Sentinels: Wolf Hunt

Chapter 3

Jet washed her face in the tiny bathroom down the hall from her own room. It calmed her. She liked the sensation, and the soap, and the lotions—even the very basic scentless hand lotion provided in this bathroom. She liked shampoo and conditioner and flinging her head back from the faucet to send water droplets flying from her hair.

It didn’t make sense, that. She was wolf, and wolf needed none of those things. But she liked them nonetheless.

She had this time because Gausto was fielding a phone call—one he thought she couldn’t overhear. He’d never bothered to test her hearing; Jet thought he had guessed it was more acute than any born human’s but simply didn’t think it mattered to know how much.

His mistake. For Jet was a made thing, might be a temporarily controlled thing…but she wasn’t truly bound to him, not by blood nor pack nor heart.

And she knew what it was to be wild. More, she wanted it back.

Gausto had that tone in his voice, now. The deference. Only one man brought that out in him—his Septs Prince.

Gausto’s was a pack of many localized packs, Jet had decided. Gausto ruled one of the local packs…but just barely. He’d made too many mistakes, shown too many weaknesses, and now the alpha of all the packs combined was displeased with him.

And no wonder. Gausto still considered his mistakes to be bold strikes against Core prey, worth the risk and worth the failure. But Jet knew the difference—and she could see it in the eyes of his men. The occasional flares of doubt, the fears that Gausto would lead them to disaster.

Wolf packs were not so very different. They were simply less forgiving.

And so she not only heard his phone call, she understood the byplay of it. Leaning over the sink to peer at her face in the small mirror and search for any sign of the wolf, she quite absently absorbed Gausto’s words.

“He’s as good as contained.” Gausto’s trouser legs brushed against one another with the faintest susurrus of cloth against cloth; his footsteps sounded slightly gritty against the thin floor covering as he paced. “That amulet was developed specifically for him.” A pause. “I still don’t know how he’s evaded so many of our more subtle amulet attacks over the past year. But once I get him here, I’ll find out.”

The eyes, Jet decided. Still wolf there. But not the face—features too refined, jaw a little too sharp. The nose was good—a strong nose, even a hint of a bump at the bridge. And the mouth…it was not wolf at all, but she liked it. She touched her lower lip with hesitant fingers, prodding the fullness of it, feeling the pliability.

Unaccountably, thinking of Nick Carter. Of how well she knew him, through those moments with his wolf. Of how the thrill of it still lingered with her…and how the cold hard dread of what she’d done still sank deep.

“Later this afternoon,” Gausto said, his voice still carrying that oily note, the one that came through when he thought he was smarter than everyone else but didn’t dare say so to the Septs Prince. “No, not at all—we’re completely covered. If anything, given my agent, they’re going to think it was one of their own.”

Nick Carter, Jet thought, had the wolf in him—right there on the surface, visible for all to see even if they didn’t recognize it. His hair, for one thing. True hoarfrost, dark hair brushed with gray…not just black and white hairs intermingled, as she’d seen in some of the Core guards and the one woman who’d tended her through the early transition.

And his eyes—not just the pale green color, but the nature of his gaze itself—steady, self-knowing. Alpha eyes. But more than all that, the way he moved, all that strength and smooth power, the impression that he always knew where he was and where everyone else was, always knew just where and how to place himself to keep the advantage. She wondered if she, too, showed the wolf in her movement.

They had to see it, she decided. The other humanborn. They just didn’t know what it was.

“Security has scrubbed this place clean,” Gausto was reassuring his prince. “I’ve got a table waiting for Carter. He’s going to talk like he’s never talked before.” Jet looked away from the mirror, startled, toward the sound of Gausto’s voice. Toward the meanness that had come into it. “Before this day is over, he’s going to understand just how much I owe him.”

Jet froze there, the towel still in her hand, the dread drilling deeper. She didn’t understand all the implications of those words, but she didn’t have to—she understood his intent.

She understood for the first time that to get what he wanted, Gausto used not only threats and punishment, he used untruths. That Gausto intended not to force postponed negotiations as he’d told Jet, but that he intended to acquire information. That he intended to do it with pain…and that he looked forward to inflicting that pain.

