She’d just gotten out the door of her suite when Izzy turned the corner, headed in Alexis’s direction. The
winikin
’s face softened to a smile. “You look better.”
Before, Alexis might’ve checked what she was wearing, and maybe straightened her ponytail. Now she just nodded. “Thanks. I feel better.” She’d been pretty ragged by the time they’d made it back. Sleep and food had fixed most of what ailed her. Now she needed to deal with the rest, which meant heading to the cottages out back. To Nate.
Izzy fell into step beside her, but stayed silent, as though unsure of what to say, or how. Which was a huge change in itself, because Alexis had never known her godmother to be at a loss for words.
When they reached the doorway leading out to the pool deck, Alexis stopped and turned to the woman who had raised and shaped her. “I owe you my life,” she said simply. “If it hadn’t been for you, I would’ve died during the massacre. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have known who and what I am when the time came to find out, and I wouldn’t have been able to deal nearly as well with the transition. I love you with all my heart, and much of who I am I owe to you.”
Izzy raised an eyebrow. “Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?”
“Because you’re a smart woman, and you know me well.” Alexis risked a small smile. “I love you. But I can’t be what you want me to be.”
“Sweetheart, you already are. You always have been.”
It took a moment for the words to penetrate. Another for confusion to set in. “Huh?” Okay, that wasn’t brilliant, but still.
The
winikin
’s smile went a little crooked. “Okay, maybe not always, but close enough.” She caught Alexis’s hands, squeezed them. “You’re not your mother, and I never wanted you to be. You’re what you were meant to be: a strong, independent woman, and a royal adviser. You helped save the world last night, and you’re probably going to do it again before all this is over. Just because I don’t agree with your taste in men, that doesn’t make you a failure.”
The look on her face when she said the last part brought a bubble of laughter to Alexis’s throat. “You sure about that?” But then she sobered. “He’s a shifter, Izzy.”
“I know. Who are we to argue with the gods?” The
winikin
gave Alexis a little push. “Go on. Do what you have to do.”
Alexis opened the door, but turned back to say, “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to do?”
“Whatever your choice, I’ll be proud of you. I always am. Now go.”
Alexis went, and she went with a lift beneath her heart, a benediction she hadn’t expected, hadn’t needed, but one that mattered nonetheless. She wasn’t sure if she’d changed or if Izzy had, but she had a feeling things were going to be different between them from now on.
The buoyancy brought by that revelation sustained her all the way to Nate’s bungalow, then deserted her in an instant. In its place nerves flared as she raised a fist and knocked.
He opened the door immediately, as though he’d sensed her approach, or had been waiting for her. Maybe both. His big body filled the doorway; he was wearing khakis and a button-down shirt that was open at the throat, revealing the medallion and the eccentric. Business casual with a twist, she thought, and felt a lump gather in her throat. She saw his laptop open behind him, his cell phone beside it. “You working?” she asked, her nerve faltering a little. “I can come back later.”
But he shook his head. “Just talking to Denjie about the new
VW
game. I guess between the writing delays and sagging sales on the other installments, the parent company that’s been handling the games doesn’t want
Hera’s Mate
. They’re ending the series instead.”
She winced, thinking that as far as omens and signs went, that wasn’t a good one. “I’m sorry.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m actually relieved. It’s time to move on.” He hadn’t leaned toward her, but it sure felt as though he had. His energy reached out to her, enveloped her, made her yearn.
“That’s new,” she said inanely, pointing to a carved black wrist piece that peeked out from beneath his left shirt cuff.
He shook it down and showed her the carvings. “I’m pretty sure it is—or was—the obsidian knife. Part of the whole Volatile thing, I guess.”
She smiled a little. “Magic.”
“Yeah.” Now he did move, stepping out of the doorway and crowding her, looking down at her with everything she’d ever wanted or needed in his eyes. “You come out here to talk about my new man-bracelet?”
