Skykeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  The king was an imposing figure.Tall,broad-shouldered, and muscular, bigger than even larger-than-average humans, as were all full-blood Nightkeeper males, Strike wore his shoulder-length black hair tied back in a queue, balancing the severity of the look with a narrow beard that traced his jawline. His right forearm was marked with the glyphs denoting him as a member of the jaguar bloodline, as royalty, as a warrior and a teleport. Higher up, on his biceps, where only the gods and kings were marked, he wore the geometric hunab ku, the symbol of the 2012 doomsday and the Nightkeepers’ king. Even though he was wearing thoroughly modern clothes in his black-on-black combat duds and heavy boots, he looked almost medieval. He could’ve been a crusader, perhaps, or one of Arthur’s knights. Hell, maybe even Arthur himself.

  Without preamble, Strike reached out and gripped Michael’s upper arm, forming the touch link necessary for him to transport another person. “Tomas has your armor and weapons waiting for you. This could be the break we’ve been hoping for.”

  “Or it could be a godsdamned ambush,” Michael countered as the ’port magic rose up around them. But ambush or not, he was on board with whatever the king was planning. A fight was a fight. And this rescue was long overdue.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Everglades

  Sasha awoke, blinking up into the light thrown down by an unshielded fluorescent tube. Something’s different, she thought. But a quick look around her said it wasn’t the scenery.

  She was still in hell. It wasn’t the Christians’ fire-and-brimstone hell or Ambrose’s nine-layered Mayan underworld of rivers and roads and monsters, though. No, this hell was one of cool, blank walls and a narrow cot in a ten-by-ten cell with gray walls, floor, and ceiling. This hell was being the prisoner of an enormous, green-eyed, chestnut-haired man who called himself Iago, but whom the others called “Master.”

  Where is the library? his red-robed, forearm-tattooed interrogators asked her over and over again while drug-spiced smoke oozed from stone braziers carved into the shapes of screaming skulls. Each time, her muscles screamed protest at the crucified position they’d tied her in, roping her to a wooden cross that represented not the son of the Christians’ god, but the world tree of the Maya and Aztec, with its roots delving into hell, its branches reaching to the sky. Where did your father hide it? Sometimes they lashed her with stone-tipped flails that drew bloody purple-black lines on her body. Other times they didn’t hit her at all, but rather somehow put her in agony without touching her, watching with avid eyes as she writhed and screamed.

  She would’ve given anything to make the torture stop, but she couldn’t tell them what she didn’t know. She’d kept insisting that Ambrose had never told her anything about a library. They didn’t believe her, though, which meant that the cycle kept repeating over and over again—days of impotent, drugged fugue interspersed with pain and terror. She thought they might have moved her once or twice, but the details had blurred together, growing ever more distant as her mind insulated her consciousness from the reality her body was suffering. Each time the interrogators had opened the cell door, reality had receded further, her burgeoning fantasies coming clearer.

  She knew the waking dreams were nothing more than illusions, constructs that her mind created for her as an escape. But she clung fiercely to the fantasies in her drugged stupor, because if her consciousness was wrapped in the dreams, she wasn’t aware of what was happening in the interrogation chamber. And that was a blessed relief.

  Sometimes the fantasies brought her to a strange cave, a circular stone room that should have reminded her of the interrogation room and the horrors within it. But she wasn’t terrified in this chamber, wasn’t hurt. Instead, she was wildly aroused, wrapped around a big, powerful man with long, wavy dark hair and green eyes that reminded her of the pine forests up in Maine. In the dreams, she breathed him in, lost herself in his kiss, and felt, maybe for the first time in her life, like she was exactly where she belonged. Which was how she knew it was a fantasy, because Sasha had done many things in her life, but she’d never truly fit anywhere.

  Other times the dreams brought her back to Boston, to the pretty, sun-filled studio apartment where she’d lived across the hall from a firefighter’s widow, an elderly ex-concert violinist named Ada, who’d become her friend. Sasha had cooked for her neighbor a few nights a week, gladly trading pumpkinseed dip and spicy barbecued shrimp for snippets of Bach and Mozart, and the knowledge that someone cared whether or not she made it home at night. Only she hadn’t made it home, had she? Instead she’d gone looking for Ambrose and wound up in hell, stuck there as her menstrual clock told her months passed, almost a year, while she lay dazed by drugs and hopelessness.

