Blood Spells

by Jessica Andersen

  All he knew was that the blade was there. His bloodied leg was there. And he had to get that fucking mark off.

  “Son of eagles, do not shame your ancestors.” The voice was familiar, yet not. It could have been a delusion; it could have come from the sky.

  “You killed them,” Brandt grated.

  “You made the oath.”

  “Now I’m breaking it.” Clenching his jaw, he set the knife point to his flesh, nearly an inch beyond the border of the mark, like it was a cancer and he had to take enough to be sure he got all of it.

  “Do not do this, or the gods and your ancestors will be lost to you until you willingly retake the oath.”

  “Fuck that.” Brandt’s consciousness grayed around the edges, tunneling until all he could see was the stark black mark.

  And he started to cut.

  Without warning, the images kaleidoscoped inward, contracting to a point, and the royal shrine took shape around him once more; he sensed torchlight and incense first, then the pressure of Patience’s fingers twined through his. He blinked and swayed, then turned and sagged back against the altar, partly so he wouldn’t fall, partly so he would be looking at Patience, not her reflection, when he told her everything.

  But then he met her eyes and saw shock. Grief. Maybe even revulsion. She knew. She must have followed him into the vision after all, though he hadn’t sensed her there.

  He would’ve thought he couldn’t possibly get any colder inside. But he could. “Patience.” He reached out.

  She backed away, expression stark. “Oh, gods.” A trembling hand lifted, pressed to her mouth.

  The walls of the tiny room closed in on him; the world telescoped to her horrified expression. “I—” He broke off as he got it—he fucking got it. His legs gave out; his ass banged down on the altar. His mouth worked, but he couldn’t get out the words that would make it better, because there weren’t any. Oh, holy hell. The thick incense burned his throat, his lungs. “Werigo made me forget.”

  And in doing so, the Xibalban had unknowingly struck a hell of a blow for his team.

  “Why didn’t Woody say anything?” she whispered almost soundlessly.

  “I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t. He would’ve been . . .” Horrified. Disappointed. Worse, he would’ve insisted that Brandt retake the oath and finish it. That was how deeply Wood’s faith ran. Brandt gripped the edge of the altar so hard his fingers shook. “I made a blood vow to tell him all about it if the barrier came back online and the countdown rebooted.”

  Only he hadn’t, because Werigo had made him fucking forget it.

  “You knew.” Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying, even though she hadn’t shed any tears. “That first night, you knew that you were under this, this curse. And you didn’t warn me, not even once you realized I was a Nightkeeper.”

  Things had been so crazy that night. He’d been wrapped up in the magic, hooked on the adventure. “I would have told you later.”

  “Right. Just like you were planning on telling Woody later.” She took a step toward him, eyes flashing. “You came up to me, made love to me, knowing that we couldn’t be together.”

  It was just supposed to be a spring-break hookup, he thought, but didn’t say, because she was right. He’d done what he wanted to do that night. But his decisions back then weren’t the point. Once again she was getting stuck in her emotions when they needed to be dealing with the practicalities. Frustration knotted his gut. “Don’t you get what this means? You’re at the top of the fucking list now.” His throat locked, but he got it out. “You and the boys.”

  Her expression iced to the “don’t mess with my sons” look he had seen only once before, when Strike had told her they had to send Harry and Braden into hiding. “I’m not an idiot. I get that. But what I also get is that this has all happened because you’re so godsdamned convinced you know everything, that you have the right to make decisions for the people around you.”

  “Bullshit.” His head hammered with his pulse. “That’s just bullshit. And can we please focus on what’s important here? We’ll deal with the relationship stuff later.”

  “On your schedule.” Her voice was chill, but her reddened eyes were full of pain.

  “Patience.” He held out a hand. “Please. Let’s not do this right now. We need to concentrate on figuring out how to get at the Triad magic safely.”

