Jaguar Night (19 page)

“Can I help you?” she asked, and it really meant
please leave this place.

“We want Dolan Treviño,” Gausto’s sidekick said, not even trying for pleasant. He and the other man were pure muscle and more…To be by Gausto’s side, they were whip-smart, accomplished with amulet and wet work both.

Anica shook her head. “He’s not one of our volunteers,” she said, admirably evasive. “Meghan might know who you mean. If you leave a number, I’ll have her call you.”

Gausto said, “Meghan Lawrence,” drawing the words out as if he were trying them on for size—and his tight smile said he liked the feel of them.

Anica took a step back, and even from his hiding place, Dolan could see her giving him the wary eye. Good for her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re a working ranch, and this is a heavily scheduled afternoon. If you leave your number, I’ll have Meghan—”

The sidekick gave no warning. He snatched Anica’s upper arm in a movement so fast it blurred even to Dolan’s eyes; he frowned, tail twitching, ears still flat, snarl still silent. The Core members were as human as
anything else. Such preternatural speed was not theirs to command. Not normally. Not when it was the very physical dominance of the Sentinels that inspired the Core’s attempts to dominate them. “Treviño,” the man said, his voice a malignant warning. Dolan dug his claws into earth, holding himself there by dint of will—it would do none of them any good if he flung himself into the hands of the Atrum Core, leaving Meghan unprotected. Leaving this ranch and its people unprotected beyond the moment.

“Asshole,” Anica snapped. “Let go of me. You think someone’s not dialing 911 right now?”

The man backhanded her—oh so casual, and yet with the force to send her spinning away and down. The other sidekick looked around the yard, raising his voice to carry. “Treviño!”

And Dolan flexed his claws, holding himself.
Not yet. It hasn’t come to that.
Not with the Sentinel team delayed who knew how damned long, leaving Meghan on her own without Dolan.
Not yet.
He had to wait…wait until there was nothing else for it…

With typically abysmal timing, a deep ping rang in his head—a query from brevis regional, a wordless
what’s happening?
He sent them his strongest possible message, in terms they couldn’t misinterpret.
Fuck you,
he snarled back at Carter, snug and happy in Tucson, withholding the help they needed. The words might not make it through…the meaning behind them would. Dolan’s fury that he had been hung out to dry, that civilians had been left exposed.
Carter, damn you,
do
something about this.

It had to be Carter. The old man hadn’t emerged from
his cave for such day-to-day matters as this for nearly a year now. Had become so ineffective that someone beneath him had leaked
Liber Nex
intel to the Core in the first place.

Anica climbed back to her feet—and kept her distance. She visibly fought and lost the impulse to look around—looking for
him.
Hiding in the brush…and
how is that different from brevis?

No. Not yet. Not quite yet—

“Hey!” A male voice, offended and protective and a little hot. Dolan winced, sinking down against the earth. Damn, damn, damn. The farrier jogged out of the barn with long, heavy hoof nippers held like a weapon; Jenny ran out after him, one arm outstretched as if to stop him, but not nearly fast enough to do it. “Whatever welcome you had is gone, fellas.”

Not so close
—! Dolan rose a few inches, restrained himself. Reached for Meghan…found her unapproachable—no longer closing him out, but simply so full there was no room for him.
What the hell?
Another impulse tore at him—to go find her. She was all that mattered. She could still find the book. She could still weave this land back together. No one but Meghan…

And she had no warning. Not yet.

“We’ve called the sheriff’s office,” the farrier said, standing uneasily between Anica and the men. “You’d best leave before they get here.”

But they ignored him. They didn’t so much as glance at him. They brushed past him to the center of the yard as Anica, fear on her face, slowly backed toward the barn, not daring to take her eyes from them. She saw something in them that the farrier hadn’t or couldn’t—
and she cried out in warning as he stalked up to the trio, reaching out—

One of the sidekicks turned, spoke a word, thrust out his hand. Nothing more than that.

The farrier crumpled. Dolan felt it clear and sharp and piercing as the man died. No fuss, no muss. Dead.

