Skykeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  Sasha involuntarily clutched the strong hands on either side of her and drew breath to scream. Before the cry broke free, though, the gray-green disappeared and the world came back into existence around her. They were back at Skywatch, in the middle of the great room. They blinked in slightly above the ground. The others landed easily, flexing their knees to absorb the impact. Sasha, on the other hand, hit and staggered, fighting to lock her knees when they wanted to go rubbery.

  The men reached out on either side of her, undoubtedly to keep her from hitting the deck, but she held up both hands, waving them off as panic spiked. “No. Please, just . . .” She trailed off when she realized the room was full, with twenty or so strangers packed into it, making it feel incredibly crowded when she’d spent so much time recently alone.

  Her hands were shaking; her whole body was shaking as she reeled away from the small group, fetching up against a soft, high-backed chair. Her heart was lodged in her throat and she couldn’t get her breath, couldn’t get her balance. “I need—” She broke off, not sure what she needed until she locked eyes on the one familiar thing in the room: Michael.

  He moved through the crowd, his reddened, pepper-burned eyes locked on her. “You okay?” he asked when he reached her, his voice pitched low, as though he sought privacy amidst the crowd. He looked more worried than pissed, which surprised her. She’d been expecting rage.

  Maybe she was wrong thinking she’d seen something ugly inside him.

  “I’m . . . I don’t know.” The stirred-up, overwrought part of her wanted her to grab onto him, hide her face in his wide, solid chest, and pretend none of this was happening. But her inner fighter, the one who’d given her the guts to escape, had her holding back. The end result was an interrupted physical hiccup in his direction, one that left her awkwardly close to him, with the two of them surrounded by a very interested audience. “Are you okay?” She lifted a hand, focusing on the details, because she thought she’d lose it if she looked at the big picture just then. “Your poor eyes. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll be fine. We heal fast.” Taking her elbow in a firm grip that fell on the border between being supportive and making sure she didn’t bolt again, he waved irritably for the crowd to scatter. “Give her room to breathe, will you?”

  Everybody moved, but nobody left, which put Sasha and Michael on one side of the open center of the sunken great room, with the others scattered on an assortment of leather sofas, chairs, and love seats, or standing up on the raised landing, near the kitchen. There was a definite generation gap between the two groups that had separated themselves out by location. The five men and four women on the lower level were younger, bigger, and drew her eyes automatically, all but oozing charisma, while the three men and two women who stood above them, watching over them, were a generation older, as well as being smaller, with a slightly darker cast to their skin, consistent with the Sumerian origins of the legendary servants of the magi. Or what she’d always thought were legends. Nightkeepers and winikin, she thought, a bubble of mild hysteria pressing at her throat, threatening to cut off her oxygen. Gods.

  It took her a couple of seconds to realize she’d used the plural of her childhood rather than the singular God she’d consciously clung to as an adult. When she did, her heart started a long, slow descent to her toes. “Oh, shit. I’m in serious trouble here.”

  She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud until Michael’s fingers tightened on her arm, and he said in an undertone, “Do me a favor and don’t make decisions right now. Just suspend disbelief and listen for a bit, okay?”

  “I think my disbelief is pretty much shot to shit at this point,” she answered, feeling her stomach churn in reaction. “That hawk wasn’t a special effect.”

  “Nope.”

  “Your king just teleported all of us back here.” Her knees threatened to buckle.

  “Yep.”

  “And what happened yesterday was—”

  “Turn it off for a little bit, okay?” he interrupted, and she thought his grip tightened in warning before he let her go and moved away. “Let me do some intros first.” He gestured to the hawk-man and his mate, who stood hip-to-hip near a long sofa. “You’ve already met Nate and Alexis. Next to them is our king, as you correctly ID’d. Striking-Jaguar.”

  The tall, black-haired man with the vivid blue eyes gave her a nod and turned both palms up in a conciliatory gesture. “Call me Strike, please. The old-school names are tough to work with these days. I’m sorry if the ’port scared you too badly. We wanted to make our point.”

