So for the moment, Skywatch was sporting some serious motion and magic detectors, and everyone was staying armed, indoors and out, while trying to get back to business as usual.
“Sorry,” Dez said as he hung up the house phone after yet another update. “Where were we?”
The Nightkeepers’ leader was sleekly bald—a characteristic of the strongest magi of the serpent bloodline—and he wore a muscle shirt that showed off the hunab ku king’s glyph on his bulging upper biceps. With his black leather jacket slung over the back of a fussy sofa—a holdover from when the former rulers, Strike and Leah, had lived in the royal suite—and wearing ripped jeans and a studded belt, he looked more like a rocker than a king, but his eyes were piercing and intelligent, and his questions had made it clear that he’d studied all the reports Sven had e-mailed back over the past six months.
“I think we got through most of it,” Sven said, keeping his voice dead level and his face set, because that was the only way he could talk about the things he’d seen and done down south. A low whine came from the floor behind his chair, though, where Mac had finally settled.
Dez crooked a finger. “Let’s finish it, then.”
“After Sasha and Rabbit confirmed that the human hosts died during the very first stages of the xombi infection and the virus allowed the Banol Kax to control the body from that point on, we didn’t have a choice. We spent the next few weeks hunting and exterminating the infected villagers.” Sven paused, wishing he could spit the bitter taste from his mouth, swallowed it instead. “It’s been a month since the last report of a new infection. Rabbit’s friends down there will keep their ears to the ground and let us know if and when a new outbreak occurs… or something else happens.”
Dez nodded. “The demons need to get a foothold here on earth. With the xombis knocked back, they’ll regroup and try something else.”
“I’ll head back down south in a few days,” Sven said. “Between Mac’s nose and my magic, we’ll have a better chance of picking up on whatever they try next.” And he’d be out and moving, away from the hemmed-in box canyon and the training compound that might’ve been built to accommodate hundreds, even thousands, but somehow felt overcrowded with only seventy or eighty people rubbing elbows.
“Actually, I’d like you to stick around for a while.”
Sven smothered the wince that came when his bone-deep need to keep moving bumped up against the fealty oath he had sworn to his king. “You and Reese headed north?” The two were Denver natives, and had set up an urban center of ops in an old warehouse in their former ’hood. Sven had Skywatch-sat once or twice when the king and his mate had gone up to the city, keeping a Nightkeeper presence at the compound while the others were on assignment.
“Actually, I’ve got something else in mind.” Dez paused. “How are you getting on with Carlos and Cara these days?”
“Fine.” Or they would be fine once he had a chance to sit down with them. Yelling at Cara hadn’t been part of the plan, but he could fix it. He would fix it, all of it. He’d made that promise to himself.
Dez nodded. “Good, because I need someone on the inside.”
“Whoa.” Sven held up a hand. “Wait. On the inside of what?”
“The winikin,” Dez said flatly. “Those creatures came in during Aaron’s funeral, and it sure as hell looked like they were after the winikin, not us. I want to think it’s another sign that there’s some sort of winikin magic waking up, but the cynical side of me says there might be something more… as in, maybe one of them already found his—or her—magic and is using it against us.”
“Hang on. You think what happened today was sabotage?” Sven shook his head. “No way. Not a winikin.” Even the rebels admitted that the Nightkeepers were humanity’s best chance of surviving the war.
“Rabbit said it didn’t feel like any magic he recognized. And they all got their bloodline marks, even without the ceremony. That says magic to me.”
“But… shit.” His brain raced even as his instincts kept saying, No way. “The First Father turned the slaves who escaped with him from Egypt into the winikin, right around when they came to this continent. That was way before the magic split into its light and dark halves. So whatever power they’ve got—if anything—would be related to the ancestral magic, which Rabbit would recognize.” He paused. “And even if you’re right and a winikin could summon those creatures, what would be the point? You said it yourself—they seemed to be targeting the winikin. Besides, if they were supposed to attack the Nightkeepers, why go after us this close to the end date? Are you saying you think one of the winikin is in league with the Banol Kax?” Because, shit, that was a hell of an accusation. One that, if it got out, would fuck any hope of solidarity.
