Nightkeepers Jessica Andersen

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As Leah and the trainees filed into the sacred chamber for the Venus conjunction ceremony, her blue robes swished around her ankles and her stomach clenched with nerves. She didn’t think she was the only one fighting to stay calm, either. Sven was a funny gray-green color, his lips almost bloodless and pressed together in a thin line. Jade was sweating lightly, even though the AC was up and she’d be sitting outside the circle while the others underwent the ritual. Michael was his usual inscrutable self, with thick shields hidden behind a sexy smile, but she’d noticed him popping a Pepto tab when he thought nobody was looking. Brandt and Patience were hanging on to each other for dear life. Rabbit had lost some of his normal swagger, his nostrils flaring as he breathed in the copan smoke liberally scenting the air, and Alexis and Nate were clinging together in the corner, trying to look like they were fine. Yep, definite barf potential, all of them.

Worse, if one of them went, it’d be a chain reaction. Hold it together, Leah told herself as the door opened to reveal Red-Boar in his black robes and Strike in royal crimson, both wearing feathered headdresses and celts, and resolute expressions.

There were no nerves there, Leah saw, or if there were, they were well hidden as they all took their positions: the trainees in a circle around the altar with Red-Boar at the center, Strike on one side of the chac-mool, her on the other.

The sight of Strike in full-on I’m in charge here mode went a long way to settling her nerves.

Red-Boar flicked his black robes out of the way with a practiced move and sat cross-legged with his back to the altar. Over the top of the chac-mool, Strike and Leah faced each other and joined hands. Electricity arced across her skin at his touch, but it served only to bring the nerves right back where they’d been. What if the three-question ritual didn’t work?

Worse, what if it did?

She met his eyes, letting his apparent calm steady her fears. Letting the strength of his grip anchor her.

At Red-Boar’s gesture, the trainees dropped to sit cross-legged. Then the winikin filed in, carrying bowls, parchment, and ceremonial knives that they passed out. When they were gone and the door shut behind them once again, everyone had a bowl and knife except Jade, who sat against the wall, her expression caught somewhere between relief and humiliation.

Without a word, Red-Boar lifted his large, ornately carved stone knife, set it to his palm, and drew the blade sharply across his flesh. Blood welled, then dripped into the bowl, soaking into the layer of paper at the bottom. The others followed suit, then took turns passing a torch and using it to set the parchment aflame.

At Red-Boar’s gesture, each of them leaned forward and inhaled the smoke of burning blood, and whispered, ‘‘Pasaj och.’’

Seconds later they stilled and their faces went slack, indicating that they’d jacked into the barrier, sending their souls into the gray-green mist but leaving their bodies behind. When they did so, Leah felt . . . nothing. No power surge, no beckoning sense of urgency, no invitation to follow. Nothing except the edge of the altar digging into her ribs and the grip of Strike’s fingers on hers.

This isn’t going to work, she thought, panic kindling in her stomach. Whatever the magic was, I lost it.

‘‘Look at me,’’ Strike ordered. When she locked her eyes with his, he said, ‘‘Don’t you dare give up.’’

In the torchlight, his black hair and close-trimmed beard made his dark good looks lean toward dangerous, sending a quiver of awareness through her, a hum of nerves. He looked like he could be a demon, could be a king. He looked like a fighter, a warrior, like the man she’d dreamed of before.

The one she still dreamed of every damn night, and then woke up aching and alone.

‘‘Ready?’’ he asked, his voice a harsh rasp that licked along her nerve endings like fire.

She took a deep breath and nodded, but didn’t trust herself to speak. He wouldn’t even be bringing her into the barrier at all, except that the three-question spell was a once-in-a-lifetime deal, three questions per magic user per existence. And while she wasn’t a Nightkeeper, they were hoping she had enough of whatever magic she’d once possessed to get her into the barrier and call up the three-question nahwal with Strike’s help.

Better that, Red-Boar had pointed out with his usual lack of tact, than letting the king’s son burn his three questions on his human girlfriend. Jade’s research suggested the questions had to be specific to the petitioner, meaning that none of the other Nightkeepers could ask for her. The meant it was Leah or nobody.

‘‘Let’s do this.’’ Strike released her hands so he could cut his own right palm, then hers. Instead of letting the blood fall into separate bowls, they locked hands so the red wetness mingled as it dripped into the king’s ceremonial bowl, which had a small piece of parchment at the bottom. When the paper was wet with their blood, Strike lit it with one of the tapers, and they both leaned in to inhale the smoke. That put them face-to-face, and Strike shifted and touched his lips to hers. ‘‘Trust me.’’

