Or was it that he had sex on the brain? Either way, it was all he could think about. He was hard and horny, and pissed off at learning that the Ixchel statuette wasn’t complete. How had they missed seeing that a portion was broken off? The overturned basket or whatever the goddess sat atop had a flat side they’d assumed had been left rough on purpose, but now it was looking like a fracture plane, damn it. Which meant . . . what? They didn’t even know what the missing piece looked like. How the hell were they supposed to find it?
“For fuck’s sake,” he said aloud, trying to gain control over the irritation, which he knew was as much about the magic as real anger. Then he heard footsteps coming up the pathway behind him, and the anger redirected itself, going from fury to a raging heat that he had even less control over. He knew who it was instantly, not through magic, but because the quick, self-assured stride could’ve belonged to no one else but Alexis. The warrior-princess.
When she rounded the corner, the sight of her was a kick in his chest. She was lovely in the moonlight—not soft, never soft, but the angles of her face and jaw combined into a mysterious effect, one that made him think of secrets and shadows, and the things they’d done to each other in the dark of night.
The eclipse fire rose up, threatening to take him over, to make him do things he wouldn’t do otherwise. “What do you want?” he snapped, temptation roughening his voice.
She hesitated. “Carlos is looking for you.”
“You didn’t come all the way out here to tell me that.”
“No.” She lifted her chin in challenge. “I came to see you.”
Holding himself still was a struggle. “Bad idea.”
“Probably. But don’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.” She glanced up at the sky, where the moon shone nearly full. “It wouldn’t have to mean anything, or take us back where we were before. We could agree that it’s just the barrier talking. The magic.”
Which was exactly what he didn’t want it to be between them. Heat flared in his veins, a sharp-edged howl of lust and need, but he dug his fingernails into his palms and forced his hands to stay still when they would’ve reached for her. “Tell Carlos I’ll talk to him in the morning,” he said, rejecting her offer by not mentioning it.
She stood there for a long moment, limned in moonlight. Then she turned and walked away, leaving him sitting alone in the night by the burial ruins of an ancient people much younger than his own. He was still there, dry eyed, exhausted, and lonely, when the sun came up and the eclipse day dawned.
Her cheeks burned at the memory, even though she’d already tortured herself throughout a long, sleepless night. She kept picturing the look on Nate’s face—total disinterest with a liberal dose of annoyance—as she’d pimped herself out, offering strings-free eclipse sex. What the hell had she been thinking? She hadn’t been; that was the answer. She’d simply gone back to old, bad habits.
She’d been the one to go looking for Nate that first time, just as she’d been the one to go after Aaron, and the guy before him, and the one before that, ad infinitum. She was usually the aggressor, the one who gave chase, mostly because she aimed so far out of her own league. And yeah, sometimes she got turned down. But not like this. Never like this. She was becoming
that
girl, the one everyone else pitied because she kept going back to the ex who hadn’t treated her all that well in the first place. She not only took the booty call when the phone rang; she was the one doing the dialing. And where had it gotten her? No-fucking-where.
She was pathetic.
“Damn it,” she muttered, pacing away from the window of her small suite, shrugging against the chafe of her weapons belt as resentment dug, not just against Nate but against all of them. She was pissed off, and jealous of the other Nightkeepers, who’d headed out to the training center to blow some shit up. Their powers were all ramping up as the eclipse approached. Her powers—what she had, anyway—had stayed flatlined; only her hormones had ramped. Which was just so not fair. Her mother had been a powerful mage, for chrissake. How come she’d lost the magic lottery? Was it because her father had been relatively weak? Izzy had implied that his minimal talents were why she carried her mother’s bloodline name and mark; her parents had been trying to ensure that she had the best chance of gaining power, of being someone.
So far that hadn’t exactly worked out, which was another thing that had anger spiking. What if—
Take a breath,
she told herself.
This isn’t you. It’s the barrier.
The magic was making her nuts.
Stalking into her bathroom, she gave herself a once-over, knowing it was nearly time to meet the others for transpo to the intersection for the eclipse ceremony. The combat clothes she wore had been her mother’s; Izzy had pulled them out of storage and made the necessary repairs once Alexis had graduated from the midnight blue robes of a Nightkeeper trainee. Alexis would’ve preferred to go with modern clothes, but it’d meant so much to Izzy that she hadn’t fought it. The pants were basic black, and loose enough at the waist that Alexis could wear them at her hips, but tight enough at the legs that she looked like a chick rather than a drag queen. The shirt was black as well, made of heavy, stretchable fabric, and the cuffs were worked with intricate sprays of blue and white stone beads that were arranged in stylized designs symbolizing the smoke bloodline.
