Nightkeepers notfp-1

by Jessica Andersen

  He’d never doubted the magic, even when it failed to work year after year. Somehow he’d always known it’d work someday; he just hadn’t counted on being left behind. And in response, he was just now realizing, he’d made a big fucking mistake.

  Probably the biggest of his life.

  ‘‘Hey, Bunny-boy,’’ the black-robed guy said. ‘‘What the fuck is this? You part of a cult? You and your fucked-up father worship the devil or something?’’

  Rabbit ID’d the voice as belonging to one of Ben’s two usual partners in crime: brown-haired, pockmarked Zits Vicker. That meant Jason Tremblay, skinhead extraordinaire, was wearing the royal red.

  ‘‘Come on, guys,’’ Tracy said, surprising Rabbit because she’d followed him into the apartment. ‘‘Lay off. You’ve gotta admit this is a pretty cool place. You want to be invited back, right?’’

  Rabbit turned to her. ‘‘Go downstairs, okay? I’ve got this.’’

  He didn’t want her to see him get his shit knocked loose.

  ‘‘Aw, let her stay,’’ Zits whined. ‘‘We’re just gonna have a little fun.’’ He shook the black robe, making the stingray spines dance. ‘‘Is this your dress, Bunny? Or does your daddy like you in the red one better?’’

  ‘‘Go,’’ Rabbit whispered, his heart bumping unevenly in his chest. ‘‘Please.’’

  Tracy finally left, and Ben shut the door after her, giving it a shove so it wedged against the busted part and stuck fast. Then he crossed to the altar and dropped the bowl he’d been drinking from, giving it a spin so beer sloshed over the edges.

  Rabbit was tempted to tell them that the last thing to hit those bowls had been human blood. He was going to take a pounding anyway. Why not deserve it?

  But where before he’d more or less taken what they’d dished out—because resistance was futile and just earned him more of a beating—now he found himself squaring off opposite Ben as Zits and Jason moved up on either side of their leader.

  Outside the sacred chamber, somebody swapped out the music, and a heavy throb of drumbeats sounded, seeming to echo up through the floor.

  ‘‘Wanna tell us what goes on in here?’’ Zits asked. He slurped from his bowl, beer sloshing down the front of the sacred black robe.

  Rabbit wanted to kill him. Really and truly kill him— a quick slash across the throat would do it, or even better, he could cut the bastard’s heart out of his chest and watch as Zits’s blood pressure crashed, his brain cut out, and he dropped dead. Better still, he could burn him, robes and all, and listen to him scream.

  For a second the image of it was so vivid in his mind, so perfect, Rabbit thought he’d already crisped the son of a bitch. Then the fantasy winked out and he was stuck back in the reality of high school torment, three months after he’d escaped the halls of hell.

  This time, though, he wasn’t the skinny kid who’d moved to town halfway through junior high and got caught doodling a black-robed wizard in his algebra notebook. This time he was . . .

  Nothing. He was nothing. A half-blood who couldn’t even jack in.

  ‘‘He’s not gonna tell us,’’ Ben said. ‘‘Guess we’ll have to make him.’’ He slapped the ceremonial bowl off the altar, sending it across the room. The thin jade shattered when it hit the wall, and the air hummed off-key.

  ‘‘Hey! Knock it off.’’ Heart hammering in his chest, feeling faintly sick, Rabbit crouched down and picked up the largest piece of jade, which had broken off in an elongated triangle with knife-sharp edges.

  Ben stuck his chin out. ‘‘Make me.’’

  The humming got louder, reverberating in Rabbit’s ears. ‘‘Just go,’’ he whispered, gripping the shard of jade and feeling it cut into his palm. ‘‘Please, just go.’’

  Heat surrounded him. Built inside him.

  There must’ve been something in his eyes or voice, or maybe the heat and the humming weren’t just his imagination, because Jason started edging toward the door. He pulled off the red robe and dropped it on the floor. ‘‘Come on, guys. We don’t want to get in trouble with the ’rents. This shit looks expensive.’’

  ‘‘There aren’t any ’rents,’’ Ben scoffed. ‘‘Just his stoner dad. You ever see him wandering around here in his brown bathrobe? What a loser.’’ His eyes flicked to Rabbit’s hand. ‘‘What’re you gonna do, stab me with that?’’ He spread his hands and stuck out the beginnings of a gut. ‘‘Have at it, Bunny. You don’t have the stones.’’

