“No biggie. Won’t be hard to come up with another.” Meaning that there were plenty of big contacts on the fish finder or some chatter on the informal network of whale-watching boats and local fishing vessels that traded info in an effort to keep the cash flowing as the winter season got under way.
“Thanks.” Taking Jack’s hand, Cara boosted herself up and made it to the rail, where she breathed deeply, lungs aching when she tried to inhale all the way.
She let Crazy Hat press a lukewarm bottle of water on her and fuss about dehydration and sunstroke, even though it was only in the high fifties and she’d eaten and drunk the same thing she did every day. The clucking reminded Cara of better days, back before her mom died.
“Cluck, cluck, cluck . . . dehydrated. Unless, of course, you’re pregnant.”
Those last two words brought Cara’s head whipping around so fast that a few white strands from her skunk stripe escaped from her ponytail and draped in her face. “No.” When the older woman recoiled, Cara exhaled. “Sorry. But no. No chance of that.”
She might believe in magic, but she didn’t believe in immaculate conception.
As Crazy Hat fussed, winding down, she chugged the rest of the water, which felt lumpy, like it was catching on something lodged in her throat. Beneath her, the Disco’s engines thrummed as they got back under way.
The others had dispersed, Bored Husband no doubt to the snack bar, most of the others to the railing, where they elbowed each other and scanned the horizon, competing to be the first to “thar she blows” it. Usually, Cara found the thrill of the hunt infectious; it was another of the reasons she had taken the job. That, and the surprising discovery that she, a born-and-raised Midwesterner, freaking loved being out at sea. Now, though, she couldn’t summon any enthusiasm. What was more, she suddenly felt out of place, like she didn’t belong there. Or, rather, like she needed to be somewhere else, right now.
Images flashed through her. Urges. She saw herself boarding a plane. Renting a car. Moving fast and traveling light, heading southwest, to where ancient pueblos overlooked wide-open canyons and the sea was a distant memory.
“Did you hurt your wrist, dearie?”
“No, I . . .” Cara trailed off as she glanced down and realized that she’d been rubbing her inner right forearm. Oh, shit. She should’ve caught on quicker, would have if she didn’t feel so crappy. But although this wasn’t the first time she had felt something echo through the severed blood-bond, it was by far the worst. Bad enough, even, to bring a stab of concern for a brother who wasn’t hers by blood. “Excuse me. I need to make a call.” She lurched away from Crazy Hat and headed for the stairs leading up to the wheelhouse, feeling like she was thirty fathoms down and walking against a stiff undertow, with everything happening in slow motion.
Jack met her at the door. “You’re lying down. Now.”
“I need to make a private call.”
“Cara. Honey.” He looked at her closely, and she could practically see him adding twenty-something single female plus fainting plus nausea and coming to the same conclusion Crazy Hat had reached.
She didn’t correct him, because it wasn’t like she could tell him the truth. She just said, “Please, Jack. It’s important.”
He checked his course, made a couple of adjustments, and then got on the radio to connect to a landline. When it was ready to go, he waved her to his high swivel chair and motioned that he would leave her alone. “I’ll need to get back in here in ten minutes or so. Charter says there’s a couple of big males spyhopping up by them.”
“This won’t take long.”
When he was gone, she took a deep breath. Or tried to, anyway. There wasn’t room enough in her lungs for the oxygen she needed, strengthening the drum of fear until it overcame the dread. Almost.
“Number, please?” That was the operator, probably tired of listening to heavy breathing.
She gave it automatically, then listened to the call ringing on the other end. She tried not to picture the phone sitting on the marble-topped counter in the big open kitchen, tried not to guess who was on comm duty, who would be walking to the phone, picking it up, and—
“Hello?” a man’s voice said.
She couldn’t place it. Not her father, certainly. Had she been away so long that she had forgotten the others?
“This is Cara,” she said. “I need to talk to my father.”
There was a beat of silence. Then, “And who would that be?”
