Tiger Bound (30 page)

Couldn’t get enough—

“Shee-it,” Akins said. “It’s not dead yet!”

“It’s thoroughly dead,” Eduard said. “Keep your rifle on Altán, you imbecile. If you think he can’t still kill you, you’re a fool.”

“Keep my rifle on—what—?” Akins stared stupidly at Maks, at the quivering creature.

“The
tiger,
” Eduard said impatiently.

“It’s all but dead,” Akins said, full of scorn.

“You
are
a fool,” Eduard muttered, and under his hand the creature juddered, its skin suddenly crawling with movement. The weight of it eased; Maks shifted slightly, finding purchase with the single back leg that responded. He breathed past the pain, finding a shallow rhythm that sucked in just enough air to tamp down the panic of suffocation.

He could still reach Akins. He could still reach Eduard. He could still watch them die.

“Hey,” Akins said, watching the javelina, suddenly understanding. “I mean, what
the hell,
Eddie—”

Gone. The javelina was gone. The amulet in Eduard’s hand turned even darker, sucking in the light around it...dimming the very air—the taste of it churning the blood in Maks’s throat into something foul. And yet he gathered himself. Not outwardly, where they could see, but within, steeling himself for the effort. Outwardly, he was the dying tiger, sickened all the more by the Core working.

Akins looked as though he might throw up. “Eddie...”

“Eduard,” the Core rogue said tightly, his hand closing around the amulet with hard satisfaction. “It’s
Eduard.
” He tucked the amulet away, pushed the other into his palm, and advanced on Maks.

“No,” Katie said, her voice just as determined as her expression. “You leave him alone. You’ve done
enough,
both of you.”

“Katie Rae,” Akins said, with a patronizing approval. “Who knew you actually had backbone?”

“Leave him,” she said,
“alone.”
And she pulled the trigger, over and over.

Akins flinched, ducking wildly—and Eduard paid her no mind at all. The bullets flew wild, and if Katie realized that Core workings sent them astray, she couldn’t absorb it—not when it had probably taken everything within her to pull that trigger in the first place. In an instant, the semiautomatic’s clip had emptied, and the slide locked back into place.

Akins straightened. “Why, you little bitch. You would have done it, wouldn’t you? Killed me over an animal!”

“
You’re
the animal,” she said, and her chin only quivered once before she lifted it.

Eduard stepped forward. Akins headed for Katie, steps full of purpose. And Maks rolled to his haunches.

No more warning than that, and he leaped—not for Eduard, practically within reach, but past him. For Akins. Akins, who headed for Katie—who had invaded her life for his simple, greedy, human reasons.

Akins, who knew nothing of shields and the Core and larger battles, but everything of cruelty.

One crippled, agonizing, shortened leap, as he brushed right past Eduard. Another, and Akins would go down. Akins screamed, hoarse and short, as he saw it coming.

But that final leap never came. In his mind, it did; in his intent it did. In reality he sank down instead of surging forth, his limbs no longer his to command, his wounded flank drawing at him. He tipped his head up, roaring protest; it echoed along the base of the outcrop and out into the trees.

Eduard stepped away, hardly ruffled, his eerie features full of satisfaction. Maks didn’t understand it at first—not with all his focus on fighting the tug of darkness, the hot strokes of pain radiating down his body. And not with all his intent on reaching Akins—on reaching Katie, who had thrown away the gun and scrambled to her feet, standing on one leg with the other toe barely touching the ground.

And then he saw Eduard’s empty hands, and understood all too well.
Core amulet.
The same working that had already sucked the creature dry and gone was now attached to his own flank.

Akins drew himself up as if he’d already convinced himself that his scream had never happened, and reached for Katie once more. She didn’t seem to care, didn’t even seem to notice—not as she stared in horror at Maks.

Eduard snapped, “Have a care, Mr. Akins! She is not to be damaged further!”

Akins snapped, “She would have
shot
me,” and grabbed for Katie.

Didn’t grab her.

Tried again, with both hands, anger rising—grabbed her hard.

Didn’t grab her at all.

“What the hell?” he demanded.

