Blood Spells

by Jessica Andersen

  When the download ended, Strike blinked at Rabbit for a few seconds. Then his features flooded with a rage so profound that Rabbit flinched away from him, ducking a little.

  Strike’s voice went deadly cold. “I’m not going to punch you out. I’m tempted as all hell, but I want you awake for this . . . and I want you to remember, every fucking second, that whatever happened in that village was your fault.”

  “Hey!” Myrinne got right in his face, eyes flashing. “Back off. He was trying to do the right thing.”

  “Oh? And what’s your excuse?” But then Strike held up a hand. “Fuck it. Later.” Refocusing on Rabbit, he grated, “That dream punched through the compound’s wards, but it wasn’t Iago sending it. How could you see all that through the old man’s eyes?”

  “How can I do half of what I do?” Rabbit said, voice raw. “I’m a freak.” His stomach churned on a sharp-edged mix of grief and anger, coated over with a huge, crushing load of guilt—because, godsdamn it, Strike was right. Iago must’ve found out about the village from being inside his head. But why bother to send the makol? There hadn’t been anything in the village worth the effort.

  Unless there had been, and he’d missed it.

  Shit. Making himself meet Strike’s glare, he said, “Are we going or not?”

  “We’re going. Let’s hope to hell it was just a nightmare.” But Strike’s expression suggested that he didn’t think they were going to get so lucky.

  Rabbit didn’t hold out much hope either.

  “It could be a trap,” Michael pointed out. “We can’t be the only ones thinking in terms of using something—or someone—as bait.”

  “Then we spring the trap,” Strike said, expression grim. “And we give Iago hell.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Oc Ajal, Mexico

  It wasn’t a trap. In fact, by the time the Nightkeepers ’ported in, wearing full battle gear and armed to the teeth, there was no sign of the makol. But it wasn’t a false alarm either.

  The village didn’t just look as bad as Rabbit had feared; it looked worse.

  All but two of the pole buildings had collapsed to smoldering cinders of wood and flesh, and the stench of charred meat permeated the air. The village was silent save for the sputter of smoke and ash. Even the surrounding forest seemed to have been struck dumb by the slaughter. And there, in the center of it all, Saamal lay splayed out in the fire pit with his hands and feet weighted by millstones, his head lolling on one of the large rocks that had probably been used for seating, and his chest laid open, ghastly and broken-ribbed where the makol leader had ripped out his heart.

  Myrinne made a sound of distress and moved closer to Rabbit’s side. Strike hadn’t suggested leaving her behind; he was punishing both of them.

  Michael, Sasha, and Sven moved off to secure the perimeter and search the forest, while Patience, Brandt, Lucius, Leah, and Jade headed off to search the few buildings that remained intact.

  Strike started toward Saamal’s body, gesturing to Rabbit and Myrinne without looking at them. “Come on.”

  Rabbit wished he could overload to numbness, as he had done when he’d stumbled over his father’s body lying in the tunnels beneath Chichén Itzá. Instead, he remained painfully aware of the sound of Myrinne’s quiet sniffles, and the heavy weight of grief and guilt that pressed on him, making it hard to breathe.

  Breathing got even more difficult when they got close enough to the corpse to catch the stink of blood, entrails, and fear. The funk made Rabbit’s skin itch. Flies had found the corpse; the rattle of their wings sounded like—Shit.

  “Stay back,” he snapped. “The body is covered with dark magic.”

  Strike, who had been reaching out to close the elder’s half-mast eyes in a gesture of respect, yanked his hand back, then scowled. “I don’t feel anything.”

  For that matter, Rabbit hadn’t caught on until he was practically on top of the corpse. Concentrating on the faint rattle, he stretched out his hand to probe the spell. “It’s not the same as the stuff Iago uses,” he said after a moment. “It’s . . . I don’t know. Softer, maybe. More passive.”

  “I thought Lucius said the thing on your head was supposed to block hellmagic.”

