Dawnkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  He took it as a bad sign that she didn’t argue the need for the emergency evac ’port, or for Patience’s talent of invisibility. Worse was the sight he caught when they rounded the next corner: glass blown out into the street, and most of a block aflame. “Shit.”

  He was out of the cab before it stopped moving. Aware that Alexis was right behind him he spun and snapped, “Stay here, and this time I fucking mean it!”

  She called his name as he turned away, but he didn’t look back. He headed straight into the flames, shouting, “Rabbit? Rabbit, goddamn it, answer me!”

  There was no answer but the roar of fire. He sucked in another breath to try again, and pain seared his lungs, the foulness of smoky air grabbing on and doubling him over in a fit of coughing. He staggered onward, though, passing tables and chairs that had already burned to skeletons, as though they’d been liberally dosed with napalm.

  Goddamn it, he was going to be seriously pissed if he died saving the kid’s punk ass from fire he’d created himself and didn’t have the chops to control. “Rabbit!” he shouted, his voice breaking.

  And thank the freaking gods he got an answer, more a groan than any words, but it’d do. Staying low and holding what was left of his shirt across his mouth, Nate headed that way, not bothering to test the floor or worry about the flaming timbers overhead, because if he didn’t move fast they were dead anyway.

  “Keep talking!” he ordered, and heard another groan. Two more steps and his foot snagged on something and he went to his knees, kneeling atop a semiconscious Rabbit. “Got you,” Nate said, voice cracking on smoke. “I’ve got you.”

  But who has me? he thought as he grabbed onto Rabbit’s hoodie and jeans and started dragging the kid in what he thought was the direction of the door. The answer was, Nobody. He’d have to make it on his own, like always. But the room was spinning and the floor was pitching beneath his feet as he staggered onward, dragging Rabbit’s limp body. He missed his next step and went down to his knees, then fell forward. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t even feel the fire anymore. The flames were cool, licking across his skin like a lover.

  He saw her face in the flames, saw her reach through the madness to touch him. But instead of the soft love she had in her eyes when he imagined her time and again—Hera, Alexis, one and the same—she looked terrified, resolute. And as she reached for him, someone else hurried past her and bent down to grab Rabbit. Then Nate felt the fantasy actually touch him, felt the jolt of contact, and he knew it wasn’t a dream at all. Alexis had come after him.

  And there was a damn good chance she was going to die right along with him.

  Fuck! He grabbed onto her wrist, used it as a lifeline, and pulled himself partway up. He was aware of Strike slinging Rabbit over his shoulder. Then the king turned back and went for Nate’s other side, so they were braced one against another, and it was all or nothing: Either all four of them made it out, or they died together, taking a quarter of the Nightkeepers’ strength with them. And destiny or not, Nate wasn’t letting that happen, wasn’t letting Alexis lose herself trying to save him, not ever.

  Together the Nightkeepers struggled from the burning building.

  They made it out—barely. Just when they got clear of the door the whole place came down with a crash and a skyscraper-high gout of flame. Then Patience was there, grabbing onto the king and invoking her talent, and all five of them went invisible.

  There were a few startled cries from bystanders who thought they’d seen what they couldn’t possibly have seen, but the invisibility trick was quickly lost amidst the chaos of a four-plus-alarm blaze. Then golden magic flared, and the buzz of a teleport surrounded them. Nate barely had time to brace himself before he was jerked sideways and went flying into the gray-green nothingness of the king’s ’port magic.

  Nate held on to Alexis on his left side, Strike on his right. It hurt to breathe, to blink, to think, so he just hung there for a second in the gray-green nothingness of the barrier and let himself be dragged along. Then, with a bang of displaced air, Skywatch’s great room materialized around them.

  They zapped in maybe a foot off the floor and hovered for a second before gravity took over. In that second Nate realized his skin was burning and his lungs were seized with smoke. Instead of landing on his feet he hit the floor and curled up, hacking for all he was worth, trying to breathe. He fought back a scream and it came out as a groan.

