Jaguar Night

Dolan’s eyes narrowed as he drank in the rising power of what lay between them…

He let it swell within him instead of fighting it, until it verged on intoxication.

Below him, Meghan drew her sweatshirt together with one hand and shoved her hair back with the other, poised for flight. Suddenly vulnerable–and yet unable to keep from leaning towards him ever so slightly.

It was his undoing.

He leaped from the rock, invoking the shift along the way–riding the flash and crackle of the change and landing human.

And damned ready to face this thing between them.

“Meghan,” he said, and his voice came out as more of a growl. He rode the pounding demands in his body, the ache of being so close and yet not touching her. Until she lifted her face slightly, leaning into what lay between them. She took a deep breath; she let it out on a single, quiet, “Yes.”

He hesitated an instant longer–just long enough to be sure of what she’d said.

Doranna Durgin
spent her childhood filling notebooks, first with stories and art, and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures–and with a new touchstone to the rugged spirit that helped settle the area, which she instils in her characters.

Doranna’s first fantasy novel received the 1995 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall award for the best first book in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres; she now has fifteen novels of eclectic genres on the shelves. Most recently she’s leaped gleefully into the world of action romance. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds web pages, wanders around outside with a camera and works with horses and dogs. You can find a complete list of her titles at www.doranna.net, along with scoops about new projects, a lot of silly photos and a link to her SFF Net newsgroup.

Sentinels:
Jaguar Night

BY

Doranna Durgin

MILLS & BOON
^®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedicated, of course, to the critters in my life–

Jean-Luc, Cheysuli Jean-Luc Picardigan
OJP NAP OJC NAC, CGC

Belle, Cheysuli’s Silver Belle
CD RE MXP3 PAX EAC EJC, CGC

Connery, Ch Cedar Ridge DoubleOSeven
CD RE MX MXJ EAC EJC, CGC

and Kacey, Xtacee Carbon Unit, CGC, who was still
with me when I wrote this book, and Strider the
WonderHound, who was there when it all started.

But especially to Duncan the Lipizzan, aka Pluto
Gladys, who has resisted critical injury, extreme
distance and lengthy separation to always fulfil the
task of keeping me humble.

And with thanks to Tashya Wilson and Tara Gavin,
for giving me a chance at all this fun!

Prologue

M
eghan crossed her arms over her flat ten-year-old’s chest and gave her mother a defiant stare. “You never listen!”

Her mother smiled. Her mother
always
smiled. Sometimes her smile hinted at a joke not yet discovered by anyone else…sometimes it was a cleverness she’d seen in the world. Sometimes it was just because. Thus was the coyote shape-shifter—hard to pin down, cheerfully unpredictable.

Tonight, that smile broke Meghan’s young heart. “The animals are worried! Listen to
them!”

“Ah, my sensitive girl…connected with us all.” Margery Lawrence sat right where she was, cross-legged there on the ranch-house porch, and pulled Meghan’s resisting body into her arms. Lanky, coltish Meghan didn’t quite fit there any longer, but her mother appeared not to
notice. Her mother ran a hand along Meghan’s hair, smoothing…petting.

Meghan wasn’t fooled. She didn’t relax into the embrace. “You shouldn’t go,” she muttered. It sounded sullen even to her own ears.

“Meggie,” her mother said, making the word a caress. “I won’t be alone. There’s someone coming to help, a fine young man who takes the jaguar when he shifts. He’ll watch for me.”

The demand burst out of her. “Then why doesn’t he do all of it? Why make you go out?”

Her mother laughed in genuine amusement. “Because he’s big and brawny, but he’s not half so clever as this nimble coyote…and he’s got no nose for the tricky things. Besides, he doesn’t know this land the way I do. The way
you
do.”

But Meghan sat, stiff and resistant and still unable to keep her lip from quivering.

Her mother pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “I might not really be one of them, Meggie, but I don’t need the Sentinels to tell me how important this is. Neither do you. The animals wouldn’t feel it, otherwise—or the land. Or even you, for that matter. So the fine young man will meet me here, and we’ll go take care of things. And then the animals won’t feel this way to you any longer, and neither will the land.”

More words burst out, even though she knew better. “But it’s not fair! They don’t pay any attention to you at all, not until they want something! They don’t even think you’re good enough to be one of them, but they still—”

“Shhh,” her mother said, a firmness in her voice. “You know that’s not true. It’s my decision to stay apart
from them, as much as is allowed. This…this is something I have to do. It’s my legacy…and in some ways, on some day, it’ll be yours. Now give me a kiss and a hug, and let’s make sure the dogs are put up and won’t bother our jaguar visitor.”

But the jaguar never came.

And Margery Lawrence left anyway.

Chapter 1

D
olan knew where to find her—or at least, how. Her scent was all over this mountainous “sky island” territory, the fat junipers and sage and high ground. The hint of her ancient Vigilia nature tingled beneath, along with the sharp smell of the occasional pine.

The daughter. The one who’d grown up apart from them…who barely realized what she was. If anyone could help, it was her.
Meghan Lawrence.
Child of a Sentinel who’d died for the cause.

A woman who’d long ago rejected them all, just as they’d rejected her.

