Cheetah Wild Read online

  That he couldn’t take the lead. Protect her.

  “Dead cat,” she murmured. Silent communication would have been better, but not everyone took naturally to it. Mark didn’t; he knew from reading her file that Tayla didn’t, either.

  He hoped they’d have the chance to grow into it.

  But since they didn’t have it, he eased closer, his back to her and the better part of his attention probing the park around them. “Long dead?”

  “Fresh dead.” She stood, twitching her shoulders in a disdainful feline gesture. “And it stinks.”

  “Core?”

  “Core.” She shifted uneasily. “Looks drained dry. About that vision of yours—”

  “No cats,” he said. “But…fingers.” Reaching, grabbing, sinking into gold-furred flesh…

  “Does that even make sense?”

  “No,” he admitted freely. “I’d guess the fingers as Core workings. So be careful.” He didn’t say workings aimed at you. She knew the dangers here.

  Something fluttered in his mind. Suddenly, intrusively. Tayla stiffened; Mark backed a step to her, putting them both in a defensive position. “Monitio,” he murmured. Monitio, the Sentinel-warning broadcast, silent to everyone else and red alert to anyone with a Sentinel’s inner ears. It didn’t matter that neither he nor Tayla could initiate private conversations; they’d always hear a monitio.

  And this one had plenty to say.

  “Oh, for—” Tayla’s voice held annoyance and disgust some moments later, breaking in over the end signal of the monitio. “That idiot!”

  “We’re scouts, not bodyguards,” Mark growled. That they weren’t ready—that they hadn’t had nearly enough time to inspect and secure the area—he didn’t need to say at all. And even if the bodyguards were racing in, bringing Carter and Ruger and Maks—a tiger-shifter on loan from Tucson—they’d still be coming in cold.

  Because the informant was already on the way. Plans changed to avoid detection.

  “The Core is flushing him out,” Tayla murmured. “They know someone’s talking, and they’re pushing him to expose himself so they can make a play for him.”

  “And he’s falling for it.”

  “This afternoon,” Tayla said, and something in her voice made him turn to look, seeing the miserable flash of her eye in the dark night as easily as if it were day. “We should have been—”

  “No,” Mark interrupted. He turned on her, fast enough that she took a surprised step back. “Don’t even think it.” Fast enough to snag her by the arms and tug her in close, understanding well that her lack of resistance was a choice. No one overpowered this wild thing so easily. Not anymore. “If we’d been faced with this situation before this afternoon, do you think we could have handled it? Handled it well?”

  Mutely, she shook her head. Not as if there was any question about that.

  “And now?”

  She smiled, a suddenly feral glint in the darkness. “Now,” she said softly, “we are going to kick Core ass.”

  He released her, but only after giving her a little shake. Pushing it. “That’s what I was going to say,” he told her, letting himself sound aggrieved. Far from it. Yeah, they were going to kick Core ass.

  As soon as they found it.

  * * *

  “Do you feel…?” Tayla cocked her head, hesitating, one hand out as if pushing at the air. Sentinel trace closed in on them, swelling in presence at the far end of the park.

  Mark shook his head, tawny hair awash in a tint of blue in her night vision; he scowled briefly. “I can only generalize until I get a starter sample on specific trace.”

  “You…really?” She absorbed this, and returned to her reading. “There’s Core, too. Ours, maybe.”

  “Got that, more or less. Where are they going?”

  She slanted a quick glance at him as she moved toward the pond. “No one can read trace that way.”

  “But you know,” he said easily. “You know this park. You know the best place to go—the place you’d pick. Cover, access, vantage…”

  “That little copse, halfway down the stem of the pond,” she said promptly. Enough trees to obscure someone in the center of it, not so many that someone on the inside couldn’t spot someone on the outside. “Supposing he knows about it.”

  “Gotta start somewhere,” Mark said, and headed for it. More surprises…she’d never seen him move like this. From casual to a stalking hunter, full of power and male grace. Full of the lion, whether he knew it or not.

