She’d not only given them a name; she’d given them a motto. A coat of arms. A battle cry in modern Quiche Mayan. Waquqik—to fight. Cajij—to protect. And—
He frowned. ‘‘What’s kuyubal-mak?’’
‘‘It means ‘to forgive,’ ’’ Jox said, his voice rough. ‘‘But there’s nothing to forgive.’’
‘‘I think there is,’’ Leah countered. ‘‘If there weren’t, you would’ve pressured him to take charge long before this. You would’ve dragged him out of the pool house and locked him in the royal suite, and you sure as hell wouldn’t have let him hide out in the library for the past two months. You would’ve forced him to take the crown— or whatever it is that your king wears. But neither you nor Red-Boar did any of those things. Thus, I have to assume there’s a reason.’’ Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘‘I’m thinking it’s because, deep down inside, you’re not sure you want him to be king.’’
Strike didn’t know which was worse—that she’d said it, or that there was dead silence in the aftermath.
Finally, Jox said, ‘‘You presume too much, Detective. You don’t know us, and you sure as hell don’t know Strike.’’
‘‘I think I do.’’ Her eyes met Strike’s. ‘‘And I don’t think he wants to be king. If he did, he’d be arguing with me right now.’’ She closed the distance between them, said softly. ‘‘I think you’re afraid you’ll make the same mistakes your father did. And I think you’re figuring that if you don’t become king you’ll nullify the thirteenth prophecy. No king, no greatest sacrifice.’’
Strike told himself the rage wasn’t him, the hatred wasn’t him. But that was all he could see or feel, all he could be just then. A scream built in his soul, and he felt the darkness closing in on him. Suffocating him. He tried to find words to tell her—to tell any of them—what was going on, but he was afraid that if he opened his mouth something terrible would come out, something vicious and violent.
So he didn’t say anything. He just closed his eyes and imagined being someplace else, someplace alone. He was so revved on anger, on power, that he zapped blind before he’d intended to, the world dissolving around him before he’d envisioned the travel thread or picked a destination.
Then the universe jolted sideways, the floor fell out from beneath him, and he dropped with a yell.
He fell too long, and hit bottom too hard, but the spongy surface yielded beneath him, cushioning the impact. He felt the feathery touch of mist on his face, and knew where he was even before he opened his eyes and saw a world of gray-green.
He’d zapped himself into the frigging barrier. And the anger—oh, the anger rose up, gripping him, tearing into him. He arched and screamed with the rage, with the bloodlust and mad hatred that came from outside him, from within him, until he wasn’t sure where he left off and the craziness began.
Gods. His mouth drew back in a rictus, his eyes rolled wildly, and his heart stuttered in his chest. Darkness blurred the edges of his vision, and he was pretty sure he was dying. Panic closed in.
He was barely conscious of the mist swirling nearby, thickening and taking on the shape of a stick-thin Nightkeeper with obsidian eyes and a ruby stud in one ear. The nahwal.
‘‘Father!’’ he shouted, though he wasn’t sure if he said the word aloud or only thought it in the small corner of his mind that was still his to control.
‘‘It is time,’’ the nahwal said in its voice-of-many-voices. It leaned down and gripped Strike’s wrist, and its touch burned like flame and acid, the worst pain he’d ever known.
He threw back his head and screamed.
The gray-green mist disappeared.
And he was home, reappearing exactly where he’d left from, standing in front of the main door, staring at the sign that said, SKYWATCH: TO FIGHT, TO PROTECT, TO FORGIVE.
The others were gone. The anger was gone, too, leaving him hollow and drained. He only had the strength left to whisper, ‘‘Forgive me, Father.’’
Then he collapsed on the welcome mat and passed the hell out.
After Strike pulled his disappearing act, leaving Leah standing there looking like a complete idiot, she held it together until she reached her rooms. His rooms. Whatever.
The moment she was through the carved double doors, though, she let go of the control she’d been holding on to by the last thread. She halfway expected tears, though she’d never been a weeper, halfway expected destructive, lamp-throwing anger, which was more typical for her. But either the two canceled each other out or she’d used up all her emotional space and had nothing left.