Nerves shimmered just beneath her skin, warming her and making her jittery. “No. I came to ask you to take me flying.”
His eyes blanked, and he exhaled a long, slow breath. “Whoa. That was so not what I was expecting you to say.”
Her lips curved. “Well, actually I came out here to take you to bed, and stay with you for good, if you’ll have me. But I figured we should go flying first.”
Now it was his turn to smile as the shock in his eyes gave way to heat and a slow build of joy. But he said, “You don’t have to do this if it freaks you out.”
“I have to do it
because
it freaks me out,” she corrected. “At least, it does a little, and I need to get past that.” She leaned up and touched her lips to his. “This is your talent. I’ll love it because it’s part of you, and I love you.”
He leaned into her, leaned into the kiss, then murmured. “I love you too.” And as though the words had been the trigger, he stepped outside and began to change, the lines of his body blurring and shifting; his clothes tearing and falling away to reveal feathers and wings as he became a raptor the size of an SUV.
When it was done he stood there opposite her, his clawed feet balancing oddly on the flat ground, his wings half spread, as though he were ready to take off at any second, or shield her from an attack. “Well?” he asked, the word a soft scree aloud, a translated thought inside her head.
“You’re amazing,” she said simply. “You’re perfect. And you’re mine.”
He had nothing to say to that, but she didn’t mind, because she was pretty speechless herself, and tears were starting to film her eyes and leak a little, because this was all so important.
“Yeah,” he said, and she felt his mental touch as a kiss. Then his mood shifted, and he said, “Grab the knapsack just inside the door, okay? I packed clothes.”
Grinning at the memory of him wearing a makeshift loincloth, she did as he’d asked. Once she’d grabbed the bag and was back outside, he dipped a shoulder and she climbed up, settling herself in the hollow between his sleek head and powerful shoulders, and twining her feet and hands in his chains as she had done before. Nerves kindled, sweeping her burst of excitement away.
“Hang on!” he warned, and then hunkered down and kicked off, then began beating the air with powerful strokes of his wings, a fast tempo at first as they skimmed the ground alongside the ball court, headed for the mansion, then slower as he gained altitude. She halfway thought he would head the other way, straight out the back of the compound to the emptiness beyond, keeping this between them, a private thing.
Instead, he buzzed the mansion.
He banked around the ceiba tree with a fierce cry of joy and sent them flashing past the residential wing, then the pool. She saw the windows and openmouthed faces, saw Sven holler with joy and backflip off the diving board as they skimmed directly over him.
Then they were away from the mansion and Nate was powering up, sending them arrowing toward the thermal currents high above.
On a whisper of love, Alexis cast a light shield spell around them. When he glanced back, she sent,
We’re in radar range, and too close to Area 51 for comfort.
Yikes. Good thinking.
He paused, then sent a soft,
Well?
Which was when she realized she’d forgotten to be weirded out, even a little. Maybe sleeping on it had helped adjust her perceptions, or maybe her psyche was ahead of her brain for a change, but his shifting talent was the last thing on her mind as they winged over the canyonscape, with the sun beating down on them from above, warming her skin.
It was the first full day of spring, she realized suddenly. A time for rebirth and growth, for starting over. A new dawn for the Nightkeepers.
“It’s perfect,” she said, speaking aloud, though she knew he’d catch the words from her head. He didn’t seem to be able to ’path in human form—for which she was grateful, because a girl needed some privacy—but she liked the mind-link they formed while flying. She liked flying too, she realized as she watched the ground flash past and listened to the wind song rustle through his feathers. “You’re perfect.”
He started angling downward, spiraling through the layers of air, his wings outstretched in a glide that took them to a small cave, one he must’ve sighted from the air, or maybe scouted out earlier in the day, who knew?
When they touched down, Alexis had a moment of nerves at the sight of the dark cave mouth. Given her last couple of cave adventures, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to going in there. But it wasn’t a hellmouth, didn’t have a river. It was soft and dry and welcoming, and when they moved inside she saw that the walls were marked with pteroglyphs, images painted by the men and women of another time, another culture than their own.