  Tayla flung herself into the cheetah and loped a circular approach to the copse, spiraling in on it—hunting trace as much as scent, and her carefully prepared clothes making the shift with her. When she met Mark outside the copse, she shifted back on the fly; he raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I’m going to loop the park,” she said, glad of the late hour and its deserted nature; she’d have to stay alert, but she could go as a cheetah if she stuck to the shadows. “Check as much of it as I can. Carter’s team will come in with close contact protection—we’ve got to be the outriders.” She didn’t wait for his obvious disagreement to reach words. “If Carter knew exactly what was going down, he’d have told us. He’ll count on us to take the initiative.”

  There in the darkness, Mark suddenly grinned at her. All lion behind it, predatory and possessive. “The cheetah has teeth again.”

  “Maybe it’s just a hell of an afterglow,” she shot at him, and shifted to the cheetah to lope away.

  But it wasn’t. It came of not having empty spots within her that should have been filled years earlier. Worth the wait, she told herself. To have filled them with Mark…to have learned that she’d been wrong about him, and that the years of waiting had made them so perfectly ready for each other…

  Totally worth it.

  She circled the perimeter of the park at a lope, gauging her speed. A cheetah wasn’t meant for distance; if she moved too quickly, falling into her natural rhythm, she’d overheat. She let her long legs and rocking-horse stride carry her through the darkness, avoiding the streetlights along the sidewalk’s edge and hesitating at the juncture of the Fronds Hotel parking lot where she crossed Carter’s powerful, unmistakable trace. He’d only just preceded three others into the park—two Sentinels less remarkable than he, and a fourth, separate person who stank of Atrum Core corruption, coming alone and taking a slightly different path.

  She squelched the urge to follow. She’d find them soon enough, and this was her job right now. Checking for Core incursions—over privacy walls, through private parking lots…inspecting a myriad unofficial entrances to the park. If not looking for actual Core agents, then for their amulets—tainted storage disks of metal and leather, preset with Core workings. They could be tossed into an area and activated from a distance later, and if no one was looking for them…

  But Tayla looked.

  And then she scented what she’d hoped she wouldn’t find at all. The stench of it, moving in on Mark, moving in on Carter and his informant—already far too close.

  Tayla lowered her head and she dug in her claws and she ran.

  * * *

  Damned good vantage point at that.

  Mark saw their approach—the Sentinels and the lone Core agent, coming in from slightly different angles, the Sentinels easily tracking the snitch. Aware of one another, but distinctly apart—playing the game. Even watching them, he couldn’t disentangle the swell of one trace from the other—and wouldn’t, until he’d had individual contact.

  Tayla, he thought at her, and wished again that they’d had the time to build communication between them…knowing she was out there. She’d anticipated their rendezvous spot, all right; the lone figure, skulking through the darkness, was definitely on his way. The other three, while moving quietly, made no great attempt to hide. The smart thing, Mark thought. Skulking around in a half-assed, unprepared way would only draw attention.

  The power traces surged; Mark nearly broke cover in warning, by now recognizing Car
ter and Maks and the big bulky presence of Ruger. But he and Tayla were Carter’s secret weapons, so he faded out of the copse, leaving it open for the informant.

  Carter followed the man right in. Damn, he was eager. He knew better than to push a situation like this—insecure, out of balance. But he entered the copse, anyway, with Maks hanging slightly behind and standing alert, on the balls of his feet and as ready for anything as a man could get. Ruger stood more stolidly to the side—a healer by nature, but one whose sheer size and strength got a regular workout. His presence told Mark just how off guard the informant’s move had caught Carter.

  The Atrum Core had done well this night, damn them. So far, they’d done exactly what they wanted. Pushed their leak out into the open, caught the Sentinels unprepared and scrambling. And whatever Mr. Mouth had, Carter sure wanted it.

  Tayla, are you out there?

  Another surge of power brought him upright. Core energy, no doubt about it. But the source…he had no sense of it.

  Carter’s voice came through the darkness, low but distinct. “I felt it.” The informant’s voice, a little louder and a little thinner, came through garbled.