Then he jacked in. Leah saw the change in his face, saw his eyes go blank and his expression slacken. Failure kicked her hard when she stayed behind, when she didn’t feel anything other than the burn in her palm and the tickle of smoke in her sinuses. Damn it, she couldn’t follow, didn’t have the power, didn’t know how to—

Hey, Blondie, his voice whispered in her mind.

Her nerves kicked. ‘‘Yeah?’’

Close your eyes and grab on.

‘‘To what?’’ But then she closed her eyes and saw a faint glowing thread that wasn’t part of her usual eyes-closed landscape. Excitement kicked her pulse a notch as she reached out with her mind and touched the thread.

There was a soundless explosion, a sense of flying while sitting still. Then her gut wrenched. Power screamed in her ears. And the bottom dropped out of her world.

Leah shrieked as she jolted down, then sideways, and the world went gray-green. She zapped in a few feet off the ground, several yards away from Strike, and fell face-first into a sea of mist, landing on something soft and squishy and vaguely mudlike.

Heart hammering, she rolled onto her back and concentrated on breathing. ‘‘Guess we made it.’’ The relief was so sharp it was almost painful.

‘‘This far, at least.’’ Strike grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. Once she was steady, he stripped off the headdress and set it aside, then reached inside his robe and withdrew a pair of stingray spines. ‘‘Now for stage two.’’

She took the spine. Tested the point with her fingertip. ‘‘Not very sharp.’’

‘‘That’s what makes it fun. Not.’’ He paused. ‘‘You ready?’’

She took a breath and nodded. At his signal, she opened her mouth and jammed the spine into her tongue, then yanked it out again. Pain was a quick slap and a longer burn, but she held herself still as blood filled her mouth and then overflowed, spilling down her chin and splashing on the blue robe.

Then, for the first time since the aphelion, she felt something. Sudden power bloomed on her skin, in her core. She smiled through the pain of her torn tongue. ‘‘I feel it!’’

‘‘Good. Say the words.’’

She began the chant, words she’d memorized phonetically but hadn’t really thought she’d use. Strike took position at her side, holding her right hand in his, joining their blood, boosting her power with his own. At first she was afraid the spell wouldn’t work. Then, as the mist thickened nearby and a human figure took shape, she was afraid it would work. Somehow, in that moment, getting the answers to the questions that’d dogged her the past few months seemed more frightening than not knowing the answers.

‘‘Steady,’’ Strike murmured at her side. ‘‘I’m here.’’

She leaned into him as the mists parted and the three-question nahwal approached, stopping a short distance away. It was a sexless humanoid figure with dead black eyes and no forearm marks or other distinguishing features, no expression on its desiccated face. Its tanned, leathery skin was pulled tight across its bones, and it made no sound when it moved.

‘‘Ask your first question,’’ it said in a toneless voice that seemed to be made of two voices, one high, one low, speaking in synchrony.

Oh, holy freak show, Leah thought, gripping Strike’s hand even tighter than before. Drawing strength from that solid contact, she took a deep breath and said, ‘‘What is the nature of my magical power?’’

Strike, Red-Boar, and Jox had confabbed on the question, going for something broad enough to get more than a yes/no answer, yet specific enough to give them something they could use. In theory, anyway.

The nahwal tilted its head and was silent for nearly a minute, unmoving, as though carrying on an inner dialogue. Then it said to Leah, ‘‘You are the light half of the god Kulkulkan. Your brother was to be the darkness. Together, you were to be the Godkeeper, able to wield the might to oppose the crocodile lord.’’

Shock hammered through Leah. Grief. She tightened her fingers on Strike’s hand, where their cut palms channeled his power into her. Kulkulkan is a dual god, Strike said through the blood link. Light and dark halves. Since you’re human, you can’t take all his powers. He must’ve tried to split himself into two blood-linked humans—you and your brother—figuring to unite you into a single Godkeeper.

But how is that possible when Matty died long before the barrier reactivated? Leah shot back, head spinning. And where does that leave me now?

‘‘Will you ask your second question?’’ the nahwal queried.

Leah thought fast. ‘‘How can I bring the darkness into myself and become the Godkeeper alone?’’

‘‘You cannot,’’ the creature replied in its two-toned voice.

Shit. Ask where the god is now, Strike prompted.

When Leah parroted the question, the nahwal replied, ‘‘Kulkulkan’s link to you keeps him trapped between heaven and earth, within the skyroad. There, his energy fades.’’

Which is why my powers are getting weaker over time rather than stronger, she thought. But that doesn’t tell us how to fix it, and I’m out of questions.

‘‘I’m not,’’ Strike said aloud, dropping her hand and breaking the blood connection before she could protest, before she could remind him that he wasn’t supposed to burn his three questions on her.

The nahwal turned its attention to him. ‘‘Will you ask your first question, son of the jaguar kings?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ Strike said. ‘‘Why do I wear the flying-serpent glyph?’’

