Close, she thought wildly. He’s too damn close. Not just to her, personally, but to the truth. The Nightkeepers weren’t sworn to secrecy, granted, and gods knew there were plenty of doomsday theories out there, but Dez would be furious if she blew this contact. Worse, he’d be disappointed.
Play it cool. You can do this. If she didn’t, the doctor would have to be mind-bent, and she didn’t want that. She just didn’t.
They were getting some sidelong looks from the hurry-scurry folk in the narrow strip of space separating the inner and outer tent rings, but nobody seemed to be paying attention to their conversation; they were too busy getting from point A to point B. Anna and David, though, seemed suddenly encased within a strange, human-made shield of privacy.
Think. She had to think. She couldn’t, though—not when her head was starting to pound, harder and harder, reminding her of when—
“I had an aneurysm,” she blurted.
His face blanked. “You what?”
She took his hand—warm and wide-palmed—and lifted it to her scalp so he could feel the ridged scar. “Surgery, a coma, long recovery, the works. I’m fine now, really. But by the time I was back on my feet, my cheating husband had divorced me, the university had put a perfectly good replacement in my position, and I realized that I wasn’t dying to go back anyway. I wanted something more.”
“Like what?”
“I’m working on a book about the ruins and their inscriptions. That’s why I remembered the carving that talked about a plague.” Again, the lies pinched.
“You’re writing a book.” His face had gone unreadable.
She eased out from behind his big body. This time he let her go, which brought a pang. Facing him now, with her back to the flow of traffic, she said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Curtis. I really need to go.”
“Dave.”
“Dave, then.” His name felt strange coming off her tongue, like it was too close to “Dick,” yet nothing at all like it. Not that she should be comparing the two of them, really. They were very different men and the situations were worlds apart. “All I know about the so-called Mayan doomsday is whatever I couldn’t avoid hearing from my grad student, Lucius, and the tripe that’s been in the media. As for the outbreak, I’ve told you everything I know, except for the stuff I’m going to go look up now, based on what Rosa was saying.” She spread her hands and met his eyes. “Seriously. I’m not hiding anything.”
It seemed like an eon before his shoulders dropped and he shook his head, chuckling a little at himself. “Shit. I could’ve sworn . . . well, maybe you’re right that I’ve been on shift too long. You wouldn’t be the first one to suggest I’m pushing too hard.”
“You should rest.”
“Yeah. I . . . yeah.” He raised a hand, hesitated as if surprised to see that it wasn’t wearing a glove, and then scrubbed his fingers through his thick hair, leaving it rumpled and standing on end. “Sorry I got weird on you. It was just that, back there in the room with Rosa, it was like there was something else in there with us. Some sort of presence, or power, or something.” He rolled his eyes, and his accent thickened. “My ma would say I’d been listening to too many stories again.”
Anna made herself ignore the tug of his voice, and the way it made her think of open spaces far away from ground zero. “I really do need to get going, and not because I’m in trouble. I promised to meet friends. Outside the quarantine zone,” she added when he started to frown. And that much, at least, was the gods’ honest truth.
“You’re taking proper precautions?”
“I am. I swear.” Just not the kind he was talking about.
“And you’ll call if you find anything else?”
“Absolutely.” Well, once Dez cleared it.
He hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Well . . . right. I guess I’ll see you?”
“I hope so.” And that, a little to her surprise, was also the gods’ honest truth.
Still, though, as they parted with a wave and one too many over-the-shoulder looks back, her stomach was tied in serious knots over the entire exchange. As she headed for the outer perimeter, she tried to figure out why she didn’t feel good about how that had gone down. She had kept him as a contact, talked her way out of a sticky situation, and managed to preserve her cover. So why did she feel like shit? Or, more accurately, why did she hate having to lie to a virtual stranger when she’d been lying to her friends and coworkers—and even a husband—for decades?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. What matters is getting home and getting your hands on that skull. The thought brought a renewed buzz of excitement and a stir of magic, along with the nerves that came with the thought that she would need to tread carefully if she wanted to—
A big, bulky form stepped in front of her, and a deep voice boomed, “Excuse me, ma’am?”
