Skykeepers n-3

by Jessica Andersen

  She told herself it was better this way, that the hints of anger she’d caught from him were a warning sign suggesting maybe he wasn’t the solid, likable guy he seemed. More, she told herself not to cling, not to let him think it had meant anything more to her than it apparently had to him. He’s just another hunter, she told herself, for the first time realizing that she’d inadvertently fallen into another of her old patterns by opening herself to a man who valued the chase and capture more than the long term. In this case, granted, the chase had been finding her, the capture her rescue, but still, once he’d gotten her, he’d realized he didn’t really want her all that much.

  What was it about her that attracted the hunters? she wondered on a spurt of self-directed disgust.

  More, why did she continue to be attracted to them? Sure, those men tended to be smooth and dangerous, tended to know their lines and moves, which she supposed explained the attraction. But once they’d caught their prey, they moved on, leaving the tattered remains behind. She knew that, damn it. She shouldn’t have been surprised—been there, done that more times than she wished to count, even with Saul, whom she’d picked precisely because he hadn’t looked like a hunter on the surface.

  But, logical or not, she was surprised to hear it from Michael, not the least because, even as they stood there faced off opposite each other, electricity hummed in the air between them. She knew damn well the attraction wasn’t one-sided. That couldn’t be her imagination.

  Could it?

  Summoning anger, more at herself than him, she said stiffly, “That’s fine. Let’s just forget it happened.”

  Michael was watching her steadily, and she had a feeling he saw more in her face than she meant him to. But he said only, “That might not be so easy.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’ve got a long-term contraceptive implant, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “No.” His flinch suggested he hadn’t thought that far. “I was more thinking about the others.

  They’re probably going to try to throw us together. Not just because of what happened last night—

  which I edited for public consumption, by the way—but because I’ve been hung up on finding you for a while. Ever since I saw your picture, in fact.”

  “I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” she said, though it wasn’t easy.

  “And then there are your dreams,” he continued.

  “You imagined me before you met me.”

  “I dreamed of a dark-haired, green-eyed man. That’s a coincidence.”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence,” he said, and it sounded like he was quoting something.

  “There’s only the will of the gods.” The words echoed in Ambrose’s voice, as well. He’d been fond of saying things like that. Okay, technically he hadn’t said things like that. He’d said those exact words, time and again.

  Sasha exhaled, feeling stretched very thin. “So which is it? Are we cooling things off, or did the gods themselves intend for us to be a couple?” Because that had to be where he was going with this.

  “We’re cooling it,” he grated between clenched teeth, the obvious tension in his body belying his apparent conviction.

  “Fine. Whatever.” She looked along the track, then back toward the compound. “You want to head back in? I don’t think I’m in the mood to walk anymore.” What she really meant was that she wasn’t in the mood to walk with him.

  “Sasha . . .” He trailed off. Lifted a shoulder. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t be putting all this on you at once.”

  She had a feeling that wasn’t what he’d been about to say. When he didn’t continue, she shrugged irritably, hating that she’d let him matter too quickly. “I’m figuring out that you guys don’t have much of a choice, given the present circumstances. You know, ‘When in the triad years’ and all that.”

  Michael stopped dead, his face draining. “You know the prophecy?”

  “From Ambrose. He said my mother taught it to him.” She paused, unnerved by his expression.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve been busting our asses trying to find the whole thing, hoping to hell it’ll tell us what to expect next month, during the winter solstice.” Michael paused. Swallowed. “Do you know the rest of it?”

  Instinct told her to lie, but the terrible hope etched in his face forced the words. “ ‘In the triad years, the daughter of the sky will defy love, conquer death, and find the lost son.’ ” She hesitated, then forced herself to go all the way. Taking a deep breath, she said, “My mother said I was the daughter of the sky. According to her, the triad prophecy is about me.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  After that announcement, Sasha quickly found herself the center of an all-hands-on-deck meeting in the main room. Michael sat her on one end of the big sofa and stood behind her as though guarding her —or perhaps making sure she didn’t bolt. Then he had her repeat what she’d told him about the library and, more important, the prophecy.

