers warm and—

  A deep groan, a sharp breath, warmth and scent and swirl of feeling—

  Katie stiffened. No, no, not—

  A touch at her waist, a hand gripping the curve of her hip, fingers brushing sensitive skin and heat skirling down through her body—

  A cry. Rough and masculine, wrung from a body in both pain and ecstasy.

  Fingers clamped down on hers. Katie jerked away with a gasp—freeing her hand, freeing her mind from this predator, so much more powerful than she—his pupils gone big and his body clenched. Understanding flooded his expression—of that unexpected invasion, of their fleeting connection...

  Of the astonishing and unexpected intimacy.

  Katie, Chinese water deer, long of limb and quick in flight, could only gape back at him—the tiger, roused and filling her small car. She couldn’t find words.

  But it was Maks who ran.

  Chapter 3

  Maks didn’t go far. Not with the log cabin before him and the surrounding woods beckoning of home. He stood there, caught up by it—breathing it in, feeling the very ground press up against his feet as if to claim him.

  Katie approached him from the side,
stopping some distance away and dropping his massive duffel there in a studied attempt to remain casual in spite of the moments in the car. “You do love this place, don’t you?”

  Maks glanced at her. Only a smoldering undertone remained of what had passed between them in the car. “Whatever I am,” he said, “these woods made me.”

  And the Core. The Core, too, had made him, whether they’d meant to or not.

  Katie laughed, short and rueful. “Whatever I am,” she said, “the Sentinels made me. Whether they want what they got, I couldn’t say.” She brushed non-existent dirt from the front of her lightweight hoodie and, before he could find a response to her comment, asked in a completely different tone, “Are you hungry? I’ve got some steaks.”

  It took a moment, but he suddenly got it. She was, in her own quiet way, apologizing for his reception. He gave her a slow smile. “Thank you.”

  He wouldn’t mention how recently he’d learned to eat his meat cooked.

  He stopped just short of her porch. The cat stalked on ahead with its tail straight in the air and a dignified air that proclaimed the utter coincidence of their mutual destination. “Why did you call brevis, Katie?”

  She gestured vaguely beside her head, frustration evident. “No real specifics yet. No details. Just this feeling that things aren’t right.” She met his gaze head-on for the first time since the bus shuttle station. “But, Maks...they really aren’t right.”

  “Not Akins?”

  She waved a dismissive hand, the gesture graceful. “That’s personal. I recently told a second client that her dog had shoulder and neck injuries from rough handling. I didn’t know it was him either time. In fact, the first time, I thought it was the owner.” Her expression grew darker. “Worse, I’m certain he’s using strays to bait his dogs—just like that cat. Reporting him without evidence would just make me look petty—but I know.” She gave him a defensive glance.

  “Did you help them, then?”

  “Did I—” She stopped, uncertain—as if orienting herself to the conversation they were having and not the one she’d thought they’d be having. “Over time. I probably could have done more, been faster, but then...” She gave her hands a rueful look. They were strong hands, with long fingers and blunt, strong nails. “Then people would notice.”

  “They come here? Your clients?”

  “I have an appointment this afternoon—a surgical recovery, and he’s doing great.” Her face had shed its inhibitions, its tight concerns—her eyes now full of spark, her mouth expressive. “I’m really excited about that one—I think I can make a real difference to his recovery time. At least, if he stops eating things that no dog should eat, which is why he had surgery in the first place. And,” she made a face, “the second.”

  He did it without even thinking—reached out to touch her, a brief brush of his hand over her arm, drawn by that spark in her eye.

  She stopped short, startled, and before he could apologize, she shook her head. “You,” she said. “One moment you’re standing there in classic John McClane pose, the next you’re...you’re...” She shook her head, fingertips lingering on her lip.

  And Maks could only say, “John McClane?”

  She sent a skeptical look his way. “Die Hard,” she said. “Lone man stands against overwhelming odds. Looks heroic a lot.”

  He could only shrug.

  She shook her head. “You had a long trip,” she said. “Let’s eat, and I’ll try to explain my whole vision thing.” Her mouth compressed, no less the beautiful for its determination. “However little brevis thinks of it, I know there’s something brewing.” She took the porch steps with the quiet squeak of tired wood under a soft tread, and reached for the screen door handle.

  The cat at her feet gave a sudden little spit, flattened its ears and ran off. Maks would have remarked on it, had Katie’s hand not faltered before reaching the door, had her face not paled, her gaze gone wide, her pupils rushing to huge.

  A faint electrical tingle skittered across the back of Maks’s neck, raising the hair on his arms. He leaped for her, wrapping his arms around her to swap places, shoving her away from the door—all the things he should have done those months ago in Flagstaff to protect his team from the attack that ravaged them. “Katie!” he said, and when she showed no awareness of him, adding a little shake. “Katie!”

  She blinked, and saw him again; her pupils closed down against the bright high-altitude day and its impossibly blue sky. She went wide-eyed at the sight of his arms around her, the alarm on his face. “Maks? What—?”