She sank to the couch in the sitting area, exhausted. Empty. There were no skitters of warmth or electricity. She doubted she could kill a gnat, never mind a coffeemaker. Her supposed powers were long gone, leaving her as nothing more than what she was—a cop with a big mouth and zero subtlety who didn’t really belong in Skywatch.
Skywatch. She hoped the name—and the motto— stuck. Her timing and delivery might’ve sucked, but she was right, damn it. They needed something to rally around, and Red-Boar and the winikin needed to accept that the past was gone and it wasn’t going to repeat itself, no matter what their writs said about the cyclical nature of time. The trainees weren’t going to fight because their winikin told them to. They needed to believe in the cause, in themselves, and in one another. And more important, they needed to believe in their leader. She didn’t care if he called himself king or Papa Smurf; he needed to step up.
Instead, he’d brushed her off and then freaking zapped himself straight out of the argument, which was against the rules of fighting. And he’d been really pissed, too, like he hated the fact that she was standing up to him.
‘‘Which is way too bad,’’ she said aloud. ‘‘If he doesn’t like a woman who gets in his face and tells him where to get off occasionally, then he can—’’ She broke off, because he didn’t have to do a flipping thing. The decision was going to have to be hers.
She could stay—if they’d let her—and add whatever weight she might have to the coming battle. Or she could go home, fast-talk her way back onto the job—which would undoubtedly include some serious shrink action— and keep hammering at Survivor2012.
She didn’t want to go back . . . but she wasn’t sure she could stay, either. Strike was using her as an excuse to avoid the others—which wasn’t fair to any of them— and his disappearing act suggested he wasn’t looking to change that strategy. Besides, she knew how to kill Zipacna now; she just had to find him, and she could do that as effectively from the outside as she could in the compound. She could defend herself. She didn’t need to stay.
More important, she didn’t have any reason to. She wasn’t Strike’s Godkeeper, and she wasn’t his mate. Hell, after tonight, she probably didn’t even rank as a friend.
‘‘Shit,’’ she said, hearing the single word echo in the too-big suite. Then she started packing.
Twenty minutes later, figuring she’d ‘‘borrow’’ a car and call Jox later to let him know where to pick it up, she slung her duffel over her shoulder and headed out without saying good-bye to anyone, because she didn’t particularly want to see the looks of relief when she said she was leaving. Telling herself she wasn’t going to cry, she swung open the front door, slamming it into something lying on the welcome mat outside.
It took her a second. Then her heart stopped in her chest. ‘‘Strike!’’
She dropped down beside him, scrambling for a pulse. She found it—sort of—but it wasn’t the thready beat that held her attention as she raised her voice and shouted, ‘‘Jox! Need some help here!’’
No, what drew her attention was the new mark on his forearm, one that hadn’t been there an hour earlier . . . and which looked a hell of a lot like a flying snake.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Strike awoke profoundly pissed off, which was unusual for him. Even more unusual was the fact that he was holding a woman’s hand.
He cracked an eye and took stock. He was in his
bed in the pool house, and it was well past dawn. He was naked save for a pair of cutoff shorts—Jox’s idea of sleepwear?—and Leah was sitting in a chair beside his bed, her head pillowed at the edge of his mattress on one folded arm. Her other hand was holding his. The sight of her face smoothed out in repose and their fingers intertwined atop the covers softened the edge of anger that rode him for no good reason.
‘‘Hey,’’ he said quietly, wincing at the crack in his voice, and again he remembered the events of the night before.
She opened her eyes and stared at him for a moment, unblinking. Then she straightened and slid her hand from his, trying to make it seem like no big deal. But the withdrawal was intentional, he knew. And it stung.
Worse, he deserved it.
‘‘You were right,’’ he said before his mood could take over and make him say something stupid. ‘‘About me hiding in the archive, about us needing something to rally behind. You were right about all of it. And the name is perfect. The motto’s perfect.’’ He levered himself up and swung his legs over the side so they were sitting facing each other, knees bumping. Leaning in, he caught the hand she’d just reclaimed. He raised it to his lips, then pressed it against his cheek even though he was about a day and a half past needing a shave. ‘‘Thank you.’’
