Tiger Bound by Doranna Durgin Read Free Book Online Page B

would now be experimenting to perfect the stability of that working, rather than trying to recreate it from scratch. Or to recreate his own personal stash of preservation workings—those that had given him the extended vigor and youth to pursue his craft to such perfection.
    A commotion in what passed for a hallway broke his concentration. Suddenly, Eduard again became aware of his crude surroundings: the arching Quonset structure and its permanent underground chill, the always-inadequate lighting, the workspace walls that stopped well short of the high central ceiling.
    The prefab nature of the buried building and its contents annoyed him in all ways—always just a little bit flimsy, far too much metal and not nearly enough well-waxed wood. For Eduard was the master of an ancient craft, and it was a craft that deserved the finest circumstances, the best materials—and, by damn, a coffeemaker that didn’t come from the dollar store.
    He didn’t turn around as he finished his thoughts out loud. “It deserves the courtesy of subordinates who knock. ”
    Silence followed that statement...perhaps a moment of dawning regret. Eduard turned to see who had intruded on his work. “Guyrasi,” he said, turning the name into a disapproving statement.
    Guyrasi took a step through the doorway into this, the largest enclosure within the buried Quonset. This was the entire back third of it, in fact, an area that had served as breeding-stock quarters years earlier.
    Eduard said softly, “Have you a problem?”
    He’d learned that from Gausto—the effectiveness of a soft voice when there was cold cruelty behind it.
    Guyrasi made a token attempt to straighten himself. “She was supposed to be detained! That civilian of yours was supposed to keep her away from the house!”
    Eduard gave the man a cool stare. “In this posse,” he said, “those who wish to survive don’t make excuses.”
    “If I had been given time—” But the man stopped as Eduard dipped a hand into one of the many amulet-filled pockets in his custom black lab coat, and when he spoke again it was with more discretion. “I located the house without difficulty. I was securing the amulet when your target arrived home with a man.” He took a deep breath and met Eduard’s gaze with, at last, the appropriate awareness of his failure and its potential consequences. “The amulet is live, but I was unable to conceal it before they came after me.”
    “They?” Eduard absorbed the man’s disheveled appearance, fondling an amulet within his biggest pocket in subtle threat. “The man was another Sentinel.”
    Guyrasi nodded once, making of it the slightest bow of acknowledgment. “He took the shape of a tiger—a Siberian.”
    A Siberian tiger. There had been a Siberian at Gausto’s compound raid, too. Eduard didn’t recall that he’d done much.
    Of course, Eduard had wisely departed before those events had played themselves out. He’d left his work and his home; he’d lost the woman he’d loved. He was here to succeed where Gausto had failed. Regardless of what Gausto’s superiors said about laying low in the wake of Gausto’s embarrassing failures in the cold war between the Core and the Sentinels.
    When Eduard didn’t respond directly, the man filled the silence. “I handled him,” Guyrasi said, bravado mixed in with his confession. “I stunned and shot him. He’s badly hurt, if not dead.” Guyrasi shifted uneasily. “Will the amulet work if not placed directly against the house?”
    It had been one of Eduard’s more subtle workings, and a lovely execution at that—carefully impressed into a blank amulet with the perfect structure to hold it. Had it been properly located, it would have gradually brought Katie Maddox under Eduard’s influence. As it was...
    “Perhaps,” Eduard said. “If it goes undetected. I’ll know soon enough.” His partnered amulet would tell him what he needed to know. “Now, have yourself tended.”
    The man drew