Blood Spells n-5

by Jessica Andersen

  His mind raced as he returned to Patience and briefly described the room and the stranger. Were they wrong about the rattling power being dark magic? The Nightkeepers were the only earth-borns capable of using the barrier’s power, and this guy sure as shit looked earth-born, not Banol Kax or boluntiku . Which left only two options.

  So what was he, mage or makol ? Please, gods, let him be a mage, Brandt thought, mind plunging ahead to the hope of there being more survivors, older warriors who could teach him and Patience what they lacked . . . and who might know how he could fix his cosmic fuckup.

  Behind him, the chant switched to English, startling him. Brandt turned as the stranger said, “By nine times nine chants and our shared blood, I call on Werigo, son of Okom, father of Ix and Iago.”

  Magic rattled in the air, hard and abrasive, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He saw Patience’s eyes widen, saw the understanding dawn.

  Because oh, holy shit, nine wasn’t a sacred number of the Nightkeepers. It belonged to the underworld.

  “Lords,” the stranger continued, “release my father’s soul, so he can continue working on your behalf.”

  Brandt’s gut twisted as his fantasy of more Nightkeeper survivors imploded beneath the realization that this was no mage. It had to be a makol , a possessed human whose demon rider was trying to bring another like it through the barrier.

  Kill it! his gut screamed. Acting on instinct, not fully aware of what he was doing, he summoned the red-gold power from the thin barrier connection he and Patience had formed.

  “Wait!” she said urgently.

  But it was too late. Like a striking rattlesnake, the dark magic lashed out into the tunnel and struck sparks off the red-gold. The makol howled a curse as it sensed the intruders.

  Brandt didn’t hesitate. He lunged through the doorway and swung his torch like a Louisville Slugger, aiming for the thing’s head.

  He had a bare second to register that its eyes were a murky hazel, not luminous green. It was a man, not a makol . Was he a Nightkeeper after all?

  Shit! He pulled the blow and deflected the swing. The other man ducked; the bone torch glanced off his shoulder, smashed into the limestone wall, and splintered at its end.

  “Who the hell are you?” Brandt demanded.

  Without any change in expression, the stranger yanked a nine-mill from his belt and fired at Patience.

  She dove out of the way, but her torch and knife went flying as the other man tracked her with his weapon.

  No! Rage poured through Brandt, possessed him. He teed off and swung again, and this time he didn’t pull a godsdamned thing.

  The splintered end of the torch hit the guy in the temple. The impact sang up Brandt’s arms and left his hands vibrating.

  The blond man staggered, gun hand sagging. He cursed when Patience kicked his wrist, sending the weapon flying. Brandt wasn’t thinking or planning, didn’t have any thought in his mind aside from stopping the bastard. He roundhoused the torch and slammed it into their enemy’s skull with a sickening crunch.

  Blood and brain spattered into the shallow sacrificial bowl as the other man slid to a heap on the floor.

  Brandt froze. His pulse throbbed sickly in his ears as he stared at the gore. At the body.

  He had just killed a man without really knowing why, or who he was.

  “He was going to kill us.” Patience was breathing hard, her eyes wide and white. “We had to—” A terrible rattling roar split the air, drowning her out as the wall behind the altar shimmered and went strange and flexible, turning a sickly muddy brown-green color. Brandt shouted and yanked her behind him when the surface bulged obscenely, as though something was fighting to be born through the membranelike surface of the dark magic.

  Oh, holy fuck. The dark mage’s death had punched a hole in the barrier.

  “Go!” He shoved her toward the doorway. “Get all the way out, call your winikin , and tell her to crack the drop box.”

  She spun back. “I’m not leaving you!”

  He knew she wouldn’t leave unless he made it good, so he gripped her wrists and met her eyes.

  “Think about it. One of us needs to make sure nothing comes through this gap. I’m bigger. I’ve got more blood to sacrifice. I’ll meet you as soon as the equinox is over. Now go !”

