More, he loved her. And she loved him. That wasn’t a story or a dream; it was real. And even though his status as the Mictlan meant he could never form the jun tan with her, she knew they had their own form of commitment, one to the other. They were bound, even without the words or the symbols. And surprisingly, she didn’t need more than that. She simply needed him.
Anna broke off reading the spell, looking down at Lucius with deep concern. “We’re losing both of them.”
Sasha couldn’t argue that; she could feel it in the ch’ul connection, the faintness of his song. “I’m giving him all I can pull through the blood-link.” But then she remembered what Jox had said once when they’d been discussing her talent over seedlings and cow manure: that the ch’ulel power might not work best through blood. That sometimes talents were sparked by love. “I think,” she began, not sure how to say it, “I think we need to go deeper than the blood-magic in order to conquer death.” It wasn’t until she’d said the words that she realized she was smack in the middle of her own prophecy.
She faltered, felt Michael’s grip tighten, and steadied herself. “I need you all to open yourself to love, or at least respect, for Lucius. Forgiveness. He needs . . . we need to not just heal him, but give him a reason to stay.”
Strike’s expression clouded, but at pleading looks from Anna and Jade, he nodded reluctantly.
“Whatever he needs, we’ll do. He’s part of this war now. One of us.”
The words held the power of a vow, rippling away from the small group in a wash of magic.
The magi linked palm-to-palm, not in blood but in support. With each member added to the circle, Sasha felt an added kick of power, a notch of life pouring through her. Or not life, she realized now.
Love. Acceptance.
As they linked themselves, not with blood but with the bonds of friends, lovers, and teammates, the solstice peak began to fade, the window of opportunity to close.
“Work fast,” Michael added under his breath.
Anna once again began to read from the librarian’s scroll.
Sasha fed the life energy toward Lucius’s song, opening herself to the stranger who’d saved her before she’d even known his name, marking her palm and helping her defeat Iago’s drugs so she’d be ready to run when the time came. I owe you one.
Still, though, it wasn’t enough. The connection fluctuated. Faded. “Rabbit. I need you to go into his mind and see if you can find him.”
The teen started in surprise, but then nodded, lips firming. “I’ll need to cut—”
“No. No blood. Love him. Or if you can’t do that, at least respect him for what he’s fought against.
Anchor him here, so the makol goes but he doesn’t.”
“That I can do.” Pulling away from the hands on either side of him, trusting that the circle would re-
form at his back, Rabbit leaned forward and pressed his palms to Lucius’s chest, above the place where his heart had been ripped out and put back in, the place where a makol ’s power began and ended.
Then, bearing down, the Nightkeepers began to pray to the gods that couldn’t hear them, and to the ancestors who could.
Lucius was lost inside his own head. He couldn’t find the sight centers, couldn’t find his hiding spot as the librarian’s spell echoed around him and the makol’s furious power sought to drive him from his own skull, sought to fling him into the magic.
On one level, he gloried in the ancient syllables, in the power he felt gathering in him, changing him. But at the same time he feared the spell, and the power, because he knew something the others didn’t: that this had been the plan all along. The Banol Kax didn’t want the Xibalbans to have the library any more than they wanted the Nightkeepers to gain the power. They wanted it for themselves, wanted it removed from the earth permanently.
He tried to scream the knowledge, tried to warn the magi who gathered around him, labored over him, trying to feed him power that he couldn’t find.
But he had to find it. He couldn’t let the makol win, couldn’t let the creature reawaken wielding even more power than it had before. The Nightkeepers thought the spell would automatically take both souls, and sought to keep Lucius with them. They didn’t realize the makol had exactly the same thought in reverse, and it had far more magic at its disposal.
Quitting? a voice said within him—not the makol or one of the magi, but that of his father, his brothers, everyone who had ever called him a pussy, a wimp, a loser. A geek. Go ahead, they said in unison, be a loser.
“No, godsdamn it!” Lucius shouted, raging at the darkness around him, at the makol’s black soul.
“No!”