She wouldn’t have thought she could feel any shit-tier and still be upright. Wrong. Breathing shallowly through a stab of pain, she said, “I’m Carlos’s daughter.” She should’ve stopped there, but couldn’t help saying, “Out of sight, out of mind, huh?”
“Not really. I’m the new guy. Which is why I’m on comm and gate duty.” He paused. “Well, that and because the others still aren’t sure what to do with me.” Before she could process that, he continued: “Carlos is out getting supplies. You want his cell number? Oh, duh. You probably have it.”
No, she didn’t. And she couldn’t handle this, any of it. But it was clear that the winikin, at least the ones back at Skywatch, didn’t know there was something very wrong. “You call him, please. Tell him he needs to find Sven, fast. There’s something . . .” She trailed off, choked up. Whispered, “Just tell him for me, okay?”
She cut the call before he could say anything, ask anything, knowing that her father would do what needed to be done. Then she bolted for the head. And was miserably sick.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
December 14
Bandera Crater and Ice Cave
New Mexico
The sign at the end of the access road identified the privately owned attraction as the LAND OF FIRE AND ICE. Which didn’t half suck, Reese had decided.
The site offered two short hikes: one to ogle the blown-out cone of the Bandera volcano, the other to climb down inside a kiva-shaped cave where a combination of water seepage and convection airflow created a crazy microenvironment that never got above freezing. The underground pool at the bottom of the cave was perpetually frozen and glowed green in the sun, tinted by a strain of algae that was otherwise found only in the Arctic. Most of the long-ago tribes in the region—and those who traveled to it from afar—had called it Winter Lake and mined it for ice. But Lucius had turned up a reference in a British explorer’s journal that described seeing thirteen warrior-priests wearing serpent-headed masks and making blood sacrifices to call the rain god.
Ancient sacred site, check. Pro-snake ritual, check. And it was located right at the southern point of the compass cross that could be drawn from the places where the other artifacts had been found. Granted, the pattern assumed that ten years earlier, when Keban had told Dez that the star demon was coming to him courtesy of Montezuma, he wasn’t using an alternate spelling of the god-king Moctezuma’s name, but rather talking about the Palace of Montezuma, which was a Pueblo ruin located just over the Arizona border. Given that the compass lines connecting north to south and east to west then crossed directly over Chaco Canyon, Reese was just fine with the assumption. More, one of the local black-market guys she had tracked down was holding an endangered rattlesnake for pickup by a guy with a scarred face, who had put in the order a week ago and paid cash.
This was the place. It had to be. And tonight was the night; the Gemenid meteor shower would be starting soon.
But as she and Dez, both lightly shielded by his magic, slipped past the locked entrance gate for the third night in a row and followed the cow pasture–flanked road to the trading post that marked the trail-heads, it bothered her that they hadn’t been able to pinpoint Keban. Hell, they hadn’t even caught a whiff of him. Granted, the winikin had been trained to disappear, and he would have gone deeper under once he knew Dez was after him, but still. It didn’t feel right.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she murmured as they passed the trading post and took the ice cave trail, the details gone green behind her night-
vision goggles. She was very aware of Dez, sleek and solid beside her, his movements predator-smooth in the darkness. Despite her best intentions and the fact that they had been strictly hands off over the past three days, focusing on the job, his taste and the way he had felt inside her seemed burned into her neurons. “Can you sense him?” she asked, voice sharper than it needed to be.
He shook his head. “I’m not getting a damn thing.” Which could mean that although Keban’s potions couldn’t knock him out anymore, they could still camouflage the winikin’s scent trail . . . or it could mean there was nothing to sense.
“He’ll be here,” she said as they moved off again. He had to show up. Not that they wanted to fight for the two-faced mask, but they needed to get their hands on the white god’s head and the red skybearer, too. And they needed to do it before Iago got wind of the weapon’s existence. The Nightkeepers had the black star demon safely locked up behind a heavy, magic-cloaking ward, but still.