  “Nate!” Alexis dropped down beside him, her hands hovering in midair, as though she wanted to touch him but didn’t dare. He didn’t know whether it was meant as comfort, to reassure herself that he was alive, or, hell, to remind the king that she’d been an important part of the rescue, but Nate found it to be a nice moment nonetheless. And for a few seconds, as the coughing eased and the Nightkeepers’ accelerated healing started to do its thing, he let himself relax and pretend she’d come after him because he mattered, not in the grand scheme of the Nightkeepers, but to her personally.

  “Thanks,” he said, though it came out as more of a croak.

  She went still for a moment, and he was expecting a dig or a snappy comeback, so he was surprised when she said only, “You’re welcome.” And then she touched him, laying her palm against his scorched cheek so she could send him a wash of warmth and power, and an edge of softness he hadn’t known he needed until just then.

  Once Nate was asleep—okay, so he’d passed out, but who could blame him?—Alexis stepped back so Carlos and Jox could carry him to his room and get him cleaned up. She badly needed a shower too, but instead she found herself crouching down beside Rabbit, opposite Strike and Leah.

  The king’s face was streaked with soot and burn marks, the latter of which were already most of the way healed. But the strain and worry didn’t ease; they wouldn’t, Alexis knew, until the teen awoke.

  “We left him behind so he’d be safe,” she said softly, feeling guilt dig deep. “We didn’t know the witch would come back to the tea shop.” Which didn’t explain why Rabbit had been three blocks away when he’d called the fire magic. But it also didn’t own the full responsibility she carried. “I should’ve listened to Nate,” she said, her shoulders sagging beneath the failure. “When the witch refused to sell us the knife outright, he wanted to steal it and get back home. I convinced him to wait. It’s my fault.”

  But the king shook his head. “You didn’t do this. The redhead did.”

  Rabbit stirred and whispered something from between cracked lips.

  Strike leaned in. “Come again?”

  “Iago,” Rabbit said, his voice a dry rasp. “His name is Iago. And you were right; he’s Order of Xibalba.”

  Leah stiffened. “How do you know?”

  “Myrinne told me. Iago offered the witch a deal.” The teen exhaled and faded again.

  “Who the hell is Myrinne?” Strike demanded, voice rough with worry.

  Alexis said, “If I’m guessing right, a dark-haired girl with a shiner; I think she may be the witch’s apprentice or servant, maybe her daughter.”

  “Which means she probably knows what she’s talking about. Shit. Order of Xibalba.” He shared a complicated look with Leah, one that excluded Alexis and the rest of the world.

  Leah nodded. “Yeah. Problem.”

  “I’m sorry I lost the knife,” Rabbit said, his cracked voice painful to hear.

  “Not your fault either,” Strike said with a look at Alexis. He reached out to touch the boy, then hesitated and let his hand fall. “Heal up. We’ll talk later.”

  At the king’s word, Jox came in to tend the boy. Strike rose with a soft curse and headed out of the room, with Leah following. The cop-turned-queen paused at the archway leading to the louvered hall and raised an eyebrow at Alexis. “You coming?”

  Alexis stalled, confused. “I don’t . . . I didn’t . . . what?” Treacherous hope unfurled. “You want me in on your meeting? Even though I screwed up?”

  “At least you tried something,” Leah said, her blu
e eyes cool and assessing, not giving away a thing. “You interested in maybe trying something else, or at least talking strategy?”

  Alexis was filthy and sore, and a weak, feminine part of her really wanted to check in on Nate, but all of those things could wait. The toehold to an advisory position, the one thing she’d wanted ever since this all began, was being offered to her. She took a tentative step in Leah’s direction, aware that the king was standing behind his mate, waiting for Alexis’s decision.

  She paused a moment longer, then lifted her chin and nodded, accepting her mother’s place—her rightful place—among the king’s council. “Count me in.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Today is not a good day to travel this road,” said Abe, the guide Lucius had hired to lead him into the Yucatán rain forest. The vague warning was the fifth he’d given in the past hour, as he and Lucius trekked along a nonpath through the heart of the jungle.

