Читать книгу Sentinels: Kodiak Chained - Doranna Durgin - Страница 9

I don’t need her there. I don’t want her there.

Mariska shouldn’t have lingered at Nick’s office, reorienting to the elevator and the quietly classy earth tones of the hallway. No, she shouldn’t have lingered at all. Not when her hearing was as acute as any Sentinel’s.

Apparently, she’d somehow fooled herself into hoping that Ruger would understand.

Silly bear that she was.

It had all made sense when she’d spoken to Nick about the assignment, twelve hours before she’d even gotten close to Ruger. No doubt she should have said something when she’d found him at the park… but the moment had been so perfect, the opportunity so rare, the man so engaging…

Well, so be it. She’d take the elevator down to the gear room to augment her own minimalist duffel—a couple of high-power stun guns, a collapsible baton, a blackjack… everything it took to manage Atrum Core goons without leaving bodies behind.

When it came time to leave bodies, she had only to call on her bear.

Not that the Core played fair. They carried guns and they carried amulets, and they pretended they were only protecting the world from Sentinels run amok with their own prowess—the connection to the earth that had given their druid ancestors the ability to shift form, and then further specialties besides. Healers, like Ruger. Trackers and warding specialists and earth power wranglers.

Mariska had none of that. She was strong and able, a powerhouse packed into a curvy little body. And she continued in the tradition that had started two thousand years earlier, when that first shape-shifting druid had faced his fratricidal half-Roman brother—a man who had then founded his Atrum Core clan, so intent on stealing power and influence that they’d only helped shape the Sentinels into what they were today—strong, confident protectors.

What did you expect from me? The thought held a bitterness she’d felt more and more often in recent days. Take a bear shifter, train her in that tradition, keep her just a little bit bored and a whole lot eager, and then turn her loose in front of opportunity?

“What did you expect?” she muttered, out loud this time, as she gave the elevator call button an unnecessarily savage punch. The little plastic cover made a faint cracking noise. Well, hell. She needed the activity, anyway. She’d take the stairs.

“You smell like Ruger.” The voice came so close, so unexpected, that Mariska startled away from the elevator.

Jet. Of course. Only wolf-borne Jet could take a Sentinel unaware. Not that Mariska had been at her best, so full of introspection and unexpected emotions. She put on her calmest face, casting Jet a glance. “Is that polite?”

Jet paused to think about it, wild whisky eyes beneath black hair, feral features unbothered by the implied criticism. “Is it not polite?”

A little off balance all over again, Mariska said, “It’s private.”

“Private is a thing that others can’t perceive,” Jet pointed out. “The scent of Ruger is an obvious thing.”

“You’re supposed to pretend,” Mariska muttered, taking a step for the stairs, uncertain how this woman fit into the hierarchy of Southwest Brevis—other than being more wolf than anyone, other than providing invaluable insight to the Core… other than being Nick’s chosen.

“Pretend what?” Jet tilted her head slightly; her posture changed, ever so subtly, and Mariska froze, seeing the threat behind it.

Mariska knew the rules about taking her bear here in the hallways of brevis. She wasn’t so sure about Jet.

“Pretend you weren’t lovers?” Jet asked, with no apparent self-consciousness at all. “Pretend you didn’t share that part of yourself with him, before you came in here this morning to hurt him so?”

“I’m doing what I think is best,” Mariska said, irritation rising. She hadn’t understood, until she’d seen that look in Ruger’s eyes, that her presence would do more than annoy him. That it would undermine him—and it would do so in front of his team. But her reasons for doing it? Still sound. Still important. “For both brevis and Ruger.”

“And for you.”

Mariska felt her eyes narrow. “You were right at the head of the line when they handed out blunt, weren’t you?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Jet said. “And I don’t think it matters. The thing that matters is how Ruger looked when he saw you in Nick’s office.”

“Don’t tell me you think he should be working this without protection.” Righteous indignation lent a snap to her voice. “Maks just barely survived what he fought up there—Maks, your own best bodyguard. Ruger is a healer. Just because he’s a bear doesn’t mean he should go up there alone.”

“Pack is best,” Jet said, agreeing so readily that it took Mariska by surprise. “But you didn’t have to hurt him to do this, and you did. How does that make you the best person to watch his back?”

“I—” Mariska’s certainty fled, leaving her floundering and frustrated. “I’m only doing my job.”

Jet looked at her with something akin to scorn. The sting of it tightened Mariska’s throat in a combination of familiar bitterness and old despair. “Pack,” Jet said, “is everything. Until you come from that place, you cannot do your job at all.”