More than that. He yearned to do it.

And he was using her to make it happen.

Marlee pondered her options. Log sheet up on her monitor screen, an Apache phrase book open on her desk—idle background reading—and the phone headset hooked over one ear. “No, seriously,” she told the field Sentinel calling in from the home. “Check to see if it’s plugged in.” And then she waited past the annoyance, the denial, the sudden silence—all the while thinking about delivery options for the virus Gausto had ordered her to insert into Nick Carter’s computer—if only they knew—and just about convinced she’d need a hand delivery. Finally she heard the sheepish acknowledgment that the Sentinel’s monitor plug had indeed wiggled loose.

“You’re welcome,” she said, keeping her voice to strict customer service cheer. She knew she was better than this. Underutilized, underappreciated. But if she was going to stay here—if she was going to stay above suspicion—then she had to use the team spirit that ran through this office like a braid of loyalty.

Loyalty to Nick Carter, of course.

The virus. Yes, it would take a hand delivery. And she’d do it today, while Carter was out at the fairgrounds pretending he was still a field Sentinel after all.

She pulled off the headset and picked up the thumbnail drive beside her keyboard, turning it thoughtfully in her hand. No big deal to create a work order for a nonexistent problem, head for Carter’s office, and infect his machine while she was “assessing” it.

“Did you really just ask me if I had the right day?” The voice was pleasant alto and just barely familiar, and at the moment it had a touch of tooth. It also wasn’t far from Marlee’s cube, there in the entry aisle of the IT section.

Something about the responding voice made Marlee want to lean into the sound of it, soaking up…something. Power. Security. Grounding. She closed her eyes against the impulse and shuddered. Sentinels. They had a sway over people that no one else could imagine. Just like Carter, trying to cover up the truth of what he was with GQ haircuts and GQ suits and still managing to suck the air out of Marlee’s lungs anytime he walked into a room.

Now this one said, with just the right surprise, “Me, imply that you had our appointment mixed up? I don’t think so. Don’t think I’d do that.”

“Nick was supposed to be here,” the woman said. “Today. Now. It’s time to get this Vegas thing sorted out. You were set up and it’s time everyone knew it.”

He snorted. “That’s not what you said not so long ago.”

She didn’t back down an inch. “Just be glad I’m on your side now.”

“That’s the truth.” His reply was somewhat fervent, and they’d said enough, then—Marlee knew exactly who they were.

She cleared her throat and leaned back in her chair. “Hello? Can I help you?”

Not that she wanted to deal with Lyn Maines, Carter’s tracker friend, or Joe Ryan—the very Sentinel who’d very nearly destroyed the balance of the San Francisco Peaks. And Lyn—when she’d first gotten here, when she was helping Carter find the Liber Nex manuscript out on Encontrados Ranch where Dolan Treviño had gotten tangled up with coyote’s daughter Meghan Lawrence…

Then, she’d had her head on straight. Then, she’d been dedicated to keeping the Sentinels honest. But Joe Ryan had turned her somehow, and now she was no better than all the rest. Using illicit power to take advantage of those who didn’t have it.

“This place overwhelms me,” Lyn murmured now. “All the trace…” She and Ryan came around the doorway, a few matter-of-fact steps while Marlee dredged up a smile of greeting and kept it there—until Lyn stopped short, startled.

Ryan reacted with the wary responsiveness that told Marlee he knew the meaning of the expression on Lyn’s face, and she struggled to maintain her own composure, realizing instantly that the pictures she’d seen of Ryan conveyed nothing of the man himself. Mountain lion shifter, he was easily a foot taller than Lyn, maybe more. Where neat, petite Lyn barely showed her ocelot—just a certain smudgy look at the outer edges of large eyes that the average person would take for makeup—Ryan pretty much oozed his cougar. Tawny hair gone short and dark at the nape and temples, a solid, muscular presence, fresh scars still healing—a powerful man used to wielding power.

Marlee kept her smile where it was. “If you’re looking for Nick, he’s not here. I think he’s out in the field today.”

“This morning, maybe,” Lyn said, sounding distracted. Overwhelmed by trace, she’d said. “He’d have called if he was delayed.”