  “You’re all right,” he said, and couldn’t quite bring himself to step back from her, his mind still reverberating with memory. His hand reaching for the hotel door in Flagstaff...the agony of the Core ambush...the darkness and the lingering fugue...

  “Oh,” she said, and a healer’s understanding crossed her face. “Oh,” she said again. “You do still need to heal.”

  He managed to pull away. “Brevis medics have done what they can.”

  “Except maybe to give you time.” She said it with some asperity, her annoyance aimed at brevis again—but only briefly, as uncertainty took over. “You know...maybe I can help.”

  He couldn’t help but send her a startled look, still reacting to what he’d seen—and to what he remembered.

  “It’s what I do,” she said with some asperity, her words an obvious echo of his response to her in the car. “You know—healer?”

  He didn’t even think—he stepped back, his body language defensive, his eyes alarmed. As if he would ever let her be so vulnerable, when he had no idea what was happening within himself—and when whatever had just happened at the doorway still lingered in the air.

  “Never mind,” she said, just a little too quickly. She looked away, biting her lip so a faintly pointed incisor peeked out as she reached for the door again.

  Not just yet. “What,” he said, and put a growl to it, “was that?” He stepped between her and the door, nodding at the handle she’d touched before.

  For a moment, she stared blankly at him, as if she’d simply forgotten all about her pale little frozen spell at the door. Then she said, “Oh. That.” She made a little face, nose wrinkling dismissively even as her eyes held hurt. “That’s as close as I get to having a true seeing. No real details, just...feelings. Something waiting to happen.” She shivered, buffing her arms in the cool overhang of the porch.

  “Here?” He lifted his head, eyes narrowed—raking the brightly sunny edge of the woods with his gaze.

  “Close enough,” she said. “I never see things at a distance. And, Maks...” She shivered again, and said the words reluctantly, as if bracing herself for the blow of disbelief. “It tastes like old iron...it smells like death. And it scares the hell out of me.”

  * * *

  Katie waited for the usual dismissive response—to her fear, to her vague portents.

  Maks only looked back out to the woods. His was a still and predatory strength; the breeze plucked at his flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up tightly over his biceps, stirred his hair to show the black streaks within dark chestnut. Katie didn’t let his half-lidded eyes fool her; she knew the sight of a big cat in utter concentration. She knew, too, when he came back to the here and now, could all but hear the deep rasping huff of a tiger’s released breath. Whatever he’d been looking for, he hadn’t found it.

  She pulled herself together, feeling the sting of his skepticism—but her response went unvoiced as they both reacted to the wayward clink of clay pottery, barely audible at the back of her log house. Unmistakable and invasive. Her ears strained to flick back; her foot lifted from the ground in an instinctive, nervous gesture—her body’s way of telling her to flee and check the situation from a safe distance.

  Maks had different instincts. He acted on them in an instant, ignoring the steps to vault over the porch rail, jarring Katie to scramble after him. He was faster than she’d expected, but no match for her own swift legs—she w
ould have overtaken him at the corner had he not thrust out an arm to prevent it, stopping short with an agility she’d anticipated no more than his speed.

  He peered around the corner, blocking her view. She felt the disgruntled rumble in his chest more than she heard it, and only then realized she had pressed against him—trying to see what he saw, heedless of his warm and predatory presence.

  On her tiptoes, she could just see over his shoulder to the man fussing at her window. Dressed in camo below, black T-shirt above, he looked uneasy and nervous, looking over his shoulder to check the woods behind him. And he had the hard features, dark olive skin tone and flashing silver earring that marked him as Atrum Core.

  Even as Katie understood, stunned, that this man had come in from the trail, that he had clearly and clandestinely targeted her very own home, the man quite suddenly realized he was no longer alone. He fumbled a small, heavy object, and it fell into the tufty grama grass as he jerked away from the window to face Maks.

  Maks didn’t react at all. Just...watched.

  A shiver of recognition tightened Katie’s chest. Tiger. Waiting for the prey to make a mistake.

  The prey bolted.

  He stumbled a little, grabbing at one of the many pockets in his fatigues, but he still hit a full-speed sprint for the edge of the woods.

  Maks didn’t seem to hurry. He didn’t seem to move at all. And yet suddenly there he was, flowing forward—one moment the man, then a bright silvery flicker and swirl of his change—synthetic shoes left behind, all-natural jeans and shirt carried along with the shifting energies.

  The tiger on the run. In her yard. Huge. Immense.

  And so very fast.

  He sprang forward in twenty-foot bounds that took him swiftly through the thin trees to his quarry. One massive paw swatted the man into a tumble and roll, and the tiger doubled back to pounce, slamming a heavy blow down on the man’s thigh with claws unsheathed just enough to prick.

  Katie fought the impulse to take the deer and flee—dog-size and rabbit-fast, her tusks no more than a sharp-edged hint but enough to take some humans aback. Not with a tiger in the yard. What had she even been thinking, to follow Maks so closely?