“Lexie,” he said, using the name he’d used only when they’d been alone together, wrapped up in each other. “I—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, pressing a finger to his lips. “It’s only a dream.”
He wasn’t sure he believed that, but knew damn sure he didn’t care anymore. He eased back to strip off his shirt, and when he did she dropped down from her perch to shimmy out of her pants. Then, with a crook of her finger, she brushed past him, naked, and headed for the edge of the platform, where the stone gave way to liquid darkness. Without a word or a moment’s hesitation, she lowered herself into the water, which rose to her waist, then her shoulders.
Swimming, treading water with lazy strokes, she turned and looked at him, one eyebrow raised in challenge. “Well?”
Done with hesitating and justifying, he hastily stripped off the rest of his clothes and dove in, slicing cleanly between the pale teeth of stone that broke the surface. The water was warmer than he’d expected, cool but not cold, and the thrill of it tightened his skin and ramped his excitement. There was a quiver of power, too, the resonance of sacrificial offerings that had been thrown in the pool in ages past.
The water was deep enough that he had to tread, kicking gently as he stroked toward the place where Alexis had come to rest. She was settled between two tall stalagmites that were joined at the base and split near the waterline, forming a pocket for her to sit in, with the spires branching away above, giving her freedom to move, yet an anchor to brace herself against if she desired.
Desire. It was all he felt, all he could process as he moved toward her. Her arms were linked around the stone pillars, her legs eased slightly apart in the natural stone pocket. Water licked at her navel; her wet hair clung to her shoulders and full breasts. Amber torchlight glittered on droplets of water as they ran from her hair and tracked down her breasts and belly and ran along the graceful curves of her arms.
She was an astonishingly beautiful gut-punch that took Nate’s breath away. And in that instant, as he closed with her and touched his lips to hers, he thought he understood the lure of thinking that goddesses were real.
If he’d believed in such things, he would’ve sworn he was looking at a goddess right now.
Alexis wasn’t a weeper, but a single tear gathered and broke free, sliding down her cheek as he touched his lips to hers for the first time in so long. The kiss was sweet and soft, a moment of worship from a man who didn’t believe in either sweetness or the gods. She leaned into him, wrapped herself around him, holding herself firmly in the moment because thoughts of the past and the future were equally heartrending. This wasn’t real; she knew it deep down inside, with both the beings that were her and not-her. This was a dream, a vision. Their bodies were back at Skywatch; they weren’t really making love; nothing was really going to change. But in that instant, in that shiny, glittering instant, she could pretend, if only for a few minutes or an hour, that the hawk was hers as he’d been before.
Before? thought a small, panicked part of her, knowing the impulse went much farther back than just the previous summer. More like a previous lifetime, and that was getting weird even for Alexis.
Then he changed the angle of the kiss, took it deeper, and the past, present, and future contracted to a single point, a limitless now that picked her up and swept her away. Murmuring agreement, encouragement, she opened to him and let herself fall into the familiar madness, the feelings she’d tried to let go of, but had really only set aside. Being with him once again unlocked those feelings, setting them free to flood her with an ache that was edged with the sharp anger of rejection.
You ditched me, she said with her next kiss. You didn’t want me enough to work out whatever got stuck in your head. She didn’t know what had happened, or how she could’ve changed the outcome.
And really, it didn’t matter now, because now wasn’t real. Still, she wanted to punish him for the pain, wanted to dig into him for hiding the truth, for hiding himself. But the other woman inside her, the one who’d never been clumsy, never been embarrassed, that woman turned the punishment into pleasure, skimming her hands and lips over his body, using the sensitive spots Alexis had found and taking them further, dancing her fingernails on his skin and testing them with her teeth.
Heat spiraled higher, flared hotter, as she and Nate strained together, locked in a combative sort of lovemaking. The air warmed around them and the water heated—or maybe that was their bodies, and the heat they made together as they brought each other to the place where joining became as necessary as breathing.
