Sentinels: Jaguar Night

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Dolan managed it somehow, crawling into the saddle with all the grace of a bread pudding.

She might hope the connection between them would fade. He wasn’t expecting it.

Hell, he didn’t even want it.

She admonished him not to touch the reins, which she’d clipped to the saddle’s grab strap. And she didn’t bother with the halter rope, tied in a loop around the horse’s neck. “He’ll follow me,” she said simply, and he did.

A man whom most horses wouldn’t approach didn’t get much time in the saddle. A man who could take the jaguar had little use for it in the first place. He clutched the flat swell of the pommel, and half the time he wished for a horn to grab and half the time, as he slumped and bobbed, he was grateful for the lack of it.

As they hesitated before the lip of a steep slope, she advised him to lean back, but halfway down the slope she stopped them and adjusted his legs with the confident touch of an instructor—except she just as quickly snatched her hands away, glaring at him. “Figure it out,” she said, and resumed her sliding, sideways progress down the rocky slope.

He didn’t need to guess at her discomfort. He’d felt it, too, the moment she’d touched him. A flow of energy, something greedy and demanding…wanting more. He’d wanted more.

Luka followed Meghan in mincing steps, and Dolan did his best simply to stay out of the animal’s way until they reached the bottom.

But bottom was a relative term…it simply meant the narrow trail now wound sideways along the slope. Meghan stopped again, patting Luka’s sweat-soaked shoulder—for although ambient temperatures were still modestly cool, the high-altitude sun stabbed down hard.

Meghan hesitated, looking down the vista below them—the tiny dots of the ranch house and barn, the swell of the hill from which he’d once watched for her. She glanced back at him. “God, you’re a mess,” she muttered. “Maybe I should have left you…” But she didn’t finish that thought. She took an audible breath and reached for him, steadying him; straightening him. She wound his fingers firmly around the grab strap. He knew she felt the surge of energy there—her hand tightened briefly around his. Not consoling, not reaching out, but a white-knuckled attempt to push through it.

“There,” she said, and her voice was hardly steady. “We’re almost there.” Then she looked down the hill again and gave a short laugh. “Well, maybe not. But the hardest parts are over.” Her hand, free of Dolan’s, trailed down the horse’s neck. Luka turned his head and tilted it just so, and Meghan gave a little laugh. “I don’t have any. Get us back home again and I promise you a bucketful of carrots.”

But as she stepped out in front, she hesitated, and said somberly, “It’s never really going to be the same, is it?”

“No,” he said, hating the weakness in his voice, the vulnerability it exposed. But she deserved an answer…she deserved the truth. “You know too much now.”

“I’ve seen too much,” she said, and glanced back at him—no recrimination there now, just sad awareness. “I’ll have to lie to my people. My chosen family. Or not answer them. Either way, they’ll know something’s wrong. And changed.”

“Don’t think about the big picture,” he said. “Screw the future. Think about getting down this hill. I know I am.”

She gave a short laugh. “I’ll bet. But you know…if you didn’t find what you came for…if the Core didn’t get it from you…then this has really all just begun.”

And here he’d thought she’d been so deeply in denial that she hadn’t been paying attention. Wrong. He reeled slightly in the saddle, caught himself and met her eyes one last time before she turned and led them back down the hill. “Yes,” he said. “It’s really all just begun.”

“Meghan!” Anica ran from the casita at top speed, slowing only when Luka made himself tall in warning, raised neck and pricked, intense ears. A small, dark and well-rounded whirlwind of a vet tech who’d burned out of city life, Anica now focused all her considerable energies toward healing the rescued animals of Encontrados Ranch—and sometimes the people.

Not this one, Meghan thought. Anica would quickly pick up on Dolan’s unusual nature. Not everyone who came to this ranch had their own quirks and sensitivities…but those who stayed? Yeah. They all found this place to be a haven, and some had stayed in this chosen family that Meghan found herself building.

“We were worried to death!” Anica said, running to meet them. “What were you doing out all night? What happened to your arm? You should have taken a cell phone!”

Meghan shook her head. “No reception that high, you know that. I ran into someone in trouble, that’s all. We couldn’t travel in the dark. And I’m fine.”

Anica said flatly, “You ran into someone in trouble.” She held her hand up in a dramatic gesture, her faint Latino accent coming out a little more strongly. “No. Wait. Don’t tell me. You had a feeling.”

Here came the evasions. “This is Dolan. Think altitude sickness. And unless I’m mistaken, he’s about to fall off the horse.”

