Tiger Bound (3 page)

“Surely you want to get the cat to help,” Akins said, his voice pitched loudly enough to include the crowd.

“You know damned well it’s too late for that.” Katie closed her eyes, took a deep and peculiar kind of breath—touching the cat between the eyes, her other hand resting so lightly on its broken body that she might not have been touching it at all.

The cat, too, took a deep and peculiar breath. And then it...didn’t.

Katie didn’t move, not for a long moment. Akins shifted as though he might come closer; Maks tipped his head in warning.

Katie wiped her hands on denim-clad thighs, and stood in a single fluid motion, one that held the same grace as her swift running stride. The glare she sent at Akins should have sent the man for cover.

“You
killed
it?” he said, his voice loud and his surprise unconvincing. “Just like that dog?”

She faltered, her flushed face gone pale and her body stiff, as if she saw the blow coming and couldn’t do anything about it.
“That dog,”
she said, strain showing in her voice, “was terribly ill.”

His sneer was back. “And it died on your table, under your hands. Just like the dog the month before, and before that it was, what...some sort of pet pig?”

Her struggle to stay above the moment showed on her face; her chin gave a single, betraying quiver. “You’re a monster, Roger Akins, and you don’t deserve those beautiful dogs of yours for one moment.”

She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving the handful of onlookers big-eared and big-eyed on the sidewalk—and leaving Maks one step behind again. He looked at the cat; he looked at Akins. The man shrugged, all innocence, and Maks wanted to snarl at him.

But sometimes the quieter warnings were the better ones. He took a single step closer, a silent step—a meaningful step, in the face of Akins’s sudden uncertainty—and then Katie Maddox was too far ahead of him to linger any longer.

He caught up with her as she outpaced the few onlookers who thought they might speak to her—calling her name, hastening to reach her. She headed past the car to the garden at the outside edge of the complex, sitting on the ornate wooden bench set in rock. Her followers might not have taken the hint at that, but when Maks glanced at them, it was enough; they fell back.

Maks joined her on the bench, quietly enough to hear it creak faintly under his weight—not responding to the single glare from behind her wet-lashed eyes and thinking, to his surprise, that they had something very much in common. In her own way, she was as much a protector as he was.

He pondered that, pushing away the lingering dissonance from the recent spell—feeling again the sting of the circumstances. The tiger who wasn’t whole, coming to help the deer who hid from herself.
Marginal seer having the vapors over vague portents,
she had said, her tone faintly bitter.

And so her file had said. But Nick Carter had been plain enough.
She knows more than she thinks she does—and we can’t afford trouble right now. You know the area. You’re the best man I can send for this job. Go see what’s happening.

Of course, in the wake of
Core D’oíche,
Nick had few field agents to choose from. He’d been, Maks thought, not so much the best man as the
only
man.

Katie shifted suddenly, drawing Maks’s gaze from its constant sweep of the area. Her expression, eyes still bright and cheeks still flushed, had shifted to annoyance. “I can deal with Roger Akins,” she said. “He’s certainly not why I called brevis.” And she stood, unfolding with graceful ease to head back for her car.

“Katie,” Maks said, without following—she stopped, turning back to him. “Why
did
you contact brevis?”

She closed her eyes, an acknowledgment of the question she didn’t look quite ready to answer. “Please,” she said. “Let’s just go home. We can talk there.”

“You want time to figure out how to deal with me.” Still honest. Always honest...or else silent.

She offered the smallest of smiles as she reached a sporty-but-sensible little vehicle. She flipped open the back hatch, and stood aside so Maks could toss in his duffel.

It wasn’t so much a polite move as it was wary. All in undertones, as if she didn’t even realize it—always a certain buffer of distance between them; always a certain balance of readiness.

This particular car model no doubt worked just fine for a slender body that folded with limber ease. His own? Not so much. Maks leaned over and pushed the seat all the way back, giving the resulting leg room a dubious look before he eased himself into the available space. He groped for the seatbelt before he closed the door, knowing there’d be no room to find it afterward. His knees bumped the dash.

