CHAPTER THREE
Anticipation vibrated
through Lucius as he guided Jade along the packed-dirt path to the
cottages. Clustered together, the cabins formed what he thought of
as a mage motel, relatively private, but cookie-cutter generic.
Just now, the other cottages were empty. He’d noticed it as the
dusk fell on the night of the new moon, and had guessed what the
Nightkeepers were up to, and why. The knowledge had sent him out
into the night to wait for Jade, because he’d wanted to approach
her on his terms this time. Before, he’d fallen too hard, too fast,
making the mistake of thinking yet again that the woman he was
panting after was on the same page as him,
relationship-wise.
Not this time,
though. This new and improved version of him wouldn’t make the
mistakes of his other, weaker incarnation.
He glanced over as
they walked. In the dim light coming from his cottage, her face was
a pale oval of smooth, pearlescent skin and features so perfect
they could have come from a Victorian cameo. The darkness robbed
her eyes of color, but his mind filled in the delicate sea-foam
green that matched so well with the sacred stone she was named
after. She was Nightkeeper-tall, only a few inches shorter than the
six-four he’d recently attained. But where Alexis, Patience, and
Sasha often moved with aggressive swaggers, Jade always seemed to
glide, serene and elegant and wholly feminine. Maybe it was because
she, like Anna, commanded a talent more cerebral than the warrior’s
magic, but the comparison ended there. Where Anna was reserved,
Jade was open and giving; where Anna wanted to escape her duty and
destiny, Jade wanted to be more than her bloodline role. And where
Anna stayed away, Jade had come back when the magi needed her. When
he needed her, though he hadn’t wanted
to admit it, or make the call.
Her straight, dark
hair was longer than it had been before, an empirical reminder of
the five, almost six months that had elapsed since he’d last seen
her. But he had needed the time to put himself back together on his
own terms. He hadn’t wanted to be her patient, didn’t want her to
see him the way she did her old clients, with a mixture of empathy
and secret inner horror. He’d wanted to be stronger than that,
tougher. He’d worked out, hour after hour, forcing himself through
increasingly punishing routines as he fought to reclaim his body
from the weakness that had plagued him in the wake of the
makol’s exorcism. In doing so, it
seemed that he’d triggered something else, something that had made
him progressively bigger and stronger. Magic, she’d said, and she was probably right; he’d
discussed that possibility with Strike and the others as they had
tried to figure out how to unlock the Prophet’s powers. But the
question remained: If he’d internalized a connection to the psi
barrier that powered the Nightkeepers’ magic, thereby gaining some
of their physical traits, why the hell couldn’t he connect to the
damned library? He was perfect for the job; what Mayanist wouldn’t
give his right nut to get his hands on an artifact cache of the
library’s reputed scope? More, he knew how to read the glyphs and
interpret the inscriptions, knew what the Nightkeepers needed. He
just had to get into the pocket of the barrier where the library
had been hidden . . . but so far that had been a big-ass
fail.
He’d shed blood onto
the Nightkeepers’ sacred altar and the First Father’s tomb. He’d
prayed to gods deafened by the skyroad’s destruction. He’d
attempted to uplink with Strike and the others during the spring
equinox. Hell, he’d even whacked off onto the damned altar—all that
had gained him was an unceremonial mess. It didn’t take a rocket
scientist to figure that the next step was Jade. He’d been making
plans to go after her, but the royal council had beaten him to it.
And as he’d stood in the shadows, eavesdropping, he’d known he
wasn’t going to turn her away. He was going to love her as he
should have done before—with pleasure and without strings. And,
gods willing, he’d find his way to the magic that had become his
through accident rather than bloodline destiny.
The man he’d been
before would’ve paused at the cottage door to make sure she hadn’t
changed her mind on the short walk. The man he’d become shouldered
the door open, tugged her through, and kicked the panel closed
behind them.
