Skykeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  “I can’t. He’s blocking it.”

  Damn.

  Using a ceremonial knife made of cloudy gray stone, Iago cut himself deeply, digging until blood poured from his hands and tongue. The makol did the same with its combat knife. Eyes glowing green, all signs of Lucius banished, the demon stood opposite Michael and began an ancient chant—the transition spell that would call a makol from the lowest level of Xibalba. Meanwhile, Iago faced Sasha, unfurled the library scroll, and began reading from it.

  When Iago paused and closed in on her, Sasha surged up, only to be slammed back down by the red-robes who held her still. She screamed as Iago sliced through her stretchy black combat shirt, then traced a line just below her ribs, where the eviscerating slash would allow her killer to pull her heart from her body in one yank. Hatred and anger wrapped around her; she leaned on them rather than letting the fear inside her.

  Iago stepped back and continued to read from the library scroll as, beside him, Lucius read the makol-summoning spell, calling the soul of Moctezuma into Michael. Magic gathered, both dark and light, Nightkeeper and Xibalban. The magic, formerly direction-less, began to take terrible shape. Images flashed across Sasha’s inner eye: herself blank eyed and soulless, sitting in a featureless ten-by-ten cell, channeling information from the library into a voice-activated digital recorder; Michael, with his gorgeous bedroom eyes gone luminous green as he sat enthroned, his body under Moctezuma’s control. She quailed inwardly, making a desperate grab for the magic; to her surprise, she felt a touch of ch’ul and caught a soft rustle. Glancing over as Iago recited the spell, she looked toward the planters only a few feet away. In them, maize and cacao plants undulated gently, though there was no breeze.

  She breathed a prayer and sent them energy, having some thought of the plants bowing down to grab her red-robed captors. The maize and cacao responded, but the small amount of growth she managed to trigger wasn’t going to do her any good.

  Then Iago shouted the final words of the spell, raised his ceremonial knife, and advanced on Sasha, while the red-robes held her tightly.

  The makol, too, advanced, knife raised. Only it didn’t go for Michael. Still green eyed, still in makol form, it turned and buried its knife in Iago’s chest. There was a moment of frozen shock as, grinning horribly, the makol said, “Compliments of the Banol Kax, human. My masters bid you remember who rules you in this war. They do not wish to lose Moctezuma’s service in Mictlan. And they want to talk to you.”

  Iago went stark white, eyes rolling as he reeled back, grabbing at the knife. The makol closed in tighter, grabbed the haft, and started twisting and hacking. Blood sprayed a gory arc and Sasha screamed, as much in disbelief as in horror. Even as she did, though, she elbowed one of her captors in the gonads and dropped the other with a foot sweep. Bullets sprayed, but bounced harmlessly.

  Michael, too, was moving. He took out his red-robes with a leg-sweep-punch combo, snagged one of the autopistols, and beckoned her. “Come on!”

  Michael and Sasha broke for the thrones and took the high ground, leaping atop the stone seats and using the leverage to kick at the red-robes who tried to grab for them. Iago shouted something, his words lost to her beneath a rising buzz of magic. Sasha looked back, shocked that he was still alive.

  “The spell has turned on him. He’s becoming an ajaw-makol ,” Michael said. “He’s already got the healing power. Soon, the only way to kill him will be to cut off his head, hack out his heart, and recite the banishing spell.”

  The red-robes opened fire, aiming low, trying to wound, not kill.

  “Down!” Michael grabbed her and dragged her off the throne. He caught her against his strong, solid body and turned her toward the stone slab, shielding her, then fired off a quick burst with his captured autopistol, forcing the six remaining red-robes to take cover. Two were down already, not moving.

  Sasha tried to feel grief, tried to find horror, and found only rage and emptiness. A need to stop the Xibalbans from doing to another what they had done to her, a drive to survive long enough to make a difference. In the end, this was the war.

  Looking up at Michael, who was fierce and bloodied, she touched his cheek and said, “Can you call the muk now that we’re not on the dais?”

