Final Prophecy 04: Demonkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  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 break 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.”

  “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s reading between the lines.”

  Refusing to go there, she said, “Of course you’re not a patient. Nobody said you were.”

  “Yet you came back to fix me.”

  No, she thought in a frustrated knee-jerk, I came back to fuck you. She didn’t say that, though, because while she considered sex more entertainment than a religious experience, she didn’t like reducing it to that level. She didn’t know whether it was the innate cool reserve of the harvester bloodline, the wisdom that had come from her own experiences, or what, but romantic love wasn’t her thing. Too often in her practice, she’d seen otherwise high-functioning women lose their dreams to love, or because of its loss. The things that love and heartbreak did to otherwise normal people most definitely did not fall within the three “D”s.

  Still, as she and Luci
us faced off in the darkness, the air thickened with the memory of sex, the anticipation of it.

  Blowing out a slow, settling breath, she said, “I came back because you haven’t been able to get into the library, and we’re running out of time and options.” She paused, peering into the darkness and seeing nothing but the shadows. “It’s not your fault. It’s a power incompatibility, that’s all.” He might have spent years collecting the Nightkeepers’ legends and reconstructing their elusive history, despite the derision the hobby had earned in academic circles, but that didn’t make him a mage. Whereas genetics and magic meant that the Nightkeepers were big, strong, and charismatic, Lucius was more angles than muscle. He was human, blood and bone. And the sooner he came around to accepting that the limitations of that had nothing to do with him being Runt Hunt, the better off he’d be . . . and, she suspected, the closer he’d get to gaining control of the Prophet’s magic. She hoped.

  “Whose idea was it for you to come?” he asked. He remained hidden in the shadows, but his voice shifted with a thread of what she thought might be acceptance.

  “Mine, start to finish.” New heat furled across her skin as the anticipation built.

  Their one spontaneous, somewhat rushed coupling in the archive had lit her up like nothing had done before, not even being with the far more polished Michael when the two of them had both been running hot with transitional hormones and their first tastes of sex magic. Where Michael had been skilled and considerate, Lucius had been raw, teetering on the borderline of control. Where Michael had held a portion of himself apart—out of necessity, as they had later learned—Lucius had been entirely there with her, making her feel like he didn’t see her as support staff, a backup, or a fill- in for what he’d really wanted. Unfortunately, that very openness, combined with a Xibalban attack on the antimagic wards surrounding Skywatch, had allowed the makol to briefly emerge from its hiding place and take over Lucius’s consciousness in the aftermath, leading to the near destruction of the archive and beginning Lucius’s downward spiral to makol possession. Despite that terrifying ordeal, though, and the strained “I don’t do love; I do friends with benefits” conversation she’d been forced to lay on him when he’d tried to make their lovemaking into more than she’d ever intended, she wanted this. She wanted him, though that hadn’t been the argument she’d used on the others. She hadn’t dared.

  “Are you doing this because it’s your best chance to finally be on the front lines, finally make a difference in the war?”

  “Do you blame me?” It wasn’t really an answer, but she didn’t want him to know that somewhere along the line, duty and desire had gotten mixed together inside her. She wanted to fix him, to help him gain the magic he’d sacrificed for. At the same time, she wanted what they had found together in the archive, when nothing had mattered but the slap of flesh, the rake of nails, the clash of lips and tongues. She missed that, wanted it. It wasn’t magic, wasn’t love, but it was a power she could summon, something she was good at.

  “I don’t blame you,” he answered, rasping voice going soft, “but I need you to understand what you’re getting into.”

  The night had gone fully dark, and the pinpoint stars did little to lighten the blackness of the new moon. The pool deck at the back of the mansion was unlit; the only real illumination came from a few gleaming windows up at the mansion, and the lights coming from a single cottage off in the middle distance. The darkness meant she felt and heard rather than saw when he moved toward her, closing the distance between them until she could feel the heat from his body, the stir of his breath. Desire tightened her inner muscles and made her acutely conscious of her own breathing, her own actions, as she wetted her lips with her tongue.

  “Light a foxfire,” he said. “Just a small one.”

  It was one of the few weak spells she could muster, one that had delighted him when they’d first been getting to know each other. His eyes had gleamed with gratifying awe when she’d sent the foxfire dancing from her hand to his and back again, though even that small spell had taxed her.

  Thinking that was what he wanted, that this was foreplay of a sort, she turned one palm up and called the magic with a single word in the language of the ancients. “Lak’in.” It meant “east,” the direction of the rising sun.

