Dawnkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  “You snooped,” Nate said, the words coming out on a wheeze. “You cased the joint before I got here.”

  The winikin didn’t turn back. “You’re a tough case, Blackhawk. I’ll take whatever leverage I can get.”

  Which was pretty much what Carol Rose, his social worker, had said about him. She’d refused to take “fuck off and die” as an answer, and had ridden his ass until he straightened up and made something of himself. He was starting to get a feeling that Carol and Carlos had more in common than the similarities in their names. And that was simple fucking coincidence, he thought bitterly. Not fate.

  “So what exactly do you want from me?” he finally asked.

  “Nothing much.” Now Carlos did glance back, and his lips twitched. “I just want you to help save the world.”

  It should’ve been a joke, probably had been meant as one, at least in part. But the winikin’s words shot straight to the heart of Nate’s frustration, his pounding sense that he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing, yet he couldn’t do what the others wanted him to. Letting his legs unlock, he slid down the wall just inside his nursery until he was sitting on the floor, his spine propped against the doorjamb. Looking up at the stand-in father figure he hadn’t met until seven months earlier, he said, “I don’t know how.”

  Rancher-practical, Carlos said, “I can’t tell you how to feel or what to do. But I can tell you what’s been done before, and how those before you thought, felt, and acted.”

  “Their history ended in 1984,” Nate said, though the words came out less like a protest and more like a plea. “It’s just not relevant today.”

  “Then you will have wasted a few hours listening to an old man’s stories. Is that really any worse than going up to the Pueblo ruins and getting hammered on Rabbit’s stash of pulque?”

  “Busted,” Nate said, and found a grin. Forcing himself to breathe, he waggled his fingers in a bring it on gesture. “Okay, winikin, you win. Introduce me to my family.”

  Which was how, as the quick desert dusk fell and day turned to night, Nate found himself staring at a snapshot of a tall, handsome man with eyes like his, wearing the hawk medallion around his neck, with his arm curved protectively around the waist of a dark-haired woman who had laughing, loving eyes, and an infant cradled in her arms.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Rabbit had lived in Massachusetts for a good chunk of his life, through the misery of junior high and high school, and then for a few months after graduation, up until the barrier reactivated and Strike and his old man had reopened Skywatch. So he pretty much felt like an ass that he’d showed up for the ’port to Boston wearing shorts and a light hoodie, and then gave Strike lip when he’d suggested a jacket. It’d been seventy and sunny in New Mex.

  It was, however, thirty and pissing freezing rain in Boston. How had he forgotten the misery of early springtime in New England?

  He couldn’t bring himself to ask Strike to zap him added clothes, though, so he wound up standing in an alley around the corner from the MFA, shivering his frigging ass off while Patience, Sven, and Brandt went over the plan yet again. He was pretty sure really only Patience and Sven, with their talents of invisibility and translocation, were necessary for the actual op, but Brandt had refused to let his wife go off on her own, and Strike had wanted Rabbit out of the way, so all four of them were on the mission.

  Strike hadn’t actually said he wanted Rabbit out of the way, of course, but the subtext had been there. Which, Rabbit suspected, meant Carter finally had a lead on Myrinne, and Strike didn’t want him to know about it. Tit for tat, Rabbit had done an end run of his own, tapping the Nightkeeper Fund for fifteen hundred bucks with Jox’s blessing, claiming he needed a laptop upgrade. Instead, he’d pocketed five hundred and used a thousand to hire a PI of his own, one with a slightly different code of ethics than Carter. The PI, Juarez, had indicated that he’d have Myrinne’s location by the end of the day, which had Rabbit alternately feeling hot and cold even in the pissing drizzle. He went feverish at the thought of seeing Myrinne again, clammy when he imagined going against a direct order from his king.

  “Rabbit!” Patience said, voice sharp, as though she’d been trying to get his attention for a while.

  “Sorry,” he said, avoiding her eyes, because she knew him well enough to know what he was thinking half the time, and he did not want her knowing about Myrinne or the PI. “We ready?”