“Lucius!” called a voice, one he recognized, one that came from his present, not his past.
“Rabbit?”
“This way. Follow my voice.”
And suddenly, Lucius’s own mind took shape around him once more. The makol roared denial as his soul slipped from its unknowing confinement. Power wrapped around Lucius, buoyed him up, and he felt the touches of more minds all calling him back, calling him home, one stronger than all the others, not because of sexual love, but because of friendship, and a blood-debt owed.
He opened his eyes and locked his gaze on the woman who was reading the spell, the one who wore a mark that complemented his own. He reached out to her and they clasped hands. And, as if seeming to know what he needed from her, Anna said, “I call upon you to discharge your debt to me by kicking that makol’s ass straight to hell.”
And though Lucius was nothing more than human, the slave bond he’d formed with Anna was magic; the marks were magic. In response to her invocation, they flared to life, binding him to her, and through her to the other magi. That connection, that bond of unity, roared through him in a screaming tidal wave of red and gold, heat and trust.
Cizin roared and dug claws into his brain. “Get out!” Lucius shouted, not caring about the niceties or the spell words, only that this demon, got out of his head for good. He tore at the claws, pushed at the writhing thing within his own soul. The magic of the Prophet’s spell peaked. A whirling vortex opened up, spearing through Lucius’s skull. Or not his skull, he realized moments later when the wind slapped at him. The funnel was real, a tornado that reached through the jagged tear in the mountain-
side. It tugged at him, threatened to suck them all up. Arching against the wind, against the pull, he leaned on the joined magics of the magi and shouted aloud, “Gods take it!”
There was a ripping, tearing sound, and a ghostly image of his own body tore free, this one with fangs and claws and glowing green eyes. It pinwheeled its arms and legs as it was lifted away from him, hung suspended above him long enough for Lucius to look into its luminous green eyes and see the evil inside himself, the evil that had called the creature to him in the first place.
The makol screamed one last time, the sound growing thin as its image wavered and dissolved. Then it was gone. The tornado was gone. Lucius fell blessedly unconscious. Overloaded. But finally alone inside his own skull.
Skywatch When strike zapped them all home, Michael sagged when his feet hit the floor, might’ve gone down if it hadn’t been for the bodies on either side of him, Rabbit on his right, Sasha his left. The three of them propped one another up for a moment, leaning on one another. Teammates.
Rabbit was the first to peel himself away, his eyes fixed past the others to the archway leading to the pool deck, where Myrinne stood, eyes faintly uncertain. “You’re here!” he said, crossing to her and stopping a couple of paces away. “How did you . . . When . . .”
The uncertainty faded a little, turning to warmth. “I hopped a plane and called Jox from the airport.
I . . .” She faltered, realizing that she and Rabbit had an audience, but then seemed to realize he needed the public apology. Or maybe she needed to give it. Either way, she continued, “I didn’t mean any of what I said. I was scared, I think. And maybe you were getting some backlash I should’ve unloa
ded on Mistress Truth, but couldn’t because she was already dead.” Her voice went soft. “I came to tell you I’m sorry. I don’t want to be with anyone but you.”
“I couldn’t get rid of the hellmark,” he said, voice cracking.
She closed the distance between them, stopping only so he’d have to cover the last six inches or so.
“Okay. We’ll deal with it. Together.”
At that, the fight seemed to go out of him. He let his head drop forward, let his forehead rest on hers. “You’re killing me, babe.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was barely audible to the others now, and the magi and winikin turned away, giving the younger generation their privacy as they slipped out through the poolside doors and headed for their cottage.
For a change, not even Strike glared after them. Not that Michael was really paying much attention to his king, or to any of the others. His entire focus was on the woman whose hand remained in his, the one looking up at him with the glittering brown eyes he knew he would see in his mind’s eye from now on, every time he thought of love. Of happiness.
Sasha loved him. He took the knowledge and tucked it beside his heart, where it warmed him from the inside out, chasing away the last dregs of the darkness. She had saved him. She was life; he was death. They matched, they balanced, whether the gods had intended it or not, whether they were destined mates or not. Fuck destiny; she was his, he thought, tightening his grip on her.
