Dawnkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  They fit, they matched, just as he’d known they would when he’d first seen her and the restless, edgy part inside him had gone still.

  They hadn’t done more than hold hands, or curl close together to share body heat as they slept, but that much had been exactly right, calling to something deep inside him, letting him know that now that he’d found her, it was up to him to protect her. Which meant getting both their asses out of there and back to Skywatch. He no longer cared whether Strike was pissed at him. He just wanted to go home. Once he got there, he’d kiss whoever’s ass he had to, promise whatever was necessary in order to claim sanctuary for him and Myrinne.

  But first they had to get the hell out of the cabin and away from Iago, which was way easier said than done, given that the bastard had that whole fast-forward/pause thing going on.

  Thing was, Rabbit thought he knew a way to neutralize Iago’s advantages—some of them, anyway. He didn’t know how he knew; he just did.

  It all went back to the second day of his captivity, when he’d traded his magic for Myrinne’s life. After making the deal, he’d followed Iago’s orders, standing inside the skull circle and drinking his own blood from the ceremonial bowl that had been dedicated to the earthquake demon, Cabrakan. He’d screamed when pain racked his entire body, and again when he’d seen the hellmouth mark appear on his arm and he’d jacked in, not to the barrier, but to the first layer of hell.

  Vicious, glorious power had whipped through him, and suddenly Iago had been inside his head, using him, forcing him to pray to the Banol Kax, to give himself to them. Through him, Iago had exhorted Cabrakan to collapse a cave down south somewhere. But even as the Xibalban had been using him, Rabbit had found himself catching thought snippets from the other man: impressions and images, emotions and bits of conversation. From them, he’d learned that Iago needed him for his wild half-blood magic, and was somehow using that magic against him through the quatrefoil mark, turning Rabbit’s mind-bending powers inward, on himself.

  Shock one had been learning that he was a mind-bender, and that the talent worked on other magi. Shock two had been realizing that Iago was a borrower, capable of siphoning another magic user’s talents.

  After he’d figured that out, Rabbit had gone digging a little deeper, taking his mind off what his body was used to doing. As he’d sat cross-legged opposite Iago with the bowl between them, working the dark magic, he’d learned that Iago’s borrowing talent worked at close proximity with any mage, but better when that mage wore the quatrefoil mark, which was why he’d needed Rabbit bound to the Xibalban magic. Since Iago couldn’t risk fouling the bonding process with a mind-bend, he’d needed Rabbit to take the mark more or less willingly. Having seen Rabbit and Myrinne together at the pizza joint and seeing that she was important, the Xibalban had located her, captured her, and then waited to grab Rabbit. He would’ve taken him from the museum, but Strike and Leah had shown up, looking for him and he hadn’t wanted to risk their detecting the magic.

  Even knowing that much had helped Rabbit, because it meant that at least they’d searched for him a little. It also gave him hope that they’d take him back . . . except for the part where Strike had forbidden him to bring Myrinne into Skywatch, of course, but he’d blow up that bridge when he got there. The first order of business was getting the hell free.

  Then he heard it: the crunch of a footfall on the packed snow outside, too close, not giving him enough time to prepare.

  “Shit!” Rabbit scrambled for the magic, lunging to his feet while Myrinne gasped and dove for the corner. Rabbit tried to latch onto Iago’s mind, but he wasn’t jacked in right; he was in the barrier, not the hell layer. Breathing fast, heart hammering in his chest, he tried again and failed. Another footfall came outside, and the doorknob rattled, and Rabbit shouted, “No!”

  The universe blinked out. Then it blinked back in, and he was in another of the cabins, this one entirely bare save for a woman lying on the floor, bound in a rope cocoon. She was dark-haired and smooth-skinned beneath the bruises that marred her face and bare forearms. She was in her mid-twenties, maybe, wearing ragged, outdoorsy clothes, like she’d been grabbed in the middle of a camping trip. Her eyes were dim with drugs, but she was aware enough to be terrified.