He entered her, sliding into her on a wash of wetness and a clench of pleasure. His hollow groan echoed deep in his chest, counterpointing her soft cry. Then they were moving together and apart, one against the other, push and pull, push and pull. Alexis braced herself against the rocky spires, feeling the slide of stone without, the slide of his hard flesh within, and around it all the soft wetness of the water and moist air, and the good press of his arms around her as they clung and shuddered.
Then he gripped her hips in his big hands, holding her in place as he began to piston, setting a pace of ruthless masculine pleasure.
“Gods,” Alexis whispered, going numb to everything but the sensations that rolled through her.
She’d forgotten this, somehow forgotten about the moment when the sex took him over, when he went beyond the civilized veneer to a feral, animal place beyond, where he existed only for his pleasure—
and hers.
He drove into her, held her, pinned her, stripping away her defenses and contracting her universe until the only things that existed were the two of them, the points at which their bodies connected, and the thundering pace of his sex.
He held her, loved her, took her over. The orgasm slapped at her, unexpected in its ferocity, which gave her no option, bowing her back and wringing a cry from deep in her throat. Her inner muscles clamped around him, feeling stronger than before, needier. She pumped him, clenched around him, and he cut loose with a roar. The pulse of his flesh within her heightened her response, prolonging the orgasm, drawing it out until she was nothing more than a bundle of neurons coalesced together, throbbing in pleasure. She hung on to the only solid objects nearby, lest she be swept away.
Then the waves passed, fading to an echo, then a fearsome memory.
Alexis clung to him with her face turned from his, her cheek pressed into his shoulder. She didn’t dare pull away and look at him, didn’t want to see how much the sex had—or hadn’t—meant to him.
And as much as she tried to tell herself that none of it was real, it’d sure as hell felt real, and the tug at her heart was real.
“Lexie,” he said, his voice cracking on the endearment. “I—” The world lurched, interrupting. The water started to swirl, and a hard, hot wind whipped through the stone chamber, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Alexis heard him shout, and screamed as they were torn apart and sucked down, as everything went to flame and then gray-green, spinning and moving and howling as though they’d insulted the gods themselves. Her heart pounded in her chest, panic slicing through her as she grabbed for something, anything she could hold on to, and found nothing but air. Wind screamed around her, howling, sounding almost like words.
All of a sudden there were words, a multitonal voice shouting, “The Volatile must be found!” Then, out of nowhere, a strong hand gripped Alexis’s wrist and yanked.
And she was back at Skywatch.
Her consciousness dropped into her body with a jarring thud. She went limp and slid sideways, saved only when Nate jammed his hip against her shoulder and shoved her back into her chair. He was still hanging on to her wrist. Somehow he’d gotten out and dragged her with him.
“Oh, gods.” Alexis sagged against him, clung to him, her fingers digging into the heavy muscles of his forearm, over the stark black of his marks. “Oh, holy hell.” She looked up at him. “What did you
—” She broke off, seei
ng in his eyes all of his usual intensity, along with the irritation she alone seemed to bring out. But that was it. She saw nothing of what they’d just done together.
He detached himself from her and stepped away. “What did I . . . what?” he prompted.
Izzy shouldered him aside and started fussing, checking Alexis’s color, her pulse, making Alexis acutely aware that they weren’t alone, that the other Nightkeepers and their winikin were still there in the great room, gathered around her and Nate and the suitcase containing the statuette of Ixchel. There was no temple, no torchlight. No lovemaking.
She swallowed hard. “What did you see?” Which wasn’t even close to what she’d been about to say before. “You were in there with me, right? You were there the whole time?”
He frowned. “What whole time?” He looked at Strike. “It was only a few seconds, right?”
The king nodded, but said, “Doesn’t mean she didn’t experience something that seemed longer, though. Time acts funny in the barrier.” He cut his eyes to Alexis. “That was where you wound up, right? In the barrier?”
