Demonkeepers n-4

by Jessica Andersen

  shirt, and sandals, with his right sleeve just brushing across the hunab ku mark that denoted his gods-

  validated kingship, Jade filled her lungs with moisture-laden air that seemed more appropriate to the lowlands of the Yucatan than a box canyon in New Mex. The air smelled faintly wrong, though she couldn’t immediately place the odor, which clung to her nasal passages and made her want to sneeze.

  She glanced at Strike, who was a dark shadow in the rapidly dimming light. “Did you guys install a giant Glade air nonfreshener while I was gone?”

  “I wish. At least then we’d know what we’re dealing with . . . and it’d presumably come with an

  ‘off’ button.” His deep voice was edged with frustration. “We seem to be going from desert to tropics, and it’s not just the ceiba tree growing out of place now, or even the cacao. There are patches of slimy green crap—like dry-land algae or something—growing all over the area, though it’s worse down here. Sasha says it’s only partly her talent that’s promoting the growth; mostly it’s the funky sun.”

  Jade glanced at the horizon just as the last sliver of orange light disappeared. The gas giant had been off-color worldwide since the previous fall, when humanity had awakened one day to a sun that had turned from white light to blood-tinged orange overnight.

  The amount of solar energy reaching the earth had dropped precipitously even though the earth’s atmosphere was its same ragged, ozone-depleted self. Scientists worldwide had various theories—no big surprise there—but the consensus seemed to be: Beats the living hell out of us. The astrophysicists were testing whether a cosmic dust cloud or something was blocking things between the earth and sun; the ecologists were freaking about issues of climate change, crop losses, and killer red tides; and the threat of mob stampede was growing as food prices skyrocketed and microclimates shifted over the course of weeks or even days. And all the while, people were asking, Why is this happening? How?

  Unbeknownst to most of humanity, the answers that came the closest to reality were those of the supposed crackpots who blamed it on aliens . . . or, rather, demons and the approach of a doomsday predicted by the calendar of the ancient Maya. In depicting the end-date, the Dresden Codex, one of only four Mayan codices to survive the conquistadors’ book burnings of the fifteen hundreds, showed a terrible horned god standing in the sky, tipping a jug that poured fire onto the earth. Although most human scholars assumed that meant the Maya believed that the world would be demolished by a fiery apocalypse, Jade had dug up information from the archive suggesting that the solar fire would be part of the gods’ efforts to help the Nightkeepers during the final battle, which was good news. . . . Or it had been until the sun got sick.

  Unfortunately, in the absence of a reliable oracle—aka the Prophet—there was no way for the Nightkeepers to ask what the hell was going on or how to fix it.

  Shivering, Jade scrubbed at sudden gooseflesh. “Maybe there’ll be something in the library,” she said, voicing the sentiment that had grown to a refrain over the past six months. “Which is my cue to get down to business.”

  But when she turned toward the mansion, which was a darkly solid, reassuring silhouette in the gathering dusk, Strike caught her arm and one-eightied her in the direction of a nearly invisible path leading away from the main house. “Lucius moved into one of the cottages a few months back. Said the mansion made him feel claustrophobic after being trapped inside his own head for so long.”

  “Oh.” She tried not to let the change unsettle her, though when she’d pictured the pending booty duty, she and Lucius had always been in his suite, which was a few doors down from her own and nearly identical in floor plan and bland decor. Not a big deal, she told herself. It’s just a shift of scenery. Experience had taught her that people didn’t fundamentally change; only peripherals did.

  Human, Nightkeeper, it didn’t matter. Some people were good, some bad, most a mixture of the two.

  She trusted Lucius despite knowing that he harbored a deep darkness that had attracted the makol and allowed it to gain a foothold within his soul. But he also had a strong core of innate goodness; that was what had kept the demon from possessing him fully, setting up the internal tug-of-war he’d suffered through for more than a year.

  “Is that a problem?” Strike asked. The deepening dusk made his voice seem to come from the humid air around her rather than from the man himself.