  “Please,” she whispered, her eyes locked on Rabbit. “Please don’t.”

  Iago swung the door shut behind him, closing them in.

  “Son of a bitch!” Rabbit spun on him, his gut clenched with fear, with rage. He lunged at the other mage. “If you did anything to Myrinne, I’ll—”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Iago said, effortlessly grabbing hold of his mind and shutting him down through the quatrefoil mark.

  The Xibalban pulled the demon prophecy knife and blooded his right palm without a change in expression, then tossed the knife to Rabbit, who caught it haft-first, and blooded his palm similarly, all without wanting to.

  Rabbit felt powerless. Impotent. Like he was fourteen all over again, and being pounded on by the bullies at school, the ones who called him Bunny-boy and teased him about his zonked-out old man. Only this was so much worse, because he wasn’t just worried about saving his own ass anymore.

  “As you’ve no doubt figured, I’ll be needing your assistance the day after tomorrow,” Iago said. “However, since there’s no guarantee you’ll live through the equinox ceremony, I thought I’d call on you beforehand to help me deal with a small problem.” He clasped Rabbit’s bleeding hand in his own, and the surge of uplinked power nearly lifted them both off their feet. The floor shifted beneath them, and the air crackled with fire magic, with transport magic, with all the borrowed talents the Xibalban held within him.

  An invisible net tightened around Rabbit, binding his limbs, his brain. It grew tentacles that dug into him, writhed through him, searching for something. He arched against the invading pressure and screamed at the top of his lungs, but the tentacles kept coming, kept searching. Then, as if one of them had plugged into a socket within his brain, suddenly he could see through Iago’s eyes and Iago could see through his. They were two and they were one, with Iago in control, Rabbit shoved to a corner of his own mind.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything except watch as Iago used his body as a puppet, forcing it to focus on the dark-haired woman, forcing it to call on something Rabbit didn’t know he’d possessed, a grayish intensity of magic he didn’t recognize.

  Then Iago and not-Rabbit spoke in synchrony, asking the woman, “Where is the library?”

  Her drug-dulled eyes blanked for a second, and her mouth opened as though to answer, but only a strangled cry emerged, one that went to pain as the woman bit down on her own tongue and blood flowed. “I don’t know,” she said.

  The gray haze in Rabbit’s brain thickened, and he could feel the magic, feel the pressure as Iago and not-Rabbit said, “Tell us where your father hid the library.”

  “Fuck. You.” Her words came from between gritted teeth.

  Iago leaned on Rabbit for more power, dug deeper into the woman’s mind for an answer. Grinning a horrible rictus of pain, she writhed against her bonds, emitting high, inhuman mewling noises that made Rabbit’s blood freeze with horror at the knowledge that he was helping Iago torture her.

  Stop it, he told himself. Make him stop! But he didn’t know how to use his own mind-bending powers, hadn’t known he had them until the Xibalban had pulled them to the surface.

  The woman was screaming now, deep, raw cries that started at the back of her throat and rose up through the octaves, each one a little weaker than the last.

  “Your father found the library and recovered it from the caves,” Iago pressed in his and not-Rabbit’s voices, their talents amplifying each other, the mind-bender and the borrower, locked together to break a human woman who was so much stronger than she should have been. “Where did he take the codices? Where did he hide them?”

  She was beyond speech now, but speech wasn’t necessary, because they were ins
ide her head. Rabbit could see flashes of an older, gray-haired man, and a busy restaurant. And over it all was the refrain of a song, one that he almost recognized.

  She was using the song to block the invasion, Rabbit realized, and was impressed. More than that, he was free to go after the magic, because Iago was pissed, and entirely focused on the melody that blocked the information he wanted. Hustling, Rabbit fought to track the grayish mist to its source, only it didn’t seem to have a source; it was all over, all around him. And then, somehow, it was inside him, inside the small knot of Rabbit-consciousness that he’d managed to retain within the prison Iago had made of his mind.

