Hopefully.
Mac barked. Friend!
Sven pictured a crowd of people, everyone he could think of who was at Skywatch, then the Jeeps. All friends. Jeeps. Then come back. Fast! Fastfastfast! He didn’t dare send more than that, hoped that wasn’t too much. But, damn, he needed help and he needed it twenty minutes ago, and both his armband and the comm device on the ATV were dead, killed by a storm that had to be something more than weather.
Mac barked twice in answer, and lightning flashed as he wheeled and bolted away, flying back up the way they had come. Sven felt him heading away, moving fast, purpose fixed in his mind. Hurry, he thought, though the mind link was already growing faint with distance. Then he turned back to the cave, bellowing, “Cara?”
There was no answer.
Roaring her name, he forced his legs through the clinging muck and shoved his body through the churning current, slogging, gutting it out, aiming for the cave mouth. The force of the water pounded into him, dragged at him, but he held fast. Ten more steps. Eight. Seven.
Then he stepped onto emptiness as the ground disappeared beneath him. And, bellowing her name, he flung himself into the foamy churn.
The icy water closed around him, blocking out the sound of the storm. For a second the freezing liquid felt entirely alien, like he’d never surfed the big waves or dived the Great Barrier, never even fucking dog-paddled. Then the current grabbed him and yanked him into its flow, and nearly two decades spent above and below the ocean came back between one heartbeat and the next.
He instinctively read the undertow and the countercurrent that said he was headed for the rock wall. Instead of fighting it, he wrapped his arms around his head and went limp, and let it happen. He slammed into the rocky surface with bruising, slashing force and smothered an underwater groan. Fuck, that hurt! But when his head broke the surface, he struck out, swimming with the current that curved around the base of the wall, knowing that when he reached the cave mouth, the undertow was going to be a bitch.
The roar of water surrounded him, threatened to consume him, but he had to get in there; the seconds were ticking beneath his skin. Please, gods, let her be okay.
Then he was at the huge vacu-suck where the floodwaters raced into the cave. Every survival instinct he possessed said to get the fuck out of there, but instead he frog-kicked down and in. The current grabbed him, yanking him down and corkscrewing him in a dizzying spin. Blood pounding in his head, he let the current carry him, pummel him, pull him, spin him around. Then, finally, it softened, eased, let go, and he broke back into blessed air.
“Son of a bitch.” He sucked in huge lungfuls while registering that the water noise and eddies around him said he was in a big cave. “Cara?”
“Sven.” It was barely a gasp, but he heard it. He heard it!
Calling on his magic, he cast a foxfire that lit a water-filled cavern and illuminated bright, vivid cave paintings. The images moved and swirled, and he wasn’t sure if that was a trick of the light or some sort of storm magic. Because there was definitely magic in the cave; it suddenly hummed in his bones and sparkled in the air, making it seem that a zoo’s worth of animals spun and dipped. Lower, down near the waterline, coyotes danced in a circle.
For a second, his eyes locked on those coyotes and something stirred inside him. Then he tore his attention free to scan the cave. “Cara!”
There was no sign of her. There was only the water.
Gods!
He’d been going with the current, but now he struck out swimming, casting around, trying to find her. The water coming in through the cave mouth piled up against the far wall in a foamy mass, but not nearly as much as he would expect; it had to be going somewhere. Which meant there was an outlet somewhere in the chamber, submerged. Had she been swept farther downstream?
But her words echoed in his head. I’m trapped. Okay, but how? Where? He dived beneath the surface, searching for some clue, but the water was murky brown, the current chaotic, the base of the pool nothing but smooth sand.
“Cara!” He shouted her name each time he surfaced, calling her over and over again. And, finally, he thought he caught a gurgled scream. Kicking to rear himself as high out of the water as he could, he cast another foxfire, a third, lighting the cave day-bright. And he saw a place at the center of the pool where the water swirled and churned rather than flowing. There was something down there!
