Kodiak Chained (30 page)

He reached down to pull her upright, and hardly gently. Nor was it gentle when he hauled her in close and caught her up in a fierce embrace, burying his face in her hair and holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe—and at that, she never wanted to let go of him. “Mari,” he said, as if no one else in this facility had Sentinel ears. “Mari,
love
—”

She did the only thing she could, crushed up against him, the bear-and-man scent of him enveloping her as much as the embrace. She
did
bite him. Right on the meat along his shoulder, her small, strong teeth firmer than a polite scrape and gentler than the bear.

Ruger made a coughing sound; his body shook beneath her. She froze—and only belatedly realized he was laughing.
Laughing.
She jerked herself free of him to scowl from only inches away, as if his beautiful face wasn’t drawn with strain and her hand wasn’t damp from contact with his draining wound. A profound scowl, with eyes narrowed and mouth clamped—and one that lasted only until he pulled her back for the fiercest, most possessive kiss in the world, one that didn’t last nearly long enough and that left her gasping when he broke away.

Jet’s voice came as dry as a wolf could manage, which was plenty dry enough. “You are well, then?”

Mariska sucked in a deep breath and leaned against the wall beside Ruger, sliding down to go cross-legged. Ruger scrubbed his hands over his face and pushed off against his thighs—standing, but only by dint of the wall still at his back. “We’re alive,” he said, and looked down at Ciobaka, who still kept a wary eye on Jet.

“Ciobaka,” he said. “Brave of you, son. This is Jet. She’s a friend, and she’s wolf. Not like us, a human who takes the wolf. But a wolf who has taken the human, because of what Forakkes once did to her.”

“Ciobaka,” Jet greeted him. “When I am wolf, you may sniff me.”

Ciobaka looked at them all, his stiff tail drooping, his big scoop ears losing loft. He backed an uncertain step, then turned and slunk away.

“It’s too much for him,” Jet said, understanding better than them all. “He will be back.”

Harrison emerged from the tunnel—dirty, ragged, and his expression simmering with lingering anger. Hardly the mild amulet assistant they’d left behind. His expression cleared somewhat as he saw Ruger and Mariska; she pushed to her feet, ignoring her own staggering clumsiness. “Heckle! What about Ian? Sandy? Did you hear from Maks? Has Katie got any news?”

“We all felt the changes,” Jet said. “Too many things happening in this spot, and it stunk.” She meant literally, from the wrinkle in her nose. “Maks stayed with Katie—she is not well with this. Annorah sent help and I brought them to the other bunker. Then I followed you out.”

“The rain slowed us.” Harrison’s mouth went flat. “We don’t know about Ian or Sandy yet.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Did you call me
Heckle?
”

“Maybe,” Mariska said cautiously—but her attention caught on movement in the cage, just as Ciobaka raised his muzzle to lift a lip in that direction. Ruger made a wary sound in his throat, started to move, and hitched over his side, a startled grunt of pain replacing his intent. She dropped beside him, bracing him—but kept her eyes on the cage.

Forakkes sprawled on his back, one arm outstretched and the amulet just beyond his reach, the cord still tangled in his fingers. His stringy musculature had gone not just lax, but soft; his hair clung to his skull in a wispy, gentle white. The angle made it hard to see his face, but Mariska had the impression of pale skin, wrinkles on wrinkles.

The assistant had flattened himself up against the back of the cage, the amulet box clutched against his torso with the lid still up—and one hand reaching within.

“Don’t!” Mariska told him. “Ruger can counter the workings before they reach us—or didn’t you notice your boss?”

“What—” The man swallowed hard, and made himself straighten. “What did you do to him?”

Ruger snorted gently. His voice held strain; he eased himself back down to sit against the wall again. “I healed him,” he said, and looked at the hand he’d had pressed against his side. He would have surreptitiously wiped the fresh blood against his leg had Mariska not grabbed his wrist and taken a good hard look. “It’s okay,” he murmured.

“It’s
not,
” she said with some asperity. Jet eyed him, too, her entire dark-clad, long, lean body coming to attention, her expression knowing.

