tethered after this spell runs out. Once I’m done, I’m done.”
“So talk fast,” Strike ordered.
Rabbit glared at him, but didn’t waste time picking the fight. It was coming, though.
“Werigo became devoted to an offshoot sect of the order, one that was destroyed long ago because its goals diverged from those of the true Order of Xibalba. The members of the sect believed that our mandate wasn’t to secure the barrier against the sky demons; it was to rule the earth ourselves.”
“Who wants to bet this sect spun off to live with the Aztecs?” Lucius murmured.
“Just so,” Saamal agreed. “Although the sect itself was destroyed during the conquest, its last leader —the Aztec god-king Moctezuma—hid key codices and ceremonial objects. Twenty-six years ago, acting on a dream he claimed was a vision from Moctezuma himself, Werigo dug up the cache and began subverting members of the true order over to his cause.” A pause. “The dream came a few months before the magic ceased working.”
Rabbit glanced at Strike. The king wasn’t telegraphing shit, but it couldn’t be a coincidence that Werigo’s prophetic dream had coincided with the ones that had set Strike’s father on the road to the Solstice Massacre.
“Werigo was a hard, harsh man before the dreams,” the elder continued. “He was the elder son of our leader, but when our father died, I—the second son—was made ruler instead of him. That festered.
In the end, Werigo and his sons left the old village along with ten others. Anticipating that he would come after us when he grew strong enough—looking to take prisoners, sacrifices, and converts, much as the god-kings of old used to do—I relocated the village, and we learned to hide our true natures.”
Saamal paused. “He and his followers grew even harder and harsher, and became fanatically convinced that it was their duty to reincarnate Moctezuma and complete the Aztec conquest. They found us one solstice, and attacked. They killed everyone they could find, murdering the men, women, and even children who had been their friends and family. Only a dozen of us survived. . . . Eventually, we came here. To Oc Ajal.”
Where they were safe, Rabbit thought hollowly, until I showed up.
As if he had heard the thought, Saamal zeroed in on him. “Werigo could have found us if he had truly looked. Since so long had passed, we thought he had decided we weren’t important. We became so wrapped up in our own preparations for the end time that we were taken by surprise when his soldiers appeared today. We had grown soft and sloppy, and because of that, we lost the war before we even got a chance to fight. So now it’s up to you.”
“Do you mean the Nightkeepers, or me, specifically?” Rabbit almost whispered the words. He didn’t bother correcting the elder’s assumption that Werigo had been behind the attack. Father or son, it didn’t seem important just then.
“The Nightkeepers serve the wrong gods. You are the crossover; you stand in both the light and shadows.” The elder’s voice sank to a windy sigh. “Three women went with Werigo when he left; two others were captured later. Your mother must have been one of them. I’m sorry, but I don’t know which one.”
Rabbit’s throat closed. “I’m not sure I want to know more than that. We came . . . I came here looking for allies. I guess I’ve got my answer.”
“Indeed. Now I’ll give you three things you didn’t come looking for. A triad, if you will.” Saamal’s lips lifted fractionally, though the effort was grotesque against the sagging backdrop of pale skin and eyes that glossed over as the life-magic failed. “First, I give you a warning. The makol stole a sacred knife that belonged to our father—an ancient war trophy that Moctezuma himself was said to have used in the first fire ceremony.” Saamal’s voice was almost gone. “Second, I give you a gift, one that I was led to by a dream of my own. There’s an eccentric hidden beneath the center post of my house. It is yours. And third and last, I give you what has, for centuries, been a blessing among the members of the order. We say: ‘May the crossover bring balance to all things.’” Rabbit’s heart raced. There were a thousand things he wanted to ask the old man, and the sum total of them logjammed in his throat, leaving him silent save for the one thing he couldn’t go without saying. He bent over, leaning close to Saamal as he whispered, “I’m so sorry I led them here.”
