Rabbit hung his head, trying to fight the nausea, the dizziness, the blackness that took on the shadowy shape of a face very like his own, only not. Something cool touched the back of his neck, a gentle, feathery brush of ghostly fingertips that telescoped time, turning him once more into a child. Pain ripped through his soul as memory broke through. He sagged and cried out, dry-heaving as she touched him again, freeing the last of the long-ago pain, and sending him into the memories. And into a vision that wasn’t his own.
The small house tucked amid the trees, glittering with leaf-dappled sunlight, might’ve been made of the same wood and thatch the native Mayan villagers used, but with its blocky construction, framed windows, and silly flower boxes, it looked more like a starter home in the ’burbs. Which in a way it was, Phee thought as she followed the hidden path leading home.
The house and the family inside it were a fresh start, a do-over for both of them after her imprisonment, his bad luck, and the miracle of her and Red-Boar finding each other, healing each other to the point of moving on.
Alerted somehow of her arrival—maybe by a change in the birdsong overhead, or some residue of the mind-bender’s talent he had once wielded—he came through the front door, eyes locking on her instantly. As it always did, her heart missed a beat at the sight of him. Tall and layered with lean muscle that popped beneath nut brown skin, with his skull shaved and his shirt off, he was a fantasy she hadn’t dared dream when she’d hung, naked and shackled, in the Xibalbans’ ritual chamber of horrors. Now, though, she was free to look at him, free to run her hands over him.
Simply and wonderfully free.
He didn’t smile when he saw her; he rarely ever relaxed the fierce scowl that had grooved deep lines beside his mouth, and his eyes would probably always carry shadows, no matter how much time separated them from the massacre that had taken his first family. But Phee had learned to look beneath his fierce exterior and see the subtle easing of tension that said, “I’m glad you’re back.”
Those small signs were all she needed. That, and the sight of two small faces popping out behind their father, the sound of their voices saying, “Mommy’s home!”
Her heart lifted as the boys—both miniature versions of their father, but with her gray eyes, one light haired, the other dark—scrambled through the door and raced toward her, arms outstretched. They whumped into her knee-high and wrapped around her as if she’d been gone for days on a supply run rather than just the couple of hours she had taken to walk the perimeter of their safe zone.
Slinging her rifle over one shoulder, she crouched down and hugged them back.
“All clear?” Red-Boar asked.
“You’ve said it yourself—at this point, checking for footprints is as much a habit as anything.”
It had been four years since she had escaped, three and a half since Red-Boar had found her lying almost dead at the edge of a ruined Mayan pyramid. And it had been more than two years since the last rumor that men wearing the bloodred quatrefoil of the Werigo’s vicious Xibalban sect were searching the highlands for her. Still, though, they stayed vigilant. They had the boys to worry about now.
Oblivious to his mother’s thought process, Rabbie—aka Mr. Short Attention Span—pulled away from her and bounced back to his father, talking animatedly and so fast that only every third word was really intelligible.
Tristan wound his arms around her neck and grinned. “Rabbit and turtle?”
“Again?” she asked, laughing past the sudden tightness in her throat. “You’ve already heard it a zillion times.” The story had been the boys’ favorite even before she and Red-Boar had started using the all-too-apt nicknames.
“Rabbit and turtle!”
“Okay, okay. Let me get a drink first.” She stood, taking Triss with her and feeling the strain of his good, solid weight in her arms. As she headed for the house, a flock of parrots burst from the trees high overhead. She stopped and looked up, grinning at the flashes of red and green. “Look!” she said to Tristan. “What do you think the birdies—”
Gunfire split the air, ripping the peace to shreds, and invisible blows slammed into her—thud, thud, thud—knocking her back and down.
“Phee!” Red-Boar’s anguished bellow roared over the chatter of a second burst of machine-gun fire. A split second later, the underbrush thrashed and six red-robed Xibalbans burst into the clearing.