  “If you are,” Brandt grumbled, leading the way.

  They headed for the museum entrance and paid the entry fee in cash, then followed the signs to the traveling exhibit of Mayan artifacts. The signage directing them to the special exhibit had a cartoonish rendition of a generic Mayan pyramid, with a glyph string beside it. The glyphs were visually interesting, granted, but Rabbit was pretty sure he saw the at glyph, which stood for “penis,” and the ’we glyph, which meant “eat.”

  He snorted. Somebody had a sense of humor.

  “Focus, kid,” Brandt muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t screw this up for us.”

  “Bite me.” A few months ago he never would’ve talked to Brandt that way, not after he and Patience had practically adopted Rabbit after Red-Boar’s death, letting him stay in their big suite and trusting him with the twins and stuff. But things had been strained ever since a few weeks earlier, when Rabbit had walked in on a big-time fight and overheard Brandt pressuring Patience to leave Skywatch and take the rug rats with her. The last thing Rabbit had heard as he sneaked back out of the suite was Brandt saying something about all the time Patience had been spending with Rabbit. But when he’d said “Rabbit,” what he’d really meant was “half-blood fuckup.” That was what Rabbit’s old man called him, what all the others thought of him.

  Well, screw them.

  Brandt pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled a long, suffering breath designed to let his wife know how hard he was working to control his temper with Rabbit, who was more her friend than his.

  “Knock it off, you two,” she said without missing a beat, in the same voice she used on the twins when they were fighting. “This way.” She kept a firm grip on Sven’s arm, steering him through the first room of the Mayan exhibit, hanging on to him as though she thought he might bolt.

  Good guess too, Rabbit thought, getting a look at Sven’s pasty face. The mage was wide-eyed with nerves. Gods only knew why he was so freaked. It wasn’t like they were getting ready to kill someone—they were stealing a bowl, for fuck’s sake, and if saving the world wasn’t a good enough reason for some five-fingering, Rabbit didn’t know what was. Besides, if Sven’s brand-new talent backfired and they set off the alarms or something, Patience could blink them invisible while they sneaked out and called Strike for a pickup. Worst-case scenario, like if the museum went into lockdown, they could hide and have Strike risk an interior ’port and pick them from inside the building.

  Seriously, what was Sven’s deal?

  “Okay, this is the place,” Brandt said, moving ahead of the others, bumping Rabbit on the way by in what might’ve been an apology, might’ve been a challenge. Or, hell, even an accident. He continued, “We’re going to work our way around the room and pretend to look at the stuff. Sven? You ready?”

  Way not, Rabbit thought, but to his surprise Sven nodded, and his voice was steady when he said, “Ready.” His color had even come back. Looked like the dude had manned up, after all.

  “Rabbit, you’re on the door,” Brandt continued, like they hadn’t gone over the stupid-simple plan a thousand times back at Skywatch. “Keep an eye out for guards, and warn us if it looks like one’s headed this way while Sven’s making the switch.”

  They weren’t even totally stealing the bowl; they were switching it with a comparable ceremonial bowl from Skywatch. They’d stashed the spare in an alley Dumpster nearby, because they hadn’t figured it’d be a good idea to stroll into the museum carrying the replacement bowl. Hello, obvious. The idea was that Sven would translocate the bow
l from the alley and switch it with the one they wanted. Which sounded great, but got complicated because it meant he had to split his brain and do a simultaneous double translocation, timing it perfectly so the motion detectors guarding the museum’s bowl didn’t register the change in the bowl’s weight on the pressure pad of the display, Indiana Jones-like. In theory, anyway.

  “You realize,” Rabbit said to Brandt, “that if they’ve got audio-recognition software, you probably just triggered it by talking about the guards.”

  “I doubt they’ve got the technology.” But the big man looked around a little, and waved for them to split up. Rabbit took his position in the far corner, where he could pretend to be studying one of the displays while keeping an eye on both of the doors serving the exhibit room. Patience, Brandt, and Sven wandered over to the display case containing the ornately carved bowl, where they lingered, waiting for the room to empty of most of the other museumgoers.