Ruger only shook his head. “It will be.”

The assistant didn’t follow the byplay—didn’t even notice it. His hand tightened around the amulet; the box shook slightly in his grasp. “What do you mean, you
healed
him? He’s dead!”

“Did you
see
him before?” Mariska asked. “Did you really call that
living?
”

Ruger scrubbed a weary hand over his face, and Mariska glared at the assistant—but Ruger rested that hand over hers when she would have spoken.

“You must have known he was not truly whole,” Jet said, taking a step toward the man, her curiosity as honest as ever. “Find the key and come out of there. What Ruger did before, he can do again; your amulets are useless.”

Mariska
hoped
he could do again. But then, she was the only one touching him, feeling the faint tremor beneath her hand as that big body slowly gave way before the insults of the past two days. She dared no more than a glance at him—seeing the strain in his jaw and around his eyes, the increasing list in his upright position.
No weakness, not in front of this particular Core minion.
The man had to believe what Jet said—had to believe that further attack would be pointless.

Ruger shook his head at the man—responding to both his fear and his defiance. “Forakkes was so tangled in workings it was hard to tell where he ended and they began.” And even though Mariska felt the hitch in his breath and moved to position her knee so it blocked the man’s view of that growing trickle of blood, Ruger’s voice stayed even. “When I stopped that final amulet working—”

“The Amulet of Undoing,” the man said, a reverence mixed with his bitter tone.

“—I did it with healing.”

The man shook his head. Not Sentinel, not understanding.

But Mariska did. “Ruger healed us faster than the amulet could harm. He
healed
the working all the way back to where it started, and the splash-over must have reached Forakkes’ amulets. It’s what we do, you know. Heal. Protect. Preserve.”

“You
kill,
” the man said, a wild look in his eye and all his attention on Ruger. “You took away an old man’s support workings—a master! You think I trust that I’m safe with you? You think I care if I die with you, if that’s the way it has to be?”

Mariska snorted, loud enough to draw the man’s startled intention away from Ruger suddenly drained of color, his breath coming faster, shallower. A man about to pass out, human enough after all. “Get over yourself,” she said with no little scorn. “Forakkes wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t triggered that amulet.” She looked at the one the man held, knowing it took little more than a trained twist of will to handle a prepared amulet—and this man surely had more than that at his disposal.

Jet knew it better than any of them. “If you try to hurt us with amulets,” she said, “Ruger will stop you. And instead of returning you to your people, we will shoot you through the bars with one of your own guns.”

::Mari,:: Ruger said, and his inner voice sounded faint; his eyes flickered, as though only strength of will kept them from rolling up. ::Mari, I’m trying—::

Trying not to faint,
she thought, and closed her hand on his shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough so he jerked with surprise, growling, and let her know she’d pay for this one. She caught the man’s gaze and held it, hard. “Unlock the damned door, because we’ve got other things to do than watch you decide to go out in an ill-conceived blaze of stupid!”

The man looked at her—looked at the amulets in the box, his face contorted, his decision made. He upended the whole box, amulets clanking to the ground, twisting and tangling around their knotted cords, and fell on his knees beside them, digging his hands into the bunch of them.

Oh, hell, he’s going to trigger them all—

There was no way Ruger could fend off such a glut of workings—and then they would be dead, and no one would know what had happened here; no one from brevis would have the chance to decipher the amulets, or to formulate defenses against them.

Oh, hell.

::Mari—:: The silent words held a gasp to them, a desperation. She dug her fingers in, glancing at Harrison and the gun he held, wondering if he was fast enough, ready enough, to pull the trigger before the man triggered the amulets.

Or if the man would be able to trigger the things even if he’d been shot.

Ciobaka yawned.

It was loud and ridiculous, with a long curl of rising sound at the end. The man startled, and for that instant his attention split.

::Mari—:: Ruger said, and this time she heard the request in it, and finally she understood.