  He threw himself into the mist, took it within himself, and found the magic. Or maybe the magic finally found him, as it had done with fire and telekinesis. Either way, he grabbed for it, locked onto it, and threw it straight into Iago’s head. Stop! he shouted mentally, as loud as he could, pouring all the power he possessed along the link. Barrier power, hell power, he didn’t care; he just threw all of himself into the Xibalban, screaming, Stop!

  Roaring, Iago yanked his hand away from their uplink and grabbed for his skull. “Get out!” But he didn’t have control of the mind-bend anymore, so the words were just words.

  Die! Rabbit shouted, beyond himself with hatred, with violence. Die, you son of a bitch!

  Too late, he realized they were still connected to the woman. The command split between her and Iago, traveling the mind-bender’s link to both of them. Iago fell with a crash and went still. The woman arched up with a soundless cry. Then she too went limp and motionless.

  In the sudden silence—both inside his skull and inside the cabin—Rabbit stared at the bodies. He reached out trembling fingers to touch the woman, and exhaled a shuddering breath of relief when he felt the faint flutter of her pulse. Same for Iago. They were alive. Sort of.

  He wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or disappointed. He hadn’t wanted to kill the woman, but the world would be better off without Iago. Way better.

  He grabbed the ceremonial knife and lifted it to the Xibalban’s throat, but then paused. He needed to get home as fast as possible, which meant ’porting. A quick search through Iago’s pockets came up with nada on the cell phone front, and he didn’t need to look to know the bastard had ’ported in from wherever. Which meant they could be a hundred yards or a hundred miles from the nearest phone, seriously cramping his ability to phone home. But the bastard had ’ported in from wherever, and he was alone, which meant it was a real talent, not a borrowed one. And maybe Rabbit could borrow it in return.

  He lurched to his feet, feeling the world tilt and spin around him, warning that he didn’t have much magic left in him.

  It was going to have to be enough.

  Sticking the knife in his belt, he staggered out the door and down the pathway, trying not to imagine what Iago had done with Myrinne. “Please, gods,” he muttered, slurring his words, his tongue gone numb from too much power drain. “Please let her be okay.”

  He was seeing double by the time he got to the cabin they’d been living in. He was afraid to call her name, afraid there wouldn’t be an answer. He unlocked the door with a touch and pushed through. A step inside, though, he stopped dead, panic coming hard and hot when he didn’t see Myrinne. Then motion blurred and he turned just in time to see her jump out from behind the door, screaming as she swung what looked like the leg from their sleeping cot.

  The impact sent him sideways. He saw her mouth go slack in horror and remorse. Then the world blinked out in a natural fast-forward.

  When he came to, he was sprawled in Myrinne’s lap, which probably would’ve been nice if he hadn’t been on the verge of puking. He forced the nausea down, though, and struggled up into a mostly sitting position. “How long was I out?”

  “Only a couple of minutes,” she said, voice quavering. “I’m sor—”

  “Save it,” he said shortly. “We’ve gotta move. Help me up, will you?”

  His head hurt like hell. The spinning had stopped, but that was actually bad news, because it meant he’d gone to the next stage in the postmagic shutdown: i.e., the one right before unconsciousness. He didn’t have time for the luxury of sleep, though. He had to get them out of there.

  “Where are we going?” she asked when he’d sort of stagger-stepped them outside and partway down the beaten track in the snow.

  “Back to Iago. Trust me.” It hurt to talk, hurt to think. Hurt to put one foot in front of the other.

  Myrinne’s breath hissed out when she saw the mage and the woman sprawled on the floor, but she didn’t ask, said only, “Tell me what to do.”

  “Stand back.” Rabbit fell to his knees between Iago and the woman, and used Iago’s knife to reblood his palm, then the Xibalban’s. Taking the other man’s hand in his and assuming the role of dominant power, he searched for the gray mist, found it, and climbed back inside the bastard’s head. Send us here, he ordered, and pictured the gates outside Skywatch, outside the wards. Aloud, he said to Myrinne, “Take my other hand, and grab on to the woman.”