  Red washed Rabbit’s vision, narrowing it to a pinprick focused on Ben’s face. All the jeers and indignities, every kick and punch, came back to him in a flare of humiliation.

  ‘‘Go,’’ he said again, his voice shaking with fear, not of them, but of what was happening inside him. Say it, a voice whispered. Say the word.

  ‘‘His hand’s bleeding,’’ Zits said suddenly. ‘‘And I think he’s gonna puke. Come on; let’s blow before he does.’’ He yanked the door and took off with Jason on his heels, tripping on the too-long robe and crushing the stingray spines into a twisted mess. But Rabbit was only peripherally aware of those small details.

  His whole focus was on Ben. His enemy.

  The humming in his head turned into a scream. The heat flared higher and higher still. Finally, Ben realized he was in trouble. His eyes got big and he started edging away, but it was too late for him to escape, too late to stop the thing that built within Rabbit, taking him over, thrilling him. Terrifying him.

  Pressure grew inside Rabbit’s skull and his fingertips burned, pain erupting as if the skin were peeling away. He tipped back his head and screamed, not sure whether he was trying to make it stop or urge it to keep going.

  Ben made a run for it, bolting for the door. He skidded on the nacho crumbs and string cheese and went down on his hands and knees, but kept going, crawling out of the room as Rabbit screamed.

  Finally, a word emerged, one he didn’t even know he knew—not even a word, really, more a long syllable. A cry for mercy. For vengeance. ‘‘Kaak!’’

  Power blasted from him like an orgasm. Flames rose up around him like lovers, touching him, stroking him, urging him on, and he said the word again, calling the fire to him and sending it higher and higher still.

  Dimly, far away, he heard screams and running feet. He felt the terror and pain of the others, and drank it in.

  ‘‘Kaak!’’ he said a third time, and clapped his bleeding palms together.

  Force and flame exploded outward, away from him, flattening everything in its path and leaving him untouched. Leaving him in control.

  Rabbit had a moment of pure, perfect joy as the apartment burned around him. Then he passed the hell out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Leah awoke, she smelled Betadine and alcohol wipes, and heard the hum of ventilation and the turned-low chatter of daytime TV. Oh, crap. She was in a hospital. And she was lying on something soft, which meant she wasn’t doing the neck-crick nap-in-a-chair routine while waiting for a patient to wake up for questioning.

  She was the patient. Damn it, she hated being the patient. Worse, beside the first quick surge of irritation was another emotion, a hollow, aching sense of loss that made her want to curl into a ball and weep.

  She racked her brain, trying to find the source, but found only the sadness.

  ‘‘What happened?’’ She pushed the words through a parched-dry throat, and they came out slurred, like she had a serious hit of happy pills in her system, blocking some monster pain. Remembering the feeling from the year before, when she’d taken a bullet in the leg during a bust gone wrong, she said, ‘‘Did I get shot again?’’

  She heard motion nearby, and had the sense of a man leaning over her. She wasn’t sure why her eyes hadn’t come back online yet, but thanks to the drugs she wasn’t too worried about it. Besides, his presence was warm and reassuring, though he didn’t touch her.

  ‘‘What is the last thing you remember?’’ His voice sent a skitter of warmth through her, a little zip of ele
ctricity that had her heart bumping in her chest.

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’ Memory was a thick cloud of gray-green mist. ‘‘Not much.’’ Had she hit her head? Did she have amnesia? The idea brought a jolt of fear. ‘‘Why can’t I see?’’

  ‘‘Give it a minute.’’ He paused. ‘‘Can you tell me your name, and your parents’ names?’’

  ‘‘I’m Leah Ann Daniels,’’ she said, relieved when the information came quickly. ‘‘My parents are Timothy and Ann Daniels, and they live in Boca. I’ve got a place outside town, and I drive a ’sixty-seven Mustang named Peggy Sue. My brother—’’

  She broke off, sucking in a breath as a big chunk of it clicked into place. Matty was dead, she remembered with a slice of grief so fresh it was like it’d just happened. Ever since then, she’d been trying to nail Zipacna and his 2012ers for the Calendar Killings.