Her defenses snapped up, born of the insecurities that had ruled too much of her life, and she nodded quickly. “Right. The barrier.”
Strike glanced at Nate, who’d jammed his hands in his pockets and was staring over her head, as though determined to distance himself from the convo. “You, too?”
“Maybe for a few seconds,” Nate allowed. “Then I got kicked back here, and she followed. Nothing complicated.”
Only it was very, very complicated, Alexis thought, staring down at the statuette, sure now that the woman’s face was buried in her hands because she was weeping with heartache . . . and the gut-
punching frustration of dealing with magic and men. The artifact had taken her to the barrier, yes, but it’d also taken her someplace else, someplace where she’d met and made love to a man who’d looked and acted like Nate, had made love like Nate, yet somehow wasn’t him.
Her hair was dry, and she was wearing the jeans and loose shirt she’d put on before the meeting, not combat gear or wet skin. Yet her body echoed with the effects of having made love. More important, it echoed with having made love with him. As much as she’d wanted to hate him in the aftermath of their belly flop of a relationship, she’d been unable to forget that with him sex felt different, echoed different.
Yet it’d either really, truly been a dream that belonged only to her . . . or for some reason he’d blocked it from his conscious mind. He wouldn’t lie about something that important. Hell, she was pretty sure he didn’t lie about anything; he was scrupulously honest, even when she hated hearing what he had to say.
Which explained absolutely nothing.
“What did you see?” Strike pressed her. “Did you speak with a nahwal?”
“No,” Alexis said automatically. Then she paused, remembering the multitonal voice that had shouted at the end. “At least, I don’t think I did.”
The nahwals were sexless, desiccated entities that existed only within the barrier. They embodied the collective wisdom of each bloodline, and could choose to share that wisdom or not, depending on the circumstances. They never lied, but Jade’s research suggested they sometimes gave only partial answers, and that they seemed to have an agenda that even the earlier generations of Nightkeepers hadn’t understood. One thing was for sure: They spoke with two or more voices combined in harmonic descant.
“You don’t seem certain,” Nate said, turning back to look at her intently. “What did you see?”
“It wasn’t what I saw,” she evaded, “but what I heard. Just as I was coming back here, a voice said something about finding something volatile.” She turned to Jade, who as usual stood at the edge of the group. “Was Ixchel an air goddess?”
The archivist shook her head. “She was—or, rather, is—the goddess of rainbows, fertility, and weaving.” She paused, looking troubled. “I’m sure I’ve seen the term volatile recently, though, and not in a good way. Let me check into it.”
Alexis looked down at the statuette, but didn’t touch it. “You think that’s what’s written in the starscript? Something about this volatile? Maybe we need whatever it is to hold back Camazotz.”
Strike hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’ll call Anna and see if she can come out a few days early, to translate.”
The king’s sister, a Mayan studies expert at UT Austin, was staying as far away from the Nightkeepers as possible, coming to Skywatch only during the cardinal days and major ceremonies, and then only because she’d promised to do so in exchange for Red-Boar saving the life of her grad student. Anna made no secret that she wanted nothing to do with the culture and magic she’d been born to, nothing to do with her own destiny.
Sometimes, Alexis thought on a sinking sense of disappointment, the gods get it wrong. Which she knew was blasphemy and illogical. But at the same time, how did it make sense to pair up a mismatch like her and Nate, or force someone like Anna to be something she didn’t want to be?
CHAPTER FOUR
“A volatile?” Anna frowned at her brother’s question, then took a quick look through the cracked-open doorway of her office, making sure she was alone. She didn’t want anyone at the university to hear her talking about Mayan myths and demons as though they were real, even if they were. Some divisions of the art history department might encourage funkiness, but not hers. Mayan epigraphy—the study and translation of the ancient glyphs and the legends they told—was serious science. Which, for better or worse, made her the logical person for her brother to call. Damn it. “Well,” she continued, hoping info was all he wanted for a change, “the volatiles are the thirteen symbols connected with the hours of the day and the thirteen levels of the sky. But they’re just symbols, not things or spells. I don’t see how they’d help if you’re looking to block the death bats.”
