Dawnkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  A shimmer of that same mysticism walked across Nate’s skin as he stripped his shirt over his head in one yank, then tossed the garment aside and took Alexis in his arms and kissed her, letting his body tell her what he didn’t always get right with words.

  In response, she pressed her hands to his chest, touching his medallion, which grew warm with their body heat as she leaned into the kiss, opening to him. And as the night waned and became a new day, he took her to bed and they became, perhaps for the first time, lovers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  It wasn’t until Anna had been back in the glyph lab for a few days following her quick trip to Skywatch that she finally admitted, to herself at least, that the balancing act wasn’t working. Not the way she was trying to pull it off, anyway.

  It’d taken some serious crystal magic to jump-start her itza’at powers and get a peek inside Iago’s cesspool of a brain. She didn’t regret the magic, but she sure as hell could’ve done without the aftereffects, namely the fact that she’d been unable to close the lid on the visions once she’d called them. Granted, she’d known that could be the outcome. She just hadn’t known how much being a full-fledged visionary would suck. Even now, sitting at her office desk, she was bombarded with flashes and fragments, images of things that might have happened or might yet happen, made worse by the very nature of her work because she was surrounded by artifacts that resonated with her power, showing her things she didn’t need or want to see.

  How did it help anybody for her to know that the tiny chac-mool figurine she used as a paperweight had been carved by a wizened old man with two front teeth? Or that the painted bark strip that hung on her wall in a museum-quality frame was a clever fake? She already knew it was a fake; it wouldn’t have been on her wall otherwise, for chrissake.

  Worse, those pointless little details existed as a background drone to larger flashes and full-fledged visions, emotionally charged moments that would—or already had—happened to the people she interacted with every day. It was exhausting to be lecturing on the celestial significance of the four staircases of the pyramid at Chichén Itzá, and suddenly learn—in excruciating detail—that the guy third from the left in the front row had started the day on the receiving end of a world-class blow job. It drove her crazy to get the change from her take-out lunch purchase and know that her cashier was about a week away from getting his heart broken, though it was a relief not to see anything worse in his future. Because that was the really sucky thing about being an itza’at seer. No matter what the seer did or said, the future visions always came true. Always.

  It was one of the numerous reasons she hadn’t wanted the sight, had tried to fight it for as long as she had. If she couldn’t use the damn talent as a tool to make things better, why put up with it? If she could’ve had someone get inside her skull and rip the magic out of her cortex—or wherever the hell it lurked—she would’ve. Since that wasn’t an option, she did the next best thing: She worked on rebuilding the mental blocks, piece by agonizing piece.

  She was slumped down at her desk, staring at the yellow quartz effigy that had belonged to her mother, and generations of itza’ats before her, doing exactly that, when the phone rang. It wasn’t much in the way of an interruption, though. She was tired and heartsore, worried about Lucius, stressed about the upcoming equinox, and hating that so much of her normal life had become a series of lies designed to cover up her life as a Nightkeeper.

  Glancing at the caller ID, she found a small smile at seeing it was Dick. The pleasure was bittersweet, though; they’d taken a few days away together, had even flown the brightly colored kites she’d bought as a surprise. It had been lovely and romantic, and vaguely awkward. The therapist had said that the more they acted as though the love were there, the more actual love would follow. And maybe there was something to that, because ever since their getaway it’d felt less and less like an act and more like the real thing.

  She picked up on the third ring. “Hey, hon. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Hey back. I was calling to see if we’re still on for tonight.”

  “Definitely,” Anna said, though for a second she couldn’t remember their having any plans. Then she thought, Right. Dinner out. Eight o’clock reservations. The drain of setting the mental blocks was making her woozy and forgetful, she thought, and scribbled down a note reminding herself to eat something.

  “And you’re leaving the day after tomorrow for that guest lecture, right?”

