Blood Spells n-5

by Jessica Andersen

  Heart heavy, he cleaned off his knife and hands, rose to his feet, and turned for the door.

  Patience stood just inside it.

  Like him, she was dressed in combat gear. But where before he’d occasionally thought she made the outfit look like coed-goes-goth, the woman who faced him now looked capable, deadly, and determined. Which drove home something he had realized while arguing with her over the Akbal oath: She hadn’t just gotten stronger as a person; she’d grown as a warrior. And that scared the shit out of him.

  He wanted to ask her to stay behind, but couldn’t. So he said simply, “Time to go?”

  “Almost.” She looked beyond him to the altar. “Any luck?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ve been doing some more thinking about the Mexico City earthquake back in the eighties,” she said, which was no surprise. She had spent a good chunk of the previous evening obsessing over the killer quake and the toll Cabrakan could take on mankind.

  He knew it was her way of coping, just like the oracle cards had started out as a way for her to beat her depression. But he didn’t want to talk about the earthquake anymore. If Cabrakan got through the barrier, people were going to die. But he couldn’t—wouldn’t—sacrifice her.

  “Can we please not do this again?” he asked.

  Her expression darkened. “Hear me out.”

  “We’re not going to agree on this one, sweetheart, so I don’t see the point in continuing to argue.”

  “Because you’ve made your decision,” she said flatly.

  “I don’t want us ’porting to El Rey pissed at each other.” He reached for her.

  She took a big step back. “You seem to be forgetting that it’s not your call.”

  His frustration upped a notch. “It’s my oath, my decision. And we both know that Strike won’t order me to retake it. Not after he broke the thirteenth prophecy to save Leah.”

  “I was talking about me. Or are you so used to calling the shots for me that you can’t wrap your head around the fact that I’ve got my own opinions now?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” He jammed his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t be tempted to do something else with them. “Look, I know you need to think about something other than the boys or you’ll lose it. I get that. But let’s not do this right now. We need to focus.”

  She flinched almost imperceptibly, but held her ground. “If you can’t see that the lack of balance in our relationship is affecting your judgment—and potentially our ability to go after the boys and winikin—then you’re the one who’s not focusing.” Her eyes softened. “Don’t you get it? You don’t get to decide what’s best for everyone else, least of all me.”

  “For fuck’s sake, I’m not trying to run your life. I’m trying to figure out how to save it.”

  “You don’t get to make decisions for me. I’m not the kid you married anymore.” She paused. “The way I see it, things started going wrong when I got my warrior’s mark and entered full-on battle training. The more I started having opinions, and the more we were expected to work together as a mated warrior team, the more you checked out on me.”

  He clenched his teeth. “That was backlash from Werigo’s spell, damn it.”

  “I wanted to believe that, I really did, but let’s face the facts: You pursued me in Cancún even knowing that you shouldn’t, and you’re refusing to retake the oath now because all the signs indicate that I’ll be the gods’ choice. If you can ignore those imperatives, then you damn well could have done the same with feeling that you needed to push me away. It doesn’t make any sense that you would go along with your subconscious unless it was telling you something you wanted to hear. Which means you wanted that distance.”

  “That’s—” bullshit, he started to say, but broke off. “Can we please focus on getting our asses to El Rey and grabbing the boys and winikin before Iago gets them underground?”

  She met his eyes. “The stronger we are, the better chance we have to rescue them. And, outside of you retaking the Akbal oath, the only way we can make ourselves stronger is to fully reopen the jun tan.”

  Finally, something concrete. He thrust out his hand, palm up. “Fine. Let’s uplink and get it open.”

  But she shook her head. “You know it doesn’t work that way.”

  Acid burned in his gut. “Then tell me how you think it does work. Give me something specific, damn it! I’ll do whatever you want—just tell me what you need from me.”

  She met his eyes. “Accept me for who I am today, not who I used to be. Make me your partner instead of your backup. Trust me to take care of myself during a fight. And do everything you can to save Harry, Braden, and the winikin. Period.”

