Stomach dropping, Rabbit stepped away from the others. “Is she—”
He broke off as a white-robed figure darted around a corner and swept through the narrow doorway into the ruin, followed by a dark, winged blur.
“No!” He bolted for the ruin, not waiting for orders or permission.
His boots skidded in loose grit and pounded over rock, and if Dez yelled for him to wait the hell up, he didn’t hear it over the hammering of his pulse. The machine gun was an awkward weight that banged as he ran, but he flipped the clip and slapped it home, and then did his damnedest to be quiet as he reached the ruin and slipped inside.
The single door led to a narrow hallway. He headed for the far end, where the fallen-through roof let in the fresh air. The room beyond stank of dark magic, making him want to howl and fling himself into the attack. Instead, he paused in the shadows, pulse thudding. He might get only one chance. He had to make it good.
The far doorway opened to a larger space, where several rooms had fallen in to form one. There, Phee and the ’zotz stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to him. Faced opposite them, cornered, was Myrinne.
The first sight of her in so long punched a fist beneath his heart, and he felt a twisted mess of relief, guilt, love, shame and a thousand other things that he couldn’t deal with right now. But there was also surprise, because she didn’t look like he had expected, like he remembered. She had her dark hair swept back in a soft, loose braid, but there was nothing soft about the set of her jaw or the anger in her eyes. She was wearing low-slung jeans he recognized and a curve-hugging hoodie he didn’t, and she was brandishing a small wooden stick, a freaking magic wand, like it was going to do something against Phee and the ’zotz.
The last time he’d seen her, she had been weak and broken, barely alive. Even before that, she had wanted to fight but hadn’t always trusted her skills. Now she looked strong, capable and somehow brilliant, like she was in sharper focus than everything around her. But she wouldn’t be for long if he didn’t get in there and save her. Please gods.
His prayers had gone unanswered for so long that he almost didn’t feel the click at the back of his brain, almost didn’t recognize it. But then the heat of battle readiness changed inside him, gaining a subsonic hum and suddenly feeling like magic. Liquid energy flowed from deep inside him, bubbling up to fill the empty spaces, and the air around him glistened with red-gold sparks.
His heart clutched. Holy shit. This was really happening.
Through suddenly numb-feeling lips, he whispered, “Pasaj och.” And, as if it had never been blocked, the barrier connection formed.
Power hammered through him, lighting him up and making him feel like he could do damn near anything. He didn’t stop to question why or how. He just summoned the magic into him, knowing there wasn’t a second to lose.
Phee hadn’t sensed him yet; she was too focused on Myrinne. Dark energy crackled in the air as the demoness raised her hands to cast a spell. “Xibal—”
“No!” Rabbit shouted, lunging through the doorway, out of the shadows and into the light. And, as Phee and the ’zotz spun toward him, he slammed a thick, fiery shield spell around Myrinne, protecting her.
The flame-threaded shield blurred the details, but he saw her jolt and heard her cry his name in a tone of horror. But then, without warning, emotions blasted through him: shock and anger, followed by a sharp lash of resentment.
What the fuck? His senses spun under the sudden onslaught, which was coming from the magic, from Myrinne. It was like they were mentally connected all of a sudden, like his mind-bender’s talent had fused their perceptions. Only he wasn’t using that part of his magic. This was something else.
Focus! His self-directed snap was almost too late, because Phee quickly shook off her shock, and when she saw that he was riding high on the Nightkeeper magic she coveted, her eyes went bright and brilliant. Her arms swept wide and she flung a bolt of dark magic at him.
Rabbit raised his hands, spread his fingers and shouted: “Kaak!” And for the first time in months, the fire came at his command. Pure and cleansing, it poured from him in a brilliant stream of Nightkeeper power.
Dark magic met light and detonated, hammering him back with its shockwave. The ’zotz screeched and took wing, narrowly escaping the blast. But the bat demon recovered almost immediately, and beelined straight for him with its fangs bared and its talons outstretched, attacking before he could call more fire.