Katie laughed, a sound on the verge of hysteria, and wobbling with fear—but not for herself. “Maks, take them back. Take back the shields. This man won’t hurt me! God knows why, but he wants me.
Take back the shields,
Maks, please!”

As if he ever would. Not until the hunters returned, realizing finally that things were not exactly as they’d thought them to be—that not all the humans were on the same side, and not all of them meant well. That Katie needed their protection.

“Maks,” she said fiercely, “I will never forgive you!”

It struck deep; he lifted his head to look at her, suddenly aware of how heavy it had gone, and that he’d let it settle to the rocks at all. Her image doubled, reverberating overtones of red...
the fugue.
He found her gaze anyway, and growled at her...a beseeching sound.

“No!” she said. “I won’t!”

His growl turned into a deep groan, driven out by faltering lungs and the world turning inside out, right there on his flank, and Eduard’s inexplicable words at his ear. “There, there,” he said, with no comfort in his voice at all, “it’ll be over soon. Inconsiderate of me, I know—we do this after the source body is already dead, but I simply couldn’t resist a little plundering of your most excellent living energies.”

“Hey,” Akins said, no more than a distant voice in spite of his proximity—because now, for Maks, there was only Katie, only the graceful slender nature of her, swaying slightly on one leg, one hand reaching out to him. Akins’s voice was only a grating in his ears. “I don’t know what the hell, but you said I could—”

“Tsk, Mr. Akins. I’ve told you that you’ll have your turn. I’ll leave enough of him for you to put a bullet into, among other things.”

Maks’s rasping attempt at a snarl nearly obscured Katie’s gasp—he could only imagine her expression. He could no longer see it, not with the whirlpool sucking at his life and returning only darkness. He reached out for the feel of her, knowing he’d find only the slick surface of his own shielding—shields that would fail soon enough.

Only until the hunters got back...

That was all the longer the shields had to last.

Maks let go of the outside world and dug inward, hunting the roots of the shields—so deep, so central...the place where everything clicked hard into place. If he poured of himself into it,
everything
of himself—

Everything.

Maks
burrowed deep among his own roots of power—pieces of him trickling out to awareness of Katie: the tension of her body, the strangled cry in her throat, the piercing throb of her ankle. A tiny piece of himself wrapping around her—taking protection there, even as he protected her.

For as long as it lasted.

Chapter 21

“Y
ou bastard,” Katie said, glaring at the bizarrely formal little man in his morning tails and supercilious attitude, wishing the gun still filled her hand, replete with bullets. “I don’t even know you.”

“Don’t you?” He cocked his head as though disappointed in her. “Think back several months, Miss Maddox. The profoundly ugly reservation dog with the liver damage. No doubt it got into something it shouldn’t have eaten, that’s what you said at the time.”

Thin, scarred, a dull yellow creature with prick ears and an upright curve of a tail.
And this man...dressed in jeans and an ugly polo shirt, his hair less styled, his eyes behind outdated glasses, his manner mild. Undercover Core.

“I see you
do
remember,” he said, approving. “I was quite impressed with the work you did. I need your assistance in one of my own endeavors.”

It didn’t make sense. She shot a glance at Akins, who stood in pure frustration—a bully unable to bully, his fist clenched at his side, his rifle in the other hand, his face flushed with emotion.

The Core rogue interpreted that glance very well, even as he watched Maks’s helpless throes with satisfaction. “A tool,” he said of Akins. “About to complete its usefulness.”

Akins might not know what that meant. Katie did. The Core rogue would not leave mundane witnesses to his workings.

In fact, Akins muttered, “About damned time, Eddie. Lady, you’ve been nothing but trouble,” as he raised his rifle to Katie, interpreting those words as wrongly as he possibly could. He looked after the hunters, as if wary of their return—but those who hadn’t been hurt were still caring for their own, not understanding Katie’s peril or Akins’s true nature. Not even beginning to understand the Core, or that the tiger who had come from nowhere was her Maks.

Maks, who now twisted in agony, a bloody froth at his mouth and a heinous Core amulet over one hip. He needed her healing, and he needed her voice, her caring...the caring touch of a love discovered.