  Startled by the reminder, Rabbit touched the circlet Lucius had given him just before they all left Skywatch. He’d forgotten he was wearing it, largely because the moment he’d put it on, light magic had flared and the stone had gone fluid and soft. When the magic faded, the crown had become a thin, flexible strand that was shaped perfectly for his skull and lay almost invisibly along his buzzed-down hairline.

  “He said the circlet blocks mind-bending at a distance,” he said. “I can use my other talents, but Iago can’t get through to me as long as I’m wearing it.”

  “We hope.”

  “Yeah.” Rabbit stared down at the corpse. I’m so fucking sorry, he thought. I didn’t mean . . . Shit, this was no time for excuses. It was time to respect the dead. And, gods willing, avenge them.

  The elder’s face was slack, his skin gray. But there was something strange about the body’s waxy stillness. Who had he been, really? He had denied using dark magic, but he had put himself inside Rabbit’s mind despite the protective wards around Skywatch, and now his corpse was enshrouded in power.

  A quiver ran through Rabbit. Had the elder somehow left him a message using the dark magic?

  “I need to take a closer look at the spell,” he said into the strained silence that surrounded the grisly scene.

  He halfway expected the king to no-fucking-way him. But Strike just looked at him for a moment, expression unreadable. Then he nodded. “Go ahead. But be careful, and pull the hell out if it feels wrong.”

  “Will do.” He glanced at Myrinne. “You’ll keep an eye on me?”

  She smiled crookedly. “Always.”

  But Rabbit didn’t tap into the strange-feeling dark magic right away. Instead, he took a deep breath and faced Strike squarely. “We were wrong to go behind your back, and we’re going to have to live with the consequences of that. But you’re wrong to put the rest of it on us. Iago sent the soldiers. He’s the enemy. Not Myrinne and me.”

  A muscle pulsed at the corner of Strike’s jaw, but he said only, “You went looking for Xibalban magic in the highlands. You found it. Now fucking do something useful with it.”

  Raw, hurting anger flared deep in Rabbit’s gut, but instead of lashing out, he tamped it down, nodded stiffly. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  Taking a deep breath, he centered himself, making sure his magic was turned inward rather than outward, and he wouldn’t accidentally open the hell-link. Then he stretched out his hand and laid it flat on the outer edge of the dark magic that surrounded the elder.

  Power, brownish and faintly greasy, prickled along his skin and rattled through his body . . . but it didn’t invade him, didn’t force its way inside and try to take over. It was just . . . magic.

  Letting his mind sink into the spell, he followed the power flow as it encircled Saamal’s body and swirled down into the open chest cavity, where it pooled, pulsing in an asynchronous rhythm.

  Rabbit let his hand follow the path his mind had taken, skimming along the old man’s outstretched limbs, over his face, and finally to the place where his heart had been. When he touched the pulsing, discordant knot of power, it shuddered. And so did the body.

  More, for a second he could’ve sworn he saw the ghostly image of Saamal, alive and well, standing beside it.

  “Fuck me. It moved!” Strike jerked Myrinne back a step and brought up his shield. The Nightkeeper magic sparked red-gold where it intersected with the dark-magic spell.

  Saamal’s body went limp as the dark magic drained away from the chest cavity, attracted by its opposite, dark to light, negative to positive.

  “Back off,” Rabbit snapped. “You’re messing with the balance, and I can handle the dark stuff.” What was more, he thought he knew what he was looking at, though not how the
elder had managed it.

  He was a little surprised when the king complied without argument, falling back and taking Myrinne with him. “Be careful,” Strike said in quiet warning. “Iago knows you inside and out, literally. This could be the trap.”

  Rabbit shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think the old man used the magic to tether his soul to his body after death.” If he concentrated, he could almost make out the ghost standing beside the corpse. “I think he sent the nightmare to summon me here, knowing I wear the hellmark but have no allegiance to Iago.”

  “If he had the chops for that level of magic, why didn’t he reveal himself when you were here before?” Strike pressed.

  “Beats the hell out of me.” He had a few suspicions, though, none of them good.

