Strike turned his scarred palms to the sky. “We do our best. It’s all the gods can ask of us these days.”
Late that night, exhausted enough that he thought he might finally be able to sleep, Michael dragged his ass into the mansion through the garage, doing his damnedest to avoid anyone seeing him. He didn’t want the looks, or the questions.
When he’d first arrived at Skywatch, he’d been a hundred percent into his salesman persona—a little too slick and pretty, a lot insubstantial. That had been the Nightkeepers’ first impression of him, and he’d only reinforced it in the weeks and months after the talent ceremony, when he’d been so fucked-up inside his own head, he’d clung to the familiar, easy role, one that had seemed so much safer than the thing he’d rediscovered within himself. And now, even though he’d been evolving over the past six months, he could tell that he was backsliding in their eyes. That’s just the way he is, he could see them thinking, and wished to hell it could be different, wished he could make them understand. But he couldn’t. It was as simple as that.
He was doing what he had to in order to keep Sasha safe, to keep her whole. And if he was the only one who could ever know it, then he’d have to be satisfied with that. He would be satisfied with that, he told himself, as long as it meant she was safe. He hated the idea of her going into the temple after Ambrose, but if she was determined to do it, then he’d be right behind her. And if the demi-nahwal went after her, it would have to get through him first.
On that thought, he turned the back corner leading to the residential wing. And stopped dead, then ducked back behind a concealing corner pillar at the sight of Sasha lingering in the doorway to her suite with Sven standing too near her, an arm braced above her on the door frame. Sven leaned in and said something, then smiled when she laughed.
Sick, dark anger sluiced through Michael in an instant, curdling his blood and making him want to kill. And for a split second, even the rational side of him actually considered it, wanting in that instant nothing more than to remove Sven from Sasha’s presence. Permanently. Michael tasted blood, and for a heartbeat thought it was the Other sending him more death images, almost welcomed them. Except he knew damn well that the sluice gates were closed, the dam secure. He’d meditated long and hard on his defenses, sharpening the skills until he shook with the effort. No, the blood didn’t come from the Other; it came from him. He’d bitten his own tongue until it bled, bringing power and madness, bringing danger—not to himself, but to the man who stood no more than thirty feet away, being his usual careless, charming self.
Michael wanted to charge down the hall and yank Sven away from her, wanted to sweep Sasha up in his arms and take her, brand her as his own. But she’d been right to call him on his bullshit earlier in the day. It wasn’t fair to her—to either of them—for him to play around the edges of the attraction, going as far as he could without summoning the darkness, without it seeing her and drawing her in. Then, when he went too far, pulling back and shutting her down. If there was a male version of a cock tease, the split inside him had him in danger of being that guy, at least when it came to her. He wanted her, but couldn’t have her. Which meant he should stay the fuck away from her already.
The hallway noncuddle broke up, with Sven sketching a wave and heading back to the main mansion, undoubtedly to hit the rec room for some Grand Theft Auto or some such shit, not having a clue how close he’d come to nonexistence. Sasha angled to disappear into her suite, but then paused, turned, and fixed Michael with a look. “Well?” she said, her voice sharp with challenge.
He froze for a second, then straightened and stepped out from behind the column to stand, unspeaking. Not because he didn’t want to talk to her, but because he’d already said everything he was physically able to say to her, and it wasn’t enough. They both knew it wasn’t enough.
She stared at him for nearly a minute, as though waiting to see if he would finally explain what the hell was going on. When he didn’t move, didn’t say a word, she turned away, stepped past the door, and shut it firmly at her back. After a moment, he let himself into his own suite three doors down and slept a few hours, alone, exhausted, and plagued by dreams of love and death, and the blurred line between the two.