The elder’s eyes were opaque in death, his skin sallow and sagging, but he managed a grotesque parody of a smile. “The gods choose the hour of our passing regardless of our actions. If they had wanted me to live, I would still be alive. They want me to begin my journey now, so off I go. Do not take the blame for what others and the gods have done. Instead, remember the strength of your name.
The rabbit not only saved the Hero Twins and their father; his is the shape of the shadow in the full moon.”
Rabbit’s throat went dry. “I know.” One night when he was just a kid, Red-Boar had taken him up on the roof of the shitty apartment where they’d been staying, and told him how the rabbit-shaped shadow had gotten onto the moon, implying that was the origin of Rabbit’s name. When Rabbit had asked later for a repeat performance, Red-Boar had claimed not to know what the fuck he was talking about.
The thing was . . . Jox hadn’t known the story either, and Lucius hadn’t been able to find it in the library. Ergo, it wasn’t Nightkeeper. Yet Red-Boar kept the name and passed on the story.
What the hell was he supposed to take from that?
“Find the eccentric,” Saamal pressed. “And find your true balance, even if your actions contradict the beliefs of those who love you.”
Rabbit didn’t make the promise. Instead he touched his forehead and the spot over his heart. “Have an interesting journey, old man.” The Xibalbans had believed that the nine levels of the underworld were a series of tests and competitions, and that a true warrior would fight his way all the way down to a seat at the ceremonial ball court of the dark lords—or, better yet, a player’s position.
“Same to you, young Rabbit.” Without ceremony or outward sign, the elder’s soul made the transition. The flaccid lips went still and the last of the dark magic slipped away, leaving Rabbit kneeling beside the elder’s corpse with his hand wet to the wrist with the old man’s blood.
He stayed there for a moment, feeling . . . nothing. He was numb. Exhausted. Confused.
“Hey.” Myrinne’s face came into view as she crouched down beside him. “You okay?”
“I’m . . .” He trailed off, then shook his head. “I have no clue how to answer that.”
She held out her hand. “Come on. Let’s go find whatever he left you. Assuming the makol didn’t get it.”
“Right. The gift. Door number two.” And shit, she was right. What if the makol had found it?
Relieved to have something— anything—concrete to focus on, he let her pull him up, and they headed for Saamal’s hut.
“Rabbit, wait,” Patience called. “Don’t go—” In there, she would have said, he realized the moment he crossed the threshold and his eyes adjusted to the light, if not to the sight confronting him. Oh, shit, he thought frantically, remembering too late the noises he’d heard coming from the building in his vision.
Myrinne turned away, gagging, but Rabbit made himself stand and look.
The woman hung limply, trussed to the center post. Based on her clothing, he thought she had been one of the ones who had been grinding corn when he and Myrinne had first visited. He couldn’t be sure from her face, though—not because the cloaking spell was gone, but because she had been horribly mutilated, sliced and slashed until the front of her body was more meat than skin. There was blood everywhere, and the air was thick with the smell of body fluids, death, and terrible fear.
Aware that the others stood there, some in the doorway, some just outside, he swallowed, trying to find some moisture to wet his mouth. “I heard her screaming. In the dream, she was still alive while they were— shit.”
He spun, got a hand over his mouth, and bolted. He made it to the edge of the forest, bey
ond the village circle and the stone archway. Then he puked violently into the undergrowth, retching until his stomach muscles hurt and tears streamed down his face. Then he stayed there, hunched over and clutching himself, for a long, long time.
When he heard someone come up behind him, he said, “That’s in my blood. It doesn’t matter if my mother followed Werigo willingly or if she was captured later. She was part of that. And my old man
—” He broke off on a dry heave that hurt like hell. “He stayed with them; he had to have stayed. He kept their name for me, he kept me, but he didn’t . . .” He trailed off. He didn’t want to snivel that his father hadn’t loved him, hadn’t liked him, had barely tolerated him most days. But still. “How does that make any sense? He was a Nightkeeper, for fuck’s sake! He was the Nightkeeper. How could he do that? And what the hell am I supposed to do about it? I don’t want to be a half blood. I don’t want to be the crossover, whatever the fuck that is. I just want to be a godsdamned mage.” He stood and turned, opening his arms for a hug, assuming it was Myrinne who had come after him.
