Jessica Andersen - Final Prophecy 01 - Nightkeepers (2008)

by Jessica Andersen - Final Prophecy 01

  ‘‘You’re Nightkeepers.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  Her legs went weak, and she whispered, ‘‘How?’’ Alexis pushed open the bathroom door. ‘‘Come on. I really don’t think I’m the person who should be telling you this.’’

  ‘‘Wait.’’ Anna grabbed her arm. ‘‘How many are there?’’

  Sympathy crept into the other woman’s eyes. ‘‘Counting the toddlers and the convict? You make it lucky thirteen.’’

  And the equinox was nine days away.

  PART IV

  AUTUMNAL EQUINOX

  A day of equally balanced night and day, containing the moment when the center of the Sun is directly over the Earth’s equator. The first day of fall.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  September 13

  Lucius woke up with a hangover so big, there wasn’t a word sufficient to describe it. He rolled over in his bed and groaned, then tried to sit partway up. When that sent a lightning bolt through his skull, he flopped back down. ‘‘Ohhhh, crap. What the— Oh, crap.’’

  There was a reason—beyond the whole alcoholic-father -codependent-mother thing—that he rarely drank. He was pretty sure he was allergic. Which begged the question: What the hell had he been thinking? Had he been celebrating something good? Drowning something bad?

  Fuck, even thinking hurt. Okay, no more thinking.

  Food, he realized when his stomach grumbled. He needed food. Which didn’t make much sense if he was hungover, but

  figuring that out would’ve required thinking, so he just rolled with it.

  ‘‘Okay,’’ he mumbled between dry, cracked lips. ‘‘Step one. Get vertical.’’ When that more or less worked, he followed up with steps two—cross bedroom—and three—open door. He didn’t need to bother with step four—get dressed—because he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. They were streaked with rusty brown, like he’d gone mud wrestling or something, and there was a funky smell coming from somewhere, but his roomies were both off on field assignments, so he figured he could eat first, then clean himself up.

  Then he shuffled into the kitchen and stopped dead. There were more of the rust stains splashed everywhere, like something out of CSI.

  ‘‘Ohhh.’’ He looked down at his clothes as the stains started making way more sense. Then a fragment of memory broke through and he looked at his right hand, where a gaping cut was scabbed over with a big, nasty clot. ‘‘Fuck me.’’

  It didn’t start hurting until he looked at it. Then it hurt like the dickens.

  What the hell had gone down last night? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, just stood there staring from his hand to the kitchen and back, before the downstairs buzzer sounded, jolting him.

  ‘‘I’m not here,’’ he said, and headed in the opposite direction for a first-aid kit.

  The buzzer sounded again—three short, angry bursts. ‘‘Still not here.’’ He turned on the faucet and put his hand under the water. He hissed with pain as old blood swirled in the sink and ran down the drain, and when he used paper towels to blot the wound dry, they came away pinkish brown at first, then red.

  At least whoever it was got the message and stopped buzzing, he thought, debating between going for stitches and using one of those icky wound patches that bubbled up and looked seriously gross after a few days, but worked really well.

  There was a knock at the apartment door.

  Lucius’s breath whistled between his teeth and his head cleared some on a burst of adrenaline. Ignore it, he told himself.

  They’ll go away.

  ‘‘Hunt?’’ a pissed-off male voice shouted full-volume. ‘‘I know you’re in there.’’

  What had he done last night?

  ‘‘I’m not in here,’’ he said under his breath. ‘‘Go away.’’

  But there was another knock. Then the voice again, quieter this time, and sounding vaguely familiar. ‘‘Hunt, please. I need to talk to her.’’

  Her? Lucius took a quick look around, in case he’d missed there being someone else in the apartment, especially of the female variety. When a really, really bad thought occurred, he peeked in the other bedrooms, and let out a breath when he didn’t see anything—or anyone— out of place.

  There wasn’t another knock, but he could sense the other man leaning against the door. He heard a broken sigh and a whispered name. Anna.

  Oh, shit, Lucius thought when recognition jolted. It was the Dick. And he was looking for his wife. In a few seconds he was across the room and yanking open the door, his heart hammering far faster than it should’ve been. ‘‘Did something happen?’’