PART IV
THE GEMINID METEOR SHOWER
The peak of this meteor shower is associated with
moderate barrier activity, but it can fluctuate wildly,
much as the Hero Twins could be tricky and unpredictable.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
December 14 Peak of the Geminid meteor shower Three years and seven days to the zero date Skywatch
As the battle-clad Nightkeepers gathered in the main room in preparation for the temple raid, Sasha perched on one of the big couches and tossed her mother’s knife from hand to hand, sending the blade spinning in a glitter of polished obsidian. It was a habit that seemed to have come with her warrior’s mark, along with the ability to nail a moving target with the queen’s blade at fifty feet, sometimes more. Not that she intended to throw the heirloom if she could help it—she wore machine pistols on her hips, and had developed fireball magic of better than average strength and accuracy.
In the eleven days since her bloodline ceremony, she’d proven deft in all of her magic lessons, as though Strike and Nate were reminding her of the spells instead of teaching her anew. The winikin—especially Jox—had nodded as if to say, Of course, she’s a ch’ulel, but she’d ignored that pressure. Or tried to, at least. Some days it got hard.
She might be projecting a calm exterior—she was doing her best, anyway—but inwardly she was scrambling to keep up with herself, with the new skills she was learning, and the new confidence—and insecurities—they brought. She’d come to Skywatch a victim, and in less than a month had become a princess and a top-notch mage; she’d found her family, and had found some forgiveness for Ambrose, and the hope that he could forgive her, as well. And she’d found and lost a lover. That piece weighed on her, despite her best efforts to just walk away from it.
She glanced up, looking for Michael, knowing she would find him nearby, not too close, but never far away, either. True to his word, he’d insisted on partnering with her during what they’d come to call the temple raid. He might not want to be with her—or not enough to get past his inner shit—but he seemed bound and determined to protect her. Part of her thought she should’ve turned him down, maybe replacing him with Sven, who along with Jade had become her friend, filling some of the empty hours when the mated pairs were off doing mated things. But Michael had had refused to let another mage take his place. Period. And to be honest, she hadn’t argued too hard. She liked Sven, but he was a bit of a lightweight still. If she had to have any of the magi at her back, she’d take Michael despite their problems, because she knew that once he’d committed to a course of action, there was no swaying him, for better or worse.
So they would go in together, but not together. Story of her life.
Focus your ass, she thought as the warriors came together in the center of the great room, with their winikin up above, clustered in the kitchen area. With the winter solstice and the three-year threshold exactly a week away, it was time for her to step up and fulfill her destiny. At least, that was what she kept telling herself in the darkest hours of the night, when she lay awake and alone. And again now, when the idea of puking was sounding really good.
“Okay, people,” Strike said as he appeared in the arched doorway leading from the royal wing. “It’s time.”
The Nightkeepers would all ’port to Ambrose’s old campsite, save for Jade, who offered nothing in the way of fighting skills, and Anna, who had gone back to Austin. Thanks to a sizable donation from the Nightkeeper Fund, which had repaired the dorm and bought them amnesty, Rabbit and Myrinne had also returned to school, wearing even stronger mental filters than before. However, because Red-Boar had once used his mind-bending talent to wrest Anna’s consciousness away from the demi-nahwal’s grip, Strike had ’ported
Rabbit back to Skywatch that morning to participate in the raid. In the event that the demi-nahwal attacked the magi, it’d be up to him to pull their minds back.
The young man had arrived sullen and dark visaged, muttered something about having a fight with Myrinne, and promptly disappeared in the direction of his cottage. Sasha had gone to see if he was okay, but he’d ignored her knock and she hadn’t pushed it. Now he lifted his hand in a gesture she thought was part acknowledgment, part apology.
She nodded and felt a little less alone, while thinking inwardly that if her least complicated ally was a loose cannon with a penchant for torching real estate, she was in trouble.
At the thought of allies, she tried very hard not to look at Michael. She was all too aware of him, though. He wore the same outfit he’d had on when he’d rescued her, when he’d made love to her that one time. She tried to tell herself it meant nothing, that those were his combat clothes. Still, her own slick black fight wear chafed in the face of sensory memories that came all too easily.
