"Danger!" the Spirit Panther roared in a sleeping Sentinel's ear. "Protect the Guide!"

Jim Ellison sat bolt upright in his bed - the bed his beloved should have been sharing but wasn't because a certain badly repressed and almost over-the-hill detective was still too damn scared to confess his true feelings - all senses on full alert. Anxiously he scanned the loft for any sign of an intruder. Nothing. As for Blair...

Blair lay bathed in moonlight, a perfect elfin sprite awaiting his one true love. Jim. Each night the Sentinel came to him, kissed him, caressed and fondled and vowed his undying love. Tonight his dream Jim was bold, teasing and licking him all over like some great jungle cat. Blair, whose Guardian Spirit was the great silver wolf, felt decidedly feline himself. He purred and arched his body with pleasure when the man he loved above all else made sweet, tender love to him. "More," he moaned. "...so good," as those oh-so-sensitive fingers slipped inside his shorts to stroke his aching erection. "Yes... Jim..."

Naomi drew back as if stung. She was certain now where her beautiful boy's heart had been given. To him. That... that pig, Ellison. Well, she was not going to sit idly by and let that happen, let some stranger take away her Blair. For he was hers, make no mistake about it. Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. In her womb had he been made, with her he would dwell as in his childhood. Because she loved him. Sure, she'd made mistakes - she was only human, wasn't she - but he would, he must forgive. And, in time, forget. Forget the Sentinel - gods damn him anyway! - and turn to her. His mother, not some freakish interloper.

Blair smiled and opened his summer sky eyes, hoping against hope that this would be real, this night he would actually gaze upon that precious face. Yes! Someone was in the room, he hadn't been imagining those skilful, sensual hands upon his body after all. "Jim? Dearest?" he called softly.

Then he saw her and his world, which had but recently started to right itself again after the infamous dissertation fiasco, came crashing down in flames about him...

"No, no, oh god no!"

Blair moaned, voice full of hurt and...betrayal? The Sentinel's heart lurched in his chest. No doubt another nightmare. Lately there had been plenty of those. And it hadn't helped matters any that only this morning the triple-homicide suspect they were in pursuit of had run them off the road, totally demolishing the truck. They'd escaped with just a few bruises, still Jim could not help but shudder as he recalled the incident and how his carelessness once again nearly cost him his greatest, indeed his only treasure.

But if bad dreams alone were the cause of Blair's distress, why the visit from the Panther? And why was the black ghost cat so totally and utterly pissed off? Then he caught it... the scent of the intruder below. Naomi. Damn the woman anyway, didn't she have enough undamaged brain cells left to realize that waltzing uninvited into someone else's home at such an ungodly hour in the morning was not a good idea? Especially when said someone was a cop and an ex-Army Ranger to boot? His jaw tightened. Apparently not.

"Protect the Guide!" The Panther screamed his fury now. Ellison leapt out of bed, ran down the stairs and all but kicked those damn doors down in his haste to reach his imperiled love.

And for what must have been the first time in his adult life that he wasn't in the grip of a zone-out, the Sentinel froze dead in his tracks...

A practically naked Blair now huddled in one corner of the small, dimly-lit room. Fear and revulsion oozed from his every pore. This wasn't happening, couldn't be happening, he thought. Not Naomi, not... he swallowed hard, trying to force down the bile rising in his painfully constricted throat... his mother forcing herself upon him.

It had to be a nightmare, some darkly warped hallucination dredged up from the depths of a guilty conscience - and he was guilty. Guilty of loving, of desiring where that desire should not, could not be. Jim Ellison, whom he secretly loved and longed for all this time, was strictly off-limits. Because Jim didn't love him or want him that way. Hence the incest dream.

Then those graceful hands, her hands, were on him again, placating, soothing - or trying to - and he felt her hot, sweet breath as she kissed him, pleaded with him to love her back and he knew beyond all shadow of doubt that this was reality, harsh and all too sickening reality.

"..nonono..." He chanted in frenzy now, a pagan spell to ward off demons but this was no mythical evil spirit, this was his mother, his own flesh and blood for crying out loud and she had, she was...

Dear god in heaven, she was molesting him!

After what felt like an eternity Jim's hand found the light switch.

It was all too terribly plain what he had just walked in on, still he could not quite bring himself to believe it. But if he doubted his eyes the evidence of his other senses was overwhelming. He could smell his Guide's sheer terror, the disgust and loathing that roiled off that beautiful, sweat-slick body. And there was no mistaking those pheromones. They were coming from her, from Naomi Sandburg. She was naked and definitely aroused, ready to take whatever she wanted.

Ready, in her selfishness, her twisted fantasy of love, to rape her own son.

Ellison snarled. Like hell the sick bitch would! Blair was his to love, his to cherish and protect, now and forever. With all the grace of his animal spirit guide, he began to stalk his prey...

She was going to die and she knew it; there was no mercy at all in those cold blue eyes. They were a killer's eyes, a predator's eyes, eyes of the Panther protecting its mate. In them she saw her destiny, saw her bloody, mangled corpse, throat torn out upon the earth. Her own eyes cast frantically about but there was no sanctuary, no escape route in sight. She steeled herself and waited.

Blair whimpered softly and the walking death once known as Ranger James Ellison turned suddenly away. Vengeance, the Sentinel decided, could wait. His Guide, his love, had need of him now. He hurled the interloper from him and gathered Blair up in his arms. At first the little one stiffened fearfully, but on recognizing his Blessed Protector clung tightly to him. Cuddled into that magnificent manly chest the Guide let loose his pain in a great flood of scalding tears which Jim - whom to judge by the way he was holding Blair and crooning all those gentle reassurances most certainly was not off-limits - wiped lovingly away.

Naomi Sandburg fled the loft. The enemy had won, but only for the moment. It was just a matter of time before her lovely little boy would again suckle at her breast. She had a plan, a fail-safe as it were, in the event Blair proved to be recalcitrant.

Among her legion of devoted ex-lovers was one Enrico Sanchez. "Ricky" was now a very wealthy individual, thanks to certain groups who, for one reason or another, felt they had grievances against the duly elected government. Grievances that could only be redressed through the superior firepower that Sanchez was more than willing - for a very reasonable fee of course - to provide.

Not only did he deal in illegal arms but he had various contacts in the underworld, in the militias, even in the CIA. And he knew the one thing Naomi didn't. The thing that, pacifist though she still firmly held herself to be, she had such urgent need of now.

He knew where to find the only professional hitman capable of taking down a Sentinel.