Once they had him on the bed, Pax passed out almost immediately. SE took one last look at his clone and closed the door behind them.
“Christ, X. That’s supposed to be a fucking gift?”
“Depends on who you ask. Pax looks at it as more of a curse though.”
“Why’d he phase into me? Because I was right there?”
X shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’ve each only been replicated by him once. It’s almost like his body is memorizing our forms.”
“Like Troy said on the stairs.”
“Yeah. You were just the newest thing around.”
SE leaned back against the wall. “You know, I wonder. If Pax could learn to focus on someone specifically, maybe he could get better control over it.”
“The dude’s in a lot of pain. I don’t know if he could keep his shit together long enough.”
SE started down the hallway toward the back wing. “I’ve got an idea. I’ll check you later, X.” As he swung around the corner, he hesitated. Dimitri had combined two sets of rooms to accommodate Richard’s growing family. That meant they now had two doors to the hall. He really didn’t want to wake Adriana at this late hour. He went with his gut and quietly knocked on the first one.
A moment later, Richard opened the door. “Hey, SE.”
“Hey. Could I talk to you for a sec?”
“Yeah, sure. Come on in.”
SE walked into a room that had been converted to a large sitting room. “So, I just witnessed Pax’s, uh…”
“Gift?”
Somehow that still didn’t sound quite right. “Er, yeah. Listen. I have an idea about how we might be able to help the brother. What if I lent him my nagual to help keep his pain under control long enough for you to use your telepathy? You think you could help him focus?”
Richard rubbed his forehead. “Possibly. If he doesn’t kill us first.”
“We’ll get X and Diesel to hold him. Come on, Richard. We’ve gotta do something. The brother’s in pain.”
“You’re right. I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow.”
SE smiled. “Thanks.” He turned to leave, and suddenly stopped. There on the bookshelf sat a photo in a carved wooden frame. It was a picture of the four of them: Adriana, Richard, Gabriela and himself. He walked over and picked it up. He remembered that day on the beach in Baja like it just happened. He could smell the ocean as the waves crashed down on the hot sand. The sunlight was shining on Gabi’s long, light brown hair as she played in the waves. She looked just like…an angel.
“Oh, SE,” Adriana was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her hand over her mouth. “Oh, God. I should have taken that down.” She walked over and reached for the photo. “That was so insensitive of me. I’m so sorry.”
Instead of handing it to her, SE gently set it back on the shelf. “No, don’t do that. It’s fine, really. She should be…remembered.” Remembered. She was gone and she was never coming back. Eight years of being permaphased hadn’t changed that.
And he couldn’t change it now.
He couldn’t change that he’d left Cesar. All he could try to be was the male she was proud of. He reached out and put his hand on Adriana’s shoulder to reassure her, but she backed up immediately.
“No, SE—”
The roar he heard behind him sounded like some kind of jungle cat. Before he could react, Richard’s weight was on him and the two males were falling to the floor as Adriana’s screams echoed around the room. Then, as Richard’s fist connected with his jaw, SE gleamed out and materialized behind the male, putting him in a quick hammerlock.
Just as fast as the protective instinct had been awakened, it faded. Richard went limp in his SE’s arms. Still panting, the two males stood up.
“I’m so sorry, SE. I don’t know what came over me.”
“No. It’s my fault, bro. I knew your situation. I didn’t think.”
“Troy?” Adriana called, as she looked out into the hallway.
SE turned around, but there was no one there. “You saw Troy just now?”
“Yes, he was right there.”
Richard looked down at the floor. “SE, I…”
SE clapped him on the back. “No worries. I’m not made of glass. Listen, I’ll see you guys later.” SE walked out of the room and rounded the corner. There was no one down the entire length of the main hall, but he heard a door close. Man, the brother sure had that exit strategy thing down.
