“Oxymoron alert. But, yeah. I’m willing to bet that your near death by drowning could have had enough magical oomph to punch through the barrier, even that far back.” Lucius paused. “Did it happen the night of the winter solstice?”
“It was early during winter break, before Christmas. It could’ve been. . . .” Brandt trailed off, frowning. “Yeah, it was the night of the solstice. But . . . I didn’t remember that until you asked, just like I never thought about the accident.”
Patience’s thoughts raced. “Werigo’s spell blocked us from remembering that the magic works. If the gods intervened that night and something happened to create a debt and make them turn against you, the spell would’ve blocked all of it.”
And deep down inside her, a new thought exploded through her mind: What if Werigo’s magic had also messed with their mated bond? It wouldn’t have bothered them out in the human world . . . but the effects could have manifested once she and Brandt were bound to the magic and started functioning as mates within the Nightkeeper milieu. Which was exactly when things had started going wrong between them.
Question was, would that change now that they had broken at least part of the spell? Gods, she hoped so.
“Regardless, the central issue remains,” Brandt said. “I can’t fix the problem until we know what I did wrong.”
Patience caught the bleakness at the back of his eyes. She touched his hand. “The gods didn’t shut you off because you somehow sacrificed your friends to save yourself. That’s not what happened.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you,” she said firmly.
“Michael’s magic got screwed up because he came into his powers with too much of a sin burden on his soul. The same thing could be happening to me.”
“There’s a fundamental difference between being in an accident and being an assassin.” She didn’t think she would’ve had the guts to put it quite that bluntly if Michael had been there.
For a second she thought he was going to pull away from her. But he didn’t. Instead, he nodded. “I hope to hell you’re right. But hoping and theorizing aren’t going to be enough here. I need to see the rest of that vision.”
Sharp relief kicked through Patience when he didn’t go back into shutdown mode on her. But it didn’t count until they managed to keep things working back at Skywatch, where loving each other wasn’t nearly so easy.
Telling herself to deal with one crisis at a time, she said, “It seems to me that the etznab spell doesn’t just need the words and props; it also needs the right atmosphere. I don’t think it’ll work again here at the hotel.”
“Maybe not. But what about our cave?”
At the thought of going back down there—with him—her stomach tightened. “That might work.”
He stood and offered her his hand. “Then let’s see if we can find the way in.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As the others headed out of the restaurant, Rabbit hung back and signaled for Strike to wait up. Myrinne stalled too, so the three of them wound up alone just outside a pair of restroom doors bearing sombrero-wearing stick figures of either sex, and labeled SE-NORS and SENORITAS in case the pictures weren’t obvious enough. Duh.
“Problem?” Strike asked, cutting a look between them.
Rabbit hesitated, but then went ahead and said it: “I’ve been feeling funky ever since we touched down here, kind of itchy, or like I’m coming down with something.” That wasn’t likely, though; the magi didn’t get sick, at least not from germs.
Strike stilled. “You didn’t feel it when you were here two days ago?”
“No. Just this time. I wasn’t even going to say anything, just figured I was tired from all the running around.” After leaving Oc Ajal, he and Myrinne had driven to three different ruins that had included sacrificial skull platforms—tzomplanti—dedicated to Cabrakan, but had come up dry in the clue department. Since they’d needed to do the two-day trip in one, in order to make up for the time they’d spent up in the mountains, they were both pretty short on sleep. “But between Brandt saying that this place buzzes different for him and Patience, and then us figuring out that there might be a dark-magic intersection entrance somewhere in the area, I figured you should know.”
“Does it feel like dark magic?”
Rabbit glanced at his forearm, at the scarlet quatrefoil above the black glyphs. “It doesn’t feel light or dark, really.”
“Please tell me it’s not muk.”
“Nah. I’m not even sure it’s magic. It’s more like—I don’t know, an itch between my shoulder blades, maybe. Like something’s going to happen soon.”