::You aren’t alone,:: she told him, responding to need—knowing that now, of all times, when he sat in the enemy’s house with his wounds bleeding and unconsciousness pushing at him, he needed someone at his back. More than that—he needed everything she could give him. As the sharp stench of triggering amulets cut the air, as the assistant clutched at the pile of amulets, his eyes squeezed closed and his lips peeled back from his teeth in fear, a noise rising in his throat as though he charged to battle—

She opened herself wide, and suddenly there he was—wrapping around her and through her and leaning on her from the inside out—surging forward into one final effort.

The assistant’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slid bonelessly against the bars, the amulet dropping from his grasp.

In the silence that followed, Harrison lowered the gun and cast Ruger a sardonic look. “Tell me that was healing.”

“He’s tired,” Ruger said shortly. His presence slowly receded from within Mariska, leaving her with only what he’d been trying to hide—the unutterable ache in his side, the gripping weariness—until that, too, withdrew back into Ruger alone. His voice faded. “He needed to...sleep. So he is.”

And then, finally, his eyes rolled back.

Mariska dropped to catch him as he slumped to the side. “Sleep, Ruger Bear,” she told him, holding him close. “You won’t be alone.”

Chapter 24

S
o much confusion.

Ruger heard it dimly, starting with Annorah’s burst of excitement upon reaching through to them for the first time. She burbled about Ian and Sandy—
They’re found! They’re alive!
—and that the recovery team was already heading for Maks and Katie’s cabin where the chopper waited. She told them the team would be coming for Ruger next.

No,
he thought, and thought it hard.
Not yet. I need to—

He hadn’t sent that thought anywhere; he hadn’t the focus. But Mariska was right
there,
and she knew—and once she took up the argument, he relaxed.

He knew she’d go after what she wanted. Or in this case, what
he
wanted.

Not to go back to brevis. Not just yet. Not when it would tear him away from Mariska and into the whirl of debriefings and brevis medical and the potential that she’d be rushed off to another assignment before he ever...

Before he got what he
really
wanted.

The argument circled around him; it grew to include Ciobaka’s fate, and Jet’s voice rose with the certainty of the dog’s sentience and his ability to make his own choices. There came the noise of new arrivals, the small victory of acquiring the key to the cage, recovering the amulets and the assistant. The swirl of activity happened around him but not to him; it circled him without touching him.

He was tired, that was all. Way too tired to open his eyes, to join in the fluster, to argue his own case. For if nothing else, a healer’s body knew when it was time to shut down and
heal.

Ian and Sandy, safe. The bad guys stopped. The working that would have killed them all, stripping them of all they were...that was stopped, too. And Mariska stood watch over him, trusting his instincts over her own and standing her ground on it.

It was okay to sleep.

* * *

Mariska plucked one last berry from the sprinkled confectioner’s sugar on her plate and popped it into her mouth, licking away the juice and powdered sweetness, slanting a quick glance at Ruger just to see if he was watching. Really, just to make sure she’d done the right thing, keeping them here in the cabin together as he’d wanted instead of sending him down to Tucson with the others.

He lay propped against pillows at the head of the king bed in their cottage, his stomach full of comfort food that was more about those berries than the French toast beneath. “I told you I’d make it to this bed sooner or later.”

Yes. The right thing.
He looked good. To Mariska’s eyes, he looked just plain perfect—every ridge of muscle, every flex and sinuous movement. Not his normally indomitable self of size and strength, but getting there, with most of the color back in his cheeks—the drawn look gone, the gray undertones gone.
Healer again.

Mariska stood and stretched, her own stomach full and happy. Her shirt—a tank top she wore only during her downtime, luxuriously without a bra at that—pulled up over her belly, and she tugged it down, giving him the eye. “Saw you looking.”

“Do it again,” he suggested.

She put a brisk tone in her voice. “You’re hurt.”

“I heal fast.”

She snorted, and snagged her dishes from the foot of the bed, heading for the kitchen to leave them soaking. She heard him yawn in her wake, and smiled to herself. She’d woken him with that breakfast after fifteen hours of sleep. She imagined he’d done some healing during that time, at that.

He rolled out of bed and rummaged around while she headed back out to the front porch—homey noises of water running and a toothbrush clanking into the glass on the bathroom sink, the toilet flushing...