  Completely, bizarrely garbled. And as soon as that sound hit the air, the informant made a panicked noise.

  Mark didn’t need translation for that one. The Core had put a working on him, and his speech…sudden nonsense. Somewhere, the Core was here.

  Only what we figured all along.

  “Maks,” Carter said. No more than that, but Carter saw Maks’s faint nod, saw him step away from the group. Preparing to shift, and making sure he had the space. As a man, Maks was imposing; as a tiger, he was massive.

  But nothing happened. The informant made another garbled noise, sounding insistent, and Maks spread his arms slightly and looked down upon himself and stayed human.

  “Andrey,” Carter said. “Stay calm. We’re here to protect you. And we aren’t alone.” But although he hesitated, lifting one shoulder and tipping his head slightly in the way he had—he, too, seemed shape-bound.

  Ruger confirmed it. “Not going anywhere, boss. Gotta be Core workings.”

  “Amulets?” Carter shook his head, although it looked frustrated more than a denial. “Tayla and Mark are here. They would have found—”

  Tayla’s cry broke the night, a chittering cheetah’s warning call.

  Mark saw it at the same time, a familiar dorky form ambling across the night, tail low and relaxed and waving hello. Not that damned useless Disney dog.

  Not just the dog. Tayla. She came sprinting across the park, putting herself out in open ground—exposing herself to the Core. Tayla, no! Not over the damned dog! But here she came, a blur of golden speed in the night. Heading straight for the dog, unaffected by the Core working that prevented the others from changing—closing in on the animal in full hunt mode, cheetah wild—

  Until the darkness rose up before her and slammed her down hard, invisible hands with inexorable force.

  “Tayla!” He shouted it this time, leaping for her—and got just as slammed, hitting the grass with a buzz of energy burning through his body.

  “Shields around us,” Carter said grimly, louder now. “Dammit, they’ve got someone here.”

  Andrey said something garbled and fearful. Mark didn’t need translation—We are so screwed—as Andrey backed away from them—and then thinking better of it, reversed course, all the while looking frantically through the darkness his eyes couldn’t penetrate, all the while babbling.

  “The dog,” Mark grunted, staggering back down in his first attempt to get to his feet. “Tayla thought the dog—”

  But Tayla hated dogs…and he felt nothing in particular from this one. After an initial cautious woof alarm at her charge, it had decided itself safe and moved closer to the men within the shields.

  On the other side of the shield, Tayla sought her feet, weaving like a big cat sedated on a nature show. She tried to take back the human. Mark saw it in her—the brief hesitation, the subtle posture change, the quick exclamation of her ears, flicking back and forward again. She growled deep in her throat.

  Carter said, “Forget the dog. It’s clean. We’ve got to find those amulets and destroy them.”

  “They might not be inside the shield,” Ruger pointed out, his voice a rumble.

  “Tayla can check the outside,” Carter said. “Start looking, all of you. We won’t have long—”

  “Garble,” moaned the informant. “Garblegarble—”

  “Get over it,” Carter told him, snapping the words. “You put yourself here. You plan to undermine your drozhar, blame his advisers, and then save the day and advance your status by turning on us.” Carter grabbed the informant by the arm, shoving him out of the protection of the copse. “It makes us very happy to use you back. Now, help find those amulets!”

  “Garble!” the man shouted back at him—and then froze an instant before stepping back, alarmed, at Carter’s expression—and his tone of voice was enough to understand exactly what he said next. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Carter—” Ruger said, equally wary, and even the quiet tiger Maks muttered something, his eyes widening. He held out his hands, checking first the backs of them and then the palms, flipping them back and forth. Carter shook his head, a heavy gesture…a drugged gesture.

  Mark glanced at Tayla, found her puzzled. “Hey,” he said to the others. “What…?”