  Come on, come on, Rabbit thought, the wait wearing on him quickly. Trying to figure out how long it’d take for whoever was manning the surveillance cameras to wonder why he was so interested in the display he was parked in front of—which was a blah fragment from a not-very-interesting mural at Tulum—he palmed his cell phone, checking the time for no particular reason.

  Okay, he was checking for messages, so sue him. Brandt’s voice whispered through his mind, saying, Don’t screw this up, but Rabbit hit the “incoming” icon just in case.

  There was a message from Juarez.

  Excitement fired in his blood, bringing a hum of magic as he clicked over to the text. Target was in N.O. two days ago, the text read, followed by an address Rabbit didn’t recognize. Feeling a kick of optimism, he started keying in a reply.

  He was halfway through when an unfamiliar voice said, “Sorry, kid, no cell phones in—” The guard broke off two steps inside the room, locking on Sven, who must’ve fucked up the translocation, because he had the demon prophecy bowl in his hands, rather than it being safe in the alley where he was supposed to send it. “Hey!” the guard shouted, going for a button on his belt first, and then rushing the thieves.

  He was across the room before Rabbit broke from the shocked paralysis that’d gripped him the second he realized just how badly he’d fucked up. Before he could move or yell a warning, the guy had stun-gunned Patience, who dropped without a sound. Brandt roared a battle cry and decked the guard, who went down for the count, but the damage was already done.

  Alarms shrilled and panels started grinding into place. And the Nightkeepers’ fallback invisibility plan was a no-go.

  Heart hammering, Rabbit jammed his phone in his pocket and started across to help, but Brandt shoved him aside. “Fuck off. You’ve done enough.” He got his wife over his shoulder and grabbed Sven by the shirt, dragging him through the nearest door just before it clanged shut, leaving Rabbit behind.

  Rabbit stood for a second, paralyzed, then bolted, barely making it out the other door. He was shaking and breathing hard, panic mixing with awful guilt. With Patience unconscious, the others were visible, vulnerable. He should double back around and find them, help them. But Brandt’s anger cut through him, warning him that he’d finally done it, finally fucked up one too many times. Rabbit’s hands were trembling when he pulled out his cell and speed-dialed home. When Jox picked up, he said, “Have Strike lock on Brandt and get them out, now.” His voice broke, and tears were gumming up his vision, but he didn’t care.

  He hung up, chucked his phone in the nearest trash, and took off.

  The day the Boston mission left, Alexis spent most of the day in her suite studying—she refused to think of it as hiding. She was reading up on the Godkeeper legends, which were woefully lacking in detail, and trying out a few selected spells to see if she could pull them off.

  So far, that would be a no.

  Her tactile senses were heightened, especially when it came to textiles and other woven things. She could touch a piece of fabric and know instantly where its weak spots lay; give her a piece of clothing and she immediately knew where its seams were imperfect, its design flawed. She saw new colors in the world around her, and was preternaturally aware of how the light bent slightly as it came through a window, how it refracted in a droplet of water dripping from her bathroom sink. And she knew at a glance where the women around her were in their biological cycles—hello, TMI. All of those were consistent with Ixchel’s triad role as the goddess of weaving, rainbows, and fertility. But how the hell was any of that supposed to help her repel the first of Camazotz’s sons during the vernal equinox in two weeks?

  Alexis didn’t have a freaking clue.

  Back in the fall, Leah’s bound god, Kulkulkan, had manifested as a giant winged serpent to fight the flying crocodile demon, Zipacna. Which had made some sense—flying monster versus flying monster. So what, exactly, was the goddess of rainbows supposed to do against a death god? And how the hell did the Volatile fit in? It would’ve helped if she could talk to the goddess and ask for info. That had been the hope going into the ceremony. Leah had gotten some thought-flashes from Kulkulkan, so they’d theorized that a true, full-blood Godkeeper might have a closer bond, one that allowed for actual conversation. Unfortunately, not so much. Which meant that so far Leah, with her flawed connection to the creator god Kulkulkan, was still more useful than Alexis as a fully bound keeper to Ixchel.

