He saw her at twenty-three, when she had come back to Skywatch to lead the rebel winikin, looking confident, capable, dead sexy, and nothing like the girl she had been, yet somehow exactly like that girl.
He saw her just now, facing down a hellhound with no armor, no shield, and no backup. And because unlike Mac he could imagine the future, he also saw what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten there when he did. It wasn’t tough to picture—gods knew he’d seen plenty of bodies over the past six months. And he’d be damned if he added hers to the list.
Her eyes narrowed. “Back off, Nightkeeper. I was just doing my job.”
“It’s not your job to get yourself killed,” he grated, then leaned in closer to make his point, putting them nose-to-nose. He could feel the soft warmth coming off her skin, smell the faintest hint of flowers and spice turned sharp by the scents of battle. And he was all too aware of the magic riding high in his bloodstream, making him want to do things he had long ago filed under Bad Idea. Gritting his teeth and willing the images away, he ground out, “The winikin can’t afford to lose their leader.”
She scowled. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Bullshit. If Mac and I hadn’t just rolled in when your mayday came through—”
“One of the others would’ve saved my ass,” she interrupted. “And there’s no way I was going to hide behind the shield and watch Zane and Lora die.”
“Zane. Right.” If he’d had fur it would’ve bristled. “Any reason he didn’t send you and Lora ahead and cover you?”
“Because I ordered him to get his ass moving, and it wasn’t like we had time to stand around and rock-paper-scissors it.”
“Sven!” Dez called. “Get over here.”
Growling under his breath, Sven looked to where the other Nightkeepers were gathered beside the charred, smoking pyre, no doubt in the first stages of a “what the hell were those things, and how the fuck did they get inside Skywatch?” conversation. “We need five minutes,” he called.
“No, we don’t.” Cara took a big step back, creating a gap between them that felt far greater than a few feet of space.
“We’re not finished.”
“Oh, yes, we are.” She held up a hand. “Look, we had a deal. You do your thing and I do mine, and we leave the past in the past. Remember?”
Yeah, he remembered, all right. It had sounded good at the time, back when she’d first returned to Skywatch and they had been trying to find a way to coexist without things getting personal. Now, though, he wanted to get personal, to a degree. He needed to make things right—or at least own up to what he’d done wrong. The past six months had changed him, he hoped for the better.
He exhaled through his nose. “Look, Cara, I—”
“Something’s wrong,” she interrupted, attention fixed on the others, where there was a sudden flurry of activity, a few shouts. “Come on.” She was in motion before he could call her back, beelining for where JT was suddenly faced off opposite Carlos, both of them red faced and furious.
Sven cursed and strode after her, knowing she was right. Duty called. And wasn’t that a bitch?
As Cara headed toward the others, she was too aware of Sven walking beside her, Mac dogtrotting at his heels. The two moved alike, making her think of wide-open spaces and the kind of freedom she was suddenly dying for, because she was raw from the funeral, shaky from the attack, and churned up over Sven’s unexpected return, which could spell trouble. The rebel members of the winikin mistrusted her old connection to the coyote mage, thinking it put her closer to the traditionalists or, worse, the Nightkeepers themselves. That meant she needed to watch not just her own step, but their perceptions, as well.
Sure enough, as she drew nearer, a couple of the rebels shot her dark looks that accused her of fraternizing. Or maybe the accusation was inside her, coming from the heat that was still vibrating through her body, singing a familiar inner refrain of, He’s back, he’s back, he’s back, just as it had when she was younger. Back then she’d thought each time he came home that he’d finally be ready to settle down, stick around, be there for the people who needed him.
Focus, she told herself, shoving aside the lingering heat and the churning excitement that belonged to the too-optimistic girl she couldn’t afford to be anymore. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she reached the winikin. They gave way, muttering and shifting, letting her into the group and then closing around her, shutting Sven on the outside.
As she reached the center, JT snarled, “Fuck this,” and spun and stalked away in the opposite direction, shoulder-checking a couple of guys who didn’t get clear fast enough.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dez shaking his head as if to say, Typical, but she knew that JT might have a temper and a major shoulder chip when it came to the Nightkeepers, but the fiery rebel wasn’t irrational. If he was in a mood, there was a reason.
Just as she turned to ask her father what the hell was going on, another of the newer winikin, Sebastian, caught her arm. “You going to show us yours?” He was a hard-edged fiftyish man who had lost his wife and child in the massacre and made no secret of his hatred for the magi… and right now, he was looking at her like she was the enemy. His eyes were hard and harsh, his grip rough enough to put a stir of fear in her belly, though she didn’t—couldn’t—let it show.
“Godsdamn it, Sebastian.” She yanked her arm away. “What the hell are you—”
She broke off as he shoved back his right sleeve to bare his forearm… which now wore a black, tattoolike mark of two interconnected ovals, along with eyes and a gaping beak, and the hint of feathers. Cara froze as her heart thudda-thuddaed in her chest, kicked off rhythm by shock.
Oh, holy shit. It was the mark of the owl bloodline.
And it hadn’t been there before the funeral.
Cloth rustled and a few more of the rebels pushed up their sleeves to bare their forearms, which now bore their bloodline marks. She saw an eagle, an ax, a curl of smoke, and two others she didn’t recognize. But she sure as hell recognized the despair in their eyes. She’d seen it in her own right after Carlos had forced her marks on her, indenturing her to Sven and putting her under Nightkeeper law whether she liked it or not. Because where the Nightkeepers’ forearm marks were the symbols of status and power, the marks of the winikin made them into servants, pairing the aj winikin “I serve” glyph with smaller bloodline glyphs.
The rebels hadn’t chosen to have their souls linked to those of specific Nightkeeper children, and they hadn’t been through the marking ceremony.… Yet they were suddenly wearing bloodline marks, as if the gods themselves had commanded it.
“Well?” Sebastian demanded. “Where’s yours?”
Oh, shit. Her stomach clutched and she reflexively clasped her right wrist beneath her jacket, which suddenly felt heavy and too hot. The coyote and the aj winikin had faded when Sven sent her away from Skywatch, leaving her with a chronic low-grade malaise that hadn’t cleared up until she returned to the compound. Still, though, she hadn’t gotten her marks back when she returned, and she’d been damned grateful to have that freedom. Now, though…
She took a deep breath and pushed back her sleeve, then hissed out a long, slow breath. Because her arm was bare, and she didn’t have a clue whether that was a good thing or not.
By later that afternoon, as Sven’s debriefing with Dez in the royal quarters headed into its second hour, the Nightkeepers knew three things about the attack: One, the blood-ward surrounding the compound hadn’t been deactivated to let the creatures through; two, there was no evidence of a magical hot spot within Skywatch that might’ve been used as a conduit to bring the creatures up from the underworld; and three, there hadn’t been any detectable power surges suggesting a spell other than Rabbit’s fire magic.
In other words, they didn’t have a fucking clue how the things had gotten in.
More, the brain trust—aka Jade, Lucius, and the Nightkeepers’ ancestral library—couldn’t figure out exac
tly what the attackers had been. They didn’t seem to have been true demons—too easy to kill; they were too big to have been demon-possessed animals of earthly origin; and they didn’t match up to anything else in the records.
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 s
ee 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 planned.”
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.”
Magic Unchained n-7 Page 3