‘‘It represents the darkness of Kulkulkan, the war god aspect.’’

‘‘Then I am to take her brother’s place?’’

The nahwal shook its head. ‘‘No. You are a male Nightkeeper, and carry too much darkness already. If you undergo the transition, you will become a makol with the power of a god. Undefeatable evil.’’

Leah gasped and moved forward, but Strike warned her back with a look.

‘‘Will you ask your final question, son of the jaguar kings?’’ the nahwal inquired in its flat, two-tonal voice.

‘‘How can the god be returned to the sky without harm to Leah?’’

‘‘It cannot.’’ For a moment, Leah thought that was all it was going to say, that it would leave them with even more questions than before. But then it continued, ‘‘The woman must die before the equinox. If she does, the god’s link to earth will be severed and Kulkulkan will return to the sky. If she remains alive at the equinox and the god has not been fully brought to earth, then both the woman and the god will die, and the god’s death will destroy the skyroad. There will be no more Godkeepers, no more help from the sky. The enemy will bring the end-time, opposed only by you and your Nightkeepers . . . and you will fail without the power of the gods.’’

That two-toned pronouncement hung for a moment in terrible silence. Then the nahwal took a step back and started going gray-green and thinning to mist. ‘‘Your questions are done.’’ Its voice grew fainter. ‘‘Gods be with you, son. . . .’’

Then silence.

Leah couldn’t tell if it’d faded out before saying ‘‘of the jaguar kings,’’ or if it’d meant to say ‘‘son.’’ A glance up at Strike told her he didn’t know, either.

Silence reigned as the mists came together again in the wake of the nahwal’s exit.

Then Strike said, ‘‘Leah.’’ Just her name, as though there were nothing else to say. And maybe there wasn’t. They’d gotten the answers they’d come for.

Unfortunately, the answers they’d gotten sucked.

She nodded, unable to speak past the lump of fear and grief that jammed her throat. She wished she could say she didn’t believe a word the nahwal had said, that there was no way she was buying into the idea that she had to die in order to prevent one of the Nightkeepers’ creator gods from being destroyed. But if the magic was real, how could she say the nahwal’s answers were lies?

Strike took her hand again, tugged her closer, and lifted his free hand to touch her, brushing the backs of his fingers across her cheek and down the side of her neck. Despair simmered just beneath the surface of his soul—she could feel it through the link, lending sharpness to the heat that built between them, quick and urgent as he leaned down and touched his lips to hers.

She hesitated a moment, feeling her heart bang against her ribs and thinking of all the reasons this wasn’t a good idea—her track record, his priorities, her vow to avenge Matty’s death, the whole greatest-sacrifice thing. But all those reasons lost to the one single thing that told her she should take this moment with him, the one thing that had her parting her lips beneath his and lifting her arms to twine them around his neck, holding on when desire built, sweeping her away.

Because as he kissed her, as they leaned into each other, she knew one thing for certain: If he was kissing her, then he thought there was no hope. She was already dead.

She whimpered a little without meaning to, and he drew away, looking fierce and every inch the leader, every bit the protector as he said, ‘‘We’ll find a way. I promise.’’

She buried her head in his chest, resting her cheek above his heart. ‘‘Take me back to Skywatch.’’

When Red-Boar triggered the talent ritual, Rabbit was the last to make it through into the barrier, dropping down to land on his ass in the mist, which swirled up around him in greasy puffs of greenish gray. The others had already formed a circle.

As Rabbit scrambled to his feet and limped to join the others—his foot had gone pins and needles for some reason—he saw something flash in his old man’s eyes. Most likely regret that he’d made it through. Well, screw him. It wasn’t like there was any question that he was going to get a talent mark—he already had his talent, didn’t he? He’d get the fire symbol. Patience would get air, symbolizing invisibility. And the others? Well, they’d see about that, wouldn’t they?

Taking his place between Sven and Michael, Rabbit smirked at the old man. ‘‘I’m here. The party can officially begin.’’

Then he realized it already had. The mists swirled and began to thicken behind each of the trainees. Moments later, the bloodline-bound nahwal appeared, one for each of the trainees, except for Rabbit, who would be repped by the old man whether either of them liked it or not.

Only there was one too many nahwal, Rabbit saw. Excitement spurted when he thought that maybe another bloodline—his mother’s?—was going to claim him.

Then the creature turned to Red-Boar and said in its fluting multitoned voice, ‘‘Where is she?’’

Rabbit hid the quick flare of disappointment. When the old man looked confused, he snapped, ‘‘It means Jade.’’

The nahwal turned toward him. ‘‘Why is she not here?’’

Rabbit said, ‘‘We left her behind. She hasn’t got any magic.’’

‘‘Of course she does.’’ The nahwal turned away and blinked its eyes. Moments later, Jade appeared in midair, screaming, and dropped a good six feet to land flat on her face.

