Sentinels: Jaguar Night

That particular expedition had consequently destroyed itself, leaving the Liber Nex on its own among the land’s own people, obscure and mostly forgotten, but recognized as an object of great evil by those with the vision to see. The most recent rumors of its existence—from the eighteen hundreds—placed it in northern Mexico. And nearly twenty years earlier, talk of it had revived, making its way into the Sentinel archives on nothing more than the whispers of hope growing in the Atrum Core. Whispers grown loud enough to act on, however belated. Fifteen years ago.

Dolan didn’t have any trouble believing the Liber Nex had made its way just north of the border. Or that it had even somehow been found during the mess of an operation that followed. Found and hidden again, by someone who didn’t live to tell of it.

Such a person would have to be tricky of mind…would have to enjoy puzzles. Not necessarily a powerful Sentinel, not necessarily even a proficient one. Just good at mind mazes, and good of heart.

Just like the coyote shifter who had once lived on this land.

And the Atrum Core had finally figured it out, first chasing the whispers, then infiltrating Sentinel intelligence, and now, finally, racing Sentinel reaction.

Well. Racing Dolan.

As far as he knew, the brevis regional consul still debated over the best team to send, no doubt cursing his willingness to act without them. His brother had taught him that—not to count on them. He’d learned it again when the local Core drozhar had gotten his hands on Dolan, and the Sentinels had assumed Dolan dead…leaving him to escape while they pondered the most politic response to the situation.

Hard lessons, well learned.

Dolan’s gaze flicked to the horizon. There was the haze again, thicker than ever, right where it had been during the two days Dolan had hunted the manuscript. Margery Lawrence had died on this land; the manuscript couldn’t be far if she’d truly been the last to hide it.

And Meghan Lawrence might know of it, and yet he was supposed to sit in Sonoita and wait as the Core closed in, led by Fabron Gausto…a man with a grudge.

He wished truly that he believed Meghan knew of the manuscript, though he feared she didn’t. But he did believe she knew her mother’s ways better than any of them, and that she might hold latent, buried clues to the manuscript’s location. He took a sudden deep breath, beset by the urge to return to the ranch, to talk to her…to convince her. But there was no time for that, so instead he let that breath go in a harsh gust, giving the ranch one last lingering look before he turned away. “Be careful, Meghan Lawrence.”

And Meghan Lawrence lifted her face to the still air of the morning, standing in the eastern doorway with the sun streaming over her hair and face, warming the huge old flannel shirt she’d thrown on over her skimpy night tank top. Cold desert nights, welcome dawn. A faint contact brushed over her skin, as subtle as the sunlight—but it tingled over her entire body, including the skin well hidden in flannel. Without thinking, she followed impulse; she ran out into the hard-packed dirt and dust of the yard, bare feet a stupidity in this climate of things that bit and stung and pricked. She couldn’t have said why she searched the steep slab of ground west of the ranch, but search it she did.

And far up the slope, gliding upward with power unhindered by the steep, rocky ground, she saw the sinuous black shape of a big cat.

She wanted to say good riddance or get lost or don’t come back. She wasn’t sure why she instead murmured, “Be careful, you.” Or why she stood bare-legged in the yard watching for a black form long since gone, her fingers clutching the flannel shirt closed and Jenny’s dog investigating her toes.

“Meg, you all right?”

Meghan looked at Jenny in surprise, then down at the rubber currycomb and stiff rice-bristle brush in her hands. The horse cross-tied before her—a sweet little mare still regaining her health after her former owner nearly neglected her to death—had obvious swirls of curry pattern in her shedding spring coat, not yet brushed smooth. It was a task Meghan should have finished half an hour earlier…if she hadn’t been staring at the oddly hazy nature of the eastern horizon.

That tingle between her shoulder blades…she wasn’t sure, any longer, that her Sentinel visitor had caused it. The Atrum Core uses many forms, her mother had once said, patiently teaching a young girl what feeble wards she could muster, what faint healing skills. They are just people, but they do things that would horrify you and me.

It had been too much for her at six or eight or ten, but now that she was twenty-five, those words lived deep within.

And warned her.