His living space
began with a small kitchen that was neat and organized-looking,
more because he ate up at the mansion than because he was either
neat or organized. Not pausing there, he led her to the room
beyond: a decent-size TV room that was more his style—or lack
thereof. The upholstered sofa and chairs, the glossy coffee and end
tables, and the kitschy retro Western lamps had been there when he
moved in, and were hell and gone more upscale than the hand-
me-downs and garage-sale specials of his shared student apartment
back at UT. But the leaning piles of books, the drifts of
note-scribbled printouts, and the oversize flat-screen jacked into
a high-powered laptop were all reminiscent of his student days. So,
too, was the image showing on-screen: an enlarged photo of a Late
Classic-period Mayan painting. Glorious and vivid, it caught Jade’s
attention immediately.
“Wow.” She let go of
him, moved to the TV, and raised a hand to trace the stylized
figures of six men arranged in an asymmetrical pattern, two on the
left, four on the right. All done in profile, as was the Mayan
tradition, they faced a dark sphere that was set off center on the
panel. The man closest to it was kneeling in supplication, while
four of the others stood near him in postures of protection, or
maybe aggression. Those five wore elaborate, feather-worked
headdresses made from the skulls of jaguars and coyotes, along with
protective shielding that covered only one side of their bodies.
There was even more asymmetry in the painting itself, created by
the sixth figure, who stood at the far right, apart from the
others. Wearing a musician’s loincloth and lacking a headdress, he
held a conch shell to his lips. Glyphs emerged from the crude
instrument as though they were musical notes, though no such scheme
had been identified for the ancient Maya—or, for that matter, the
ancient Nightkeepers. The paint colors ranged from pale mauve
through rusty red to charcoal black. The earthy hues reflected on
Jade’s face as she frowned at the text, trying to parse out the
glyphs.
Lucius shook his
head. “Don’t bother; the writing doesn’t make any sense. The
current theory is that the artist was illiterate, and just copied a
bunch of cool-looking glyphs off nearby inscriptions or whatever
else he had on hand. It’s just gibberish.” He didn’t say why he’d
been studying the painting, why it was important to
him.
Under other
circumstances, with another woman, talking translation would’ve
spoiled the mood. With Jade, though, it served only to heighten the
sense of intimacy provided by the small, quiet cottage and the rust
red light. They shared a love of language, and although he couldn’t
honestly say he was more attracted to her brains than her body, the
two together had made a hell of an impression when he’d first met
her. Or rather, once he’d gotten past her habitual reserve, which
came across as shyness, but he’d learned was her way of hiding in
plain sight. He’d long ago realized that they each suffered from
their own cultural conditioning, though hers had come from a
too-demanding winikin and a set of
writs rather than family dysfunction.
“There’s something .
. .” She trailed off, still frowning at the glyphs, but then she
shook her head and turned back to him, her expression going from
intrigue to warmth with a hint of nerves. “Never mind. That’s not
what we’re here for.”
“True enough,” Lucius
agreed, trying to keep it casual, because she’d made it clear that
was what she wanted. But at the same time this wasn’t just about
sex for either of them. There was a far larger goal, one that hung
over them, weighing on him as it had for nearly half a year now,
though now edged with a sharp sense of anticipation. Determination.
He was getting his ass into the library, whatever it took. And if
that meant that the Nightkeepers’ needs and his own desire to be
part of things wound up getting mixed together with the desire he
felt for Jade—had felt for her from the first day they’d worked
together—then that was part of the Nightkeepers’ culture, wasn’t
it? Sex was magic, magic was power, and power could save the
world.
Reaching out to Jade,
he recaptured her hand. Satisfaction kicked through him as his
fingers enfolded hers, locking on with easy strength. Rather than
growing awkward as his body had increased in size and mass, he’d
lost the sprawling clumsiness that had plagued him his entire life.
It was as though his brain and synapses had been designed all along
for this larger body, and hadn’t known how to tone it down for the
scrawny, too-tall beanpole he’d been. Tightening his fingers on
hers, he tipped his head toward the other side of the TV room,
where a short hallway branched off. “The bedroom’s this
way.”
But she tugged him
back toward her, lips curving when their bodies bumped. “Let’s stay
right here.” She nodded to the screen. “I want it to be like it was
before, only better.”