Shit! He threw himself flat and rolled aside.
Without warning, a streak of green fire—like his, only not—seared through the place where he’d been, hit the camazotz and blasted it back. The strange flames clung like napalm and spread, engulfing the bat demon, which fell to the ground and lay writhing, emitting shrill shrieks.
As it died to ash, a suddenly wild-eyed Phee cast a shield spell around herself, yanked a pair of carved stones from her robe, and started a transport spell. The bitch was trying to escape!
“She’s mine!” he bellowed, not sure which of the others had taken out the ’zotz or how they’d summoned the green flames, but not really giving a shit as long as they gave him a clear shot.
The knife was suddenly in his hand, his palms bleeding, though he didn’t remember making the sacrifice. It added to his power as he called the fire magic, gathering it from the depths of a soul he’d thought was dead and gone, used up and kicked aside when he’d betrayed his teammates. Now, though, he felt whole in a way he hadn’t for a long time—farther back even than his imprisonment. He wasn’t the whipped dog anymore, wasn’t the betrayer, the prisoner or the mage.
He was all of those things and none of them.
Magic pumped harder and higher, flowing through his synapses and setting fire to neurons long unused. He could do this. He could.
Raising his bleeding palms, he drew breath and shouted the command again: “Kaak!”
Sound, heat and fury detonated; flames speared from his outstretched fingers and hammered into the demoness. Her dark-magic shield cracked and then imploded, sucking back into its maker as she screamed, flung her arms wide, and caught fire.
“Rabbie!” she cried. The word trailed up at the end, going to an inhuman screech as she began morphing away from the human form she’d flaunted. Her fire-wreathed shape stretched, blurred, elongated . . . and became a huge dark shadow, with glowing green eyes that blazed with hatred and pain.
“Son of a bitch,” Rabbit grated. It was a makol, a soul of such terrible evil that it had descended to the lowest of the nine levels of Xibalba, to be tortured there, honed by fire and pain until it emerged as a green-eyed wraith.
The luminous eyes dominated his vision, locking him in place as her voice spoke deep inside his head. In time you will know me for real . . . Son.
“No!” He poured himself into the spell, into the flames, aware that the others had arrived and were adding their magic to his as he shouted a final: “Go to hell!”
The fire flared higher and the makol writhed, screeched and clawed the air, fighting hard enough to make him think it wasn’t simply being dumped back in the underworld, but was being destroyed utterly. And who knew? Maybe it was. The rules were changing as they got closer to the end date; the magic was stronger, the stakes higher. Good fucking riddance.
Her face appeared in the flames, human once more, and tortured as it screamed, “Rabb-ieeeeee!” Then the luminous green eyes winked out, the shadow disappeared, and the flames guttered and died. And Phee was gone, leaving behind only a few char marks scored deeply into the stones.
Rabbit stood, staring at the scorched spots.
Phee was gone.
Dead. Kaput. No more.
The burning need for revenge drained suddenly, leaving him hollow and aching, with no clue what he was supposed to do next. He could hear the thud of his own heart, the rasp of his breathing. He was very aware of the others standing behind him, partly as backup and partly—no doubt—to protect Myrinne from him. Which was a hell
of a thought. I won’t hurt her, he wanted to tell them, but history said otherwise, driving home the fact that one part of the battle might be over, but another had only just begun.
Taking a deep breath, he turned his back on the Nightkeepers—on his resurrected father, his king, all the people who had every right to hate him—and faced Myrinne. Who had the most right of all of them to hate his ass.
She was standing at the midway point between him and the far wall, at the edge of where he’d set his shield spell—gone now, though he didn’t know when or how it had fallen—and very close to the smudgy ash pile that was all that was left of the camazotz.
As their eyes met, she lowered her ridiculous magic wand. And his power went out—poof, gone.