  “ ‘In the triad years, the daughter of the sky will defy love, conquer death, and find the lost son,’ ” Strike repeated thoughtfully. “And you say your mother taught it to Ambrose?”

  Sasha nodded. “That’s what he told me, anyway. She made him repeat it over and over again until he had it memorized, and then asked for his blood vow that he would teach it to me.” The memory pinched with the sense that, in turning away from Ambrose, she’d failed the mother she’d never known. She’d thought she was doing the right thing by protecting herself from him. How was she supposed to know he’d been telling the truth?

  “What else did he say about your mother?” Strike pressed.

  “Nothing, really. He always called her ‘Lady.’ ” A shiver collected within Sasha as she wondered whether the endearment had actually been something more. Like a title.“You guys don’t have a . . . a nobility, I guess you’d call it?” The question felt like a huge leap. It was her first overt acknowledgment that her mother, too, might have come from Skywatch. Even that she herself might’ve been here as a baby. She’d been born two years before the massacre. It was possible.

  “Only the queen, really,” Jox said, “and her kids are accounted for.” The royal winikin frowned.

  “We’ve been over and over the records, trying to figure out who Ambrose might have been. But back then, the Nightkeepers were pretty scattered. The royals, advisers, instructors, and other key magi lived here year-round, along with the students, but most of the others had homes off-site. Everybody gathered here on the cardinal days, but there might’ve been a thousand or more people total. So none of us necessarily knew everyone by sight. And what records we kept were badly damaged during the massacre.”

  She let out a long breath, disappointment quashing the quick stir of a hope she’d barely even acknowledged. “So we might never know who I am. Assuming I’m someone.”

  “You’re someone,” Michael said in a tone that brooked no argument. “That’s not in question. What we need to figure out is what the prophecy means.” He paused, then said reflectively, “We have a few key phrases to work with. First, we’ve got ‘daughter of the sky,’ but the sky means the gods, and all humans are the children of the gods, right? So that probably means there’s a closer connection.” He eyed Sasha, then glanced at Jox. “Were any of the gods supposed to have children on earth?”

  “Not as such,” he said.

  Wanting to derail that hypothesis as quickly as possible, and preferring to avoid any discussion of how she might “defy love,” especially in the aftermath of the oddest dumping she’d ever experienced, Sasha said quickly, “Ambrose thought the part about conquering death meant I was to be a healer. He tried to steer me toward med school.” Understatement of the year. “He didn’t know who the lost son might be.”

  Patience made a low sound of distress. “What if it’s one of the twins?”

  “I’ll get a message to Woody and Hannah, telling them to watch their backs,” Strike said, referring to the win
ikin who had taken Patience and Brandt’s twin boys into hiding, for their own protection during such unsettled times. “But if I had to guess, I’d say the prophecy probably relates to someone old enough to make a difference when the zero date comes. Snake Mendez is a possibility—he’s the last of the magi, and he’d qualify in the ‘lost’ category, at least in terms of his soul.”

  Michael leaned in and said in a low voice, “Mendez is the last of the known Nightkeepers. He’s doing an extra six months for aggravated assault, which is a bonus. That way we know where he is, without actually having to figure out what the hell to do with him.”

  Jox said slowly, “We thought Mendez was the last of the magi, until we found out about Sasha. If she survived outside the formal system, maybe there’s a chance others did, as well.”

  There was a moment of wistful silence before Strike said, “I don’t think we can put too much hope in that. There’s nobody else out there like Ambrose, at least that we’re aware of.”

  Leah nodded. “I think we should focus on the things we can control.” She looked at Sasha and said, “I know you’ve been over this a thousand times, but I’m sorry, I have to ask: Do you have any idea where to look for the scroll your father mentioned in his journal?”

