Spellfire

by Jessica Andersen

  “What happened to you?” she pressed, stomach knotting at the sight of a strange new light in his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He hesitated, then held out his hand. “I’ll show you. It’s probably better this way.”

  Which sounded ominous and put a new quiver in her belly. But there was no time to hesitate, no time to shore up her inner defenses. She would have to be strong enough to deal with whatever came next.

  Taking a deep breath, she clasped his fingers in hers, and opened herself to the mind-bend.

  Emotions poured into her—determination, fear, grief, regret, relief, all the things she’d felt from him when he’d first returned to Skywatch. Now, though, there was also an edge of instability, of volatility. As she saw things unfold with rapid-fire in his mind—the stasis spell, the voice, the dark and twisted emotions he’d let back into his head—her heart leaped up to clog her throat. And then it broke.

  He had hidden the anger from her, hidden the danger from her. Hidden himself from her.

  She reeled back, breaking the connection. “Oh, Rabbit.” She didn’t know what to say, or even what she was feeling, except that it was huge and terrible, and it made her want to weep.

  “I was trying to protect you.”

  Anger flared, bright and righteous. “Bullshit! You were doing what you always do, which is exactly what you want to do, when you want to do it. You were afraid I would be mad because you’ve gone back to being your old self? You’re damn right. More, from where I’m standing, it looks like you never stopped being that guy. You just camouflaged it better for a while.” And if the words didn’t feel exactly right, the fury did. The panic did. He was back to being the man she feared, the one she couldn’t trust.

  His face blanked. “You used to love that guy.”

  “I outgrew him three months ago, when I regained consciousness and remembered what he had done to me.”

  “Two minutes to ’port,” Dez bellowed. He made it sound like he was announcing it to the entire team, but his eyes were on the two of them.

  Rabbit reached for her. “Give me another chance, later.”

  She backed off and shook her head as a tear tracked down her face. “I can’t. I won’t.” She took a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry, but I waited too damn long to run away from the Witch. I refuse to make the same mistake again.”

  “Myr—”

  “No. That’s it, we’re done. I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Myr, please, for the love of the gods, don’t. I love you.” His throat worked. “And that’s not leftover from before, and it’s not just because we’ve been great together these past few weeks. It’s all of it. I never stopped loving you, damn it.”

  She choked on a sob. “I don’t . . . I can’t. I’m sorry.” And she was. So sorry that it felt like green flames were burning her from the inside out.

  But just because it hurt didn’t make it the wrong decision.

  Nearly blinded by tears, she turned and headed toward where the others were finishing up packing the essentials, and she didn’t let herself look back, even when he called her name. Because he’d been right all along when he’d said they needed to move forward. She just hadn’t realized until now that in order for her to move forward, she was going to have to leave him behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Chichén Itzá, Mexico

  The Nightkeepers ’ported into the shadow of the main pyramid, heavily shielded and weapons hot, but there was no attack, no sign of the enemy.

  The atmosphere crackled with magic, though, making Rabbit feel itchy and twitchy, and like he was going to jump out of his damn skin if he didn’t get to fight, and soon. But at the same time, there was a deep darkness inside him, a chill that was impervious to the magic.

  He looked over to where Myr stood beside Anna, the two of them talking with their heads together, carefully not looking at him.

  He didn’t blame her—or he was trying not to.

  Trying really fucking hard.

  “This is definitely the right place,” Dez said, but his eyes were on the empty sky, his brows furrowed.

  “The maize god needed Red-Boar’s sacrifice to materialize,” Lucius said. “That suggests that the big guns still can’t get through the barrier, at least not yet.”

  “Why not send makol, then, or the xombis?”

  “No clue.”

  Dez glanced at his wrist. “Fifty minutes to the hard threshold.” He directed the winikin to summon their totems—the ghost animals they commanded—and put them on outer surveillance. Then he waved toward the raised limestone road that led to the sacred cenote. “Eyes open, people. We can’t be alone.”