Her eyes filled. ‘‘You took off. I felt like an idiot.’’
More than that, he realized, she’d felt rejected. And why wouldn’t she? It wasn’t as though he’d bothered explaining what had been going on inside him. What still was going on inside him, he knew, feeling the anger roil within. He glanced at his arm, at the mark of the flying serpent, and wished he knew what the hell it all meant. It was probably a reference to the creator god Kulkulkan, but beyond that he was clueless. Worse, he couldn’t settle his brain enough to think it through.
How was he supposed to lead the others when he could barely control himself?
‘‘I’m sorry.’’ When she tried to pull away, he pressed his hand over hers on his cheek, which was as much of a hug as he dared give her until he got said what needed to be said. ‘‘Over the last few days I’ve been having . . . moods, I guess you could call them. Anger attacks. Only it’s not my anger, not really me, like it’s coming from outside me.’’
Her eyes sharpened. ‘‘From the barrier?’’
‘‘Or something.’’ He wasn’t yet ready to verbalize his deepest fear: that somehow the Banol Kax had gotten a foothold inside his head. Looking at his forearm, he said, ‘‘And then there’s this. The flying serpent.’’
‘‘Jade couldn’t find that specific mark in the archive, and none of the winikin remember having seen anything like it before,’’ Leah said before he could ask. ‘‘Red-Boar thinks it probably means you’re bound to the creator god Kulkulkan through your Godkeeper mate.’’ She paused. Grimaced. ‘‘You know, the Godkeeper mate you don’t have because one, the god didn’t come through the barrier during the solstice because I’m ‘only human’ ’’— she emphasized the phrase with finger quotes—‘‘and two, because neither of us is sold on the predestined-mates thing.’’ Her grin went a little crooked and she didn’t meet his eyes. ‘‘I’m not looking for long-term, and we both know that a couple of dreams and some hot sex does not necessarily a lasting relationship make. And besides—’’
He touched a finger to her lips, cutting her off. ‘‘Don’t,’’ he said, as a whole bunch of messy emotions crowded around inside him. ‘‘Don’t talk yourself out of believing in what’s happened between us.’’
To his surprise, her eyes filled. ‘‘Why not? What good does it do me to keep thinking about something that’s going nowhere? You’re afraid that if we’re lovers then the gods—the prophecies, whatever—are going to demand me as a sacrifice. I get that. I even appreciate it, because I’m nobody’s sacrifice. But if that’s the case and we can’t even talk to each other, never mind sleeping together, what’s the point of me being here at all?’’ Her voice went thin. ‘‘It sucks going to bed alone every night, knowing you’re right across the pool deck, and knowing that you’ll buck tradition by having me here, but you don’t want me enough to take it all the way.’’
‘‘That,’’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘‘is bullshit.’’ The anger fought to come, and he fought equally hard to hold it back, though he wasn’t sure anymore how much of it was him and how much wasn’t.
‘‘Is it?’’ Color rode high in her cheeks. ‘‘Then why—’’
He cut her off again, this time with his lips, shifting his grip from her hands to her hips, and bracketing her knees with his, blocking her escape.
There was no finesse to the kiss, no soft question or coaxing. It was all about the anger that had ridden him for days now, and the raw need he’d been holding in check for far longer than that. Don’t tell me I don’t want you enough, the kiss said. Don’t even think it. It was because he wanted her so much, needed her so much, that he’d stayed away from her for so long. Only now she was right there in front of him, in the place where he slept, and he was near the breaking point.
But when he broke, she was right there with him.
She didn’t resist the kiss, didn’t shove him off and ask what the hell he thought he was doing, didn’t blast him for the mixed messages. No, she met him head-on, leaning in and grabbing on, one hand in his hair at the nape of his neck, the other wrapped around his upper bicep, fingers digging in. She opened her mouth beneath his, a demand rather than an invitation.