  ‘‘We were meeting a snitch,’’ she said, remembering Nick’s unhesitating support and wondering why that brought another wash of grief. ‘‘Itchy. He showed up and . . .’’ She frowned, bumping up against that grayness again. ‘‘I don’t remember anything after that.’’

  She let the silence continue for a minute, sure the doctor—because that was what he had to be, right?— would either fill in the gaps or ask her another question. But he did neither.

  ‘‘Hello?’’ she tried, wondering if the silence meant she was missing more than a few hours. ‘‘What day is it, anyway?’’

  ‘‘Tuesday,’’ a female voice answered. ‘‘Welcome back, Detective.’’

  Leah frowned. ‘‘Where’s the doctor?’’

  ‘‘I’m Dr. Black.’’

  ‘‘What about the guy who was just in here?’’

  The newcomer ignored the question, instead taking Leah’s pulse, then running her through the exact same ‘‘who are you and who are your parents’’ questions she’d just answered for the other guy.

  Leah’s banged-up brain spun. Who the hell had she just been talking to? The easy answer was that he’d been one of Zipacna’s boys, sent to see what she remembered. Which meant there’d been something for her to remember, damn it. Problem was, she couldn’t convince herself the voice had belonged to a 2012er. First off, they didn’t tend to blend. Someone would’ve noticed. Second off, though she told herself she damn well knew better than to judge on looks—or sound—it didn’t feel right. The owner of that voice wasn’t a member of Zipacna’s cult; he was . . .

  Nothing, she realized, coming up against that gray wall again. He was nothing to her. Probably just a dream, or a fragment of TV dialogue that she’d turned into something more.

  Yet the image of piercing blue eyes stayed with her, even though she hadn’t seen his face.

  When the doctor finished her exam, she said, ‘‘You’re looking good, considering.’’

  ‘‘Considering what?’’ Concentrating, Leah managed to open her eyes, wincing at the glare and the rasp of her eyelids. Her eyeballs felt like they’d been scorched, like all the tears had been burned away, and once the light leveled off, the dull pain at the back of her head increased to a steadily drumming headache. Her tongue was sore, too, and her body ached all over, though in a not entirely unpleasant way, like she’d had really good sex or something.

  Yeah, right.

  The doctor turned out to be a forty-something motherly type wearing round-rimmed glasses and happy-face scrubs that made Leah wonder if she’d gotten turfed to pediatrics. The room looked vaguely familiar, as did the view of Biscayne Bay. ‘‘I’m in Mercy?’’

  The doctor nodded as she scribbled something in Leah’s chart. ‘‘Yep. Miami’s finest.’’

  ‘‘How long am I going to be here?’’

  ‘‘Not long. I’ll run a few tests, make sure everything still checks out okay. You were unconscious for quite a while, but sometimes the body knows best. You may have needed to shut it off for a while. Considering what you went through, you’re in very good shape.’’

  That was the second time the doctor had given her the ‘‘considering’’ line, but since she’d avoided the question the first time Leah didn’t bother trying again. ‘‘My head hurts. And if I’m doing so well, what’s with the drugs?’’

  ‘‘We haven’t given you anything.’’ Concerned, she put down the clipboard and crossed to Leah so she could do the penlight-in-eyes, follow-my-finger routine. ‘‘Is your vision blurry?’’

  ‘‘Getting clearer by the second, now that I’ve got my eyes open,’’ Leah said quickly, knowing she was on the verge of adding an overnight to her hospital sentence.

  The doc didn’t look convinced. ‘‘Do you have someone who can stay with you for the next forty-eight hours or so?’’

  Which begged the question of where the ‘‘utterly single with no prospects in sight’’ check mark went on the admissions form—and who’d filled it in for her.

  Nick, probably, she thought. Then she remembered that he’d been with her for the gone-wrong meeting with Itchy. ‘‘How’s my partner? Nick Ramon. Did he bring me in?’’

  The doctor headed for the door. ‘‘The waiting room is practically overflowing with cops. Captain Mendez, in particular, would like to speak with you.’’

  Another evasion, Leah realized, a chill settling in her gut. ‘‘Bring her on.’’

  Connie would tell it like it was.