He floundered toward the spot, sucked in a breath, and submerged, hands outstretched. He found stone and followed it to a cargo strap, felt along the tight strap, and touched a hand. It grabbed on to him instantly, clutching in panic.
The move brought a spurt of relief. And he’d found her just in time too, because although the churning water had given her some extra chances at oxygen, she was fully submerged now, wide-eyed and scared, spitting bubbles as she screamed his name and begged for air.
Rearing up, he gulped a lungful, then ducked down, slanted his lips across hers, and gave her his breath in a kiss that wasn’t a kiss, but was full of feeling anyway. Once, twice, and again he did it, until her eyes lost a little bit of their desperation. Then, racing time, he hooked his legs on either side of the stone slab she was bound to, pulled his ceremonial knife, and started hacking at the nylon straps, which were tough and slippery. Come on, you bastards. Come on!
Rage caught up with him then. Someone had done this to her. Who? Why? He didn’t know, couldn’t deal with it now. But fury flowed through him, then coalesced to a cold, icy vow: He was going to get her out of this no matter what it took. He was going to find whoever had done this to her. And he was going to fucking kill them.
He hacked through the chest strap and loosened one wrist, and she reared up, clutching at him as she shuddered and coughed, sucking in huge, ragged breaths. Her hair was plastered to her face, so black against her pasty white skin that she looked entirely colorless until her eyes blinked open and locked on his, twin gleams of honeyed brown that were warm, vibrant, and totally at odds with the world around them. “Cara.” The word was a pained groan that ripped at his chest, coming from the place where he kept all the things he couldn’t say.
“Hurry,” she whispered between trembling, colorless lips. “Cut the others.” The water was up to her throat and climbing.
He fumbled with the rest of her bonds, sawing through the one at her hips and then fucking ripping the last ankle strap free on a convulsive heave that was part fury, part relief. Then he dragged her into his arms and clutched her close. “Jesus gods.” He buried his face in the crook of her neck. “I thought you were already gone.”
She burrowed in, held on. “I’m f-freezing.”
He wasn’t much better off, his body cold, his wet clothes plastered to him. But now that he had her, knew she was alive, fury kindled in his chest. “Who did this?”
She hesitated, but then turned her face away and said in a low voice, “Zane planned it, with Lora helping. I don’t know if any of the others were involved.”
“Son of a—” He broke off, knowing now wasn’t the time and anger wasn’t what she needed. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” Sorrier than she knew, because he’d been fucking watching those two and he hadn’t seen it. Rage turned his insides murderously cold, and he felt like part of Mac was inside him, telling him to find, fight, kill! Not now, though. She needed him, and for a change he was there. It was a new, humbling sensation, one that put a funny twist in his throat as he gathered her tighter against his chest. “We need to get the hell out of here. Can you swim?”
“Yes, I—”
His stomach sank as a rumbling noise started up, coming from gods only knew where, interrupting him. He scanned a full three-sixty for the cause, but didn’t find it.
“Look!” She pointed up, face blanking with new terror.
He followed her gesture and his heart stopped—seriously fucking stopped—at the sight of the cave roof dropping down toward them, running along a seam that hadn’t been visible before. Magic, machinery, it didn’t mat
ter how it was moving, only that it was, and what it meant. Holy fucking shit.
They were in a trick cave, a damned magical hot spot.
The Nightkeepers’ original intersection, a circular ceremonial chamber buried beneath the main pyramid of Chichén Itzá, had been able to magically seal itself off and drop into the subterranean river below it, subjecting the magi trapped inside it to a near-death experience by drowning: one of the most sacred sacrifices, bringing the sufferers close to the gods themselves. The room at Chichén Itzá had been designed for the Godkeeper ceremony, and had worked only during the cardinal solstices and equinoxes. But although this was no cardinal day—it was just another freaking Tuesday—when Sven looked up, he saw that the zoo was way closer than it had started. More, only the lower halves of the coyotes were visible. Cara’s eyes, wide and terrified, snapped to his. “What is this place?”