“Well,” Katie said, and bit her lip. “We can check with brevis about renting something while you’re here.” She reached behind him, stretching—the rustle of clothing, the sweet scent of woman and prey combined, brushing up against him and—

“Here,” she said, and maybe she’d already repeated it once or twice, nudging his hand with the seat belt buckle. Maks clamped down on it with such abrupt reflex that her breath caught—right there in his ear—and he swallowed hard.
So close. So sweet. So...

What was he even thinking?

She sat back behind the wheel, her hands quiet in her lap. Not reaching for her own seat belt at all. “Maybe,” she said, “this was a mistake.”

He turned on her with more ferocity than he’d intended, then desperately swallowed it down.

Because it didn’t matter if she carried the faint scent of something he might well hunt, and it didn’t matter that her movement mesmerized him. Maks had grown up protecting the weak, the small, the injured...he had made it his life. Before he’d even spoken fluent English, he’d conquered his instinctive responses to such factors. So it
shouldn’t
matter.

He managed to gather his thoughts. “It’s not a mistake to ask for help. Or to give it.”

She sat a moment longer, hair spilling free of the careless waterfall at her nape, a ponytail running through elastic and then half again, the ends spraying free in cinnamon undertones that matched her freckles and brows and eyes. Searching eyes, large and dark-lashed, irises rimmed with chocolate. She finally reached for her own seat belt. “I don’t think it’s going to be that simple.”

Maks couldn’t argue that.

He barely watched the road as they drove the mile to the first turn—but then, he never watched the road. Oh, he could drive and he could navigate. But it had never been natural...never been a part of who he was. They’d been too late in finding him for that.

Pine Bluff was a small town with a single wide, meandering main street; one turn took them onto narrow asphalt, another onto dirt. They passed a house set far back in the woods, then another; after a third, they came to a straight quiet stretch and Maks rolled his window down to take in the scents of the place. All the green, all the fir and pine, all the sharp, dry dust and a thick overlay of dried needles breaking down black over silty soil.

Not a tiger’s native land...unless that tiger happened to be Maks.

The dirt road ended without fanfare, turning into the stumpy driveway for a well-worn log cabin tucked in among the trees. It was old enough to precede the existence of manufactured log homes; old enough for the trees to crowd it, ponderosa pines looming tall.

She cut the little car’s engine, and they sat in silence for a moment.

Maks breathed.

Maybe for the first time in a long time.

“I need to do some fire clearing,” Katie said finally.

Maks pulled himself from
being
to thinking—to applying himself to Katie’s situation. Unlike many Sentinels, he had little in the way of additional talent. He could handle shields; he could create faint boundaries, and knew when those were crossed. He couldn’t heal, or see and manipulate wards, or sense subtle amulets. He had no clear mind-voice—only a few words conveyed with much effort, and the habit of sending impressions and concepts that didn’t always make an impact on the intended recipient.

Of course, there was the silence. A gift from his early years, born of necessity and seldom used. But not even the best tracker—using Sentinel gifts or Atrum Core amulets—would discern his psychic scent if he went silent.

It wasn’t likely to be of any use in the protection of Katie Maddox. His mouth twitched; he returned his full attention to her, finding her paused and waiting, fully aware of his wandering thoughts.

She pointed through the windshield. “This is where I started. The road turns into a trail...cuts through to the forest land. Bikers, hikers, horseback riders...it’s a trickle this time of year. You never know when someone might toss a cigarette, so I cleared out the deadfall—but the stuff near the house...” She shrugged, shoulders eloquent. “That job has always been bigger than I am.”

“But you’ve worked on it,” he said, seeing the signs. Areas where the smaller trees had been thinned, the space between them cleaned of the ladder fuels that would leapfrog a fire straight to the house.

“I love this place,” she said simply, looking down at hands that, indeed, bore calluses; she probably didn’t even know about the smile curving her mouth, or the way it brushed light into her eyes. “After the Chediski-Rodeo fire pushed right up against this town...” She brushed her hands off. “Well, I may not be able to do it all, but I’d be a fool not to try.”