  Dr. Black pushed through the door. Moments later, Connie swung through, her heels tapping on the polished floor, her brown eyes fixed on Leah. She was wearing her usual conservative power suit—this one a member of the olive green family—buttoned tight across her thick fifty-something frame, but her serene I’m in charge expression showed cracks of concern.

  She stopped beside the bed and stared down. The sight of her normally stoic boss with her mouth working and nothing coming out was enough to send a chill through Leah. It was the glint of tears in Connie’s eyes, though, that sealed it.

  ‘‘Nick’s dead, isn’t he.’’ It wasn’t even a question. Leah already knew. It explained the doctor’s reticence and the look in Connie’s eyes.

  It also explained why, from the moment she’d woken up all the way from her dream, she’d felt as though her heart were breaking.

  Strike dumped the borrowed lab coat on an empty gurney, slipped out of Mercy Hospital, and headed down the block to the Vizcaya Gardens, where Jox and Red-Boar were waiting for him. They had helped him hide Leah’s unconscious body near where her partner had died—an image Red-Boar had pulled from her mind. Once she was in place, he’d made an anonymous 911 call and stood watch until the cops arrived, and then he’d shadowed them to the hospital in order to make sure she woke up okay.

  Red-Boar had bitched about the time suck, but Strike had been adamant. Bad enough he’d had to wipe her memories, had to leave her. He sure as hell wasn’t taking off without making sure she was okay. He’d also slapped a protection spell on her when Red-Boar and Jox weren’t looking. The threadlike connection running through the barrier would alert him if she thought she was in mortal danger. In theory, anyway. In practice, who the hell knew?

  They’d lost too much of the knowledge and magic their ancestors had once commanded.

  Fury and frustration bubbled up in Strike as he walked beneath the screaming Florida sun. He wanted to put his fist through something, wanted to drive too fast, wanted to press a willing woman—okay, Leah—up against the wall and pound himself into her until he forgot that he was a king without a people, a protector without much power, a savior who didn’t have the foggiest notion how to go about doing what thirteen hundred generations of his forebears had intended for him to do. The writs said that a Nightkeeper answered to the gods first, and then to his people, but what if he had no people? What if he was on his own?

  ‘‘Then he’s just a guy who can do a few parlor tricks, and the world is pretty much fucked four and a half years from now,’’ he said aloud, the words rasping in his throat.

  He needed more power, needed more people, needed . . . />
  Help. He needed help.

  You had help, a voice whispered inside. You let her go.

  ‘‘She’s better off without me,’’ he said, and meant it.

  Strike paid his admission fee to Vizcaya, which was some sort of mansion-turned-tourist attraction. He did a thanks-but-no-thanks on the guided tour and headed straight through the main house, which was huge and rococo, a sort of ode to Italian Renaissance built in the early nineteen hundreds by some industrialist or another. It wasn’t his thing, but Jox had chosen the meeting place, and it hadn’t seemed worth arguing.

  The gardens beside the mansion were pretty, green and hot, and the sound of fountain-borne water mingled with that of jetliners entering their landing pattern on the way to the airport. Strike followed the brochure map out to the meeting spot. Jox and Red-Boar were waiting for him in something called the Grotto, which proved to be a cavelike structure made of coral and carved stone that’d probably sounded really good when the architect first pitched it, but as far as Strike was concerned just looked lumpy and weird. Statues of the sea god Neptune flanked either side of the arched doorway, and a low bench ran around the interior. The coral walls absorbed the sounds made by the few other tourists meandering around the formal gardens, and that, combined with the rush of a large fountain cascading over and in front of the Grotto, gave the illusion of privacy for their council of war.

  Jox stood by the entrance, pensive. Red-Boar sat cross-legged on the floor, doing his Yoda impression of eyes-closed, hands-folded-in-lap meditation.

  ‘‘It’s done,’’ Strike said.

  ‘‘Good.’’ Jox waved him into the small space, then sat near the door, so he could see both in and out. Guarding them, like generations of winikin had guarded their Nightkeepers.

  Seeing that, Strike felt a layer of strangeness settle around them. How long had they talked about what-if? What if the barrier came back to life before the end-time? What if the Banol Kax found a way to contact evil on earth and set out to fulfill the final prophecy?