  Lucius wasn’t sure if the guy was trying to spook him, or if he really thought the gods had slapped a big old cosmic Keep Out sign across their path. But if anyone was going to get the omens right, it was someone like Abe, who was in training to become a Daykeeper, a shamanistic tradition the modern Maya had retained from their long-ago ancestors. Centuries of push-pull between Christianization and tradition had given birth to a blended religion that nodded to Christian themes while retaining many of the old ceremonies and beliefs, including the Daykeepers, who were in charge of the multiple Mayan calendars and their associated prophecies and portents.

  According to Abe, those portents indicated that the spirits of the rain forest were restless, and wanted Lucius out of their ’hood.

  Normally Lucius would’ve given in. Anna had taught him early on that a Mayanist worked within the local community, even when studying the ancient glyph system that was no longer practiced in the modern day. If she’d been there, she would’ve turned back on warning number two or three. She wouldn’t’ve kept going until Abe broke out in a light sweat and his eyes went wild around the edges. But Anna wasn’t there, and Lucius had no intention of turning back. Something was pulling him onward, drawing him along the faint pathway one of Ledbetter’s grad students had mentioned seeing in his notes. The old coot had been secretive about the site, the girl had said; he’d nearly bitten her head off when he realized she’d seen the journal entry.

  That was what she’d told Sasha Ledbetter when she’d come looking for a clue as to where her father had gone. And Lucius, thanks to Desiree and her magic AmEx, had followed, more than four months after Sasha had flown south, and fallen off the map, just like her old man.

  Logic said that Ambrose Ledbetter and his daughter had perished, probably taking with them whatever Ambrose had known about the Nightkeepers. But Lucius needed to know for sure.

  As though in answer to his thought, the wind picked up, moaning through the top level of the leafy canopy in an eerie descant. Okay, that’s creepy, Lucius admitted inwardly. Doesn’t mean I’m quitting, though.

  Abe planted himself in the middle of the nonpath and jammed his machete into the loam. “We’re going back now.”

  “It was just the wind,” Lucius said, because really, there was nothing to suggest otherwise. The birds and critters were still doing their thing, and the sun still dappled through the canopy, though slanting a little lower in the sky than it’d been when they left the Jeep at the place where the narrow footpath intersected the muddy track that passed for a road. The air hadn’t changed. Nothing was different.

  Yet at the same time, something was different, he realized suddenly. There was a hum in the air that hadn’t been there before, subsonic, almost a buzz running beneath his skin.

  “I’m not going back,” he said before he was even aware of having made the decision.

  “I am.” Abe stepped away and spit on the ground. “Good luck.”

  The loogie wasn’t a sign of disrespect, Lucius knew, but rather the exact opposite. Moisture was precious in the Yucatán, where water ran entirely underground, coming to the surface only at circular openings, fallen-through sinkholes called cenotes. The spittle was a sacrifice. A blessing.

  Or, more likely, a gesture of, Gods be with you, dumb-ass.

  The Daykeeper left the machete and his canteen and took off, humping it back down the trail at more than twice the speed they’d made forging forward.

  “Thanks for your help,” Lucius called, figuring there was no need for hurt feelings. He had plenty of supplies, a GPS unit, and a satellite phone for emergencies. He could see the path—more or less, anyway—and figured there was a good bet that the temple site he was looking for was somewhere up ahead. He was good to go.

  Yet his feet wouldn’t move.

  He stood there as the sound of Abe’s retreat faded into the background jungle chatter, and he was completely frozen as the two halves of him pulled in diametrically opposite directions. The logical part of him, the part that’d absorbed Anna’s training and already couldn’t believe he’d gone behind her back like this, wanted to go with Abe. The Daykeeper knew his shit. If he said the signs were wrong, then the signs were wrong and it was time to leave.

  The other part of him, though, the part that brought him strange, twisted dreams in the night, dreams that curled with fire and tasted of blood—that part of him wanted to grab the machete and keep going. The temple was up ahead; he could feel it, practically see it. There was no reason to turn back now and every reason to keep going. And then he was moving, though he couldn’t have said why or how; he just knew he had the machete in his hand and was using it to widen the narrow trail, pushing through the densely packed vegetation, wading through an ocean of green.