  With Strike out of range, the dark magic flowed back into its original pattern, and the power bundle in the old man’s chest cavity began pulsing again. But it was far weaker than it had been before, as if the encounter with the Nightkeeper magic had nullified part of the spell. This time when Rabbit touched the knotted dark magic, the corpse didn’t move.

  “There’s something going on here.” He described the power flow to Strike, the way it kept pulsing in Saamal’s chest, unfocused and losing steam. “I think he died before he could finish the spell. If I could just—”

  “No fucking way,” Strike interrupted. “So far all I’ve heard here is a bunch of wishful thinking.”

  “You saw the body move.”

  “I need more than that before I let you use dark magic.”

  Trust me, Rabbit wanted to say, but didn’t, because he had a feeling he and Strike might’ve passed the point of no return on that front. But while he had betrayed Strike’s trust by not telling him about the visit to Oc Ajal, he’d done way worse to Saamal and the villagers.

  “You want proof? Fine. Keep your eyes on the left side of the body.” Fixing his attention on the barely perceptible ghost image, he sent what little dark magic he had left into the wavering shape. Nothing happened. Then, slowly, Saamal’s ghost became visible as a translucent shadow standing beside the open-chested corpse.

  “Holy. Shit.” Strike stared, jaw working. Then he nodded stiffly. “Okay. What do you need? You want an uplink?”

  “Not with you guys. I want Michael.” At the king’s sharp look, Rabbit turned up his palms in a “What the hell else can I do?” gesture. “I need dark magic, not light, and he’s the only one who comes close. Lucius said the old rituals used to split the muk into its dark and light halves, right? Well, I’ve got both bloodlines in me, and I wear both marks. I might be able to take Michael’s magic, divide it into light and dark, and funnel the dark half into Saamal.”

  “Might be,” Strike repeated ominously.

  Rabbit met his eyes and did something he almost never did. He said, “Please.”

  The king stayed silent for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Fine. We’ll try it.” He got on the radio and recalled the entire team, his body language stiff and annoyed.

  While they waited for the others, Rabbit met Myrinne’s eyes. She gave him a covert thumbs-up and the special smile she reserved just for him, which smoothed out some of the nerves that were digging into him harder by the minute. He sent her a wink of thanks. And as the others converged, he said a small, directionless prayer: Please, gods, don’t let this be a trap.

  He didn’t think it was, but Iago knew him too well. Better, it seemed some days, than he knew himself.

  “I need a ten-foot radius,” he said. “Except for Michael. I need you in here.” Quickly, Rabbit explained what was going on, and what he was going to try. As he did, Saamal’s ghost faded entirely; he hoped to hell it wasn’t all the way gone. When Michael came up beside him, he said, “I need you to boost me with the smallest trickle of muk you can manage.” Which was a little like trying to plug a reading light into a nuclear power plant—it might work . . . or it might blow the lamp right the fuck up. And he was the lamp.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Yes.” No.

  At a nod of agreement from Strike, Michael moved around behind Rabbit and gripped his shoulders, the way he did when he balanced Sasha’s chu’ul magic. “You ready?”

  Rabbit nodded. “Bring it.”

  Michael brought it, all right. Silver power slammed into Rabbit, searing from his shoulders to the ends of his fingers and toes and back again. Pain ripped through him and he hissed out a breath.

  “Too much?” Michael asked, his voice rocky with the effort of squelching the power to a thin trickle.

  “I’ll deal.” After the first sledgehammer blow the pain leveled off, then warmed to something closer to pleasure. Magic twined through Rabbit, the silver becoming braided strands of brown and red-gold, dark and light magic intertwined. “Okay,” he breathed, peripherally aware that the others were fixated on him, waiting for him to do something amazing.

  Well, he was godsdamned well trying.

  Slowly at first, and then with growing confidence, he separated the strands with fingers of thought; he sent the light magic into the back of his brain, where his Nightkeeper talents resided. Then he put his hand once more inside Saamal’s open chest cavity, where his heart should have been, and channeled the dark magic to that point.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the dark power curled around his hand, taking the shape of his fist and becoming almost tangible. Within the bundled magic, he felt a flutter. A pulse. Another.