What the hell?
The wards should have stopped any object of power—and these men had no power of their own, no way to draw on this earth. Just as the Core shouldn’t have been able to find him at the old homestead…

Jenny cried out and ran from the barn—Anica intercepted her, dragging her back to shelter. And this time when Carter pinged him in a more demanding, more personalized repetition of the first call, Dolan dropped the attitude, he dropped the waiting curse and he sent back the purest, strongest impression of alarm he could muster. The purest cry for help.

For if the Core could kill with a touch, this was suddenly about so much more than Dolan or Meghan or this ranch. This was the Core gone amok—changing thousands of years of clandestine push-and-shove into outright war.

Dead, while I hide in the woods…

And then the man who’d killed the farrier faltered. A look of surprise crossed his face as he went to his knees; he said,
“Drozhar
—” and quite neatly pitched onto his face.

Gausto did not appear to take notice. He stopped in the center of the yard, surveying it.

But Dolan took close notice. Only two of them now. He had personal wards; they could not find him. They
couldn’t know for certain he was here. They might look, but they would tire…they would drop their guard. Only two of them. He could end this right here and now—

“Dolan Treviño,” Gausto said, a stage voice for the benefit of everyone else on the ranch—a ranch come to a standstill, with someone’s soft sobbing in the background and a hushed, urgent exchange in the barn doorway, Anica and Jenny holding back a young man whose face twisted with grief and anger.

Gausto lifted one fisted hand and opened it—a tiny vial, almost invisible except for the wink of it in the sun. “Dolan Treviño, murderer! The time has come to pay for your crimes.” He closed his fingers back around the vial and admitted, much more conversationally, “Of course, it is a convenient thing, indeed, that we can also follow your trail to the
Liber Nex.”

Not yet, you can’t.
And not ever, if Dolan could get there first.

But that meant walking away from these people under siege to finish the job for which he’d come. For the first time, he wasn’t sure he could do that.

Gausto gave the vial a little toss. “Do you think I’m out here talking to myself?” He handed the vial over to his remaining sidekick, who took it with a certain distinct, stolid reluctance. The man murmured a few words, just enough to shift his lips; his hand tightened around the vial.

Dolan grunted with the sudden pain across his flank. Remembered pain, come alive again. Black, dappled jaguar skin twitched in response, involuntary and unwanted.

Tiberon Gausto, sharp scalpel smeared with blood. Looming. Smug. Certain of his control and his victory.

Just a little sooner than he should have been.

Except now Dolan wondered if he’d been a little too certain of his own escape. It had been years—his capture while in search of revenge, his revenge while captured. His apparent escape.

All the trouble he’d caused between then and now, and they’d been biding their time?

Or maybe they just now had the tools to deal with him.

Gausto nodded at the man, who muttered more words yet—and Dolan snarled silently at the tug of them, at the renewed pain. Gausto looked into the brush woods, his gaze unerringly accurate. “Come out,” he said. “I can find you wherever you go. If you leave, you sacrifice these people for nothing.”

No. Not even with the
Liber Nex
at stake, with Meghan at stake.

Dolan padded out into the bright sunshine of the day, just as he was—sleek and dark and deadly. Anica and Jenny already knew…and now the others would understand, too. They’d know to stay out of this battle, that it was far beyond their influence. That they could only die, as the farrier had died.

And the jaguar would remind Gausto that walking out into the open was far from giving up.

“Very showy,” Gausto said. “Now be respectful, and dress yourself for polite company.”

Dolan offered nothing but a silent snarl, bright whiskers tipping back. He circled Gausto, lowering himself into a slink to make his intentions clear.
Stalking his prey.
He smelled bright blood and didn’t understand it, ignored it.

Gausto nodded at his companion. The man’s reluc
tance broke through to the surface, coming out in wary eyes, the infinitesimal shake of his head. Abruptly, Dolan understood: the Core’s unexpected new abilities came with a price. With one man dead, this man, feeling
something,
was unwilling to risk more.

Except that Gausto smiled tightly and said, “Do it. Bring him out.”

Big and brawny, muscled by exercise and drugs both, the man nonetheless had to steady his trembling hand with the other, clasping his wrist as his knuckles whitened. He went gray around the lips and Dolan, stalking them both, at first felt nothing.