In a flash, he
remembered being with her in the inner, most secure room of the
three- room archive buried deep within the mansion. He remembered
kissing her almost desperately, thrusting into her against the
backdrop of the ancient writs, which were displayed in flat cases
on three sides of the tiny room, with their elaborate glyphwork and
painted illuminations highlighted by museum- quality lighting. Back
then, he’d been fighting time, fighting the lure of the
makol and the song of dark magic in the
air. Now he was fighting to gain the power that was his by right of
spell and sacrifice. In that, he realized, the ancient backdrop was
a fitting one. “Right here,” he agreed, drawing her into
him.
She looped her arms
around his neck, using the leverage to draw herself up his body,
onto her tiptoes. “Right now,” she whispered against his
mouth.
He kissed her,
feeling the play of lips and tongues in a way he never had before,
as though his neurons had changed along with the rest of him,
becoming more sensitive, more ready to fire the signals of sex.
Heat arced across the point of contact with an almost physical
force, jolting through him, lighting him up. He’d been hard since
before they’d even kissed out by the training hall, but now he
filled to bursting, straining uncomfortably in his jeans. He slid
his arms around her, caught her up against his body, and was
acutely aware that she might be tall, but she was delicate and fine
boned, and so much smaller than he’d become. Fierce protectiveness
welled up inside him, an unexpected surge of emotion he squelched
before it could begin, reminding himself of the rules she’d set
before, the ones he needed now.
Jade broke the kiss,
breathing lightly, her body seeming to vibrate against his. “Do you
feel that? Do you feel the magic?”
“Maybe.” He wasn’t
sure he’d recognize Nightkeeper power if it ran him over doing
eighty-five in a forty zone. He’d heard the thoughts of the demon
that had possessed him, the one he’d named Cizin. Flatulent one. The makol’s foul, angry temper had echoed inside him,
becoming his own. Marking him. He knew he would instantly recognize
the awful pressure of possession if the Banol
Kax ever sought him again. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt
true magic, not the way the Nightkeepers meant it. Even when he had
lain on the floor of Iago’s giant volcanic cave, bleeding out onto
the stone while the Nightkeepers crowded around him and enacted the
Prophet’s spell, he couldn’t say he’d felt the magic. He’d felt
inner chaos and the soul-deep agony of Cizin being ripped out of
him, but he couldn’t have pointed to any part of the spell casting
and said, That’s magic. He was only
human, after all.
“There’s magic here,”
Jade whispered against his lips. “Trust me.”
In answer, he kissed
her again. He didn’t want to think about trust or power, not
really; he wanted to think about the woman in his arms, who would
be his first lover in this new body. He wanted to touch her, shape
her with hands that spread wider than they had before, registering
the soft curves with fingers that seemed to have gotten
exponentially more sensitive as the other parts of him had grown
and changed. He kissed her, caressed her, learning her body and
letting her get used to his, even as he
was getting used to the newly acute bite of heat, the powerful
thunder of the blood surging through his veins, impelled by the
beat of a heart he instinctively knew was stronger than
before.
Murmuring
appreciation, Jade slipped her delicately capable hands beneath his
tee and ran them up his back, skin-on-skin with an inciting scrape
of fingernail. He groaned as an answering avalanche of lust swept
into his system, bringing an unexpected and unwanted slash of raw
aggression. In the next instant, nothing existed but his need to
take her, to wrap her around him, to put her up against the nearest
wall and pound into her, lose himself in her. Mine, the heat said, branding the possessive howl
across his consciousness.
His mind jerked back
but his body leaned in instead, inviting her maddening touch.
Unnerved to be suddenly teetering at the edge of his hard-won
control, he broke the kiss and smoothed his hands down her body and
back up again, soothing himself more than her. Hold it together, he told himself. Don’t lose your shit. Before, he’d let himself be
taken over, used. He didn’t intend to let that happen again,
whether by makol, desire, or power. Not
ever.