There was a moist-sounding thud when she landed, and Rabbit winced in spite of himself. ‘‘Ouch. That had to hurt.’’

‘‘Shut,’’ Red-Boar said tightly, ‘‘up.’’

‘‘What happened?’’ Jade pushed herself up, eyes wide and frightened. ‘‘I didn’t . . .’’ She looked at Red-Boar. ‘‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to—’’

‘‘It’s okay,’’ he interrupted. ‘‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’’ He nodded to the nahwal. ‘‘Your ancestors wanted you here.’’

She scrambled to her feet. Stared at the nahwal as it approached her. ‘‘But why?’’ Her voice squeaked on the question.

‘‘Because they need you,’’ the nahwal said. ‘‘We all do.’’ The creature gripped her right forearm. Lightning flashed and Jade went stiff, like she’d just been hit with the jolt. Then the nahwal faded—like poof, one minute it was there, the next gone—leaving Jade standing in the middle of the circle with a shocked look on her face and a new mark on her arm.

Rabbit couldn’t see it clearly, but it looked like a hand holding a pen.

She stared at it. Frowned. ‘‘I’m a scribe? Great.’’ She looked at Red-Boar and spread her hands. ‘‘Well, that was worth the trip. I can write stuff down.’’

‘‘Not stuff, daughter,’’ the nahwal’s voice corrected, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. ‘‘Spells. You, and you alone, can create new spells.’’

‘‘Oh!’’ Her face flooded with joy. Then she faded just like the nahwal had.

Without further delay, the other trainees turned to face their nahwal, who gripped their arms in benediction. Lightning flashed, huge zaps of green-white light that arced across the mist with blinding intensity, with glyph shadows contained within the light. Each of the new Nightkeepers got the warrior’s glyph that would confer added fighting power and strength, along with the heightened reflexes necessary for battle. Patience got invisibility, Sven got something Rabbit didn’t recognize, and three of the others had dark spots in the mists above them that suggested they might get other talents in the future.

Then thunder grumbled, lightning flashed again, and when Rabbit’s vision cleared, the other trainees were all gone. He and Red-Boar were the only ones left.

He closed the distance between them and held out his bare forearm. ‘‘What do you say, old man? It looks like put-up-or-shut-up time.’’

Something moved in his father’s eyes, and for a second Rabbit thought he was going to refuse. Then Red-Boar reached out and gripped Rabbit’s forearm. But instead of summoning the lightning, he said, ‘‘I accept this child as mine, as a son of the boar bloodline.’’

Shock hammered Rabbit alongside pain. He screamed and sagged in his father’s grip as lightning flashed and agony arced through him. Thunder raked the mist, making the moist firmament shudder, and then Rabbit was falling, collapsing.

The last thing he remembered was being caught in strong, black-robed arms as his father swept him up. And brought him home.

Anna writhed beneath her husband, digging her fingers into the thick, strong muscles of his back as he thrust into her and withdrew, thrust and withdrew.

The lights in the bedroom were off, but in the mad dash they’d made from the front door to the bedroom, shedding clothes as they went, they’d left the hall lights on. The illumination spilled in through the doorway, lighting one side of his face and leaving the other in shadow as he rose above her, his eyes open and fixed on hers.

She felt him in every fiber of her being—his thighs between hers, the faint rasp of masculine hair against her skin, the slide of his hard flesh within her. The scent of their lovemaking filled her, excitement riding high on a sense of, Christ, where has this been?

For far too long their lovemaking had been, if not routine, then certainly nothing special, undertaken as much on the calendar as anything, days counted forward from the little ‘‘p’’ she marked on the first day of her period each month. This was different, though. This reminded her of other times, better times, and as he hardened within her, swelling until she felt the good, tight stretch within, she saw in his eyes that he felt it, too, that it mattered to him. That she mattered.

Then he thrust deeper, higher, angling his hips so he pressed just right and sent her tumbling over the edge before she even knew she’d been close.

Anna gasped and arched against him as her inner muscles fisted, clenching and relaxing, and he cut loose with a roar. She barely heard him, though, because her orgasm had her in its grip, blinding her, deafening her as it spiraled higher and higher still, taking her farther and deeper than it should have.

Oh, crap, she thought as she slid down a slippery slope of consciousness. The stars. The barrier. Orgasm was a way to touch the heavens and speak to the gods, and as she crested, she felt the power thrum within her. She lost herself, lost touch with the here and now and went someplace else entirely.

She had a flash of the sight she’d long denied, and stiffened in shock. ‘‘Lucius!’’

‘‘What the fuck?’’ A sudden jolt jerked her back to reality, but by the time she realized the movement was her husband yanking away from her, it was too late.

