Blood Spells

by Jessica Andersen

  She could relate.

  Moving to the nearest intercom, the winikin keyed the button that would transmit his voice throughout the compound. “The away team’s back. All hands on deck in the great room, ASAP.” Then he said to Nate and Michael, “Help Patience get Brandt bedded down.” To her, he said, “I’ll send someone with an IV setup for him and food for you.” The magi all needed to rest and refuel after the amount of magic they had just pulled.

  His orders were practical, a veneer of necessity slapped over a deep layer of shock. But that was what the Nightkeepers did, wasn’t it? They took what the gods threw at them, dealt with the bad stuff, fought the battles that needed fighting, and lived their lives in between crises.

  Or tried to, anyway.

  Focus, Patience told herself. Make a plan. This wasn’t a physical enemy she could fight, but she still needed a strategy. “Let’s hold off on the IV,” she said to Jox. “I’d want to try uplinking and—”

  “Not a chance,” the winikin interrupted. “You need to recharge.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Promise me you won’t do anything before you’ve at least eaten.”

  “I can’t just sit here.”

  “You won’t be any good to him if you crap out in the middle of the uplink.”

  “I’ll help,” a new voice interjected. Patience turned to find Lucius standing behind her. He was pure human, but he was also their Prophet, endowed with the magical ability to search their ancestors’ library for spells and answers. Although the magic had made him nearly as big and strong as a Nightkeeper male, his half-untucked T-shirt, finger-tunneled sandy hair, and ratty sandals reminded her of the geeky grad student he’d been when he first arrived.

  Oddly, that small piece of continuity in the middle of chaos helped center her. Inhaling a breath that was too close to tears, she nodded. “Thanks. What did you have in mind?”

  “Jade said the nahwal mentioned a couple of gods, Kali and Cabrakan. I’ll pull together info on both of them. But I was also thinking I could try to find a reboot spell, something that could get a mage out of misfired magic. Maybe we can reach Brandt that way.”

  Patience’s chest loosened a little at the reminder that even though the nahwal had said she had to be the one to bring Brandt back, she wasn’t entirely on her own. “That’d be good. And maybe look for a memory-enhancing spell.”

  “Right. Any ideas what the nahwal was talking about Brandt having forgotten?”

  Disquiet tightened her stomach. “I can only think of one thing that neither of us can remember.”

  Lucius snapped his fingers, making the connection. “The night you met.”

  “Yeah.” They had both been down in the Yucatán for spring break and awakened in bed together the morning after the equinox with no memory of what had happened the night before. Later, it had become obvious that they hadn’t met by chance. Instead, they had somehow connected with the magic more than four years before the barrier fully reactivated. And they didn’t have the faintest clue what had happened that night.

  The Nightkeepers and winikin had thrown around various theories, but those discussions had dwindled over time because the “where, how, why” of their marriage hadn’t seemed all that important in the larger scheme.

  It did now, though. What had happened that night? What debt did he owe? And how the hell was she supposed to help him remember anything if he was trapped in the Triad spell?

  “I’ll see what I can find.” Lucius pointed toward the residential wing. “Now go. Eat. Sleep. I’ll call you when I’ve got something.”

  She meant to rest; she really did. But once she was alone in the suite, with Brandt stripped down to a black tee and bike shorts, lying too still beneath the blue coverlet of the bed they had once shared, she couldn’t settle. Instead, she found herself pacing the five-room suite, glancing at the framed pictures that were hung on nearly every wall.

  Some were of just her and Brandt—a few candids and a posed portrait from their small wedding. Others were of the family foursome: her and Brandt with the newborn twins; the four of them out in front of the starter house they had bought right before Strike had called them back to Skywatch. A few showed just the boys: Braden feeding a brown nanny goat while Harry hid behind Brandt’s jean-clad leg; Braden playing on an inflatable moon-bounce while Harry stood off to the side with a look of intense concentration on his face, as if trying to figure out how the thing worked. There was even one from Skywatch, an extended family portrait with the four of them, plus Hannah, Woody, and Rabbit.