“That’s not fair,” Mariska muttered—but she did it to Jet’s retreating back, seeing in her tall, lithe form everything that she wasn’t; seeing in her graceful movement everything she had wanted to be.

No, she told herself. What she wanted to be was seen for herself, accepted for herself, valued for herself… given the chance to prove herself.

She’d thought this was it. She’d thought Ruger might understand; she’d thought she could be of important value to this team.

But now she’d seen that look on Ruger’s face; she’d heard his fierce need to support his friends and his beleaguered brevis… she understood that she’d taken that chance from him.

And now she’d watched them discuss things she’d only before read about. Now she’d seen the grim expression in Ian Scott’s eyes when he spoke of the amulets, and the concern on Sandy’s face. She’d seen them all trying to be matter-of-fact about circumstances that were so obviously grave, and she’d seen them reacting to a seer’s visions that she’d so readily shrugged off after reading about Katie Maddox’s lightweight history.

Mariska looked at Jet’s retreating form, and for the second time that morning, swallowed back the fear that she’d been terribly, terribly wrong.

Ruger tossed his gear in the back of his assigned short-bed pickup truck, grateful that brevis motor pool hadn’t tried to cram him into the hybrid BMW SUV that had put that brief, slightly manic grin on Ian’s face.

Grateful, too, that after they’d dumped their gear into the pickup, his two amulet flunkies had trailed Ian over to that vehicle, along with Sandra and Jet. At least, he was grateful until he did the math, and jerked his head up to see Mariska hoisting her own gear into the back of the truck… with no seats left in the BMW.

“Yeahhh,” he said. And, “No. Trade out with Sandy.”

Mariska cast a meaningful glance over her shoulder to where Ian had already put the car in gear and peeled out—too quickly—into Tucson’s rising midday traffic. “I was hoping we could talk.”

“I was hoping we wouldn’t,” Ruger told her, yanking the door open and adjusting the driver’s seat back as far as it would go without even trying to get in first.

“Don’t you think we should?” She stood solidly in the other doorway, the sun glinting so brightly off her dark hair as to be painful, nothing even hinting of hesitance in her manner. Lady bear, and everything about her was still just what he wanted. His body knew it, his brain knew it, his heart knew it, and damn, it made him mad. So close…

“Look,” he said. “I get it. You went for what you wanted with brevis. You went for what you wanted last night. It turns out to be different from what I wanted, but I don’t guess that’s your fault. But it also turns out I don’t trust you because of how you went about it, and that would be your fault. Don’t expect me to feel any differently about it. And don’t expect me to play nice so you can pretend it’s all fine. You wanted to ride with me? Let me know how that works out for you.” He climbed into the truck and slammed the door closed, making final adjustments to the seat.

When he reached for the seat belt, she was right there beside him already, tucking her small personal backpack off to the side, flipping the air vents the way she wanted them. “It’s not like that.”

He snorted, with no effort to make it kind. “It’s exactly like that.” The motor started smoothly, and he reached for the radio.

She turned it off.

“Ah, hell,” Ruger said in disgust, and put the truck into gear. “Awkward silence it is.”

“Look,” she said, and she sounded exasperated. Exasperated, but trying to moderate it. “I did what I did, and it’s done. But I didn’t mean to mess with you.”

He snorted again. “What did you mean, then?”

“I just wanted—”

“I got that part,” he said. “You wanted.”

“So did you!” she said, temper rising in a sudden spurt—her nostrils flared, the color rising on the angle of her cheek, coming through the tone of her skin. “You wanted several times, as I recall, and it seemed to me you were happy enough with what you got!”

Ruger sat in silence a moment, his foot on the brake, his body twisting to check behind the truck before he backed up. He regarded her steadily, his heart beating stupidly hard, his chest tightened up with equally stupid hurt. He said, “I did. And I was. And I somehow managed not to sacrifice you along the way.”

Her eyes widened; her mouth flattened, and he suspected she bit the inside of her lip. After a long moment, she said quietly, “None of that means I’m not right for this job.”

“It means I don’t trust you.” He pulled out into traffic a lot more steadily than Ian had, heading for Route 77 northwest out of Tucson. “And that means you can’t do the job.”

“Sure as hell is going to make it harder,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her seat belt, looking away. “Maybe you’re just a big dumb bear after all.”