Needing a moment, he
released her to turn and snag the quilt he’d left tossed over the
back of the couch, having dragged it in from the bedroom one night
when he’d been working on a series of translations, unable to
sleep. Done in masculine shades of rust, brown, and cream, the
quilt’s color scheme mimicked the hues on the TV screen. Shoving
aside the coffee table with his foot, he spread the comforter on
the thick carpeting and swept a bunch of pillows off the sofa onto
the quilt, creating a layer softer even than the padded
wall-to-wall carpeting beneath, a comfortable nest in the wide-
open space of the floor rather than the close confines of a
too-soft couch that occasionally made him feel trapped even when he
was sitting there alone.
Unable to bear the
constricting chafe of his tee, he shucked off his shirt over his
head and tossed it aside. He was acutely aware of Jade watching
him, taking in the sight of muscles where there hadn’t been any
before. He was grateful that she didn’t seem to linger on the
heavy, gnarled scar that ran across his stomach, just below his
ribs. Maybe, like him, she didn’t care to remember the day he’d
almost died . . . and had been reborn instead. He’d taken the pain
and the smell of his own blood pumping from his slashed throat, the
grotesque panic of seeing his heart on the outside of his chest
cavity, connected to him by a few thin threads of vessel and
fascia—and he’d locked those memories deep inside, away from the
things that mattered. He hoped she could do the same, hoped she
already had. And yes, he hoped she cared enough to need to lock
those things away. Just because they were distilling sex to mutual
pleasure didn’t mean he didn’t care deeply for her. It was just
that he’d finally grown up—and out—to the point that he got what
she’d been trying to explain before: that not every sexual
relationship had to be aiming for more. Sometimes it was just about
friendship and sex. And in this case, there were also the issues of
their summoning sex magic and getting his ass into the library.
Gods willing.
Blood humming,
feeling back in control, he toed off his sandals, dropped to the
makeshift bed, and stretched out on his side, head propped up on
one hand. Looking up at her, he patted the wide empty space beside
him. “You want to at least get horizontal this time?”
He meant as opposed
to their rushed coupling in the archive, when they’d stayed
partially dressed and gone at it hard, starting up against the wall
and finishing on one of the study tables in the inner sanctum. But
they both knew that he was also saying, Last
chance . . . you going to go through with this or
not?
Jade stared at the
bare skin of Lucius’s torso, where hard muscles glowed with
burnished highlights in the reddish brown light. Shirtless and
barefoot, wearing only his jeans and an I-dare-you gleam in his
eyes, he looked like something out of the pages of Cosmo. His caption might have read, Ways to let him please you, or some such nonsense
that implied the article was aimed at female self-actualization,
but the subheading would’ve been a thin lipstick gloss over the
simple fact that sex sells, the hotter, the better. Hell, yes, I’m going through
with it, she thought, wetting her lips and seeing his eyes
darken in the rusty light. Dipping into the pocket of her jeans,
she touched the earpiece Strike had given her, partly to make sure
it was toggled off, partly to reassure herself it was there, just
in case. Because even if Lucius couldn’t feel the magic, it crowded
thick and warm around her, seeming expectant, the calm before the
storm.
Yes, there was magic
in the air. She only hoped her reserves would be enough to
jump-start the Prophet’s powers. But if Lucius could grow into the
jock’s body he’d always wanted, then she should be able to grow
into the power she craved. And if that wish bumped up against the
knowledge that people didn’t really change, she ignored the
disparity to focus on the moment, and the man watching her with an
intensity that brought heat to her skin and tension coiling deep
inside her.
Entirely conscious of
his eyes on her, imagining herself silhouetted against the fiercely
elegant painting projected on the big screen behind her, she caught
the hem of her floaty green shirt in both hands, gave a little
shimmy as she skimmed it up and over her head, then stretched
sinuously to let the garment fall beside his discarded tee. Leaving
her soft, lace-edged bra—the same jewel green as the shirt—in place
because it made her feel wholly feminine, she toed off her sneakers
and socks into a small pile. The cool air tightened her skin,
though the blood pumping through her veins still sizzled with
desire.