  It was only partway a lie; he would try to hold the barrier with bloodletting. If it came down to it, though, he could only hope that since a dark mage’s sacrifice had opened the connection, the sacrifice of a Nightkeeper, even one like him, would close it back up again.

  Woody would understand, even approve.

  Patience hesitated, then spun for the doorway. But she was too late. The membrane tore with a wet ripping sound that amped the rattling magic to a maniacal chatter. Smoke poured through the opening, unrelieved black save for two pinpoint glints of luminous green. A makol !

  The dispossessed demon soul arrowed straight for Patience, moving fast.

  “Run!” Brandt dove for the billowing presence, trying to grab it and keep it away from her. He passed right through it, though, catching nothing but air. He landed hard, rolled, and lurched back to his feet just in time to see Patience dodge the smoke and make a dive for the altar.

  She snagged the stone knife from the corpse’s belt, slashed both her palms and thrust her hands into the mess atop the altar, crying, “Gods help us!”

  A soundless detonation rocked the chamber, thumping deep within Brandt and making his ears ring.

  The dark-magic rattle modulated, becoming underlain by the buzzing hum from before. The undulating membrane went from muddy brown to pure silver, shot through with rainbow hues, like the surface of a bubble seen from an angle.

  Patience’s expression turned radiant; she seemed to glow from within as she turned to him. But then her face blanked with horror, and she screamed, “Behind you!”

  Brandt lifted the bloodstained torch and spun—straight into a roiling cloud of black smoke. He caught a flash of fluorescent green and smelled char, and then he was seeing the world in fluorescent green, and his brain was impossibly split in two.

  He was himself, but he was someone else too; he caught kaleidoscope images of terrible blood rituals designed to prepare the living for resurrection. He saw two boys, flashing images of them growing, one into the guy he had just killed, the other into a younger, auburn-haired version. He saw them carve their father’s beating heart from his chest and make the sacrifices that would ensure his immortality as a demon soul. The dead brother had been stone-faced, the other in tears.

  He was Werigo, ex-leader of the Order of Xibalba, a group even more deeply underground than the surviving Nightkeepers. He was also Brandt White-Eagle. And the part of him that remained Brandt would be fucked if he was going to let a dark mage turn him into a makol .

  Forcing his body to move, he lurched for the altar. “Give me the knife!”

  Patience tossed it and he caught it on the fly. The second his fingers closed around the hilt, the dark magic that had been used to baptize the blade rose up within him, giving Werigo the upper hand.

  Seeing the light of the gods inside Patience and recognizing the power her sacrifice would generate, the makol wrested control of their shared body away from Brandt and reached for her.

  Panic slashed through Brandt. Using that fear, he managed to regain enough control to shout, “Kill me. Do it now !”

  Her eyes flashed. “No way. I just found you.”

  She closed the distance between them, dodged Werigo’s knife slash, and grabbed Brandt’s wrist in a numbing, twisting grip. The knife clattered to the floor as she kissed him, grabbed his bloodstained hand in hers, and connected them, blood to blood.

  Brandt howled in his soul when he felt part of Werigo leave him and enter Patience through the kiss, felt the makol gather his magic and inwardly begin a spell that would kill the two Nightkeepers and use the sacrifice to reanimate the dead man as another makol . Brandt struggled to pull Werigo back but couldn’t
, fought to push Patience away, but she held on to him, not letting him end the kiss.

  Against his mouth, she whispered, “Please, gods.”

  Without warning, power jolted into him, through him, in a screaming rainbow that flayed his soul raw in an instant, leaving him bare.

  He sensed the gods within Patience, and knew they were saving her because she deserved it, and were saving him solely because he and Patience were connected. Collateral salvation instead of collateral damage.

  His inner right forearm burned at the spot where the magi had worn their bloodline marks.

  Then the makol howled as the gods tore it out of Patience and aimed its essence toward a rainbow funnel cloud that spun midair above the blood-spattered altar.

  Werigo’s old, angry soul dug claws into Brandt’s consciousness, tearing deep furrows in his psyche.