He slanted a quick scowl at her, keeping his attention on the road. Even Sentinel reflexes were good for just so much in city traffic. “How exactly do you figure that?”

“I figure,” she said, “that it’s in your best interests to be a team player. I figure it’s in your best interests to work with me so I can watch your back.”

“That’s your mistake.” Ruger braked for a light, and took advantage of the moment to look over at her—catching her by surprise, and catching, too, the faint hint of misery on her face—right before her mouth firmed up and her eyes hardened, and she met his gaze straight on. He didn’t soften his tone in the least, letting the words come out distinctly, hitting each one and watching the impact of them in her expression. “Because I don’t need anyone to watch my back at all.”

This time, when he switched the radio on, she left it.

Mariska climbed out of the truck to take a deep breath of pine-scented air, looking out over the achingly clear skies of Arizona high country. Their accommodations—a cluster of seasonal tourist cabins twenty minutes out from the tiny town of Pine Bluff—sat nestled against a rugged hillside, and Sitgreaves National Forest spread out before them. Mariska’s bear stretched within her, eager to sink claws to earth.

The SUV had arrived some moments before, its occupants spilling out over a minimalist parking zone of hard dirt, natural cinders and pine needles spread everywhere. Sandy already stood to the south of the cabins, her posture too erect to be casual, her face lifted slightly to the sky, her eyes closed. Already setting the wards. Ian’s people had scattered across the grounds surrounding the two neighboring cabins, their expressions full of focus.

Not that there would likely be amulets seeded anywhere nearby when they’d only just arrived, but Mariska understood well enough that familiarizing themselves with the taste and energies of the area would make it possible to locate amulets should they be placed later—especially if they were of the new crop of silent amulets.

Ruger, too, disembarked from the truck, standing much as Mariska had—scenting the air, visibly longing to indulge in his bear. Yesterday she’d seen him as tall and burly; she’d loved the curl of his hair, so obviously only tamed by the cut, and she’d loved the rugged nature of his beard. It had been all too easy to imagine the vigorous nature of their bodies joining… and it was all too easy to remember it now.

But today she saw beyond the first impression, and realized how much of it was just that—an impression, driven by his very nature. Today she saw the masculine beauty of a body that was large and strong, but not overbuilt; today she saw that the beard had hidden the lean features of his face, long dimples carved into his cheeks, a jaw that was strong without going wide, and pale brown eyes shadowed by dark and expressive eyebrows.

She realized her palms had gone damp, and surreptitiously wiped them along her thighs.

Jet came out of the cabin in front of the truck, wearing nothing but a long T-shirt and a necklace of braided leather and gleaming metal. Her bare feet moved soundlessly over the ground, and she stopped before Mariska. “This is our cabin,” she said. “You, and me, and Ruger.” She glanced at the second cabin. “The others will stay together so they can talk amulet things.”

Mariska winced inwardly—but of course she’d be housed with the man she was here to guard. “Thanks,” she said. “Going out already?”

“To run,” Jet said with such longing that Mariska felt an immediate sympathy. It was one thing to keep her bear at bay when she’d grown up doing so, when she hadn’t even taken the bear until she was twelve. It was another to be born wolf and linger as human. Jet added, “And I want to check this land.”

“Are those—” Mariska stopped herself from reaching to touch the metal-thick, satin disks with chunky edges that looked like a gift, but also looked like “—dog tags?”

Jet laughed. “Wolf tags,” she said. “You can wear your special clothes and have them change with you. I run without.”

Ian joined them from the other cabin, looking satisfied with the housing and satisfied with the inspection. “So you play pet, if someone comes on you?”

“Not pet,” Jet said, and bared her teeth.

Ian laughed and held up a defensive hand. “We know that, darlin’,” he said. “But try not to scare the natives, okay?”

“They won’t see me,” she assured him, and headed for the woods.

“Ready to take a look around?” Ian asked Mariska. “We’re meeting Maks in half an hour.”

Mariska looked over the hood of the truck to Ruger, who had come out of his reverie to head for the back of the truck. “Go ahead,” he said, grabbing the first three bags and easily slinging them from the truck. “It’s more important for you to check the place out. I’ll do my own recon when I get the chance.”

She heard nothing in his voice but matter-of-fact practicality, but she winced a little inside anyway. And then, as Ruger’s shoulders filled the doorway, she wondered how they would both possibly fit into the same cabin, no matter how large it was.

Jet ran the woods. She ran as wolf, stretching her legs and lowering her head into the pure glory of it. Indulging in the hot, dry scent of the towering pines in the afternoon sun, the breeze ruffling her black fur… the silence in her head.