  “Which cottage?” she said, ducking the question because she knew it would take far more than a change of scenery to scare off a warrior, and she was determined not to let herself be anything less.

  “The one farthest from the mansion; you’ll see the lights. He sleeps with them on. Or else he doesn’t sleep at all; we’re not sure.” The king paused. “Nate and Alexis are spending the night in the main house rather than their cottage. With Rabbit and Myrinne at school, you’ll have privacy.”

  Closing the distance between them, he pressed something into her hand. “Take this.”

  Feeling the outlines of one of the earpiece-throat mike combos the warriors used to stay in contact during ops, she didn’t ask why. “Who’s going to be on the other end?” Even knowing that the mike would transmit only if she keyed it on, she couldn’t help picturing a voyeuristic tableau in the great room.

  “Either me or Jox. Unless you’d prefer Leah.”

  He was doing his best, she realized, to maintain the illusion of privacy while keeping her safe, letting her know the warriors stood ready to come to her defense if the sex magic went awry and Lucius once again drew the attention of the underworld lords of the Banol Kax. Which had been only one of the numerous daunting possibilities that had been thrown around over the past few weeks.

  “Whatever you think is best,” Jade said, just barely managing not to tack on “sire” at the end, as her winikin ’s voice echoed in her head, reminding her of the three “D”s. I’m not following orders this time. This was my idea. My choice. Raising her chin, she said, “Lucius won’t hurt me.” No, she’d manage that part on her own. Always had.

  “He’s not the guy you used to know. Becoming the Prophet has changed him.”

  “He’s not the Prophet yet. If he were, you wouldn’t need me.”

  Strike didn’t have anything to say to that, which pinched somewhere in the region of Jade’s heart.

  Given her inability to tap her scribe’s talent for the spell crafter’s gift it was supposed to convey, she didn’t bring much in the way of a unique skill set to the Nightkeepers . . . except in the matter at hand.

  She was the only female mage who remained yet unmated, and she and Lucius had—briefly, at least—

  shared a sexual connection. More, in the wake of her and Michael’s failed affair, back when they’d all first come to Skywatch and gotten their bloodline marks, she’d proven that she could be sexually involved with a man and not lose her heart. While that was more innate practicality than skill, she knew the royal council saw it as a plus. Lucius wasn’t one of them, with or without the Prophet’s powers.

  Realizing that Strike was waiting for her to make her move, she took a deep breath. “Okay. Wish me luck.”

  She halfway expected him to come back with something about getting lucky. Instead, he said, “I want you to remember one thing: You can call it off at any point. This was your idea. I wouldn’t have summoned you today if you hadn’t volunteered. So promise me that you’ll stop if it doesn’t feel right.”

  She frowned at the sudden one-eighty. “But the writs say—”

  “Fuck the writs,” he interrupted succinctly. “Which probably isn’t what you expected—or wanted—

  your king to say, but there you have it. Over the past two years we’ve proved that the writs aren’t perfect or immutable. So now I’m telling you—hell, I’m ordering you, if that makes it better—to make your own decision on this one. Take me out of it. Take the others out of it. This is between you and Lucius. Sleep with him or don’t, your call.”

  Jade drew breath
to whatever-you-say-sire him, but then stopped herself. After a moment’s pause, she said, “I get where you’re coming from, but with all due respect, it’s bullshit. I’m here because we’re out of other options. If we don’t get our hands on the library soon, the earth might not even make it to the zero date. Between whatever’s going on with the sun, and the threat that Moctezuma could come through into Iago any day now, we might be looking at going into full-on war with the Xibalbans long before the barrier falls in 2012. Sorry, but you don’t get to tell me to take all that out of the equation just so you can feel better about making the call. If it doesn’t bother me to offer myself to Lucius this way, under these circumstances, then it shouldn’t bother you. And if it does, that’s not my problem.”

  There was a moment of startled silence. Then Strike said, “Huh.”