She reached out to him. ‘‘Dick—’’

‘‘Your fucking grad student?’’ He pulled away, his face twisted. ‘‘How could you?’’

‘‘I didn’t,’’ she said. ‘‘I wouldn’t.’’ But she knew he’d see the long hours and her preoccupation as proof.

‘‘So you’re just thinking about him while you’re fucking me? That’s supposed to make it better? Jesus, Anna.’’

She wanted to stay and explain, to try to fix what might be unfixable, but she couldn’t get that image out of her head. She’d seen Lucius sitting in his apartment, reading the codex fragment aloud. Reading the lost spell she’d only half translated but already knew to be powerful magic.

She had to get over there, had to stop him. Heart pounding, she leaped out of bed and scrabbled for her bra and panties. ‘‘I’ve got to go.’’

‘‘What?’’ Dick stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘‘You’re fucking kidding me!’’

She knew there was hurt beneath the bluster. She also knew this was quite possibly the moment that would define the rest of their marriage—or end it. But the text was her responsibility, as was Lucius.

‘‘I’m sorry.’’ She turned away from Dick, though her heart twisted. ‘‘I have to go.’’

He was stone silent, watching as she pulled on jeans and a shirt, shoved her feet into a pair of sneakers, and headed for the bedroom door. She wanted to stay, wanted to explain everything, but he wouldn’t believe her. Hell, she’d lived the first nineteen years of her life in the Nightkeepers’ world, and she barely believed the things she knew to be true. Dick would never get it.

So she took off, leaving him alone in the bedroom, knowing he probably wouldn’t be there when she got back.

Sitting in the kitchen of his apartment, Lucius stared down at his left hand, which clutched a serrated steak knife. He didn’t dare look at his other hand, or he might pass out. Jesus, what have I done?

Pain radiated up his right arm, stemming from where he’d clenched his fingers around his cut-open palm. Blood leaked from between his knuckles, dripping faster than seemed natural. It wasn’t the blood or the pain that had him panicked, though—it was the codex fragment.

He’d bled all over the thing.

Anna was going to kill him.

He didn’t remember deciphering any of it, but there were words rocketing around inside his brain, syllables he couldn’t quite catch but knew he should understand. The translation eluded him, dancing just beyond the reaches of his spinning mind.

Letting go of the knife, hearing it clatter to the floor, Lucius pressed the fingers of his good hand to his eyes in an effort to stop the pounding pulse behind them.

He sort of remembered deciphering the first couple of glyphs, but then something had happened and things had gone fuzzy for a while until he’d snapped back in and found himself sitting at the kitchen table with a steak knife stuck in his palm and half a pint of A-positive splattered on the stolen text.

Thinking to clean it off or something, he rose from the kitchen table and shambled across the room to the sink. He wadded up a couple of paper towels and pressed them against his cut palm, then wet a couple more of the towels and turned back to the table.

By the time he got there, he wasn’t carrying paper towels. Instead, he held one of his roommate’s froufrou scented candles and a box of matches.

Don’t do it . . . just don’t! he shouted inside his own skull as he watched his hands strike a match and light the candle. Don’t, please, no!

Without volition—his own, at least—Lucius touched the candle to the edge of the blood-soaked codex fragment. The flame licked at the dried bark, turning the edges brown and then black. A chant rose in his mind, overwhelming him, overpowering him until he said the words aloud, giving them shape and substance as the codex burned. He leaned forward and breathed in the smoke of burned blood and paper.

A ripping, tearing noise blotted out everything else, and a void appeared inside him, a sudden emptiness inside his soul, his being.

‘‘Crap!’’ He reeled and fell to his hands and knees, retching as glowing green foulness oozed from the tear inside him and began to fill the empty spot. Pain sliced through him, crippling him and driving him to the kitchen floor, where he curled himself into a ball of agony, with his knees pulled up tight beneath his chin. He threw back his head and howled, but he couldn’t tell if any noise actually came out, because it was lost amid the screams that seemed to come from his soul, from all around him.

There was a loud boom, a thundering noise he felt as a vibration rather than hearing as a sound, and suddenly he knew he wasn’t alone anymore. Something else lived inside him. He turned blind eyes upward, squinting in an effort to see through the darkness.

A dark-haired man stood over him, heavily muscled, barefoot and bare chested, wearing loose black pants fastened at the ankles with intricate twists of red twine. His eyes were a bright, luminous green, one darker than the other, and he had a flying crocodile inked across his right pec. The air around him was shadowed a dark purple-black and radiated with hatred. Malice.

Lucius opened his mouth to beg for help, for mercy, but he wasn’t sure he even formed words through the taste of evil and the stink of despair. He was suddenly very afraid he was going to die.

Worse, he was afraid he might not.