She didn’t know whether she screamed or not, knew only that her heartbeat was hammering in her ears as she fell. She tried to hang on to Tristan, tried to curl around him and then scramble up and away from the attack. But nothing was working right; she couldn’t hold on to him, couldn’t get up, couldn’t do anything but lie there as more shots rang out and one of the boys started crying.
Dear gods, only one. Only…
Blackness.
Sometime later she awoke. She knew it was later by the angle of the sun, which was suddenly too bright, making her squint through a haze of tears as she tried to focus on Red-Boar’s face. His eyes were swimming with moisture, his face etched as always with grief. But it wasn’t old remembered pain right now; this agony was fresh and new, and wholly focused on her.
She was dying. She didn’t need to see it in his eyes to know it. Her body was numb and cold, her heart stuttering. “Triss… tan?” she asked, forcing her lips to shape the word. “Rabbie?”
A tear broke free and tracked down his face. “Rabbie’s fine. And you’ll…” He swallowed hard. “You’ll see Triss soon.”
“Noo…” She closed her eyes as something broke inside her with utter and devastating finality. There was pain—terrible, rending agony—but there was also a strange sort of peace that said soon it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Soon it would be over—the pain, her life, all of it. Red-Boar, though, would have to live with the agony, not for his own sake, but for Rabbie’s. Her heart broke anew, because there could be no greater torture for him, she knew, than to be once more the survivor.
“Take him home,” she said, knowing that if she hadn’t been chickenshit they would’ve already been in the States with their names changed and the last surviving winikin in charge of their anonymity. But she had been too afraid of the Nightkeepers’ high-pressure, high-tech world, clinging instead to the familiar forests she’d grown up in. That was her mistake, her sin. “Keep him safe and raise him right. Promise me.”
His tears were flowing freely now and his eyes were soul-deep wounds without end. “I promise.”
She tried to respond, but the only thing that came out was her final breath as the world went dim. Then dark.
Then gone.
Rabbit awoke to find himself lying on the stone floor of the library, cold and stiff, with tears drying on his face and an aching hole where his heart used to be.
“Hello?” The word came out as a croak, nearly unrecognizable. “Are you still here?”
There was no answer. She was gone.
He rolled onto his side with a groan, then lay there for a few seconds, gulping for oxygen. His stomach muscles hurt and his throat was raw, like he’d been retching. And his whole world felt off balance, like it had gone off the road and halfway off a cliff, where it teetered, waiting for a stiff wind to send it crashing down.
His eyes locked on two gleaming pieces of stone lying nearby, fitted together. Dragging himself to a woozy sort of upright position, he reached for them, then hesitated.
The eccentrics had faded, one to its normal flinty black and the other to a bright white quartz that was shot through with reddish iron streaks. They looked like normal stones now rather than artifacts that had the power to allow a spirit’s essence to pass from the dark barrier onto the earthly plane. But that was what they had done.
His mother’s ghost had come to him. He had seen her, talked to her.
It almost felt like a dream, except that the eccentrics were there, connected. Just as he felt connected now to her… and to the twin brother he’d forgotten. Tristan. Gods.
Exhaling softly, he touched the sto
nes, which parted with a soft, almost musical grating sound. He didn’t feel anything when he picked them up, didn’t get any indication that they were more than plain stones, not even when he fitted them together once more. They aligned perfectly, with the spiky shapes of one fitting into the indentations of the other to create a single whole. But they didn’t click into place and there was no heat, no power.
He would have tried putting his own magic into them, but he was too damn woozy. He needed to eat something—not more chili dogs—and take some downtime to recharge before he attempted to summon the spirit, or send his own to the dark side of the barrier to speak with her again. And he needed to think things through before he tried any of it.
His gut said she was the real deal, but the things he’d seen in that vision didn’t line up with what he knew of his old man. Not by a long shot.