  His eyes flared, but he bowed his head, pressed his brow to hers. “I don’t want to be the Other. Not ever again. It’s a monster.”

  “Not a monster. A weapon. And it’s your talent; it’s not you.” She cupped his jaw in her bloodied hands and stared into his eyes, willing him to hear her, believe her. “I was wrong about that—dead wrong. Whether or not all your kills were in battle, they were part of a larger war, on the orders of your king. That is the Nightkeeper way. It doesn’t make you anything more than a mage who found his calling sooner than most of us. The magic is a tool; it’s not you. Just like my magic isn’t all me. I wield life but I think I’ve proven that doesn’t make me an angel, right?”

  Air escaped from him in a hiss, but she saw a spark in the depths of him—rage going to power. “Depends on your definition of ‘angel,’ babe.” But there was such desperate need in him.

  “I’m no angel,” she said firmly. “And you’re not a devil or a monster. Your talent is a tool from the gods, a weapon in the war. You’re not any of those things. You’re a man.” She paused, searching inside herself for hesitation, for reservation, and finding none when she said, “You’re my man.”

  He held very still for a long, breathless moment. Then he touched his lips to hers, a brief, fleeting press that promised more than a thousand words.

  In a single move of deadly elegance, he flowed to his feet and moved away from their shallow concealment, stepping out into the cross fire of his enemies. His hair was slicked back close to his skull, his black combat clothes torn and tattered as they clung to his fighter’s muscles. He spread his arms away from his body, indicating he was unarmed, or offering himself up as the sacrifice Iago had intended him to be. As he did, he called the muk. It gathered to him, clung to him, greasy and gray in her mind’s eye.

  The red-robes let loose, firing low, still trying to preserve their sacrificial victim. The bullets sped inward in a deadly hail, only to reverse outward when Michael let loose the Mictlan’s power. It exploded from him in a thunderclap of gray death, taking the red-robes where they crouched, puffing them to dust in an instant.

  It was over so quickly, there and gone in an instant, that Sasha blinked, tempted to think they had just left, or been ’ported away. But she saw the gray cast of death on Michael’s skin, saw the dark grief and guilt of the man, the cold satisfaction of the killer within.

  He turned back to her and offered his hand. She took it without hesitation and rose to stand next to him, leaning into him in mute reassurance. He stared down at her, eyes dark, but finally calm, as though he’d gone beyond himself, or maybe found himself. “This is who and what I am.” His voice was a low rumble in his chest.

  “This,” she said firmly, “is war. It’s justice.” She took his hand, lifted his wrist, and pressed her lips to his marks. “Neither of us is perfect. Together, though, we balance each other out. And even if we didn’t, I’d still want to be with you.”

  “Despite what I am.”

  “Because of who you are,” she countered. “Now. Let’s finish this.”

  His eyes went past her. Flattened. “Shit.”

  Sasha turned, her warrior’s instincts firing a second too late. Not because of an attack, but because of what the lack of attack meant. Iago, badly battered by the makol, sagged against the larger throne, losing blood fast. But he was still alive, having survived the edges of the close-range muk blast by virtue of his healing powers . . . and the makol bond. His color was wrong, his eyes disoriented . . . but they flicked to luminous green and back again. When they went green, his face became more angular and power seemed to glow in a halo around him, as the emperor Moctezuma fought to come through to the earth.

  As his eyes settled green, ’port magi
c rattled in the air.

  “Stop him!” Sasha cried.

  Roaring, Michael lunged for Iago. The Xibalban disappeared with a pop of displaced air, leaving Michael to slam into the throne, then pound it with a fist. “Gods damn it!”

  Sasha reeled as near-prescience gripped her. Moctezuma had come to earth. And he’d possessed the strongest of the Xibalban magi, leaving the Nightkeepers with . . . what? They had nothing, and the solstice threatened to pass without their gaining the one thing they needed most: the Prophet.

  At the thought, she moved around the throne, in search of their former ally . . . who might just manage to become an ally once again. “Lucius?” she called, cursing softly when she saw his feet stretched out behind one of the planters, blood splashed on the stones. Then she rounded the planter. And cursed aloud. “Michael! Come quick.”