  “Consider it made,” Sasha said, her voice gone thin though she stood on her own, keeping herself as strong as she could in the face of incontrovertible evidence she didn’t want to believe. The man was a teleport. He’d instantaneously moved the four of them from the desert to the mansion. It should’ve been impossible, but she couldn’t deny what she’d just experienced. And she couldn’t pass this off as drugs or stress anymore. It wasn’t a dream, wasn’t a hallucination. All this was really happening.

  Her father might not have been entirely sane, but he hadn’t been nearly as crazy as she’d thought. Oh, Ambrose, she thought on a burst of aching, awful guilt. Learning the truth didn’t make right what he’d done to her. But it sure as hell explained why he’d done some of it. In the end he’d been failed by the magic itself. If she accepted this new reality, then, according to Michael’s story, the barrier had been closed off throughout her childhood, explaining why his magic—and potentially her own—had never worked.

  “This is Leah,” Strike continued, dropping a light hand on the shoulder of the woman who stood beside him, and his arresting eyes glinted with satisfied possessiveness as he elaborated, “My mate and queen.”

  The woman—an edgy-looking white-blonde who was smaller than the others, but still looked fighting tough in the extreme—sent him an affectionate eye roll, then sketched a wave in Sasha’s direction. “Leah Daniels, formerly of the Miami PD. I’m fully human, and got dropped into this a bit like you did. If you want to scream, or vent, or shoot something, whatever—I’m available.”

  That seemed to require a response, so Sasha wet her lips and managed a weak, “Thanks. I’ll . . . Thanks.”

  “Patience and Brandt White-Eagle,” Michael said, continuing the intros by indicating a porcelain-skinned woman, also blond, sitting on a love seat beside a square-featured man with dark brown hair. “Patience used to run a dojo. She can make herself invisible, and she and Brandt have a pair of four-year-old twins, Harry and Braden.They’re off property, in hiding with their winikin, Hannah and Woody.” Without giving Sasha time to process that, he moved on to the other sofa, where a tanned guy with bright, interested blue eyes and a stubby blond ponytail was sprawled akimbo. “That’s Coyote-Seven, aka Sven. He used to be a marine treasure hunter. Now he moves things from point A to point B with his mind.” There was something else in Michael’s voice, but before Sasha could think to wonder, he’d turned to the last of the Nightkeepers gathered on the lower level. “And this is our archivist, Jade.” The lovely brunette had arresting pale green eyes and seemed wrapped in a layer of serenity Sasha badly envied.

  “I was a counselor in the outside world,” Jade offered. “I know Rabbit did some work on you, but if you ever want someone to talk to, I’d be honored.”

  Sasha raised an eyebrow at Michael. “Rabbit?”

  “He’s one of two other magi who aren’t here,” he answered without really answering. “Strike’s sister, Anna, is a Mayanist at UT Austin. Our resident juvie, Rabbit, is in school there with his human girlfriend, Myrinne, under Anna’s supervision, gods help her.” When she just stood there, waiting, he finished, “Rabbit’s a mind-bender. He put some mental filters into your head to help you deal with what Iago did to you.”

  The admission didn’t surprise her nearly as much as it probably should have. She touched her temple briefly, finding a fragment of memory she hadn’t been aware of before. “He interrogated me.” />
  “He tried to. You blocked him.” Sending her a look that she interpreted as, Later, Michael moved on to the group near the kitchen, introducing the others, who were, as she had deduced earlier, the winikin. Jox—a wiry, gray-haired man with kind eyes and several small marks on his inner forearm—was the royal winikin, meaning that he looked after Strike and his sister, and had leadership rights over the other winikin. Hangdog Tomas was Michael’s winikin, and didn’t look particularly happy about the fact. The two women, Izzy and Shandi, looked after Alexis and Jade, respectively, and the remaining man, a stocky bulldog named Carlos, watched after both Nate and Sven.

