words. “Leaving now,” he said, “would waste your mother’s sacrifice. You don’t give her enough credit…Neither did we. But I’m beginning to understand just what happened here fifteen years ago. I thought you would want to know, too…to help preserve what she accomplished.”
She barely had time to process that this man knew what she didn’t—knew what her mother had done, and why she’d died. And then, quite suddenly, he was looking at her from beneath a lowered brow, the kind of look that seemed charming on Clooney and yet downright dark on this man. “I’ll go,” he said, forestalling the deep breath she nearly took to repeat the demand. “But I’m not leaving. I’m not done here, Meg.”
“Meghan,” she said. “Not Meg. Not Meggie. Not anymore.”
He acknowledged that with the slightest tip of his head. “Meghan. Before I go, I need to warn you—”
“The Atrum Core,” she said. “Yeah, yeah.”
He moved so quickly she didn’t realize until too late that he had trapped her against the round pen pipe panels. Just suddenly…he was there, taller than she’d thought and closing her in an intimate cage, his hands gripping the top pipe on either side of her shoulders. There was a growl low in his throat; her whole body clenched in response to it—a fear and flight response, as well as the recognition of what he was. “Don’t,” he said, and stopped, closing his eyes to take a deep breath. Control. In that moment she heard nothing but the galloping pace of her own heartbeat, loud enough so surely he must hear it, too. He released his breath through flared nostrils and opened his eyes to pin her with his gaze, direct and inescapable. “Don’t take them so lightly,” he said. “You may not count yourself as one of us, but you can be sure that they do. That Fabron Gausto does. If he finds you here, death will be the least of what your people will suffer.”
She didn’t have time for a response before he tore himself away, heading back to the ridge that rose up to the south of the ranch buildings. Even if she’d found the words, she wouldn’t have shouted them at his back. She stood, shell-shocked, right where he’d left her, staring dumbly after him with just enough presence of mind to realize she was trembling.
He stopped his ground-eating pace and turned to look back at her, so deliberately she thought he might even return. But instead a sudden strobe of intense blue light scattered and fractured, startling her eyes. She blinked, and that was all the longer it took for him to change. To become other.
Knowing it was one thing. Seeing it was another. One moment a man, the next…black and low and lithe, staring back at her with intelligence. Jaguar. As she’d thought…only deep, dappled black, not gold and rosette. The jaguar once native to this area, stronger and heavier of bone than a leopard, imbued with power. He hesitated there, tail held low and twitching, as if waiting for Meghan’s response.
But Meghan stood transfixed, pinned by both memories and unwilling awe. Behind her, the gelding stamped a foot and snorted, a high blast of alarm that would carry across the whole ranch. The black jaguar turned and bounded away, effortlessly scaling steep ground into the cover of juniper, oak and pine.
And Meghan sagged against the metal pipe behind her, cursing his presence here—cursing the Sentinels, cursing the Atrum Core…cursing the jaguar who’d finally shown up. Hearing his words echo in her mind.
You may not count yourself as one of us, but you can be sure that they do.
Chapter 2
Dolan surprised himself by returning to the slopes above the Lawrence ranch. He’d let the jaguar have the night, submersing most of his humanity until sunrise. He hadn’t expected to find himself here come dawn, with the hard glint of light skipping over the tops of the opposite ridge. He squeezed cat eyes closed against it—and opened the eyes of a man. Colors brighter but not quite as crisp, movements dulled from sharp clarity to mere smears.
Below, the ranch spread out in a series of outbuildings, paddocks and a main house with a satellite casita. Still sleeping, all of them. Even the horses were silent, slouching in the sunshine to shake the chill of the high desert night.
He wondered if his brother had made it this far.
Leave it alone. You’ll never know.
He shouldn’t have come back. He could do nothing more than draw attention to her, and he’d seen how unprepared she was, how resistant to warning—how reactive to his very presence. But here he was, sitting on the crest of a ridge with his legs crossed and his hands relaxed on his knees, watching for the movement he already knew as hers.
He’d come here the day before, too. Fool. Lured by nothing more profound than her very presence, the tangible self she’d imbued into this land along with her love of it—just as her mother had. Lured by the hope that she might change her mind, if he could find the right moment to approach again. More fool yet.
He’d known her just as surely as she’d known him. He hadn’t needed the research, the driver’s license photo from sources that didn’t know they’d been tapped, the old online yearbook from her high school. Glossy dark hair, wiry form with a scarcity of curves, a narrowchinned foxy face and almond eyes, so heavily lashed as to look sooty. He’d known her, all right. And he’d—
He lifted his shoulders, tensed, and let them drop—literally shrugging away the memory of his unexpected response to her, the ache he could still feel.
Or trying to.
Best not to go down there again in any event. He didn’t have the time to convince her to delve through painful memories in hunt of the tiniest clue. He definitely didn’t have the time to sort out his response to her—a stupid, foolish response from someone who had every reason to know better.
He’d have to hope that the remains of the fading wards on this land were strong enough. They’d already failed in the untamed areas, but here, right around the heart of the ranch, they held. “You’re on your own, Meghan Lawrence,” he murmured out loud, and then wondered whom he was trying to convince.
Knowing the answer just made him mad.
He came to his feet in one swift motion, turning his back on the sharpening sunlight. Too bad it couldn’t burn away the persistent ethereal haze of the Atrum Core’s presence—he knew he’d see it out there again once the sun rose high enough, hovering over the spring dust devils of the lower grasslands. They wanted what he wanted, and they wanted it badly: the indestructible Liber Nex. They’d wanted the ancient manuscript since they lost it, back when the Spanish conquistadors were foolish enough to use its recipes and wisdom against a new land, stealing ancient native strengths, twisting power they hadn’t understood.
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
