LITMIR.BIZ

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personnel bustled around the teenager. Scattered groups of tourists appeared in the distant chairs on the lift. Good. With more people up here, their own absence would be less noticeable.

      But while she tried to focus her thoughts on the power surges of the area, on the consequences of such surges, on her need to prove Joe Ryan a Sentinel gone dark, the gentle gusty wind snatched at her thoughts; the scent of sun-warmed pine beguiled her nose. The thin air slipped in and out of her lungs without leaving much impact, and her peripheral vision seemed ever so sparkly around the edges. Her fingers curled around the upper rail of the brown pipe fencing; she took a deep breath.

      “Give it a few minutes,” Ryan said, giving her a quick, sharp glance before he returned his attention to the panorama before them. “You’ll adjust.”

      More so than the average tourist—an advantage of her robust shifter form, and one she’d gladly take. Plenty of travelers found the seven-thousand-foot altitude at the base challenging enough; Lyn hadn’t even considered it until this moment. She took another deep breath, suddenly overwhelmed by the very alien nature of the landscape—from the volcanic rock formations around them to the distinct sections of forest and high desert prairie spread out below and the slash of the Grand Canyon far to the northwest…this place smelled different, it sounded different…it even tasted different, pressing in around her with clear, rarefied air and the unique trace of those creatures who dared to live at this cold, dry twelve thousand feet.

      Perhaps that’s why she nearly missed it. Another rumble of power, a mere bass hiss of presence, tasting of Ryan and of deep green wild…Lyn found herself closing her eyes, leaning into it as she might a pleasant breeze on a hot day.

      Her eyes snapped open, riveting to him in accusation—but the words she gathered to fling at him died on her lips. He stood braced against the rail, a frown drawing his brows, nostrils flared with the impact of that faint surge…or with effort, she wasn’t sure. Even as she watched, eyes narrowed, he lifted his head—a little jerk of determination there—and turned to her.

      And then she couldn’t help it. Then the words burst out. “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that. Don’t tell me you didn’t taste yourself in that surge!”

      For an instant, he looked nothing more than nonplussed. And then his frustration snapped back at her. “No! It’s not—I—” A quick step, another, and he’d closed the distance between them, by then under better control. “Tell me, Lyn Maines…did you recognize your voice the first time you heard yourself recorded?”

      She blinked. “I…” Flashed back to that day, two children playing with an off-limits answering machine, her brother leading the way into trouble even then. The laughter at how they sounded, their insistence—that really is you!

      She didn’t get a chance to voice her answer; he turned away from her again, looking back out over the vista. It truly didn’t matter—they both knew her answer. And so the question became…did he not know why his trace was tangled with the surges? Or had he simply not realized it would be detectible?

      Voices muttered up from below as the next wave of tourists grew closer, the Snowbowl management and emergency personnel in discussion with the lift operator. “They’ll be looking for us,” Ryan said, but it came as an afterthought, an aside to whatever else ran through his mind.

      Lyn said, “If the Core siphons the energy of this place…if they store it in their amulets, if they use it against us…if they use it against the rest of the world—”

      He didn’t turn on her, but she got the impression it was only through strength of will. “Then this ancient place will change forever,” he said, his voice low. “Irrevocably. The people who revere it, who draw their spiritual strength from it…those nations would never recover. There’s no telling what would happen to the delicate ecosystem up here.”

      “And you?” she said, words that slipped out before she could think better of them. She tightened his jacket around her, realized suddenly that it was his, and pretended that it didn’t matter. “If you siphon energy?”

      He laughed—a short, bitter sound. “They think I’m that good, do they?” He gestured out over the slopes—hard red-brown cinders cropping up in dramatic patches between the pines, while above them the trees stunted down and gave way to lichens and scrub. “Look at it! Can’t you feel it, lurking here, as big as the world? What would I do with it all?”

      She shrugged, determined to be unaffected by his passion for this area. “Personal glory? A little something to make up for what you’ve lost?”

      No laughter this time, but he grinned, and turned so the gusts lifted the hair from his forehead as he looked back at her. “Don’t you think it’s all just a little bit bigger than I am?”

      “Well,” she said, taken aback at both the grin and the matter-of-fact nature of the response, “I do. But people who break rules usually think they’re the exception.”

      He nodded. “Okay,” he said, and turned to her, leaning his hips against the top pipe rail with an insouciance she could not have mustered, not with the fatal nature of the drop behind him. He nodded again, catching her eyes. The sharp shadows thrown by his own features turned his dusky hazel gaze to something darker. “Okay,” he repeated. “That’s good. You think like that.”

      She must have registered her surprise. He grinned again. “Thinking like that will find the truth. That’s fine by me. That’s not the same as already having made up your mind, and coming here with some old grudge already in hand.”

      Lyn’s jaw dropped; she groped for words. Her temper filled the void. “How dare you even suggest—”

      He cut her off with a snort of a laugh. “What have I got to lose?”

      And that stopped her temper cold, floundering; she was unable to do anything but search his eyes. From below came filtered conversation—clear to any Sentinel, if not the average person. The lift wrangler said, “They’ve got to come down soon.”

      “We should go,” Ryan said, dropping her gaze. He pushed away from the railing and then quite suddenly froze, and the hint of natural burnished color in his face paled away. His step faltered to the point that she reached for him—and that’s when she felt it herself, another angry aftershock of power, whispering through her veins and briefly clouding her head. Only the merest of grumbles, but here, so close to the source…

      An instant of panic skittered down her spine, fluttered in her chest. So much power, and we’re sitting right on top of it…

      What if she hadn’t even thought of the worst of the possibilities? What if brevis regional had missed it, too? Because…what if whoever had disturbed the mountain hadn’t done it right?

      If the area had been unbalanced, destabilized…it could be on the verge of an eruption such as the world had never seen. Not magma, but pure power…

      Take a breath. She did just that. Get a grip. Not quite as easily done. She took another breath, deeper…slower. She gathered her own energy, what little grasp she had of it. She was no Joe Ryan, to perceive and impose himself on the world’s deepest powers, but she could damn well control her own. She pulled it into herself, found it tainted with her fears, and hunted the inner note that had always cleared away such things…a silent hum. It grounded her…centered her.

      And when she opened her eyes, she found him there—right there—his hand reaching for the side of her face, his expression equal parts intensity and wonder. “How…?” he said. And, “I thought you were a tracker…”

      “I am,” she said, the calm lingering; she didn’t so much as blink to find him so close, though she couldn’t help but lift her chin slightly.

      He shook his head. “Whatever. Damned fine job of…” He shook his head again. “It wasn’t shielding, or even just centering. Nicely done.”

      She shrugged. “Are you all right? You looked—”

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