  The names, bloodlines, and marks piled up in Sasha’s head, bringing to life the childhood stories she’d been raised on, making her head spin with wonder, fear, and terrible, dragging guilt. The very air seemed to press in on her, but she tried not to let herself sway, tried not to let the impending panic show. The people gathered in the big room weren’t her enemies, she was coming to realize. But she sure as hell wasn’t ready to deal with what they might be, what it might all mean.

  “Do you want to sit down?” Michael asked.

  She shook her head. “What I really want is to get out of here.” She didn’t think there was a rat’s chance of that, though. The last time she’d set foot outside, she’d done her damnedest to escape.

  So she was caught off guard when Strike nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I know how that feels.”

  Michael said, “I’ll give her the grand tour.” He and Strike traded a look that seemed to mean far more than had been said aloud, but then Michael simply touched her arm, urging her toward the sliders leading out to the pool deck. “Come on. I could use some air too.”

  She exhaled. “Thanks.” Casting a look across the assembled group, she found a thin smile that felt more than a little panicky. “I’ll . . . um. It was nice to meet you all.”

  Gulping air, she turned and headed for the sliders. She had to force herself not to run as she pushed them open, and it took a conscious effort for her not to weep as she stepped through and the world opened up around her, big and beautiful, and full of possibilities that hadn’t been hers for so long. “Wait,” Michael said. She turned back to find him holding out a pair of pink flip-flops. “Here.”

  Tears fogging her vision at the small, kind gesture, she nodded mutely, stuck the silly foam sandals on her feet, and headed across the pool deck and through a small gate. Once she was on the hard-packed earth, she struck out at random.

  Michael paced her without comment, for which she was pathetically grateful. They walked in silence for a few minutes, past the out-of-place tree and the big metal building it shaded. When they reached the end of the steel span, Michael urged her along a narrow track. “This goes past the firing range and loops back through the ball court and the cottages.”

  “Fine,” she said, though she didn’t care where they went as long as she kept moving. Somewhere deep inside, she was afraid that if she stopped, everything would catch up with her, all the fears and confusion, and the terrible, awful guilt that had taken root and was building by the second, telling her that she’d owed Ambrose so much better than she’d given him.

  At first she power-walked, trying to burn off the restless, edgy energy and outpace her own thoughts. But by the time they were halfway through the loop, the panic had started to drain. As it did, she became acutely aware of the big man who walked beside her, matching his strides to hers, giving her the room she’d wanted, yet providing a solid, reassuring presence she was far too tempted to rely on. Their bare arms brushed as they walked, and the contact brought a hum of energy and pleasure. Heat shimmered between them; she almost imagined she could see it . . . then wondered whether she could.

  Although Ambrose had been downright nasty to the few boys she’d tried bringing home, he’d been forthright about Nightkeeper sex magic, treating it as a natural extension of power. Now, as Sasha walked beside Michael and felt desire and temptation spin between them, those lessons broke through, perhaps explaining some of what had happened the night before.The words “power boost” and “gods-destined mates” filtered through to her conscious mind, though she did her best to ignore them, knowing it would be far too easy to talk herself into something that would not only excuse the fact that she’d had sex with a complete stranger about ten minutes after they met, but also suggested there might be the possibility—hell, a mandate—for a future between them.

  Don’t go there, she told herself. Just . . . don’t.

  Still, she was jarringly, achingly conscious of his body, of the way he walked, the way his muscles played one against the next. “I didn’t believe you,” she said, feeling like it needed to be said. “I thought you were part of some elaborate, overfunded role-playing game that had somehow turned real for the people inside it.”

  He was silent for a moment before he said, “In a way, it’d probably be better if that were the case. At least then we wouldn’t be looking down the barrel of a three-year countdown with no fucking clue what we’re supposed to be doing.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t know how much of it she wanted to know, how much of it she could handle just then. So she walked. And in walking, she stared up at the sun. As she’d noticed before, it was a strange, orange-yellow color.