  He came around the corner, his only reaction a hitch in his stride when he saw what Iago had done to the makol. Lucius’s head had been all but severed from his body, and his heart hung out of his chest cavity by a thread. His eyes were closed, but his chest still moved in a gruesome, bubbling parody of life, held by the makol’s healing magic.

  Sasha dropped down beside him, heedless of the blood that soaked through her pants. “He’s alive. Sort of.” She felt the makol’s dark magic fluctuate, heard Lucius’s song cut in and out. “Iago must have said the spell. He didn’t get the head and heart all the way, though.” But the makol wasn’t healing; he was merely existing, his eyes flicking from hazel to green and back again.

  Sasha met Michael’s eyes over the laboring near-corpse. Feeling the hard practicality of the warrior she had become, she said, “Get the library scroll. Let’s not waste the sacrifice.”

  “Are you sure? He’s not a magic user.”

  She grinned fiercely up at him. “Maybe not. But the makol is.”

  Michael’s expression went blank, then fired with excitement as he went for the scroll, snagging it off the floor, where it had fallen during the melee. “Fuck. I can’t read it. You?”

  She glanced at the glyphs, but she shook her head. “That’s beyond what Ambrose taught me. And we can’t risk my screwing it up.” She looked toward the rubble-filled tunnel. “We have to get the others in here.”

  Michael’s eyes flashed acknowledgment, but he turned up a hand in question. “Can you get the ’port image to Strike through the bloodline link?”

  “Not clearly enough.” She shook her head. “Maybe Rabbit . . .” He’d sent her his cry for help from the pueblo, using the connection they’d forged when he’d been inside her mind. But when she searched inwardly for a hint of that connection she found nothing. “I think it only goes one way. How about shield magic? Could you use it to clear the tunnel somehow?”

  Eyes dark with frustration, he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Damn it.”

  “Break the mountain,” said a faint whisper.

  For a second, she thought the words were inside her head. Then she realized they’d come from behind her. She looked down to find Lucius conscious, squinting up at her. The flesh at his throat had knitted somewhat. His abdominal cavity gaped open, but as she watched, his heart drew back into place slowly, looking sad and misshapen. Yet his eyes were fixed on her, gone hazel, though he shuddered with the effort of keeping them that way. The entire effect was macabre in the extreme.

  “This is Paxil Mountain,” he whispered. “Break it.” His eyes stopped flickering, started to dull.

  Michael’s and Sasha’s eyes went to the planters set on either side of the thrones. Maize and cacao. Was it possible?

  “The gods split Paxil Mountain to release the seeds to mankind,” she said. “But we’re not gods.”

  “Maybe not.” Michael took her hand, twining their fingers together. “But we’re what’s left.” He lifted her hand. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “And I’m not through fighting. Not for you, and not for justice.”

  Sasha’s power kicked at his words, at the quiet certainty in them. She felt the muk resonating from him, reaching into her. For the first time, she didn’t push the sensation away, but rather welcomed it, welcomed him. Aware of the solstice magic raging around them, within them, she turned to face him. “I can’t do this alone. Iago said we could create incredible power together.”

  “We do,” Michael said softly. “We can.” He paused, and his voice roughened. “You’ve been everything I need and want, even when I was too caught up in myself to realize it.”

  Her heart shuddered and went still in her chest. She saw the truth in his eyes, felt it in his touch and his energy. And for the first time, she wasn’t looking at Michael, or the Other, or the Mictlan. She saw all of them in him, saw them as a single man, the united whole she’d fallen for. The real Michael didn’t come from an absence of darkness, she realized with sudden paralytic comprehension. He came from balance. He was a chameleon himself, shifting among aspects of himself and his magic, but the core remained. The man remained.

  “I kept telling myself you weren’t real, that you were a fantasy straight out of one of Ambrose’s stories. Which you are. But you’re also real.”

  He leaned down and she reached up, in that stilled moment of time, and she heard her own music, heard his, then heard the two twine together, backbeat and chords blending to form a fully realized song. And, as the solstice slid to its peak, their magics combined, muk to ch’ul.

