As the days passed, finding anything new on the crossover started to seem like an impossible quest . . . until she hit the jackpot.
Okay, it was a small jackpot, but still. It was something.
“No shit.” She stared at the picture on the page in front of her. It was a purple painting with too many five-pointed stars, but she was willing to bet that it was a reference to the crossover. Courtesy of a kid’s book she’d ordered from Amazon’s Witchcraft and Spirituality department, no less. Go figure.
The picture didn’t look like Rabbit—more like Gandalf with a touch of Martha Stewart—but the figure was clearly straddling the line between day and night, with one foot in the darkness and the other in the light. More, he was wreathed in fire, and the old doomsday standbys—bell, book and candle—were hanging suspended in front of him. Pyrokinesis, telekinesis and a text that talked about a man who was supposed to “build a bridge between the darkness and light on the day of final reckoning”?
Yeah, that was the crossover, all right, smack dab in the middle of a Wiccan-influenced children’s story about something called the Gatekeeper’s Doomsday. She didn’t know whether the story had come from the Nightkeepers and morphed from there, or if it had another, more human origin. Either way, score one for her.
The buzz of discovery didn’t last long, though. Not once she read the rest of the text beside the picture.
The Crossing Guard stands at the bridge between day and night. A lone warrior, he can free the armies of the dead when the world rests on the brink of war.
“A lone warrior,” she said aloud, chest going hollow. “Damn it. Just . . . damn it.”
A few of the other references had hinted that the crossover was supposed to go into the war alone, without a fighting partner at his side. Worse, Lucius had come up with a spell he thought would shift her magic back to Rabbit. So far, Dez hadn’t ordered them to make the transfer, but she had a feeling that one more reference—like this one—would tip the scales.
Lose it, said a small voice inside her, and it was tempting. She couldn’t, though; she just couldn’t. So instead she took the book to the royal wing, holding it against her chest as she knocked on the carved doors leading to Dez and Reese’s quarters.
“It’s open,” he called.
She found the king in the main sitting area, going over something on his laptop. Holding out the book, she flipped to the right page, and said, “You’re going to want to read this.”
He took it, skimmed it, and grimaced. “A lone warrior. Damn it.”
“That’s pretty much what I said.” She jammed her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders. “I’ll do it, though. It’s time.” Her voice didn’t shake, didn’t do anything to betray how much she hated the idea of losing the magic.
Dez reached out and squeezed her shoulder in a rare show of sympathy. “I’m truly sorry. And to be honest, I hope the spell doesn’t work, because you make a hell of a mage . . . But if it does work, remember that you’re one of us, Myrinne. Whether you’re kicking ass with magic or a machine gun, I’d want you on my side any damn day, even if it’s the last day. Especially if it’s the last day.”
“Thanks. That matters.” She didn’t let him see just how much it mattered. “But before you show me too much more love, I need to ask you for a couple of favors.”
“Such as?”
“No offense, but I’m done with public performances. I want this to be just me and Rabbit.”
He hesitated, then tipped his head in acknowledgement. “I can’t say I blame you. And it’s not like you can’t handle yourself with him. You’ve made that plenty clear since he got back.”
Which just went to show that she was a better actress than she thought. But all she said was, “Thanks.” Then, taking a deep breath, she added in a rush, “Next favor . . . I want to do it in the winikin’s cave.”
The cave, which was painted with the strange, ghostly animals that the winikin could call from beyond the barrier, was where she had taken Rabbit’s prized stone eccentrics, hoping to purify them of whatever evil spells they were casting on him. Instead, he had followed her, held a knife to her throat, and accused her of being the enemy.
She hadn’t set foot near the cave since that day, hadn’t ever planned to . . . but her gut said that if she wanted to move forward, she first had to go back.
Dez scowled. “That’s outside the blood-ward.”
“I don’t like it, either, but you have to admit that it makes sense. What has happened before, and all that.” She swallowed. “I need to bring this full circle, Dez.”