  First he saw the Dick, followed by the Dick’s fist headed toward his face.

  Then he saw stars.

  The next thing he saw was the cops.

  He watched in a numb blur as they confiscated the bloodstained stuff he’d slept in, photographed the shit out of the apartment, and took a couple of his steak knives into evidence, along with the dime bag they’d found in the fridge and a gun he hadn’t even known his freak-show roommate owned.

  The bad news—like he needed any more of it—was that the Dick knew most of the cops who covered the campus and surrounding area, so Lucius wasn’t getting too many favors. The good news was that the one cop Lucius did know happened to be the one in charge of detention and it was a slow day, so he got a cell to himself. Small favors and all that.

  He skipped his phone call. There was no way he was calling his parents until he knew the exact situation. And the person he normally would’ve called to bail him out— Anna—was apparently in the wind. His cautious optimism that she’d left her husband warred with worry. Where the hell was she?

  He supposed he could call Neenie, but what was she going to do? In a few hours or whatever, everything should get straightened out. All the blood in the kitchen was his—he was sure of that much, anyway. Even better, when the cops had asked the Dick why he’d been convinced his wife would be at Lucius’s apartment, he’d gone red-faced and refused to answer.

  Sure enough, a couple of hours after he’d been locked up, a skinny guy in jeans, a polo shirt, and sandals stopped outside Lucius’s cell. ‘‘Mr. Hunt?’’

  ‘‘You’re the public defender?’’ Lucius asked, looking him up and down and back again. ‘‘For real?’’

  ‘‘You want to get out of here, or would you rather wait for somebody in a suit?’’

  Lucius rose from the cot. ‘‘Nothing wrong with Tevas. I take it they figured out all the blood is mine?’’

  The guy gave him a look. ‘‘Please. Evidence only gets processed that quickly on TV. No, Professor Catori’s wife called him.

  She’s fine.’’

  ‘‘Thank God.’’ Lucius exhaled far too much relief, earning himself a second look. ‘‘That she’s back, I mean. She’s my thesis adviser, and I’m supposed to defend soon, and—’’ And I’m babbling. I’ll shut up now.

  ‘‘I said she called,’’ the PD said, leading him out to a desk and watching while he signed off on his personal effects; such as they were. ‘‘I didn’t say she was back.’’

  Lucius held out until they got out onto the sidewalk before he said, ‘‘Where is she?’’

  He didn’t give a shit whether the PD thought the Dick was right about them having an affair. Something wasn’t right. Anna wouldn’t just up and disappear. She just wouldn’t.

  ‘‘New Mexico. Something about needing some time away, staying with a friend, et cetera, et cetera.’’ The PD handed Lucius another paper to sign, then stepped back. ‘‘You’re good. Charges dropped, very sorry, blah, blah.’’

  He turned and walked away, leaving Lucius with the distinct impression that the PD, too, was a friend—or more likely a former student—of the Dick’s. Anna and her hubby were both professors, yet the Dick had been ‘‘Professor Catori’’ and Anna had been ‘‘she.’’

  ‘‘Don’t overanalyze it,’’ he told himself aloud. ‘‘Just be glad you’re out. Go home, clean up,
and get back to work.’’ Maybe with an aspirin or five added to the mix.

  Heading for the bus stop, he reminded himself that Anna was an adult—a married adult—and she didn’t owe him any explanations or schedule updates. But he couldn’t shake the sense that something monumental must’ve happened to send her to New Mex when she’d never mentioned the trip before. Maybe something connected to the Dick’s utter conviction that he’d find his wife at Lucius’s apartment. Damned if he knew what it might be.

  The bus arrived, and he climbed aboard. As he lifted his hand to grab an overhead anchor, he caught a glimpse of the slice on his palm and frowned. ‘‘Weird.’’

  The cut was almost completely healed.

  Leah woke slowly, her consciousness dragging itself out of a warm cocoon of sleep back to reality, where it way didn’t want to be. Her head felt hollow and empty, and her heart hurt with grief, with guilt. For the first few seconds she couldn’t remember why.