He was wholly focused
on her, hot for her. The knowledge added an extra wiggle to her
walk as she crossed the short distance to where he lay waiting for
her. She lowered herself to the comforter, coming down on her knees
with the thought of touching him, enticing him, letting the hum of
magic lead the way. The moment she knelt, though, he reached out
and snagged her wrist, overbalancing her and then rising up to
cover her body with his own. She gasped, her senses revving to
flash point as he pressed into her, the sensation of skin on skin
heightened by the chafe of their remaining clothes. He caught her
other wrist, bracketing her hands together in one of his, holding
them captive above her head in the pillows. Nearly helpless in the
face of the heat that speared to her core at the move, Jade gave
herself up to his kiss.
She was peripherally
aware that the bedding carried his scent, bringing some of the
intimacy she’d hoped to avoid by keeping them out in the main room,
with its glowing scene of ritual and magic as a pointed reminder of
their goal. But she wasn’t thinking of ritual or magic as she
dragged her fingernails lightly down his sides, then stroked his
ass, his hips, and the long columns of the thighs that lay
alongside hers, slightly bent to take some of his weight. As she
did so, he shifted, moving the line of his kisses from her mouth to
her jaw, her throat, all the while touching her breasts through the
thin fabric of her bra, stroking her, bringing her nipples to twin
peaks beneath the lace, then popping the clasp of the bra and
tugging the wisp of fabric away, baring her breasts. She arched
into him on a gasp when he touched her next; she wasn’t heavily
endowed, but she was exquisitely sensitive there.
As though her soft
cry had broken through whatever small restraint had kept him in
check up to that point, he growled something in his new, rasping
voice, and plunged into the next kiss, letting go of her wrists and
dragging his hands down her body in a rough, inciting stroke. He
used his tongue, teeth, and hands on her with ruthless intent and
an edge of anger that demanded a response. Barely breaking the
kiss, he stripped her out of the rest of her clothes with impatient
movements, then came back to cover her naked body with his own, his
jeans making an arousing contrast against her skin.
Lust slammed through
Jade, revving her system from zero to holy
shit in two seconds flat. Gods,
she thought, latching her fingernails onto the solid muscle on
either side of his spine as he rolled fully atop her and pressed
her into the piled bedding, making her even more aware of the feel
of him, the scent and taste of him, the fact of him. Moaning as the world went white-hot
behind her eyelids, she clung, knowing that this was what she’d
wanted, what she’d come back for. Not just the chance to make a
difference, but to feel the burn of lust and chemical combustion
she’d found with him before. More, this time there was no
makol, no one-sided hopes or
expectations of more than she was willing to give; there was only
the plunge and surge of raw, unabashed sex, and the buzzing hum of
magic. The heady flow of power swirled around them, inside her.
Urgent yet formless, the energy made her feel that her low- level
skills were straining toward an unknown destination . . . and
falling short.
A hollow kick of
disappointment threatened to break through the sensual spell when
she realized it wasn’t working, that she was too weak—or Lucius too
human—to force the gathered magic to detonate. But then he slid a
hand between them to touch the place where their thighs twined
together, and the sensation of his strong fingers rhythmically
stroking her core blotted out all other thought or
logic.
Arching into his
touch, she grazed his earlobe with her teeth, making him groan,
then whispered hot incitements until he shuddered against her. Her
inner muscles locked around the long fingers he slid inside her;
she surged against him as he set a hard, fast rhythm, then mimicked
it in a deep kiss until an orgasm rolled through her, shattering
her remaining thoughts in a wash of sensation. She came hard and
fast, fisting around him with a long, wordless cry as the whiplash
pressure released only to quickly recoil within her, tightening her
to a waiting, wanting knot that demanded more than his fingers and
his kiss.
Gods, she thought. Just . . .
gods.
Growling something
under his breath, Lucius rolled aside. She heard the slide of cloth
as he shucked off his jeans and briefs in a single impatient yank.
Before she could gather herself to look at him, fully naked in the
reflected light, he rolled back to her, covered her with his body,
and kissed her long and hard. Between the disease resistance
inherent to the magi and the fact that they were all using
contraceptive spells now, this close to the end-time, there was no
need for a condom, and skin on skin was glorious contact, an erotic
contrast between his skin and hers, his body and hers. When she
wrapped her legs around him wantonly, wonderfully, he reached to
position his hard cock at her opening . . . and slid
home.