  Rabbit found himself walking alone as the others hung back or shifted away. He didn’t know if they were afraid of what he could do, or wondering what he would do, but that was nothing new. If anything, it felt too fucking familiar.

  The prophecies had said the crossover was supposed to be a lone warrior, he thought. Guess they got it right.

  As they moved out of the pyramid’s shadow, they saw scorched earth, splintered wood and other garbage, seeming very out of place on the grounds of the normally groomed tourist attraction.

  “Riots,” Anna said grimly. “The believers are making illegal sacrifices, the nonbelievers are trying to stop them and get them to shut the hell up, the cops are trying to keep people out of the hot zone, and everyone wants the outbreak to be over, one way or another.” Her eyes went to the tent city she could just see in the distance. Twin columns of smoke rose up from one end, but the camp itself looked intact.

  Beside her, Myr had her shields up and her magic at the ready, and was staring intently into the shadows of each ruin they passed, then the jumbled pile of rocks that marked where the roadway led out of the main city and continued on to the cenote. She caught Rabbit’s eye in passing, hesitated and then nodded, like one teammate to another. Like she was already living in Let’s Just Be Friends Land.

  “Well, fuck that,” he muttered under his breath, suddenly pissed at himself, at the situation. How had he let this happen? How had it come to this?

  You don’t give up, even when the battle seems lost, Jag’s voice whispered in his mind. But if that was true, why hadn’t he argued with her when she said it was over?

  Then again, that was one of the things he did, wasn’t it? He coasted, at least when it came to her. He hadn’t worked hard enough to fix things when they went off the rails the first time, and he hadn’t fought hard enough just now. Maybe because things had happened too easily with her in the beginning he’d never learned how . . . or maybe because he still wasn’t really sure what she was doing with a guy like him.

  Yeah, that resonated.

  She doesn’t want you, not like this. The whisper came from the parts of himself he’d just taken back—the frustrations and insecurities that had hamstrung him too many times before, making him do dumb-ass things. She dumped you. She walked away. She didn’t look back.

  But she’d been crying as she did it. More, she wasn’t just the warrior she’d become over the past few months. She was also the Goth chick he’d gone to college with, and the skinny girl who’d tried to barter a knife for her freedom from the Witch. And those people had loved him despite his temper and impulsiveness. Hell, in the beginning, she had loved him because of it—she had been as much a rebel as he was, if not more. That was what he’d first seen in her, what had brought them together. It was still there, he knew. Maybe right now it was buried beneath duty and fear, but it was there.

  And he’d be damned if he gave up on her. He loved her, and he wanted her at his side for the rest of their lives, whether that was five minutes or fifty-five years.

  “Hold.” Dez raised a hand, stopping the group as the pathway ahead of them shimmered and then solidified to reveal Alexis astride Nate in his giant hawk form. “Anything?” the king asked the forward scouts.

  Alexis shook her head. “Not a damn thing. Either the cenote is clear,
or they’re hiding behind magic that I can’t sense.”

  The teammates moved off again, cautiously, as the low trees opened up to reveal the uppermost level of the Cenote Sagrada, where a hundred-foot pit gaped in the earth and plunged down to a green-blue pool at the bottom.

  Rabbit’s head said to get up to the small temple and start the spell.

  “Fuck this.” He turned back and headed for Myr, knowing that his magic—and his heart—would be stronger if he said what he needed to say to her.

  He had gone three steps when JT shouted, “Incoming!”

  “Son of a—” He twisted too late, saw wide brown wings and a puke-ugly face headed straight for him, and threw all of his power to his shield. The ’zotz crashed into it at full speed, driving him back, off the edge of the raised roadway. He tripped and fell, and the impact jarred the shit out of him, just enough that he lost control of the shield spell for a split second.

  The ’zotz screeched, lashed out with its barb-tipped tail, and sliced him to the bone. “Motherfu—”

  Darkness.

