Kodiak Chained (16 page)

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 look 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

C
uriosity 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?”

“Those who work against me,” Ehwoord said, not so much as cracking his eyes open, “eventually die. Our Sentinel friends have just learned this lesson.” Then he did look at Ciobaka, one of those direct looks that set Ciobaka’s hackles on end no matter how unwise.

This time, Ehwoord merely laughed. “You still have use,” he said, and Ciobaka narrowed his eyes to a canine squint. “But the Sentinels...if I don’t have access to my work, then neither will they. I eliminated their opportunity to study the living animals. Among other things.” Ehwoord said it so matter-of-factly it took Ciobaka a moment to understand.

“Deah?” he asked, startled.

“Yes, dead.” Ehwoord tipped his head, pushing the headphone disk with one finger and squeezing the button that meant the mike curving to his mouth would let him talk to others. “Deploy the veil working, and then fall back. Once you return, monitor their wards. When the woman who set them dies, they’ll fall—then you may use the remaining workings to fully obliterate any remaining evidence of our presence there.”

The corners of Ciobaka’s mouth pulled back. Months ago, he wouldn’t have understood the significance of this conversation—not any of it. But now, as Ehwoord left his desk to toss a limp quail into Ciobaka’s cage, he understood it all.

But as he glanced at Ehwoord from the corner of his eyes, chewing vigorously at a feathered wing, he knew one other thing, one very important thing.

Ehwoord didn’t know that he knew.

* * *

The noise went on forever, and Mariska saw none of it. She buried her face in Ruger’s shoulder—she had no choice. She couldn’t even see the table above them. She could only hear the groan of earth and metal, the crash of things falling from the ceiling, tipping over from the walls. Falling dirt made a softer noise, an uneven patter of earth rain that finally...
finally...
faded to a trickle.

“Get
off,
” she said when he didn’t move. His uneven breathing gusted near her ear, his body so tense it trembled—still waiting for a final blow.

But the table had held. And if she couldn’t yet make sense of the visual chaos around them, she could at least tell they’d have dim light to work with—the ceiling ripped through to the sky and daylight filtered dully through the dust of the cave-in.

“Ruger,” she said more gently, another nudge.

He released a long breath and raised himself to hands and knees, his back bumping the table, his body still caging hers. “Hell,” he said, his expression heavily dazed. “They fucking
blew us up.
”

“Ruger,” she said,
“get off.”

He looked down at her with dawning comprehension—and still he didn’t move. Still protecting her. She showed her teeth at him and shoved.

“No,” he said, unmoved—still not sounding completely with it, and she wondered how hard the shelves had hit him. The sting of her own injuries made themselves known—nothing more than bumps and cuts and a few deep bruises. He added, “Not quite yet,” and sounded a little more sensible about it—especially given the belated crash of something not far away.

So for the moment they huddled together, breathing, waiting for the world to settle. Ruger eased back down over her, propped on his elbows; she searched his face, trying to understand what she saw there—wondering if he could feel her heart pounding just as she felt his. Another nearby crash and the table shifted; he stiffened, hunching slightly as if to protect her.

“Shh,” she said, and reached up to touch the side of his face—sweaty and dirt-streaked and just a little wild. It startled her—she hadn’t realized she had that kind of gentle reassurance in her. And she hadn’t realized that he needed it.

But he dropped his forehead to hers, his voice broken. “Mariska,” he said. “God, Mariska—if you’d—”

“Shh,” she said again, and stroked his hair, short and wiry and the hint of curl against her fingers.

She wasn’t surprised when he kissed her.

She was surprised by its gentleness, by its care—a kiss imbued with a tender, thorough care. His hands framed her face, capturing her without imprisoning her, and he kissed her mouth, he kissed her cheek, he kissed her brow—and her mouth again, while she felt a hot trickle of tears escape to run into her hair simply from the purity of what he offered.

He pulled back without releasing her—watching her with concern, trying to read her. With her thumb, she wiped away the moisture from beneath his eye and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Do you suppose,” he told her, “I would ever be happy with someone who didn’t have the strength to do what she believed in?”

Her eyes widened as the impact of his words rolled through her—unfolding in her body as a fluttering lightness of spirit, the intense relief of an underlying tension she didn’t know she’d been holding. And still— “But the things I did—”

“Shh,” he said, and bent to kiss her again. This time neither of them startled when something crashed nearby, and though her body warmed to him—and she felt his response just as clearly—neither of them rose to that, either, instead reveling in the tenderness.

It couldn’t last forever—it couldn’t last for more than a moment, with the world still trickling down around them. When he eased back, she said, “I’m going to make you mad again.”

He grinned down at her, and it, too, held something of teeth. “I’m going to make you mad again, too.”

::Ruger? Harrison?:: Ian’s communication came filtered through a certain amount of confusion, a distinct stab of pain. Ruger winced—feeling it more than she did, Mariska realized.

::We’re here!:: Mariska replied for them. ::Under a table. We can’t see anything yet.::

::Too dark in here even for Sentinel eyes,:: Ian said. ::We’re under...:: His mind-voice trailed off, as though he was only then making assessment—or as though he’d become disoriented. Ruger tensed above her, his head tilted with a fierce concentration that told Mariska he was gleaning everything he could through his diminished healer’s skills. Finally Ian said, sounding more true to his dry nature, ::...a helluva lot of crap, that’s what. Smack in the middle of the tunnel.::

::Sandy?:: Mariska asked, so Ruger didn’t have to.

::She’s out cold—half-buried. I can feel her breathing.::

She thought of broad, clawed paws working against the dirt and debris of the tunnel. ::Can you take your leopard?::

He responded with a short, sharp snapshot of what he saw, what he felt, bypassing words for the immediacy of
choking dust, utter darkness, shifting rubble, Sandy’s back warm and her breath hitching, the profound pressure of dirt, the stabbing pain of something sharp and invasive, the gouge of crumpled wire.

Ruger breathed a curse, his head dropping as he absorbed all, including Mariska’s gasp of dismay.