“Link up,” Strike ordered. The magi formed a circle, cut their palms, joined hands, and jacked in. Standing between Strike and Michael, Sasha was all but overwhelmed by maleness and magic, and by the sharp difference between the two men. Trumpets and silence. Yet it was the stillness within Michael that compelled her, making her want to sink inside him and give him music.
And that wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking of, she reminded herself. Focus!
Strike summoned his magic from the uplink, found the travel thread linking them to the campsite, and sent them into the barrier. The world went gray-green around Sasha, and Skywatch disappeared. Ch’ul flowed past her, mingled songs whipping faster than thought, and then the rain forest blinked into being around her.
All around the clearing, the trees rose to impossible-seeming heights, lush and verdant and singing with life. And it wasn’t just the plants and creatures that were singing, she realized after a moment; the red-gold magic had come alive at the base of her brain, singing that quiet martial theme, suggesting there was a source of power nearby. But that stood to reason; Anna had revealed that Ambrose’s campsite was a place of power in its own right. The natural clearing, which was almost perfectly circular, had once been a cenote, one of the caved-in sinkholes that the ancients had used as both a water source and a place of sacrifice, believing the circular openings to be among the earthly entrances to Xibalba. Those sacrifices, mostly offerings of food, pottery, or small carvings called eccentrics, had remained at the bottom of the cenote even after the area ceased being inhabited by Maya or Nightkeepers. Over time, layers of leaves and debris had covered the sinkhole, eventually capping it over entirely. Now it was simply a clearing in the rain forest, with a subterranean waterway running beneath, and a cluster of offerings that gave off a background hum of magic by their very nature as sacrifices.
“Anna and Red-Boar reburied Ambrose over here,” Strike said, gesturing her over to one edge of the clearing. The magi had moved him from his original spot atop the cenote to a place at the edge of the clearing. That way, if archaeologists ever found and excavated the cenote to get at the sacrificial relics within, they wouldn’t find the newer corpse.
The spot Strike indicated looked like all the others, but when Sasha reached it, the air felt different—thicker, and faintly expectant. “Hello, Ambrose,” she said, stumbling a little over his name, which brought the image of the demi-nahwal’s cruel, crazed face. “I’m keeping my promise. You’ll get your funeral.” Something hummed in the air, but she wasn’t sure whether it was mosquitoes or magic. The thought of bugs brought her back to the last time she’d been at the cenote clearing, and cold fingers ran down her spine.
This was the first time she had been outside the blood-ward surrounding Skywatch since her escape. Unsure whether Iago would be monitoring them, and whether he would try to ’port in and snatch her, the Nightkeepers were on alert. Rabbit, especially, was keeping himself attuned to any influx of dark magic.
Even on high alert, though, the magi made quick work of the exhumation, taking turns between digging and standing watch. Sasha looked away as Strike and Nate wrapped Ambrose’s headless corpse in the sheets they’d brought with them for the purpose, then with a blue plastic tarp, for the sake of practicality. The tarp crinkled as they hefted the corpse out of the hole and set it off to the side of the clearing. Then they moved aside, giving Sasha a moment.
Aware that Michael stood close behind her, Sasha stared down at the wrapped bundle. When she’d first set out to retrieve her father’s remains, she’d pictured what she’d say or do when she found him. But none of what she had imagined seemed appropriate now. Not when she was hoping that she’d soon be facing his ghost, trying to get through its madness. So in the end, she said only, “I owe you my life. I promise I’ll do my best to ease your death.”
She didn’t watch as Strike ’ported the body back to Skywatch, didn’t turn back until she heard the pop of air that signaled his return. At Strike’s inquiring look, she shook her head. “No sign of him.”
Strike nodded. “Then let’s go ghost hunting.”