Meghan gave Jenny a little smile, full of sheepish chagrin for a job half finished and hiding thoughts she could never share. “Woolgathering,” she admitted.

“More than that.” Fair Jenny had a knack for seeing through those little white lies, even the ones people told themselves. She also had the knack of seeing through to the heart of a horse, and she took charge of their problem rescues. Now she leaned against the aisle rail of the openair mare motel, crossing her arms. “You haven’t been yourself since yesterday morning. Not since Starling lost his wits in the round pen. Something’s got you shook-up.”

Everyone at the rescue ranch knew when someone rattled up that long rutted driveway, and no one had; she could hardly say a visitor had rattled her. Meghan went for a half-truth. “Got a call from an old friend of my mother’s.”

Not hardly. The man who’d let her mother face the Atrum Core alone.

Jenny winced in sympathy. “Stirred things up, I’ll bet.” But as she gave the mare a pat and pushed away from the stall panel, she added, “It’s more, though. There’s something…else.” She shrugged. “Won’t pry. As long as you’re dealing.”

“I’m dealing.” Meghan rubbed a cheek against her upper arm to dislodge flyaway winter horse hair; her hands were already covered in it. “Listen, you and Chris gonna be here this afternoon to take in the drop-off? I want to get a good start with this one—I think we’ve got potential for a therapy horse in the turnaround.”

“Nice change of subject,” Jenny said, and then she let it go. “Chris has something at home.” Their teenaged young man currently playing jack-of-all-trades had nothing if not a turbulent home life. “Anica will be here.” Anica did the on-site nursing work and had been with Meghan the longest. Rescue work…it tended to burn people out. Meghan was grateful to have Jenny and Anica and Chris, not to mention their fund-raising wizards and the rotating volunteers who handled the necessary physical work involved with the rescue operation. Jenny and Anica both lived on the ranch, and plenty of others had overnighter kits set aside for the unexpected need.

Jenny had also been here long enough to know when to walk away from unanswered questions. She left Meghan to her grooming and her thoughts with nothing more than a parting invitation to talk if she wanted. Meghan returned to the currycomb with a vengeance, and the mare leaned happily into her hand. Stirred things up. That much was the truth. Stirred up her grief and her resentment and her anger, and brought out in the open the things she’d always tried to forget about her life.

That her mother wasn’t like other mothers. That she had shifted her form. That along with her wicked sense of humor and gentle smile, she also occasionally wore fur.

That a man had changed to a black jaguar before her eyes, bringing that world rushing back to collide with her own. A fine young man who takes the jaguar…

Could he even be the same man who should have met her mother that night? Was he old enough? Certainty became less so as logic crept in. But then, she wasn’t a big believer in coincidence.

She thought about their confrontation, about the moments he’d backed her against the corral. How she’d felt every inch of her body—the skin tightening down her back, the unexpected tremor in her legs, the very air on her face. Her skills were modest, would always be modest—and yet still she’d felt the power in him. She’d known then that he was a predator, but…also a protector, as her mother had been.

Too bad she didn’t trust him.

Dolan found the land’s abandoned old homestead in late afternoon, layered in so many wards that he wasn’t the least surprised it had taken him two days, or that he’d been through this very area three times before noticing the old buildings. At least a century old, crumbling adobe and exposed wood framing, ocotillo cactus skeletons still lingering atop the porch to create scattered shade…Prickly pear clung to the corners of the buildings, struggling in this altitude. A lean-to shed for animals surrounded by the drunken remains of a corral, the tiny home, a chicken house, an outhouse and a shed that was now merely a trace of a foundation in the dirt.

He stood in the center of the yard for a long moment, on human feet with human senses attuned to the wards that had once been installed over this place. Layers and mazes and switchbacks, all set by a mind he admired anew. A natural trickster, one who could not only worry over the ends of a puzzle until it unraveled, but who could create her own. Her daughter might indeed have unraveled it all faster than he, but only if it wouldn’t have taken too long to convince her to try. Now he searched the patterns of the wards, having long ago realized that there was no single bright spot, no obviously protected area—and he finally saw what he was looking for.

