Yes. With care, he eased the manuscript free. It felt right in his hand—the expected size, the expected heft—if at the same time without the presence he’d expected. The weightiness.
He withdrew it from the chimney and set it on the hearth, a paper-wrapped package thoroughly secured with duct tape. More duct tape showing than paper, dammit. The stuff would be hell to cut through, even after all this time. He reached into his treated back pocket for his folding Buck knife—and that’s when he realized.
Not dusk, this darkness. Not yet.
Atrum Core. Here. Now. In spite of his personal wards. Coming for the one thing he could never let them have.
The haze once restricted to the horizon now abruptly descended around him, saturating the air with an oily stench. He threw himself down on the manuscript, pulling the threads of his wards tighter even as he sent the most piercing Vigilia adveho call he could—the 911 incantation of a Sentinel in deepest jeopardy. By then he realized the haze wasn’t mist, wasn’t droplets of any sort, but had turned into infinitesimal insects, gnats almost too small to see—and that as they settled on the skin exposed at his wrists, they sank right into his damn skin, making it twitch with the sudden burning fire of their passage.
Can’t be good. He instantly gave over to the jaguar, trading inadequate clothing for thick black fur, still crouched over the manuscript, ears flattened closed and eyes tightly closed, his nose tucked down between his front legs and his tail curled tightly to his side. Expose nothing—and never stop reaching for those wards—
Abruptly, the stench eased. The fiery burn beneath his skin eased, fading to an ache. The dusk—true dusk—enfolded him in silence. Dolan didn’t move, not at first—he finished reinforcing his wards, not allowing himself to wonder why the Core had retreated when they—face it—they’d had the complete advantage. The Vigilia adveho hadn’t yet even reached its target; the ward reinforcement hadn’t been finished. His dappled black jaguar fur wouldn’t have kept the invading gnats away forever, and the fire of them had been enough to fragment his concentration. And yet…
Gone. All of it.
Dolan slowly raised his head, a growl slipping out. He flexed his claws into the stone hearth—claws sharp enough to tear through duct tape as easily as a knife. He didn’t waste any time tackling the manuscript wrapping, beset with the sudden urgency to see the thing, to touch it directly—to feel it. Beset with the sudden premonition that it—
That it wasn’t the manuscript at all.
Dolan growled again—couldn’t stop it, or stop from lashing his tail. Decoy. Paper encased in leather—a fancy journal of some sort, filled with the scripted details of daily life. The Core must have realized it, and they had promptly quit the field.
He’d been lucky in a backward kind of way—the Core shouldn’t have been able to find him, shouldn’t have been able to reach him…but they had, and only this decoy had saved him from that bafflingly successful attack.
But it left him with no manuscript and a cold trail.
And it left him with the need to return to Meghan Lawrence, to see if she could lend insight to his search. It left him with a biting inner self-scorn, knowing he’d underestimated Fabron Gausto and the regional Core.
A twinge shot through one front leg, involuntarily flexing his claws into the journal’s leather binding; he stared at it without immediate comprehension. A spasm flickered across his ribs; he grunted in surprise, hissing as a contraction twisted his back leg hard enough to kick out across the dirt floor beyond the hearth.
And then he knew.
The Atrum Core had left not in retreat, but because they’d already done what they’d come for. Another twist of muscle down his back, a grunt of pain from deep within, tinged with annoyance and—
—yes, desperation.
They’d waited for his distraction and they’d somehow infiltrated his defenses, instilling sly dark poisons and now—
—fire traced down his back—now Meghan would be on her own—a dry jaguar cough, wrenched from a body twisting around itself—and the real manuscript was still out there for the taking—consciousness fading, making way for the fire and—
Failure. Agonizing death and failure.
But he still held the threads of the unfinished call, and he redirected it to a closer target, to the one he least wanted to endanger and most wanted to help.
Meghan. Sentinel unblooded. Daughter of the trickster.
Hope of the Vigilia.
And the one face he wanted to see.
Meghan stiffened. Echoes of pain shot through her body, trying to twist her—trying to take over. Without thinking, she whirled to face the eastern horizon, which was darkened by dusk…but no longer by the strange haze of the past few days, the one she’d first thought was an atmospheric oddity and then smoke from a distant fire and then pretended not to notice at all.
“Meghan!” Jenny ran down the aisle of the opensided barn to reach her, hands closing over her upper arms to turn her, to look her in the eye. “Meghan—?”
Meghan had to blink a few times before she truly saw her friend—before she realized she’d dropped an entire bucket of oats and psyllium, leaving the hungry gelding in the end stall pawing in frustration. “I have to go,” she said, and the words sounded as if they came from someone else’s mouth.
“You—” Jenny dropped her arms, took a step back. “You what?”
“Have to go.” Meghan spoke more briskly, her mind racing ahead—choosing a horse, listing supplies…preparing.
She’d felt the pain. She knew who it was, if not why. She knew he was alone on her land.
She knew she had to go…
If not why.
Chapter 3
Meghan ignored Jenny’s hovering presence as she grabbed saddle, bridle and the saddlebags set aside for trail emergencies. A quick side trip to the house and her bedroom, and a low storage bin bumped out from beneath her bed and across the braided rug to yield her mother’s lore box with its precious herbs and powders.
Meghan dashed back to the barn, nearly colliding with Jenny at the threshold. Jenny did a double take, her gaze settling on the box tucked under Meghan’s arm. Wooden, carved with loving but basic skills by an adolescent Margery Lawrence…the most meaningful thing Meghan had left of her mother.
“I’m okay,” Meghan said, knowing how very much circumstances indicated otherwise. “But my mother…she may have left something undone. And I have a feeling—” She broke off. How she hated that phrase; how she usually avoided it. How she’d been teased as a girl in school—
But this was Jenny, and her face cleared. Or nearly cleared. “All right,” she said. “But is it safe?”
Meghan hesitated long enough to shrug. Safe? Not in the least. That somehow didn’t, at the moment, seem relevant. “Grab Luka for me?” she asked Jenny, and pulled a floppy camp bag from the small tack room opposite the saddles.
“Luka,” Jenny echoed. “You’re going into rough country?” But her feet were already moving for the gelding’s stall.
Because Luka would get her there. Wise, once mistreated into a man-killer, the aging gelding had finally found a rider who understood his mighty Lipizzan spirit. He still suffered no fool gladly, but he’d given his heart to Meghan—and now his sure feet and still-powerful body