  Jade didn’t know if that meant he was offended, taken aback, or what, but told herself she didn’t care, three “D”s or no three “D”s. “What? You didn’t know I have a spine?”

  “I knew you had one. I just wasn’t sure you’d figured it out.” He made a move like he was going to touch her, but instead let his hand fall to the warrior’s knife he wore at his belt. “Good luck, then. And remember that we’ll be monitoring the radio in case . . . well, just in case.”

  Without another word, he spun up the red-gold magic of a Nightkeeper warrior- mage and disappeared in a pop of collapsing air, leaving her standing there thinking that the ’port talent was a hell of a way to get the last word in an argument. Not that they had been arguing, really, because they were both right: She couldn’t separate the act from the situation, but at the same time, the act itself was her choice. Strike had called only to tell her that the other magi and the winikin were out of ideas, and they were up against the new moon, which was the last day of any real astrological significance—

  and hence increased barrier activity—before the summer solstice that would mark the two-and-a-half-

  year threshold. Her response to the information was her responsibility, just as the suggestion had been hers in the first place.

  “So why are you still standing here?” she asked herself aloud.

  “Maybe because you’re not sure this is such a good idea after all,” a stranger ’s voice rasped from the darkness.

  Adrenaline shot through Jade, making her skin prickle with sudden awareness. “Who’s there?” But even as she asked the question, she realized that the voice hadn’t been entirely that of a stranger. The whispery tone wasn’t familiar, but she knew the cadence and faint Midwest accent. Knew them well, in fact. Swallowing to wet her suddenly dry mouth, she said, “Eavesdropping, Lucius? That’s not like you. And why are you whispering? Trying to creep me out? Well, congrats. You succeeded.”

  The shadows near the training hall moved and she heard the faint hiss of denim, the pad of sandals on the steps leading down to the packed dust of the canyon floor. That same voice responded, “I’m not trying to do anything. But considering that you’ve been discussing my sex life, or lack thereof, with the royal council, do you really want to complain about my listening in on your conversation?”

  He wasn’t whispering, she realized belatedly. Six months earlier, Iago had nearly hacked his head off—which, along with ritual disembowelment and performance of the banishment spell on a cardinal day, was what it took to kill an ajaw-makol, as Lucius had been back then. Although his possessing demon had kept him alive and Sasha’s magic had later knit his flesh, the grievous injury to his throat had made it difficult for him to speak in the immediate aftermath. Jade had assumed that would improve with time. Apparently not. Your poor voice , she wanted to say, but didn’t. Regret pierced her for the loss of his lovely storyteller ’s tenor, even as the change sent a fine shiver racing along the back of her neck and down her spine.

  It’s just Lucius , she told herself, as she’d been doing ever since she’d first broached the sex-magic idea to the king. Now, though, she wondered whether she’d sold herself on a lie. Granted, she’d learned early and often that human beings didn’t fundamentally change, not at their core. But what if the human being in question might not be entirely human anymore? He had been an ajaw-makol. He’d survived the Prophet’s spell. Was she trapping herself in her own logic by applying human rules to him on the one hand while on the other arguing that he could be susceptible to sex magic?

  She took a deep breath that didn’t do much to settle the sudden churn of nerves. “I guess your eavesdropping makes us even, then. And it saves me from explaining why I’m here . . . though I doubt you’re surprised. You had to figure something like this was coming.”

  His gritty tone darkened. “Given the choice of sex versus ritual sacrifice, I vote for sex.”

  She didn’t even try to pretend that execution wasn’t another of the options that had been discussed.