Their tongues touched and slid, and the taste of her raced in his veins. He crowded closer, or maybe she did—he wasn’t sure who moved first—but they twined together, her hands streaking across his bare shoulders and back, her T-shirt-covered breasts brushing against his naked chest.
He went hard against the fabric of his cutoffs, the material a rough contrast to the silk of her skin when he slid his hands beneath her T-shirt. She made a soft, urgent sound at the back of her throat, one that called to everything primitive and male within him. He wanted to drag her across his body and press her down on the bed, wanted to take her, to possess her, to brand himself across her skin so there would be no question that she belonged to him and he to her, and nothing else in the world mattered.
Which was the problem.
Shuddering with the rampant need that rode him, locking horns with the logic that told him he had to stop now, he forced himself to end the kiss. He couldn’t make himself pull away, though. Instead, he pressed his forehead to hers so they were leaning into each other, holding each other up. ‘‘It’s not that I don’t want you enough to risk the prophecy,’’ he said, his voice rasping. ‘‘It’s that I want you so much, when I’m with you the other stuff fades. You could become so much more important to me than the others.’’ He paused as a tremor within warned that maybe she already had, that their relationship was already clouding his judgment the way his father’s love for his family had altered the decisions he’d made as king. ‘‘I can’t let that happen,’’ he said. ‘‘Not if we’re going to win this war.’’
He expected her to argue, almost hoped she would. Instead, she said softly, ‘‘Then let me go. I can protect myself now . . . and you’d be a teleport away if I got in trouble. I think it’d be better, easier for both of us.’’
She wasn’t asking for permission, he knew. She was asking him to end it, to release her from their nonrelationship, or at least give her the distance to regain her footing in the rational world.
But he couldn’t. ‘‘Stay,’’ he said, a single word that held both command and longing, even to his own ears.
She drew away so they were no longer supporting each other. ‘‘You don’t need me here, and the others don’t want me here. Why should I stay?’’
Because you’re safer here than on the outside, he wanted to say. Because my gut tells me the gods aren’t finished with you and me, despite what Red-Boar says; and because you were right last night when you said we need an outside perspective, and that I need the occasional kick in
the ass. But while all of that was true, he knew it wasn’t what she was asking. So he said, ‘‘Because I want you to. Please stay, at least through the conjunction.’’
Her eyes went dark. ‘‘And then?’’
‘‘And then we’ll see.’’
He expected her to press. Instead she nodded. ‘‘Until the conjunction, then.’’ She touched his arm, tracing each of his marks with a fingertip in a light caress that let him think about nothing but the softness of her skin and the taste of her breath on his lips. ‘‘Where did you go?’’ she asked, tapping the last mark, the one he’d gotten the night before.
It took him a second to refocus, another to answer. ‘‘I zapped myself into the barrier.’’ He didn’t mention that he’d jumped blind, and that he might’ve ended up totally in limbo if the nahwal hadn’t reached through and given his subconscious mind a destination, as Leah herself had done the very first time he’d teleported. ‘‘When I got there I saw my father, or the nahwal I believe is my father and Red-Boar believes is a figment of my imagination.’’ He paused. ‘‘The nahwal told me that it’s time, but I think he’s wrong.’’ He paused, exhaling heavily with a look toward the mansion. ‘‘They’re not ready for a king.’’
‘‘Are you ready to be king?’’ she asked, still touching his arm, her fingers resting above the serpent’s wings.
‘‘No,’’ he said, shaking his head. Not with what felt an awful lot like a demon rocketing around in his skull. Not until he figured out how she fit into everything that was going on around him, inside him, and whether the thirteenth prophecy would require her death if he took up the Manikin scepter, which was the symbol of the Nightkeepers’ king. ‘‘But I’m ready to be their leader. I’m ready to find out what the flying serpent mark means, and I’m ready for the others to get their talents so we can start functioning as a team. In fact . . .’’ He glanced at the bedside clock radio and winced when he saw it was past ten a.m. already. ‘‘Can you ask Jox to get everyone together for a meeting? You were right last night. It’s time for me to get off my ass and do my damn job.’’
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