Surely it won’t be this easy. Not a bright spot, woven into the threads of protections and the occasional glow of obscuring aura, but a blank spot. A don’t-look-at-me spot. He opened his eyes and superimposed his inner ward vision over his outer, and found himself facing the old house. Right through the open, damaged wall to what remained of the old fireplace.

In the chimney of the old fireplace.

Not quite as tricky as he’d expected—not the location, not the process of navigating those ward lines. At least, not until he realized what she’d done by using the old homestead, for anyone who did happen to notice the lingering wards would think nothing of them. Many older dwellings still carried protections, especially in an area where they might be needed fast. Violent monsoon storms, cold desert nights at even colder altitudes…as wrecked as it was, this place was still shelter. Still worth protecting.

Dolan slipped through the warding on the house, leaving it as intact as he could—out of respect, and out of the need to keep things quiet. The Core was hovering too closely as it was. He thought briefly about waiting, of bringing Meghan Lawrence back here to take part in what had surely been her mother’s greatest victory and greatest sacrifice…

Then again, maybe not such a good idea. He’d stop for a quick visit on the way out, letting her know her mother’s legacy. She deserved that, and he…

Maybe he just needed to prove he could walk away again.

He flattened his ears in annoyance. Oh, maybe they were currently human ears and maybe they didn’t truly flatten, but he felt it all the same, and knew it reflected on his face—annoyance at his own inability to let go of the woman who’d wanted nothing to do with him or his quest or his blood. Sentinel blood, like her own…but running too thick to dismiss.

Dolan glanced at the sky, at the sun about to go down, and shrugged off his distractions, a literal twitch of shoulder. He’d come here for a reason, and one reason only—and if Meghan Lawrence thanked him for anything, it would be that he achieved his goal fast enough to prevent the official team from descending on the area. So he quit hesitating in the doorway and crossed the threshold, hyperaware of the fresh breezes stirred by his entrance. Not physical breezes, but metaphysical disturbances just waiting for him to take a wrong step, to prove he didn’t belong.

He didn’t really want to find out what a trickster would do in retribution to a trespasser.

So he offered his respect and his caution, and he slowly progressed to the interior of the crumbling house, the single main room with its sleeping and cooking alcoves and the hand-formed fireplace still in nearperfect condition. He crouched beside it, hesitating long enough to check for traps and black widow spiders alike, finding neither. Just that blank space that had drawn him here, alluring…close enough to success to send tension zinging down his spine.

As dusk fell around him, he reached into the chimney and felt around until his fingers came to rest on crackling paper.

Yes. With care, he eased the manuscript free. It felt right in his hand—the expected size, the expected heft—if at the same time without the presence he’d expected. The weightiness.

He withdrew it from the chimney and set it on the hearth, a paper-wrapped package thoroughly secured with duct tape. More duct tape showing than paper, dammit. The stuff would be hell to cut through, even after all this time. He reached into his treated back pocket for his folding Buck knife—and that’s when he realized.

Not dusk, this darkness. Not yet.

Atrum Core. Here. Now. In spite of his personal wards. Coming for the one thing he could never let them have.

The haze once restricted to the horizon now abruptly descended around him, saturating the air with an oily stench. He threw himself down on the manuscript, pulling the threads of his wards tighter even as he sent the most piercing Vigilia adveho call he could—the 911 incantation of a Sentinel in deepest jeopardy. By then he realized the haze wasn’t mist, wasn’t droplets of any sort, but had turned into infinitesimal insects, gnats almost too small to see—and that as they settled on the skin exposed at his wrists, they sank right into his damn skin, making it twitch with the sudden burning fire of their passage.

Can’t be good. He instantly gave over to the jaguar, trading inadequate clothing for thick black fur, still crouched over the manuscript, ears flattened closed and eyes tightly closed, his nose tucked down between his front legs and his tail curled tightly to his side. Expose nothing—and never stop reaching for those wards—

Abruptly, the stench eased. The fiery burn beneath his skin eased, fading to an ache. The dusk—true dusk—enfolded him in silence. Dolan didn’t move, not at first—he finished reinforcing his wards, not allowing himself to wonder why the Core had retreated when they—face it—they’d had the complete advantage. The Vigilia adveho hadn’t yet even reached its target; the ward reinforcement hadn’t been finished. His dappled black jaguar fur wouldn’t have kept the invading gnats away forever, and the fire of them had been enough to fragment his concentration. And yet…

Gone. All of it.