“I didn’t need your help,” she said coolly. “I had it under control. So, hey, thanks for nothing, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
Shock seared through him and he took a step toward her. “Myr?” There were a dozen questions in that one word, but he couldn’t articulate a damn one of them, not when she was staring at him the same as he’d stared at his old man, like he had come back from the dead and wasn’t all that welcome. And when a gesture from her had severed his link to the magic.
What was he supposed to do now? What was he supposed to say? An apology would be a good place to start, but there was really no way to apologize for what he’d done to her. Still, he wiped his freshly healed palms on his grubby rag-pants and started toward her, holding out his hands in a gesture of no harm, no foul, and hoping to hell that was the truth. He had harmed her, he knew, had fouled their relationship beyond repair. But if he could just—
She flicked the wand up and a shield spell slammed into place an inch from his nose.
He froze as another shock piled up on top of the others. “What the hell?”
The force field was clear, but threaded through with an almost imperceptible gleam of the same green he’d seen in the flames that had killed the camazotz. And suddenly things started lining up, sort of. His magic had come back when he got near her. He had sensed her emotions, felt a connection. Green fire magic—like his own, only not—had taken out the ’zotz. And his magic had cut off with a flick of her magic wand.
Holy shit. Had he somehow transferred his barrier connection when he traded his life for hers, linking their energies and giving her some of his magic?
Impossible.
“Not. One. More. Step.” Her eyes were hard now, implacable. “In fact, how about you just back the fuck off?”
He started to say something—anything—but then she pushed up her right sleeve and the air vacated his lungs with a quick sayonara at the sight of four marks in stark black on her forearm: the warrior, the fire starter, the telekyne and the mind-bender.
They were Nightkeeper marks.
More, they were his marks. All of them, save for the dark-magic trefoil.
“Holy shit, Myr,” he blurted, forgetting himself, forgetting the situation in the sheer impossibility of it all. “You got my magic!”
* * *
Myrinne hated how her nickname came out differently in his voice somehow, becoming more important, more intimate than it should’ve been. Hell, everything was too important and intimate all of a sudden, because—damn it—the magic had reached out to him. And now, even though she’d cut the connection, she couldn’t stop herself from looking at him and feeling an unwanted pang.
He was filthy and ragged, his hair grown out from its usual buzzed Mohawk to punkish spikes. The magic had healed him and kept his broad frame covered with a warrior’s muscles, but whip marks formed an X on his bare chest, as if a single arm had wielded the lash in an unvarying pattern. His back was even worse. More, the deep creases beside his mouth and the haunted strain in his pale blue eyes said that he had suffered over the past two months, and badly.
Part of her—dark and vindictive—whispered, Good, I’m glad. But the rest of her knew there was nothing good about any of this.
She wanted to tell him to fuck off, wanted to walk away. Unfortunately, she knew damn well that the magic was going to force her to deal with him. More, she didn’t want the others to see her wimp out. So, keeping her voice level, she steeled herself and said, “After you disappeared, I was unconscious for almost three days. When I woke up, I was wearing the marks and hearing voices in my head, reading minds.” It had been terrifying, yet illuminating, as if a whole new world was opening up in front of her. “The other talents came online soon after. Our best guess is that the gods wanted to keep the crossover’s magic with the Nightkeepers, and somehow managed to shunt the power into me when you went bad.”
The new lines beside his mouth deepened, but whatever pain she’d just caused him wasn’t nearly enough payback. He had accused her of spying for the demons when he was the one being influenced, and he had nearly offered her up to them as a sacrifice. Bastard, she thought grimly, because while he’d believed her in the end, saved her in the end, she’d had to let him into her mind to prove her innocence.
Having him see so deeply inside her had been bad—a tearing, rending invasion by the man she had loved. Worse, the mind-bending had stirred up old, unwanted memories—of watching tourists out on the street or from a small, cold closet adjoining the teashop, listening for details the Witch could use in her “readings,” knowing she would be beaten if she failed. You’re gone, she had told the Witch’s memory, over and over again. You’re nothing to me now. But then again, she’d told herself the same thing about Rabbit, yet here he was. And the painful thud of her heart against her ribs said that whatever he was to her now, it was far from nothing.