Still jacked into the barrier, the magi formed a line. Michael took the lead, hacking through the forest growth with powerful slashes from a sharp-bladed, bone-handled machete that he held with easy, deadly familiarity. Sasha followed close behind him, with Strike and Leah behind her. The two other mated couples formed the middle, with Rabbit and Sven forming the firepower-heavy rear guard. Sasha’s position in the line forced her to watch the bunch and flow of Michael’s muscles beneath his dark tank and body armor, the powerful flex of his legs as he led them toward the temple. Heat pooled in her belly. She told herself to look away, that she was just making herself crazy. But at the same time, the heat within served to intensify the buzz of magic. So instead of pretending not to watch him, she let herself appreciate the aesthetics instead. And if that brought an ache beneath her heart, that was her problem, her pain.
As if she’d said something aloud, Strike reached forward and gripped her shoulder, a steadying contact that telegraphed strength and solidity, and left her with the impression of a hug, an echo of the not-quite telepathy they shared through their sibling bond. He’d asked her once whether she wanted to talk about her and Michael’s nonrelationship, and when she’d answered something along the lines of, “Oh, hell, no,” he’d given her the space she’d needed. But it was nice that he’d asked.
Sooner than she would have expected, they emerged at the edge of the clearing, where shade-dappled orange sunlight glinted down on the entrance to Ambrose’s temple. Cupping her hands around her mouth, Sasha called, “Ambrose? I need to talk to you.”
The only response was a monkey’s screech coming from far above. Unsurprised—she’d suspected all along that she would have to brave the temple—she started across the clearing with Michael at her side and the rest of her teammates at her back. As the magi passed through the arched doorway, the temperature dropped sharply while wan daylight gave way to shadows. Once Sasha’s eyes had adjusted, though, she realized the shadows were far less than they could’ve been—the corridor was lit by the sun itself, with rays bouncing off highly polished sections of rock that were angled to refract the glow farther into the temple than it would’ve gone otherwise. “I didn’t see the mirrors before.”
“Lucius noticed them; they’re set to show the starscript farther back,” Michael said. “Still, since we don’t need the script, let’s give ourselves an advantage.” He palmed a couple of glow sticks from his utility belt, handed her one, and cracked his own, shaking it to activate the glowing phosphorescence, which lit the scene an unearthly orange.
The small group moved along the tunnel, magic humming at a high background, there if they needed it. Sasha kept breathing, kept telling herself that every step inward they took was a good sign, a few feet closer to where she’d seen Ambrose’s skull. She led them around the edge of the pit trap and consciously braced herself as they move
d deeper into the temple, but it was still a sick shock when they reached the caved-in section. The skull was back at Skywatch, but the tzomplanti where it had rested was still there. There was no sign of Ambrose’s demi-nahwal, though. Which meant . . . what? Was she supposed to search the ruin, hoping to find something the others had missed?
Sweat prickled at her pores, sensitizing her skin to the brush of her clothes, the heavy chill of the air as she braced her hands on her hips and called out, “I’m here, Ambrose. I’m wearing my bloodline and talent marks, and the royal ju. I’m a mage, a Nightkeeper. I’ve done what you always wanted. Now it’s your turn to do what I want. Show yourself.”
Nothing happened.
Anger stirred as she palmed her knife and recut her palm, deep enough that blood flowed freely, dripping to the stone floor of the temple.
Heart tripping unevenly in her chest, Sasha closed her eyes and whispered, “Where are you? I’ve done what you wanted; I’ve become what you intended. But now I need your help. Do you hear me?” She raised her voice, all but shouting, “I need you, godsdamn it. Why aren’t you ever around when I need you?”
A roaring whip of wind slashed through the tunnel, all but flattening the magi. Strike and the others were driven back, shouting. They took refuge a few feet deeper down the tunnel as the gale slammed into where the space dead-ended in rubble, flinging Sasha into the wall. Panic slashed through her, and she screamed and tried to protect her face and head as the howling wind peppered her with dirt and gravel from the cave-in.
“I’ve got you.” Michael grabbed her and turned them both toward the wall, using his body to protect her from the flying debris. She clung to him, burrowed into him. For a moment she thought it was going to be okay, that they’d gotten through the worst of it. Then thunder cracked in the tunnel, and an invisible grip picked them up and wrenched them both sideways, through a blur of gray-green barrier energy.
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