  * * *

  Within seconds, a dozen camazotz swarmed the spot where Rabbit had been, tearing at him in a frenzy. There were others nearby, blackening the air and screeching as they attacked, but the Nightkeepers’ shields held them off.

  Rabbit’s shield was down, though. He was down.

  “No!” The world blurred as Myrinne screamed and unleashed a massive bolt of green fire into the flock, aiming high so she didn’t hit him. The fireball detonated and the fire magic clung to the creatures, eating into them and driving them to the ground as she raced to where he lay in a bloody heap. “Rabbit!”

  He was sprawled in a spreading pool of blood; she wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but there was too much of it. And there was no sign of the golden magic, no sign of life.

  The nearest ’zotz began to move again, regenerating even as its flesh smoldered, but before she could react, Strike and JT closed from opposite directions, knives out, ready to dispatch the camazotz. “We’ve got this,” the winikin said. “You take care of him.”

  Around them, the battle raged on. She saw the Nightkeepers bringing down camazotz and strange, fishlike creatures that sliced through the air with sharp fins and tails, and snapped with piranha jaws. They weren’t the kax or kohan, though, just minions, guards put in place to stop the Nightkeepers from getting to the cenote.

  That had to mean they were in the right place. But now they were missing a key player.

  “Come back, you hear me?” She clutched Rabbit’s bloodied hand and sent her energy into him through the mind-bender’s magic. “We need you.” I need you.

  The truth was stark and real: she wasn’t all that mad at him about hiding the truth about the dark magic. Instead, she was terrified of him, terrified for him, and just plain terrified in general . . . He hadn’t just claimed the magic, he had reclaimed the part of himself that scared her the most, not because she was afraid he would hurt her, but because she knew that it would put him in the worst sort of danger.

  So what had she done? She panicked and bolted, even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t ever run away from him again.

  “Come on, come on.” She clutched his hand and sent her magic flowing faster, but his skin was chalky and cool, and there was no echo of his conscious self inside his skull. Panic sliced through her. “This isn’t working. I need Sasha!”

  “I’m here.” The healer skidded to a stop on the other side of Rabbit and dropped down, breathing hard. She was sweating, and had dark spatters on her sleeves.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” Myr said. “And I can’t find him with my magic.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  As Sasha bent over him, Myr looked beyond to where the Nightkeepers fought against the enemy’s thinning ranks. As she watched, Michael fried a fish-thing out of the sky with a stream of silver death magic, and hawk-Nate brought down a camazotz on the fly and then backwinged while Alexis fried it to dust. All of the Nightkeepers and their teammates seemed to be up and moving.

  Except Rabbit.

  Holding his too-cool hand against her face, she said, “He was so worried about what would happen to me when the demons zeroed in on the crossover, but he forgot to worry about himself.”

  “That’s because he loves you,” Sasha said, not taking her eyes off her patient. She said it with a “duh” tone in her voice, but not unkindly. More like she’d been there, done that, and come out the other side of it.

  Myr ducked her head to hide the tears, and also so Sasha wouldn’t hear her whisper in his ear, “Don’t you dare leave me.”

  Her voice caught on the words, her heart twisted, and pain bit so deeply that she sucked in a breath. Sudden panic crushed in on her, and she tightened her grip on him, afraid that if she didn’t hold on to him, he would disappear. Don’t leave me. Her parents had dumped her in a strip club. The Witch had disappeared, leaving her locked out of her home. At the time, Myr hadn’t known that Iago had killed her; all she had known was that she was alone and didn’t have anywhere to go until she found the Nightkeepers. But while they had given her a family of sorts, the team was poised to break up after today, one way or another.

  Don’t leave me. Everyone she had depended on over the years, right or wrong, had left her. Except for Rabbit. Because this time, she had left him before he could leave her . . . but that had been a stupid move, a coward’s move. She loved him. She always had. And she was going to lose him . . . unless he came back, so she could tell him that she was sorry, that she loved him, that she’d been afraid.