  Guilt pinched at the lie, but there was no way she could tell Dick that she was headed down to New Mexico to hook up with the brother he didn’t know about, who would then teleport her and a dozen or so other psi-powered warriors down to southern Mexico, where they were going to fight like hell to hold the line between the earth and the underworld when a bunch of heavy hitters tried to come through and precipitate the end of days.

  Yeah. So not going there.

  “It’s just an overnight,” she said. “I’ll be back the day after.” Assuming, of course, that she survived the fight, Iago hadn’t succeeded in opening the hellroad, and there was still a university for her to return to. And the fact that those assumptions didn’t bother her as much as they used to was just another sign of how tired she was, how strung-out and stuck inside her own jumbled-up head.

  “Meet me at the car around seven thirty?”

  “Will do,” Anna said. That had been another one of the therapist’s ideas, for them to commute together, given that they were both going to the same place on a daily basis. And she had to admit that it was kind of nice riding in and out with him. It gave them a chance to chat—forced them to do so—twice a day.

  “See you then. Love you.” As usual, he hung up before she could respond in kind. It used to annoy her, because it seemed like he was winning by getting the last word. These days she wondered if he did it because he was afraid she wouldn’t say the words back. He was trying. They both were.

  “Love you,” she said, even though he was no longer there.

  Then she hung up the phone, ignored her scribbled note about a snack, and got back to work, knowing that her life would be a thousand times better once she killed the background drone. Problem was, blocks were the sort of thing she would’ve learned after her talent ceremony, when her mother and the other itza’ats would’ve instructed her on the proper use and control of her talent. Normally she would’ve had her talent ceremony during the cardinal day right after she hit puberty. Since that had coincided with her father’s attack on the intersection, the ceremony had been postponed . . . and then never happened. She’d finally gotten her itza’at’s mark, twenty-four years later, when Strike had dragged her back into the world she’d left behind. But the talent hadn’t come with training or enlightenment, had barely come with added power, thanks to the subconscious mental blocks her brain had thrown up to stop the nightmarish memories of the massacre, which she’d seen through the eyes of not just one, but hundreds of dying Nightkeepers.

  “Focus,” she said aloud, and forced herself to concentrate on the quartz effigy that she’d set in the middle of her blotter. According to the sketchy records Jade and Lucius had been able to find, an itza’at should be able to use her crystal to form a reversible block, one that could be kept in place on a day-to-day basis and lowered for a vision quest. In theory.

  In practice, she wasn’t getting very far.

  Don’t be such a girl, a familiar voice whispered at the back of her mind. The sound had her shooting straight up in her chair and looking around for a ghost, though she knew that was beyond stupid. He wasn’t there, wasn’t ever there. He was nothing more than a memory, and not even a good one, at that.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, hunkering down with her chin on the edge of her desk and glaring at the effigy.

  Amazingly, the quartz seemed to shimmer for a second, then started to glow from within. Excitement tightened her skin as carefully, very carefully, she sent a tendril of mental magic toward the crystal, an
d—

  The phone rang, snapping her concentration. “Gods damn it!” she snapped, annoyed with the caller for calling, beyond annoyed with herself for forgetting yet again to forward the phone to voice mail. Grabbing the handset, she snapped, “What?”

  There was a pause; then Lucius said, “I think you should come back to Skywatch.” His voice grated, as though he were forcing each of the words.

  Anna’s fingers tightened on the phone. “I’ll be there the day after tomorrow for the equinox ceremony. Is that soon enough?”

  “I . . . don’t think so.” His words trailed off to hissing silence.

  She understood then, and the bottom fell out of her world. Heart hammering against her ribs, she said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. And Lucius?”

  “Yes?” The word was barely a sigh.

  “I’m sorry.” This time she was the one who cut the connection, then dialed the main number at Skywatch. After ordering Jox to update Strike, and for the two of them to clear Lucius’s rooms of any sharp objects and lock him the hell in, she called the airline and paid a fortune to move her tickets up two days. She snagged the last seat on a flight that left in ninety minutes, and called a taxi to pick her up.

  She was in the air by seven. At nine she realized she’d stood Dick up for their date. At ten thirty, she called home to apologize, but there was no answer.