Soaring Eagle went down to his own room, disarmed, and sat on the edge of the bed. Fuck. His head was starting to ache just slightly again at the temples. The headaches were coming back, but the physical pain was the least of it. The goddamn voice in his head was making him feel like he was having some kind of psychotic break. He wished. A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Adriana.”
“Hi,” she said. “I just…I thought you might want to have this. I know all your personal stuff is up in the attic somewhere, so…”
SE looked at the photo that had somehow landed in his hand. It was the one from the bookshelf. He was so touched by the gesture he almost couldn’t speak. “Adri—” He cleared his throat. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Adriana. Thank you.”
Knowing better, he didn’t hug her or try to touch her in any way. Instead, he placed his fist over his own heart. “In lak'ech,” he said, bowing his head in deep reverence.
The female smiled and returned the gesture. “Ala k'in.”
SE walked into his room and sat back down on the bed. He looked at the picture for a few moments, letting Gabi’s image sink in.
“I love you, Gabriela,” he said to the photo as if she could hear him. “And I’m sorry for not being there for our son. I promise you…from now on I’m going to be the male you mated.” Tears rose in his eyes, and her face became blurry. “I’ll always love you, Gabi. But you’re just not coming back.” He rubbed the wet from his eyes with his arm, got up, and carefully placed the picture in the drawer of his bedside table.
Ana materialized at the entrance of an alley next to a liquor store in Brookline. Up ahead she could see another Toltec shifter and a hellion following a civilian. What was the deal with civilians and alleys? Didn’t they ever learn?
She gleamed halfway down the alley, then up on to a fire escape. She leaned over the edge so she could see as the Toltec shifter stood watch and the mutant did its thing. The hellion took the shifter civilian by the sides of his face and looked deep into his eyes. As the male shook with fear, a faintly luminous essence began to flow from his eyes to the mutant’s. This was nothing new. She’d seen hellions steal k’ul hundreds of times, but that wasn’t what she was there for. At last, as the final remnants of the civilian’s life essence left him, two delicate translucent orbs arose from his body. One was opalescent, like a moonstone, the other, incandescent.
As the first sphere floated away into the darkness and vanished, Ana focused on the brightly glowing form. It was almost like behind the light was…oh, God. She could see the civilian’s nagual and just make out the faint impression of a snowy owl inside the light. Before the orb could get very far, the shifter opened his vial and held it out to the light, which shimmered for a moment, as if struggling against the pull of the little bottle. And then it was suddenly trapped. The vessel now glowed with the owl’s essence. The shifter slid the vial back around his neck, and ran to the open street, the hellion not far behind.
Ana gleamed to the alley below and walked over to the civilian’s lifeless body. She kneeled down next to him and gently turned his head so she could see his mark. Tears streaming down her face, she lightly traced the owl’s impression on his neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
SE sat up, his body glued to the sheets with sweat, his lungs working hard. As he leapt out of bed, he blinked in the darkness, searching frantically for a pen. He opened the little antique desk, his large hands fumbling clumsily in the small space until he found a marker.
SE walked over to the window and held his hand up in the moonlight, then carefully wrote the letters he had seen in his dream. When he had finished, he stared at his palm.
aj k’o’ol
What the fuck?
It was definitely Mayan, possibly one word, but it wasn’t common. Holy hell. Did he remember it wrong? He didn’t think so. He looked over at the clock. Christ, it was barely five in the morning. No wonder it was still dark out. Well, he wasn’t going to find that shit on Wikipedia. He needed X.
Now.
SE pulled on his jeans and headed out of his room. He crossed to the hall and headed down the back wing on the opposite side. He opened the door to the small upstairs sitting room, where he pushed aside a heavy bookcase full of books on the back wall. Pulling it closed behind him, he launched himself down the hidden stairway.
Stopping outside X’s room, he pounded on the door. When he didn’t get an answer, he pounded harder and heard some obvious swearing on the other side of the door before it finally swung open. X was standing in the doorway. Six feet seven of what the fuck do you think you’re doing glaring down at SE like he was about to take a piece out of him.
