CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The moment Alexis broke contact with the sacred
circle and physically stepped into the rainbow, Nate knew she was
in serious trouble. When he saw her shimmer and start to fade, he
didn’t hesitate. He flung himself after her.
Instead of the rainbow, though, he found
agony.
Flames lashed at him; lightning struck at him as
he was transported someplace else, someplace between the earth and
sky, another layer that wasn’t the barrier, but was so much worse.
He twisted in the lashing wind and rain, suspended in the midst of
a terrible storm. “Alexis!” he cried, shouting so hard his voice
cracked on the word. “Lexie!”
But she wasn’t there. They’d been separated by
the magic, because she belonged in the rainbow and he didn’t, never
had.
He thrashed, screaming, not with the pain, but
because he needed to get to her, needed to protect her.
“Godsdamn it!” he shouted into the storm.
“She needs me! I won’t let it end like this. I can’t. For gods’
sake, let me help her. She’ll die without me!”
And, he realized in the extreme of his panic, he
would die without her. A sudden parade of impressions flashed
through his mind, kaleidoscoping images of the two of them together
in the past, the good times and the bad. Then he saw himself in two
different futures, one that continued for many years, one that cut
short in 2012, both without her in them. Both unacceptable.
Lightning slapped at him, arching him double in pain as he
contemplated a future without Alexis and realized that all along
his so-called honesty had been a front, a terrible lie. He’d been
trying to be honest with her, and in the process had lied to
himself. He might not have started out wanting a life with her, a
future with her, but now that he was facing one without her, he
realized it was the last thing he wanted. The one thing he wouldn’t
tolerate.
“Give her back!” he shouted to the storm, to the
gods. “She’s mine. I love her!”
The moment he said the words, the moment he
truly accepted them for what they were and what they meant, his
powers bolted wildly, careening to a new level he’d never
experienced before. The magic whiplashed through him, fighting the
storm, fighting captivity.
Feeding on the power, he tipped back his head
into the storm and roared, “I. Love. Her!”
The universe seemed to pause, seemed to take a
breath. In the sudden stillness a door unlocked in his mind, and he
suddenly saw his own dreams. He’d dreamed of his mother and father
as his infant self remembered them. He’d dreamed of being with
Alexis in the temple cave, of losing himself in her as she’d
pressed back against a twin column of stalagmites and cried his
name at the back of her throat.
And all along he’d dreamed of flying. Of being
free, not of love or duty, but free of gravity. Free of the
earth.
A warm, magical glow kindled in his heart. Only
it wasn’t his heart. It was the hawk medallion.
Son of a bitch, he
thought. The fucking thing really is
magic.
Acting on instinct, on impulse, he palmed his
knife from his belt. Only it wasn’t his usual knife; it was the
ceremonial blade Strike had given him. The weapon felt like an
extension of his own arm, cool on his flesh as he nicked first his
tongue, then each of his palms in sacrifice.
Cupping both bloodstained hands around the
medallion, he lifted it and pressed a kiss to the etching, where
the hawk became the man, and the man became the hawk. “I love her,”
he said simply. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” And, in accepting that
deep down inside, he let himself go fully to the magic,
relinquished control, and gave himself to destiny. He tipped his
head back as the storm began anew, now rotating around him in a
funnel cloud of gray-black and lightning, and he roared, “Gods take
me!”
And, keeping Alexis in his mind, his love for
her at the forefront, he dived headfirst into the funnel.
The winds whipped at him, ripping at his
clothing, at his flesh. His skin stretched tight and tore; his
whole body split apart. Pain slashed through him, beat at him, and
he screamed with the pain, with the power. His clothes shredded and
fell away. The wind screamed with him, and then he heard another
voice, an inhuman screech that reached deep inside him and brought
recognition, longing, and a sense of the freedom he’d always
sought, the freedom he’d thought love was trying to take
away.
He flailed his arms and legs against the
whirling vortex, screaming again and again, the creature’s cries
drowning out his own. His skin burned, his bones ached, his flesh
and tendons sang with unfamiliar tension.
Gradually, though, his flailing gained purpose
and rhythm. He waved his arms and felt them bite into the storm
winds, arched his spine and felt the motion alter his course. An
unfamiliar slapping noise surrounded him, filled him up, and he
waved his arms harder, and started to make progress.
Then he saw a flash of color and light up ahead;
a place where the storm had cleared, leaving a rainbow behind.
“Alexis,” he shouted, and heard only the
creature’s scream, but didn’t care about that, cared only about
getting to her. He started swimming through the air, flapping arms
that had become fifteen-foot wings, spreading something that felt
like fingers but seemed to have sprouted out of his ass, wide and
flat and feathered—a tail? what the fuck?—and letting his legs
flatten out behind him, curling his talons, each the size of the
forearm of his human self.
Understanding was both a shock and a relief, and
a sense of rightness like he’d never before experienced.
He was the sacred black hawk-eagle, and the
hawk-eagle was him.
The medallion banged against his breastbone as
he flew. It was still hanging around his neck alongside the king’s
eccentric, both of the chains having somehow grown to accommodate
his new size and shape. He carried the sacred knife with him too;
it had changed when he did, becoming an obsidian band that hung
around his ankle, marking him not just as a shifter, but as the
Volatile.