  At midnight she stood with Strike and Leah, looking down at Lucius.

  He lay curled on his side, clutching his bloody hand to his chest, his eyes flickering from hazel to luminous green and back, as the barrier thinned with the approaching equinox and evil struggled to gain a foothold in Skywatch.

  With Lucius locked up tight and a second layer of wards cast around his rooms, both to keep him in and to keep the makol out, the royal council adjourned to the kitchen to argue about what they should do with him. By the time Jox kicked them out of the kitchen so he could work on breakfast, and they’d adjourned to the royal suite to continue the battle, Alexis had been thoroughly reminded that Nate might be damn good in bed, but he could be seriously annoying and incredibly wrong when it came to matters of state.

  They sat together on a love seat in the sitting room of Strike and Leah’s suite, while the royal couple and Anna sat opposite them on a long couch. For the most part, though, the love seat wasn’t feeling much love.

  As far as Alexis was concerned, there was no excuse for maintaining a makol within Skywatch; it was too great a risk. She hated to do it, but had to vote for sacrificing Lucius. Leah agreed with her, which was a little surprising, given that the detective was a non-Nightkeeper herself, and had been under a similar threat of death only months earlier. But Leah was practical, and a cop, and was pretty firm on the idea that the needs of the many outweighed those of a given individual. Strike and Nate, on the other hand, wanted to keep Lucius alive and locked up through the equinox, on the theory that if he was human three hundred and fifty or so days a year, they could stand to lock him up for the duration of each solstice and equinox. Like he was some sort of werewolf or something, and there were only four full moons a year.

  Granted, Strike’s opinion was at least in part based on the fact that they didn’t know exactly what would happen to Anna if her bond-servant were sacrificed. Some of Jade’s info suggested she’d lose the slave-master’s mark on her arm in a flash of pain, similar to what the winikin experienced when a Nightkeeper member of their bound bloodline died. Other references, though, suggested that the outcome could be far worse, especially because she was an itza’at seer. One even went so far as to suggest that she would experience his death over and over and over again, regardless of whether she was awake or asleep. Since that was pretty much what Anna had been through after the massacre, Alexis saw the king’s point and sympathized with his concern for his sister. Unfortunately, since Nate agreed with the king, that left them deadlocked in a two-to-two vote, with Anna abstaining for obvious reasons and Jox maintaining that this was a matter for the magi, and a winikin shouldn’t cast the deciding vote.

  “I don’t want to do anything that’ll hurt Anna,” Alexis said, feeling like they were going around in circles. “But it’s simply not safe for us to harbor a makol in our midst. Just look what happened when Iago got one of his people inside. Do you really want to give the actual Banol Kax a foothold?”

  “Lucius is locked up and double-warded,” Nate countered. “We can keep him that way, and study him during the cardinal days, maybe come up with a way to cure him. The rest of the time he’ll be free to roam the compound and help Jade in the library, just like he is now.” He spoke to the group, but Alexis knew his words were aimed directly at her.

  The air crackled between them, rife with energy. But it wasn’t the same anger and frustration as before; this was a good energy, a productive energy that had developed in the week since she had gone to him as a woman wanting a man, and nothing more.

  During the day they trained together, and advised the king and queen, taking opposite sides partly because their views differed that sharply, and partly because having a devil’s advocate never hurt. They spent their nights together, usually in the cottage, which she liked for its privacy, and for the touches of home. The shag rug would have to go, of course, but the other kitsch had grown on her just as quickly as the idea of Nate as her lover and partner. They worked well together, loved well together.

  And if she’d fallen hard while he was still seeing the sex as a nice side benefit, then that was entirely her problem, her choice. Her responsibility to deal with.

  She shook her head, both at her own weakness for the slick, aloof ones, and to counter his point. “You’re making Lucius sound like a pet we can stick in a kennel and let out when it’s convenient. That’s inhumane.”

  “So it’s more humane to kill him now, without giving him a chance to come out of it?” Nate’s eyes narrowed on hers. “That’s logical.”