  The throbbing gained in rhythm and intensity as he channeled more dark magic into Saamal. He could almost hear the pulses become a twofold beat: lub dub, lub dub. It was fucking working.

  What was more, the ghost became visible once more as a dark shadow beside the body. And, as Rabbit continued to feed the dark magic into the half-finished spell, the ghostly image started drifting down to align with the corpse.

  “Come on, old man,” he said under his breath. “You must’ve stuck around for a reason.”

  “Ho-ly shit,” Patience whispered from the other side of the fire pit, where she and Brandt stood shoulder to shoulder.

  There was enough of his old crush left that he got a buzz off her gasp. But in the split second he was distracted, the magic built inside him too quickly, threatening his control. A shimmer of red-gold magic leaked through the connection, making the ghost writhe with a soundless scream.

  “Shit!” Rabbit yanked back the light magic and tried to send it toward his talents, but his usual reserves were already beyond full.

  “Let off some steam,” Michael warned in a low voice. “You’ve got to keep the balance between light and dark.”

  “Right.” He couldn’t pour dark magic into the elder without bleeding off an equal amount of light magic. But where was he supposed to put it?

  Fire, came the immediate instinctual answer. Light this place up in a pyre that all the gods will see. But the thought brought a twist of nausea and the image of the pole buildings burning with people inside. Smoke clogged his throat and sinuses, smelling of charred flesh. No, he thought. Not fire. Too much had burned there already. With his mind-bending blocked by the circlet, he was left with his smallest talent, that of low-level telekinesis, but what—

  “Give it to me,” Jade said unexpectedly. When Lucius no-fucking-way’d her, she waved him off. “Hear me out. There’s a strange sort of pattern here, some sort of concealment spell. I can’t get a handle on it, though. I need a boost to get a better look.”

  Rabbit held out a hand. “Free magic,” he rasped. “Onetime offer, first come, first served.”

  At Strike’s nod, Jade moved forward. The moment she took his hand, Rabbit felt a huge rush of relief as the light magic left him and headed for her, and the painful pressure inside him eased.

  Then something strange happened: The air around them all took on a gleam of red-gold, then a hint of silver.

  “Jade?” Strike said in soft warning.

  “There’s a cloaking spell permeating the village,” she sa
id, voice tight with effort. “It’s not the normal sort of magic, but I think that I can reverse it if I just—” The light magic surged through Rabbit and then drained away to almost nothing as she leaned on their link. “There it is. I think if I . . .”

  A psychic shock wave rolled through Rabbit, and both the dark and light connections winked out of existence. Boom, gone. Like they had never been.

  “Jade, no!” he cried, but it was already too late. Whatever she had done, it had cut his connection to Saamal. He couldn’t sense the dark-magic spell anymore, couldn’t hear the lub-dub heartbeat that had been going strong only moments before.

  But something was happening.

  “What the hell?” Michael breathed, staring out into the forests, where a shimmer of magic moved in the distance, working its way around the village, spiraling inward.

  Rabbit turned to follow the movement, aware that the others were doing the same as the incandescence became more visible, skipping from one place to another, getting closer.

  “It’s coming from the bodies we found in the woods,” Sven said. He pointed ahead of the moving shimmer. “The next one is right about there.” Seconds later, magic flared near where he’d just indicated.

  After that, the spell—or whatever the hell it was—entered the village, hazing the air around the burned-out pole buildings where human remains were mixed with char. The magic moved one to the next, ever inward, until it reached the men lying near the central pole building and the woman with the blood-spattered grindstone. When the shimmer cleared, the woman was taller and paler, with honey-colored hair where it had been dark a second earlier. The men too were bigger and burlier, and had lighter hair.

  Before Rabbit could even begin to comprehend what he’d just seen, the shimmer coalesced around Saamal’s body. The air around the corpse shimmered and shifted, and then the body grew, its limbs and torso elongating with strange, Gumby-ish plasticity, then thickening with ropy layers of muscle gone soft with old-man flab. The elder’s face broadened and paled slightly, while the skin of his unmarked forearm darkened in a familiar pattern.