Читать книгу Night of the Tiger - Doranna Durgin - Страница 6

This is a mistake.

Scott should have known better than to relax, to let himself feel…to respond to the woman now beside him when he’d first spotted her in the gym.

Because nothing was normal these days, and nothing was right. Not with brevis—infiltrated by moles and traitors—and not with Scott O’Brien himself.

It certainly wasn’t right to discover this woman had been the cause of all the things wrong with him now. The badly healing muscle of his shoulder, the freshly scored muscle of his chest…

The way he’d lost his tiger.

Marlee Abril Cerrosa. He’d heard of her, the mixed-blood tech who’d betrayed them all; he’d known she was here, under house arrest within brevis HQ. He hadn’t expected her to be small, or wickedly fit beneath those Latina curves, or delicate of feature beneath that dramatically short hair.

He hadn’t expected her to be vulnerable.

He sure as hell hadn’t expected to feel like an ass for bringing her down here to brevis medical—mostly as an excuse to get her down onto this floor, but, yeah…to face what she’d done, too.

Her toasty complexion had gone pale; her face strained. Her chin trembled now and then, as if she barely managed her game face at all.

Here, where so many of the victims of Core D’oìche lingered.

They didn’t know who she was. They thought she was Abril—they thought she’d come down from tech support to dispense a fresh batch of games, DVDs and e-reading devices loaded with books. And still, after she waved an ostensibly cheerful goodbye to those scarred and haunted Sentinels, she came out of the lounge to close her eyes and lean flat against the hallway wall, as if it might even hold her up.

Scott did that instead, closing a hand around her arm; he regretted it when she flinched—and then felt a swell of anger, hard and pounding in his chest. “You needed to see that.”

She made a visible effort to relax in his grip—to not care about his proximity—and probably didn’t know that the flutter of the pulse in her throat gave her completely away.

A tiger noticed such things. Along with her scent, and the small details of her posture. This one wants to run.

But he was surprised when she said, “I probably did need to see it.” She took a deep breath. “Until now, I’ve only seen pictures. Or…like you. In the gym.” She opened her eyes—a rich shade of brown, sad and worried. “I’ve never understood…the injuries…”

He knew that one without thinking. “Core workings, released through amulets. Energy with claws.” And he understood the faint puzzlement on her expression, too, because Core amulets and Core workings emitted an ugly taste of corrupted energy readily discernible to most Sentinels. It shouldn’t have been possible to take them by surprise at all. “Half of them were those new silent amulets, but either way…full-bloods aren’t clones. Not all of us can track amulets. So we never saw it coming.” The anger beat at him from inside. “Tell me you know at least that much about the agents you were working against.”

Her quick resentment surprised him—the way her mouth firmed as she seemed to grow just a little taller. She shook off his arm. “Maybe you don’t know as much as you think you know. Maybe the way you are right now is one of the reasons the Core was able to work me.”

“What the—” Scott stopped, waiting for the physician and healer team to pass by and garnering only scant glances; he knew from the tone of the conversation that they were at odds over someone’s treatment—and he knew from experience that such arguments happened all too often in the aftermath of Core D’oìche. He moved closer to Marlee, one arm thrust against the wall. The bad arm, and it let him know it; he pushed back at it—felt what was left of the tiger snarl at it. But when he spoke again, he kept his voice low—remembering that they were in public, here on the medical floor. “What the hell,” he said, “are you talking about?”

“That,” she said, scorn lacing her voice. “You and your tiger—and the wolf and the bobcat and the jackal we just left. Instead of taking responsibility for your strength, you use it to get what you want—you don’t even know it. The rest of us are just here to disregard, or to bully if we get in your way—or even sometimes when we don’t. The Core is treacherous, but they aren’t wrong—if you didn’t have someone looking over your shoulder, who knows what you’d have done with the rest of us by now.”

Scott glowered at her, not even hearing the words at first—knowing only that this woman who had done so much harm thought she could justify herself. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” she snapped, bitterness lacing those words. “What happened to me when I was young and bullied? Months in a cast, that’s what. Months of rehab. What happened to the young full-blood who tried his claws out on me? A slap on the paw, that’s what. A few days of restrictions and a few visits to a counselor. His life went on…mine didn’t. Not for a long time. And by then, the Core had found me, and started whispering in my ear.”

Disbelief joined with anger. “An accident?” he said, and he didn’t back off one bit—because if he did, he would be acceding her point. The one about how he was using his very presence to ram home his anger. “You did all this because of some childhood accident?”

But Marlee Abril Cerrosa had apparently had enough of full-bloods, regardless of their strength. She stiff-armed him in the chest with enough force to gain herself some space, following it up with another shove as she stepped away from the wall. “You jerk,” she said. “Looming over me like that, and then dismissing the moment that changed my life just like that. Well, you know what? You asked for answers. It wasn’t an accident. And it wasn’t right that it was treated like one. That has to be part of the deal, if you don’t want the rest of us to look for ways to feel safe. You have to be more careful, you have to be more thoughtful, and you damned well have to keep your hands to yourself!”

He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t come close. But he felt the first stirrings of guilt.

No, not just guilt. Admiration. She was terrified—of that he had no doubt. And her words stung. “We put ourselves on the line,” he said, his voice low and ragged. “Every day, we’re out in that field, taking the hits—from the Core, and from the rest of the world. Sentinels. We protect this earth, and we protect the rest of you along the way.”

She produced the world’s smallest violin with her thumb and forefinger. “Hooray for you,” she said. “Do you think we’d need it, if the Core hadn’t once been so alarmed by the very nature of what you are?”

“And you,” he shot back at her. “You’re one of us, whether you like it or not. But you still could have opted out—lived outside brevis activity altogether. Light-bloods have that choice. The rest of us don’t.” The rest of them were, by default, regional field agents in the age-old conflict with the Atrum Core.

“I told you,” she said, her voice brittle and tight. “The Core got hold of me early. Between your kind and their kind, I wasn’t left with any choices at all.”

He snorted. “You had your choices. You’re a grown woman.”

“I was a child,” she said, and now she stalked him, stepping forward so he had to move back. “I was a little girl, and the Core filled my head with fear and whispers. Where was brevis then, tiger? Who protected me from the bully, and who protected me from the Core? Don’t you talk to me about choices. I’m doing the best I can.”

He found himself without a response. He found her words landing hard…and sticking. She had been a little girl….

And she had been unprotected.

And that wasn’t right.

Not that she was done. “I’m not one of them,” she said. “I never meant to do anything but balance the scales. I never knew anything about Core D’oìche and I never knew about the silent amulets. I’m just a damned good systems tech who probably won’t ever have a normal life. But at least I take responsibility for my screwup. I deserve to be here, no matter how little choice I had along the way.”

“You—” he said, and then stopped, facing too many choices—and too many questions. And then her words finally hit him—the significance of what she’d said earlier. His anger gave way to a keen curiosity. “How did you know?”

The question took her by surprise—and, denied his angry response, she eased back into a perplexed frown. “How did I…what?”

“You knew,” he said. “I didn’t introduce those agents in the lounge as wolf or bobcat or jackal. I gave you their names.”

She stepped back, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, a move that only served to highlight fit curves. “It was obvious.”

He shook his head. “Not everyone knows, Marlee. Not even the full-bloods. Maybe you’re more one of us than you think.”

She shook her head. “Don’t exaggerate. I’m observant, not Sentinel. Besides, you said you wanted my help.” The bitter edge came back. “To redeem myself, as if that’s ever going to happen. So what is it, exactly, you think I can do down here?”