  His blood chilled. “In other words, retake the Akbal oath. You want me to prove that I love you by sacrificing you.”

  “If the gods want me, they’ll take me.”

  “I can’t—” He broke off, swallowing hard. This was why he hadn’t wanted to get back into this argument. Because she wasn’t wrong. But he didn’t think she was right either. “Not yet,” he said. “If it comes down to it, I’ll say the words. But not now. Not until we’re sure there isn’t another way.”

  She wanted to keep arguing; he saw it in her eyes. Instead, she nodded. “Okay. I don’t like it, but okay. We’ll do it your way.”

  “It’s not about doing things my way, damn it.”

  Her look said, Isn’t it? He would’ve liked to think the words came through the jun tan link, but his forearm mark was cool, and for all the times she had accused him of being distant, now she was the one who seemed very far away as she crossed the circular chamber, knelt before the chac-mool, and bowed her head.

  After a moment, he joined her there. But instead of a prayer, all he could come up with was, Come on, Rabbit. Hurry up and find that fucking doorway.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  El Rey Rabbit was sweating as he and Jade quartered the ruins of the El Rey palace, which was little more than a stone-outlined footprint of where the big structure once stood. They were blood-linked, which allowed him to enter her mind despite wearing the jade circlet, and they were doing their damnedest to blend his dark magic with her sensitivity to concealment spells. Michael and Sasha trailed them, weapons drawn, and the shimmer of his chameleon shield concealed them from the makol sentries Iago had undoubtedly posted in the nearby forest.

  The flop sweat sliding down Rabbit’s back wasn’t from the warm sunlight, or even his churning worry that this particular cardinal day was poised to go really fucking wrong. It came from the fact that using his mind-bend to slant Jade’s talent toward dark magic was way too close to Iago’s ability to borrow other people’s magic. Rabbit didn’t like the squick factor brought by the comparison . . . or the skirl of temptation that licked at the edges of his mind.

  Saamal had called him the crossover, but what the hell did that mean? Was he supposed to reunite the light and dark into its ancestral form? Michael used only the destructive, death-dealing aspects of muk. If Rabbit could harness the full power of the magic, it could be a huge plus for the Nightkeepers.

  And—

  And nothing, he told himself, aware that he was spinning into grand-plan territory, which tended to get his ass in trouble. Keep your mind on the godsdamned job.

  “See anything?” Jade asked as they picked their way across a central courtyard that was outlined by crumbling pillars.

  “Nothing. You?” They weren’t sure which one of them would see the dark-magic shimmer, or even if their combined efforts would work.

  “Ditto.”

  Glancing at the sky, Rabbit winced when he saw that the sun was a quarter of the way down to the dusk horizon. “It’s getting late. I still think we should try—”

  “You’re not connecting with Iago. King’s orders, nonnegotiable,” Michael interrupted from behind them.

  “But this isn’t—” working, Rabbit started to say, but broke off when he caught a quiver in his peripheral
vision, like a heat shimmer, though it wasn’t that hot. He focused on the spot, which was near the palace’s back wall. There, three large stone slabs were inset into the ground, each of them approximately the size and shape of a coffin.

  The one in the middle was swirling with the greasy brown smears of dark magic.

  “I see it,” Jade whispered. “That’s got to be the second doorway.”

  “Nice job.” Michael pulled his phone and summoned the others, who were there in five minutes, materializing in a hum of red-gold Nightkeeper power.

  Almost before they were boots down, Patience broke the ’port uplink and hurried toward the doorway team. Brandt followed a couple of steps behind her, grim-faced. Rabbit cut a sharp look between the two of them, not liking what he saw. Over the past few days, their unique jun tan link had begun resonating in his perceptions. Maybe the magic hadn’t been as strong as it used to be, but he’d thought they were on the mend.

  Now, they could’ve been strangers.