She stopped dead, and an “oh shit” zinged through her at the sight of a security guard. It wasn’t the guy she’d waved her way past as she’d booked it out of the clean zone, but she had a feeling that had been her mistake. It’d gotten them talking, and they had realized that nobody had signed her in. Faking surprise, she blinked at him. “I’m sorry. Is there a problem?”
He caught her arm and turned her back the way she’d come. “I’m going to need you to come with me, please.” His voice was polite, his grip inexorable, and Anna found herself being force-marched past row after row of doors that all looked the same, while her brain raced. What the hell was she supposed to do now?
She had options, of course—she could knock him down with a sleep spell, use a chameleon spell, teleport away . . . But any of those things would send up some serious red flags for her already-suspicious doctor.
A glance at her comm device showed that there weren’t any blinking lights, no evidence that anybody needed her. So, as the guard ushered her through an unmarked door into a prefab steel room that held a desk, a couple of chairs, a huge wipe board scrawled with guard shifts and notes suggesting that she was in what passed for their security hub, she followed his orders without question, figuring she would go with the flow, do her best to smooth things over, and talk her way out of starring in an incident report.
Gods knew that in a place like this, with so many people coming and going, the left hand probably wouldn’t know what the right was doing half the time. Ten bucks said she could convince this guy that she’d been waved through the checkpoint on the strength of Dr. Dave’s name, asked some volunteer for help with her protective gear, and found him on her own. And if they couldn’t track down anyone to verify, they’d just figure it’d gotten lost in the chaos.
Last resort, she’d lock herself in the bathroom and put in a call for some mind-bending support—which she was far less reluctant to do on the guards than she had been on David. Either way, she could deal with this. Hopefully, Rabbit and Myrinne could handle things on their end for a little longer without getting in major trouble.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Oc Ajal, Mexico
Rabbit faced the fire pit and tried to block everything else out—the rain forest, the remains of the village where he’d been born, the latent hiss of magic surrounding him, the Nightkeeper powers that wanted to flare and combat the darkness—all of it. He was still aware of Myr standing behind him, though, with her shield running hot, ready to protect him . . . and to protect herself against him.
Hoping it would be enough—hoping he would be enough—he sent a quick prayer to the gods he’d forsaken. Then, pulse thudding in his ears, he opened his hands and cast his blood into the cold, bare fire pit. “Cha’ik ten ee’hochen!” Bring the darkness to me!
Blam! The floodgates slammed open, giving way beneath an onslaught of power. Dark magic hammered through him, terrible yet incredible, and as he staggered back a step, flames erupted from within the stone circle, writhing like serpents.
“Rabbit!” Myr cried, her voice sounding far away.
“Stay back!” he shouted as the darkness surrounded him, swamping hi
m with an incalculable power that gushed up from the depths of his soul. More, emotions tore at him—frustration, impotence, resentment, murderous rage, loneliness, all of it mixing together into a blinding fury that made him want to howl.
No! He fought the impulses, but he wasn’t braced for fury, wasn’t buffered against one of the red rages that used to grab on to him, making him do stupid, impulsive things. For that was what raced into his mind.
Suddenly, he wasn’t himself anymore, at least not the guy he wanted to be. Instead, he was the whipped dog he had become beneath the ’zotz’s lash. He was the pissed-off teen who had torched Jox’s garden center, the frustrated punk who’d wanted to make his mark on Skywatch. He was the impulsive asshole who’d led Iago to Oc Ajal, the gullible prick who had listened to Phee’s lies, sucking them up like soft-serve. And he was the stone-cold bastard who’d held a knife to Myr’s throat and made her bleed.