More, she had to do whatever the Nightkeepers needed her to do, at least for the next week and a half. And after that . . . hell, she didn’t know. Whenever she tried to picture her life after the twenty-first of December, all she got was a blank screen and some static, like her inner Cablevision was on the fritz. She didn’t have a clue what she was going to do in the aftermath.
The others had their plans—Patience and Brandt were itching to reunite with their twins, and would probably move to New England, where Jox and Hannah—the boys’ winikin and current guardians—would reopen the garden center that had long been Jox’s dream. VR game designer Nate and fashion-forward Alexis would undoubtedly go somewhere and be creative, successful and disgustingly happy; Jade and Lucius would probably fund an esoteric Mayan dig somewhere and eat weird food; Strike and Leah would get into law enforcement or private security and have a half dozen kids; and Myrinne . . . well, she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do. She didn’t have a mate, didn’t have any real skills or hobbies, didn’t have much going for her beyond the magic, and soon she might not even have that.
And she fucking refused to open up a tea shop, sell crappy crystals and illegal voodoo concoctions, pick pockets, and pass off cold reads as fortune-telling. Even if that was all she was really trained to do in the outside world.
“I don’t like it,” Dez grumbled.
“Me either,” she said, then realized he was talking about the cave. Regrouping, she added, “But if we’re going to try this, we need to give it the best chance of succeeding.” Duty first, she thought, blah, blah, blah and yadda-yadda. It was the truth, though. Now more than ever, their priorities needed to be to the war, the gods, their leader, and from there on down, with personal wants way at the bottom of the list.
Thus, the cave.
She and Dez went back and forth for a few more minutes, but in the end he agreed to her plan with a few choice expletives and a worried sigh that touched her more than it probably should have, warning her that her emotions were way too close to the surface right now, and she needed to find a way to dial them down before she met with Rabbit.
“Do you want to tell him, or should I?” Dez asked.
“Can you take care of it?”
“Consider it done.” Hell glanced down at the book, then closed it and handed it back to her with a scowl of well, hell. “Looking at this from an earth-magic angle was good thinking, by the way. Very good thinking. In fact, I’m going to have Lucius and the rest of the brain trust do a broader search along these lines and see what else they can come up with. Okay with you if they give a shout-out with any questions?”
“Of course.” The vindication helped some.
The Witch’s spells might’ve been the bastard child of voodoo, devil worship and ancient Aztec rituals, but she’d kept a few Wiccan texts on the shelves for the sake of appearances. Myr had memorized the incantations and practiced them in secret, hiding her small crystals and hoarded scents. And now, at Skywatch, the earth magic was hers alone. More, there was no blood or violence, no sacrificing or swearing away bits of her soul; there was only the peace of incense, the solidity of crystal, the supple strength of wood and a sense of connecting to something far bigger than herself that welcomed her, supported her, and asked nothing in return.
It appealed to the person she sometimes thought she would’ve been if she hadn’t wound up with the Witch. Heck, it sti
ll appealed to the person she was, despite everything.
So use it, she told herself, and felt the fear recede a little. Who knew—maybe she could find other pieces of real magic in the books she’d bought. Maybe she wouldn’t be giving all her powers to Rabbit.
Still, though, dread pinched.
“When do you want to do it?” Dez asked.
She wanted to close her eyes and block out the sympathy in his. It would still be in his voice, though, and in the air between them. “Let’s get it over with. Say, an hour? Tell him I’ll meet him at the cave.”
The king hesitated, looking like he wanted to say a whole bunch of things, but in the end settled for, “Wear your armband, park as close to the entrance as you can, and keep your panic button primed.” The newer Jeeps were fitted with transponders that could pick up her signal and bounce it to Skywatch, hopefully overcoming the reception problems that had been getting worse and worse as the zero date approached and the barrier flux increased.
“Will do. And Dez?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for always treating me like I’ve got a right to an opinion.”