“You’re not going prescient on me, are you?” Strike tried to play it like he was kidding, but they both knew he wasn’t.
Nightkeeper males occasionally envisioned their destined mates before meeting them, but that was where Y-chromosome foretelling left off. What was more, precognition tended to have nasty-assed repercussions within the magic. So while the approach of the end date continued to increase the scope of the Nightkeepers’ powers—for example, allowing the warriors to cast shield spells at greater distances for longer times—there were some talents, like prescience, that they were hoping wouldn’t go on the rise.
Forcing aside the memory of the things he’d seen the night Myrinne had tried her foretelling spell on him, Rabbit shook his head. “It’s not prescience. It’s just . . . I don’t know. An itch.” The more he talked about it, the dumber it sounded. He wouldn’t even have said anything, but didn’t want to jeopardize the team by being a dumbass and keeping quiet about something that was probably nothing.
Strike thought for a minute. “Could you be sensing the solstice-eclipse ahead of the rest of us?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m getting paranoid because my ass is dragging.” Myrinne had pointed out—rather acerbically—that fatigue sometimes triggered his old patterns. And gods knew the whole “the world is out to get me” thing used to be one of his fallback modes.
“How are your blocks?”
“My head’s locked down tight.” He’d made damn sure of it after they left Oc Ajal, and again this morning. No way he wanted Iago breaking back through. “And I’m not trying to bag out on you. Myrinne almost never gets to see me do my thing, and I’m totally jonesing to get inside the pyramid.” At the thought, the itch between his shoulder blades got worse. “I just thought it should be your call whether I stayed behind or not.”
“Yeah. It should be.” Strike didn’t seem as grateful as Rabbit would’ve expected, though. If anything, he looked more annoyed than before, though that sort of seemed to have become his fallback recently. Finally, after a long enough pause that Rabbit’s stomach had started to think about sinking, the king said, “I have a feeling we’re going to need your oomph to get this doorway open. But”—he shot Rabbit an “I’m way fucking serious” look—“if the itch gets worse or anything else changes, you pull out of the link immediately, and tell me what’s going on.” Before Rabbit could nod, Strike transferred his glare to Myrinne. “Same goes for you. If you see him doing anything you don’t like, you tell me. Got it?”
She played it cool, nodding and saying, “Will do.”
Inwardly, though, Rabbit knew she was doing a boogie-woogie victory dance. She was grateful to the magi for taking her in—on Rabbit’s say-so and with Anna’s support—even though she had been raised by one of Iago’s allies. Strike had given her a place to stay, spending money, an education, and some small jobs within Skywatch. But being grateful didn’t stop her from wanting more—not financially, but in terms of getting in on the action. She was dying to be out on the front lines with the other warriors.
Rabbit sure as shit knew how that felt; he’d been there, done that, and eventually earned the king’s trust. Now it was her turn . . . he hoped.
“Was there anything else?” Strike asked.
Rabbit shook his head. “I’m good if you are.”
“Then let’s go.”
They met the others outside the hotel and headed for El Rey. There, they all went in through the main gate, paid the entry fee, and joined the scattering of other park visitors, who were being desultorily watched by a couple of attendants who wore uniforms but no sidearms.
Once they were in, Strike gave a little finger wiggle. “Let’s spread out. We’ll meet up in five at the back of the pyramid.”
Although the magi could conceal themselves with a chameleon shield or by uplinking with Patience when she went invisible, the spells would be a power drain, so they stuck to more conventional camouflage to start with, splitting up to wander into the park, flying casual.
At least most of them did. Rabbit stopped just inside the main gate and took a long look around.
Most of the old buildings were little more than stone footprints, lines in the limestone outlining where the village’s market buildings, houses, temples, and palace had once stood. It all looked exactly the same as it had two days ago . . . but the air carried a subsonic whine he didn’t remember from before, one that made him want to work his jaw and pop his ears.