  Five minutes later he saw the first sign of civilization he’d seen in hours, and it wasn’t modern. The carved stone pillar lay on its side, broken into three pieces along the seams where the stacked sections had been sealed together.

  Called stelae, such pillars had been the Maya’s billboards. In the ruined city of Chichén Itzá, they were grouped together by the hundreds in the Hall of Pillars, and had offered up everything from local proclamations and records of political changes to histories and legends. Elsewhere—including the burbs of Chichén—stelae were scattered farther out, standing alone, sometimes in the seeming middle of nowhere, a testament to a culture that might be long gone, but remained alive in its writings. Those scattered stelae had typically been more along the lines of road markers . . . or sometimes warnings.

  Feeling a creepy-crawl heading down the back of his neck, Lucius knelt beside the stela and swiped at the encroaching vegetation, which had grown only partway up to cover the carved limestone. Can’t have fallen that long ago, he thought as the heady excitement of fieldwork cleared his brain a little. Would’ve been covered otherwise.

  If it’d been any more overgrown he might not’ve seen it. As it was, the only reason he’d noticed the whitehued stone was because he’d had to hack around a section of denser brush. It was a happy coincidence that he’d stumbled on the thing. Or maybe it’d been fate. The Nightkeepers hadn’t believed in coincidence, after all.

  Using the flat of the machete to scrape away some thorny, clinging vines, he uncovered a swath of carved stone. It took a second for the sight of the main glyph to register. When it did, he stopped breathing.

  He’d found the screaming skull.

  It was the one glyph he’d needed to prove his thesis. The one glyph he’d been unable to conclusively identify from actual writing samples.

  “Holy shit.” He’d been so sure it existed, had been pretty sure he’d found it at least twice before, but Anna had torpedoed his translation the first time, and the second time . . . well, back then they’d still been friends and he’d taken her at her word that it was really Jaguar-Paw’s laughing-skull glyph. In retrospect, he had a feeling she’d Photoshopped his digitals to make sure of it. And wasn’t that a nasty suspicion?

  A faint warning bell chimed at the back of his head, a brain worm that said the t
houghts weren’t his own, and neither was the anger. But as he knelt there and the damp worked through the fabric of his breathable nylon cargo pants, the rage took root and started to grow.

  He’d trusted her, and she’d blocked him at every turn.

  I’ll show her, he thought, pulling his camera out of his pack and taking a dozen snaps of the stela, and the tell-tale glyph that symbolized the Nightkeepers’ involvement in the zero date, and their vow to protect mankind. In theory, anyway.

  “No theory about it,” he said, rising to his feet and shouldering his pack, the weight feeling far lighter than it had only moments earlier as the certainty flowed through him. He was almost there, almost at the end of years of searching for something the experts said didn’t exist. The stela had been a marker; he was sure of it. And maybe a warning, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, just as he hadn’t been scared off by Abe’s talk of bad omens.

  The thrill of excitement drew him onward, the promise of discovery, the mystery of what the hell’d happened to Ambrose Ledbetter, and the burning certainty that he had to find Ambrose’s daughter, Sasha.

  Lucius had e-mailed Ambrose once or twice about his end-time theories, but the old coot had stonewalled him, and their one in-person meeting had been more of a midconference snarl in passing from Ledbetter than an actual meeting. Lucius hadn’t even known Ledbetter had a daughter until Sasha had phoned the glyph lab looking for Anna. Yet it was Sasha’s voice he heard at the back of his head as he hacked his way along the thin trail, and her picture, which he’d downloaded from the Web page of the high-end restaurant where she worked, that he held in the forefront of his mind. She was pretty enough—okay, gorgeous—but it wasn’t her looks that he’d focused most on. There had been something about her eyes, something about their shape and intensity. That something had sent a chill down his spine and kicked some serious heat into his bloodstream, driving him onward.