Dolan slowly raised his head, a growl slipping out. He flexed his claws into the stone hearth—claws sharp enough to tear through duct tape as easily as a knife. He didn’t waste any time tackling the manuscript wrapping, beset with the sudden urgency to see the thing, to touch it directly—to feel it. Beset with the sudden premonition that it—

That it wasn’t the manuscript at all.

Dolan growled again—couldn’t stop it, or stop from lashing his tail. Decoy. Paper encased in leather—a fancy journal of some sort, filled with the scripted details of daily life. The Core must have realized it, and they had promptly quit the field.

He’d been lucky in a backward kind of way—the Core shouldn’t have been able to find him, shouldn’t have been able to reach him…but they had, and only this decoy had saved him from that bafflingly successful attack.

But it left him with no manuscript and a cold trail.

And it left him with the need to return to Meghan Lawrence, to see if she could lend insight to his search. It left him with a biting inner self-scorn, knowing he’d underestimated Fabron Gausto and the regional Core.

A twinge shot through one front leg, involuntarily flexing his claws into the journal’s leather binding; he stared at it without immediate comprehension. A spasm flickered across his ribs; he grunted in surprise, hissing as a contraction twisted his back leg hard enough to kick out across the dirt floor beyond the hearth.

And then he knew.

The Atrum Core had left not in retreat, but because they’d already done what they’d come for. Another twist of muscle down his back, a grunt of pain from deep within, tinged with annoyance and—

—yes, desperation.

They’d waited for his distraction and they’d somehow infiltrated his defenses, instilling sly dark poisons and now—

—fire traced down his back—now Meghan would be on her own—a dry jaguar cough, wrenched from a body twisting around itself—and the real manuscript was still out there for the taking—consciousness fading, making way for the fire and—

Failure. Agonizing death and failure.

But he still held the threads of the unfinished call, and he redirected it to a closer target, to the one he least wanted to endanger and most wanted to help.

Meghan. Sentinel unblooded. Daughter of the trickster.

Hope of the Vigilia.

And the one face he wanted to see.

Meghan stiffened. Echoes of pain shot through her body, trying to twist her—trying to take over. Without thinking, she whirled to face the eastern horizon, which was darkened by dusk…but no longer by the strange haze of the past few days, the one she’d first thought was an atmospheric oddity and then smoke from a distant fire and then pretended not to notice at all.

“Meghan!” Jenny ran down the aisle of the opensided barn to reach her, hands closing over her upper arms to turn her, to look her in the eye. “Meghan—?”

Meghan had to blink a few times before she truly saw her friend—before she realized she’d dropped an entire bucket of oats and psyllium, leaving the hungry gelding in the end stall pawing in frustration. “I have to go,” she said, and the words sounded as if they came from someone else’s mouth.

“You—” Jenny dropped her arms, took a step back. “You what?”

“Have to go.” Meghan spoke more briskly, her mind racing ahead—choosing a horse, listing supplies…preparing.

She’d felt the pain. She knew who it was, if not why. She knew he was alone on her land.

She knew she had to go…

If not why.

Chapter 3

Meghan ignored Jenny’s hovering presence as she grabbed saddle, bridle and the saddlebags set aside for trail emergencies. A quick side trip to the house and her bedroom, and a low storage bin bumped out from beneath her bed and across the braided rug to yield her mother’s lore box with its precious herbs and powders.

Meghan dashed back to the barn, nearly colliding with Jenny at the threshold. Jenny did a double take, her gaze settling on the box tucked under Meghan’s arm. Wooden, carved with loving but basic skills by an adolescent Margery Lawrence…the most meaningful thing Meghan had left of her mother.

“I’m okay,” Meghan said, knowing how very much circumstances indicated otherwise. “But my mother…she may have left something undone. And I have a feeling—” She broke off. How she hated that phrase; how she usually avoided it. How she’d been teased as a girl in school—

But this was Jenny, and her face cleared. Or nearly cleared. “All right,” she said. “But is it safe?”