He’d always figured he’d been an accident, something that Red-Boar had kept around as a sort of sacrifice, a penance, just like the brown robes he had worn and the grisly self-sacrifices he had performed on the cardinal days, though he would never say why he was doing penance or what he was praying for. Now, though… Shit. He didn’t know what to think, how to feel.
Even searching for his mother had really been about figuring out the limits of his magic, not finding some sort of model family at the end of the rainbow. But now… Gods, he used to be part of something. He’d had a real family once… and a brother. A twin, for fuck’s sake.
All the times he’d felt jagged and unfinished, or turned to say something to someone who wasn’t there… well, it made sense now, because twins were sacred to the Nightkeepers, powerful.
The hollow place inside him ached—for himself, for his mother, for Tristan… and, yeah, even for his old man. Because the guy in that vision sure as shit wasn’t the guy he’d grown up with. But at the same time, he knew the past wasn’t the most important thing right now, not with the war coming. Sluggish excitement stirred at the realization that if he could learn to use the stones to summon her again, he might be able to pump her for information about the dark barrier, maybe even the plans of the Banol Kax. And maybe, possibly, how he was supposed to become the crossover.
Dragging himself upright with a muffled groan, he stuck the stones in separate pockets, righted the box, and used an ancient codex to scoop the other, garden-variety stone chips back into it. He knew darn well that Lucius would have an aneurism if he saw the one-of-a-kind-text-turned-dustpan routine, but his instincts were suddenly telling him he needed to work fast, with his pulse throbbing to a tribal drumbeat of, Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry! He was sweating by the time he’d put the box back where it started, stuck the codex back in its folder, and headed for the front of the library, zigzagging like a drunk.
Beyond the racks, the library opened up to a workspace furnished with stone tables and benches. The walls were carved and windowless, and a single wooden door on the short side led out.
As he lurched for the door, it swung open and Myrinne stepped through. He jolted at the sight of her, and at the slash of heat that cut through him—as always—when she came into the room. With her dark hair cut in a sassy, asymmetrical bob and her foxy face bare of makeup, wearing embroidered jeans and a pale yellow shirt that flirted up to show a gleam of jade at her pierced belly button, she looked young and fresh, and so damn beautiful his knees nearly buckled the rest of the way.
Ah, baby.
Longing stabbed, not because he wanted her right then and there—he probably would’ve passed out right the fuck on top of her if he’d tried anything—but because he wanted things to be back the way they used to be: the two of them against the world. Now they were just… different. Tenser, even if he couldn’t always put his finger on what was making him tense.
Her face brightened at the sight of him, showing none of that strain. “Hey! I was just coming to— Gods!” She hurried toward him. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I’m… Shit.” He took a step toward her, sagged, and slapped out an arm for balance.
“Rabbit!” She got her shoulder under his, and managed to prop him back up. Once he was stabilized, she felt his face, then his forehead, her hand cool on his clammy skin. “You’re on fire!”
“Not literally, thank fuck.” He let his cheek rest on the top of her head, let himself breathe in the knowledge that even when things weren’t quite right between them, she cared for him, worried about him, loved him. Which still seemed like a fucking miracle some days. “I’m okay,” he said into her hair. “Just overdid it after pulling so much magic earlier.”
It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he realized he wasn’t going to tell her about the vision.
And what the hell was that about?
She frowned up at him. “You’re sure it’s just a crash? You didn’t get nailed by one of those animals, did you?”
No, he’d been bitten by something else: reluctance. He knew that if he told her about his mother and Tristan, she would start asking questions that he wasn’t ready to answer yet. More, she would push him on experimenting with the eccentrics using any means possible, including dark magic. She didn’t care that he’d promised Dez he wouldn’t try to reawaken the hell-link—as far as she was concerned, he didn’t owe the Nightkeepers anything.
Shit, he just wanted some breathing room. He wanted her to keep looking at him like she was right now, with the glint in her eyes that said she was seeing only him, Rabbit the guy, not Rabbit the pyro, telekine, mind-bender, warrior, crossover, or what-the-fuck-ever.