  To his surprise, she took the hand he’d offered. But instead of twining their fingers together, she turned his palm up, so torchlight shone on the half-healed sacrificial cut. “Don’t you get it? Everything’s connected.” Something new moved in her expression, a hint of grief existing beneath the anger. “None of this has been a coincidence.”

  “You want me to have faith.” He said the last word like a curse.

  She tightened her grip on his hand. “I want you to let me in. I want you to tell me everything, and listen to what I have to say. I want you to trust me. I want you to trust all of us.” Her voice went low and urgent. “You’ve got to stop making decisions for other people. And you’ve got to let us be your teammates. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to figure out how to fix this. As a team.”

  “There’s no way to fix it,” he said harshly.

  “You don’t know that for sure. Lucius might be able to find something in the library, or one of the others might have an idea.” She tugged on their joined hands. “Come on. Let’s go tell them what happened.”

  But he stayed rooted. “I can’t.”

  She let go of his hand. “Can’t or won’t?”

  “I need time to think it through. An hour. Give me an hour to figure things out, so we can go in there together.”

  “So you can tell me what we decided, you mean.” Her smile was bitter. “That would’ve worked six months ago, but not anymore. You don’t get to be the leader of a team within a team anymore. You either come out there with me now or I go on my own.” And with that, her request became an ultimatum. Come with me now, or don’t bother coming out at all.

  “Fifteen minutes.” Pressure vised his temples, pounded behind his eyeballs, but he couldn’t give her what she wanted. And he didn’t know why.

  He glimpsed tears as she turned away and pushed open the door. With her back to him, she said, “Woody once told me that it was impossible to change an eagle male, that I had to either learn to live with you the way you are or cut my losses.”

  She paused for a moment, giving him a chance.

  He opened his mouth to tell her not to go, to tell her that he would go out there with her, that he would try harder, but a surge of pain grayed his vision and took away the words. He put his face in his hands, digging his fingers in at his temples. Son of a bitch. He sensed, deep down inside, the moment that she gave up, the moment that she stepped through the door and let it swing shut behind her. But he couldn’t move. Nausea rose as the torchlight speared through him, gone suddenly far too bright.

  The headaches were getting worse, but why? What was—

  Oh, shit. He got it. He fucking got it.

  And the moment he did, the headache snapped out of existence.

  He didn’t wait around to enjoy the relief, though. He straight-armed the door and went after her. “Patience, wait!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Patience marched down the hallway outside the royal suite, intent on telling the others what she’d seen in the vision . . . and, in doing so, making a clean break. She hadn’t planned it that way, hadn’t consciously decided to issue an ultimatum, but it was long past due.

  Maybe he had a point that the timing was wrong, that they should table the personal stuff until after the solstice-eclipse. But, deep down inside, she didn’t believe that. The magic of a mated pair came, not just from the sex, but from the love they shared. Without that love, they were just exes who occasionally slept together.

  And oh, gods, how that thought hurt.

  “Wait,” his voice said from behind her. “Please.” Her heart thudded
and she told herself to keep going. Instead, she stopped and turned back, because she was weak when it came to him. Weak, weak, weak. She got even weaker when she saw the hint of gold in his eyes, the suppressed excitement that said he’d figured something out. Be strong, she told herself, not even sure she knew what that meant anymore, but sure she couldn’t keep going on the way things had been between them for so long.

  She lifted her chin. “What?”

  He closed the distance between them with long-legged strides and stopped opposite her, so they stood face-to-face very near the heavily carved sideboard that was one of the few pieces of furniture in the hallway.

  It was almost exactly where and how they had stood while he’d chewed her out for breaking into the royal suite six months earlier.

  “You’re right that it’s all connected. But not the way you mean.” He reached to take her hands, hesitated, and hooked his thumbs in his pockets instead. “We were right that our problems dated back to the talent ceremony, but we were wrong about why. My warrior’s talent wasn’t trying to screw things up between us. . . . It was trying to protect you.”