Ryan’s hand lingered at her waist. “Things aren’t always like that in the field.”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Marlee agreed, adding a little laugh. She thought it convinced them, and relaxed a little. They didn’t, after all, have any idea she’d been sitting here thinking about planting a virus in Carter’s private system.

Her computer dinged at her, a cheerful little instant message notification. Like Pavlov’s dog, she glanced at it—and froze. Just for an instant, seeing the screen name there. FG347. Acprince. So subtle. And lately, not nearly enough care. Too pushy, too cavalier with her security, too assured of her compliance. She was no puppet, doing his bidding unquestioned. She was no traitor.

She only wanted to make sure the Sentinels didn’t grow too cocky.

Done? Gausto asked her in his IM.

She hit the space bar with a casual thumb and then the return, barely glancing at the keyboard. An empty reply—a message of her own. Back off. I’ll let you know.

Maybe it was time to see if she could work with someone else as contact. Fabron Gausto made her feel…

Dirty.

“You’re busy,” Lyn said. “Sorry about that. We just thought we’d look around rather than disturb the whole building by having Annorah page him.”

Right. Annorah. Carter’s pet communications Sentinel. Another whom Carter seemed determined to keep on active duty regardless of her behavior in the field. Marlee wondered that Lyn could even say the woman’s name so calmly, given Ryan’s injuries at the time. True, she hadn’t meant for the consequences to be as grim as they’d turned out…

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Sentinels interfering, and thinking oops was reaction enough when things went wrong.

“No problem,” Marlee said. “His system’s been a little hinky lately, so it’s possible he tried to mail you an update and it just didn’t reach you.” Ooh, nice one. Lay the groundwork there for when the virus took Carter’s communications down.

“So, listen, if you see him…” Lyn said, and let the words trail off. Ryan had gone silent, contemplating Marlee in a way that made her itchy. Sentinels. They were all like that.

“No problem,” Marlee said. “You’ll be here for the afternoon?”

“A while,” Lyn agreed. She nudged Ryan with her hip. “Let’s check with his admin. Nick might have set him to digging up information on the clerk who—” she glanced at Marlee and didn’t finish the sentence. “Anyway, it’s worth a try.”

“You done here?” he asked.

“Everything I need,” she told him, which made little sense. Marlee waited for them to turn around, and then frowned fiercely at their backs.

They’d hardly gone when her computer dinged at her again.

When?

Admit it. More than just annoying and pushy. These days, Gausto downright scared her.

Jet pushed the Triumph into the tree line, just enough to obscure it—here, on the desert side of the buffer zone, where she’d done as directed and cut the barbed range fencing to approach from this angle. She toed the kickstand down and gave the sleek leather seat an absent pat of appreciation.

Gausto had bought this bike expressly for her, and try as she might to treat it with the same disdain she applied to everything human he forced upon her, she couldn’t help that since her awakening to nonborn human, this one thing had restored to her the fleeting taste of running wild. Powerful on the road, quick with speed, sleekly responsive to the lean of her body…it floundered a little in this brief foray off-road, but she loved it no less for that.

So she patted it and she left it, jogging silently through the man-made belt of wooded overgrowth to where she’d left Carter—unharmed but incapacitated, and no doubt cursing her.

But Nick Carter was gone.

Instant panic assailed her. He can’t be gone. For she’d seen the results of this amulet—Gausto had shown her, using one of his own men, so she’d know what to expect. So she’d trust him.

Never that.

But she trusted the consistency of the amulet, and Nick Carter should be here. The same as tranked and bound. Gausto would blame her if he had escaped. And worse—as she stood there, staring at the place he’d been, the flattened foliage and scuffed sandy soil—worse—

She wouldn’t see him again.

That made her stop. Made her frown. For it wasn’t part of her world, that bereft feeling. He wasn’t part of her world.

Or he hadn’t been.

But now…

Now he was.

She gave a little shake—a stress-release shake, flowing through her neck and shoulders—and she put herself back in her wolf-thoughts. Letting her primal self take over, even in this form.