“Not necessarily.” Dez was silent for a moment, no doubt deciding how much more to say. He and his mate, Reese, were as tight-lipped as they were brilliant strategists, and they formed a closed unit at the top of the hierarchy—some thought too closed at times. After a moment, though, he said, “Look at the history. A thousand years ago, the Xibalban sect split from the Nightkeepers and took the dark magic with them because they believed the Nightkeepers had it wrong, that the sky gods were the ones who wanted to take over the earth and the Banol Kax were the good guys, right?”
“So Rabbit would have us believe.” Ever since a run-in with a dying Xibalban shaman the year before, Rabbit had been trying to get the Nightkeepers to seriously consider that their long-ago ancestors had been tricked into believing in the sky gods. “You don’t think he’s been experimenting with dark magic again, do you?”
Dez shook his head. “No. My gut says he’s toeing the line. But who’s to say there’s not another group of Xibalbans out there? We went from thinking they all died out in the fifteen hundreds to thinking Iago and his red robes were the last of them… only to discover that Iago’s people were a nasty offshoot of an original, relatively peaceful sect. What if there’s another offshoot out there? And what if they got to one of the rebels?”
“I don’t see how that could be possible. Rabbit scoured the area a couple of years ago looking for information about his mother, and then did the rounds again when the xombi virus hit, trying to find a cure. If there were other magic users out there, he would’ve ID’d them by now.”
“We’re not in the highlands.” Dez gestured to the compound surrounding them. “What if there’s another group like us, more peaceful than Iago’s crowd, but that believes in the underworld as strongly as we believe in the sky gods?”
“We would’ve seen something by now, and you know it.” Sven paused. “So why are you hearing horses and trying to talk yourself into zebras?”
The king exhaled heavily. “Because we know how to fight the Xibalbans, and we could even handle a traitor or two… but the Banol Kax scare the crap out of me. If that’s what broke through here today, we’re in deep shit. So right now, yeah, I’m hoping for stripes.”
Sven wished he had a joke at the ready, one of the quick toss-off lines that used to come so easily for him. But those days were gone. Now he could only shake his head and say, “Better not let the others hear you talking like that. You’re our crazy-brave king who’s not afraid of anything.”
“Unless we get some more weapons in our arsenal, crazy-brave isn’t going to be enough.” Dez’s expression fell back into its usual resolute lines. “But we’ll soldier on and keep pushing the boundaries. It’s all we can do, right now.” He paused. “Which brings things back to you. Are you willing to lean on Carlos and Cara for intel on the winikin—especially the newcomers—without letting them know what you’re up to?”
Shit. He didn’t want to… but he could see the king’s point. “You’re not making it an order?”
Dez shook his head. “The way I see it, they’re the only family you’ve ever known, so I don’t want to force you to spy on them.” His lips quirked. “Besides, the last time I gave you a winikin-related order, things didn’t go exactly the way I had plann
ed.”
After telling Cara that she was Jox’s chosen successor, Sven had given her the opportunity to bolt and she’d taken it. Then, a few weeks later, she showed up at Skywatch with the rebels… on her own terms.
Sven shrugged and pointed out, “She got here eventually.”
“Yes, she did, and I’m far better off with her willing cooperation than I would’ve been if I had forced her into the position. That’s why you’re getting a choice now.”
“What happens if I say no?”
“I’ll use Rabbit to eavesdrop. I don’t want to, though.”
“Christ,” Sven muttered, though Carlos had boxed his ears more than once early on for calling on the son of the Christians’ God. “It’d be a fucking train wreck if they figured out you mind-bent them to get information.” Bad enough if they caught wind that the king suspected them of treason. If they realized Rabbit was using his magical talents to spy on them telepathically… Shit. Twenty times worse. A hundred.
“Like I said, I don’t want to do it. But we can’t afford to have this blow up.”
