Nate’s gut clenched and his voice went deadly chill. “And you’re only just telling me this now?”
“You’ve made it clear that she isn’t your concern.” There was an edge to the
winikin
’s voice, coming from Nate’s refusal to buy into the whole gods-given-mate thing.
Screw refusing to buy in; he was actively fighting it. He respected Alexis, and yeah, they’d clicked physically—hell, the sex had been scorching. But it’d been too much, too fast, at a time when his life had been doing a screeching one-eighty, swerving around a bit and then skidding off into a ditch. If it hadn’t been for the magic and the Nightkeepers, he and Alexis never would’ve met. If they had, odds were that they would’ve felt the spark, acknowledged it, and moved on, because it was godsdamned obvious that while they might have chemistry, they didn’t always like each other.
Hera, he understood; Alexis, not so much. But that didn’t stop his gut from locking up at the knowledge that she was outside the wards and didn’t have a clue there was a
makol
or something after the demon prophecies. And if the demon spawn were tracking the artifacts by piggybacking on the Nightkeepers’ investigations, whether by magic or good old-fashioned e-hacking, which was the only way the timing of Edna Hopkins’s death made any sense, then the odds were good that Alexis was going to have company very soon, if she didn’t already.
Shit.
Nate hit the brakes, yanked the rental over to the side of the road, and grated, “Get Strike here. Now.”
“The king’s ability to teleport isn’t a convenience.”
“Fuck convenience. Consider this a rescue.”
In the ornate ballroom of a recently foreclosed estate on the Monterey coast, the auctioneer introduced lot two twelve, a thirteen-hundred-year-old Mayan statuette of the goddess Ixchel. Bidding started at two grand and jumped almost immediately to five. At fifty-five hundred, Alexis caught the spotter’s eye and nodded to bump the bid. Then she leaned back in her folding chair, projecting the calm of a collector.
It was a lie, of course. The only things she’d ever collected were parking tickets at the Newport Marina. She looked the part, though, in a stylish navy pin-striped pantsuit that nipped in at the waist and pulled a little across the shoulders, thanks to all the hand-to-hand training she’d gotten in recent months. Her streaky blond hair was caught back in a severe ponytail, tasteful makeup accented her blue eyes and wide mouth, and she wore secondhand designer shoes that put her well over six feet. A top-end bag sat at her feet beside a matching folio, both slightly scuffed around the edges.
Understated upscale, courtesy of eBay. Her godmother, Izzy, might’ve pushed her into finance rather than fashion, but Alexis had put her love of fabric to good use regardless, calling on it to build an image.
In her previous life as a private investment consultant, her look had been calculated to reassure her wealthy friends and clients that she belonged among them but wouldn’t compete, wouldn’t upstage. She’d played the part for so long prior to the
oh, by the way, you’re a Nightkeeper
revelation that it’d been second nature to dress for this gig. But as bidding on the statuette topped sixtyfive hundred and Alexis nodded to bump it to a cool seven grand, she felt a hum of power that had been missing from her old life.
I have money now,
the buzz in her blood said.
I deserve to be here.
It wasn’t her money, not really. But she had carte blanche with the Nightkeeper Fund, and orders not to come home empty-handed.
“Ma’am?” said a cultured, amplified voice. It was the auctioneer now, not the spotter, which meant the dabblers had dropped out and he had his two or three serious bidders on the hook. “It’s seventy-five hundred dollars to you.”
She glanced up at the projection screen at the front of the room. It showed a magnification of the statuette, which rested near the auctioneer’s elbow, top-lit on a nest of black cloth. Described in the auction catalog as “a statuette of Ixchel, Mayan goddess of rainbows and fertility, carved from chert, circa A.D. 1100; love poem inscribed in hieroglyphs on base,” the statuette was lovely. The waxy, pale green stone had been carved with deceptive simplicity into the shape of a woman with a large nose and flattened forehead, her conical skull crowned with a rainbow of hair that fell forward as she tipped her head into her hands in repose, or perhaps tears. She sat upon a stone, or maybe an overturned bowl or basket, and that was where the glyphs were carved, curved and fluid and gorgeous like all Mayan writing, which was as much art as a form of communication.