  “From his perspective? Maybe not. But from the perspective of keeping the Nightkeepers safe, so we’ll have the greatest possible number of warriors to hold the barrier and fight the end-time, then yes. It’s the most rational answer.” Alexis glanced at a too-pale Anna, hating the necessity, and said softly, “I’m sorry.”

  The king’s sister grimaced. “What we need is a mind-bender to exorcise the makol.”

  Nate held up both hands in a don’t go there gesture. “The only one we know of is Iago, and not even I’m going to okay a plan that involves capturing him and somehow forcing him to fix Lucius. Besides, wouldn’t it be more or less impossible to make a mind-bender like him do something? He could just twist us back around and make us think it was our idea to release him in the middle of Skywatch.”

  “Now, there’s a cheerful thought.” Alexis shuddered. “Too bad none of the others got—” She broke off as a new thought occurred. “Oh, shit!”

  “Is that a good ‘oh, shit,’ or a bad one?” Leah asked.

  “Potentially both,” Alexis answered as adrenaline kicked. “After what happened with the library, a bunch of us were sitting around and brainstorming, trying to figure out how Iago does what he can do. Lucius was wondering whether Iago might not have far fewer talents than it seems. For example, during the parley he didn’t try to force us to open the front door; he jammed the wards and the woman ’ported inside. So what if that means he didn’t have access to his mind-bending abilities? What if he’s actually borrowing some of his powers from the magi around him?”

  The others took a moment to digest the concept. Nate finally broke the silence, saying, “Not a bad point, but it’s academic, isn’t it? It doesn’t really matter where he gets the powers from, as long as he’s got access.”

  “It does matter, though, if you think about who he was with when he showed mind-bending powers,” Alexis said. “The first time was when he got the knife from Rabbit, and we’re figuring that he probably used it again in the museum, to distract Rabbit and lure the security guard onto the scene at exactly the wrong moment, then
later to make Sven drop the bowl and leave it behind.” She paused. “Are we seeing the pattern here?”

  Anna’s eyes sharpened. “The peccary bloodline carries mind-benders.” She paused. “You’re thinking that Iago was borrowing from Rabbit?”

  Leah exhaled. “But Rabbit doesn’t—” She broke off. “You’re right. It could be in his bag of tricks, like the telekinesis. He might not even know he has it yet, or didn’t when he left.” She nodded pensively. “If that’s the case and we can find him, it’s possible he could help rescue Lucius from the makol.”

  “That’s assuming Rabbit’s still alive,” Strike grated, his face setting in pain. “We have no reason to believe that’s the case. For gods’ sake, I can’t even get a ’port lock on him.”

  Alexis leaned in. “You couldn’t get one on Desiree or Iago, either. What if they’ve got him and they’re blocking your ’port?”

  Strike’s expression went thunderous. “Then we find them. And they’re dead.”

  Rabbit and Myrinne had been locked up together in the warded cabin for nearly a week with no outside contact, and only a couple of jugs of water and a box of energy bars. Her bruises had faded, leaving her high-cheekboned face unmarked and lovely, though pale with nerves as they sat shoulder to shoulder up against the wall. “You’re sure he’ll come today?” she asked quietly.

  “Tomorrow at the absolute latest. He’ll want me for the equinox, which is the day after.” Rabbit tugged at the grimy cuff of his sweatshirt, pulling it down farther, even though it already hid the new mark he wore on his forearm: the quatrefoil red hellmouth of the Xibalbans. He’d sold himself for Myrinne and didn’t regret the transaction for an instant. They’d clicked with each other there in captivity. She was tough and bossy, with an edge of street cool, and she got him like nobody else did. She understood when he needed to be quiet. Heck, she’d shut him down once or twice when she’d needed her own space, and he hadn’t minded. She couldn’t do magic, but wasn’t afraid of it, either, wasn’t afraid of him. After being the odd man out for so long, it was a huge relief to Rabbit to have someone else out there with him.