And then the pain ripped down his side, striking deep with remembered pain as well injury anew. He snarled again, no longer soundless, as his back leg collapsed beneath him, losing strength with the shock of—

Again. And again. And
Meghan, dammit, let me in, let me warn you,
and Dolan suddenly twisted right out of the jaguar and back to his human self—still graceful in movement, still powerful in intent, straightening to stand against the pain while the hot sun beat against hot blood, sheening down his bare torso to obscure the deep stripes of opened scars beneath. From the barn came exclamations in a teen’s breaking voice; a horse called out.

Gausto’s sidekick wavered, staggering slightly. Gausto took the vial from him, prying it brusquely from his hand; Dolan found himself still on the prowl, still circling the men—and found his gaze drawn to the vial. He slipped into ward view and saw…

Nothing. Nothing around the vial, nothing lingering around the man. No wonder they’d come right through the wards with this new power, flinging death around
Encontrados. There’d been nothing to detect, nothing to stop. And no wonder they’d found him at the old homestead. This was no ordinary object of power, no predictable storage vessel. This was—

“Your blood,” Gausto said.

Dolan flicked his gaze up to Gausto’s, as if he could find answers there. Power drawn from blood? It was a myth left undisturbed, condemned as too heinous even for the Core’s power-driven goals.

A myth.

But his flank ran red, old wounds burning with more than just the slice of skin.

“We found some intriguing new toys while looking for the
Liber Nex,”
Gausto said. His sidekick stepped back, a muscleman trying for the unaccustomed—to be as unobtrusive as possible. To fade so thoroughly that Gausto wouldn’t think to thrust that vial back into his hand. “Pretty little things, indeed.”

Dolan gave the man on the ground a pointed look. “Those
things
obviously come with a price.”

“His own clumsiness.” Gausto shrugged. “He lacked control. And, as you’ve seen, it’s so much easier when one has a sample of the intended victim’s blood.”

Dolan would have snarled, if he’d had the right body. He almost did it anyway—nostrils flaring, a twitch of his cheek—but clenched his jaw around it and swallowed it down.
“Victim,”
he said, disdain for the blithe assumption. “Your brother made that same mistake.”

Gausto’s olive skin went ruddy, his slicked-back hair emphasizing the angry distortion of his features. “My brother didn’t have
this.”
He clenched his fist a little tighter. “With
this,
you have no chance. And your blood
is going to run thick, indeed, before the end of this day. We have questions we’d like answered. It’s just a shame we seem to have missed the little Lawrence bitch, or we’d have answers already.” He slanted a knowing look at Dolan.
“You
should have those answers by now, Treviño. It’s not like you to go soft on a mission.”

No. It’s not.
But the realization didn’t bother him. “I’m good with that,” he said, gave it another moment and nodded. “I’m damned good with that.” For Meghan, it seemed right.
Was
right.

“Then you’ll be content when you die,” Gausto said dryly.

Dolan only growled. Blood power or not—

The sidekick cleared his throat.
“Drozhar.”
Respectful but insistent, a man with something important to say.
News.
Dolan gave him a narrow-eyed look. The wards should have stopped any direct communication—and the Core had even fewer tools than the Sentinels when it came to distance contacts.

But when Gausto glanced aside, the man held up the BlackBerry he’d had tucked away. “They’ve found her. They’re in position to acquire.”

Gausto looked purely annoyed. “We have no further need of Trevino, then.”

But the exchange told Dolan more than they’d ever intended. They had Meghan in their sights, but they didn’t have her
yet.
And the annoyance…that meant Gausto’s little trip to this ranch hadn’t been sanctioned—that he couldn’t finish this the way he’d prefer. It meant Gausto had come here on his own, flinging around forbidden power, revealing Core secrets. He’d been charged to find the
Liber Nex,
not to play revenge
games while he was at it. Possibly he’d even been warned against such distractions.

For the Gausto family did like their games.

“Tell them to assess the best opportunity and take her,” Gausto said—and then glanced at Dolan. “Tell them not to put so much as a scratch on her. That privilege will be mine.”