Looking at her face in the mirror, Alexis tried to see the woman from the vision, tried to see her mother in herself. And failed.
Where Gray-Smoke had been willowy and elegant in every picture showing her, Alexis was sturdy and . . . well, not elegant. Where her mother had had high, narrow cheekbones and a delicately pointed chin, Alexis’s face was broad and anything but delicate. Almond-shaped eyes didn’t match wide and round, and hazel didn’t match blue.
They had nothing physically in common, and even less in terms of magic, yet they were bound by blood, and perhaps by destiny.
“What if I don’t ever find my magic?” Alexis whispered to her own reflection. “What if I fail?”
For a second her reflected image fogged up and wavered, as though it might answer, as though she’d drawn on the barrier to pull scrying magic she didn’t know how to manage. Then she blinked and the picture solidified, and she realized it wasn’t magic at all. It was tears. And she was being a wuss. She was supposed to draw strength from the barrier on the peak days, not cringe away from it. But with her streaky hair pulled back into a practical French braid and no makeup on, she felt exposed. Cool currents of air touched her body, tightening her skin and making her too aware of the brush of the heavy fabric and the weight of what was to come. Once Strike ’ported them to the safe house near the ruins of Chichén Itzá and they descended into the sacred tunnels below the ancient city, they were going enact the transition ritual and support Patience in her bid to become a Godkeeper, with Brandt as her Nightkeeper mate. And if that brought another slice of jealousy, nobody else needed to know how small Alexis really was, how petty.
There was a quiet knock at the door to her suite, followed by Izzy’s voice calling, “You just about ready, princess?”
Don’t call me that,
Alexis wanted to snap. She didn’t, though, because she knew the spiky irritability was the magic, nothing more. And besides, Izzy had called her that long before Nate had turned it into a sneer. The
winikin
meant it as an endearment, a reminder of what Alexis was meant to be. And maybe that was part of the problem. The pressure and expectations came from her bloodline, from her family’s history. Not from her own potential for a damn thing. In a way she didn’t belong here any more than she’d belonged at the Newport Yacht Club, and she kept wondering why nobody seemed to see it except her.
“Coming,” she called in answer to her
winikin
, forcing herself to shove the insecurities deep down inside, in a locked section of her soul she opened only rarely, when she was down and needed to feel even crappier about herself. Or on days like today, when other people were depending on her and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to produce enough power to help.
“You can do it,” she told herself. And went out to face the lunar eclipse.
A soft golden glow surrounded the king and his mate, growing stronger when Strike reached out and took Leah’s hand. The Nightkeeper’s human queen might not have magic on a day-to-day basis, but when the peak days came around, look out. She and Strike together channeled the powers of the creator god Kulkulkan, who had serious skills.
Alexis suffered another tug of envy. Not just at the magic, but at the connection between the two of them, and the soft, intimate look they shared for half a second before turning to the business at hand. Which, in a way, was as much about love as it was about war, because the next god to come through the barrier would most likely offer its powers to a Nightkeeper female who had a strong mate at her side.
Alexis glanced over at Brandt and Patience. They stood close together, holding hands and pressed together at hip and shoulder, looking like they’d worked out whatever had been worrying Strike the other day. This time envy tugged stronger at Alexis’s heart. Was love so much to ask for?
“Okay, gang, here’s how it’s going to work,” Strike said. “We’ll link up and I’ll use the boost to teleport all of us to the new site. We’ll drop in the house, not the forest, because the house ought to be secure.”
The Nightkeepers—or rather Jox—had purchased a run-down rental property in the Yucatán over the winter and retrofitted it with a kick-ass security system and emergency supplies, so they could use it as a staging area for trips down into the sacred tunnels. The move had become necessary when the Nightkeepers’ previous passageway to the tunnels leading to the sacred intersection had been destroyed during the equinox battle. Luckily for them—though gods knew it’d been more fate than luck—Leah had known of a second access point near a small house her parents had rented on vacation when she was a child.
Though finding the entrance during the summer solstice of ’84, amidst the massacre itself, had marked Leah and her younger brother and had eventually cost her brother’s life, it’d also meant that the loss of the first passageway hadn’t been the disaster it would’ve been otherwise. Gods forbid they couldn’t get to the intersection and undergo the transition ritual, because the legends said the Godkeepers would be the first and best defense standing between mankind and the
Banol Kax
when the end-time came.
At the moment they didn’t even have one full Godkeeper, though. Which meant they had some serious catching up to do.
Strike continued, “Once we’ve secured the perimeter, the warriors will go down while the
winikin
and nonwarriors stay topside and cover the entrance.” The king made it sound matter-of-fact, even though it was a serious breach of SOP.
