hidden ruins and modern sacred sites. Oc Ajal, though, didn’t seem to follow the pattern.
Which meant . . . hell, he didn’t know what it meant. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
“I take it we’re hiking in from here?” he asked Cheech.
“Yes. These people are very traditional, very spiritual. They don’t want cars disturbing their earth connection.” The driver hopped out, then paused and turned back. “No cameras either.”
Myrinne slung her bag over her shoulder and held up both hands. “No problem. We’re not here to take pictures.”
Rabbit was ready to step in with a mind-bend if the convo turned to weapons, but Cheech’s thought process didn’t go there. He just gave a “come on, then” wave and started heading up one of three trails that led away from the parking area. Myrinne glanced at Rabbit, who nodded to indicate that their guide was on the level. As they fell into step on the pathway, she whispered, “You getting any buzz?”
“Not really.”
She took his hand, threading their fingers together and squeezing, so he could feel the hard bump of the ring he’d given her.
They hiked uphill through the trees for five minutes or so, picking their way over rocks and roots.
Although the mountain trees were much lower growing than their giant rain forest cousins, their leafy branches wove together overhead, and the under- and middle growth was thick, giving the hikers little hint as to what was up ahead . . . until they reached two high stone columns that were topped by a crude archway held in place by a lintel stone.
The construction wasn’t up to the ancients’ standards and didn’t resonate with power on the dark or light level, but it definitely marked a boundary.
Cheech paused to let Rabbit and Myrinne catch up. Then he waved them through the archway. “Oc Ajal.”
Rabbit took a deep breath. Then, tightening his grip on Myrinne’s hand, he stepped through.
He was braced for almost anything. What he got was a village that looked pretty much like the others they had driven through on the way up, with the exception that the pole buildings were made entirely of natural materials, with no tin or fiberglass. The villagers weren’t total purists, though: Two denim-wearing kids and a couple of skinny mutts wrestled over possession of a dingy volleyball off on one side, and although the four women clustered near a central fire pit were hand-grinding maize on traditional millstones, they were dumping the resulting cornmeal into brightly colored plastic bowls.
As he and Myrinne stepped through the archway with Cheech right behind them, the women looked up, their eyes bright and interested.
All too young to be her, Rabbit found himself thinking, even though he’d tried to talk himself out of expecting too much. He just wanted some info on the other side of his bloodlines . . . and to check out Myrinne’s theory that the only way his old man would’ve slept with a Xibalban and schlepped along the resulting bastard child was if that Xibalban had been part of a sect separate from Iago’s red-robed sociopaths.
But although he’d told himself not to have any expectations, he went a little hollow when their only reaction was for one of the women to call what he assumed was the equivalent of “Got company!” to someone inside a nearby building. Then the women went back to grinding, while the kids and the dogs —which were barking now, belatedly warning of the intrusion—headed around the back of the hut circle and disappeared.
So much for the return of the prodigal whatever.
Fuck it. Forcing himself to focus on the here and now, he leaned closer to Myrinne. “Why didn’t they hear us?” he said in an undertone, though what he really meant was, Why didn’t they sense me?
He could’ve sent the thought straight into her mind through the touch link of their handclasp, but she didn’t like him inside her head. As she put it, there had to be some boundaries between them. So he whispered, and kept it general, trusting her to translate his real meaning.
“Can you ‘hear’ them?”
He shook his head. No. He hadn’t sensed any magic—light or dark—on the way up the path, and he didn’t sense any now. “Maybe Jox remembered wrong, or my old man lied to him about the name of the village.”
But that didn’t totally play either, given the rumors about dark magic in the village, and the way Cheech and the other guy down in the market had connected the trading language with Oc Ajal, even before Rabbit asked about the village by name.
What was more, he realized with a click of connection, the whole place was arranged around powerful numbers and symbols.
There were two rows of thirteen huts each, arranged in a three-quarters circle around a central fire pit, with the archway centered in the gap. Seven flattened millstones surrounded the fire pit. And he’d bet a minor body part that the spiral designs incised, row after row, into the poles that made up each building would, if he counted them, add up to plays on 13, 20, 52, 260, and various other numbers that had been central to the ancient calendars.
More, with the central fire pit surrounded by concentric circles of millstones, huts, and then trees, the village’s whole layout symbolized the entrance to Xibalba, which was located in the dark spot at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
The symbols didn’t prove anything, though, he reminded himself. Plenty of modern Maya were spiritual without being magic users. And the villagers they had seen so far looked indigenous. Given that the Order of Xibalba had been a splinter sect of the original Nightkeepers, the descendants of the order should have retained the size, coloring, and charisma of the magi. Iago sure had.
Which meant . . . hell, he didn’t know. And he didn’t know what he was hoping for, just that he was hoping for something.
As if in response to that thought—or, more likely, the woman’s call—a man emerged from the building directly opposite the archway, and started toward the visitors. He was wizened and white-
haired, though given the living conditions, Rabbit couldn’t guess his age any more accurately than
“somewhere over fifty.”
The elder wore battered jeans and a patterned serape; his eyes were bright, his mouth nearly toothless as he flashed a smile and said, “Oola.”