“Doesn’t matter, because we’re getting out of here.” He threaded her fingers through his weapons belt. “Swim as hard as you can and don’t let go of me, no matter what. Okay?”
At her nod, he got an arm around her waist and, with a powerful thrust of his legs, launched them off the altar toward the cave opening.
The current grabbed them, tumbled them, but they fought it inch by inch, swimming hard. She struggled gamely beside him, but he could feel her flagging, her cold-sapped strength no match for his enhanced reserves. “I’ve got you,” he said over the rumble of the ceiling and the rush of water. “Just hang on.” He would get her out of there, get her safe, get whoever had done this to her. And then… Shit, he didn’t know what he was going to do then.
Suddenly, a new sound joined the rumble and the rush: a stone-on-stone grating noise that had the knots in his gut coiling to the snapping point.
“Look! Hurry!” Her voice cracked on the words, and she started swimming harder with a burst of terrified energy, headed for the place where a stone slab was sliding across the little bit of the cave mouth that was still visible.
“Shit.” He called his magic and threw a shield spell into the narrowing gap, but it fizzled and died, warning him that, same as the ceremonial chamber beneath Chichén Itzá, his magic wouldn’t work in the chamber. The low-level foxfire spell was the best he could do, and even those lights were dimming as the ceiling crowded them down to the waterline while, with a grating noise, the slab slid into place, trapping them.
Cara gave a wordless cry and stopped swimming to stare at the place where their exit had been. She turned back, looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Tell me you brought backup.”
“They’re on their way.” Gods willing, Mac had got the message across. “But without magic…” He trailed off. Even if Strike or Anna could detect them within the stone chamber, they wouldn’t be able to ’port in. And if they were truly locked inside a ritual chamber—and that was sure as hell what it seemed like—all the fireballs in the world wouldn’t be able to get them out until the cavern’s spell had run its course.
But what spell? What ritual? And by the gods, how was he going to get her out alive? She wasn’t a mage, didn’t have the same natural resilience he did. And although her big personality and the huge effect she had on him made him forget how small she was sometimes, he was acutely aware now of the size difference between them. She was light and lithe against him, and so fine boned he thought he could break her if he held on too hard.
Either she had shifted or he had changed his grip; he wasn’t sure. But they were holding each other now, wrapped around each other as they treaded muddy water. The magic must have closed off whatever outflow normally let the subterranean lake drain, because the water gradually stilled around them, leaving only the rumble of the ceiling as it dropped nearer and nearer still.
There was less than a foot of headroom left. They were running out of time. His mind raced. He had to do something. But what?
Cast the spell. It came to him on a whisper of thought, an urgency that seemed to come from the moist air around them. One of the foxfires touched the surface and blinked out, even though the spells could usually withstand water. This wasn’t normal water, though; it was water inside a ceremonial chamber, a magical hot spot. And maybe that was the answer. He might not know what ritual he was supposed to perform, but he was a coyote, and there were coyotes on the wall. Maybe his magic would be enough to trigger whatever spell needed to be completed before the chamber would drain. Please, gods, let it be enough.
Heart thudding suddenly in his chest, he lifted his knife and rasped, “I need to—”
“Do it,” she said. “I don’t care what it is; just do it. This is your world, not mine. You’re the one who’s got to get us out of here.” She tightened her grip on him for a beat, though he didn’t know if she was reassuring him or saying good-bye.
No, damn it. Not good-bye. He was going to get them out of there.
The ceiling bumped his head, forcing him down as he caught her hands in his and gripped them tight, holding on to her. In that moment, he was achingly aware of the way she fit seamlessly, perfectly, even though they were so different in size and temperament. But where those differences had loomed so large in the past, now they mattered far less than the heat that rose between them, making the water seem suddenly warmer than before. He couldn’t let that matter as much as he wanted to, though. He never could.