  And the world around them started to shake.

  Magic poured through Michael, piercing every aspect of him: light and dark, love and revenge, murder and justice. The coming of the three-year countdown fired through him, smashing his hard-won barriers to dust and opening him to all of his dissociated pieces at once. But where before that had been one of his greatest fears—the loss of control, the loss of himself—now he gave himself up to it.

  He was the Other, with all the monster’s trained strategy, killer instinct, and love of the hunt. He was Michael, brave enough to take any hand-to-hand challenge, yet coward enough to turn away from emotional pain. He was the Nightkeeper, with a mage’s fighting drive and determination to make things right; he was the human he’d been raised as, not sure it was possible to make things right. He was the mate who’d wanted Sasha too much to heed the warnings, the lover who hadn’t known what to do with her when he got her. And over it all, as the muk flowed through him, became him, he was the Mictlan, the wielder of an ancient magic that blended both dark and light, making a whole that was so much stronger than its parts.

  Instead of fragmenting him further, the magic made him complete. His muk powers and Sasha’s ch’ul magic combined in a flare of light and dark, not canceling each other out or combusting at all, but rather complementing each other, creating a balance out of the imbalance that had plagued him for so long. His human and mage aspects blended with each other, with the killer, and he became the Mictlan. The man he was supposed to have been all along, anchored by the love of the woman he’d fought for, almost too late.

  Power flowed from him to her and back again, forming a feedback loop that turned the muk from greasy gray to pure silver, like liquid mercury running in his veins.

  Aware of the trembling roar that had built around them—not volcanic, but akin to it—he changed the angle of the kiss, deepening it and sending both of them into the sex magic that had bound them from the first. He was the Mictlan and the lover. She was the ch’ulel and the hot warrior princess who, incredibly, loved him.

  He was aware of movement curling around them as the plants grew taller and broader, seeking the walls of the chamber. The air moistened and warmed, and, incredibly, a bright light kindled above them, warming them as though the sun shone inside. He smelled green, leafy things, and felt the ground soften beneath him.

  The kiss spun on, bringing heat and magic, the energies coiling together as he and Sasha embraced. Hotter and hotter it whirled, coiling into a knot of energy that gained its own momentum, started moving faster and faster, spinning up to a peak. They broke the kis
s and looked at each other; he saw love in her eyes, and the forgiveness he’d sought without knowing he was seeking it.

  “I love you,” he said simply.

  “And I you.”

  Triggered by the affirmation, the energy crested and broke, climaxing away from them in a tidal wave of pleasure and pressure, of life and growth and mad, pure power. The maize and cacao, grown to epic proportions, strained at the cavern, thrusting outward, seeking the sky.

  A horrendous rending crack split the air, and the mountain shuddered and began to tear. Rocks rained down from above, but were caught by twining leaves and vines, a cushioning bower that protected Sasha and Michael and the dying man who would soon be their sacrificial victim. The plants shuddered with power, the volcano with protest.

  The magic crested and ebbed as Michael and Sasha clung to each other, hearts pounding in unison. When the power cleared and settled, when everything settled, there was a huge, gaping crack in the side of Paxil Mountain, lined with a carpet of leafy greenery he suspected would prove to be maize and cacao, growing from the split out into the world.

  The night beyond was dark, the air moist with highland vapor. Within moments, though, the night gave way to the warm glow of a rainbow fireball held by a blond Valkyrie, who sat astride a giant hawk.

  Within minutes, Anna stood over her onetime friend, onetime student, onetime slave. Tears ran down her cheeks as she read from the Prophet’s scroll.

  Sasha sat at his head, keeping Lucius alive as best she could. Jade sat on one side of him, holding his hand, deadly pale, her eyes intent on the rise and fall of his chest, which had closed over, but just barely. She gripped Michael’s hand, not just for the power, but for support, and because part of her wasn’t yet ready to believe that they’d finally found their way to each other. But even she couldn’t have imagined something like what had just happened—they’d broken a mountain together.