White, red, black, yellow, she thought, because they were expecting the two-faced mask to be made of yellow stone. Once she had figured out the trick of what they had taken to calling the compass artifacts, Lucius had come up with another layer to the symbolism: In Nightkeeper lore, each direction was associated with a color and certain traits. Black-west was the power of shadows and dreams, as well as the ability to shake things up. Which was Dez in a nutshell, and explained why he had connected so strongly with the star demon, but hadn’t felt the same pull to the white god’s head, which represented truth, integrity, and the winds of change. Red-east represented inspiration, passion, and flashiness; no doubt he’d click with the skybearer statue when they got their hands on it. Not so much the two-faced mask, though, because yellow-south was connected with patience and balance, neither of which was his forte.
He was trying, though—or he seemed to be. In the days since their post-sex showdown he hadn’t given her any new reason to distrust him. He was still stubborn and prone to shortcuts, but he listened to her, argued patterns with her, and had even won a few of those arguments, reminding her what it was like to debate someone who thought so far outside the box. But through it all she had been aware that a part of her was standing back and watching him, trying to figure out whether it was real or part of an act, even one he wasn’t aware of putting on. He’d always had a knack for talking himself into doing what he wanted, after all.
“Look,” he said, pausing to point through a spot where the dark tree branches gave way to the horizon. A streak of light crossed the night sky. Then another. The meteor shower had begun.
She suddenly was very aware of being alone with him in the darkness, attuned to his breathing and the soft click of his weapons as he shifted his weight and glanced over at her. But all she said was, “We should go.”
“Yeah.” But he looked at her for another long moment before he moved off toward the covered wooden staircase that led down to the cave. She followed him down, nearly piling into him when he stopped on the first landing and turned back to her. “Listen. If this turns into a firefight . . .”
“I’ll stay close to you so you can shield me.”
“But if you can’t get to me, or if things get really bad, I want you to call in the cavalry.”
She raised an eyebrow, trusting that he would see the move with his augmented vision. “What happened to ‘I need to do this on my own. We can’t involve the others’?”
“You happened,” he said. And suddenly, the air between them held more than just the shield magic.
“Don’t,” she said, then couldn’t get another word out, because he was lifting a hand to brush a strand of hair away from her face and tuck it behind her ear.
“It’s one thing to risk my own life, another to risk yours. I couldn’t . . . I don’t want you hurt again because of me.”
Her heart went thudda-thump and her breath thinned in her lungs, but she lifted her chin. “It’s my choice to be here. I’m not your responsibility.”
“Promise me you’ll call for backup if things get hairy.”
She nodded, because what was the point of arguing about something she was already planning to do? “I promise.”
Without another word, he turned and moved ahead of her, pulling his .44 as he headed down the stairs toward the cave mouth, which was a huge, rounded opening the size of a highway underpass. Pulling her .38, Reese followed. And as she did, she told herself not to make the moment into something more than it really was. Which was nothing, really. Or at least nothing that could truly matter.
The air changed, the temperature decreasing with each step as they passed into the cave and descended the final short flight of stairs to where a wide observation platform overlooked the frozen lake. The night vision robbed her view of color, but it was still impressive. The frozen surface was roughly circular, edged with jumbles of rock and curving cavern walls that dripped with more ice, some of it in icicles, some as cascading waterfall formations.
That was all the same as it had been last night and the night before. Now, though, there was also a line of starscript glowing blue-white on the far wall, where the ice ended and the stone began.
Adrenaline kicked through her at the confirmation that they were in the right place at the right time. “Nice,” she whispered under her breath, feeling a beat of optimism.
Dez swung over the railing. “Come on, let’s take a closer look. Keep an eye on the door for me, though.”