It was a standard greeting that had been adapted from the Spanish hola because many Mayan languages lacked the typical “Hello, how are you?” pleasantries of other cultures.
Rabbit sensed other people nearby, some in the pole buildings, others in the forest beyond. None seemed threatening; if anything, they seemed unusually mellow, without the spiky discord he usually felt from at least a few people in any given group.
Cheech stepped up and returned the greeting, followed by a spate of words that seemed to be a patois combining the most common modern Mayan dialect, Yucatec, along with equal parts Spanish and the ancient trading language.
Rabbit caught the semiderogatory Yucatec term for American tourists, which literally translated to
“white odors,” followed by the ancient honorific for
“mother” and the word for “rabbit,” which in Yucatec sounded like “tool.” He didn’t let on that he’d caught that much, though. He just stood there with his senses wide-open, waiting for a ripple in the barrier’s energy—something, anything, that would indicate they were in the right place.
He got fucking nothing.
“This is the leader of Oc Ajal,” Cheech said formally. “His name is Saamal.”
Tomorrow, Rabbit thought, translating the name, which itself was a powerful spell word. Still, that didn’t prove anything. Symbols and words weren’t the same as magic.
“Is he willing to talk to me about my—” Rabbit stumbled over the word “mother,” and wound up going with, “About what my father’s note said?”
“I told him what you told me. He will answer your questions.”
Rabbit wasn’t sure if it was Cheech’s English or Saamal’s answer that made that one feel off, but he kept going, speaking directly to the elder while Cheech translated. “The note my father le
ft said he met my mother while staying here in Oc Ajal, twenty-two years ago. He would have been my age when he came here. He looked like me, but with darker eyes and a sad soul.” Which he figured was better than saying “off his fucking rocker over his dead wife and kids.”
When the translation ran down and Saamal didn’t say anything, Myrinne nudged him. “He said he’d answer your questions. I’m guessing he meant that literally.”
Oh, for fuck’s—“Fine. Do you remember my father?” Rabbit unbuttoned his right sleeve and flipped the cuff, baring his forearm. “He had marks like these, only all black. He wore the peccary, the warrior, and the jun tan.” He watched the elder, but the guy didn’t show any outer—or inner—sign of recognizing the marks.
He did, however, nod and answer in a few words. Cheech translated: “Yes, I remember your father.”
For a second, Rabbit thought he was going to have to pull the info twenty-questions-style, but then Saamal continued, and Cheech fell into rhythm, echoing a few words behind the elder. “He only stayed a few days, though, and he was alone. He was lost.” Cheech paused. “Not wandering lost, but lost in his head. You understand the difference?”
“Yeah. Trust me, I get it.” Rabbit exhaled through his nose. “Do you know where he went when he left here?”
Saamal shook his head. “Ma.” Cheech didn’t bother translating the obvious negative.
“Not even what direction? Uphill? Downhill? Anything?” Rabbit did his best to keep the frustration out of his voice; Jox had dinged him often enough for whining, and Saamal reminded him of the royal winikin . Impatience flared inside Rabbit, though, bumping up against power, anger, and all the other things he’d learned to control. More or less.
“He left in the night,” Cheech translated. “We didn’t see him go.”
“Do you remember him asking about any ruins, any other villages? Anything that would give me an idea where to look next?”
“Ma.”
Fuck it. Deciding it was worth the risk, Rabbit hit the air-lock doors, sent the outer blockade folding back in his mind, and touched the barrier with an inner whisper of Pasaj och. Nightkeeper power flowed into him, blooming red-gold and firing his senses and talents, heating his skin and bringing a whiff of smoke.
“Easy there, Sparky,” Myrinne said softly. She might not have Nightkeeper magic in the traditional sense, but she could perceive the ebb and flow of his power. According to Lucius, her experiences as Iago’s prisoner two years earlier had left her sensitized.
“Sorry.” He throttled it back, then leaned on the mind-bend and opened himself to Saamal, keeping the power in careful check, and making sure the inner blocks guarding the hell-link remained intact.
Addressing the elder once more, he asked, “Why did he come here?”
“He was looking for his sons. He said his wife had been murdered, but he’d never seen the boys’ bodies. He suspected they were still alive.”
“Oh.” Ouch.
That explained why Red-Boar had nearly killed Jox before disappearing into the highlands. He’d been trying to erase the only living person who had seen the bodies of the children killed back at Skywatch, in the second wave of the Solstice Massacre.
In years past, Rabbit would’ve been seriously pissed about learning that Red-Boar had fathered him while on a quest to find his full-blood sons. Now it just made him want to go home and get back to work, in the hopes that the Nightkeepers would eventually hit on the right alchemy, the right combination of sacrifice, magic, prophecy, teamwork, and sheer fucking luck that would allow them to seal the barrier tightly shut when the zero day came.
If they didn’t, the Solstice Massacre was going to look like a warm-up act.
Saamal said something more, and Cheech translated: “You were one of those sons?”
“No.” Hell, no. “I came later.”
“Did he find what he was looking for?”
Rabbit shook his head. “He knew they were dead. He just didn’t want to believe it.”