  Which was essentially a backhanded way of asking, Where is the library? Sasha made a face. “I don’t. I’m sorry.” She paused. “I’m assuming you’ve searched Ambrose’s temple?”

  Now it was Strike’s turn to grimace. “To the best of our ability. It’s guarded by an entity of some sort that’s able to both take corporeal form and mind-bend full magi. The thing nearly killed Anna, and it’s gone after us a couple of other times when we were in there, searching. We didn’t find anything.” He paused. “We did recover your father’s skull while we were in there. It seemed wrong to just leave it. The next time we’re out there, we’ll exhume the rest of him, and bring him back for a proper funeral.”

  Sasha’s throat closed on a surge of emotion. “Thank you. He’d . . . Thank you.”

  The king nodded. Then his expression softened, making him suddenly seem far less imposing, far more human. “You look exhausted—you’re probably ready to turn it off for a little while, huh?”

  “Beyond ready,” she said.

  Strike nodded. “Jox will show you a couple of suites; choose one and crash. When you’re ready to start moving in for real, tap him for decorating and clothing money out of the Nightkeeper Fund. Get what you want, no limits, though be advised that he starts wincing after a while.”

  “I . . .” Sasha trailed off, sort of guppy-gaping at how things had done yet another quick one-eighty on her.

  “What?”

  “You’re one of us,” he said implacably. “If you’re going to be hit with the responsibilities and dangers, you should get the perks, too.”

  Her mouth went dry. “You don’t know for certain that I’m a Nightkeeper.” And for the first time, she felt a tug of longing, a desire to belong to these people, to live the adventures she’d dreamed of as a child.

  The king tapped the geometric hunab ku on his upper arm. “I have faith. The gods may not be able to reach us directly anymore, but the plans they helped put in place long ago are still coming to fruition. You’re a child of prophecy, Sasha, just like I was.” His expression reflected an odd mix of regret and satisfaction. “I would wish for you to have an easier time of it than I did, but I have a feeling it’s one of those doctrine-of-balance things, that the greater the challenge, the greater the reward.” He looked over at Leah, and his face lit with love.

  “Thanks, I think,” Sasha said, carefully not looking over her shoulder, where Michael still stood guard.

  He growled, “Don’t thank him yet. He hasn’t gotten to the catch.”

  But Sasha shook her head. “I already know. I’m my father’s daughter, after all.” She paused. “You want me to undergo the bloodline ceremony,” she said, and saw the confirmation in their faces. Oddly, she wasn’t as upset as she would’ve thought. “When?”

  “The full moon,” Strike answered immediately. “On December second, thirteen days from now.”

  She nodded, because what else was there to say, really? She’d woken up a prisoner, and would go to sleep that night a potential mage. So much had changed, yet plenty was still the same. She was still at odds with her father, even though he was more than a year in the grave. And once again, she’d set her sights on a hunter, and imagined he felt more than he really did. At the thought, she glanced over at Michael and saw him deep in convo with the pretty brunette archivist, Jade, their heads bent together with intimate familiarity. When Strike cleared his throat, her gut-check was confirmed. Well, hell, she thought, just what I don’t need . Best-case scenario, she was an ex. Worst-case, she was a current. And Sasha so couldn’t deal with that level of drama right now, so she focused on Strike. Her king. And how weird was that? “You said something about assigning me a real room?” she asked.

  Strike watched as Michael and Jade disappeared down a hallway beside the kitchen. “What the—” He caught himself with a glance at Sasha. “Sorry. Right. Check with Jox. He’s . . .” A quick check showed that the winikin was gone. “Try the greenhouse,” Strike suggested. “He goes there when things get hectic.”

  “Then I think he and I will get along just fine,” Sasha said, and dredged up a smile that felt only a little thin around the edges. She headed for the sliders leading out. And she damn well didn’t let herself look back, down the hallway where Michael and Jade had gone.