  “We’re taking them with us?”

  “Gonna try.”

  But the magic was sluggish, the power slow to come. The preteleport rattle cycled too slowly, cutting in and out like a bad engine no matter how hard he leaned on his connection to the barrier and Iago’s faltering power.

  They weren’t going to make it. Shit.

  “Let go of her,” he ordered tersely. “Listen carefully. If I’m unconscious when we get where we’re going, you’re going to have to deal with . . . with my family, I guess you could say. Here’s what I want you to do.” He sketched out the best plan he could think of with his brain halfway inside Iago’s. Then he fell silent, unable to spare the energy for more explanation. He dropped Iago’s hand but kept the mind-link intact. Gods help me, he said inside his swirling skull. Myrinne is important; I know she’s important. Help me get her safe.

  This time when he leaned on Iago and forced the mage to initiate the ’port magic, the rattle cycled up faster, still not quite enough, but as good as it was going to get.

  Hoping to hell he didn’t send them into the side of a mountain or something, Rabbit closed his eyes and looked into Iago’s mind, where he could finally see the glowing yellow teleport thread connecting him and Myrinne to their destination. Take it, he told Iago. Send us there.

  The world lurched. Everything went gray-green.

  And the Xibalban’s dark magic sent Rabbit and his human home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Nate was on the phone with Denjie, working out some of the kinks for the latest EmoPunk release and wondering what his second in command would do if he just said, “I don’t fucking care; you deal with it,” when the surveillance system monitoring the borders of Skywatch let rip with a two-toned alarm that warned they had drop-in company. The cottage wasn’t linked to the security system, but Nate heard the siren coming from the mansion, and was on his feet before the first set of whoops had died down.

  Denjie broke off midsentence. “What in the hell was that?”

  “Doorbell. Gotta go.”

  “But what about—”

  “Don’t care. You deal with it.” Nate slapped his phone shut and tossed it on the little table near the door on his way out. Then he hauled ass up to the mansion, through the building, and out the front door, which was where the commotion seemed to be coming from.

  Someone—Jox, probably—had killed the alarm, but the entire population of the compound had mobilized to the front gate, which was wide-open.

  Not good, Nate thought, but forced himself to slow down to a purposeful walk as he strode up to the crowd, aware that there were a couple of stragglers behind him still. “What’s going on?” he asked nobody in particular.

  Before he got an answer, the king bellowed, “Out of the way!” The crowd parted and Strike appeared, carrying . . . Holy shit, was that Rabbit?

  The king’s face was set and hard, with worry ri
ding the edges, and it looked as if he were going to mow through anyone who got in his way, including Jox, who was tugging at his arm, trying to slow him down. Behind Strike strode Leah, looking as though she were in full-on cop mode as she half escorted, half dragged a young girl, a total stranger. Behind them was Alexis, looking borderline frantic as she talked fast, trying to convince Leah of something and not making headway.

  When she saw Nate, Alexis locked onto him and mouthed, Stop him!

  They might have their differences when it came to matters of state, but there was no arguing the fear in her face, so Nate put himself between Strike and the front door of Skywatch and said, “Nochem.”

  The word was meant to remind Strike that he couldn’t think like a man when he was king. For a second Nate thought the other man was going to ignore him, blow right through him, but then it seemed to penetrate. Strike’s head came up and he locked onto Nate, fury and annoyance hardening his cobalt blue eyes. “Get the fuck out of my way, Blackhawk.”

  “I will. In thirty seconds, once you’ve thought this through.” Nate glanced at Rabbit, wincing at how thin the teen had gotten, how ragged. “Where are you taking him?”

  “To his cottage,” Strike said, his voice a low growl. “And if you don’t stand aside, I’m going through you.” The grief in his expression was that of a father or an older brother who’d almost lost family, or a winikin who had failed in his duty. Nate knew that Rabbit’s disappearance had dragged on the king, tormented him. And because of that, he knew he had to be careful or Strike would go through him, losing caution to emotion.