  The gods might be saving Brandt, but they sure as shit weren’t protecting him from the fallout.

  Patience was trying to, though; she held him tighter, kissed him harder, sharing her blood, her strength, and the grace of her gods.

  Brandt howled and fought to free himself from Werigo. Triumph flared when he felt the makol ’s grip give and sensed the bastard’s realization that he was going to be trapped once again behind the barrier. But he also felt Werigo’s determination not to let them escape with the knowledge that the barrier was friable within this sacred spot, which had access points for both light and dark magic, or that the Order of Xibalba was real, not just a bedtime story used to frighten Nightkeeper children.

  Before Brandt could block the move, if he had even known how, Werigo reached through the connection of blood and sex magic that bound him and Patience together. The demon soul locked on to both of their consciousnesses as dark magic rattled harshly.

  Brandt shouted curses as oily brown power clouded his mind, blocking off memory after memory, and doing the same to Patience.

  He saw the images parade past in reverse: him and Patience creeping through the tunnel; them intertwined in the aftermath of lovemaking; his elation at finding her on the beach; the first moment he saw her. Then Werigo went back further still, to another time, another encounter with the gods.

  Brandt howled, tried to fight it, but he didn’t know what to do with the magic, didn’t know how to defend himself as his past was torn away from him.

  Then Werigo was gone. But so were the memories.

  “No!” Brandt croaked the word aloud, surprised to realize that he could speak, that he was back in control of his own body again. Deep in his bones, he felt it the moment that the equinox faded and the barrier solidified.

  The air above the altar went still. Silence filled the chamber. And the magic snapped out of existence, leaving him utterly empty.

  He sagged against the altar, retching against the awful, sickening spin of his head. Patience lay unmoving on the floor, but a fumbling vitals check reassured him that she was breathing, her heartbeat steady. Gray fog clouded his vision, his thoughts; it was all he could do to light her torch using one of the wall sconces. He wanted to pass the hell out, but he didn’t dare. His gut told him that their exit wouldn’t be open much longer.

  He had to get them out of there.

  Dizzy but determined, he picked her up, staggered out of the chamber, and started back up the tunnel.

  With each step he took, the gray fog got thicker, obscuring his memories of the—what was it again?

  “Doesn’t matter,” he rasped through a thick-feeling throat. Channeling Woody, he said, “Focus on your priorities.” Knowing he was losing it, that he wasn’t far from shutting down entirely, he fixed a single priority in his mind: I’ve got to get us both back to the hotel.

  He repeated that over and over again as he carried her through the tunnel. By the time he reached the lagoon cave and dropped the burned-out torch at the edge of the water, he didn’t know how he’d gotten there, didn’t know the name of the woman in his arms or why they were both wearing ripped, dirty clothing that stank of blood. Instinct had him washing away the worst of the gore in the lagoon before he carried her back up the stairs and out of the pyramid, which looked solid once again when he turned back, looking for . . . what?

  He couldn’t remember. He just knew that they couldn’t stay in the park after dark, so he followed the path out the back way, and trudged up the beach, past a scattering of motionless partyers who had passed out after the fireworks.

  When he hit the street and a couple of guys loped up to make sure they were okay, gut instinct had him playing “still drunk from last night.” He wobbled and slurred, “I’ve got to get us both back to the hotel.”

  One of the guys—red-eyed and hovering on the borderline between last night’s drunk and tomorrow’s hangover himself—offered to help.

  By the time Brandt and the blonde were up in his room, and he’d thanked the Samaritan with a twenty to buy himself a few rounds, he was barely conscious. It was all he could do to strip them both, crawl into bed beside her, and fall the hell asleep.

  If he was lucky, everything would make sense when he woke up.

  CHAPTER TEN

  December 19 Two days until the solstice-eclipse Cancún, Mexico Patience awoke with her cheek pillowed on Brandt’s shoulder and one leg thrown over his. As always, his body temperature had crept up to “furnace” overnight, making her too hot, but she hadn’t moved away as she slept, didn’t want to move away now. Instead, she cuddled into him, pressing her lips to the smooth, tough skin of his upper arm as she slid her leg higher along the satin-slick sheets and—

  Satin?