  Twenty minutes after the meeting broke up, almost exactly twenty hours after he’d lost himself in Sasha’s body and let the Other escape, Michael stared at the reference Jade had dug up for him, and cursed hollowly.

  He’d asked her to search for references to silver magic and rage. Because he’d claimed to have seen it coming from Iago, she hadn’t thought twice about the request—aside from a grimace of disgust at his description of the corpse. Using the computerized database she and Lucius had put together, she’d searched all the scanned, translated pages they had on file, and had come up with a likely reference.

  Michael stared at the computer screen, which was split between the scanned page and Lucius’s translation. The reference had come from the journal of a missionary who’d worked in the Mayan highlands in the mid-sixteenth century. Lucius had done a very rough, vernacular translation from old-

  style Spanish: The village elders speak of great white-gold magicians who used to live with their ancestors in the sky pyramids. These great magi fought against the devil himself, wielding a silver-

  gray magic called muk. But the muk held too much evil, it was too easily corrupted, and the magicians split it in half, taking the red-gold half for themselves and banishing the darkness to Xibalba.

  From there, the passage devolved to proselytizing, but in the margin was a red-lined note tagged with Lucius’s user name. Don’t know what the hell this muk is—I’ve never heard of it before, and I can’t cross-ref it anywhere, but I think we can assume Nightkeeper magic was the “good” side of it, hellmagic the bad. Not sure if the ancestral joined magic is even still around, though it’s probably worth looking into, as it’d make a hell of a weapon . . . if we could find a way to control the stuff and keep it from turning to the dark side.

  “Weapon, yes,” Michael muttered under his breath. “Control, maybe.” Was that what was going on with him? Were the lies and rationalizations evidence that the silver magic was corrupting him? Or had he come precorrupted, thanks to the Other? And how the hell did a government-created alternate personality relate to the ancestral magic that preceded Nightkeeper power? More, how was Sasha involved with the Other and the magic? Iago had implied that she was important to his transformation, and that his transformed self would be of use to the Xibalbans, and that fit with the way she broke through his defenses without trying. But at the same time, there had been moments when touching her, being with her, had helped level him off, as though she strengthen
ed not only the monster inside him, but the man. And it wasn’t like he could tell her any of what was going on—he’d tried earlier, and had vapor locked on the words. As far as she knew, he was . . . hell, he didn’t know what she thought he was at this point. All he knew was that he couldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk her. Not until he knew what he was, and why Iago wanted him.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “We need more info, as usual.”

  “Was that what you were looking for?” asked Jade from her desk in the corner.

  “Yeah, thanks,” he answered, but he doubted she heard him. She hadn’t looked up from what she was doing, and her tone had suggested she was mostly asking to be polite, and to indicate that she could make herself available if he needed help. All of which was quintessential Jade—always supportive, always there. Even after the talent ceremony, when he’d been too screwed up to continue as her lover, she’d tried to help him.

  I’m sorry we couldn’t bring Lucius back with us , he wanted to say. He didn’t, though, because she’d already made it clear she didn’t want to talk about it. She preferred to deal with her problems alone, in silence. He could relate, though in his case it wasn’t necessarily a preference. Fuck it, he thought. He was so damn tired of being alone in a house full of people.

  Then, knowing that swearing about it wasn’t going to get the job done, he printed the page and closed the file. After a quick glance to make sure that she’d gone back to her work, he tapped a few keys, got into the code, and, with a twinge of guilt that was weaker than it should have been, he deleted the file, scrubbed it from the directory, and replaced the citation with a dupe of another page he pulled at random.

  As he headed out of the archive, sketching a wave, he sought the back of his brain, expecting to find one of the sluiceways cracked, letting through the dishonesty he associated with the Other.

  It was shut. That move had come entirely from him.

  Shit. Michael stalled in the hallway, not liking that realization one bit. He didn’t want to be the liar, didn’t want to be corrupted. But at the same time he couldn’t stop thinking of what Lucius had written.