  But where those pictures were familiar, when she stalled in the bedroom door, the man she saw lying in the big bed looked like a stranger.

  She wished she knew what she could have done differently. She had resented the hell out of him for backing Strike’s decision to send the boys away and then distancing himself when she had wanted—needed—to talk it through. And when, in the worst of her depression, she had gone behind his back to break into the royal quarters in search of a clue to the boys’ whereabouts, Brandt might have alibied her when Strike and Leah had caught her coming out of their suite, but later, in private, he had turned away from her. And stayed gone.

  Now, as she stared at his motionless form, the nahwal ’s words echoed in her mind: Help him remember. But how?

  Giving in to the impulse, freed by the knowledge that there wasn’t anybody there who would hit her with a derisive snort or eye-roll, she pulled a small deck of oracle cards from the pocket of her combat pants, where she had carried them for luck. She shuffled them, taking solace in the small action; the cards were one of the few things that belonged only to her these days.

  When the deck felt right, she stopped shuffling, cut the cards, and flipped the bottom one in the quickest and simplest of readings.

  A shiver touched the back of her neck at the sight of a geometric glyph that looked like the outline of two flat-topped, step-sided pyramids that had been joined together at their crowns to form a ragged “X” shape.

  It was etznab, the mirror glyph . . . and the harbinger of unfinished business.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the pitch of night in the middle of freaking nowhere, a mangled streetlight hung off the bridge at a crazy angle, shining on a busted-through guardrail that dangled down to touch the cold black river. The light was getting smaller by the second, though, as the wrecked, once-classic Beemer traveled downstream, sinking as water gushed through the punched-out windshield to fill the empty front seats.

  Strapped into the back, eighteen-year-old Brandt tore at his seat belt, which was jammed tight, hung up on the crumpled door on one side, just fucking stuck on the other. The driver’s seat was off-kilter and shoved up against his shins, trapping his legs, one of which hurt like hell, even through the numbing cold.

  He shouted as loud as he could: “Joe! Dewey! Anybody! For fuck’s sake, help!”

  There was no answer. Hadn’t been since he’d come to, alone in the car and stuck as shit.

  He was godsdamned freezing; the icy water was up to his chest and climbing. His head hurt; he was pretty sure he’d banged it on the side window when Dewey hit the slick patch and the car spun out. Or maybe he’d been whacked by one of the hockey sticks that were now floating around him, along with other bits of their gear. He shoved one of the sticks aside. Then he stared at it as inspiration worked its way through his spinning brain.

  Hey, moron. Ever heard of leverage?

  Almost sobbing now, he grabbed one of the sticks, jammed it against the opposite door handle, and pushed. The lock gave! His pulse pounded as he shoved against the inward press of the water. The door opened a few inches, letting in more water but offering a way out. He was so damned excited to see the exit that he forgot about the other problems.

  He lunged across, got hung up on the belt, and screamed when his injured leg shifted and flesh tore. “Fuck!”

  Gods, it hurt. He grayed out for a few seconds, groaning.

  As he started
coming back, the world sharpening back into place around him, he heard Woody’s voice in his head. Don’t just react, the winikin had lectured time and again during Brandt’s fight training. For gods’ sake, think.

  As if remembering the winikin’s advice had thrown a switch inside him, the night got brighter, his vision clearer. He saw the bridge in the distance . . . and the splashing movement of someone swimming. Two someones. The others were okay!

  “Joe!” he shouted. “Dewey!” But they didn’t react; he was too far away, the rushing water too loud.

  Thinking now, he swung the hockey stick around, aiming it past the driver’s seat. His motions were slowed by the water and the beginnings of hypothermia, but the same lack of air bags that’d made the crash so gods-awful helped him now. He managed to jam the end of the stick on the column, and the horn blared.

  The distant heads jerked around; faraway voices cried his name. He hit the horn a couple more times before a fat spark arced and the noise quit.