Myrinne had initially moved off with the others, but now backtracked and put herself in front of him. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s not wrong, so much. I’m just getting a strange buzz off this place. It’s probably just the same thing Brandt was talking about.” He resisted the almost overwhelming urge to scratch the back of his neck. “I’m probably feeling it because we’re almost on top of the solstice-eclipse. I bet the others will start noticing it soon.”
She looked dubious. “Should we tell Strike?”
“Not yet.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he warned, “Don’t cry wolf on me, babe.”
She made a face at him. “You’re just pissed that when he finally gave me something to do, it turned out to be babysitting you.”
“Ouch.” But he snorted, amusement smoothing out some of the itchiness. “Witch.”
“Pyro.”
They grinned at each other like a couple of idiots in love—which they pretty much were—then linked hands and headed for the pyramid. But even as he let himself be distracted by the bounce in her step and the excited gleam in her eyes, he stayed very aware of the angry-mosquito buzz that plagued him just below the audible level . . . and the feeling, deep in his gut, that he was missing something.
At the back side of the square pyramid, out of sight of the tourists and the park attendants, the magi gathered near the center point of the lowest tier.
Brandt flattened his hand on a section of stonework that looked exactly like its neighbors on either side. “It was right here.” Beside him, Patience nodded.
They were standing closer together than usual, Rabbit saw, and when Patience caught his eye and sent him a “hope this works” look, she didn’t look as tight as she had for the past few months. He hoped that meant she and Brandt were putting things back together. He didn’t like them being out of whack, because if those two couldn’t make it work—hell, he didn’t know. It wasn’t good.
Jade stared at the stones, her eyes going blurry with the inward-looking expression she wore when she used her spell caster’s talents. After a moment, though, she shook her head. “I’m not sensing any sort of concealment spell. Let’s try uplinking and see if the power boost helps.”
To be on the safe side, Alexis cast a thin chameleon shield that would obscure them from view, making them seem to blend into the surrounding stone. Michael had discovered the variation on the warrior’s traditional protective shield, and Alexis had picked up on it through her connection to Ixchel, the goddess of weaving and rainbows; she said it was like weaving light.
They were the only two who had mastered the magic so far, though. Most of the others could only cast the protective shield. Rabbit had managed to alter his, but instead of going into stealth mode, it turned the deep, vibrant orange found at the heart of a fire, and grew bitching hot to the touch. Which was neat, but not exactly subtle.
Once the chameleon shield was in place, perceptible as a wall of blurriness separating them from the human world, Nate passed out the combo earpiece-microphones the warriors wore to keep in touch on ops. The reception wasn’t totally reliable underground, but the earbuds were better than nothing, and although this wasn’t an official op and they weren’t wearing full combat gear, they were all on guard, and most of them were carrying, concealed in some form or another.
At Strike’s cue, the magi pulled their ceremonial knives and blooded their palms on both sides. Rabbit pasaj och-ed his way into a barrier connection, and grinned when Nightkeeper power flared to life within him. Gods, he loved magic. The energy level kicked higher when the others started joining up, linking blood to blood, with the three non-Nightkeepers standing outside the main circle.
With his senses amped, Rabbit smelled blood and the mingled scents of his teammates’ soaps, colognes, and perfumes, along with the sharp edge of rich Mexican coffee and breakfast grease. He heard the trill of a sugarbird and the sigh of a gentle breeze, and saw subtle imperfections in the seemingly smooth spots on the pyramid face. But he didn’t see a doorway, not even with the inner senses that followed the flow of magic.
Then the energy flow fluctuated as Jade leaned on the uplink. Because the magi were all blood-linked so deeply, Rabbit picked up on the shimmer of her normally intangible magic as it spread across the stone surface, seeking a concealment spell.
And finding one.
Seeing the magic trace the contours of an arched doorway, Jade bore down, pulling magic from the whole team as she whispered a counterspell.
For a second nothing happened. Then the pyramid face shimmered and changed, revealing the doorway as a dark square leading inward.
Beside him, Patience gave a low gasp, and pain echoed through their handclasp.