Love poem,
Alexis thought with an inner snort.
Not.
Or rather, it was eau-de-Hallmark read one way, but according to Jade, the Nightkeepers’ archivist, if they held the statuette at the proper angle under starlight, a second layer of glyphwork would spell out the first of the seven demon prophecies they needed to combat the
Banol Kax
. Starscript, which was less about magic and more about the refractive angles and wavelengths of starlight, was apparently one of the tricks the ancestral Nightkeepers had used to bury their spells and prophecies within the carved writings of the ancient Maya, again according to Jade. And since Jade was the one who’d gotten the message from her
nahwal
ancestor during the winter solstice ritual, warning that the demon prophecies must be found, Alexis was inclined to believe her. The
nahwal
had said that the first prophecy would be triggered during the upcoming spring equinox, just over six weeks away . . . which meant it was pretty godsdamned critical that Alexis didn’t let some collector type outbid her on the Ixchel statuette.
Aware that the auctioneer was waiting for her answer, she said, “Ten thousand dollars.” As she’d hoped, the advance jumped the bid past fair market value by enough to make her remaining opponent shake his head and drop out. The auctioneer pronounced it a done deal, and she felt a flare of success as she flashed her bidder number, knowing there would be no problem with the money.
The Nightkeeper Fund, which had—ironically—been seeded in the late eighteen hundreds with the proceeds from her five-times-great-grandparents’ generation unwisely selling off the very Mayan artifacts the modern Nightkeepers were scrambling to recover now, had been intended to fund an army of hundreds as the 2012 end date approached. That, however, was before the current king’s father had led his warrior-priests in an ill-fated battle against the demons. Only a few of the youngest Nightkeepers had survived, hidden and raised in secret by their
winikin
until seven months earlier, when the intersection connecting the earth, sky, and underworld had reactivated from its two-decade dormancy, and the old king’s son, Strike, had recalled his warriors.
Yeah, that had been a shocker.
Alexis, dear, you’re a magic user,
Izzy had pretty much said.
I’m not your godmother; I’m your
winikin
, and we need to leave tonight for your bloodline ceremony and training. And, oh, by the way, you and the other Nightkeepers have a little over four years to save the world.
According to the thirteenth prophecy, Strike’s refusal to sacrifice Leah, the human who had become his mate and queen, meant that the countdown to the end—time had now begun in earnest. Jade’s research indicated that they’d passed into the four-year cycle ruled by the demon prophecies, which predicted that seven minions of the demon Camazotz would come through the intersection one at a time, each on a cardinal day, and attack. If they succeeded, the barrier would tear and the
Banol Kax
would be freed onto the earth . . . which had the Nightkeepers hustling to find the seven artifacts inscribed with starscript clues on how to avoid the fulfillment of the prophecies.
Make that six artifacts,
Alexis thought, grinning.
Because I just bagged Ixchel.
“Excuse me, please,” she murmured, and rose, snagging her folio and bag off the floor. She stepped out into the aisle while the auction house employees whisked her statuette off the podium and set up the next lot, and the auctioneer launched into his spiel. When she reached the temporary office that’d been set up in the hallway outside the big estate’s ballroom, she unzipped her folio and enjoyed how the staffer’s eyes got big at the sight of the neatly stacked and banded cash. She handed over her bidder’s number. “What’s the total damage?”
“One moment please,” he said, but his eyes were still glued to the cash.
The two items she’d bought with the Nightkeepers’ money—the statuette and a death mask that had been an earlier impulse buy—wouldn’t be the biggest deals of the day by far, but she’d bet they’d be among only a few handled in paper money. Granted, she could’ve done the remote transfer thing, too, but she quite simply loved the feel of the green stuff. And no, it wasn’t because she’d been deprived or picked on as a child, as
someone
back at Skywatch had unkindly suggested. Nor was it a reaction to the idea that the world was four years away from a serious crisis of being, as that same someone had offered, or a rejection of destiny or some such garbage.