  Granted, although she might be fully bound, she was functioning without her gods-destined protector. She’d stopped thinking of Nate as her gods-destined mate and gone with “protector” instead, because the more comfortable she got with her connection to Ixchel’s subtle powers, the more the fabric of her own life took shape around her, letting her see that she deserved someone who wanted her, flaws and all, someone who loved every piece of her and asked nothing but that she love him back. Which, she realized, was sort of what Nate had been saying before, that sex and love shouldn’t be a commodity used to pay for increased power.

  She couldn’t help thinking, though, that if he wanted her enough, needed her enough, then none of the power stuff would matter to him, and he’d take her any way he could get her. That meant he hadn’t—and didn’t—want her enough. Story of her life.

  Aaron had liked her as a portfolio manager and arm candy in certain social situations, and most of his predecessors had been iterations of the same theme. Izzy loved her; Alexis was sure of that. But at the same time, she couldn’t help wondering how much of that emotion was tied into the winikin’s ambitions, always wanting her to be the best and brightest, to live up to her bloodline and her mother’s reputation. And Nate . . . hell, he wanted her sexually because the gods had hardwired him that way, whether or not he was willing to admit it. But the woman he truly wanted wasn’t her. He wanted the warrior in his video game, the woman Alexis might have been if the massacre had never happened, if she’d been raised by her parents within the Nightkeeper system. But that hadn’t happened, and the lives each of them had lived prior to discovering their true nature had made them too different from the people they should have been. Which meant she and Nate were almost—but not quite—a match.

  A quick knock on the door jolted her out of her reverie. “Yes?”

  “We’ve got a problem. You’d better come.” It was Nate, sounding clipped and urgent.

  His voice brought a buzz of heat and frustration, coming so close on the heels of her thoughts of him. But his tone warned that something was wrong.

  “Coming,” she called. Heart kicking against her ribs, she scrambled to her feet, dumping a pile of reference books on the floor. Pausing only to jam her feet in a pair of scuffs, she headed for the door, coming up short when she swung open the panel and found him standing in the hallway, waiting for her. He was wearing combat clothes, though no bulletproof vest or belt. Hesitating, she said, “Should I get my gear?”

  He shook his head. “I was headed out to the shooting range when Carlos came for me. There’s a problem with the team in Boston.”

>   “Iago?” she asked immediately.

  “Rabbit.”

  “Let’s go.” They hurried up the hall to the main body of the mansion. When they pushed through a set of swinging doors leading to the sunken main room, Alexis gave a low cry at the sight of Patience lying motionless on one of the big couches with Jox bent over her. Sven was sitting on the other sofa with his head in his hands; Carlos was trying to make him drink some OJ, only to be shaken off. Jade was hovering over the sofas, looking lost, with Lucius in the background behind her. The other winikin were in the kitchen, pulling together food, suggesting that serious magic was on tap. There was no sign of Strike, Brandt, Michael, or Rabbit.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Nate asked before Alexis could. For a moment there was no answer; then Sven dragged his face out of his hands and looked up, revealing a hunted, haunted expression. “They went back for the demon-prophecy bowl. I managed to make the switch, but I zapped it into my hands instead of out into the alley. A guard saw, and I lost the bowl while we were trying to get away from the cops. I fucking dropped it, and now we’ve got nothing.”

  “It wasn’t—” Carlos began, but Sven shot to his feet and stood, swaying.

  “It was my fault; don’t you get it? I dropped the bowl and didn’t go back for it. I was too busy running away, just like—” Now he interrupted himself, clicking his teeth over the words and saying instead, “It fucking was my fault.”

  Alexis, who’d never had much patience with breast-beating guilt trips, found herself crossing the room and taking the glass of OJ from Carlos. “Get him food,” she ordered. Then she made Sven sit back down and pressed the juice into his hand. “Bottoms up,” she said firmly. “You need the sugar after pulling off the double translocation.”

  “I didn’t pull it off,” he snapped. “I—”