She dropped down from astride the hawk and looked in the knapsack, knowing he would’ve packed a blanket in addition to clothes. She turned her back on him as she spread the blanket on the dusty cave floor, giving him a moment of privacy, and by the time she turned around he was back to human form, stark naked and aroused. They lay together, loved together under the warm desert sun of springtime, and when the moment came they climaxed together, the orgasm punching through even stronger than before, because it was love now, not just sex. . . . In that moment she felt a sting on her forearm, and thought she saw a shimmer of rainbows reflected on the cave wall.
A few minutes later, as they lay cooling together, she raised her forearm and held it beside his. They each wore a new mark. A loving mark.
He leaned over and touched his lips to hers.
“Jun tan.”
There was no panic in his soul, no regret. Nothing except an absolute and perfect rightness that might’ve made him suspect that he and Alexis had been destined for each other all along . . . if he believed in that sort of thing. Which he didn’t. Just in case, though, he sent his thoughts skyward and whispered, “Thank you, gods.”
Little was actually settled in real terms, of course. Rabbit was awake and talking, but there were major questions about his connection to Iago and what it would mean going forward. Myrinne was another consideration, as was the search they were going to have to man in order to find Iago’s compound, and Sasha and Lucius. And the library.
The next few months—and years—were going to be complicated and dangerous, but he wouldn’t be facing them alone, or unarmed. He had a talent, a purpose, and a role within the Nightkeepers. More important, he had Alexis. Tipping his head back so he could look at the painting hung above the bed, which glowed shadows-on-gray in the moonlight, he whispered, “I get it now, Father.”
The paintings didn’t symbolize detachment at all, he’d realized. There were two people in every one of them: the artist . . . and the woman who’d clung to his shoulders and laughed with joy as they flew the skies together, looking down on the canyon, the ruin, and the sea. The paintings were his mother and father. They were love. And, as Nate curled into Alexis and breathed her scent, he knew that one thing would remain constant in the months and years and battles to come: With her, he was finally free.
A small, panicked part of her thought that this was a dream, that her soul had once again retreated deep inside her as the red-robes dragged her to the small stone room that smelled of incense and blood. But no, she had to believe this was real. She could feel the pinch of her boots and smell her own fear as the footsteps came closer.
She didn’t know why or how she was awake, whether they’d forgotten the drugs or withdrawn them for some purpose. She also didn’t know how it could be possible that her bedsores had healed overnight, and her muscles had grown strong once again, her arms and legs lean and toned. She knew only that she’d somehow been given a slim chance, and she didn’t intend to waste it.
Her heart hammered as she curled her fingers around the plastic spork she’d taken from her meal tray, leaving the oversalted microwave dinner uneaten. Letting the jagged round end poke between her fingers, she imagined shoving it into one of Iago’s gloating green eyes. She hated him, hated what he’d done to her, and to her father, Ambrose. Hell, for all she knew, the bastard had killed her Aunt Pim, too, setting Ambrose on the downward spiral to his death.
It fit. It played. And it rankled deep inside Sasha, taking her from the rebellious but naive young chef she’d been prior to her capture and making her into something else, someone else. Someone who could—and would—do whatever it took to get away from Iago and his so-called Xibalbans, who were nothing more than a group of delusional psychopaths who worshipped gods nobody sane believed in anymore, preparing for an apocalyptic threat that existed only in their minds. In that, they were very like her father.
Damn him.
A ball of hot fury kindled in her chest, as the lock to her cell door rattled. Moments later the panel swung inward, sending the meal tray scraping aside with a screech of plastic across the floor.
Sasha didn’t stop to think or look. She attacked in silence, springing from behind the door and slamming her makeshift weapon into the face of the big man who stood in the doorway. She nailed him in the left eye, the spork sinking in with a moment of resistance followed by liquid give.