“Hell of a door.” The cave mouth was a huge, gaping opening with multiple time-worn rock trails leading down. It would be far too easy for Keban to find a sheltered position up there and shoot down into the cave. Which is why I’m sticking close to the guy with the magic, Reese thought. She traded her .38 for the heavier firepower of the autopistol as they walk-slid across the frozen pool to the other side, then climbed over jumbled rocks to the starscript. Two outcroppings protruded slightly out into the pond; one was marked in blue-white starscript with half a man’s face, the other with half a screaming skull. Behind them on the wall, running roughly between them, was a squiggling, serpentine line.
Dez kicked at the ice between the two marked stones. “Doesn’t look any different than the rest of it.”
“The cave adds ice every year. Depending on when the artifact was hidden, it could be pretty far down.”
“Lucky for us, we’ve got—”
Without a buzz or hum of warning, the air cracked nearby and twenty men materialized in the center of the cave. Or not men, Reese saw even as she pivoted and brought up her autopistol, blood icing at the sight of glowing green eyes. “Makol!”
They wore long loincloths, quilted armor and feather-trimmed demon-faced masks, and they carried buzzswords—wooden staves edged with spinning black blades that could detach like throwing stars. Her heart seized on a crazed thought of Ohmigod they’re real, but then Dez shouted something and amped his shield to a blue-white latticework of energy, snapping her out of her shock.
She fired a panicked burst through the shield and a makol sprayed black blood and went down writhing. And for a second she froze, flashing back on another cavernous space, another gunned-down body lying twitching on the floor in a pool of blood.
“Reese!” Dez jerked her behind him and let rip with a blast of purple-white as their attackers spread out and rushed the shield, swords buzzing a high-pitched bee swarm of sound. The magic tore into the oncoming line, knocking back three of the makol, who went down twitching. “Reese! There’s too many of them. Make the call.”
She jerked from her paralysis and slapped her armband, but nothing happened. There was no little red light, no acknowledging beep. No reception, damn it. “We’re too deep underground! We need to get closer to the door!”
“Wait. Close your eyes.” Dez grabbed her, stripped off her goggles and got an arm around her, so her face was pressed into his chest and covered with the edge of his coat. Then electricity raced over her, through her, and the world went bright white as he unleashed a massive bolt of magic
into the ice near their feet.
The blast was deafening. The ice heaved beneath them, cracking and tilting, and she clung to him without meaning to.
Then he let go of her, shoved the goggles into her hand, and snapped, “Get the mask and we’ll make a run for it.”
For a terrifying second, she was lost in a surreal world of pitch blackness lit only by luminous green eyes and his shield magic. Then she jammed the goggles into place and everything snapped back into focus: The makol had concentrated their efforts at one point on Dez’s shield and were trying to hack through with their swords. He stood opposite them, channeling lightning with one hand and firing an autopistol with the other, keeping them off balance and floundering. Bleeding.
“Move!” he bellowed.
Reese moved.
Spinning to where he had blasted away the ice and part of the rock near the starscript, she dove into the ragged chasm he had created. Her night vision was blurry at close range, but her fingers found a lumpy object wrapped in frozen cloth. She tried to pull it out, but the cloth tore and her fingers brushed a smooth, sleek, and intricately carved artifact. The mask! She fumbled, trying to get hold of it.
“Reese!” His voice cracked with the strain of holding the shield.
“Almost there.” Her fingers found an edge and the disk popped free. “Got it!” She lunged to his side, held it out. “Here.”
“Keep it.” He jammed the autopistol into his belt and grabbed her free arm. A tingle ran through her at his touch, a sign that his magic was running hot. He grated, “Close your eyes on three. One. Two. Now!”
She slammed her eyes shut as he let rip with a huge bolt of magic that cracked and crashed, and made her hair spark with static.
“Come on!” He dragged her to a stumbling run over the torn-up ice, tightening the shield spell around them.
She caught disjointed glimpses of makol bodies, ripped limbs, black blood.
“Don’t look,” he ordered roughly, pulling her to his side and trying to block the sight with his body. But she could still see the carnage, smell the blood.
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