  When Patience came up beside him, he whispered, “Did something else happen?”

  “Just more of the same,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Don’t worry about us. We’re solid.”

  He knew damn well that was an overstatement, but she had been there for him after his old man’s death, so he didn’t poke at her now. Instead, he took her hand and squeezed it. “We’re going to get them back.”

  She nodded, swallowing. “Thanks.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rabbit saw Myrinne’s expression sharpen. She was at the back of the group, wearing black on black and carrying a jade-tip-loaded autopistol, having finally, after eighteen months, won her way fully onto the team. He sent her a finger-wiggle, but wasn’t sure if she saw.

  There wasn’t time for more, because Strike and Brandt moved up on his other side, and the king said, “Okay, you two. Let’s get this thing open.”

  Rabbit and Jade clasped hands once again, blending their magic so her uncloaking ability was skewed from light magic to dark, and got some extra oomph. As she cast the spell, the air over the coffin-shaped stone shivered and the dark-magic smear started swirling faster and faster, expanding with each revolution.

  Then the magic solidified with a low-level boom, and a small stone temple appeared right in front of them. It was plain, square, and unadorned, and the end facing them was almost entirely taken up by an arched doorway that led to a set of stairs heading down.

  Two Aztec makol stood just inside the doorway, looking startled as hell.

  “Rabbit, down!” Michael barked from behind him.

  Rabbit dropped to his knees. A split second later, death magic flared straight over his head in a killing stream of silver light that forked to hit the makol chest high. They died instantly in a flare of muk, becoming greasy piles of gray char that crumpled inward and collapsed with a hiss.

  Rabbit glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Michael had turned ash gray himself. Sasha took his hand and summoned her chu’ul magic, working to level off the aftereffects. Although the assassin’s power was lightning fast and worked against all but the strongest of their enemies, it took its toll. Michael wouldn’t be good for too many more flat-out kills.

  Which could be a problem, because the guards weren’t a good sign.

  Thinking to test for more of them, Rabbit stepped through the doorway and opened up his senses.

  And was instantly awash in power.

  As if coming from very far away, down a long, echoing tunnel, he heard Strike say: “Fuck. Iago’s already down there.” There was a pause; then he said, “Rabbit, can you sense anything?”

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

  Dark magic flowed all around him, through him, weighing his soul and making him want to gag at the same time that it skimmed over his skin, lighting his neurons and getting him hard. He loved it, hated it, wanted it, despised it. For a moment he was balanced. Then there was a surge, the scales tipped, and he leaned into the glorious flow of coppery brown magic, opened himself up to it, and—

  “Rabbit! ” Myrinne was suddenly in his face, shaking him. “Shut it down, now!”

  It took him a second to focus on her, another to figure out what she was talking about. Then the gag response flared higher as the Nightkeeper half of him reasserted itself, beating back the lure of the dark power.

  He shut down the connection, slamming the barriers down. His head echoed with sudden emptiness and he sagged against the wall, would’ve gone down without it. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he rasped, “Holy shit.”

  He’d never sensed the dark magic like that before, never felt like he could ride the wave to someplace incredible.

  “Somebody get a shield over the doorway,” Strike ordered. Then he gripped Rabbit’s shoulder.

  “Talk to me.”

  “Let him breathe first,” Myrinne snapped.

  But Rabbit shook his head. “I’m okay.” Sort of. “The hellroad is wide-open.”

  Strike cursed. “That shouldn’t be possible this far ahead of the solstice.” He paused. “Maybe it’s something to do with the eclipse, or Moctezuma’s magic.”

  “Or else Iago jump-started it with blood,” Patience said, her voice barely above a whisper. Brandt reached out and took her hand, but although she leaned into him, the air around them remained still.

  “Does he know we’re here?” Brandt asked, eyes fixed on the staircase leading down.

  Rabbit shook his head. “He’s pouring all his power into keeping the intersection open. He doesn’t know we took out the two makol up here.”