Meghan hesitated long enough to shrug. Safe? Not in the least. That somehow didn’t, at the moment, seem relevant. “Grab Luka for me?” she asked Jenny, and pulled a floppy camp bag from the small tack room opposite the saddles.

“Luka,” Jenny echoed. “You’re going into rough country?” But her feet were already moving for the gelding’s stall.

Because Luka would get her there. Wise, once mistreated into a man-killer, the aging gelding had finally found a rider who understood his mighty Lipizzan spirit. He still suffered no fool gladly, but he’d given his heart to Meghan—and now his sure feet and still-powerful body would take her anywhere.

A mount she might well need, since she had no idea just where she’d end up. She only knew she’d follow—

Wrenching pain, fracturing thoughts…

And a sudden brief clarity, a presence so clear that it arrowed right through her. Danger, it said, and Atrum Core and ’Ware, Meghan Lawrence and then more faintly, an entirely different tone behind it, something yearning, Meghan…

Meghan blinked. She scrambled to her feet, having found herself on her knees in the aisle—and just in time, for here came Jenny with Luka, and in what possible way could she explain her reaction, explain why she still had to go?

Still reeling from the touch of him—the dark presence, the faint, sharp spice, the hint of something deep, untapped—she wondered quite suddenly if the jaguar had touched her mother like this. If he’d warned her.

If she’d gone anyway, as Meghan intended to do.

“You’re sure?” Jenny asked, dropping Luka’s lead rope beside the gear; it was as good as tying him. But she didn’t wait for an answer; she said, “Let me grab you a couple of jackets, then.” Because the temperature would drop fast on a crystal-clear night like this one; already Meghan’s sweatshirt didn’t seem quite enough to keep the goose bumps away.

Or maybe that was the lingering touch of his presence in her soul.

She shut him out as best she could, just so she could think. She quickly saddled Luka, stroking his noble baroque nose when he turned to inquire of her hurry, but swiftly turning to tighten the girth on the lightweight synthetic Aussie saddle, adding a breastplate, strapping the bulging saddlebags in place…and turning to find Jenny proffering not only an armful of easily layered jackets, but pommel bags stuffed with trail food. She gave Meghan a quirky little smile and said, “I had a feeling.”

Meghan gave her a quick hug while Jenny still had her hands full, and then pulled on a Windbreaker and vest and strapped the remaining two jackets over the sleeping bag. “That’s why I choose my family.”

“Oh, pshaw,” Jenny said airily, but her eyes had a glint in the sallow mercury light of the barn aisle. She double-checked the straps and girth as Meghan slipped a practical trail halter bridle over a head almost too dignified to carry so much. Luka chomped the bit and waited patiently, nothing like the mount he’d be once Meghan swung her leg over the saddle.

“I’ve got my cell phone,” Meghan said, though she knew she wouldn’t use it even if she managed a rare connection. There was no way she’d lure her unsuspecting chosen family into the thick of this mess. They knew of her feelings, of her connections…in truth, there was a little of it in all of them, that common thread that drew them here. But they had no idea her long-dead mother had shifted to a coyote any time or place that pleased her. They had no idea such organizations as the Sentinels and the Atrum Core even existed.

And if Meghan had anything to say about it, they never would.

Once mounted, Luka transformed—no longer a stocky, aging gray-to-white gelding, but a creature of movement and air, dancing his way out of the ranch yard and heading toward familiar trails. Meghan allowed him to pick up a power trot, propelling them along the steady incline of a trail. He stretched into the generous rein she offered, arching his neck like a young stallion, and took them up into the darkness.

As the trail turned twisty and tricky, Meghan gave him his head and turned inward, bracing herself, and cautiously opened the connection she’d shuttered away. Sensations flooded in, swamping her. She reeled in the saddle, dimly aware that Luka deftly shifted beneath her, balancing her again. Black fur and clawed dirt and burning lungs and the fiery agony of spasming muscles and again, that briefest instant of awareness—this time with a hint of puzzlement, as though he perceived her approach. Meghan?