Rather than the platitudes she would’ve gotten from most of the others—the ones who’d been raised by their winikin and had always been given choices—he nodded. “Street smarts recognize street smarts, Myrinne, and ambition recognizes ambition. You’ve got more than your share of both, and I’m the last guy who’s going to ding you for that.”
Her spine straightened. “Is that a warning?”
“Nope. I’m not that subtle—if I thought you were heading for trouble, I’d tell you straight out. It was an observation, nothing more.”
But as she left the royal suite, she was pretty darned sure Dez was far more subtle than he let on. In his own way he was as much of a manipulator as the Witch had been, though with far better intentions. And right now, those intentions involved protecting the Nightkeepers’ agenda—which meant her giving up the magic to Rabbit.
“I’m doing it, aren’t I?” she muttered as she headed down the hall. But that didn’t stop her from feeling the pressure of being involved in something so much bigger than herself. It dogged her as she stalked out of the royal wing and across the main kitchen, and had her turning away from her suite.
Her rooms were too quiet, too empty and at the same time too hemmed in, sparking a sense of suffocation that chased her out a side door. There, a stone-lined path flanked the garage, but she didn’t want to snag a Jeep and keep on driving today. Instead, she headed for the magic-imbued cacao grove beyond the winikin’s hall, where the air was rainforest humid, the ground soft and the trees green and fragrant.
She slipped into the grove and picked her way to the open space at its center. There, she sat cross-legged, with her hands open on her folded knees. And—for a little while, at least—she found peace in the whirring sound the leaves made in the faint breeze, and the feeling of the earth surrounding her.
“I’m trying to get it right,” she said aloud. “I’m doing my best.” Deep down inside, though, she wondered whether that was the truth. Because when she came down to it, she didn’t want to give back the magic, not one bit.
It wasn’t fucking fair.
* * *
At the appointed time, Rabbit sat outside the winikin’s cave for a good five minutes before he managed to make himself get out of the damn Jeep. He didn’t want to be here. More, he wished he could forget the way he’d acted the last time he’d been at the cave, wished he didn’t see the parallels. And he wished to hell his knuckles weren’t throbbing like a bitch from punching his damned fridge when he got Dez’s message.
It was a dumb fucking idea to go around punching appliances, no matter how pissed off he was. More, he couldn’t let himself get pissed off, not like that. For a few minutes, he’d felt like the guy he used to be, the one who’d lashed out without thinking, doing major damage. He needed to be better than that, damn it. He needed to control the part of him that used to take over and make him do dumb things—not the stripped-down creature he’d become while imprisoned, but the angry, unloved kid who wanted to set the world on fire and watch it burn.
Or maybe the two were flip sides of the same anger.
“Pull your shit together,” he muttered. He owed Myr his absolute best self, even today. Especially today.
He hated that it had come to this, hated that she was going to be the one making the sacrifice when she deserved the magic a hell of a lot more than he did. He hated it . . . and he respected the hell out of her for making the call. She would be dreading the mind-meld that the spell required, he knew, and was determined to make it as easy as he could for her, just as he’d done his damnedest to quell the raw gut punch of lust that had nailed him every time he had gotten near her over the past week and a half.
It was his problem that he couldn’t be satisfied with what he’d gotten back already, his problem that he wanted more, wanted her, with a churning desire that was equal parts magic, lust, history and fascination with the stronger, sleeker, glossier woman she’d become . . . and one hundred percent Not Happening.
It was also past time for him to get his ass down there. Bad enough he was supposed to take her magic, worse to make her wait on him.
He had parked on the bank of the wide wash, where flash floods created a huge river and filled the cave when the rains came. It was dry now, so Myr had parked with her Jeep’s nose stuck into the cave mouth, no doubt partly so it could act as a transponder, partly so the trick door—a huge stone slab that was geared to uncertain magic—couldn’t slide into place and trap them inside.