He clenched his fists as his soul overflowed with every bad decision he’d ever made, every moment that he’d been unhappy, pissed off, pissed on.
Burn it, whispered a voice inside him. Burn it all down.
The fire climbed hotter and higher, sending out billows of dark, oily smoke that tore at his throat and filled his lungs. His heart hammered as his warrior’s instincts said to back up, back off and lock himself down. But another set of instincts said he couldn’t shut himself off now. Not if he wanted to become the crossover.
“Oh, shit,” he said, not sure if he said it aloud or only in his mind. “I get it. I fucking get it.”
This was why the Nightkeepers’ ancestors had deemed the dark half of the magic too dangerous and banished the dark magi . . . and it was why they had feared the wild powers of a half blood like him—because where the light magic tapped into the good stuff, like love, sex and the power of teamwork, the dark magic drew from all the bad stuff inside its wielder. It concentrated it, encouraged it, made it real.
He hadn’t felt these things when he’d used the dark magic before, when the rage had already been at the surface of his soul, ready for the darkness to tap into it. Now, though, he could feel the old frustrations hissing and seething inside him, heard them whispering, They never believed you, never believed in you. You can show them all just how powerful you really are.
Sudden images crammed his mind’s eye, and anger surged through him, pure and powerful. Screw them. They never liked him, never understood him, had always been afraid of him. They were small-minded, shortsighted, jealous, and—
Rabbit shuddered as he recognized all the things he’d told himself when he’d been under Phee’s spell. But those weren’t his words; they weren’t his thoughts. And that meant he could ignore them, block them off.
You can do this. You can handle it. He needed to prove it to himself, to the others, especially to Myrinne. He hadn’t wanted her to see him like this, and he sure as hell didn’t want her to see him fail. More, he didn’t have a fucking choice, not if he wanted—needed—to harness the crossover’s powers. So, imagining a fierce, cleansing wind blowing through his mind, he swept up the voices, the memories, the taunts and the righteous-feeling anger that wasn’t righteous at all, corralling them and stuffing them back into the vault. Then, with a mental heave, he slammed the lid on all of it, leaving the dark magic outside but shutting his own weaknesses away.
The hinges creaked; the door bulged. But it held. It fucking held.
For now, at least. And with the whispers and emotions gone, only the power of the dark magic remained, deep and surging, pulsing an urgent demand through him. Use me, it seemed to say. I’m yours.
Exhaling, but not daring to glance back at Myr to see how much of that inner battle she had comprehended, he reopened the slashes across his palms and cast a spray of blood into the flames. Then he steeled himself, and said, “Cha’ik ten nohoch taat.” Bring me the grandfather.
Fire burst skyward, turning the day red-orange, scorching his skin and sending the monkeys overhead screeching to higher branches as the noise of the dark magic cycled up to a chain-saw buzz, whipping around him and making his jaw ache.
He felt the spell hesitate, teetering between success and failure, felt the vault door shudder as the other part of the dark magic struggled to break free.
Strengthening his mental hold on his inner garbage, he repeated the incantation. “Cha’ik ten nohoch taat.”
Pain streaked along the scars that striped his back, turning them raw and new as the smoke swirled and churned, becoming something. A strangled sound tore from Rabbit’s throat, but he held in the rest as the smoke twined together, and then, bam, whipped into the shape of a gimlet-eyed old man who wore the long robe of a Xibalban priest and had the hellmark on his wrist.
And even though Rabbit had come for this, prepared for it, sick and ugly anger awoke at the sight of the old shaman. His fucking grandfather.
The smoke-ghost looked around, seeming unsurprised at the summons. His eyes lingered on Myrinne, but then moved on. “Greetings, young Rabbit.”
“Greetings . . . Grandfather.” You cocksucker.
The see-through bastard had the gall to smile. “Ah. So you know the truth now.”