Her primal self saw clearly past the emotions and found the trail. Bent twigs, disturbed soil, crushed leaves in this place where so much was spiny and waxy and hard to damage at all. Her nose scented it; her eyes saw it.

And more. There was sickness here…a certain raw flavor of effort and distress.

It was a trail she could follow. But she did it with care, not assuming anything in this strange place with its many people, so close. One slow step at a time, confirming the sights, the sounds—checking out of this shadowed buffer zone and into the bright sunshine full of dogs and huge white tent canopies and people and noise, a loudspeaker announcing in the background about Sporting Group and Ring Five.

Busy people. No one looked at her, or noted her slow movement among the trees. And so she tracked.

Not that it took long.

He hadn’t gone far.

He shouldn’t have been able to move at all, but…

He wasn’t moving anymore.

Too late, too stupid.

He’d figured it out, all right. The amulet strung around his neck held a containment working, but…so much more.

The more Nick tried to break it, to fight it, the more it drove back at him, insinuating itself into his energies—replacing good with bad.

Poisoning him.

Realizing it—realizing how far it had already gone—he did the only thing left to him. He poured everything he had into one final effort. All his intent, all his focus—clawing his way across the ground, one excruciating inch after another, hind legs splayed out behind him. He had no thought for what he’d do if he was spotted or if he broke free, only that narrow little goal. Move. Break the working. Leave the amulet smoking.

Find the woman who’d left him here. The Core agent in wolf’s clothing. That, too.

Move.

But it occurred to him, finally, that he no longer made progress. That what felt like heart-bursting effort from within resulted in nothing without—only his head sinking toward the ground, lolling off slightly to the side with his mouth barely open to pant. Air puffed past his flews. Heavy sickness spread through his body, weighing it down.

The next panting breath brought an influx of scent, both ambrosia and anathema.

She was back.

He growled, a ridiculous and weak token—but an unforgiving noise. A statement.

She’d come in her human form, all black-clothed and lithe. She made a noise of dismay; she went to one knee beside him. With all the effort he had in him, he raised his growl to something distinctly audible.

It gave her not an instant’s hesitation. Her hand landed on his ruff, fingers kneading in. For a long moment, she said nothing—for that long moment, his growl hung between them. Unmistakable.

Until he had to break it off and resume panting, more heavily now, eyes slitting closed.

“I don’t understand,” she said, and frustration laced through her words. Frustration and more. Grief.

Nick didn’t think it was for him.

“He said you wouldn’t be hurt.” Her accent, whatever it was, came thick. Or no accent at all, perhaps—a difficulty in forming the words. A slight speech impediment, almost Castillian in nature. “He said he wanted only to talk.” Her fingers kneaded his fur, then smoothed it. “When he said you took the wolf, he made it sound…wrong. Stealing. Faking.” Nick growled at her again…but it came weaker. Barely there at all. “Yes,” she told him. “He was wrong about that. And this…I can see how it harms you.” She found the thong around his neck—the amulet strap she’d placed there herself—and her hand hesitated.

Nick tried to growl again. Somehow it came out as a faint whine.

“He said he wouldn’t hurt my pack.” She covered her face with her free hand—an unusual gesture, putting the back of her wrist against her nose, her hand loosely curled and oddly graceful. As if the hand itself wasn’t as familiar as the paw. “He said if I did this…”

Nick panted. The amulet worked on him, tugging at all the corners of his being. Fever washed over him.

She repeated, slowly, “He said if I brought you to him…”

Breathing suddenly seemed like too much effort. His lungs burned; he realized he’d let them lie fallow for long moments and dragged in a gulp of air.

Quite suddenly she bent over, laying her face against his—nuzzling him ever so slightly. Just as suddenly, she straightened again. “I think he lies,” she said. “He will do to my pack what suits him, no matter what I bring him.” A gentle lift of his head and a flick of her hand, and she removed the amulet thong. “No more do I heed him. You, I help. And my pack…I save on my own.”

Instantly, breathing seemed natural again. And if his body shuddered with waves of flame and ice, he nonetheless had his growl back.

She gave a little laugh, laying her head against his for a long, long moment. “Good,” she said. “That suits you. Now be the human again, and take yourself away from here. Gausto will not wait long before he comes for us.”