  Then it all came rushing back; she remembered the nahwal’s dire predictions, remembered that Vince and Zipacna were one and the same . . . and she remembered what the ajaw-makol had said about her being the gods’ chosen.

  Making a small sound of pain, she rolled onto her side and curled up, pressing her hands to her face in a pointless effort to shut it all out.

  But the mattress dipped beside her and gentle hands touched her, rolling her over. Strong arms drew her against a warm, solid chest. ‘‘Come here,’’ Strike said, his voice rumbling beneath the softness of his T-shirt. ‘‘Hold on to me. You’re not alone, Blondie. You’re not going through this alone.’’

  Shock rattled her, and she opened her eyes to find herself nestled in the crook of his arm, lying on the mattress she’d schlepped out to the solarium so she could sleep beneath the stars.

  He was fully clothed and resting on top of the comforter while she’d slept beneath in a T-shirt and underwear, as though he’d kept watch over her, not wanting her to wake up scared. His eyes were very blue, his face haggard with emotion and exhaustion as he pressed her head back to his shoulder. ‘‘Just one more minute. Then we’ll talk.’’

  She resisted for a heartbeat, then gave in and clung, because the fact that they were alone together—in her bed, no less—meant she hadn’t imagined any of it, that it’d all really happened.

  Stifling a sob, she pressed against him full-length and looped an arm around his waist, holding him close, anchoring herself.

  Heat rose, and she was tempted to kiss him, tempted to lose herself in the madness. But that would’ve been an evasion, and she knew it. So she shifted to look at the scar she’d gotten as a child, high on her inner right wrist. He’d asked about it twice before, and each time she’d avoided the question. Now she had to wonder—if she’d told him from the very beginning, would anything have happened differently?

  ‘‘We were on vacation,’’ she began. ‘‘In Mexico. The Yucatán.’’

  The time-share had been billed as a ‘‘rain forest retreat on the beautiful Yucatán peninsula only minutes away from the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá.’’ The house itself had been okay, but it had been the small, unrestored stone ruins tucked into the rain forest nearby that’d grabbed Leah’s attention. She’d been eight years old, Matty six, and she’d had no business sneaking out that night, even less business making her younger brother go with her. But even knowing she’d catch hell if her parents found out, she’d snagged a flashlight and headed out into the warm, humid night, far too brave for her own good, but not brave enough to go alone.

  ‘‘Don’t be a baby,’’ she’d said to Matty with all the lofty scorn of a two-year age gap. ‘‘I dare you.’’ And he’d gone along

  with her, not because of the dare, but because even back then he’d been too willing to follow the leader.

  ‘‘We went inside,’’ she said, remembering the damp chill of the stones, even though so much time had passed. ‘‘It wasn’t big, just a stone rectangle the size of a school bus or something. We’d checked it out that afternoon, the whole family, so I knew there wasn’t anything scary. Except when we got inside, there was a door that hadn’t been there before.’’ She paused.

  ‘‘School had just gotten out when we left. I don’t remember the date, but it could’ve been the summer solstice.’’

  Strike nodded, and didn’t seem all that surprised. Which she supposed made sense. The phrase ‘‘twenty-four years ago at the summer solstice’’ was burned into the Nightkeepers’ collective consciousness as the night their lives had changed irrevocably.

  Hers too, apparently. And her brother’s.

  ‘‘Go on.’’

  ‘‘The door led to a long tunnel that sloped down. Matty didn’t want to go in. I didn’t either, really, but there was something calling me. Like a child’s voice, only in my head, telling me it was okay, that I needed to go in there. So I did, and I made Matty come with me.’’ He’d been crying, she remembered. And she’d dragged him along anyway.

  She continued, ‘‘I don’t know how far down we were, but there was this explosion, first orange, then yellow. I remember screaming and turning to run, but something hit me on the back of the head. I fell and lost hold of Matty, and then . . .’’ She trailed off. ‘‘My parents found us the next morning outside the little ruin, unconscious, and rushed us to the nearest hospital.

  When I woke up, my mother was crying. She stopped when Matty woke up, too. We both had burns on our arms, and . . .

  that was it.’’ She stared at the scar. ‘‘We went home the next day, and I spent the entire summer grounded.’’