“Right.” Anica stood to the side, giving Dolan the once-over. Dolan, in his black leather biker jacket and his black jeans and booted feet, whisker-shadowed jaw and pain-shadowed eyes, barely sitting in the saddle at all. “A tourist.”

Meghan swallowed back her new fears, knowing there was little she could do or say at this point; either Anica would accept Meghan’s new understanding of her world, or she wouldn’t. Just another way that Dolan’s appearance had intruded on her life.

She led the horse toward the porch, with Dolan dipping and swaying over Luka’s withers. One hand was still clamped around the grab strap; the other had found Luka’s mane halfway up his neck. His eyes were clenched as tightly shut as his grip. “Dolan,” she said, reaching to touch him—and then thinking better of it.

“He’s really out of it,” Anica said. “Maybe we should call 911.”

“He asked me not to,” Meghan said. She knew well enough that Dolan would prefer to stay out of the system—that the Sentinels would be coming for him. And that conventional medicine would be of little help anyway. But at the look on Anica’s face, she added, “Don’t worry—if he doesn’t perk up with some liquids, we’ll call.”

“Okay, then,” Anica said, tugging Dolan’s foot from the stirrup. She went on to untie the jackets and saddlebags, pulling them off Luka’s rump to splat carelessly against the dusty yard. “You ready?”

Oh, no. Not for the touching. “Come on, Dolan. We’re home.”

But when he looked at her, she wasn’t the least bit sure he actually saw her—or anything, for that matter. There was no focus or recognition in those blue, blue eyes. Dammit. “Hold on,” she said to Anica when the other woman would have shoved his leg over Luka’s patient rump. Another deep breath; she flexed her hand, reaching out to his calf…hesitating with her hand close enough to feel the warmth of him.

“Meghan?”

Right. Best get on with it. Gently, she let her hand settle onto his leg. At first she felt only muscle beneath denim, lax with the herbal incantations she’d put into his system, warm and yielding. And then it started—a thrumming through her body, an aching awareness—awareness that this time pooled in sensitive places she’d very much rather not have respond to him at all.

Anica gave her a strange look over the saddlebags, and Meghan did what she hadn’t even thought to do, but which suddenly felt altogether too natural after a night of swapping memories. She focused her thoughts and snapped Dolan! without ever opening her mouth.

He started slightly, looking at her with a confounded expression. Anica abruptly shoved his leg over Luka’s rump and Dolan’s eyes widened—and over he went, taking Meghan down with him in a tangle of arms and legs and the disgruntled snarl of a jaguar in the background of Meghan’s mind.

“Take care of Luka?” Meghan asked Anica, straightening Dolan’s legs on the bed of the creaky-floored little box of a guest room and starting in on the leather laces of his boots.

Anica hesitated, still aware she hadn’t been given all the answers here, aware that Meghan was giving off a muddle of mixed signals, and nodded shortly. “Call out if you need anything. I’ll give Luka a good rubdown and get the quarantine stall ready for our newcomer. You’ll be out?”

“That’s the plan,” Meghan said, doing her best to keep the grim out of her voice.

Anica hesitated in the doorway as if she might say something. When she finally murmured, “Call for help if you need it,” Meghan knew those weren’t the words that had lingered on the tip of her tongue. Those words would have been something more like What’s up with you, woman?

Just as well Anica hadn’t asked. Meghan had no answers.

She finished pulling off Dolan’s boots and did her best to straighten the twisted leather jacket; then she grabbed a quilt off the foot of the iron bed frame and spread it over him, here in the cool interior of the house. All the while, her blood thrummed and heated, and she had a weird duplicity of perception, as though she felt Dolan’s vague impression of the moment along with her own.

And even though she tried to busy her mind with such practical matters, she found herself lingering at the side of the narrow bed, watching the little flickers of movement in his face. At the moment she should have walked away, she instead crouched by the bed and watched her hand touch his cheek, trembling along the contours of his brow and the dark hair at his temple.

Not all of the shifters reflected their other form. Her mother hadn’t. Her mother had looked like Meghan, all dark hair and dark eyes and sharp jaw in clean, exacting features. The coyote showed only in her laughing eyes. But Dolan…Dolan somehow looked exactly like what he was. Blue eyes, holding all the shadowed power of his past. Black, sleek hair, falling across his forehead just a tad too long. But mostly it was in the way he moved, the way he held himself…and now all the sinuous power hidden beneath the incantations she’d fed into his system with her herbs.