Jade’s vision dimmed
as all of her senses turned suddenly inward, concentrating on the
feelings that sparked as he stretched her, filled her, invaded her,
possessed her. His first thrust set off a chain reaction within
her; heat slammed into greed, which banged up against a kernel of
fear, not of him, but of being weak, of failing. She didn’t even
know anymore what she was afraid of failing at, knew only that she
existed to hold on to him as he surged into her on powerful thrusts
that he counteracted with the iron grip he kept on her body,
holding her in place as he took her with more lust than finesse,
seeming driven beyond himself, beyond them both, by the chemistry
they’d shared from the first.
Heat rocketed through
her as she clung to him, dug into him, and tried to give as good as
she was getting, counterpointing his movements with her own to
create heady, insane friction. Air hissed between his teeth in a
word that might have been a curse, might have been her name, as he
drove into her again and again. Jade forced herself to keep
breathing, but oxygen did little to cut the spinning that swept her
up and threatened to take her over before she was ready to go.
Fighting the raw, edgy pleasure that seemed certain to push her
over to the other side of an orgasm that loomed large on the
horizon of her senses, she bit his sweat-dampened shoulder. When he
groaned harshly at the back of his throat, she turned her head to
whisper in his ear: “Come with me. I don’t want to leave you behind
this time.”
“Fuck.” He turned his
head, blindly sought her lips with his, and locked them together in
a hard, deep kiss as he surged against her, swelled within
her.
The added
pressure—and the raw intensity of the kiss—drove her over whether
she was ready or not. Her muscles clamped and pulsed, milked and
demanded. He made it two more thrusts, then came, his body
shuddering as he heaved into her and stilled, rigor-locked with the
force of his orgasm. A long, low groan resonated from his chest as
he broke the kiss to press his cheek to hers, holding on to her as
the pulses of pleasure went from her to him and back again. Caught
in her own ecstasy, Jade could do little more than cling and gasp
while the full- body throb went on and on, seeming to cycle up
instead of down. Heat poured through her, not an afterglow, but
more an extension of the orgasm, a new level of passion and energy
that seemed to travel through the point where their bodies merged,
becoming something more than sexual gratification, until it felt
almost like—
Magic, she realized, her eyes flying open to find
that the sepia tones in the room had gone to red-gold. Nightkeeper
magic limned their bodies, making it impossible to tell where his
skin stopped and hers began. His face was very close to hers, his
eyes locked on hers as the red-gold light intensified, becoming a
prickling heat that seemed to come from the last ripples of
pleasure within her, centered at the point where his flesh still
joined with hers.
Again, the panic of
impending failure flared; the power running through her was
stronger than she’d ever felt before, but she didn’t know what to
do with it. Was there a spell? A
gesture? What?
“Jade, I—” Lucius
began, but then his face changed, his eyes going blank and wide as
the magic changed its pitch and swirled around him in tightening
spirals. “I see it!” He rolled off her without ceremony and
scrabbled into his clothes. “Get dressed!”
Jade wasn’t supposed
to enter the library with him, but the magic was wrapping around
her too. Heart hammering, she yanked on her own clothes, knowing
that whatever a mage was holding or wearing typically made it into
the barrier, and they didn’t want to wind up transitioning
bare-assed naked. But I’m not supposed to go
anywhere!
A sharp pain pierced
her forearm, a voice—maybe a woman’s voice, maybe her
imagination?—whispered, “Beware,” and
the world suddenly jolted and spun. She felt the familiar ripping
sensation of her spiritual self leaving her physical body, but she
wasn’t being pulled sideways into the gray-green flow of the
barrier. She was being pulled down. She
screamed and tried to block the magic, but it was too late. She
heard Lucius bellow, saw him reach for her as their physical bodies
collapsed to the floor. She lunged her metaphysical self toward
him; their hands caught and held, feeling solid and real as the
world blurred around them. And disappeared.