packed out what they brought in—he left alone. Careless hikers...
One way or another they didn’t stay.
Kai didn’t plan for the Core to stay.
He found them arrayed around the dry pool, the ground scuffed around them and rocks carelessly overturned. There were three of them—the first of the Core he’d ever seen. He watched them for some moments, paws spread wide over the ground, short tail restless—lashing as it could.
It surprised him that they were so recognizable. Big, beefy men, one of them in a suit with an expensive sheen and fall of cloth, the other two in serviceable black slacks and dark gray short-sleeved shirts under identical black jackets. They all bore silver at their ears, silver on their wrists and fingers, and dark olive skin tones that owed nothing to the sun. The suited man had his dark hair pulled back in a short club at his nape; the other two wore utilitarian styles, long enough to lick at their ears and collars.
And while the suited man watched, the others were hard at work. Two large metal cases lay by the side of the dry pool, open to reveal padded, sectioned interiors. One case still held its original contents—gleaming piles of dark metal, glinting dully in the uneven trickle of light through the overhead pines. Kai narrowed his eyes, finding it painful to focus on those metal disks for reasons he couldn’t discern; his lynx’s vision preferred motion to stillness and muted colors into smears of similarity, but never had it simply slid away from an object under examination.
He quit trying and focused on what they were doing, instead.
Not that it made any more sense. Loose piles of the metal disks sat one off to the side in the dry pool, and Kai couldn’t see so much as feel it steaming with the same dark and desultory emissions that now crept over the land.
The men gave it a wide berth, murmuring to one another as they moved efficiently around a second pile, placing additional disks to make four enclosing corners while the suited man uttered short directives.
Kai growled into the morning. Deep in his chest. Deep in his heart. The suited man’s head jerked up; he’d heard it. He heard it again when the land picked up the sound, rolling it along the slopes and down the dry creek bed. The other two heard it as well, stopping their work to look around.
The suited man spoke sharply to them, his manner peremptory. But as they returned to work, he also pulled out a gun, scanning the woods above and around them.
Kai growled again. He imbued it with threat and intent and sent it out through the living forest, letting the trees thrum with it.
You are not welcome here.
The two men stood, backing away from their work to join the third in searching the woods—and distracting him in the process. Kai took advantage to slink closer, paws spread wide and silent on the ground, long legs coiled beneath him.
“There aren’t supposed to be any Sentinels in this area!” one of the men argued. He was stouter than the other and held himself with stiff awareness that they weren’t alone—and a wariness of the woods that bespoke his utter lack of familiarity. “That’s why we’re here.”
The suited man offered no sympathy. “And that’s exactly why we’ll stay. Now finish cleansing those amulets—we need the blanks.”
Cleansing those amulets... Core pollution. The very equivalent of dumping toxic waste.
“It’s a trick of the terrain!” the suited man snapped at the extended hesitation from his minions. “Sound carries out here. Now get back to work!”
Kai’s tufted ear twitched with satisfaction and no little derision. Sound did carry in these woods—but it carried uphill, not down. If these men knew no better than that, it didn’t matter that they were three to his one. He could deal with them as he had to.
Never had he taken on a human before—never had he used his quick strength to overcome another. But he’d spent a lifetime on the hunt...on his own, whether fighting off aggressive, hungry coyotes or bringing down his own prey. And he’d spent a lifetime studying human disciplines—running the miles to the tiny town of Cloudview and its tiny Tae Kwon Do dojang, where the students accepted him even if they didn’t quite know what to do with someone they clearly thought of as a modern-day mountain man.
But Kai enjoyed the run, and he enjoyed the discipline—and besides, he had to return his library books.
All these men had to know of him was that he would—and could—stop them. Core minions, his father had called such men, with a wry twist of his mouth that told Kai he might well be disrespectful of them, but he was nonetheless wary.
Kai let his growl roll across the land, a twist of threatening yowl in the undertones. Not quite big cat...but big enough. He didn’t want them here...the land didn’t want them here. Surely, together they could—
Concern. Resistance. Intent.
But that wasn’t the land whispering to him now. It was Regan.
He’d grown too used to the undertones of the voice she didn’t seem to know she had...he’d let her grow near without paying heed.
And she had no idea who these men were. If they had active amulets, they could sicken her and she wouldn’t even know what was happening.
If they were looking for trouble, they could do worse.
They hadn’t yet seen her, but she wasn’t far. Her bandanna-print shirt flashed brightly between the tree trunks; her walking stick seemed a token thing.
She looked, for that moment, a wild thing—just as at home in the woods as he was. The shadows muted the bright gold of her pale hair; she moved easily down the rugged hill, barely touching the trees for balance on the way past. And for that moment, Kai was lost in her—her presence, her free movement, her resonance on the land.
But only for that moment. For the corruption of new Core poison crept out along the land, and Regan came on. And Kai couldn’t stop her without giving himself away to the Core—not as lynx, not as human. They knew Sentinel as well as he knew Core, even on first sight.
If he gave himself away as Sentinel, it would be the beginning of his end.
Chapter 3
Regan couldn’t believe it. Not on any count.
I did not just follow impulse and voices in my head to find these men.
She hadn’t. Because if she had...
It didn’t bear thinking about.
And what were they doing anyway?
Not burning, although her eyes stung as if smoke hung in the air. But it was something more than mere littering, even if it made no visual sense.
Nor did that undertone of a deep feline growl, something she heard not with her ears at all.
She adjusted her grip on the walking stick—a stout, twisting maple stick, polished by time and handling—and stuck her chin in the air, coming on out of the woods as if she owned them.
Even if she knew better than to get close.
“This