  Pulse jolting, she opened her eyes to find herself looking into a wall of mirrors that showed her initial surprise, then the way her eyes clouded as memory sledgehammered her with so many long-

  forgotten truths that she wasn’t sure what to think about first.

  She made herself roll away from him, not letting herself feel the loss of warmth. “Wake up, big guy. We fell asleep.”

  “We wh—? Huh?” He blinked awake and locked on their reflection over the bed, and his face went through the whole surprised-then-remembering sequence she’d just been through. He cleared his throat.

  “Oh. Well.”

  “We should get dressed,” she said too quickly, latching on to the practical details when the thought of dealing with the other, larger pieces of the puzzle made her palms sweat. “Jade and the others will be here soon.”

  Taking the slippery top sheet with her, she headed for the shower, trying not to make a big deal about snagging her scattered clothes along the way.

  “Patience.”

  His quiet word stalled her in the bathroom doorway. Taking a deep breath, she turned back.

  She lost the breath she had just taken.

  He sat cross-legged in the center of the mattress, bare-chested, with the bedspread tossed casually over his lap. His hair was tousled, his eyes still carried a blur of sleep, and the mirrored reflections behind him showed the strong curve of his spine. Her body still hummed from their raw sex of the night before; the thought of it brought a clutch of desire low in her abdomen, a blush of moisture to her cleft.

  But last night hadn’t been about them; it had been about the place, the magic, and the memories.

  Loving him now, in the light of a new day, would be something entirely different.

  He held out his hand, but she took a step back, shaking her head.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, the words little more than a breath.

  His expression tightened. “I just want to talk.” But he let his hand drop.

  Her heart twisted. “We knew,” she said softly. “From almost the very beginning, we knew we were both Nightkeepers.”

  “Yeah, we did. Until Werigo blocked the memories.”

  She told herself to focus on the pieces that mattered to the next forty-eight hours. But the words slipped out. “It was such a relief to think that I wasn’t going to be alone anymore.”

  “We were together after
that,” he pointed out. Which was true—instead of an awkward morning-

  after walk of shame, they had ordered breakfast. Three months later, they were married.

  “Not the way we should have been.” As magi. Partners.

  “Maybe not. But they were good times.”

  It hit her then, what knowing all along would have really meant. They would’ve come clean to their winikin right off the bat, might’ve even gotten married, not in the furtive-feeling ceremony they’d had, but with full Nightkeeper pomp. Then after that, they would’ve been in training, fully immersed in the world of the magi. And, knowing firsthand that the barrier wasn’t completely sealed and the end time was a real threat, she probably wouldn’t have gotten pregnant . . . and Harry and Braden wouldn’t exist.

  “I—” She broke off, pressing a hand to her stomach. “Oh, gods.” She was sorely tempted to take the bathroom escape route, but they owed each other better than that. She didn’t look at him, though, as she said, “If it hadn’t been for Werigo’s spell, we probably wouldn’t have had the boys. And, gods forgive me, sometimes I think it would’ve been easier if we’d come into this as strangers, or as lovers but not parents. I don’t regret having Harry and Braden, never that. I just wish . . .” She trailed off. “I wish I knew which parts have been pieces of the gods’ plan, and which have been our choices.”

  “I would’ve picked you out of the crowd with or without the magic,” he said softly. “You dazzled me then, both as a man and a mage. I’m still dazzled by you now. More so, even, because you gave us Harry and Braden.”

  Patience swallowed against the hard, hot lump of emotion that narrowed her throat. “But will you still feel that way back home?”

  To his credit he didn’t lie. But the regret in his eyes hurt just as much as the lie would have.

  The burble of her phone was almost a relief at that point. She pawed through her clothes, pulled out her cell, and checked the new text message. “Jade and the others are downstairs.”

  “They’re early. You want to tell them to grab a table someplace quiet and we’ll debrief while we eat?”