So full of talk, the humans. So full of thinking they knew what they wanted, and then not being happy when those things happened.

Her tongue lolled out in a ridiculous pant; she pulled herself down to a trot, scrambling up the loose scuff of a rocky outcrop to circle behind and above the cabins. No wise wolf wore herself out on indulgences when she needed to stay sharp against the enemy. Always in the form of man, that enemy—once because she had been wolf, and now because she called the Sentinels her pack.

It was to her relief that Ian had asked her to stay here at the cabins while they went off to meet Maks Altán at the place where he now lived and to follow him into the forest to Forakkes’ bunker. Not just to stay, but to learn the area in all its scents and sounds and lay of the land so she might be alert to any hint of incursion by the Atrum Core. “We’ll be working hard and fast,” he’d said. “When we come to ground, we’ll need to know it’s safe.”

She’d promised him that. And if later, they needed her to stand sentry at the bunker, she would do that, too. Wolf again.

She only regretted that she was not wolf again with Nick, whose uniquely hoarfrost hair fooled people into thinking he was prematurely gray. Foolish people. They had only to look, and they would see it wasn’t. They had only to look in his eyes to see the gray wolf lurking there.

She saw the bear in Ruger easily enough. She’d spotted Mariska’s smaller bear right away. And no matter that they’d showered… they smelled of one another, and of lingering lust.

Mariska, she didn’t know. But she had never seen that hurt in Ruger’s eye; she had never seen him closed and angry… and yet still obviously wanting. It was the wanting that was the problem. It meant Mariska could hurt him again, if she wanted. Or even if she didn’t want, but didn’t pay enough attention.

Blunt, Mariska had called her.

Jet’s teeth weren’t blunt. Not in the least. And if Mariska Banks wasn’t careful with Jet’s pack, she would learn just that.

Mariska stood behind Katie Maddox’s weathered log home and even more weathered old pole barn, looking out into the embracing forest—and even with the team and Maks Altán right there beside her, found herself so in the thrall of the place that she almost forgot why they were there.

Like Ruger, Maks was a big man—a Siberian tiger lurking visibly beneath, his eyes green and his hair white at the temples with darker streaks running through the deep chestnut. Like Jet, the wildness of his nature flaunted itself, running quiet but steady in every move he made. His uneven movement stood out in stark contrast—the hitch in his stride, the stiffness in his torso. Sentinels healed with astonishing swiftness—but only when it came to saving their lives. Beyond that point, they had to pull themselves together one day at a time, like anyone else.

Or at least, almost like anyone else.

On the surface, Maks didn’t hover over Katie, his slender love, and he didn’t evince any threat or subtle warning—but Mariska quickly realized that no matter how they shifted in conversation, he always stood between her and the team.

With good reason, at that. No Chinese water deer would find herself happy in the presence of so many predators. Ian’s two assistants were too light of blood to take a change form, but two bears and a snow leopard were quite enough.

All the same, Katie Maddox—long-legged, graceful, and touched by cinnamon in her hair, her eyes and even her faint freckles—didn’t look intimidated. She looked, in her way, fierce. Protective. And while Mariska puzzled over it, Ruger narrowed his eyes, traded glances between Katie and Maks, and said, “You two didn’t waste any time.”

Only when Katie looked at him in surprise, her hand touching her abdomen, did Mariska understand. She immediately accorded Maks another notch of respect for his quiet restraint, and took a step farther away from Katie.

Maks chose not to acknowledge Ruger at all; he lifted his head to the woods, drawing their attention west.

“We bought the neighbor’s land,” Katie said. “And there’s forest on all sides of us. So as long as you head out in this direction, no one will see you.” She ran a hand over the electronic ATV sitting beside her; four of the machines hunkered by the side of the old pole barn well behind the house. “You’ll be hooking up with an old logging road for most of the ride. Don’t be seen—nothing with a motor is allowed in this forest.”

“Then why use them at all?” Mariska was the first to voice the unspoken, although she tried to put humor behind it. “You didn’t think the bears could keep up with the cats?”

Maks only smiled, quiet as it was. “Up to you,” he said. “I’m riding.”

Ruger sent her a look, a thread of incredulous response reaching her from what was most likely a lingering result of their time together. Only then did she understand, even as Maks shifted the weight from his recently injured leg, and winced as she opened her mouth to apologize—except she couldn’t read the expression that crossed his face just then, a sudden dazed distraction.