  ‘‘Did you and he ever talk about what happened?’’ Strike asked, his words rumbling beneath her cheek.

  ‘‘Not then. But we got into a fight a few months before he died, when I found out how much time he was spending with the 2012ers. He said there was something about Zipacna that called to him, that I ought to understand what he was going through.’’ She broke off, swallowing hard. ‘‘He was so angry . . .’’ She closed her eyes, making a connection she hadn’t seen before because she hadn’t wanted to look too closely. ‘‘He’d always been a little borderline.’’

  It was starting to make an awful sort of sense. The temple must’ve been some ancient place of power, maybe even one of the hidden entrances to the underground river system beneath Chichén Itzá. She’d wandered in there—or been called?—at the same time that Strike’s father and the other Nightkeepers were fighting to seal the intersection. After the Nightkeepers died the barrier started to close off, and Kulkulkan must’ve reached out to the two nearest—and possibly, because of their ages, most open-minded—humans: her and Matty. The dual god had touched them somehow, making them his. Matty had gotten the darker aspects, leading to his later troubles—or maybe he’d been predisposed to trouble, and that had attracted the darker aspects of the god; who knew? She’d gotten the lighter aspects, which included justice. Police work. It fit.

  Unfortunately, it also fit that the Banol Kax had somehow known about the two of them, or sensed their connection to the god and had sent Zipacna after them.

  Matty’s blood had held enough power to reactivate the barrier, Zipacna had said. Hers held enough to bring the Banol Kax through.

  All because she’d gone exploring as a child.

  That was why she hadn’t wanted to talk about the scar before, for fear that it would be something like this. Even before she’d learned of the Nightkeepers and the things going on beneath the surface of everyday life, she’d known Matty’s—and her—connection to the 2012ers and their Maya-based mythology wasn’t a coincidence.

  ‘‘He was crying,’’ she said softly, her voice cracking on guilt and despair. ‘‘He didn’t want to go into the tunnel, but I made him.’’ And in doing so, she’d started the chain of events that would eventually kill him.

  ‘‘You were eight.’’

  ‘‘I knew better.’’

  ‘‘You made a mistake.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ There wa
s silence between them for a moment. She could hear sounds coming from other parts of the mansion, and the steady thump of Strike’s heart beneath her cheek. ‘‘He kept a journal,’’ she said eventually, feeling as though the words were being pushed out of her by an outside force, a compulsion to purge all the ugly truths she’d been keeping. ‘‘I guess he started seeing a therapist after his fiancée left him. I didn’t even know. . . .’’ She trailed off, feeling the weight of guilt. ‘‘The Calendar Killer task force kept it as evidence, but Connie had them make me a copy.’’

  ‘‘Did he write about that night in Mexico?’’ Strike asked, seeming to know she needed the prodding or she’d lose her ability to keep going. ‘‘Did he say that was why he was attracted to Zipacna and the group?’’

  ‘‘Not in so many words, but now that I look back, yeah.’’ She nodded. ‘‘It was in there. He talked about how he felt like he and Zipacna were connected somehow, like they’d known each other in another life.’’ She glanced at Strike. ‘‘Past lives weren’t Matty’s style. He wasn’t real artsy or spiritual. He liked things—possessions, money, pleasures—and he liked to get them the easy way. At first I thought that was the attraction of Survivor2012— the nice mansion, the fat bankroll. When I read that diary, though, it freaked me out. It sounded like he was really buying into the religion, which didn’t make any sense.’’

  Now, though, maybe it was starting to. ‘‘Do you think—’’ She broke off. ‘‘Do you think he became who he was because of Kulkulkan’s darkness, or did he get the darkness because his personality already skewed that way?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’ He shifted so he could look into her eyes. ‘‘Which would be easier to hear?’’

  She exhaled. Nodded. ‘‘Yeah. Doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s just . . . I can’t help thinking that if I’d gotten the darkness I could’ve handled it better. I was older and stronger; I should’ve—’’

  ‘‘Hush.’’ He pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘‘What’s done is done. We go on from here.’’