As he got out of his vehicle and headed down there, kicking up pebbles and sand with his worn boots, he remembered all too well the fury that had carried him into the cave the last time, the anger and betrayal that had blasted through him when he’d seen her there with his eccentrics. Phee’s lies had been whispering in his head, stroking the rage and chaos inside him until he’d let it loose.
Not again. Never again.
Taking a deep breath, he brushed past her Jeep and stepped into the darkness. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, for the cave to come clear around him as a circular space with a sandy floor and ancient paintings of animals overhead. In the center, near a plain, unadorned stone altar, Myrinne sat cross-legged in front of a small fire that she’d laid in a circle of stones.
Heat seared low in his gut and punched beneath his heart, but he weathered the blows like he’d endured the ’zotz’s lash, by telling himself he was getting what he damn well deserved. More, he was trying to give her what she deserved—the respect of a fighting equal and the room to do what she needed to do, even when it wasn’t what he wanted.
The air carried hints of ginger, patchouli and vanilla, making him think of the candles she used to light in her college dorm room, back when things had been so much easier than they were now, though they’d both thought them complicated as hell. It was only a couple of years ago, but it felt like a fucking lifetime. Since then, he’d been to hell and back; he’d destroyed villages, led battles and killed xombis; he’d aged a decade in a year; he’d lost one king and gained another. And, though he wouldn’t have believed it possible back then, he’d lost Myrinne.
She looked up at him now, eyes dark and determined, and if there was an answering flare of heat deep within them, it was quickly gone.
Ah, baby. He wanted to tell her that she could trust him, that he wouldn’t hurt her ever again. And yet he didn’t dare make any promises when his knuckles were bruised with temper and the end of the world lay ahead of them. So he didn’t say a damn thing. Instead, he crossed to her, boots thudding hollowly on the dried mud.
She watched him approach, expression unreadable. The small fire darkened, though, turning more green than orange, and the smoke thickened and turned bitter, coating the back of his throat.
He drew breath to speak, but she forestalled him with: “How about we skip the conversation and go right to the Vulcan mind-meld
.” It wasn’t a question.
Exhaling, he said, “Yeah, sure. If that’s what you want.” He told himself to leave it at that. Couldn’t. “Shit, Myr, I—”
“Don’t. Let’s just get this over with.” She pointed to the opposite side of the fire. “Sit.”
He sat, assuming a cross-legged pose that mirrored hers. “You’ve got the spell?”
“Yeah. Here.” She handed him an index card with the Hooked on Phonics version of the ancient Mayan incantation. “I’ll unblock your magic and we’ll both jack in. After that, we say the spell, and . . . well . . .” She looked away.
Before, she had forbidden him from mind-bending her, going so far as to have him put mental blocks in there and teach her how to use them to keep him out. And she had, right up until the moment when she’d realized he had lost himself to Phee’s lies. Then, to save herself, she had let him in and showed him that she wasn’t working for the demons . . . he was. He hated that he’d forced her to that point, hated that he’d hurt her. And he hated that he was about to do it again.
He waited until she looked at him, until their eyes met and held over the fire. “Seriously, Myr. I’m sorry about this.”
Anger flared in the depths of her eyes. “Yet here you are.”
“King’s orders.”
“Right. Because you’ve never gone against orders before.”
“Hello, Boar Oath.” Though he hadn’t really bumped up against it yet, wasn’t sure what would happen when he did. For the moment, he wasn’t having trouble following his old man’s orders.
The look she shot him said she knew it. “You want this. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Myr . . .” He didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to have this fight. Her glare said she wasn’t backing down, though, so he said, “I agreed to this because we need to figure out the crossover’s powers. Not because I want to take the magic away from you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And?”
She knew him too damn well. “Fine. I’m also doing this because when the barrier comes down, the Banol Kax are going to be gunning for the crossover. And I don’t want you standing next to me when that happens.” Not when he wasn’t sure he’d be able to shield her and still do whatever it was the gods needed him to do.
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