He caught her hands when she would’ve started patting him down, checking for injuries. “I’ll be fine; I promise. I just need some food.” And a few hours to process things. Because as his scattered brain cells started checking in for duty, he was realizing that he couldn’t tell the Nightkeepers about his vision, either. His mother was Xibalban, after all. The enemy.
Under any other circumstance, keeping this shit all to himself would’ve felt way wrong. But as Myrinne guided him out of the library and into the passenger seat of one of the compound’s ubiquitous Jeeps, clucking and fussing over him as if she too had needed an excuse to let their recent bickering fall aside, it all felt very right. There was a new warmth inside him, singing soft, half-remembered lullabies and letting him know that whatever happened, he wasn’t alone anymore, not deep down in his heart. His mother’s spirit—and maybe even Tristan’s too—was watching him, watching out for him. And thank the gods for that.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Wait up.”
Cara winced at the sound of Zane’s voice behind her, followed by the heavy tread of his boots catching up to her in the hallway. She stopped, though, and turned back, surreptitiously tucking the package of hot dogs she’d filched from the kitchen into her waistband at the small of her back, beneath her shirt, where they pressed like cold, sweaty fingers.
He had changed out of his funeral garb—she suspected they all had, wanting to put some distance between them and the attack—and was dressed down in fatigue pants and an army green T-shirt, with a blue button-down thrown over it and turned up at the cuffs. On one level she recognized that he looked good, with the button-down deepening the blue of his eyes while the tee showed off the iron-pumping physique beneath. On another level, though, she thought that his eyes were too dark, his muscling too heavy, his face too much on a level with hers, when she would’ve preferred lighter eyes on a leaner, taller man.
And it was a really, really bad idea comparing him and Sven. Besides, there was no comparison, really. One wanted her, while the other wanted to ride to the rescue when it suited him. And she just wanted to do her job for the next three months or so, and then leave all this—and both of them—behind.
“What’s up?” she said, angling her body so he couldn’t see the hot-dog bulge.
His eyes searched hers. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Fine.” Even with him, she didn’t dare be anything but fine. Not if she wanted the winiki
n to follow her lead. “How are the others?” They had still been muttering over their forearm marks—and her lack of one—when Dez had called her to the royal suite to give her report on the attack.
“They’re rattled. Scared. Wondering why the ward didn’t stop those things and what the hell else is going to go wrong next.”
Was it a good thing or bad that he didn’t mention the marks? She tried to tell from his expression, but saw only his concern and a questioning empathy that silently prodded, Are you sure you’re okay?
“I’m fine,” she said again, then realized he hadn’t asked the question aloud. Shit. Flushing slightly, she added, “Should we do a Bud-’n’-bitch?” The officially unofficial gripe sessions were held once or twice a month in the Nightkeepers’ old training hall, which the rebel winikin had appropriated and renovated into a rec room. Part town meeting, part drinking game, and with no weapons allowed, the sessions gave the winikin an opportunity to blow off steam in no-Nightkeepers-allowed privacy.
He shook his head. “I think you should give it a day or two, see what the brain trust comes up with, and go from there. Besides, tonight might not be the best night to stick everyone in a room and throw alcohol in the mix.”
“Yeah. Probably not.” Edging back a step, feeling beyond awkward with a pound of hot dogs stuck down her pants, she made a gotta go gesture. “Well, I’m going to—”
“He was right, you know,” Zane interrupted, and the sudden set of his jaw said that this was what he’d come to tell her.
She stilled. “He who?”
“The coyote mage.” That was Zane’s name for Sven and was said, as always, with a faint sneer, but the bulk of his anger seemed self-directed as he said, “I should have sent you ahead with Lora. I should have had your back.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t realized he had been close enough to overhear, wondered what else he’d picked up from her and Sven’s exchange. Carefully, she said, “I gave you an order and you followed it. You did the right thing.”
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