  “It’s a working,” Carter said, both palms now up at his temples, pushing there—he probably didn’t even know he’d gone to his knees. “It’s a…there’s a…”

  Mark looked down at himself, arms spread. Looked over at Maks, who rubbed his arms as if they might be on fire. At Ruger, whose eyes rolled back in his head as he went down with an earth-shaking thump. At Andrey, who stood in the middle of them in frozen horror. And back to Carter, who now braced himself against the earth with one arm, still fighting the working. Outside the shield, Tayla paced, graceful impatience with twitching tail, perfectly fine.

  “It’s a shifter thing,” Andrey said, suddenly intelligible again. Either the one working canceled out the other, or the Core figured they no longer needed Andrey muzzled. Neither was a good sign. “Here inside the shield, to strike at those with me. But you—”

  “Don’t shift,” Mark told him, grimly enough. “And you had damned well better find that amulet. It’s planted here somewhere—they probably seeded them all over the park.”

  “There’s no time—we’ve got to run—”

  “We don’t have a way to do that,” Mark snapped. “So look.”

  “Tayla,” Carter said, grinding out the words. “She has to find them….” Not the amulets, but the Core agents.

  “No,” Mark snapped, while Tayla made a frustrated noise and an abortive attempt to smack a paw against the shield, startling the dog away with a yelp. “That’s a suicide mission. We’ll stick together—I’m fine. Give me your stun gun and—”

  Carter shook his head. Sentinels heading into an active Core op always carried a stun gun—but no. There was Carter, shaking his head.

  “I told them…” Andrey started, realization in his voice and his face gone white. “I told them I’d leave if I found one. Too likely to be used on me.”

  “Great,” Mark growled. “Just great. Did you really want us to not protect you for this meeting? Cutting short our prep time, eliminating our defensive weapons…anything else I should know about?”

  Andrey stared along the pond with alarm. “I…I think I see someone….”

  Mark didn’t sense a thing—no Core stench, no rippling trace. “Someone avoiding the day’s heat,” he muttered, but he squinted at the movement down the bank.

  Tayla paced, tail lashing, pushing at the shield; a rainbow of sparks flew off her side. She interrupted her neat feline panting only long enough to yowl at him—and when she saw she had his attention, to follow it up with a series of yipping chirps.

  “Check them out,” Mark suggested. He wasn
’t expecting her growl of annoyance; her tail lashed and her ears flattened. She directed her big green stare at the dog now snuffling around Ruger’s beard, its tail slowly wagging.

  “I can’t feel a thing from that dog,” Mark said. Neither could Carter. Let it go. Tayla, you’ve got to—”

  She growled at him, a higher noise than the bigger cats, and whipped herself around the pivot of her hind legs, loping off down the bank. Down toward the figures who were most likely Core, and most likely had guns, and who would most likely kill her. Mark whirled on Andrey, glaring at him over the bodies of his fallen companions. “Keep looking,” he snapped. “If you think you’ll sit on your ass waiting for that woman to save it—”

  The look on Andrey’s face stopped him. Startled horror, focused behind Mark’s shoulder. A flash of movement warned him, and he turned just in time to see Tayla charging the shielded area—charging it with full intent and full speed.

  Carter choked on hoarse words—“Stop her!”—while Andrey scrambled backward, away from imminent collision of big cat and shields—and suddenly Mark understood.

  This wasn’t Tayla with her distrust of dogs and her drop-out confidence. This was Tayla set to full, Tayla with her confidence on and her cheetah flung free.

  Tayla, certain of herself.

  And certain of what she’d sensed, before those shields had snapped up. No matter that Mark didn’t feel it—he’d never differentiated the various traces. No matter that Carter didn’t feel it—tracking wasn’t Carter’s specialty, and then…the shields triggered.

  Who knew how many ways the Core had affected those of them trapped inside?

  She couldn’t bespeak his mind; she couldn’t argue her case. She could only act on conviction, defying them all…believing in herself.

  And Mark could believe in her, too.

  He threw himself in front of her path, right up close to the shield; the energy of it singed against his skin, making his hair stand on end. Too late, too late…she was too close, she’d collide and take both of them out with the energy discharge—