Tiger Bound by Doranna Durgin Read Free Book Online Page A

She ran her tongue over her teeth, feeling the sharp bite of those slightly elongated canines. At least her deer had a little token set of tusks.
    She overtook him, jamming her first-aid supplies under the rail of the side porch to meet him near the window, moving nimbly among the unused flowerpots that lined the back of the house. The same pots that had, no doubt, tripped up their intruder in the first place. She crouched at the window, poking among the sparse grasses—and recoiling at the sight of something black and oily, a sheen of unearthly metal.
    She started to reach out, but Maks moved faster than she’d thought possible and caught her arm, pulling her back. She squeaked a protest—she’d hardly been about to touch the thing. Before she could say as much, he gentled his hold; by the time his fingers left her arm, it felt more like a caress.
    “Amulet,” she said grimly. Of course, an amulet—what else did the Core do but leave their little missives of evil? Amulets that eavesdropped, or that induced slow, subtle malaise...those that disrupted wards, disrupted talents. But they had to be triggered first...and surely this man hadn’t had the time to do that? Not if he was still holding it when they found him? She shook her head. “I haven’t seen one of these since training. What—?”
    He shook his head. “No idea.” He reached for the nearest flowerpot, flipped it upside down in one big hand, and plopped it down right over the metal.
    Katie snorted a startled laugh. “Don’t tell me that makes it safe.”
    “No,” he said reasonably. “But it will keep your cat from walking on it.”
    She reached out to almost touch the red clay pot, then let her fingers fall away. She felt as though she should be able to perceive something—some tingle of warning, some miasma of evil. “I wonder what it’s meant to do.”
    He scowled. “It’s theirs; that’s enough. And it lacks...scent.” His jaw briefly hardened. “Like the one in Flagstaff. And those found at Fabron Gausto’s workshop.”
    “You were there, too?” It startled her all over again.
    His grin took her just as much by surprise—it was fierce and full of memory. “I wasn’t cleared for it,” he said. “I went. Nick needed us.”
    Nick Carter, he meant—the Southwest Brevis consul. And us —that meant the small team that had infiltrated Gausto’s home, the Sentinels who had saved Carter and who had kept Core D’oíche from being worse than it might have been.
    No. Not just any wounded tiger.
    * * *
    Eduard Forrakes ran his hand over the array of silent amulet blanks on the worktable before him, waiting for one of them to speak to him—the faint warmth that meant it was ready for impression.
    Fabron Gausto had once scorned Eduard’s insistence that he could discern the ripeness of any given blank. But then, Gausto was dead, wasn’t he? Too arrogant to listen to Eduard’s advice, even as he took credit for Eduard’s accomplishments.
    “Yes,” he murmured. “It’s good to be king.” And then smiled at his own faint self-mockery even as he selected an amulet blank.
    Once he’d impressed a working upon the amulet, its unadorned leather thong would be knotted so as to identify it; the dull and crudely stamped metal would acquire its own particular sheen. It would become a thing of beauty...and a thing of power. With such a blank, he had once created the working that had located Dolan Treviño in the Sky Islands of southern Arizona; he had penetrated the troublesome Sentinel’s wards. He had left a surprise for the nosy Sentinel team in Flagstaff, and still resented the fact that they hadn’t been killed outright. He had, for a short time, taken down the man who was now Southwest Brevis consul. He had even created the woman Jet, once known as only wolf.
    And he had created the working that changed Fabron Gausto into a creature greater than any Sentinel, more werewolf than wolf—and if Gausto hadn’t been so arrogant, Eduard