  Except she wasn’t drugged or hopeless now. She felt sharp and energized for the first time in what seemed like forever.

  Hardly daring to trust the sudden change, she sat up on her bunk and braced herself for the pain to hit. It didn’t. Instead, nerves and excitement and all sorts of other sharp, hot emotions poked through the numb confusion that had cloaked her for too long.

  “What the hell is going on?” she asked, and jerked at the sound of her own voice, the alien clarity of words that weren’t drugged mumbles or throat-tearing screams.

  Starting to shake now—with hope, with fear—she took stock. She was wearing the sturdy bush pants she’d had on when she’d been captured, along with a too-big navy sweatshirt she’d had for a while now, though she didn’t know who she’d gotten it from, or when. Her underwear, T-shirt, and socks were long gone to rags, her boots confiscated. All that was the same as it had been. The cuts on her palms, though, were new.

  She stared at the shallow, scabbed-over slices as a hazy memory broke through. Had she dreamed of a brown-haired man bending over her with a serrated combat knife, his eyes flickering from hazel to luminous green and back again? If so, it was a new, less pleasant fantasy than the others, her imagination run amok. But no, she was positive he had been there; she had the scabs to prove it. Had he done something to neutralize the tranquilizers they’d been mixing in her food for so long? Or had the red-robes withdrawn the drugs for some reason, wanting her fully aware for whatever they had planned next?

  But she wasn’t just awake; she felt damned good. Energy coursed through her, effervescent bubbles running in her veins, making her want to leap up and run, to scream with the mad exuberance of being alive. More, she was warm. Hot, even, and suddenly needy in a way she hadn’t been in a long, long time. Her heart pounded; her skin tingled. She thought of her dark-haired, green-eyed dream man, and ached for him, for the press of his flesh on hers.

  Lifting her hands, she cupped her suddenly flushed cheeks, then let her fingertips drift down to skim across her collarbones and along her ribs. Surprise shuddered through her at the feel of smooth, toned flesh. Slowly, almost afraid to look, she lifted the hem of her sweatshirt so her eyes could confirm what her hands had found. Although it seemed impossible, the festering sores on her hips and shoulders had healed overnight, and the crosshatched welts, scabs, and scars of the repeated whippings had faded from her skin. Her wasted flesh had been restored; her arms and legs were muscled, her butt and breasts rounded, as they had been before her captivity.

  Stunned, she let the sweatshirt drop back down to cover her irrationally taut, toned stomach. Her head spun with disbelief, but not with drugs.

  If she’d believed in miracles, she would’ve called it just that. How else could matching slashes on her palms cause her body to heal itself?

  “Doesn’t matter,” she told herself as the embers of the strong woman she’d once been kindled to a low, guttering flame of determination. “Don’t waste whatever time you’ve got trying to figure out what’s going on. Just get your ass out of here.”

  Rising from the narrow, blanketless cot, she stood for a moment, thrilling to the sense of balance and power that coursed through her, the awareness of her own body. She acutely felt the weight of her sweatshirt and pants, the press of the
floor against the soles of her feet. In the back of her head lurked the fear that this was nothing more than another sort of torture, that Iago had given her back herself only to take the feeling away again. But on the heels of fear came determination. “If that’s your plan, you bastard, you’re going to regret it,” she said softly. “That’s a promise.”

  Outside in the hallway, muffled slightly by the heavy metal door of her cell, she heard the measured tread of footsteps in the hallway. One set, heading in her direction. She froze, imagining the possibilities. Was one of Iago’s acolytes coming to her room? Oh, please, yes. I dare you.

  Adrenaline sizzled in her veins and her pulse hammered as she cast around for a weapon. There wasn’t time to disassemble the bedframe, if she could even manage the feat, and the toilet was bolted in place. The only other thing in the cell was her meal tray, where a microwaved mac-and-cheese sat half-eaten, a plastic spoon sticking out of the congealed mess.