Chapter 4

Gausto.

Nick had known it, of course. Or guessed it, the moment that amulet went over his head. But to hear her say it…

A wave of dizziness swamped his thoughts.

She stood up and back, and made as if to fling away the amulet—stopping herself at the last moment. “No,” she said out loud, a lurking anger behind her words. “Someone else could find it.”

It shouldn’t matter. It had been triggered; it had connected with Nick. Separated from him, it was worthless.

Or should be. With Gausto, you never knew. The man seldom cared about consequences when he drove for power.

So yeah. Best not to take chances. As she tucked the amulet away in a tight front pocket, he lifted his head—wobbly at that, but still a significant improvement. Not for long—it thunked back to earth, a jarring thud.

In an instant, she was there beside him. “You have to take the human,” she said, cradling his head in her hands, lifting it to face him nose-to-nose. No fear, not even with his crazed eye and the snarl on his lips. She stroked his face from the muzzle back, awakening all the myriad nerves there, flattening his whiskers. Past his cheeks and the massive carnassials that could have sheared off her arm, firmly down his ears…tugging ever so slightly and waking those nerves, too. Bringing him back, even if his head still lolled in her hands. “Nick Carter,” she said, “I heard him talking. He wants you. He will hurt you. Do you understand this?”

He snarled for her.

“Be the human,” she told him, one more time, whiskey-gold gaze latched onto his with ferocity. “I must leave this place, too.”

Too many things gone unspoken there—too many pieces unknown.

But he heard her urgency. He believed it. Be the human.

Easier said than done. Took every fuzzied bit of concentration he had. He thought she’d back away, giving him space—but when humanity settled around him, there she was, still holding his head—turning it, gently, so he wouldn’t end up face-first in the goats’ head burrs and stiff ground cover—and then releasing him.

She did it like someone who’d been there.

He coughed, clearing his throat of weakness—or trying to. “What?” he rasped, and made it clear enough with an unyielding gaze that he referred to her. “Who?”

She shook her head. “I have to go.” Right. To help her people. Whatever that meant. “You have to go, too. He won’t wait long.” She shook her head again. “He almost sent men with me, but his prince spoke loudly of not being caught. I think, though, that they are not far behind. So go, now.”

“Not without you,” Nick said. He made it to his hands and knees, limbs shaking visibly, a feverish hot and cold chasing itself through his bones—but he didn’t take his gaze from her. Didn’t release her. “Who…” Too much going on in brevis these days to ignore that fact. “It matters…”

“It matters to me,” she told him. “But it is not yours to have.” She rose, a fluid motion, and strode away down the buffer zone. No looking back…but there, at the edge of the trees, the slightest of hesitations.

But then she moved on.

And Nick’s shaking arms gave way, and he plowed down into the dirt without grace. He spat an unequivocal curse and rolled over to his back, wiping dirt from beneath his lip with the careless and uncoordinated swipe of his wrist.

All right. Fine. He hadn’t intimidated her into sticking around. It had been a long shot. He tried Annorah again, got nowhere—his focus was too scrambled, his energies likewise. So he needed to get up on his feet and find his way across the fairground to his car. Or at the least, onto the agility grounds where someone would have a phone.

Because he had no doubt his mystery betrayer-and-savior was right. If Gausto was behind this, if he’d had any doubts of the outcome…he wasn’t far off. Or his people weren’t far. No matter how the Septs Prince had instructed him.

Get up. Walk. Stagger. Crawl, if he had to. To the phone, in the car. Across the show grounds. Gausto would seed these grounds with his people if he realized that Nick was here, loose and vulnerable. And unlike the Sentinels, the Core agents carried guns. Guns and amulets and no compunction about damaging their prey.

His fingers twitched; fever cold chased him. And he realized, some moments later, that he hadn’t moved at all.

Son of a bitch.

…no, still hadn’t moved at all.

He didn’t hear her coming.

There she was, standing over him, and in his mind he rolled up and sprang to his feet and he caught her—claiming every bit of the intimacy she’d established with her invitation to run in the desert, every bit of the conflicted tangle between them, driven into place with her four-footed romp and lighthearted play.