“The what?”
Anna winced at the knowledge gap. “Camazotz is the ruler of the death bats, which are linked, as you might suspect, with death and sacrifice. You need a better researcher. Seriously. She’s missing basic stuff your average Google search is going to pull up.”
“She’s a therapist.” There was a bite in Strike’s tone now. “And she’s practically killing herself trying to catalog the archive, never mind looking up the things we need her to.” He didn’t add, And we have a better researcher . . . or we would if you’d get your ass back here where you belong , but they both knew that was what he was thinking.
Anna, though, was standing firm. She had a husband and a life in the real world, and didn’t intend to buy back into the universe that’d killed their parents, into the mythology that would eventually kill them all. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the end-time. It was that she didn’t believe a dozen or so half-trained magi were going to make a damned bit of difference determining whether it came or not, or that she could help save the world. Better that she live the next four years the best she could, and pray to the gods for forgiveness when the end came.
Still, though, she owed Strike something. Family mattered, regardless of how dysfunctional. “I’ll send Jade some Web links that should help her get up to speed on Camazotz.”
“Not good enough. I need you to come out early and read the starscript for us. I need to know what’s on the statuette ASAP, in case it’s something we can use in the eclipse ceremony,” Strike persisted, once again trying to draw Anna back to the world they’d both been born into. She wanted to tell him no, to tell him to call someone else. But like it or not—and she didn’t like it one bit—she was the only translator the Nightkeepers could trust.
She touched the yellow, skull-shaped quartz effigy that she wore beneath her shirt even though her seer’s powers hadn’t so much as twitched since the autumnal equinox. “Fine. I’ll move my flight up and try to leave early tomorrow.” She hated the thought of being at Skywatch longer than absolutely necessary, but she’d already been planning on being there for the penumbral lunar eclipse, which was a tim
e of great barrier power that the Nightkeepers would try to use for one or more of the bigger spells. A couple of extra days wouldn’t kill her.
Strike sighed, the sound coming from deep within his chest. “Thank you.” He paused, then said in a different, more tentative tone, “So, are you okay?”
They hadn’t talked much since the equinox. She’d flown home immediately after their return from the intersection. She hadn’t even stayed for Red-Boar’s funeral, hadn’t been able to. Not after he’d bled out in her arms and died with his eyes locked onto hers. The experience had changed her, though, made her more aware of what mattered. She’d gone straight from the airport to her husband’s on-
campus office in the economics building, shut the door at her back, and had the conversation they’d both been avoiding for months, i.e., the one that started with an accusation and ended with an ultimatum: Ditch the other woman, whoever the hell she is.
It hadn’t been as easy as that, of course, because Anna had earned her fair share of the blame for the shambles their marriage had become. She’d wanted a baby, because that was what marriage and family was about. Then, when months of not using birth control had stretched to years with no baby and even their first expensive try at in vitro had failed, she’d gotten wrapped up in the failure. As many times as she’d said she didn’t blame him, she knew he didn’t believe her, knew she hadn’t given him reason to believe. So they’d drifted, her to her work, him to his own pursuits. At first it’d been golf and hanging out at the faculty club. After a while she’d realized those were excuses, that he was actually having an affair. And the worst part was she’d been willing to go on that way, telling herself that it was okay their relationship had changed.
Her parents had died when she was fourteen, and her fledgling powers, those of an itza’at seer, had forced her to live through the experience with them. She’d relived it over and over in her dreams for years thereafter, until the day she’d left Strike and Jox, moving away to college at the age of twenty, after sticking it out for as long as she’d been able. She’d known even then that she was gone for good.
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