Her fingertips tingled. Her body throbbed. She touched his jaw; she ran the backs of her fingers along the stubble there. She let herself feel what came from him.

Longing and need and…

He growled, deep in his throat; he tensed, a quiver passing through his arms and torso. She held her breath, startled as arousal reverberated through her, uncertain if it was him or her or both of them. She closed her eyes; bit her lip. She had the sudden, startling revelation that if she stayed here with him, if she kept the contact between them, she would quiver herself right into an orgasm, right here beside the bed with both of them fully clothed and barely touching and barely knowing each other at that.

She wrenched herself away, so hard that she lost her balance and tipped over to land on her butt. After that, she didn’t linger. She climbed to her feet and marched out to the kitchen with long, deliberate strides, pulling chipped ice through the refrigerator door and grabbing a spoon. She returned to the bedroom and made short work of spooning a few chips into his mouth. And when the plastic tumbler was half-empty, she left it on the bedside table and marched herself off to the shower, shedding filthy clothes along the way.

A nice, cool shower. She might even be tempted to call it cold.

Chapter 6

Meghan strode out into the yard with purpose. Jenny’s dog, a mixed cattle dog—all pricked ears and foxy face, mottled blue coat and short, stout tail—circled her with excitement, barking at the sudden energy and movement in the yard. Meghan hushed her with a gesture and stood in the center of the packed-dirt hub of the ranch, reassuring herself that some things were still normal.

The main house. All one floor, it had started small and grown over the generations. It had belonged to her mother’s family…although Meghan knew little of them. Only her mother had manifested the coyote, after her grandmother’s long-lost Sentinel lover had ended the happily-ever-after story of the ranch. Until then, generations of Lawrence ranchers had raised horses, grazed cattle and escorted tourists around the mountain ranges that formed the inviting sky islands of southern Arizona. And then came Meghan’s grandmother, who’d had Margery Lawrence and never married when her Sentinel lover didn’t return for her. Margery followed Meghan’s grandmother’s path and loved a man who died before Meghan was even born.

So here she was, raised by her mother and then by her aunt, who hadn’t taken to the Southwest and had moved back East as soon as Meghan came of age.

And so Meghan had decided to choose her own family.

The ranch house, tiny casita—Jenny’s and Anica’s—and storage shed made up the yard. There, where the cleared flatland elongated to a point, lived the smaller livestock, all damaged or behaviorally problematic or simply in need of hospice care.

The horses took up most of the space, occupying a long mare motel with covered, open-sided stalls, paddock runs, several communal paddocks and even a separate quarantine area. This generation, Encontrados was purely a rescue ranch, funded by donations, investments, volunteers and a grant or two. Never enough to get comfortable, but…

Successful.

And those who helped her run it…they were her people now.

People she intended to keep safe from Dolan Treviño and whatever trouble he’d brought with him.

She headed for the three-stall quarantine barn, the ranch barn, made of sturdy timbers and thick planking from rough-sawn wood. A detour through the mare motel showed her Luka, groomed, relaxed and happily munching on hay. One of a kind, her dangerous Lipizzan gelding turned indispensable ranch horse.

Inside the quarantine barn, Meghan found a wideopen stall filled with fresh, deep wood shavings and a welcoming flake of hay already shoved into the hay rack. The cool, dim light of the little barn made her realize how warm the day had grown. It might still be spring out there, but it was looking real hard at summer.

There was no sign of Jenny or Anica, but Jenny’s dog had darted back toward the casita—Jenny, at least, was there. And all looked to be ready here, so…

It gave Meghan a moment to realize how tired she was. Bone-tired, after a night of no sleep, wrestling with the effects of a mysterious Atrum Core poisoning and sometimes wrestling with the jaguar himself. And fit as she was, the hike back to the ranch had been a long one. If she was lucky, she’d grab a nap before the new horse arrived—an event that could occur any minute now, or late in the afternoon. With a volunteer at the wheel, she wasn’t inclined to nag.

She emerged from the barn, cast another thoughtful look around the place…felt another surge of protectiveness.

I shouldn’t have brought him here.

He’d said the Core thought him dead. He’d argued it, even.

She hoped he was right. But she didn’t think the only threat to Encontrados came from the Core. The Sentinels, too, knew how to focus on a goal…and how to sacrifice others along the way.

It made her realize just how very much she’d been taking the ranch’s safety for granted. It had been so many years since her mother’s death…so many years since she’d seen even a hint of Sentinel or Atrum Core activity.

Well, you’ve seen it now.