“Anyway,” she said, making herself keep going. “After some experimenting, we discovered that I needed to use the accessories of my ‘magic’ to channel the power.” She bracketed the word with finger quotes, because he’d never really taken her Wiccan-style rituals seriously. None of them had, until she’d gone out to meditate in the cacao grove and nearly started a forest fire. After that, things had gotten seriously shaky for a few days, with her trying to adjust to the idea of suddenly being a mage while the others waited to see if she’d inherited Rabbit’s problems along with his magic.
Dez had been the first one to really stand up for her, believe in her. Guilt tugging, she shot a look at the king. “I’m sorry I bolted. I just needed . . . I don’t know. Distance.” Yet the very person she’d needed to escape from was standing a few feet away, looking at her as if she’d just sprouted wings.
Or stolen his magic.
The muscles in Rabbit’s throat worked as he swallowed. Then, voice hoarse, he said, “I haven’t been able to use my powers since I left Skywatch . . . and now they’re gone again.”
Dez’s eyes went from her to Rabbit and back again. She didn’t know how much the others had witnessed, how much they had guessed. Hell, she didn’t want to admit to any of it . . . but with only a few weeks left in the countdown, there was no time for secrets. “The magic reached out to you.” She rubbed her inner wrist, where the marks ached, though that had to be the power of suggestion.
“And now?” It was Dez asking.
“I’m blocking the link. The connection caught me by surprise just now. That won’t happen again.”
With a gesture from her ash wand, she killed the shield spell around Rabbit. It had mostly been a symbol anyway, a sort of in-your-face “look what I can do now.”
Apparently taking that as an invitation, he closed the distance between them with three long strides, in a move that had several of the magi bristling. She shot them an it’s okay look, even though it was far from okay. But if she was going to have to deal with Rabbit, they might as well get this reunion over with. Better to do it in public, too. That way there wouldn’t be any sidelong looks, any pity.
Or less of it, anyway.
As he squared off opposite her, she told herself she was imagining that she could feel his body heat. There was no mistaking the reek of sweat and blood, though. The stink of capt
ivity brought a pang, but she refused to give in to it. She glared at him instead. “Well? What have you got to say for yourself?”
“I think the real question is ‘Where the fuck do I start?’”
CHAPTER FOUR
Myr’s chest tightened at Rabbit’s question, because it didn’t have an answer, not really. There was no way he could make up for what he’d done—not in the time they had left. And after that it wouldn’t matter; they’d either all be dead, the earth enslaved by the Banol Kax, or the world would be saved and they would all go their separate ways.
Forcing herself to breathe past the sudden lump in her throat, she said, “Red-Boar explained what happened with the stones and the demoness, so we can just take it as a ‘yeah-I-know’ and move on, I guess.”
That had been how she and Rabbit had sometimes ended their fights. The shorthand had allowed them to walk away from the dispute without really settling it, because it could mean anything from “this is stupid and I don’t want to fight anymore” to “I’m sorry, I love you and I won’t ever do it again.” It didn’t matter, as long as the other person’s expected response would be: “Yeah, I know.” It had gotten them out of a few of their more serious fights—over her rituals, his secrecy, her ambition. And it would work now, not because it would really solve anything, but because they didn’t need to solve anything. They just needed to find a way to tolerate each other for the next three weeks.
But Rabbit shook his head, expression set. “That’s not good enough. Not anymore. Maybe it never should’ve been.”
Nerves tugged at the knowledge that he was talking about their last few months together, when things between them had been strained even before the demoness made contact. “You don’t have to—”
“Yeah. I really do.” He reached out and took her hand.
“Hey!” She yanked away.
“Please.” He held out his hand, palm up to show both his forearm marks and his sacrificial scars.
“If you say ‘trust me’ I’m going to kick you where it hurts.” She was bluffing, though, trying to stay angry when she was suddenly all too aware of the new scars on his chest, arms and back. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, didn’t want to feel anything for him.
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