She just loved money. She loved the feel and smell of it. She loved what it could buy—not just the things, but the respect. The power. It wasn’t actually until she’d been at Skywatch for a few weeks that she’d realized that the money thing was simple biology. The Nightkeepers were bigger, stronger, and more graceful than average humans, pumped with charisma and loaded with talent. At least, most of them were. Alexis had somehow gotten the bigger-and-stronger part without the other stuff, particularly the grace, which meant she tended more toward the clumsy side of life. She’d worked long and hard to camouflage the klutz factor, and most days managed to control her freakishly long limbs. That effort, however, left her seriously low on charisma, and so far she was average in the magical talent department, as well.
Ergo, the cash. She liked living as large as possible. So sue her.
“It’s going to take a minute,” the staffer said. “The computer’s being glitchy today.”
“No rush.” She flipped the folio shut and turned away, figuring she’d use the brief delay to check in—which consisted of powering up her PDA, shooting off a quick text message to Izzy reporting that she had the statue and was headed back to Skywatch, and then powering off the unit without checking her backlogged messages.
She wasn’t in the mood for the chatter—hadn’t been for a while, which was why she’d jumped at the chance to fly from New Mex out to the California coast for the auction. The quick trip had given her a chance to breathe air she wasn’t sharing with the same group of Nightkeepers and
winikin
she’d been cheek-by-jowl with for the past half year. She wasn’t the only one feeling it, either. Tensions were running high, thanks to the lack of both privacy and enemy activity.
Besides, she could guarantee the messages on her cell were nothing critical, because she wasn’t in line for the important stuff yet. Strike had his advisers—Leah and the royal
winikin
, Jox—and the three of them handled the heavy lifting, with the lower-impact jobs delegated to the newly inducted Nightkeepers.
For now, anyway. Alexis had her sights set higher. Her mother, Gray-Smoke, had been one of King Scarred-Jaguar’s most trusted advisers, holding political power equaled only by that of her adversarial coadviser, Two-Hawk. That pretty much figured, because Two-Hawk’s son was Alexis’s own personal nemesis, i.e., the
someone
who’d been seriously pissing her off over the past few months, ever since he’d dumped her on her ass right after the talent ceremony, with no explanation given beyond the old standard:
It’s not you, it’s me.
Damn him.
“Ma’am? You’re all set.” The staffer held out her paperwork. “I have a couple of messages for you too. She said it was important.”
“Thanks.” Alexis took the slips, glanced at them, and tucked them into her pocket. Just Izzy mother-henning her. The
winikin
would’ve gotten the text message by now, so they were square.
A grizzled, heavyset security guard set a metal case on the table and flipped it open so she could see the statuette nestled inside a shockproof foam bed, alongside the Mayan death mask she’d bought earlier. At her nod, the guard shut the case and slid it across the table to her, rumbling in a basso profundo voice, “Dial the numbers to what you want, and hit this button.” He pointed to an inset red dot. “That’ll set your combination. If you don’t want to bother, just leave it all zeros and it’ll act like a suitcase. Got it?”
“Got it.” A whim had her dialing in a date and hitting the red button. There was something satisfying about hearing the locks click.
Hefting the case, she gave the guard a friendly nod and headed out, mission accomplished. When she stepped through the front door of the estate, she found herself under the clear blue sky of a perfect February day in Nor Cal. The warm yellow sun and crisp, faintly salty air made her wish she’d opted for the convertible when she’d rented her car. But it’d been drizzling when she landed, so she’d treated herself to a sporty silver BMW that hugged the road like a lover. Convertible or not, the silver roadster ought to be automotive muscle enough to entertain her on the way back to LAX.
Sure enough, once she was on the road with the metal case in the passenger seat beside her, the feel of engine power and smooth leather lightened her mood, sending a victory dance through her soul. She had the statuette, and she wasn’t technically due back at Skywatch for another day. There was a sense of freedom in the thought, one that had her cranking the radio to something loud and edgy with a heavy backbeat as she pulled onto the narrow shoreline drive that led away from the lavish private estate that was being sold off, piece by piece, to settle the owner’s debts.