So she stood in the doorway to the barn, and she listened. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, falling into unconscious habit. Sometimes she listened to a horse, sometimes to the land, sometimes to the true mood of those around her…sometimes she just listened to see what was there.

And this time she heard something.

It was small and slippery and whispery, a harsh and discordant sound. She tipped her head, followed it.

It moved.

From the outer edge of the property toward the center, it eased between strong wards. As if in response to having been noticed, its movements increased in speed; Meghan felt a hint of malevolence, and fury swelled within her. How dare anyone send such an incantation sneaking around her ranch? Trespassing, unwelcome…malignant.

She wasn’t a prodigy when it came to wards, not like her mother. She didn’t have the power. Still, she knew enough to find the nearest ward lines, to grasp those shadowed glow lines in her mind’s eye and slam them together over that dark blot of unwelcome presence.

A sizzle; a pop. The presence vanished. The ward lines wavered, momentarily diminished—but they were tied strongly to the land, and the thin spots soon flowed back into balance.

Meghan let out a long, deep breath, finding herself with a small grim smile of satisfaction. “No trespassing,” she murmured to the world at large, and went to take her nap.

Dolan opened his eyes to an unfamiliar room. His body continued the low-key background thrumming he now associated with Meghan, but was still plenty weak, muscles full of burning pain and lassitude. Unfamiliar panic surged within him—concern that Meghan, barely schooled and unpracticed, had truly done him harm. Had somehow locked him away from the jaguar permanently.

It’s been only half a day. She said it would take time.

He smelled the water by the bedside and took solace. If he could smell the water, then the jaguar still lurked.

Not to mention he was damned thirsty.

He sat for a moment, checking his stability, taking in the details of this room. An old room, nothing quite in true any longer, everything worn around the edges…comfortable. It smelled of Meghan, gingery, and while at first he accepted the effect as a natural for her house, his gaze finally landed on the rocking chair in the corner. He realized that the bundle of light knit cotton throw was actually a bundle of Meghan beneath the cotton throw.

He watched her sleep for a moment, getting his bearings. The bedside clock said it was early afternoon; they’d only been here a few hours.

She’d said it would take time. Not a few hours, but time.

He quashed the flare of impatience and reached for the bedside pitcher—slowly, deliberately, taking none of his muscles for granted—to pour himself a full glass. He downed it in a few deep gulps, his eyes still on Meghan. She hadn’t stirred. Exhausted…and with good reason.

He wondered about her arm. No cat’s claws made a wound to be so casually dismissed—too prone to infection, regardless of size. He should check…

And still his body urged him to return to sleep, a deep escape from pain. He found the glass still in his hand—and then he misjudged the distance to the serving tray. The tumbler clunked awkwardly into place.

Meghan’s eyes opened at once. “You’re awake,” she said, voice a little creaky. “How are you?”

“I was wondering the same of you.” He flung the quilt back and dropped his legs over the side of the bed, relieved to find himself still fully clothed. “Your arm?”

She pushed the light throw down; she wore a bright coral tank top under a white, gauzy tunic, spaghetti straps barely visible. His gaze got hung up on the strong, graceful lines of her neck and the sweep of her collarbones; she pushed up the tunic sleeve and held her arm out for inspection, turning it this way and that.

What he saw got his attention, all right. “That can’t be the same wound.”

Her face held the smallest of smiles. “My mother’s herbs drove off the Core poison,” she said. “You think they can’t deal with a couple of scratches?” But she shifted so the window light hit her skin, and he saw the remains of the bruising, the clean red puncture marks. “It’s still sore,” she admitted. “But give it another day.” She slid the tunic sleeve back into place. “There’s a reason I don’t use those herbs for everyday injuries.”

So she thought like a Sentinel, even if she didn’t want to. Low profile. “It would draw a lot of attention if you healed overnight from every bump and bruise.”

She brushed a self-conscious hand down the front of the tunic. “Bad enough they’ll wonder why I’m in town clothes with a horse coming in any time now.” But of course a plain T-shirt or tank top would have revealed the wounds—and her healing rate.

She gathered the throw and draped it over the back of the rocker as she went to the window, looking over the back edge of the property, the intense blue sky filling the window. Light shone through the gauze tunic so the tank top outlined her spare shape in clear silhouette—strong shoulders, the nip of her waist, the flare of her hips and a tight, toned bottom.

Dolan scrubbed a hand over his face. It still felt like someone else’s hand, not quite doing his bidding, tingling painfully in every joint. “I didn’t mean to take your bed.”