  Strike glanced at him. “What do you think? Can you still do it?”

  When the kidnapping had nixed the plan of baiting a trap by letting Iago see specific things within Rabbit’s mind, Jade had modified the spell in the other direction. Now Rabbit should be able to make his presence look like part of Iago’s background mental pattern and—in theory, anyway—influence his thoughts.

  There hadn’t been any time to test it, though. “If he senses me, he’s going to link up and take over,” Rabbit warned, though they had been over the pros and cons a dozen times already. “You might not even know he’s got me until it’s too late.”

  “I’ll know.” Myrinne moved up beside him so they were shoulder to shoulder facing the temple door.

  Strike nodded. “Do it.”

  Taking a deep breath and hoping to hell this shit worked, Rabbit slipped off the protective circlet.

  Although he’d had it for only a few days, his head felt seriously naked without it. Deal with it, he told himself, and got to work.

  Disguising his thoughts beneath a layer of mental patterns that were as close as he could get to Iago’s, he dropped the blocks and cracked open the hell-link. Between proximity and the power of the solstice-eclipse, the connection formed instantly. One second he was looking at Myrinne, and in the next, he was in a ceremonial chamber, looking out through Iago’s eyes as the Xibalban raised Moctezuma’s knife. And advanced on his first sacrificial victim.

  As Rabbit tuned out and swayed on his feet, Patience gave a low moan and whispered, “Please, gods.”

  Brandt gripped her hand and got a return squeeze, but he didn’t feel anything more than the press of her fingers on his. They were standing in the middle of El Rey, yet he couldn’t sense the special buzz of magic that had been theirs alone.

  She was blocking him. She had closed herself off, distancing herself when they most needed to be working together.

  “Don’t shut me out,” he said under his breath.

  She glanced at him. “I’m not.”

  But there was a barrier between them, one he didn’t know how to breach. The Akbal spell wasn’t the answer. He was sure of that much.

  “I’m in,” Rabbit said suddenly, his voice a low, effortful gasp. “I’ll stall him as long as I can, but we need to move fast. He’s already got his first sacrifice prepped.” He fixed on Brandt. “It’s Woody.”

  The world froze as the words rocketed
around inside Brandt’s head, in his heart, icing his universe.

  It’s Woody. . . . It’s Woody. . . . Woody . . . Woody.

  Sudden heat raced through him, boiling the ice with mad, murderous rage. He lunged for the dark-

  magic doorway, lashing out with his warrior’s talent and slamming aside Michael’s sturdy shield spell.

  “Holy shit,” someone said; he didn’t know which one of them it was. Didn’t care. All he cared about was that he would have the strength of an eagle warrior when he went up against his enemy.

  Patience was right on his heels, with the others behind her. When darkness closed around him, he called up light—not a weak and harmless foxfire, but a fighting fireball that pulsed red-gold and dripped sparks from his hand, searing stone and sand to glass where they fell. Talent magic hadn’t worked beneath Chichén Itzá, but it worked here. Michael spread a chameleon shield over them, cloaking the light and noise as the others called their fireballs. The burning lights cast the smooth, water-cut tunnel walls bloodred as they raced down the twisting staircase.

  Rabbit haltingly briefed them as they went: Iago and Woody were alone in the sacred chamber, but there were twenty Aztec makol on the far side, in the short stretch of the light-magic tunnel that had survived the cave-in. They were guarding Hannah and the twins, who were in an offshoot room Iago had discovered.

  “They’re all okay,” Rabbit said, but the unspoken caveat was, For now.

  Another twenty makol guarded the dark-magic entrance; the Nightkeepers would have to go through them to get to the chamber. And although Rabbit was working to prevent Iago from killing Woody while also keeping the Xibalban from sensing the incoming attack, the effort was costing him. He leaned heavily on Myrinne, and his words slurred as he said, “We’re almost on top of them.”