Strike dropped back into his earthly body with a flash of pain that he welcomed because it meant he was still alive. He blinked and felt his eyelids grate, shifted and felt his joints pop, and didn’t care because the first thing he saw was Leah on the other side of the chac-mool, blinking her cornflower blue eyes in confusion, and then, when the memories caught up, making a little, ‘‘Oh,’’ of despair.

‘‘We’ll figure something out,’’ he said quickly. ‘‘I promise.’’

But they both knew he hadn’t promised to keep her safe, or even alive. Things had gotten seriously complicated way fast. The Nightkeepers couldn’t lose the skyroad or Kulkulkan. But at the same time, he couldn’t lose Leah.

Her expression went wistful. ‘‘Yeah,’’ she said, responding to what he hadn’t said, rather than what he had. ‘‘I know.’’

He wanted to say something but didn’t know what or how, so he stayed silent, and in the next moment Red-Boar exhaled and stirred, and the blue-robed trainees did the same as they all jacked out simultaneously. Strike felt the power surge, felt the echoed satisfaction of a job well-done, and knew that the talent ceremony had gone well.

Thank the gods for small favors.

Letting go of Leah’s hands, Strike pushed away from the altar and headed for the door, intending to warn Jox that he was about five minutes away from a kitchen stampede. He was halfway there when a woman’s scream echoed in his head. ‘‘Help him!’’

The cry was followed by a mental picture that flashed along the link of a shared bloodline, powered by the magic of an itza’at seer. Anna! Strike thought on a spike of adrenaline and bloodline power.

The image she sent was that of a young man curled up and clutching his bleeding hand to his chest as his eyes started to glow green. A dark figure stood over him. Zipacna.

Rage flared, and Strike didn’t stop to think or ask questions, didn’t care that his legs were numb and his head pounding with a postmagic hangover, that he might not have the power to ’port accurately. He grabbed Leah with one hand and Red-Boar with the other. ‘‘Hang on!’’

He leaned on the older Nightkeeper for a boost, fixing the transmitted image in his mind.

And zapped.

One minute Leah was getting her bearings in the sacred chamber at Skywatch, trying to deal with the nahwal ’s morbid information dump. Then Strike grabbed her, the world lurched, and the next thing she knew she was in some sort of student apartment, standing in a combined kitchen/living room full of yard-sale furniture and clutter.

And Zipacna was there.

He stood near where the kitchen tile began, his mismatched eyes glowing pure emerald green as he crouched over a young man who lay in a fetal ball, unmoving. The ajaw-makol was wearing loose black pants and held a bloody steak knife in one hand. The creature snapped his head up when the Nightkeepers appeared, and he bared his teeth in a hiss. Then his eyes fixed on Leah and the hiss became a smile.

Rage flared through her, hard and hot and pure, and she lunged at him, screaming an incoherent battle cry. She was dimly aware that Strike shouted for her to stop and Red-Boar cursed and made a grab for her, but neither of them mattered just then. What mattered was the bastard who’d killed her brother, her friends.

Surprise was on her side. She slammed into Zipacna, burying her shoulder in his gut and using the momentum to drive them both away from the young man. They went stumbling into the kitchen and slammed into the stove, which clattered a metallic protest. The ajaw-makol roared and pushed away, reversing their momentum and sending Leah flying across the small space to smash into the opposite cabinets.

Without the benefit of jade-tips to slow him down, she went for the kitchen sink, which was full of nasty-ass dirty dishes. Grabbing a knife, she lunged under his swing and stabbed up, going for his heart. The weapon bit through flesh and grated on bone, and blood flowed over her hand, looking darker than it should have.

Zipacna stiffened and roared with pain. ‘‘Bitch!’’

Quicker than human reactions, he grabbed her and spun her, whipping her arm up behind her back and getting his own knife across her throat, pressing hard enough to have her freezing in place.

‘‘I thought we were friends,’’ he said softly in her ear. Only it wasn’t Zipacna’s voice anymore.

It was Vince’s.

Shock hammered through Leah. Betrayal. ‘‘Vince, no!’’

Red-Boar’s expression went dark, and he hissed, ‘‘Mimic,’’ like it was the lowest form of life imaginable.

‘‘No shape-shifting necessary,’’ the ajaw-makol said in Vince’s voice. ‘‘She was perfectly willing to believe a wig and colored contacts, even when I was only human. Never even thought to check with his coworkers that Vince Rincon was a real person, just glommed on when I said I’d known her brother, and thought the wicked cult members had killed him.’’

Leah nearly broke at the realization he’d played her all along. She’d been so pitifully willing to go along with the illusion, so grateful for some sort of support that she hadn’t looked hard enough at the source. ‘‘Why?’’ she said, her voice a broken whisper. ‘‘Why me?’’