Traditionally, the
winikin
stayed back at the training compound and watched the Nightkeeper children. But with only the twin boys to watch over and too few warriors, Strike was pressing everyone into service. The female
winikin
would protect the twins back at Skywatch. The four male
winikin
, along with Jade, who hadn’t received the warrior’s mark or the attendant fighting prowess, would be heavily armed and tasked with keeping watch for Iago and his ilk, or any other sign of danger.
Alexis had argued along the lines of tradition, but Strike and Leah had overruled her. Still, the debate had helped them clarify a few fail-safes, so she felt like she’d at least added to the convo and justified her place on what was coming to be known as the royal council.
Leah took over, saying, “When we’ve reached the temple chamber, we’ll link up. Strike and I will take whatever boost we need to man the defenses. The rest of the power should go to Patience and Brandt for the Godkeeper ritual.”
Strike’s expression, which had been serious all along, went deadly intense. “We need this, people. We need a true Godkeeper, and we need her now.” He looked straight at Patience as he said, “With a Godkeeper’s power, especially if we get another of the war gods, we might be able to get ahead of Iago, maybe even attack him on his own turf. Without it, we’re vulnerable.”
A chill skimmed down Alexis’s spine. Without meaning to she glanced over at Nate. He was staring at the king, his jaw locked, and something told her his thoughts were elsewhere.
But where? And why?
“Any questions?” Strike asked, then quirked a humorless smile. “I suppose I should rephrase that: Any questions I’d have a prayer of answering? Didn’t think so. Okay, let’s link up.”
Without further discussion the Nightkeepers pulled their ceremonial knives from their weapons belts and drew the blades across their palms. Alexis stared at the thin line she’d just carved in her skin, watched it go from shocked white to red, then well up and spill over. She felt the kick of pain and power, the shimmer of magic just out of reach, a wellspring of it that she could touch but couldn’t really tap into, as though something were blocking her, keeping her from reaching her true potential. Or else that was wishful thinking and she was already as strong as she was ever going to get.
“Ready?” Sven asked from her left side, holding out his bloodied palm in invitation.
Alexis nodded and grabbed on. The power boost hummed through her bones as she reached out to clasp Patience’s hand on her other side, continuing the circle of Nightkeepers. The
winikin
formed an outer circle, touching the magi so they’d be included in the ’port magic, even though they didn’t add to the boost. When the circle was complete except for Strike and Leah, the royal couple stepped in and finished the connection.
When they did, the power whiplashed through Alexis, untold magic using her as a conduit, though not a wielder. She threw her head back and let her body arch into it as the world tilted sideways, then accelerated when Strike triggered the ’port magic.
Everything went gray-green, and mist whipped past. Then the universe decelerated around her, spun sideways, and slammed into the soles of her feet.
The air changed, going humid and earthy, and a room materialized around her, whitewashed and sparsely furnished in Early Particleboard, with a couple of serapes thrown around and a red velvet mariachi hat hung on one wall in a weak effort at local color.
Welcome to the Yucatán, low-rent style,
Alexis thought. She’d been to the safe house once before, during the winter solstice, but hadn’t noticed the lame decor so much. Maybe it bugged her now because she’d been making a real effort to brighten up Skywatch. Or maybe, she acknowledged, she was looking for something to focus on other than the ceremony.
Strike’s low whistle caught her attention, and she looked to her king. He sent Jox and Michael to a locked back room that was filled with surveillance monitors, and gestured for the rest of them to wait. When Jox signaled the all-clear, Strike waved the Nightkeeper warriors out of the house, leaving Jade and the
winikin
males behind. Jade looked simultaneously relieved and miserable as the others filed out. She was the only one of them lacking any fighting magic. The only other Nightkeeper lacking the warrior’s mark was Anna, but although the king’s sister wasn’t able to call upon her
itza’at
seer’s powers, she’d proven able to boost any of the others with her power, so she was going with the warriors as backup.
Alexis sketched a wave at Jade on the way out, thinking that it might suck being on the low end of the warriors’ talent range, but at least she was a warrior and not a librarian.
It was cloudy outside, providing an unexpected continuity with the weather where they’d come from, but the similarities pretty much stopped there. Where the land surrounding Skywatch was arid and red-cast, with little wildlife beyond the occasional hawk, snake, or coyote, the Yucatán was lush and verdant, and before Alexis had gone three steps she’d been bitten by a buzzing insect. Parrots called to one another through the trees despite the gloom and the darkness, and monkeys chattered from farther away.