But it wasn’t Myrinne. It was Strike.
“Shit.” He turned the arms-out move into a swipe at his tear-soaked face and puke-fouled mouth, then drew back, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Want to take a swing at me? Go ahead. I could use a good pounding right now. Might make me feel better about—” He broke off as a faint breeze stirred the air, bringing him the smell of blood and terror.
The image of the woman’s body hit him again, and his gorge rose. He fought it down this time, and lifted his chin in a dare. Tears sheened his vision, making the world shimmer. “Go ahead. What are you waiting for?”
Strike shook his head. “I didn’t come out here to pound on you. I came out to apologize. I’ve been acting like a dick and it’s not fair. What’s more, it meant you couldn’t talk to me about wanting to track down your mother.”
Rabbit swallowed hard, taking a second to process the apology. Which just made him feel more like shit. “I should’ve told you anyway. You wouldn’t have let me go, we wouldn’t be here now, and none of this—” He swallowed the heave, knowing it was his body’s way of wussing out of facing what he’d done. “None of this would’ve happened.”
“Or maybe it would’ve happened a different way. We can’t second-guess the gods—sky or Xibalban.” Strike paused, grimacing. “But I wish this had happened differently. I wish I’d handled it better, wish I’d handled you better.”
“Why didn’t you?” Rabbit hadn’t meant to ask. He’d told himself he didn’t care, that he had Myrinne for support and Jox for the occasional piece of advice, so it didn’t matter if three of the four people he’d grown up with—Strike, Anna, and his old man—were out of the picture.
But now, off alone with Strike after what they’d just been through, it wasn’t about him and Strike the king, but rather him and the guy who’d helped raise him, and who’d been older by enough years to play a role that had hit halfway between big brother and father figure. And who had disappeared on him recently.
With it just the two of them, and him raw as hell, Rabbit could admit that it had mattered. It had mattered a shit-ton.
“Because you terrify me,” Strike said finally. “I’m terrified of you. I’m terrified for you. And I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to the rest of us if things go wrong with you. You’re already the strongest mage of the bunch of us, and I have a feeling you haven’t even started to tap what’s in that head of yours. You’re too fucking brave for your own good, and you’ve got the shittiest luck of anyone I’ve ever known. You put all that together, and it keeps me up some nights worrying about what’s in your future. Two days, two weeks, two years . . . shit, I don’t know what you’re going to be doing two minutes from now, except that I know that whatever it is, you’ll be giving it a hundred percent effort, for better or worse.”
Strike paused, but Rabbit didn’t say anything—he fucking couldn’t say anything past the millstone that’d just landed on his chest.
After an awkward pause, the king shrugged. “So, yeah, I’ve been riding your ass. Jox’s too, because he’s ripping himself to shreds trying to keep it all together at Skywatch and making himself miserable in the process. And Brandt and Patience . . . shit. The team is coming together, but some of the people in it are on the edge, and I don’t know how to pull them back. I—” He broke off, jamming his hands into his pockets, his shoulders sagging from their usual “I can handle whatever the hell you want to chuck at me” squareness. “Fuck. And I’ve just turned what happened here into something about me, which I didn’t mean to do. I just thought . . . I just wanted you to know that nothing that’s been going on between the two of us has a godsdamned thing to do with who your mother was—or, hell, who your father was, what he did, or what he was thinking when he did it. You’re you. I’ve known you most of my life. And . . . I love you. I just thought you might need to hear that right about now.”
Forget not being able to talk. Rabbit couldn’t breathe.
Strike stood there for another moment, looking uncomfortable as hell. Then he shrugged, shot a funny half smile that Rabbit remembered from a thousand times before, growing up, and turned away, heading back to the village center.
He’d gone two steps when Rabbit’s feet finally came unglued and his lungs and throat started working again.
“Hey!” he called. And launched himself at his king.