Then don’t ask me to do it, Sven almost said, because gods knew he’d fucked up major assignments before, like the time he’d fumbled a translocation spell during a museum heist and Patience had wound up hurt. He’d gotten steadier since bonding with Mac, but he hadn’t been given any really sensitive tasks since then, either. Most of his assignments had been of the slash-and-burn variety. Or tracking. He and Mac together were hell on wheels finding shit, and it kept them on the move. But spying? And using Cara and Carlos to do it? He didn’t know about that.
“Why not ask someone else? There are plenty of others who are closer to their winikin than I am.” Hello, understatement.
“Because you also worked with JT down south, and you got along with him as well as anyone outside of the rebels has, which gives you connections in both camps. And besides”—a ghost of a smile touched Dez’s lips—“Reese and I agree that if Rabbit is our loose cannon, you’re our wild card. We have this feeling that you haven’t gotten to the bottom of yourself yet, and that if and when you do, big things could happen.”
“Big good, or big bad?”
The smile got real. “That’s the ‘wild’ part.” The king paused. “Do you gamble?”
Sven thought of winter nights, a fire in the hearth, and an ancient wagering game spread out on the kitchen table: the patolli, which was an ancestor of the modern Parcheesi, with rolls of the dice, figures moving around the board, and strategies of defense and offense. Carlos had used it to teach him war games; Cara had used it to win her way out of chores; and her mom, Essie, had just liked having the four of them together in one place. When the memory threatened to hit the nostalgia button, he set it firmly aside and shook his head. “Not for a long time.”
“Well, maybe it’s time to give it a shot.” The king stood. “Think about it and let me know.”
But as Sven strode away from the royal suite, with Mac at his heels and no real destination other than “away,” he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do. If there was a problem—or worse, a traitor—it needed to be dealt with, and fast… but if there wasn’t, and it came out that he’d been getting close to Cara and Carlos to spy on the winikin, it wouldn’t be worth trying to fix those relationships. In fact, if that happened he might as well just hit the road and keep on going, because they—and especially she—would never speak to him again.
CHAPTER THREE
“Lame, lame, boring, meh, lame…” Near dusk on the day of the funeral gone awry, in a dark corner at the rear of the long, narrow stone room that housed the library, Rabbit rifled through yet another box of carefully labeled artifacts. The brain trust had culled the pieces as being more or less related to the boar bloodline, so he was going over them in the hopes that he’d get a vibe. So far, though, there was a whole lot of nothing going on.
Okay, the artifacts themselves were pretty cool—he had come across a set of spear-thrower missiles that were made out of intricately carved peccary-tusk ivory and weighted with slivers of stone, and he had been tempted to swap out the ceremonial knife he wore on his belt for a longer, thinner blade made of pale green stone and carved with repeating boar motifs. But a MAC-10 loaded with jade tips—or better yet a fireball—kicked ass over a spear-thrower any day, and the knife he wore had been his old man’s. And although Red-Boar had been a miserable son of a bitch, tradition said you used the weapon that got handed down, like it or lump it. Besides, he wasn’t browsing for some “ooh, shiny” shit to take with him just because it appealed. The magi all had boxes to go through, because the Nightkeepers badly needed some new tricks.
“Boring, boring…” He paused to pick up a weird-ass clay statue that was about the length of his forearm and covered with a red pigment that had faded to Pepto pink. Although the glyph incised on the bottom was a boar, the thing itself looked like some sort of waterbird. Eyeballing it, he muttered, “Shit, glad you’re not giving me any tingles.” He could just picture himself going up against the dark lords wielding a Death Flamingo, or whatever the fuck it was. No frigging thank you. He shook his head and put it back down. “Sissy, boring, lame, lame…”
Gods, there was a ton of stuff from the boar bloodline. Then again, the boars had been the royal bloodline prior to the jaguars, reigning during the first millennium, when the library was established, so he guessed it made sense they would figure heavily in the archived material. And he didn’t mind some quiet time alone in the library, really. It was peaceful, and he’d been pretty damn short on peace lately.