Giving a second low whistle, Strike sent them into the forest along the narrow path they’d scouted, cleared, and then hidden again a few months earlier. It led through the trees to a squat stone temple made of simple blocks fitted together. The structure was uncarved and unadorned from the outside, almost forgettable until they stepped through the low doorway. The inside of the unprepossessing structure was a rectangular room that during the day looked like nothing much, with little more than a few badly eroded carvings. At night, though, when the stars were bright, the walls showed instructions for opening a secret passageway that was viable for only an hour on either side of an equinox, solstice, or major event like an eclipse.
There were no stars tonight, and the writing didn’t glow quicksilver-bright, but the spell was already familiar. Strike and Leah knelt together, pressed their bloodied palms to the stones at the back of the narrow temple space, and recited the ancient words in synchrony.
When the doorway opened Alexis hung back a little, partially so she could scan the forest for any sign of trouble, and partly so she could avoid being too close to Nate as Strike and Leah led the Nightkeepers down the narrow passageway, and the others started falling in, moving single-file toward the sacred chambers, lighting the way with cheap flashlights.
Magic hummed in the air, heating Alexis’s blood and setting up vibrations where they didn’t belong, drawing her to a man whom didn’t want her, and who she didn’t want.
Liar,
her inner voice chided, but she ignored it and took up a position at the back of the line, with only Michael behind her. He always took the rearmost position, because he was the best among them at shield magic. Very few spells worked down in the tunnels, but the shield did, and it could buy them valuable time if they were attacked.
Which left Alexis feeling like a spare wheel, because her shield was for shit.
And you so need to get over yourself,
she thought fiercely, not sure where the negativity was coming from, but figuring it had to do with the eclipse, and the things that had happened—real or imagined—between her and Nate over the past week.
The tunnel sloped gently down, and as the small group moved onward, the sound of running water quickly became audible. They would parallel the river all the way to their destination, which was a rectangular altar room deep beneath the ruins of Chichén Itzá. There they would initiate the ceremony, and if—gods willing—a god accepted Patience as its keeper, she and Brandt would in theory get their asses zapped into the circular chamber where Strike and Leah had first met. Now buried beneath a shit-ton of rubble, the sacred chamber was where the Godkeeper ceremony was supposed to take place.
In theory, anyway. In practice, the Nightkeepers had performed the same calling ritual during the winter solstice, and had returned to the surface without a Godkeeper. There was no guarantee that this time would be any different.
When they reached the temple, which was fairly plain, save for sconces set at regular intervals and a large
chac-mool
altar that took up most of one end of the chamber, they set their flashlights on the floor and reblooded their palms. Alexis barely felt the pain through the humming that’d taken up residence in her brain. The buzz was one of warm urgency and temptation, though she couldn’t have said what it was tempting her to do.
Joining up again, the Nightkeepers spoke the words necessary to jack into the barrier:
“Pasaj och.”
Alexis felt the kick of power, felt the split in her brain as part of her went into the barrier and part stayed behind. As planned, Patience began reciting the Godkeeper spell as the others boosted her power. The intersection was a weak spot in the barrier, supposedly created when the Xibalbans had called the demons to earth in the first millennium A.D. There, the earth, sky, and underworld were very close together, though the skyroad was long and winding by comparison to the hellmouth. As such, the intersection was where the Nightkeepers gathered for their strongest spells, especially those designed to call a god. Yet at the same time it opened the way for a demon as well, which was why Strike and Leah joined up and called on their god, Kulkulkan, to cast blockade magic and help keep the
Banol Kax
from coming through the portal formed by the Godkeeper spell. As they did so, the king and queen were surrounded by a golden shimmer: the light of love, and of the gods.
Alexis turned away from them, her throat closing on a beat of grief for what could’ve been, yet wasn’t. Telling herself that she was an important part of the battle regardless, she opened herself to the magic, reciting the Godkeeper spell in her head only a beat after hearing it in Patience’s sweet voice, supporting rather than ascending, following rather than leading.
Then, suddenly, she wasn’t following anymore.
Sudden urgency gathered in Alexis’s chest and mind, grabbing onto her. She gasped as the power hum increased, then her lungs vised on the exhale. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. Panicking, she opened her eyes, not having realized she’d closed them until that moment. She looked for help and latched onto Nate, saw the surprise on his face, the concern. He said something; she didn’t catch what it was, couldn’t hear him over the humming, yearning buzz. She could hear Patience, though, could hear the spell, could feel it grabbing onto her.
Sudden pain tore through Alexis’s hand, though she’d sheathed her knife. She yanked her hands away from the magi on either side of her and looked down in horror. Blood ran from her palms, pooling on the floor and then running uphill to the
chac-mool
, where it streamed up the lines of the rain god’s carved body in defiance of gravity. The blood collected in the bowl the statue held in its lap, pooling there.