Strike caught him on the fly and they hugged like they hadn’t since . . . shit, Rabbit didn’t remember. Since back before he’d gotten too cool to do crap like hug the big brother who wasn’t really. They both ignored Rabbit’s stifled sob and the way Strike hung on a beat too long, and when they separated, they both stared into different parts of the forest rather than at each other. But the air between them was clearer than it had been in weeks, maybe longer.
“We should get back,” Rabbit said finally. “There’s a shitload left to do.”
But when they stepped through the archway together, he saw that the others had been seriously busy while they’d been gone. Either that, or he and Strike had been gone longer than he’d thought.
The bodies from the forest and village had been stacked beside the fire pit and layered with wood that had been stripped from Saamal’s hut, leaving the structure’s skeleton behind. The central pole was gone; a hole in the bloodstained sand marked where its base had stood.
Myrinne crossed to Rabbit and held out her hand. “Here.”
From Lucius’s tendencies toward verbal diarrhea when he was working in the library, Rabbit knew that “eccentric” was a catchall term for the small, flat objects the ancients had made from stone, imbuing them with ritual significance—and sometimes even power—through their choice of shape and stone. Some had holes so they could be worn as pendants or carried in pockets, while others had been sacrificed or buried in a house or village to ward off evil.
Leah, Nate, and Alexis each wore one given to them by the king, signifying that they were members of the royal council; those eccentrics were abstractly curving shapes that made Rabbit think of Chinese dragons.
The one that Myrinne held out, in contrast, was a flat, flared quatrefoil.
He stared at it. “Well, hell.”
“Literally,” she quipped, but her eyes searched his. “What can I do to help?”
“You’re already doing it.” He took the eccentric and held it flat on his palm; it was heavier than it looked. He didn’t see any markings on it, didn’t catch any power buzz. It seemed to be nothing more than a carefully knapped piece of waxy gray flint. “Ten bucks says I slice myself every time I stick my hand in my pocket with this thing.”
“You could wear it around your neck.”
He was pretty sure she was kidding. “Yeah. That’ll happen. Not.” He wasn’t even sure he should carry it day to day. “What if it—I don’t know—attracts dark magic or something?”
“Like the hellmark doesn’t already?”
She had
him there. “I’m just wondering if I should leave it here. Nothing says I have to accept it.
You heard Saamal—they weren’t our allies at all, and they were operating on a whacked theology. I mean, sky demons? Seriously?” He shook his head. “No. Even if this branch of the order was threat-
level yellow compared to Iago’s, they opposed the gods.” He rubbed a thumb over the eccentric, which had warmed in his hand. It was soft to the touch. Appealing. “I shouldn’t carry it, or even keep it.”
Myrinne thought for a moment. “How about you hang on to it for now and ask Lucius to check it out? Once you’ve got more info, you can make the call.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, exhaling. “Yeah, that’ll work.” He went to slip the eccentric into his pocket and was startled to realize he already had.
“They’re waiting for you.”
“I know.” He was all too aware that Strike had helped the others finish their grisly work. Now he and the other members of the team stood loosely ringed around the large stacked pyre that contained the village inhabitants, and another, smaller one next to it, where Saamal lay on a crisscrossed pyramid of poles, with a brightly colored swath of fabric covering his gaping chest. Strangely, his color looked better now than it had at the end of the reanimation spell. Was that a sign that dark magic took a toll on the user?
Catching Rabbit’s eye, Strike said, “You okay to do this?”
“No. But I’ll do it anyway.” Fire was cleansing. It was traditional. And although he’d never tested out the theory, he had a feeling that on some level, it tapped into both light and dark levels of the magic.
Before he started, though, he moved around the pyres and pulled Strike away a few paces. “I just wanted to run this by you.” He showed the king the hellmark-shaped eccentric and went through his and Myrinne’s thought process. “If you don’t like the idea of me holding on to it, though, tell me now, because I’d like it to go into the pyre.”
“Keep it. We found a cache of codices and a couple of modern notebooks in the elder’s place.
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