  The Prophet’s spell called for the sacrifice of a magic user’s soul, assuming that the sacrificial victim would have just one soul in residence, and would therefore yield an empty golem through which the Prophet’s power would speak, answering the Nightkeepers’ questions from the information contained within the library of their ancient ancestors, which had long ago been hidden within the barrier to keep it safe from their enemies. In Lucius’s case, though, the makol’s soul had been sacrificed, leaving his human consciousness behind. It wasn’t clear whether his failure to access the library had come from the retention of his soul, the fact that he wasn’t a true magic user, the thick mental defenses he’d built up over more than a year of sharing head space with the makol, or what. But it wasn’t much of a stretch to think that the only way to get a fully functional Prophet might be by emptying Lucius’s body of its remaining soul through another sacrifice. To be fair, Strike was holding that out as the absolute last option—the Nightkeepers practiced largely self-sacrifice, helping separate them from the Xibalbans and their dark, bloodthirsty magic. But at the same time, the Nightkeepers’ king would do whatever was necessary to protect the magi and their ability to combat the Xibalbans and Banol Kax.

  That was his responsibility, his duty. But what was hers in this case? She wasn’t sure, and nobody seemed to have an answer for her.

  She had lobbied the royal council on Lucius’s behalf just as vehemently as she’d begged the warriors to search for him after he’d gone makol. Now, as then, the answer was a maddening, We’ll do our best, but he’s not our priority. She knew what it felt like not to be a priority, which had only made her fight harder on his behalf . . . earning the victory that had her standing there in the darkness, suddenly wondering if she was making a Big Freaking Mistake.

  It’s Lucius, she reminded herself again. You’re not afraid of him.

  “So . . . does this make you the sacrificial victim?”

  A spurt of irritation had her snapping, “I’m not the loser’s forfeit in one of your brothers’ drinking games, Lucius. I’m not offering you a pity fuck, and I don’t need to sleep my way to a better grade in Intro to Mayan Studies. I’m—” She broke off, swearing to herself. Great seduction technique, genius.

  Remind him of all the embarrassing stuff he’s ever told you. While you’re at it, why not call him “Runt Hunt” like his old man used to? She had to remember that the past wasn’t important just then. What mattered was what happened—or didn’t—next. At the thought of that next, heat skimmed through her, brought by the memory of a sexual encounter that had registered Richter high. Leveling her tone so it wouldn’t betray the sudden thudda-thump of her heart, she said, “I’m just trying to help. If you want to turn me down because of what happened before, then do it. But don’t try to make me into the bad guy because I’m offering.”

  There was a long beat of silence before he exhaled. When he spoke again, his rasping voice sounded more like that of the man she’d known, or else she was getting used to the change. “I don’t want to turn you down. And I don’t think badly of you. I couldn’t. You’re the only person here that I—” Now it was his turn to br
eak off.

  The only person that I . . . what? Jade skimmed through possibilities to settle on “trust.” Despite what had happened, she trusted him. That might work both ways. Given that he knew she’d been discussing his potential for sex magic with Strike and the others, he probably also knew she was the closest thing he had to an ally within Skywatch. “Then why the hell wouldn’t you talk to me?” The question was out before she could stop it, despite her plan to stop bringing up the past. But it had hurt when he’d refused to let her help him deal with the shock of the exorcism and the memories of what he’d done—or rather, what his body had done—while under the makol’s control. She’d been overjoyed by his rescue, had wanted to do everything and anything in her power to bring him back to the man he’d once been, the friend she’d once treasured.

  “Because I was a godsdamned mess,” he said. “I didn’t want you to see me that way.”

  Jade wished she could see his eyes, wished the darkness didn’t leave her trying to interpret his feelings from a few clipped words in a stranger’s voice. Before, his lovely tenor had painted the old legends of the Nightkeepers into word pictures for her as they’d worked side by side. Though he was only human, he’d taught her about her own ancestors in a way Shandi had never managed, making it less about duty and more about adventure and glory, and the joy of doing something because you could. Now, though, each word sounded like an effort, each sentence a study in pain. The change made her ache from knowing she’d promised her king results in a situation complicated by human factors.

  “I was only trying to help you back then,” she said softly. “The same as I am now.”

  He shifted in the darkness, though he didn’t come any closer. “I didn’t want you to fix me. I wanted you to go away and give me room to fix myself. . . . I don’t want your pity, and I’m not one of your patients, damn it.”

  Ice splashed in her veins, chill and uncomfortable. “I never said I pitied them.”