  It took a second. But then, like the last few pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle slipping into place, her perceptions realigned themselves, and she saw it. Of course. Understanding seared through her, paralyzing her. She couldn’t breathe.

  “The talent ceremony must have punched partway through Werigo’s spell.” He paused, his voice going rough. “My subconscious knew I was cursed, and that I had to drive you away, but my conscious self didn’t know why. All I knew was that I was making you miserable and I didn’t know how to stop. And when I tried to fix things, it felt like my head was ripping itself apart.”

  “And now?” Her mouth had gone suddenly dry.

  “The second I figured it out, the headache quit. I know what’s going on now, so my protective instincts don’t need to clash with my wanting to be with you.”

  “Gods,” she whispered.

  “Everything’s going to be different from now on. I promise.” He held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s go brief the others. You’re right—we need to work together to come up with a plan.”

  But as she took his hand and let him tug her into his arms, let herself rest her cheek on his shoulder for a moment, part of her held itself away. She had spent a long time telling herself that everything would be okay if they could figure out what had gone wrong, and how to fix it. Instead, things were more complicated than ever. And she wasn’t sure she trusted any of it.

  Tired and sad, Patience mostly sat back and listened while Brandt brought the others up to speed. That was, until Lucius asked Brandt to draw the mark he’d cut out of his leg, and he sketched out a glyph that was reminiscent of a sailboat on the ocean, with seagulls flocking around the mast, all contained within a round-cornered square.

  The air went thin in her lungs and the low-grade nausea in the pit of her stomach kicked up several notches. She leaned in, touched the picture. “Akbal.”

  “What?”

  “It’s the name of the glyph,” Lucius said. “Akbal. It symbolizes the third day of the everyday calendar of the ancients. Literally translated, it means ‘darkness, ’ because it was associated with . . .” He trailed off, then finished, “Eclipses. Okay. That’s relevant.” He looked at Patience. “It means something to you?”

  “Akbal is the Abyss card.” She paused. “I told you guys how I almost always pull the Mother card, Imix, when I’m putting myself in the light position of a spread. Well, when the card representing me is in the shadow position, I almost always pull Akbal. Its negative aspects are issues of internalization, poor self-image, depression, and fear of change.” She had to remind herself to breathe, as if her body had suddenly forgotten how. “I guess I was destined to be the third sacrifice all along, huh? And I guess we know when it’s supposed to happen.”

  She kept her voice steady, but her thoughts spun with an inner litany. Oh, gods. Why me? Why now? Why like this? She had thought she was through with the tears, all cried out for the day. She was wrong.

  The glyph symbolizing Brandt’s last sacrifice was the one that represented her shadow self.

  “Fuck that.” He surged to his feet. Once he was up, though, he didn’t go anywhere. He just glared down at her, eyes hard and wild. “I drew the glyph wrong. It’s something else.”

  She shook her head. Swiping at her cheeks and trying to breathe past the churning fear to find her warrior’s strength, she said, “Akbal fits too well. It’s connected to dark caves, obsidian, water, and access to dream worlds and memories, all of which symbolize your visions and what we’ve been through over the past few days. What’s more, pulling the card is a call to step into the unknown . . . or the afterlife.”

  “I won’t do it,” he said flatly.

  “I don’t want you to. But we can’t let Cabrakan get loose.” She stood and faced him, refusing to let her legs shake. “You saw those pictures. You heard the numbers. Ten thousand people died in the Mexico City earthquake, and that was a year after the massacre sealed the barrier. How much worse will it be with the barrier wide-open? What’s more, the miniquakes haven’t just been confined to Mexico.” She paused, fear tightening her throat. “He could hit anywhere in the world. Anywhere.”

  Anywhere . . . as in where the twins and winikin were hidden. And she wouldn’t even know they were gone.

  A muscle pulsed at the side of his jaw. “We’ll go somewhere safe, dig in, and hide. That’s what we should’ve done in the first place.” He cut a steely look at Strike. “Sometimes a man has to put the woman he loves above the writs.”