“Before you say anything, I need help with something. It’s important.”
X’s huge form came slightly closer. “If you say the treadmill, so help me, I will kick your ass.”
“I’m serious, X.” SE shoved his hand in the brother’s face. Maybe he could have been more polite. Given the guy’s size and mood, it was probably advisable.
“You need help with some shit you wrote on your hand? Sorry, I don’t teach penmanship. Dig?” X moved to close the door, but SE put his arm in the way and followed him in.
“Look,” he said, “I wrote it down after I dreamt it. I do that sometimes.”
“What? Sleep?”
“No, I have dreams about things. It’s very rare, but it’s usually important. Like there’s urgency to it.”
After Xavier pulled on some sweats, the two started toward the tech room. When they walked in, SE immediately found a pencil and a piece of paper and rewrote the letters on it.
X rubbed his goatee. “All right, let’s have a look. Hmm. Definitely Mayan. I’m not as familiar with the Old Language as some shifters. We may need to look it up in the library.”
“Do you think we can find it online somewhere? If we need to use books, it’ll take too long.” If his hunch was right, this was the answer to the meaning of the vial and Ana’s phone message.
Ana.
Jesus Christ. He couldn’t even think about her without his pulse racing and his cock standing at attention. But it was more than that, and he knew it. He was starting to find himself wondering where she might be or what or even who she might be doing. He rubbed his forehead and tried to focus.
“It just so happens,” Xavier was saying, “we have a data base of Mayan vocabulary. It’ll take a while to run it through, though, and there are no guarantees.”
“Okay. I’ll walk down and make some coffee.” Translation: I’ll go down to the kitchen and see if I can get rid of the giant hard-on I’m sporting before you notice it. Not to mention the fucking headache ten thousand Advil couldn’t cure. No, there was only one cure for both. The kicker was, even though she was his, he couldn’t have her.
In the kitchen, SE went to the sink, turned on the tap, and threw cold water on his face. That helped for about ten seconds. The pain was getting worse, and he knew that his body was going to keep playing the discomfort card until it won. And then what? He hunted Ana down and jumped her again? Jesus. He never should have taken the female like that. It was totally disrespectful. At the very least, he needed to find her and apologize. End things right. But that was just another excuse to see her and he knew it. No—he wouldn’t see her again. That was the best thing for her. Even if his whole goddamn body went up in flames.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Evelyn O’Donnell arrived at the teen center in Dorchester, her VW bug protesting as she down–shifted into the parking lot. Man, she was tired. Between classes at the community college and working here at the center, she was beyond exhausted. She slammed the car door, hurried across the lot, and headed into the building, where she pulled her coat off as she walked into the new technology lab. God, she loved watching the kids on the new computers. And the tech lab was really hooked up. It had everything now—video equipment, tablets, laser printers. It was obvious the anonymous donor had spared no expense.
“Ah, Derek,” she said to one of the teens, “would you go down the hall and see if Chris can come and help with the overhead monitor? It’s not hooked up yet and the little guys will need it later.”
“Sure, Ms. O’Donnell.”
“Thanks.”
“Ohmygod, Evy, you’re here!”
Evy grinned at her friend, Liz, who always seemed to have enough energy for both of them. “Yep,” she said. “It’s three o’clock, and here I am. Poof! Like magic.”
“Hilarious. Listen. You are never gonna believe!”
“You never know. I might.”
“I finally solved the mystery,” Liz said, looking proud.
“What mystery?”
“The anonymous donor of the tech lab money.”
“You’re kidding, who?” Evy asked, suddenly interested.
Liz lowered her voice. “It was Troy Thomsen.”
“Troy Thomsen?” Evy’s mind wrapped around the name, but couldn’t quite…
“From school,” Liz added.
“That Troy Thomsen? Are you sure it’s the same one?”
“Well, I wasn’t at first. I had to do some digging. There wasn’t much of a paper trail. It turns out he donated the money in cash.”