“Michael?” she said, turning his name into a question.
“It’s okay,” he said, though he wasn’t really sure that it was. He’d failed to cleanse his soul, failed to discharge his duty. Which meant no jun tan, no mate. Was it fair to ask her to buy into that?
Too late , logic and reason said. She already has. And so had he. But at the same time, it was up to him to make it as right as he possibly could.
“Food,” a new voice intruded. “Rest. Now.” It was Tomas, dividing his glare equally between Michael and Sasha, probably because Jox had his hands full with Strike, Leah, and Rabbit.
Before, Michael would’ve given him shit. Now, he simply grinned and said, “Pancakes and Canadian bacon? Lots of coffee?”
The winikin scowled, but there was a gleam in his eye. “For one or two?”
“Two,” Michael said firmly. “Definitely two.” Now he had a feeling the gleam was in his own eyes, coming to life when he looked down at Sasha and found a heat in her expression to match his own.
“We’ll be in her suite. I like the way the herbs make the air smell.”
Laughing, Sasha rolled her eyes. “Bull. You’re just angling for more hot chocolate.”
“Depends on whether by ‘hot chocolate’ you mean something else.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, making Tomas groan.
“You’re never going to change, are you?” the winikin demanded.
But it was Sasha who answered: “He’s changed as much as he needs to. Anything more and he wouldn’t be the man I love.”
And that, Michael realized as the warmth unfurled beside his heart and surrounded his bruised, battered soul, was exactly what he’d needed to hear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
December 26 Two years, three hundred and sixty days until the end
The five days after the solstice passed in a blur for Sasha, as the magi pitched in to prepare for the wayeb days, the five days between the end of the solar calendar of one year and the beginning of the next. Those days, which weren’t even named in the calendar of the Maya, were considered supremely unlucky . . . or days of great change, depending on who was doing the proselytizing.
Because of that, and because of the jaguar bloodline’s propensity to play with the rules, Strike had declared that those five days would be one big par-tay. The celebration would begin with Ambrose’s funeral, which seemed fitting. Sasha and Jox had put their heads together and come up with a hell of a menu for the five-day festival. For the purpose, Jox had flown in the necessary ingredients. Since the Nightkeepers’ overall desire for pulque was at a definite low point, the winikin had also brought in several other types of alcoholic ceremonial drinks. In addition, Sasha had fermented the last of her cacao seeds, and was processing the slimy mess into the hot chocolate she’d experimented on before .
. . and continued to experiment on, using Michael as her eminently willing guinea pig for the various sauces and sweets.
As the sun dipped toward the horizon on the first wayeb day, the magi donned their ceremonial robes and knives and gathered together in the ash-shadow court-yard beneath the ceiba tree as Rabbit moved around, lighting the ceremonial torches using his pyro talent. Sasha leaned into the steady warmth of Michael, who stood at her side as the magi and winikin formed parallel lines through which the king and queen would formally march to begin the wayeb festival.
“I’m glad you made it back in time,” she said in a totally nonsubtle probe.
His lips curved as he looked down at her. He squeezed her fingers where he’d tucked them in the crook of his arm, as though he’d needed the contact as much as she needed to touch him. “Wouldn’t have missed it.” But he didn’t explain where he’d gone the night before, leaving the compound with little more than a kiss and a passable Terminator impression of “I’ll be back.”
She told herself the absence wouldn’t have bothered her in the slightest if it hadn’t been for the slightly off vibes she’d been getting from him the past couple of days. Their vibe in the bedroom wasn’t in question—he was an ardent and inspired lover, and she took full advantage of his practiced skills, while polishing her own. Better yet was when she drove him beyond practice to the point of action-reaction, when he lost himself in the moment and let himself go, dragging her along with him into the abyss that was sensation and heat, and nothing of reality. And if, in those moments, some of the darkness seeped from him into her, that was as it should be. She helped him stay balanced; he kept her from becoming too settled, made things exciting. As Ada had told her so long ago, she’d found a man who challenged her, kept her guessing.