  Michael followed her gaze. “It’s like that all over the world. Nobody knows what’s wrong with it,” he said without her having to ask. “There are theories, of course—pollution, lack of solar flares, changes in magnetism—you name it, there’s someone out there arguing in favor of it as a theory. But nobody knows for sure.”

  “Is it . . .” She trailed off, not yet ready to shift her paradigm so far as to ask about the pending end of the world. “Did Iago do something, or the Banol Kax?”

  “We don’t know. We need more information, and we’re out of options.” It was an indirect nudge, a subtle interrogation.

  “I don’t know where the library is,” she said. But for the first time, the tightness in her chest and stomach came not from the hated question, but from a new understanding of the situation, and its urgency.

  At the end of the age, the 2012 prophecy held that the magi would number in the hundreds, that they would form an army powered by the might of the gods. Instead, there were, what, ten or so of them? And if she was reading their forearm marks correctly, only Leah—a human—and Alexis wore the marks of the Godkeep ers who were supposed to be the keys to the end-time war. In the absence of manpower, they must have gone looking for spell power, only to find their repository gone.

  Ambrose, what did you do? Why? The why might not be a simple or logical answer, she knew. Even stipulating that he hadn’t been as crazy as she’d thought, he hadn’t been sane, either.

  “How about you tell me what you do know,” Michael said, “and we’ll go from there.” Once again, she had to wonder if she’d really seen that flash of darkness within him. There was no sign of it now; that was certain.

  “I hadn’t been close to my father in more than eight years before his death,” she answered, “so when Iago first asked me about a hidden library, it wasn’t an effort to play dumb, because honest to God—gods, whatever—I’d never heard of it. When Ambrose was in one of his manic phases, I couldn’t get him to shut up about the Nightkeeper crap.” She paused, wincing. “No offense. Anyway, if he’d known about a library back when I was still living with him, he would’ve told me. I’m sure of that much.” More, he would’ve insisted that she become involved. “At first I thought the library itself was just another part of the mythos.”

  “I take it something convinced you it was real?”

  She nodded, exhaling a long, slow breath.“A few weeks after Iago grabbed me from the temple, he brought me one of my father’s journals. It wasn’t dated or signed—they never were—but I recognized the writing style.” Or lack thereof. When Ambrose was on one of his Nightkeeper rants, his scholarly acumen devolved to repetitive babbles and fragments of things tha
t she now realized might have been actual spells. “In it, he mentioned swimming through some sort of cave system toward where he thought the library should be, and instead finding a scroll. On it was a spell he couldn’t use. He took it and hid it. He didn’t say where, not even a hint.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive. The rest of the entries were a combination of lecture notes, complaints about his students, and . . . well, ravings, really.” She met his gaze squarely. “Ambrose had mental problems. I don’t know if it was a true split personality. More likely, he was manic-depressive. He existed day to day on a decently functional balance, especially when he was at the university. But at home or in the rain forest, when something set him off, he was . . .” She trailed off, uncomfortable with the words that came immediately to mind, such as “impossible,” “off his rocker,” or Pim’s favorite, “fucking nuts.” Ambrose had been a demanding, sometimes cruel man. But apparently not all of what she’d dismissed as ravings actually had been. So in the end she went with: “Difficult.”

  Michael’s expression had gone shuttered as she’d spoken of Ambrose’s problems. Or maybe he was simply disappointed that she’d gotten so little from the journal. “Are you absolutely sure none of what he wrote, even the rantings, contained clues to where he hid this scroll?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I went over and over the journal, and told the red-robes all the places I could think for them to look.” She shrugged, though the movement didn’t even begin to encapsulate the months of pain and terror, which still existed within her, even though they’d been blunted by a mind-bender. “I’m sorry. That’s all I’ve got.” She wasn’t just talking about information, either. As she’d been talking, the adrenaline that had sustained her to that point had drained suddenly, leaving her feeling wrung out, strung out. “Honestly? If I knew where to find the scroll or the library, or anything that would’ve helped lead the Xibalbans to either, I would’ve told them months ago,”