“What? Are you kidding me? I mean, this would have to cost—”
Liz nodded. “Yeah. Fifty thousand.”
“Fifty grand?” Evy was pretty sure her eyes had just left her head. Cash? That was weird. What was he, a dealer donating some cash to assuage a guilty conscience? “Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
“Huh.” Troy Thomsen. It wasn’t that Evy begrudged him any good fortune. It just seemed so, well, so unlikely. Troy had graduated a year above them. She’d known him since junior high and had even had a crush on him at one point in high school. But he wasn’t any wealthier than anyone else at their school.
“Chris said he’d be down in like, ten minutes,” Derek said, startling Evy out of her thoughts.
“Oh, perfect. Thanks, Derek.” She smiled at the teen. “Let’s see if we can figure this thing out.”
“Yahtzee!”
SE didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until X nearly scared the shit out of him. “Wait, you found it?”
“I got something,” X said. “It doesn’t make that much sense to me, but take a look.”
SE leaned toward the monitor and read the entry. aj k’o’ol (n.) One who works to defeat enemies by attacking the spirit companion.
He swallowed hard and read it again. Holy fuck! He began looking through his pockets for the little piece of paper about his conversation with Ana. He pulled out the crumpled little note and reread it. There was no doubt about it. Toltec wasn’t just after shifters’ k’ul anymore. They were after their souls. The vial he’d ganked off that shifter had to somehow be related.
And as for the aj k’o’ol? He’d bet his left nut it was Victrixa. Son of a—well, the profile certainly fit, didn’t it. She’d started out as a rebel on their side, then turned, got pregnant, trained her own daughter as a spy, gave the kid up for adoption when she was ten, and then used her to fucking infiltrate them again. Somehow it seemed so fucking perfect that the bitch gave birth to the female that was torturing his souls.
Ana materialized inside Toltec’s main headquarters, just outside the door to The Initiative’s nerve center. She took a quick look around. She was always very careful never to let anyone see her gleam. If being raised as a spy by her psychotic bitch of a mother had taught her anything, it was that you needed
to keep a shitload of secrets. From all sides. And that’s exactly what she was looking for. The mother lode of secrets. If the plan was to take out a fuckload of mutants before she disappeared, then she needed to know what Mommie Dearest was up to.
She cast out her shifter senses, making sure the main hallway was empty, then gleamed to the other side of the door. Anyone else who wanted to enter had to go through a series of ID checks; everything from eye scans to fingerprint screening. Ana had no idea how her mother managed to get that one approved. She pulled her pistol from its holster and moved stealthily down the hallway. Just outside the door to Victrixa’s office, she cast out her senses again and then moved inside.
Hmm. Victrixa wasn’t big on safes or computers. No, if she has anything worth hiding, she’d be clever about it. She quickly began to sweep her mother’s desk, checking the drawers and tapping around for hollow spots. She was rewarded so quickly that for a minute, she thought her mother was losing her touch. She was feeling under the center drawer when she realized it had a false bottom. She popped it and pulled out a file.
The minute Ana opened it, her faith in her mother’s devious ways was instantly restored. Everything in the folder was written in Yucatec Mayan. Now wasn’t that just the perfect up yours to pretty much everyone on the planet who wasn’t Maya. Except Ana. Clearly, her mother hadn’t counted on being double–crossed by her own daughter. What a shame. Ana took out her spy-cam and started photographing the pages. She wouldn’t understand it all, but she’d be able to read enough. She finished with the pictures, replaced the documents, and disappeared.
“Hold him, goddamnit!” SE yelled.
Pax was thrashing around and trying to break free as X and Diesel tried to subdue him in the gym. They were holding on to him for dear life, but Pax was still breaking free in short spurts. Finally, when he went still for a moment, SE got as near to him as he could and closed his eyes. There was a surge of heat and he felt his nagual leave his body. He opened his eyes and watched until he saw the expression on Pax’s face ease.
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