Blood and fluid spurted and the man shouted, spun, and staggered, clapping both hands to his ruined face and dropping to his knees just inside the door.
Sasha caught an impression of shaggy brown hair and massive shoulders, but it was the gray robes of a Xibalban acolyte that caught her attention, and the incongruous flash of black at his wrist. He wasn’t a red-robe, wasn’t tattooed with the blood-colored quatrefoil glyph that the others wore on their right inner forearms. Instead, he wore a small black glyph shaped like a jaguar’s head, one that she recognized from her childhood.
Telling herself it didn’t matter, that she didn’t have time to stop, look, or think—or regret for even an instant—Sasha dodged around him and through the door, then spun to shut and lock the panel behind her.
She bolted down the corridor with her blood humming in her ears, then stopped at an intersecting corner and took a quick look around, trying to get her bearings. To try was the best she could do, though, because the hallway looked much like her cell—bare and functional, only with drywall painted plain gray rather than the impervious plastic-lined metal that lined the walls of her cell. But beyond that? Nada. No character, no windows, no nothing. Just blah and more blah. She might be in a repurposed guerrilla compound in Central America near the Maya ruin where Iago had captured her, baiting her with her own father’s skull. Or she might be on the thirtieth floor of a high-rise somewhere in the States. There was no way to tell.
For the first time since she’d come out of her drugged fugue, Sasha faltered. Even if she got free, what would she find outside? How would she get home? For that matter, where the hell
was
home? Ambrose and Pim were dead, her apartment had undoubtedly been cleared and re-rented, and there were precious few who would’ve missed her, or even noticed she was gone. Tears threatened at the unbe-
freaking
-lievable suckfest of her situation, and she wondered whether, if she closed her eyes very tight and wished hard enough, she’d wake up in her bed back in Boston and find that the last eleven months had been a terrible dream.
But this wasn’t a nightmare, she knew. This was reality, or at least a version of it created by some very disturbed minds.
Remembering that the red-robes had always dragged her to the left, she went right, running, her breath whistling in her lungs as she braced herself each second for a shout of discovery, the crack of one of the rifles the red-robed guards carried across their backs. She passed a row of solid metal doors, then turned another corner and faltered to a stop when the hall dead-ended at an ancient-looking wall, one with interlocking stone blocks that ran up and over in an arch pattern, making it look like a doorway, though there was no doorknob. There was a circular depression off to one side, carved in the shape of a stylized house symbol. Thanks to Ambrose, she recognized the Mayan
way
glyph, which could mean both “home” and “doorway.”
The question was, did she want to pass through this particular doorway? The stones were too much like the ones in the interrogation chamber. What if she’d run in a circle?
There’s no time to second-guess
, she told herself, her pulse drumming so loud in her ears that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear the sound of pursuit coming up behind her. Whispering a prayer to the gods, though she’d left Ambrose’s religion behind a long time ago, she pressed the flat of her palm against the glyph, hoping against hope that it was a pressure pad.
For several agonizing seconds, nothing happened. Then a groaning noise came from the stone panel and it began to move, sliding sideways into the wall, rumbling on some hidden mechanism. Exhaling with relief and wiping away a spurt of tears, Sasha pushed through into the stone-lined corridor beyond, moving as quietly as she could, keeping her senses on high alert.
The air in the stone tunnel was cool, with the peculiar dampness she associated with stone churches and temple ruins; ambient light came from bare bulbs hanging off an electric line that was bolted to the low ceiling, a jarring anachronism. There was another doorway at the far end, this one wooden and cobbled together with what looked like iron straps and rosehead nails. What the hell was this place?
She didn’t know, didn’t really care except to wonder what was on the other side of the wooden door, and where she was going to find herself when she came out into the open air.
If
she came out into the open air.
No, don’t think that way
, she told herself.