  The Beemer’s back end was dropping faster than the front, thanks to the cinder blocks Dewey’s dad had loaded into the trunk for traction. The water lapped at Brandt’s throat, his chin. Touched his mouth.

  “Brandt?” The shout was faint with distance.

  “Here! I’m here!” Spurred by hope, he twisted, contorting yet again in an effort to reach the knife sheath that was strapped low on his good ankle. He had tried to get at it before and couldn’t reach. This time, though, he got it. His hands shook as he slashed through the seat belt. He immediately floated up, then jolted against the tether of his lower legs.

  He freed his good leg with a yank, but even that move brought a slash of agony from the other side. And when he tried to pull on his torn-up leg, he spasmed and nearly passed out.

  “Help! I’m stuck!” He shouted the words, but they came out garbled as the water closed in on him, filling his ears. He couldn’t hear Joe and Dewey anymore. He was pretty sure the car was all the way under, hoped to hell they’d be able to find him.

  His consciousness flickered as he crowded up near the roof of the sinking car, tilting his head into the remaining air, which was leaking out in a string of silvery bubbles. On his next breath, he sucked water along with the air.

  Don’t panic. But all he could think about was Woody’s stories of the barrier, the Nightkeepers, and the end-time war. The winikin had broken tradition by raising Brandt with full knowledge of his heritage even though they were in hiding, living as humans. But in all other ways, despite his easygoing nature, Wood was strictly traditional. He’d taught Brandt the old ways, and made him promise that he would keep himself fit and ready through the zero date, that he wouldn’t marry or have children before that time, and that he would keep the faith.

  As the final string of silvery bubbles escaped, and panic chilled to grim desperation, Brandt’s mind locked on the last of Woody’s expectations. Faith, he thought. When all else failed, that was what it came down to, wasn’t it?

  Tasting his own blood in the water he’d inhaled along with the last little bit of air, he searched for a prayer in the old language. When nothing seemed right, with grayness telescoping inward from the edges of his consciousness, he went with his heart, and said, “Gods. If you can hear this, please help me. I’ll give anything. I swear it.”

  Then the grayness closed in. The cold took over. And—

  The cold vanished, the car and the river disappeared, and Brandt found himself hanging weightless and immobile, completely deprived of all sensory input save for that created by his body: the pulsing whine of blood through his veins, the sensation of swallowing, the repetitive act of breathing.

  His brain spun as he fought to shift gears.

  As he did so, he was aware that this wasn’t the first time he’d made the transition, or the second. More like the hundredth. Sick dread latched itself on to his soul as he realized all over again that the Triad spell had trapped him in his own private Groundhog Day. He was reliving that night over and over again, an endless loop in which he sank into a vision, became his teenage self and experienced the terror of that night, then switched back to his adult self, only then becoming cognizant of what was going on.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been cycling, but he knew for damned sure that he had to get out of this fucking loop, and fast, because it wouldn’t be long before it started all over again.

  This wasn’t part of the Triad spell. By now, he should be fighting to assimilate—or be assimilated by—his ancestors. Instead he was reliving the night he’d almost died in that river. At the thought, though, adrenaline kicked. A near-death experience formed a link to the gods. The Godkeeper ceremony involved near death by drowning. Maybe the Triad spell did too.

  But he was already having an almost-dead-by-drowning experience within the vision. What more did he need to do in order to complete the spell?

  He didn’t know.

  And then it was too late, because the temperature dropped, chilling him to his bones.

  For the last few seconds he was himself, he let his mind fill with a warm memory, that of Patience’s face aglow with happiness as they swapped marriage vows in front of a JP and half a dozen friends, needing nothing more than each other, really. Even though they had both lied about why their godparents—aka winikin—couldn’t be there, beginning the chain of small lies that had shaped the early, happy years of their marriage, the memory brought only a poignant ache.

  No matter what had come after, that had been a good day. One of his best.

  As the small peace dissolved, he closed his eyes and whispered into the blackness, “Sorry, sweetheart. I’m lost and I can’t figure out how to get back.”