The elder spread his hands and looked to the sky, and for the first time since their arrival, Rabbit felt a shimmer in the barrier. It wasn’t magic, though, or at least not the kind he was looking for. It was the gentle warmth that came from Saamal’s prayer.
When the elder finished and returned his attention to Rabbit, his eyes were sad. He said something, and Cheech translated: “He said they were twins.”
And therefore so much more valuable than their younger half brother, Rabbit knew. Anger kindled, bringing a whiff of smoke that he tamped down even before Myrinne touched his arm in warning.
Coiled way too tight, he paced away a few steps, fisting his hands so tightly that his fingernails dug in and drew blood.
Dial it down, he told himself. It wasn’t Saamal’s fault that Red-Boar hadn’t left a forwarding addy, or that Rabbit had gotten his hopes up.
“Down the mountain, in the village, they say the people of Oc Ajal worship Xibalba,” Myrinne said.
“Is this true?”
Cheech shot her a look, but translated her question and Saamal’s response: “This is true, but not the way I think you mean it. We worship the gods of Xibalba, the Banol Kax, but we do not revere darkness or evil deeds.”
Rabbit’s head came up. “How is that possible? Xibalba is the underworld.”
“But not as the Christians perceive it, as a place of hellfire and damnation. To my ancestors and my people, the sky and underworld are simply the residences of the gods. Some of them oversee positive things, such as science, medicine, and justice; others negative things like cruelty, greed, and addiction.
Most, though, are a mix of dark and light, just as we are.” Saamal paused. “Xibalba is where the dead are challenged, yes, but it is not perdition. It is simply another plane, one that balances the sky.”
“But the—” Rabbit broke off, not wanting to reveal how much he knew about Xibalba—as in “been there, got the tee.” Instead, he opened his mind to the elder’s and skimmed off what he could about the religion of Oc Ajal, which proved to be almost identical to that of the Nightkeepers, except turned upside down.
In other words, the trip was a bust. The villagers might worship the gods of Xibalba, but they weren’t members of the Order of Xibalba. He hadn’t found his mother’s village, and he hadn’t found new allies for the magi. Please hang up and try your call again.
Shaken and more let down than he wanted to admit, Rabbit said woodenly, “Thank you for answering my questions.”
Cheech translated the elder’s response as “Good luck,” but Rabbit was pretty sure the literal word-
for-word was more along the lines of “May the future go well for you.”
We can only hope. He sketched a wave to the old man and turned away, tugging Myrinne with him.
Cheech followed a moment later.
They were at the archway when Saamal called, “An. Tool!”
“That is so not my name,” Rabbit grumbled, but he turned back. “What?”
He didn’t follow the elder’s quick words, so cocked his head back for Cheech, who said, “He says the peccary is a fine animal—clever, fierce, protective, and ambitious. But it was a rabbit that helped the Hero Twins save their father from the underworld.”
Rabbit’s throat closed, but he managed to get out, “I know the story.”
It had been one of Harry’s and Braden’s favorites. He had a sudden memory of sitting in the pool house with them, telling them that very part of the story— the savior-rabbit part—while Patience leaned in the doorway and watched her sons with a small, soft smile. The expression on her face, a mixture of love and contentment somehow coexisting with fierce possessiveness, had reached inside Rabbit and imprinted itself within him.
Nobody had ever looked at him that way, not before or since. And maybe he’d been fooling himself coming out to Oc Ajal, trying to pretend he was looking for allies when what he’d really wanted was to see if there was someone up here who could look at him like that.
Swallowing heavily, he jammed his hands in his pockets and headed for the archway, closing off his mental air locks as he walked.
Behind him, Cheech started in on Myrinne about the ride home, and she squeaked an indignant protest and geared up to haggle.
Without looking back, Rabbit said, “We’ll pay. Just get us down as fast as you can without killing anyone.”
He didn’t care what it cost. He just wanted to go home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cancún, Mexico The sky was bloodred with the sunset as Patience and Brandt left El Rey and headed back into town.
They didn’t speak as they walked. He held her hand, their fingers twined together like a promise. And although he knew he couldn’t keep that promise, he couldn’t make himself let go.
Because this was their spot.
Over the past couple of years, he had put his boots on the ground at hundreds of sites south of the U.S. border. He’d fought the Xibalbans in the Yucatán and Honduras. He’d let blood in Guatemala.
He’d climbed sacred temples in Belize. And throughout the former Mayan territories, he’d patrolled the ruins, both continuing the search for a new skyroad and shoring up weak spots in the barrier as 2012 approached.
He’d breathed the air of rain forests, cloud forests, ancient mountain strongholds, modern cities and towns. Zap him into an empty warehouse with no contact with the outside world, and he could tell if he was in a former Mayan city-state, because all those places felt a little bit the same to him . . . except for this small section of Cancún.
Here, the air danced across his skin as it did nowhere else. And here, he and Patience worked.
They had been back only once since becoming full-fledged magi, on a fact-finding trip that had turned into an unexpected second honeymoon, a seventy-two-hour sexual marathon that had wrung him out, lit him up, and left him hoping that they had made a breakthrough.
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