“Is that what you thought when you contacted brevis for help?” Maks asked. “Only that you would be a fool not to try?”

She’d reached for her door latch. Now she let the door finish its opening arc, but made no move to get out of the car. Her face had stilled. No smile, no light. And no flinching. She studied his face a moment, and then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Because I couldn’t not try. No matter what I expect.”

Maks had never learned the art of layered conversation; it wasn’t in his nature or his nurture. Not when survival meant clear action and clear communication. “I don’t know what you
expect,
” he said. “But you asked for help. I’m here to give it.”

She laughed, short but light. “Your cleared field profile is a study in contradictions and things unsaid. But it doesn’t make me think you’re the right one to deal with this. With
me.
”

He tried not to feel the sting of that—the accusation.

Or the truth of it.

Although maybe not for the reasons she thought it.

She must have seen it anyway. She bit her lip, a single canine briefly peeking out, and looked down at her hands, fingers brushing over the calluses. “I’m sorry. But you must see it. You’re a
tiger.
And me, I’m...” She shrugged, hands tightening around each other as she looked out her side window. “I’m a deer. A Chinese water deer. I’m what you might eat for lunch, if I wasn’t—”

She didn’t have to say the words; he knew what she was.
Sentinel. Borderline seer. Most times human.

Her mouth took on a tight set. “I told myself I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I knew they wouldn’t take me seriously—and they didn’t. They sent a man who’s barely off medical. Who’s going to spend all his effort fighting the instincts we all have.”

He made a noise of protest, wanting to say that he was off medical and that he’d gotten his instincts well tamed long ago—

Except he’d already come to the same conclusion about his assignment here and he knew better about his field status.

She didn’t notice the protest, too wound up in her own words. “Instincts I’ve had my fill of already, or I wouldn’t be way out here trying not to get visions and using my healing on people’s
dogs!
”

Deer.
Small, dog-size deer, at that. What had it been like for her, growing up among young predators? Jostling her, crowding her, making comments and insinuations...

Maks couldn’t guess. He hadn’t had the chance to be among them at all.

“Katie,” he said, trying again—and earned a sharp glance for invoking her name. “Maybe you’re right.” That slowed her down, all right. “Maybe I’m all they had to send. Things are bad there since—”

Core D’oíche.
The night that death and destruction had unfolded throughout the Southwest region at the hands of the Atrum Core—only a month ago at that. Maks had been barely recovered enough from the earlier Flagstaff attack to do his part.

And Katie, gentle healer with seer’s eyes, had been so spared by that night that she didn’t truly understand. Had she even dreamed it, marginal seer that she was?

He shook his head. He took a breath. “I’m all they could spare,” he repeated firmly. “But it doesn’t matter.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, darkening the cinnamon with shadow.

“I know this area. I
know
it, in ways you can’t—” He stopped, closed his eyes. Drew breath—the pines, the cedar, the blur of time and memory. Tried again. “This is my place, these woods. I can keep you safe while you figure out the things you’ve seen.”

She watched him with eyes that remained unconvinced. She watched him as a creature on the edge of flight—emotional, if not literal. Far too aware that he skirted the edge of things that mattered deeply, but unable to interpret his emotions. And not knowing, after all, how seldom he came to such truths with others.

Maks grumbled—disgruntled, wordless again. It often happened that way; always had. He’d spent too much of his life without words at all.

A flicker of movement reflected in the passenger side-view mirror—Maks focused on it, found a man in a garish orange-and-lime shirt hesitating behind them on the road, one leg bracing his mountain bike. Found him, and reacted to him.

Just as Katie reacted to Maks, recognizing instantly that his inner timbre had changed—moving away from him and up against her door. “I told you...people use this road.”

Maks kept his gaze on the mirror. “Do you know this man?”

She shrugged. “Lots of people ride here. My neighbor—Williams—he comes this way all the time.”

He glanced away from the man just long enough to find her gaze—the faint annoyance there, the fears. He felt his own annoyance rise to meet it.