Most of the time he was loving and attentive, dark and edgy, showing her glimpses of the different men he’d been, all combining into the man she’d fallen for. Yet now and then there was something else, something that tempted her to worry. It was in his brief hesitation when she spoke of the future.
He’d told her he loved her, and she had no reason to disbelieve, but she remained wary, guided by that part of her that had yearned before, been wrong before. And then he’d disappeared. He’d come back, yes, but still. It was tough not to fall right back into old patterns, hard as she tried to avoid them.
She told herself it didn’t matter, that she’d decided to take him, to love him, even knowing that he wasn’t able to commit to the long term. More, she lectured herself, it wasn’t fair to make that decision and then blame him for being who she’d known he was.
Deliberately shoving aside the worry, she looked down the double line. The winikin stood together on one side, except for Jox, who was at the head of the whole pattern, with his back to the big tree. The other magi stood on the other side, along with Myrinne and a badly debilitated Lucius, who’d been heard joking that pretty soon the humans were going to outnumber the magi at Skywatch. At least, Sasha thought it was a joke.
Lucius was recovering from his ordeal, though slowly. He’d been deeply scarred by his captivity, more so than Sasha, because he had no healing magic of his own, and the Prophet’s bond didn’t allow Rabbit to get in there and help. More, he’d so far proven unable to form the conduit that was supposed to allow the Prophet access to the library. The theory was that there was a magical logjam going on, since the spell called for an empty body, and his was still inhabited by, well, him. Jade and Anna were convinced he could learn to call the conduit himself, but first he needed to recover fully.
He mostly kept to himself, sitting atop the walls of the ball court, staring into the distance. But the few times Sasha had arranged to bump into him, she’d f
elt health in his ch’ul song, and the beginnings of acceptance.
That was all she could feel these days—her healing powers seemed to have burned out with the effort of bringing Lucius back from the brink. Similarly, Rabbit’s mental powers had become seriously blunted. He could perform traditional mind-bends, but he couldn’t read as deeply as he could before. Otherwise, the younger mage seemed to be doing okay; he and Myrinne were in the middle of a nauseating honeymoon period the rest were tolerating solely because it’d been generally agreed that they’d rather have Rabbit acting besotted than sulking and burning stuff down.
The magi seemed to have similarly leveled off after the chaos of the past couple of months. Brandt and Patience acted fine in public, though there was no telling what was going on behind the scenes.
Nate and Alexis were solid, and Sven was . . . Sven. Jade was keeping to herself, as was Anna, who hadn’t returned to Austin immediately after the solstice, which, according to Jox, was very unusual indeed. Not that the winikin was gossiping, he’d assured Sasha as they’d put the calendar cakes into the ovens. He was simply remarking. But she’d gotten the impression he was hoping she would talk to Anna about it. Maybe she would, too. It might take them time to decide what sort of relationship they would have—sisters? friends? something else?—but Sasha wasn’t leaving Skywatch anytime soon.
They had time. Some, anyway.
“Here they come,” Michael said, breaking into her thoughts.
Then there was a stir of movement at the edge of the pool patio, and Strike and Leah appeared, walking together in their bloodred ceremonial robes, hands linked.
Strike was wearing his king face, but beneath that capable shell, Sasha saw love. Simply love, the beginning and ending of their magic, their lives. And the sight of it, the knowledge of it, smoothed the edges of her soul and had her leaning into Michael, the man she loved.
He brushed a kiss across her temple as the king and queen passed and took their places facing each other, while Jox presented them with the first sacrificial offering of the wayeb days: a bowl of maize seeds, several from each of the ears that had been passed through the blood-smoke of the magi during Sasha’s bloodline ceremony. When Strike accepted the bowl, Sasha felt a small pinch beneath her heart, knowing that the seeds would be burned, symbolically returning the blood and flesh of the magi to the gods.
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