“I know you bred me. I want to know the rest. I want to understand your purpose for me.” He heard Myr’s smothered gasp, felt her mistrust, and hoped to hell she would go with it. More, he hoped he wasn’t making a big fucking mistake. Because if anything happened to him, he wasn’t sure she’d be strong enough to take Anntah on her own. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could do it, and he’d summoned the bastard. If she got hurt because of him . . .
Over my dead body, he thought, and the mental promise had the force of a blood vow.
Anntah spread his ghostly arms. “Ask your questions.”
Rabbit was all too aware that the smoke-ghost had his own agenda, that he would lie . . . but he was also the only one left who knew the truth. “How do I become the crossover?”
“You already are. You are the son of a Xibalban princess and the last surviving Nightkeeper mage. You are the child of prophecy.”
A shiver tried to work its way down Rabbit’s spine, but he ignored it. “Okay, let’s try it this way. How can I access the powers of the crossover? Is there a spell, an artifact, what?”
“There is nothing. Only you.”
“Bullshit. Tell me the fucking truth.”
“This is the truth. There is no spell or artifact, no need for you to become anything other than what you already are. You are the crossover, Rabbie. The power is inside you.”
Rabbie. The name echoed in his head, in his heart, rattled at the vault. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? It’s what your mother and I called you, the name your father and the Nightkeepers took from you. Just like they told you that you weren’t good enough for them, that your mistakes were too costly, your self-control too weak.” The ghost leaned in, eyes lighting. “They were wrong, you know. You’re stronger than they are—stronger than any of us. And I can make you stronger still.”
“Fuck you.” But the whispers urged him on. And he had a feeling the bastard knew it.
“You are the last Xibalban, Rabbie. Swear yourself to the dark gods and all our powers will be yours.”
“Swear . . .” He trailed off as shock rattled through him, sounding like the magic. He was suddenly aware that the elder wasn’t alone in the mist anymore. There were others behind him, around him, vague shadows that shifted, yearning toward Rabbit like he was their hope, like he was the hero he’d always wanted to be. More, there was a new note to the power—a deep thrumming that vibrated at the edge of his magic, limitless and tempting.
Take it. It’s yours. You can show them all, burn them all.
“Rabbit, don’t do it. Don’t listen to him!” Myrinne’s faraway voice was ragged and breathless, like she’d been shouting at him for a while and he hadn’t heard.
Ignoring her, Anntah held out his hand, which bled red-tinged fog from a slashing cut across the palm. “Come,
son. Take the oath and you will have more power than you ever imagined. And when the day comes, you’ll rule the war.”
“Rabbit, no!” Myr’s magic surged and a fireball crackled to life in the supercharged air.
“We’ll do it together,” Rabbit said, and reached out and clasped the ghost’s outstretched hand, not just with his body, but with his magic as well. Suddenly, he could feel Anntah’s flesh, his cool skin, and even the slickness of his blood. Gripping tight, he summoned a whiplash of Nightkeeper magic, and shouted, “Kaak!”
Red-gold fire erupted from his hand and laced up Anntah’s arm, and then higher, racing to engulf him. The ghost shrieked and jerked back. “Aiiee!”
Rabbit hung on, body and soul, and poured himself into the flames. “Myr, now!”
A green fireball hit Anntah and detonated, wreathing the spirit with lambent napalm. And then she was there, standing beside him and hammering the ghost with magic.
“No!” Anntah howled. “Noo!” He whipped from side to side as the fire engulfed him, ate at him. “Whyyy?”
“Because I’m choosing my side,” Rabbit grated, “and it’s not yours.” Nightkeeper power sang through him, driving the dark magic back into the vault. Buoyed by that victory—and by the ferocity in Myr’s face as she fought beside him—he cast the banishment spell. “Teech xeen!”
Power detonated with a huge shock wave and a flash of brilliant red-gold light. Rabbit reflexively spun and yanked Myr against him, and then cast a shield around them both. For a second, furious magic roared over them, around them, heating the air and lighting his senses.
Spellfire n-8 Page 15