  Then the bottom fell out of his world, his soul lurched, and his consciousness regressed to that of a terrified, dying teen.

  Skywatch

  Just past dawn, Patience jolted awake with her heart pounding and Brandt’s voice echoing in her mind.

  “Hey,” she said, a smile blooming as she rolled toward him, having finally crashed in the bed, albeit clothed and atop the comforter. “You’re—” She broke off at the sight of his still form, the lack of animation in his angular features. “Not awake,” she finished, disappointment thudding through her as she saw that he looked the same as he had when she’d fallen asleep—his breathing too slow, his skin gray despite the IV taped at the crook of his elbow.

  After recharging, she and the others had tried everything they could think of the night before, from a joint blood sacrifice to a one-sided attempt for her to call sex magic and awaken their jun tan bond. Their mated link had remained stubbornly silent. Yet now she could swear his voice had awakened her.

  Although the other mated pairs could share thoughts when they were uplinked, her and Brandt’s bond had always been different. Their jun tan link had carried a magic of its own, one that allowed them to transmit power, pleasure, and thoughts, sometimes even from a distance. So it wasn’t impossible that she’d heard him, but still . . .

  “It was probably just a dream,” she murmured, knowing too well how much false hope could hurt. But that didn’t stop her from taking his hand, interlacing their fingers, pressing their scarred palms together, and sending part of herself into their jun tan bond, just to see. The mark on her wrist warmed momentarily, but that was it. His half of their mated bond didn’t respond.

  It wasn’t a surprise. But it hurt with a dull ache that gathered beneath her breastbone and lay leaden, weighing her down. She didn’t let go of his hand, though. Instead, she inched closer to his big, warm body and let her eyes drift shut. I’ll just lie here for a minute longer. . . .

  Shrieks and laughter pulled her out of sleep into the warm drowsiness of yellow morning sunlight and the weight of her husband’s arm across her hips, the curve of his body behind hers, enfolding hers. Through the open bedroom door, she saw Rabbit spinning around in the main room, roaring demonlike while Braden clung to his shoulders and Harry battered at his knees, two miniature magi fighting to br
ing down one of the fearsome Banol Kax. With a final roar, Rabbit fell back onto the couch, flailing in pretend death throes while the twins pounced on him.

  Hannah and Woody were making a big breakfast in the kitchen nook beyond, in what had become a weekend tradition, a way to carve some family time out of the daily demands of life at Skywatch.

  Catching Patience’s look, Hannah grinned and turned her palms to the sky in an “I tried to get them to keep quiet” gesture belied by the amusement that snapped in her good eye. She had a brightly patterned kerchief tied pirate-style over the other side, where six parallel scars trailed down her face, tugging her smile slightly off center as she pretended to whack Woody’s knuckles for snitching an underdone pancake off the stove.

  In the main room, Rabbit rolled off the couch to pounce on Harry with renewed roars and a growl of “Gotcha!”

  Braden shrieked and dove into the fray, and the three of them went down in a laughing, squirming tangle.

  “Welcome to chaos,” Brandt rumbled against Patience’s neck, his voice amused. Beneath the bedcovers, he slid his hand up from her hip to her breast and began a slow, seductive morning fondle that was all the more enticing for its semipublic nature. More, it said that he was in a good mood, not sharp or distant as he had been too often lately, stressed by the transition to their new lives.

  Her blood fired as she shifted to fit herself closer into the curve of his body, so she could feel the heavy throb of his morning erection. “Silence is overrated,” she whispered in return, keeping her voice low in the hopes of protecting a few more minutes together before the twins noticed that Mom and Dad were up.

  And Dad was most definitely “up”; he rolled his hips a little to seat himself more firmly into the cleft of her buttocks, then slid his hand down to press her into him, with his strong, clever fingers drifting across the very top of her mound, sending spears of sensation that left her breathless. His breath was hot on the back of her neck and the side of her face, air-feathers that sent shivers coiling through her, making her yearn.