He came into sight at the crest of the hill, appearing from between two junipers to wave her onward, and she suddenly understood. Lannie had gone uphill to take his other—whatever his other was. The light, the energy, even the humming song—those had all been the edges of his return to human. And now he stood there waiting for her, all matter-of-fact confidence and underlying strength.
She hiked the last hundred feet more quickly than she’d thought she had left in her, and greeted him with demand. “Was that you?”
She didn’t truly expect his frown. “Maybe,” he said, and thought about it until he shook his head. “Did it bother you?”
“Bother?” She found her hand was still gritty, the thin soil pressed into the lines of her palm, where she’d grabbed at the ground in her reaction to that song. She realized, too, what she really, really didn’t want to admit—that her body had responded, humming along in its own way, and that now it had warmed to him in a clear defiance of how she felt about Sentinels, being here and being anywhere near him in the first place.
Good God, she wanted him.
Except she didn’t. She didn’t want any part of being here, Lannie Stewart included. So she, too, finally shook her head. “It didn’t bother me,” she said. “It surprised me. It was rude.”
He pondered that, watching her with an awareness she wasn’t sure she liked. “Probably so,” he allowed, and left it at that, switching his attention to the well house now completely within view. “There’s nothing much up here. They didn’t waste much time trying to chase Aldo off.” He shook his head. “Just an old man taking a smoke.”
Holly took a few more steps in that direction, eyeing the faint track of an unofficial lane. The well house itself didn’t do anything to offset her initial impression, and its security consisted of a simple aged hasp and lock. “Why would they even come down this road?”
Lannie walked past her to the lane, scuffing his way across it. At her inquisitive look, he pointed downward. “This ground holds a track a whole lot better than you might think. I’ll know it when someone comes through this way again.”
Tracks. She looked down at that weird mix of silty, gritty soil overlaying hard ground, and discovered herself in the midst of them.
Not all of them human.
She crouched, running a forefinger around the outside of the nearest track. The nearest huge track, doglike in shape if not in size. Lannie’s? Or had it been here all along? “You’re right,” she said. “This ground holds a significant track.” She glanced up at him. “You should have brought a broom.”
“Maybe I will.” He paced down the road, looking along its length as if the guy gang and their truck might come barreling back down it any moment now. Holly pressed her hand over the track, obliterating it, and stood up. A few steps took her to the only snatch of color in the pale ground, and it took her some moments to recognize the splatter of dried blood. Her gaze flickered to the faded bruising on his face, and he shook his head. “Not mine.”
“Nice,” she said. “They probably never knew what hit them.”
Because he was Sentinel. He was stronger. He was supposed to pull his punches.
“There were five of them,” he reminded her.
“Sentinel,” she reminded him, out loud this time.
To her surprise, he lifted the front tail of his shirt. At first she saw nothing but the gleam of skin over surprisingly hard muscle, the light scatter of hair toward the center of a torso leaner than she’d expected. She stuttered on a response—and then realized the steep shadow between two of his lowest ribs wasn’t a shadow, but the angry and slightly gaping lips of a knife wound.
“Sentinel,” he said. “Not Superman. You should know. Your blood is strong enough.”
“I never thought so,” she said, more faintly than pleased her. “I’m not truly different from anyone else. Not like—”
You. With the way the wild strength sometimes gleamed straight from his eyes, or how the very way he stood broadcast the dangerous nature lurking behind a laconic exterior.
“Look in a mirror sometime.” He let the shirttail fall.
“I don’t understand.” She tore her gaze away from his side to search his expression, finding little she could read there at all. “I don’t heal much faster than anyone else.” She made a face, and admitted, “Yes, a little. But I thought Sentinels healed really fast.”
His grin was wry; it changed his face, made her want to reach out to him and take his hand and bump a companionable shoulder. She took a step back instead, startled at herself. He said, “If we’re badly injured, the early healing comes quick. Hurts like hell, too. But it keeps us alive when we might otherwise die.” He shrugged. “After that? You already know. We heal a little more quickly than normal. That’s all.”
“Then that must have been a whole lot worse yesterday.” Realization struck. “Right after I got here.” And then she leaped forward to a whole new understanding, and she speared a glance at him. “You were loading hay with that?”
He frowned down at the injury, resting his hand lightly over top. “There was hay to unload.”
She exhaled a sharp and impatient breath. “For everything you say, I swear there are two things you’re keeping to yourself.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But never things about you, from you. Just ask.”
She made a noncommittal noise in her throat that sounded no more convinced that she felt; he looked sharply at her. “Altitude catching up with you?”
“Maybe.” She looked down the slope—the unfamiliarity of the terrain, the unfamiliarity of the scents and even the sound of the bird flashing bright blue from the brush as it scolded them. The unfamiliarity, yes...and deeper, beneath it all, the sense that something else was missing, was wrong. Something she’d been leaning on so long she hadn’t even known it was there and now couldn’t begin to define.
“Still want to go to Cloudview?”
She jerked her head back to narrow her eyes at him. “Don’t you dare go back on that.”
Was that amusement on his features, lurking at the corners of his eyes, in the slight lift on one side of his mouth? She took a step toward him, a light growl vibrating somewhere in her chest. “Are you laughing at me?”
At the same time, she heard it again—the hint of song, beguiling cello tones weaving beneath faint strains of barely whispered complexity. The intrusion stunned her—the affront of it, the fact that she could hear it at all—but she’d barely drawn breath to protest when he grinned outright. Also unexpected, and also stunning—in its own way, striking deep into the heart of her.
By then he’d taken the few steps between them and wrapped an unexpected arm around her shoulder in a gesture of startling affection.
She wanted to sputter at him. She wanted to say I didn’t invite you to do that and You have no right—but her body was already melting into him. Just long enough to feel the upright strength in him, and to understand how clearly his gentleness was a choice.
Then he stepped back, framing her head between both big hands to look directly into her gaze, piercing eyes gone somehow softer. “It gets easier,” he told her. “Let’s go see your brother.”
And then he took her hand and led her down the hill.
The