  The king didn’t say anything. But he didn’t order Brandt to retake the oath either.

  Heart aching, Patience took his hand, not caring that they were laying things out in public this time, where before they had always tried to keep a layer of privacy intact. “Once upon a time, I would’ve given anything to hear you say that.”

  His gold-flecked eyes radiated raw pain. “But not anymore?”

  “It still matters. But running away isn’t an option, and you know it. Cabrakan is going to come after the Nightkeepers. Even if we hide, he’ll find us.” She turned their joined hands so their marks faced the sky. “He’ll be able to track us the same way the boluntiku tracked our families.”

  He looked away. “I fucking hate this.”

  “Finally, something we agree on.”

  “Shit.” He let out a long, drawn-out sigh and let his forehead rest on hers. “This sucks.”

  They stood there for a moment, leaning into each other while their teammates watched in silence.

  Finally, Strike said, “Okay, you two. Go get something to eat, and take a few hours of downtime. If you’re not ready to crash yet, you will be soon.”

  She was dully surprised to realize that it had grown dark out.

  “Want me to pull something together for you?” Sasha offered. In her previous life out in the human world, she had been a highly trained chef.

  Patience grinned humorlessly. “Normally I’d be all over that offer. But it feels a little too last-mealish right now. Maybe tomorrow, okay? Or, even better, next week. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “Come on.” Brandt pulled Patience away from the group. But instead of heading straight for their suite, he detoured them to the main kitchen. At her sidelong look, he said, “Don’t know about you, but I’m starving. And I’d like some privacy.”

  But where for so long when he’d said “privacy,” he’d really meant “time alone,” now he meant “time alone with you.”

  Swallowing against the sudden press of emotion, she nodded. Together, they raided Jox’s supplies for enough food to fix a simple meal of the sort they had cooked together back in Pittsburgh, in the pretty starter house with the chrome toaster and Formica countertops. She was aware that the meeting continued on in their absence, with Strike and Leah discussing contingencies for the solstice-eclipse, while Lucius and Jade conferred wi
th Rabbit about something that lit the younger man’s expression with a wary hope that was mirrored in Myrinne’s face.

  But although she was aware of those things, she was also very aware of Brandt, and the way he moved around the kitchen and nearby storeroom and walk-in cooler, juggling the veggies and packaged chicken breasts she’d handed him while cruising the small wine selection and picking a chardonnay.

  A small bubble of privacy seemed to separate them from the others, just like it used to out in the outside world, when—especially before they had Harry and Braden—they had often shopped like this, not even really talking about what they were going to make, partly because they were letting it evolve from their choices, and partly because they had been so in tune that they hadn’t needed the words. They might not have recognized it as magic back then, but it had certainly been magical.

  Now that same sense of simpatico bound them together as they finished “shopping” and headed for their suite.

  Was it love? She wasn’t sure anymore what that felt like. But for the first time in a long, long time, she didn’t feel a pinch of grief when she opened the door. Instead, there was building anticipation.

  As they cooked, they shared a glass of wine a sip at a time. The suite’s kitchen nook was a tiny space, but instead of that being an irritation as they bumped into each other, it increased the sense of intimacy that grew as they traded off the wineglass, or reached around each other for ingredients and utensils. As they built a meal of chicken stir-fry, fresh vegetables, tortillas, and cool garnishes of the guac and sour cream variety, they traded “remember-whens” about the boys, making them seem very near.

  When the food was ready, she carried their plates to the dining table, which hadn’t been used for anything but clutter since Harry, Braden, and the winikin had moved away. Brandt had cleared it off and set two places, complete with candles. As she set down the plates, she saw that he’d added an off-center center-piece: a framed photo he had taken of Harry, Braden, Hannah, and Woody all working on one of the Lego fortresses that had been the boys’ shared passion—Harry’s because of the engineering involved in building them, Braden’s because of the fun in knocking them down.