‘‘Because twenty-four years ago the gods marked you and your brother as their own,’’ he said, leaning so close that his hot breath feathered against her cheek. ‘‘Matthew’s blood started the process. Yours will finish it.’’

‘‘No,’’ Leah cried as something broke within her, bleeding rage and pain. ‘‘No!’’

Strike took a step forward, his face tight. ‘‘Let. Her. Go.’’

‘‘Why, so you can kill her and free the serpent to fight another day? I think not. Better she comes with me and joins the other devoted followers I’ve assembled for my use, for blood or as makol.’’ The ajaw-makol took a step back, dragging her with him, and power started rattling through him, revving up, feeling black and twisted rather than the gold-red hum of the Nightkeepers.

‘‘No!’’ Strike shouted, and lunged forward to grab her as purple mist rose up to haze her vision. The moment he touched her, power arced, red against purple-black, teleport against teleport, as Zipacna fought to take her and Strike fought to keep her.

Sobbing, not caring about the blade at her throat, Leah twisted in the ajaw-makol’s arms and jammed the heel of her hand into the knife still stuck in his chest, driving it deeper and feeling the spurt of hot blood.

Zipacna shouted in pain. And disappeared.

Leah fell to the ground half cradled in Strike’s arms. He caught her against him, breathing hard. ‘‘You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.’’

Except she wasn’t sure whether he was trying to reassure himself or her, because if it was the latter, he shouldn’t have bothered. It wasn’t okay. It probably never would be again.

Feeling numb, like she was already dead, she pulled away from him, lifted her right arm, and stared at the scarred patch. Twenty-four years ago, the ajaw-makol had said. And yeah, she knew exactly what he was talking about.

‘‘I killed him,’’ she said, her voice a broken whisper. ‘‘I killed us both.’’

As she realized the truth, a roaring whirl of purple-black rose up to claim her mind, and she was almost grateful to let it, to let the world slip away.

Until there was nothing. Until she was nothing.

‘‘Leah.’’ Terrified by her sudden immobility and fixed stare, Strike gripped her shoulders and shook her. ‘‘Leah!’’ When she didn’t respond, he turned to Red-Boar. ‘‘I’m taking her back.’’

‘‘Leave her,’’ the older Nightkeeper snapped. ‘‘We deal with this first.’’

He stood aside to reveal the ajaw-makol’s victim. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, shaggy-haired, tall and lanky, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and worn hiking boots. The ruined remains of the codex fragment were crumpled nearby, bloodstained and blackened with flame. A total loss. But Red-Boar was right: They had a more immediate problem in the form of the young man, whose eyes flickered from normal to luminous green and back. If and when they set green, he wouldn’t just be a second-generation makol created by Zipacna’s magic. He’d be a new ajaw-makol, created through the parent spell and the magic of the Banol Kax.

‘‘We have to kill it.’’ There was far more practicality in Red-Boar’s voice than regret. ‘‘Give me your knife.’’

‘‘He’s a person,’’ Strike protested. ‘‘Not an ‘it.’ ’’

‘‘It was a person,’’ Red-Boar corrected. ‘‘Now it’s a liability.’’ He held out his hand. ‘‘Give me the damn knife.’’

‘‘Don’t.’’ But it wasn’t Strike who said that. It was a woman’s voice.

Anna’s voice.

Strike turned and saw her in the apartment doorway, and even through his worry for Leah, everything inside him went still. She was older than she had been—they all were—but he saw his sister in the woman who stood before him, saw the same blue eyes that met his in the mirror each day.

‘‘Anna.’’ The word hurt.

‘‘Hey, little brother.’’ But her attention was fixed on Red-Boar. ‘‘Don’t kill him.’’

Sudden tension crackled in the air between them. ‘‘It is my right and duty,’’ the older Nightkeeper said. ‘‘He is makol.’’

‘‘Lucius is my student, my responsibility.’’ She fixed him with a look. ‘‘And you gave him the codex.’’

Strike rounded on Red-Boar. ‘‘You what?’’ Red-Boar dismissed the accusation. ‘‘Two months ago, and I told him to give it straight to Anna, who then mailed it back to you. I can only assume you returned it, and this idiot’’—he nudged the young man with his toe—‘‘snagged it once he realized what it was.’’

‘‘He had no idea what it was,’’ she hissed. ‘‘Fix him.’’

‘‘Why should I?’’ Red-Boar snapped, looking as much at Strike as Anna, as if he were accusing them both of having seriously skewed priorities.

‘‘Because we need Anna, and that’s the trade,’’ Strike said. ‘‘The student for her power added to ours during the equinox.’’

She nodded as though she’d known from the start that would be the deal. ‘‘I’ll come with you, but I’m not promising to stay.’’

