else went so bad. So much loss…
This was his turf now—the western slopes of the San Francisco Peaks. From peripheral Vegas to high-altitude desert. He couldn’t say he regretted the move. But the circumstances? Oh, yeah.
Still, he protected the area as best he could. Today, that meant ghosting along beside this chattering, trail-bound couple and their loose dog, unseen until he was good and ready to show himself.
There. Up ahead. He trotted a few rangy strides, big paws silent against the ground. He fought that ever-present instinct to hunt, to play with the dog like the prey it could be—
Down, boy-o. Dean’s voice in his head—or the memory of it. He slipped out through a sun-dappled spot between two oaks, crouching down tight behind the base of a giant old Ponderosa. He could shift in an instant if he had to.
The couple had stopped. “Did you see—?” asked the man.
“I’m not sure what I saw,” the woman said, alarm in her voice. “Bunky-Dog, come here.”
“Yeah,” the man agreed. “Let’s get him on the leash.”
Joe squeezed his eyes half-shut in practiced patience as the couple cajoled and chased and finally lured the oblivious Bunky-Dog with a treat. If he’d been a wild cougar drawn by the noisy, gamboling canine, they’d be good and mauled by now.
Finally. Their voices faded as they headed down the trail with haste. Mission accomplished. He’d work on saving the world tomorrow.
Joe stood and stretched, yawning hugely and letting his claws slide in and out of the soil, allowing himself some satisfaction. Now he could turn his attention to the power surge he’d felt on his way out—just like the one he’d felt yesterday, and a week earlier, when he’d been so felled by a cold that he hadn’t been certain he’d perceived it at all. The Peaks, turning and grumbling and rolling off power in disgruntled waves. Not a good thing.
He couldn’t let things go wrong on his watch. Not again.
He turned to cross the trail—and froze. Not alone.
Ocelot. Cleverly upwind, as silent as he could ever be. She sat, stiff and offended, her tail tucked around her front legs, rich black lining her chained rosettes and striping her legs and that thickly furred tail. She sported black-tipped ears and a pink nose, with black lines defining her delicate face along the inside corner of each eye. In comparison to his tawny cougar’s bulk, she was little more than dog-sized house cat.
A house cat who didn’t belong here—and whose intelligence shone from her eyes with an intensity that made him wince. Now that he’d seen her, she dropped the wards concealing her etheric presence; her power flowed over him, smooth as weightless silk.
Smooth as…
He fought the startling impulse to lean into the sensation, to let it trickle over his whiskers and ruffle his fur. And yet his ears flicked forward…back…indecisive. She was Sentinel; he knew that much. Those eyes gave her away, that indignant posture…the silky power. That she was here at all, an ocelot out of place and time.
Decision made. He flicked a shake down his spine, quick and sharp, and shed the cougar—sleek and efficient, blurring from one form of tawny and lean to another and assuming the organically made clothes that came with him. Faded jeans and a cotton flannel shirt, moccasin-like ankle boots, his knives enclosed in treated, warded fabric pockets.
Quite a few of those, when it came right down to it.
He stood beside the tree and waited. She gave him a flat up-and-down stare and obliged with her own shift to stand with quick grace, wearing undyed linen summer pants and a scoop-necked, cap-sleeved shirt of some fine mesh weave.
He realized that his gaze had lingered on her body—like the ocelot, it was petite and understated and yet lithe and perfectly balanced—and stared at her face instead. Her hair was black, her eyes deep brown—neither reflected her Sentinel form. But the ocelot was there, in the sharp nature of her chin, her strikingly large eyes…and he would bet that was a natural smudge of darkness around her lashes, and not mineral makeup applied before she’d shifted. There was intensity in those eyes…purpose. It spoke to him.
She stared back without welcome. “Have you no sense at all, putting us to the change out in the open?”
Joe bit down on irritation, knowing his nostrils flared anyway, catlike, and that his eyes narrowed. Of course she didn’t like him. She was a Sentinel with a mission…and that mission was probably him.
So he kept his voice even when he said, “There’s no one here to see us.” And he squashed his regret, that he’d never had any control over his heart. Foolish thing, heart.
She was oblivious to it. “I can’t imagine what you were thinking, exposing yourself to those hikers.”
He leaned a shoulder against the tree, as relaxed on the outside as he wasn’t on the inside. Cat-lazy. “When loose dogs lure cougars into human contact, it’s the cougar who usually ends up dead in the end. A little reminder that they’re not the only ones here generally straightens them up.” Training humans, that’s what he was doing.
And he’d been doing it since he got here, without incident. He thought about saying that, too, but he’d learned the hard way that vigorous self-defense only made things worse. Made it seem as though there was indeed something to be guilty over.
Especially if someone already believed that you were.
“I’m Joe Ryan,” he said. “But I suspect you already know that.”
“Yes.” She made no apology for it, or for the other things she already knew. “Lyn Maines. Can we talk?” As if he had any choice.
“Sure.” He took the short drop to the trail with looselimbed grace, hesitated long enough for her to join him, and headed up a narrow dirt path littered with volcanic cinders large and small. Raucous Steller’s jays followed them through the trees, unheeding of the bright, building clouds above the trees and the heat.
He moved just as she’d imagined he would—balanced, easy, holding himself with authority. But she also sensed a hint of restraint in his movement, and she didn’t blame him. He might have gone dark, but he was no fool. He knew she was there for him.
Even if that wasn’t the whole of it. Not with the mountain surging power, or the Atrum Core prince—this region’s drozhar—retreating here after losing a confrontation with Sentinels at the southern edge of the state. Retreating, or just moving on to the next greedy, wreck-the-world-along-the-way scheme?
“It can’t be a surprise that I’m here,” she told him. “You must know about the power surges in the area…even though you’ve said nothing to the brevis consul.”
He stopped short, clearly impatient with the hardly veiled accusation. In the gathering humidity of the afternoon storm, sweat darkened the tracings at his nape and temple. “That’s worth a phone call, not a personal visit. And not worth finding me in the woods when you could have waited for me at my place.”
“I—” She gathered herself. Of course he wouldn’t mince words…of course he’d be blunt. Maybe she should have hidden her bias when she’d met him.
Or