“Maks…” Katie’s voice sounded odd, faint and distressed; her eyes had lost focus. If Mariska had had any doubt about the nature of their relationship, it would have disappeared before the sight of the tiger gone stupid and dazed beside her, caught up in whatever gripped her.

Ruger reached Katie just as her eyes rolled back, scooping her right off her feet, his legs braced but otherwise showing no particular effort—as though he could stand there forever.

“That’s a powerful thing for a vague little seeing,” Ian said, always that little sardonic tone behind his words.

“Could be the pregnancy,” Ruger said, carefully shifting so Katie’s lolling head found support against his shoulder. “Could be she’s been hiding this much from us.”

Maks took a staggered step forward, caught his balance, and shook off whatever had gripped him, looking far too vulnerable for a tiger. His voice came a little rough. “No. This is new.” He reached for Katie with purpose, but it was too late; she stirred in Ruger’s arms and then made a startled, frightened noise, stiffening against him.

“Katie Rae,” Maks said, but he didn’t crowd them; he only put a hand on her leg. “Ruger is safe. Let it be.”

“Maks,” she said uncertainly, clutching at Ruger’s shirt as if that would hold the world still, too.

“Let it be, Katie Rae,” Maks said again. “If he frightens you, I’ll have to hurt him. And we need him right now.”

“Oh,” Katie said—still breathless, but no longer quite sounding frightened. “Okay, then.” But then she hesitated, looking up at Ruger as if she saw him for the first time—reaching to touch his face with a sympathetic empathy that took Mariska by surprise. “Healer,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Mariska fought a shock of envy at the way he received Katie’s touch, accepting both it and the sentiment she offered. He set Katie gently on her feet, relinquishing her to Maks.

Katie held tightly to Maks’ hand. “Just like before,” she said, her gaze still a little distant. “This foreseeing has always been about more than Maks’ presence here… that was just part of it. The first part. But… there’s a foreboding… there’s terrible grief, there’s—” She stopped and shook her head. “Can I try to show you, please? My seeings have never translated well to words.”

“Can you do that?” one of Ian’s assistants asked. Mariska hadn’t seen them at the meeting, hadn’t ridden with them in the tidy little BMW SUV, and now, with some resignation, simply thought of them as Heckle and Jeckle.

“I can try,” Katie told him. “But I need hands.” She extended hers, and Maks put his over it. Ruger, too, and that left Mariska and Ian and Sandy, exchanging glances with a mutual reluctance but finally adding their hands to the physical nexus along with Heckle and Jeckle.

“Ready?” Katie murmured. “Here it comes…”

But Mariska wasn’t ready.

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—

Ian swore under his breath, jerking his hand from beneath Mariska’s and sending her tumbling back to reality. Tumbling back in reality, as she struggled to reorient and found herself steadied by a pair of familiar hands—familiar and big, and a touch her body knew instantly.

Not until she’d blinked and recovered her equilibrium did he step away, leaving an ache where his warmth had been.

“You see,” Maks said, glancing at Katie. “You see why it matters.”

“Yes,” Ian said, and his words sounded a little strangled. “Whatever that was, it sure as hell matters.”

“That sound,” said Heckle—short, bandy-muscled, and not strong enough of Sentinel blood to take the change. He cupped his hands over his mouth to imitate what words couldn’t quite convey. A hollow huffing sound, a clacking…

“What was that?” Jeckle asked, but not as if he expected to get an answer. Like Heckle, he likely saw little of fieldwork, but he was a solid sort, old enough to have a wealth of experience behind him.

Mariska exchanged a glance with Ruger, looking for and finding the wince of awareness that told her he’d recognized it, too. “Bear,” she said finally. “Frightened black bear, with teeth and breath.”

Heckle gave her a skeptical look. “What frightens a bear?”

Ruger said flatly, “Not much,” and Mariska realized she was chafing her upper arms, chilled to the bone in the rising warmth of the late-summer day.

“Great,” Ian said. “Now the bears are spooked.”

“Good,” Katie said, her tone unexpectedly practical. “You should be.”

Ruger made a rumbling noise; Mariska thought it might have been dark humor. Katie shot him a look. “And maybe you’ll all be careful.” She shivered, giving the woods a wary look.

“The boundaries are up,” Maks told her. “I’ll know if anyone approaches while we’re gone.” He sent a look Ruger’s way that Mariska interpreted as a warning. And once I take you in, you’re on your own.