‘‘We’ll discuss that later.’’ Strike reached down and gathered Leah’s limp form to his chest. He turned to Red-Boar. ‘‘Can you save him?’’

The mind-bender touched Lucius’s shoulder and frowned in concentration. Then he grimaced and nodded. ‘‘He didn’t finish reciting the spell, so the demon doesn’t have a full grasp on him yet. I should be able to push it back beyond the barrier and blank his memories.’’

Strike nodded. ‘‘Do it. I’ll be back for you in ten minutes. ’’ Then he held out his hand to Anna. ‘‘Let’s go.’’

And he brought his sister home.

Anna might’ve left the Nightkeeper way of life without fanfare, but she returned with a bang when Strike materialized them a few feet above a tiled floor. They hovered for a second, like Road Runner going off a cliff, then dropped in the middle of a group twenty-somethings wearing the blue robes of Nightkeeper trainees.

She hit hard, saw stars, and bit her tongue, and the blood added to the power humming in her veins. When she shifted, she saw a new mark on her arm, the itza’at seer’s mark. She’d gotten it on the pass through the barrier, whether she wanted it or not. But it wasn’t the mark, the pain, the power, or the trainees that grabbed her full attention. It was the nausea of teleport sickness. She’d never been a good traveler.

‘‘Oh, God.’’ She curled up on her side. ‘‘I think I’m going to be sick.’’

‘‘I’ve got you.’’ One of the blue robes—a strikingly tall blonde with blue eyes and a no-nonsense air—helped Anna up and steered her out the door. ‘‘Bathroom’s this way,’’ she said. ‘‘But you probably know that.’’

That wasn’t nearly enough warning for Anna, because the moment she stepped outside the ceremonial chamber and got a good look at the hallway, she recognized the training compound from her childhood. From her nightmares.

She clapped a hand across her mouth and bolted for the john, where she was miserably, wretchedly ill.

Images pounded at her, some of them from memory, some of them from the sight. All of them bloody and terrible, spewing past the barriers she’d set in her mind long ago, which were breached in an instant by the power of the stars and the horror of being back in a place she’d thought had been destroyed long ago.

When the heaves passed, leaving her dizzy and wrung-out, she stayed hunched over the bowl and pressed her face to the cool porcelain of the outer rim, not caring how gross that was. ‘‘I’m dreaming,’’ she said weakly. ‘‘I’m going to wake up in Austin, and Dick’ll either be there or he won’t, but even if he’s not that’s okay, because I’m not really here. I’m there, and this is all a dream.’’

The blonde crouched down so they were at eye level. ‘‘I tried talking myself out of it, too. Didn’t work.’’ She held out a hand. ‘‘You want to get cleaned up?’’

Anna stared at the other woman’s marked forearm. ‘‘Who are you?’’

‘‘Alexis Gray. You’re Anna, right?’’

‘‘That’s me,’’ Anna said faintly.

‘‘You’ve got his eyes,’’ Alexis said. ‘‘Or I suppose you’ve both got your father’s eyes.’’

Anna went cold. ‘‘I’m nothing like him.’’

‘‘Oo-kay.’’ Alexis held up both hands. ‘‘Touched a nerve. Sorry.’’ She stood. ‘‘You want some time alone to decompress?’’

‘‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.’’

‘‘No harm done.’’ Alexis popped open the mirrored cabinet above the sink, pulled out a couple of hand towels and a travel-size bottle of Listerine, and offered them. ‘‘If you’re done hurling, we should probably get back out there.’’

‘‘Yeah. I need to tell Strike to have Red-Boar blank the codex from my intern, Neenie, too.’’ And how weird was it to say those names after all this time? Anna thought. She took the tiny mouthwash, saying, ‘‘This has Jox written all over it. No way Strike or Red-Boar thought to lay in guest toiletries.’’

‘‘Good call. Jox and the other winikin have the details nailed.’’

Inhaling sharply, Anna swallowed a mouthful of Listerine and gagged. ‘‘What do you mean, ‘other winikin’? Jox was the last.’’

‘‘Long story. How about you get cleaned up and we’ll go find Strike? I’m sure he’ll do a better job explaining than I could.’’

But Anna thought back to her arrival, and the others crowding the sacred chamber. They’d been bigger than average, gorgeous and young. As was Alexis. Her heart started hammering in her ears as she reached an impossible conclusion. ‘‘You’re Nightkeepers.’’

‘‘Yes.’’

Her legs went weak, and she whispered, ‘‘How?’’ Alexis pushed open the bathroom door. ‘‘Come on. I really don’t think I’m the person who should be telling you this.’’

‘‘Wait.’’ Anna grabbed her arm. ‘‘How many are there?’’

Sympathy crept into the other woman’s eyes. ‘‘Counting the toddlers and the convict? You make it lucky thirteen.’’

And the equinox was nine days away.

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