Keep it positive
. She was going to get out, she was going to find some cops—or mercenaries, depending on where she was—and she was going to come back and kick . . . Iago’s . . . ass.
She was going to do it for her father, and for the months she’d lost because a group of nutjobs had convinced themselves that the mythical Nightkeepers were real, that Ambrose had somehow stolen and hidden some imaginary library that held clues about an apocalypse that wasn’t coming.
Gritting her teeth as anger surged, Sasha reached for the handle of the strapped wooden door. Before she could touch it, though, it swung open.
Iago stood there, with a half dozen red-robes at his back. The bastard’s green eyes widened, then snapped narrow in anger as he roared and lunged, shouting, “Grab her!”
Sasha spun and ran for her life. Adrenaline raced through her bloodstream, urging her on as she skidded on the slick stones underfoot, headed for the sliding door and the prefab tunnels beyond. The stone doorway was still open, beckoning her onward. Gunfire chattered, and she screamed as she threw herself through the door. She scrabbled for the pressure panel, trying to get the door to shut again, still screaming as bullets flew through the door and slammed into the drywall opposite her, chewing through the thin walls in an instant and showing more stone behind the wallboard.
Sobbing with terror, she yanked at the door, trying to force it to shut, her thin veneer of toughness dissolving as reality set in, bringing the dull knowledge that she wasn’t ever going to get out of here, that she was going to—
“Leave it, for fuck’s sake!” Rough hands grabbed her and yanked her away from the door. “Come on!”
Those same hands dragged her down the corridor, hauled her into a stumbling run, but Sasha was barely aware of moving, didn’t know where they were headed, whether into danger or away. Her entire attention was focused on the man who dragged her at his side.
He was a total stranger. He was freaking huge.
And holy shit, he was gorgeous.
His deep green eyes, more forest, where Iago’s were piercing emerald, gleamed beneath elegant brows. His lean-bridged nose had a pronounced ridge in the middle, and that, along with a square, stubbled jaw and thick, wavy black hair took his looks into fiercely masculine territory, while a poet’s mouth and the paleness of his skin saved him from looking thuggish. The whole effect was one of darkness and light, of contradictions and raw, potent sexuality.
His body lived up to the promise of his face; he was built, bulked, and entirely male. Heat came off him in waves, all but sparking red and gold in the air between them.
“Who are you?” She barely managed to get the question out as she stumbled at his side. “Where did you come from?”
“Explanations later. We’ve got to haul ass to the rendezvous point.” He glanced at her with eyes that gave away nothing. “That’d go lots faster if you stopped staring and started running.”
His rudeness wasn’t enough to shake Sasha out of her where-have-you-been-all-my-life vaporlock. Catching a glimpse of his right forearm, though, was.
Her brain cataloged the data. He was bigger than average. He oozed charisma and sex appeal. And he wore two glyph tattoos on his right inner forearm, both done in black: the stone bloodline, and the warrior. The marks were straight out of the stories Ambrose had crammed into her brain throughout her childhood, usually following them with a rambling diatribe about her responsibilities to the world in the years leading up to the 2012 doomsday.
She screeched to a halt, pulling away from him with the leverage of surprise. “You think you’re a goddamn Nightkeeper!”
He stopped dead and turned to face her, growling, “No, sweetheart, I
am
a goddamn Nightkeeper. And right now, I’m the only thing standing between you and a one-way trip to visit your old man in the afterlife. So, what’s it going to be? Are you going to shut up and move your ass, or am I going to have to carry you?”
“I—” she began, but didn’t get any further than that.
He muttered a sharp expletive under his breath, scooped her up against his chest as though she weighed nothing, and took off running. He slapped a palm against a pressure pad as they ducked through another doorway that led to a stone tunnel, and a stone slab grated into place behind him. For a second Sasha thought they were going to make it. Then a hollow boom sounded and the hallway around them shuddered.
The universe seemed to take a breath. Then, with a terrible, howling roar, the tunnel collapsed around them.