Rabbit said in an undertone, “You okay?”
She nodded. “I’m fine,” she said, equally quietly. “It’s just that—”
Without warning, the mosquito buzz in Rabbit’s head ratcheted to a shriek and dark magic smashed through his mental blocks like they were fucking newspaper.
The hell-link slammed open and a terrible presence entered him, swelling inside his skull and seizing control of his body.
Before, Iago’s mental pattern had felt like those of the other magi. Now it was ten times stronger, faster, and more complex, with his and Moctezuma’s thoughts and memories twisted into a single entity controlled by the mage’s consciousness. And the bastard dug in and hung on tight. Agony ripped through Rabbit, but the Xibalban didn’t let him cry out in pain or yank his hands away from the blood-link and jam them against his temples. More, the bastard blocked Rabbit’s magic, not letting him transmit any sort of warning through the uplink.
Rabbit’s inner vision kaleidoscoped inward, spinning with fractured images, most unfamiliar. He caught impressions from Iago’s current lair: a cement-slab tunnel lit by strings of bare bulbs with a time-worn yellow sign hung on the wall. Those images were mixed with Moctezuma’s memories: scenes of sun-drenched pyramids, bright feathers, blood pouring onto sand as his Aztecs fought their Spanish enemies. Over it all lay a night-vision overcast of luminous green.
But then, a few frantic heartbeats later, the kaleidoscope reversed. It stopped showing him memories, and started taking his instead, lifting them wholesale from his mind.
Oh, holy shit. The bastard was fucking downloading him.
No! Rabbit screamed inwardly as information gushed out of him, Iago focusing on the Nightkeepers’ recent highlights: the Triad spell, Patience and Brandt’s visions, the breakfast meeting, Ix’s death. Iago roared with rage over that last memory; he hadn’t known what had happened to his brother, or who had been responsible. He dug deeper, probing Rabbit’s memories of Patience and Brandt, and what he knew of Ix’s death. The information sped faster and faster, going to a blur that left Rabbit with no idea of what he’d divulged.
Howling inwardly, sick with the knowledge that he
was giving up his teammates while they stood around him, unaware of the danger, he hammered against the bastard’s hold, trying to break free, trying to keep some part of himself locked down, but not managing to do either.
“Rabbit? What’s wrong?” Myrinne’s voice seemed very far away.
Help! He didn’t know what had tipped her off, or whether she caught his desperate cry, but suddenly she was shouting Strike’s name.
He was barely conscious of the magi converging on him, their mouths opening and closing as they asked him questions he couldn’t hear. All he could do was stare at them while his vision flickered from green to normal and back again, like a hard drive rebooting.
Then Iago vanished from inside him.The invading presence disappeared. The green disappeared. The mental blocks reappeared, seeming strong and solid, like there had never been a problem.
But there was a big problem. His brain was in a fucking shambles.
Rabbit writhed as his body tried to tear itself apart from the inside out, like that was going to make up for the weakness it had just displayed. Memories hammered through him—his own, someone else’s; he didn’t fucking know anymore. Tremors racked him; he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except clutch himself and groan, wishing to hell he’d paid more attention to that twitchy feeling.
Then he couldn’t even do that, because the seizure got worse. He staggered away from the pyramid, and passed the fuck out.
As Rabbit went down, a headache came out of nowhere to nail Patience behind her eyeballs, washing her world white with sudden agony. She reeled sideways, grabbing for her temples, as the others bolted for Rabbit.
Brandt spun back. “Patience!”
She waved him off as the sharp pain subsided, leaving a dull ache behind. “I’m fine.” Or if not exactly fine, she was doing better than Rabbit.
The others were trying to keep him from hurting himself as he thrashed wildly, his eyes rolled back in his skull, his lips drawn back in a terrible, silent scream. Strike had his shoulders and was wrestling to hold him flat on the ground, while Nate, Sven, and Lucius grappled with his flailing arms and legs, and Jade tried to get something between his teeth.
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