  “It’s not working.” Sasha shook her head. “His magic and mine just aren’t compatible.”

  “Keep trying,” Myr said. “There has to be something else you can do. Some spell or incantation, or . . . oh.” She stopped, suddenly very aware of the green-threaded shield she had been automatically maintaining around her and Rabbit, the mind-bender’s magic that linked them, and the fireball spell that shimmered at the surface of her soul, ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

  It was her magic . . . but it was his, too.

  “I know what to do. Stand back.” She took a breath, knowing this was the only way. And, more, knowing that she was okay with it—he could have every last spark of her magic, if that was what it took to bring him back.

  Pulling her knife, she bloodied her palms, took his hands in hers, and whispered raggedly, “Pasaj och.” Then as the barrier connection formed—feeling suddenly unsteady—she said the transfer spell and opened herself up to it, to him.

  I love you. She sent the words into him on a wave of green-tinged magic. Come back to me. Magic poured through her, and from her into him. Something inside her tore loose, just as it had the last time they used the spell. This time, though, nothing stayed inside her—all of her power drained. All of her magic left her. And she let it.

  “No.” It was a moan, a soft sound of denial, but she didn’t pull back or block the magic from leaving her. This was her choice. Her sacrifice.

  Sasha gasped. “Look!”

  Myr’s eyelids felt heavy, but she cranked them open, then stared as a pair of butterflies flitted down toward her and Rabbit—one green, the other streaked red and orange. It couldn’t be the same two from Oc Ajal . . . but it sure looked like them.

  As the last of the magic drained from her and the spell died away, they landed on Rabbit’s chest. The moment they made contact, he took a convulsive breath, opened his eyes, and locked on her. “Ah, baby.” His voice was low, and ragged with emotion. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m not giving up on us this time. I’m going to fight. I’m going to do whatever it takes.”

  Myr gave a low cry of joy and relief. He shoved himself up and reached for her, and she met him halfway. The move startled the butterflies, which flitted upward as they embraced.

  His arms went around her, strong and sure; she almost couldn’t believe it—couldn’t believe that he was alive, that they
were kissing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said against his lips. “I didn’t mean what I said. I was scared and I lashed out. I love you. Oh, how I love you.”

  He silenced her with his lips, with his kiss, and when they parted, he said, “I was coming back for you. I need you so damn much, and I’m not letting you go. Never again. Because I love you.”

  A delicious rushing sensation suddenly flared inside her, and, as if that had turned the key in a lock, a connection bloomed open at the back of her mind. Suddenly, the magic raced through her once more. It had come back!

  “Rabbit!”

  His face lit with fierce joy. “I feel it!” It was the same as before, only not. Because this time, she was sharing his magic. And, more, this time she didn’t resent the connection that forged itself between them. She gloried in it, loved it.

  Loved him, and was loved in return.

  The butterflies circled them, drawing their attention up, and together, they watched the creatures flit away into a sky that was free of the enemy now, but buzzed with magic and anticipation.

  Her wristband ticked below the ten-minute mark, but she gave herself these last few seconds of joy. Of love.

  Then, when the butterflies had disappeared into the trees, he turned and held out a hand to her. “Come on. We have a sacred chamber to salvage, a barrier to seal, a shit ton of demons to defeat, and two undead armies to save.”

  Incredibly, impossibly, she found a lopsided grin. “What are you planning for an encore?”

  He smiled back with the devilish glint she had so missed in him, without even realizing she had missed it. “I was thinking of getting really wasted, making love to you, and then sleeping for twenty or so hours, possibly not in that order, and definitely including pancakes somewhere in there. But I’m open to suggestions.”

  * * *

  Finally feeling like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to do, Rabbit led Myr to the temple, and then beyond it, to where a rocky outcropping speared out into thin air, hovering a hundred feet above the murky water of the Cenote Sagrada.