The cluster-fuck with the xombi virus had taken something out of him, plain and simple. He had gone down there thinking he, Sven, and the others would be able to handle the outbreak, save the villagers, and block the magical pipeline that was causing the problem. Instead, he’d found himself razing the very villages he’d gone there intending to protect, then helping Sven track and kill the xombis, napalming dozens of them, hundreds.
He still woke up pretty much every morning with the stink of it lodged in his sinuses.
“No buzz, no buzz, boring, boring…” He moved to a nearby rack, stopping at a carved bone miniature of five warriors wearing ceremonial garb, toting spear chuckers and stalking a wild peccary. Beside that was an incense burner painted to show a boar-bloodline warrior offering his heart to a woman who turned her face away.
That one pinged, though not because of any magic.
Damn it. He rubbed the heel of his hand over the center of his chest, which had suddenly gone hollow and achy because of how things had been between him and his human girlfriend, Myrinne, lately. He loved her one hundred percent—he’d kill for her, die for her, and anything in between—but he wished he could get her to stop pressuring him to experiment with the other half of his magic. More, he wished that it didn’t feel like more and more that when she said, I love you, it really meant, I love you when you do what I want. Especially when what she wanted him to do went against the king’s orders.
Last year, a dying Xibalban shaman had named Rabbit the “crossover” and said that his mingled blood made him the key to winning the war using both the light magic of the Nightkeepers and the dark powers of his Xibalban half. But not long after that, their enemy Iago had managed to break Rabbit’s connection to the dark magic—and since then, pretty much every time he’d tried to make a real impact he’d just wound up making things worse, until Dez had finally ordered him to stop trying to reconnect with his darker side. These days he was doing his damnedest to follow orders and be a good mage, a good soldier. And that was driving Myrinne up a freaking wall.
“Shit.” Letting go of the big, weighted-down box he’d just been about to open, he launched to his feet, suddenly needing to pace off the restless energy that came from inside the hollow place in his chest, along with the sly inner voice that said he was a lucky son of a bitch to have her and he’d better do whatever it took not to fuck it up. Once he was on his feet, though, he swayed and had to slap a
hand out to steady himself against the nearest wall. “Whoa. Vertigo.”
Sweat popped on his forehead and crawled down his spine, and a rush of nausea filled the hollows. He swallowed hard, then blinked to clear his eyes when they threatened to fog.
Shit, maybe that third chili dog had been a bad idea. He’d needed to recharge his batteries, but maybe he should’ve gone with nice, safe pasta instead of five-alarm pig by-products and extra pepper jack.
Except… His head whipped up as logic made it through the spins, reminding him that the magi didn’t usually get pukey from stuff like food poisoning. Which meant this was something else.
Like something in that box, maybe?
Backtracking, he dropped to his heels and tugged on the cross-folded flaps to open the box. It was more than half full of flat stones that had been carved into all sorts of weird shapes. The inner flap was labeled in Lucius’s crabbed writing: Eccentrics for our favorite eccentric.
“Nice,” Rabbit muttered. Lucius—the Nightkeepers’ head researcher and an ass kicker in his own right—might’ve rolled his eyes a little at his request and grumbled about needles in haystacks, but he’d come through and collected a shit ton of eccentrics.
The small, flat pieces of stone were all different shapes, from abstract geometrics to detailed images of people, animals, glyphs, gods… it was all fair game. In ancient times, they had been worn as pendants or symbols of office, tucked into pockets as charms, or even busted up as sacrifices. The small stone artifacts were as common as arrowheads farther north, and hadn’t been thought to have any real magic… until the dying shaman had given one to Rabbit and named him as its wielder, suggesting that some eccentrics, at any rate, could be important.
But although Rabbit had been able to sense power in the small black flint carving, he’d never managed to trigger any sort of magic. Which was why he had asked Lucius to cull others for him, thinking he might need a full set, or a Nightkeeper half to go with the Xibalban piece.
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