On the eastern horizon, menace loomed in a long, hazy cloud that had no business in this southwestern spring sky—the Atrum Core, keeping track of this area, their dark presence a constant itch between his shoulder
blades. For all he knew, they and their twisted prince sought the very same trail he now followed.

He’d have to get there first.

Nearby, an ATV crawled clumsily over fragile soil, chewing up plant life. Dolan veered off in annoyance, a silent snarl on his lips. The rider—oblivious beneath a helmet—crept forward in jerks and stops, challenged by the rugged nature of the protected ground. This, too, was why Dolan was here. Sentinel of the earth in all ways.

He eased back down to ghost along behind and above the man, taking up a loose-limbed trot. Biding his time. Controlling the thrill of the hunt that made his ears flatten, his head sink lower. This wasn’t the hunt. This was the job.
His life.

And so when the time was right, when the ground slanted sharply away but not too sharply, when the creosote and scrub oaks offered uphill cover, Dolan coiled himself on powerful legs and freed his eversimmering anger, leaping to smack the ATV rider right off his machine and tumbling down the slope.

He almost couldn’t control the impulse to follow
the hunt, the kill, the satisfaction, strong jaws crunching bone;
he took his ire out on the machine instead, shredding the plastic and cables and vulnerable exposed guts. Even as the rider lifted his head, Dolan whirled and bounded into the brush, surging with instincts and impulses that wanted to stay.
To kill.

A mile away he stopped, crouching into the wispy grasses and rough ground, panting. Leaving the man behind to return to his own forbidden quest.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to
have waited in Sonoita for orders, for a team.
Waited until too late.
Just as his brother had.

He folded his whiskers back tight with disdain, crouched down close to the earth and dismissed the Sentinels from his thoughts. He closed his eyes, opened his nose and rediscovered the trail. The woman. The dark quest he’d been following before he’d indulged himself.

No. It’s part of the job.
Of protecting this territory. Not just from the evil that menaced it, the Atrum Core, but from the mundane things as well. The man would think twice before returning here, embroidering the story of his brush with death until his friends ceased to truly believe him—but they, too, might also think twice the next time they went four-wheeling on protected lands.

And the man might have seen a flash of black, might have felt the brush of fur and whisker and massive paw…but nothing more. For all he knew, he’d been nailed by a desert Bigfoot.

Not a huge, sleek and healthy black jaguar with startling blue eyes and a man’s thoughts.

Meghan saw him coming. She knew him instantly for what he was; her mother had taught her that much before she’d died.
Vigilia. Sentinel.
Those who had failed her mother. Those who had sent her out to die alone.

Another couple of steps and it hit her in a literal gasp of realization—his other nature.

…
a fine young man who takes the jaguar.

Jaguar.
In every step, emanating from his very being…as clear to Meghan as if he’d stalked up to her in form, just as her mother’s coyote had always glimmered clearly to Meghan’s younger eyes.

The horse knew what he was, too, and she barely managed to secure the side rein snap before he leaped away, pulling from her grasp to gallop in panicked circles at the outside edge of the training pen. Around and around, flashing repeatedly between her and the approaching man, tail clamped tight and ears back, side reins flapping.

She walked toward the man from within the pen, her stomach already churning. Never mind the way he moved—fluidly, each step deliberate and yet barely contained. Never mind his expression—so alert, so intense—or the very direct way he approached her. She could have closed her eyes and still known him as Sentinel.
As a jaguar.

That was one of her mother’s legacies. The connections, whether she wanted them or not.

He was close now, close enough to see that his eyes weren’t black at all, but a deep, startling blue. Close enough so the terrified gelding fled to the opposite side of the pipe panel round pen, snorting and grunting his fear.

She slipped between the metal rails and straightened as he came to a stop. She didn’t give him time to speak. “I know what you are.
Who
you are.” She felt it in every fiber of her being, a strange reverberation that raised the hair on her arms. “You’re not welcome here.”

He lifted his chin ever so slightly. Instead of resentment or disappointment, interest flickered in those eyes. “You
think
you know what I am.”

She fought the urge to take a step back. Nothing but cold metal pipe behind her. “I know enough.” She wouldn’t make the mistake of listening to Sentinel words—to Sentinel requests. Especially not from this man.

He eased closer, off to the side, as though looking at her from a slightly different angle would somehow improve his perception of her. “I didn’t know your mother.” The morning light flashed against his eyes, bringing out their clarity; it skipped along the angles of his cheek and jaw and got lost in the gloss of thick black hair. All black, so wrong for this climate…black jeans, black leather biker jacket. “But I know
of her.
We all do.”

She snorted. It wasn’t delicate. “Right, because she was your patsy. She let you talk her into dangers she shouldn’t even have been near.”

At that he shook his head, short and almost imperceptible. “Not I.”

“As if it matters,” she said, bitterness leaking through along with disbelief. The noises of the ranch folded in around her—horses calling to each other in reaction to the gelding’s fear; human voices raised as they queried each other, pausing in chores.
They
were her family now, the people who worked rescue with her. And they didn’t need this interference any more than she did. “You know what? I’m busy. And you’re scaring the hell out of this horse. Go away, Sentinel.”