  “It’ll have to do,” she hissed, grabbing the makeshift weapon and pressing her body tight against the wall, on the hinged side of the door. Letting the handle end of the spoon poke between her fingers, she imagined shoving it into one of Iago’s gloating, emerald green eyes. Rage and excitement rose up, nearly choking her. She hated him, hated what he’d done to her, to Ambrose. Hell, for all she knew, the bastard had killed Pim, too. It was Pim’s funeral that had precipitated her fleeting reunion with her father in late June of the prior year, and it had been the memory of his grief that had prompted Sasha to call him months later, only to learn that he’d fled to his rain forest. If Iago had been trying to force Ambrose over the edge of his tenuous grip on sanity, killing Pim would have been the perfect trigger. Not because Ambrose had loved her, but because she’d kept him as contained as he ever got, giving his sanity an anchor.

  It fit. It played. And it rankled deep inside Sasha as the footsteps paused outside her cell door and the lock clicked. Moments later, the metal panel swung inward and a gray-robe stepped through. Sasha took a split second to make sure it wasn’t her brown-haired maybe-ally. Then she attacked.

  Now! Propelled by a year’s worth of rage and hatred, along with the gut-deep knowledge that this might be her only chance of escape, she attacked. Lunging from behind the door, she slammed the spoon handle into the gray-robe’s face. She nailed him in the left eye, the spoon handle sinking in with a moment of resistance followed by a liquid give that made her gag.

  Her victim shouted, spun, and staggered, clapping both hands to his ruined eye as blood and fluid spurted. Sickened, Sasha slashed a kick that folded his knee sideways, dropping him howling just inside the door. A second kick, this one to the side of his head, had him going limp. She searched him hurriedly; he was carrying a high-tech com device but no weapon, damn it. Slipping into the hallway, she shut and locked the door, then leaned back against it, gulping air.

  Keep it together, she told herself. You can do this.

  Unable to figure out how to turn off the handheld com, and afraid it would make noise at exactly the wrong moment, she ditched it. Then, with her heart hammering a tempo of fear and victory, her shaking hands stained with the blood of her enemy, she took off running down the metal-lined corridor. She had no clue where she was going, but anywhere had to be better than where she’d been.

  In the blue-black of dusk in the Everglades, eight Nightkeeper warriors and one human ex-cop materialized in the swamp just beyond the former Survivor2012 compound.

  The nine fighters wore black-on-black combat clothes, all a variation of a tee or turtleneck and Kevlar-impregnated cargo pants tucked into lightweight, grippy boots. Body armor went over the top—black again—and their utility belts held MAC-10 autopistols and spare clips of jade-tipped bullets on one side, ceremonial knives on the other. Night-vision opticals gave them eyes in the gathering darkness, and military-grade earpiece-throat mike combos would allow them to reach out and touch, as long as there wasn’t too much interference.

  The ground squelched beneath Michael’s combat boots; the swampy smell was seriously rank, and he was pretty sure something had slithered out from beneath him as he landed. He didn’t comment, though, merely registered the peripheral annoyances as he sought the inner calm he relied on. But balance didn’t come easily, with the possibility of Sasha’s rescue so close at hand. Magic hummed at the base of his brain, responding to the peak of the Leonid meteor shower; the red-gold Nightkeeper power was far stronger than it had been in many months, and carried a jagged, unfamiliar edge of violence that warned him that his control was close to slipping.

  Anger pulsed beneath his skin, foreign and tempting; it throbbed in time with the blood that ran hot in his veins. Screw stealth and subtlety; he wanted to use a couple of jade-filled grenades to bust open the gates of the narrow causeway leading into the compound, and go in with guns blazing. He wanted not just to rescue Sasha, but to kill the men who had taken her, who had kept her. Who had, he knew, hurt her.

  The pounding, overwhelming need for revenge brought sweat prickling beneath his body armor. The heavy iron tang of blood suddenly coated his sinuses and layered his tongue, and for a second he was awash in violence. Horror—and horrible temptation—locked him in place as death flooded his senses. He could feel the flutter of a man’s carotid beneath his gripping fingers, smell his fear, taste the moment life cut out and the afterlife took over. Yes, something deep within him thought. Yes!