Katie was tired of being the prey, tired of hiding...tired of taking her cues from a single side of her inescapable deer nature.

The deer was swift. The deer was persistent. The deer could fight back when cornered.

Maybe this time she wouldn’t wait until she was completely cornered.

She lurched forward, the merest hint of weight on her bad ankle—the one so badly twisted by the Core minion who even now made his long, crashing way back down the outcrop.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Akins snapped at her, bullying for the sake of it. “Sit your ass down and face facts. Your manly friend ran off and left you here. Cowardly sonuvabitch.”

“Shut up,” Katie told him, her words full of calm, striking intensity. She took another hop toward Maks, who had subsided, no longer even twitching, but simply deflating, there in his twisted posture; urgency drove her.
It can’t be too late. It can’t.
Not while she still had the shields. “You, Roger Akins, are a mewling, nasty little schoolyard bully, and you’re in over your head. You don’t matter to me, and you don’t matter to him.” She jerked her head in the Core rogue’s direction, her hands busy with her balance.

Akins snatched at her again, unable to stop himself; his hands slipped away from her, closing on nothing. Katie stopped long enough to give him a bitter smile. “You see? In over your head. You know
nothing,
and you’re about to die. You won’t have the tiger, you won’t have your reputation, and you won’t have
me.
”

He snarled a long string of curses, stepping back, lifting the rifle—not, with a glance at the Core rogue, to aim at Katie.

To aim at
Maks.

She had no idea how long the shields would last; she had no idea if they would stop a rifle bullet point-blank. But she didn’t throw herself at the rifle, hoping to wrench it aside; she didn’t wait for Akins to heed the rogue’s snapped command. She threw herself at what mattered most, a single bound across rock that wrung the last bit of effort from her ankle, that covered more ground than Akins or the rogue or even Katie herself had thought possible of a one-legged woman. And as the rogue shouted in alarm, warning Akins off, as Akins snapped the rifle to his shoulder to put Maks in his sights and pull the trigger, Katie threw herself over the tiger, covering his body with hers, her face pressed up close to his bleeding flank and to that appalling amulet.

Akins’s shot rent the air, a spike of sound.

Katie barely felt the impact—high against her back, where it would have shattered her spine. She barely heard the rogue’s escalating anger. She felt only Maks, the rough warmth of him through the fading shields, the thickness of his fur, the muscles gone limp. The amulet pulsed malevolent darkness inches from her nose, a thick and gathering malaise.

Katie didn’t think twice. She slipped her still-shielded hand between Maks and the amulet—
shoved
—and flipped it away with violent disgust.

“Maks,” she whispered, resting her face against fur. “I know you’re in there. I
know...
” For the shields still slipped between them, paper thin and growing thinner.

“What the fu—” Akins’s voice had gone up an octave. “Eddie, whatever the hell this thing is...get it off, get it
off—
”

Katie’s fingers sank deeply into fur—too deeply, the hard outer coat making way for the soft undercoat, the sensation of it both luxurious and alarming...the shields were fading fast. And she mourned the biggest irony of all, that she couldn’t reach him for healing until the shields were gone and it was too late—and then this rogue and his men would snatch her up and leave Maks to his death.

“Off!” Akins shrieked. “Ohmigod, get it off!”

She saw it, then—that he’d followed her to Maks, that he’d been close enough—no doubt reaching for her—that he’d been directly in the path of the amulet as she flung it away.

That he, human in all ways, had neither the great strength nor reserves of a Sentinel. He went to his knees even as she looked, his face contorting with pain. “Eddie! Eddie, get it—” His words degenerated into a panting howl; he writhed as Maks had writhed, going down to the rocks.

The rogue stood over him. “Eduard,” he said coldly. “You may call me Eduard. And then you may die.”

And the shield between Katie and Maks, the shield whose very presence meant that Maks was still there...

The shield slipped away, and Katie buried her face in the tiger’s fur and keened bitter grief.

* * *

Maks hid from the pain, hid from loss, hid from the truth. Broken tiger, unable to protect that which he loved.
Again.

Not that he’d stopped trying—still pouring the last of himself into that shield.