The water hit his chin and crept higher. His heart hammered in his chest, but he forced himself to stay calm and meet her eyes, hold them as he cut his own palms, first one and then the other, so he bled into the water. The air began to hum, singing the high, sweet note of power. Magic. The second foxfire died, then the third, but it didn’t matter, because the magic was there inside him, racing in his veins and lighting up the water around them with red-gold sparkles. It poured through him, expanding his very soul, until he felt bigger, stronger, more powerful than ever, yet still not enough to fight the earth and stone that held them prisoner. He was going to have to rely on the gods for that.
The gods… and Cara. Because somehow he needed to bring her with him into the magic. It was the only way.
Drawing her close, he cut her palms to match his own and then threaded their fingers together so their palms aligned blood to blood. He didn’t feel a blood-link, didn’t feel anything but her narrow fingers in his, yet that was enough to shift his heart in his chest. Please, gods, he whispered deep in his soul as he took a last deep breath and straightened to sink beneath the water. When she did the same, trembling against him, he touched his lips to hers and whispered against her skin, “Pasaj och.”
The magic of a barrier connection flared inside him, even though it shouldn’t have been able to form with them still several days away from the equinox. The power was bottomless, eternal, and it reached out of him to surround her as her eyes went wide in the red-gold sparkles. Then he leaned in and kissed her, and this time he didn’t hold back, instead pouring into her all the wishes and longings he’d kept locked inside for so long. She stiffened, clutching at him. He could feel her surprise, her confusion, and the heat that leaped up in answer. Then there was a soundless detonation. The bottom fell out of his soul. And he dropped into the magic, taking her with him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Somewhere in the magic
The surprise of Sven’s kiss—the heat, the intensity, the fireworks—turned instantly to shock as the cold water went hot and Cara’s world lurched like a trampoline.
Suddenly she was moving without changing place, her consciousness leaping out of her body and accelerating through a dizzying, zigzagging blur of gray, green, and brown. She still felt like herself, but an insubstantial version. Part of her was cold, wet, and drowning, while another part flew free. He had brought her into his magic. She hung on to his hands, squeezing tightly. It’s working!
They swerved and slewed, and then plunged down, up, sideways, and into a corkscrew spin that flipped her insubstantial self head over ass—wham, wham, wham—like an airplane barrel roll. Her heart leaped into her
throat; she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but jam her eyelids shut and hang on for the ride. The spinning got worse, until she didn’t know up from down and the motion stopped feeling like movement and became the spinning of her mind, which knew only that she was still clutching his hand like a lifeline.
Then, gradually, the spins slowed. Her vision cleared. And she found them standing together in a beautiful underground grotto, facing each other and holding hands as if waiting to hear, “You may now kiss the bride.”
It would’ve been a ridiculous thought—she wasn’t a wedding kind of girl—except that the color scheme carried the vibe too. He was wearing combat black-on-black without the body armor or weapons, while she was somehow wearing a filmy white dress made of a woven fabric so light it felt like she wasn’t wearing anything at all. It clung to her, seeming to be a single piece of fabric wound intricately around her body, showing every dip and curve. It ended high on her thigh on one side and trailed down to touch the ground on the other. Her hair hung loose down her back, fully dry; his was slicked back as if he’d just gotten out of the shower. To add to the what-the-fuck factor, they were both barefoot. Soft grains of sand shifted between her toes, and it was as if she could feel each inch of her body individually: the brush of her dress, the blunt pressure of his fingers on hers, squeezing as if to say, It’s okay.
“Where are we?” she asked softly. “Is this the barrier?”
“No, not the barrier. We’re in a vision,” he answered, voice equally quiet, though the echoes were picked up by the arching walls of the circular cave.
“It feels so real.”
“It is, just on another level of reality.”
She stared around her, wide-eyed, heart drumming with a mixture of fear and exhilaration. This is what all the fuss is about, she thought, borderlining on awestruck. This is magic. The air was warm, humid, and redolent of the rain forest she could see through the fallen-through spots high overhead, where green vines draped through and sunlight splashed down at a late-afternoon angle. They stood together on a wide, flat spot beside a deep pool. In places, stalactites dripped down from the ceiling or stalagmites pushed up from the water, thick, blunt, and slick with moisture.
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