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?
She might have answered, had that awareness not shattered into a stuttering fugue of pained disorientation. She clutched Luka’s thick white mane, struggling to control the connection, to keep from drowning in the intensity of those shared impressions.
Nothing had prepared her for this…not her mother, not her mother’s death. Not her guardian aunt’s uninterest in the shape-shifter skills that touched their lives. Not even this man’s sudden presence in her life two days earlier.
Jaguar.
I’m supposed to hate you.
Maybe she did. Maybe that’s what had created the strength of the thread between them. The clarity. And even the tears running unchecked down her face as she absorbed the smallest fraction of his experience.
Beware, Meghan…
“I’m coming,” she told him, out loud into the night. His protest beat against her—but only for a moment before pain swept him away. Setting her own jaw, she shifted to follow the sensations; Luka willingly took the next chance to turn uphill, scrabbling between a batch of tightly bunched oaks, his big unshod feet biting into the scrabble-rock hillside. She balanced lightly over his withers, giving him freedom to move. Soon enough they’d reach the high ponderosa pines, leaving Luka more space—at least until they hit the canyon that divided her land from Coronado National Forest.
But as they reached the pines, as the feel of the Sentinel began to fade—weakening—she found herself turning directly toward that canyon, leveling off their progress. Luka moved out strongly beneath her, as if he knew where he was going—and suddenly, so did Meghan.
The old homestead.
The first homestead took advantage of the canyon stream, the one funneling cold snowmelt down the side of the hill; it was tucked into the small natural clearing beside the stream, using a backdrop of pines and oak and the occasional creosote bush, with cedars creeping up the side of the hill. But even so, it was now only a wreck of disintegrating structures, barely enough for emergency shelter in the case of a sudden storm.
His thought, surfacing randomly against hers before sliding away again. I thought it was here. I thought…
Meghan stiffened in the saddle, causing Luka to hesitate for the very first time. It. Her mother had been dealing with an it—one she never would identify, not even in the most generic terms. An it that had killed her—if not directly, because of the Atrum Core’s obsession with the thing.
Meghan had thought it destroyed. She’d thought it gone. And yet the jaguar had come back to hunt it?
For the first time, she truly hesitated. Luka, not quite willing to stop his energetic process, nonetheless scaled back to a cadenced, high-kneed trot. The trail unfurled before them in the light of the rising moon—coming on full, it was enough to light their way in these well-spaced pines. Enough, if she let him, for Luka to flow forward into a collected canter, perfectly balanced to avoid ruts and suddenly jutting rocks alike.
Sudden regret found her on a breeze. His regret—and yearning and need and a deep, bitter underlayer of…
Failure. Loneliness.
Meghan settled deep in the saddle, giving Luka the faintest lift of thigh and seat bone to release him into the canter.
I know where you are. And I’m still coming.
Failure. He’d come to put an end to this once and for all…to secure the indestructible manuscript where it would never be found. He’d come to involve the daughter, as his brother had involved the mother. But he’d meant to keep her safe…not writhe out his life on the dirt floor of an ancient home while the daughter was left to take the heat.
Like his brother.
Jaguar fur, scattered over the towering desert landscape. Gold and black rosettes, a claw…a whisker. No more. Because the brevis regional consul had delayed backup with scrying and warding and—
Whatever. Too late.
They’d be too late for Meghan, too.
Your brother? The thought had a light touch, gentle…and unfamiliar.
Hearthstone bruised shoulder and spine as his body jerked uncontrollably against it, twisting so tightly he couldn’t find room to breathe. The world dimmed even further, and still he recoiled inwardly in the alarm of no longer being alone. His lips drew back in a snarl and his whiskers quivered, and even blinded by pain and his body’s jerking dance, his slapping paw found its target, claws clogged with dirt and blood but still able to pierce skin.
He hadn’t expected to feel the pain of it, sharp and wounding; he froze. Only for an instant, and then the poisons took him away, the world fading away to thin nothingness. He barely felt the light touch on his head, around his muzzle—confident fingers lifting that frozen snarl and smearing his gums with a paste imbued with the feather-touch of incantations.
As fast as that, the rigor eased, his long and powerful body sagging back to dirt and hearthstone. And when the world darkened, it was as if he fell into himself, deeply into himself…back into the life of his beating heart and panting lungs and even that deep growl of feeble protest stuck in his throat.
And then, somewhere along the way, he fell into her. Meghan. Slip-sliding from one thought to another, from his to hers and back again. Through it all echoed his anguished backdrop of warning—Atrum Core…Atrum Core…’ ware. Meghan, Atrum Core…
They’d come back if they knew she was here. They’d come back if they thought she’d become involved…if they thought she’d shed her noncombatant’s role to join the Sentinels outright.
If they thought, as he’d thought, that she could help to find the Liber Nex.
’Ware, Meghan…
And then he lost himself to darkness, to sweet scents and blessed lassitude and the enfolding blanket of determination that he would not, after all, lose himself to the Core.
And Meghan followed him down to the darkness.
You shouldn’t go…don’t go—! Sweet little girl voice, gone reedy and thin with desperation, the recognition of futility.
The world skipped around memory turned into reality. Long coltish legs crossed on the bed, covers over her head…herbs pungent in their pinched little piles, arrayed directly on the sheets around her bare legs. Breathe deep. Take them in, like Mama says. Transform them. Empower them. They didn’t quite have meaning, those words, but by God she tried. She built wards and she built