  A tiny light kindled, starting pinpoint small and then expanding outward to a ball of cool blue flame that shed light on the two of them. She looked up at him, smiling, expecting to see his joy in the minor spell, a small connection to better days between them. Instead, familiar hazel eyes looked at her out of a stranger ’s face.

  “Gods!” Jade jolted as shock hammered through her, sending her back a step. “Who . . . What the . . .” She faltered to silence as reality and unreality collided and she recognized the man standing opposite her. Sort of.

  It was Lucius, but he wasn’t for an instant the man she’d known. Instead, he was what Lucius would have been if he’d gotten the “big and burly” genes of his massive linebacker brothers and father along with the “tall and borderline willowy” genes he’d inherited from his mother’s side. The combination had yielded a frame that was only maybe an inch taller than that of the man she’d known, but carried twice the muscle, layered onto bone and sinew as though sculpted there. He was wearing new- looking jeans; she honestly doubted his thighs would’ve fit in the old ones. The bar-logo T-shirt was familiar, but there was nothing familiar about the way it stretched across his chest and arms, and hinted at a ripple of muscle along his flat abs. Above the shirt’s neckline, a thin white scar spoke of the attack that had cost him his voice, nearly his life. And his face . . . gods, his face. Features that had been pleasantly regular before were sharper and broader now; his jaw was aggressively square, his formerly overlarge nose was brought into perfect proportion, and his newly high cheekbones and broad brows framed hazel eyes that she knew, yet didn’t know.

  Watching her with an unfamiliar level of intensity, he held out his hands and turned his palms up, so the foxfire lit the lifeline scars and the dual marks on his right forearm: the black slave mark that bound him to Anna and the Nightkeepers, and the red quatrefoil hellmark his demon-possessed self had accepted from Iago. Jade had seen the scars and marks before, of course, but back then they had seemed entirely out of place, magic unwittingly imposed on a human, drawing him into a place where he didn’t belong.

  Now, though, they looked . . . right. Like they belonged. She didn’t know why the sight chilled her, or how that fear could exist alongside and within the churning sexual heat that somehow flared higher rather than died when she realized this wasn’t the man she’d come to seduce. Not by a long shot.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “You look . . .” She trailed off, not sure he’d be flattered by her first few responses, which involved steroids and testosterone poisoning, clear evidence that her normally hidden wise-ass side was kicking in, trying to buffer the shock. Nor did she go with the calm, analytical response brought by her cool counselor’s reserve, which often came to the fore when Jade-the-person didn’t know how to respond to something. But he had called her on both of those knee-jerk defenses in the past, so she paused, trying to find the words. In the end, all she came up with was a lame, “. . . different.”

  In fact, he looked amazing, reminding her of the long lunches she’d spent at the Met during her student days, wandering through the Greek and Roman art galleries, and imagining that the carved marble statues and bronze castings could come to life. He was that perfectly imperfect, human, yet something more now. And that “more” had new heat skimming beneath her suddenly too-sensitive skin, making her acutely aware of her own body, and his.

  It’s just Lucius, she told herself. Only it wasn’t. This was a new, different Lucius, one who had broken the rule that said people didn’t fundamentally change. Because it wasn’t just the voice and the body that had changed; he had changed. Gone was the endearingly awkward geek who’d made her feel comfortable with herself. In his
place was two hundred pounds of raw, potent male sexuality regarding her with hot hunter ’s eyes. And—oh, gods—she’d offered herself to him. More, she’d fought long-distance for the opportunity, and she’d ignored Strike and Anna when they had tried to tell her that he was different now, that the Prophet’s spell had done something to him. In her rush to finally break free from her backup role, she’d thrown herself headlong at . . . what? What was he now? He couldn’t access the library, yet there was clearly magic at work within him. How else could she explain the added bulk and muscle, and the gut-punch of pheromone-laden charisma he’d lacked before, but now wore as though born with it?

  “Not exactly what you were expecting when you volunteered for sex-magic duty, was it?” he asked, his eyes going hooded in intimate challenge.

  Heat touched the air between them, thickening her breath in her lungs.

  “I . . .” She trailed off. What was wrong with her? Where had her words gone? She was the one with the answers, the cool-blooded harvester who didn’t get rattled. But right now her body was saying one thing, her spinning brain another, and her verbal skills had gotten lost in the cross fire.

  His not-quite-familiar mouth curved in a humorless smile. “That’s about what I figured. I wish they had warned you.”

  That, at least, she could respond to. “They tried. I wasn’t listening. But . . . you could’ve called me, or e-mailed.” She’d posted her contact info in the mansion’s kitchen, just in case. “I hate thinking of you going through all this alone.”

  “I haven’t been in the mood for company.”

  It was easier not to look at him as she said, “What are you in the mood for?”