  “No,” he said aloud, gritting the word through locked teeth that he unclenched only long enough to bite the tip of his own tongue, more for the snap of pain than the blood sacrifice—gods knew he was already channeling plenty of magic. That was part of the problem. He didn’t know where the dark surge had come from, unless—

  His head snapped up and he took a quick look around at the others, but they were focused on Strike as he went over the basic plan one last time. All except Rabbit, who had been ’ported back from UT for the rescue mission. The sharp-featured young man, his former skull trim grown out into a short bristle of brown spikes, glanced over and met Michael’s eyes. Rabbit raised an eyebrow. Got a problem? the expression said.

  Michael looked away.

  “I don’t sense any wards,” Alexis said from the other side of the loosely clustered group of black-clad fighters. Formerly soul-bound to the goddess Ixchel, the tall, blond Valkyrie had retained the ability to sense patterns, both visible and invisible, even after the destruction of the skyroad had severed her connection to the goddess. Michael had to wonder, though, if Alexis was losing the last of her goddess-given skills, because it didn’t make any sense for Iago not to have warded the hell out of his hideout.

  “Lucius said he’d take care of getting us inside safely.” That was from Patience, who tended to be a stubborn optimist, even when things were going to shit. And it was true that Lucius had gotten out a second message to that effect, as relayed by Anna. It was also technically possible that it’d happened the way Lucius claimed: that he’d tried to kill himself back in the spring after escaping from Skywatch, but the makol’s powers had healed his injuries, drawing the attention of Iago, who’d taken him into the Xibalbans’ fold. There, the mage had used spells and sacrifices to bring the makol to the forefront, so it overrode Lucius’s human self except during times of increased barrier activity . . . like the one they were experiencing now.

  Sure, all of that played. But it was still too damned convenient.

  Alexis’s mate, Nate Blackhawk, was thinking along the same lines. The dark-haired, slick-looking warrior growled, “Thousand bucks says it’s a trap.” Nate, a former war game developer, had a decent grip on strategy, and often played devil’s advocate to any plan taken up by Strike and the other four members of the royal council, who did most of the Nightkeepers’ planning.

  “We knew that going in,” Michael countered, having been part of the brief confab back at Skywatch. He didn’t wear the small, carved eccentric that symbolized an adviser, but these days he often sat in on the meetings and brought hi
s rather unique perspective to the discussions. Not that the others understood exactly how unique that perspective was.

  “Trap or not, we’re not leaving her in there to be sacrificed,” Strike growled. “Even if her father wasn’t a Nightkeeper, she’s our best connection to the library. Sure, if anyone gets a shot at Iago or a chance to snag Lucius, take it, but remember that the rescue mission is our top priority. Get the hostage and get out. Everything else follows from there. We can come back for the Xibalbans after we get the library and the added firepower it contains.”

  The tight knot of battle readiness eased slightly inside Michael, making him aware that he hadn’t been entirely sure of his king. As their leader, Strike sometimes had to make shitty decisions, like whether to risk almost all of the remaining Nightkeepers in order to rescue one woman who might or might not be a mage’s daughter. Michael, on the other hand, was on a personal crusade sparked by a handful of photos and a childhood story he could relate to. He was getting Sasha out, period. And gods help anyone who got in his way.

  At the thought, he felt a stir of sharp-edged magic. Blocked it.

  Without further discussion, Nate and Alexis melted away from the group and disappeared into the darkness. Moments later there was a surge of sex-charged magic as the mated pair leaned on each other to power Nate’s ability to shape-shift to a man-size hawk. A low, alien cry announced the successful shift, followed by the beat of powerful wings. A blur moved past, that of a blond Valkyrie astride a giant hawk. Then the pair took to the air and swept up over the compound, angling precariously through the encroaching mangroves.

  “It’s pretty tight going,” Alexis’s voice said quietly in Michael’s ear, coming through the earpiece with only a slight burr of distortion. “Not sure how much help we’re going to be in terms of recon.”