He wasn’t supposed to challenge the sky by
fighting the gods.
He was supposed to fly.
Before, he’d rejected his destiny. Now he just
freaking rolled with it, because he’d chosen the path, and the
woman, and she was what mattered right now. She was
everything.
He screamed again, this time not even trying for
a human word, but going only for volume. He was a predator, a
raptor calling his challenge against the enemy, a male trumpeting
possession of his mate as he broke free of the funnel cloud and
found himself on the earth plane, high in the sky. The air was
thin, the world very small below him. With night-bright vision he
saw the mountains and cloud line, the bumps of ancient pyramids,
and realized with a shock that was more acceptance than surprise
that he was seeing things now from the angle in his father’s
paintings.
This, then, was what had kept Two-Hawk apart,
what had tainted the others’ perceptions of the bloodline—the fear
of shifters, and the secret he had carried for his son.
Well, shift this, Nate
thought, then pressed his wings close to his body and dived. The
wind whipped past and sang freedom in his ears as he plummeted from
the heights where the funnel cloud had left him. He flew toward the
bright spot near the cloud city, fear gathering in his chest as he
saw the tear in the sky and the darkness beyond.
“Lexie!” he called. “Lexie!” The words came out
as a raptor’s scream, but, incredibly, he heard an answer.
Nate. It was a whisper
in his mind, a faint connection through the love bond they’d
shared, the one he’d tried to sever because he’d been too set in
his old patterns to see that things had changed around him, that
he’d changed.
He called her name again and she answered again,
and he tracked the response not to the rainbow or the tear in the
sky, but to the darkness beyond.
Gods. She was on the
wrong side of the barrier. And oh, holy
hell. The split was getting bigger by the second. The starry
night sky strained on either side of the gash, while red blackness
oozed down, bleeding evil onto the earth.
He could sense the creatures on the other side
more than he could see them, could sense the tentacled thing that
held Alexis, draining her energy from her and using it to tear the
barrier. Her strength was fading, her connection to the goddess
almost lost, and all because of him, he knew. He’d been almost too
late figuring out what she meant to him, almost too late accepting
that sometimes the gods got it right, destiny or not.
But almost doesn’t matter
worth a damn, he thought, trumpeting the attack. I’m here now, and watch out, because I’m coming for my
woman!
He dived through the gap with his curved beak
gaping wide and his razor-sharp talons extended in attack. In an
instant, blackness enveloped him, slowing his wings and wrapping
around him like a heavy, viscous oil, weighing him down and driving
him away from Alexis. He could see her, a rainbow shimmer up above
him, could hear her cry his name as he fell.
No! He tumbled, losing
the rhythm of flight as the black goo flared to boluntiku orange, lava-hot and cloying. NO! He fought the creature’s hold as it went solid
and slashed at him with a raking six-clawed hand.
Nate howled and reached for his power, calling
up a fireball, shaping and throwing the fire magic with his mind
because his hands had turned to wings. As he did so, his medallion
heated and flashed bright white, and it was as if he’d just thrown
a fucking atomic bomb. There was a deep, thrumming thump, then a
pause as the world went still.
Then all hell broke loose.
The fireball’s detonation roared, vaporizing the
goo in an instant and slamming Nate to the gray-black ground. The
shock wave kept on going, radiating away from him, blowing the
boluntiku and disembodied makol back, sending them tumbling end over end,
their gods-awful screeching noises nearly lost beneath the thunder
of the explosion. Then light flashed, pure, golden, and brilliant,
and so bright Nate had to close his eyes and look away. When he
looked again, the Banol Kax had been driven
back to the horizon, and the creature that had been holding Alexis
aloft was gone. She was safe from the explosion behind a rainbow
barrier, but now she was falling, screaming, “Nate!”
And the gap in the barrier was even wider than
before, hanging open, blown larger by the explosion. Worse—the
Banol Kax had regrouped and were headed for
the opening freight-train fast.
Fuck me. Nate didn’t
hesitate. He turned his back on the gap and the demons, kicked hard
off the ground, and arrowed toward Alexis. The king’s writ might
say that Strike had to prioritize other things above his family,
but Nate was bound by no such scripture. And he was damn well
prioritizing Alexis, the way he should’ve been doing all along. He
powered to her, got above her, and then dived, matching her
free-falling speed as the rocky, gray-black surface rose up to meet
them.
At practically the last second he got ahead of
her and swooped up, scooping her from the air. She shrieked and
grabbed on, but then started struggling, trying to bail off. He
didn’t get it for a second; then he realized she had no idea who—or
what—he was. “It’s me!” he shouted, only it came out as a hawk’s
cry.
But she stilled, lying flat on his back, hanging
on to his feathers, pulling hard enough to hurt but not hard enough
to keep her in place if things got tough. “Holy shit,” she said,
voice rattling with fear, with shock. “Nate?”
Which pretty much proved she could hear him
through the screeching, maybe because she loved him. Or at least
she had; that might be open to some debate in about thirty seconds
or so, he realized with a deep clutch of dismay. She’d been raised
by the most traditional winikin of them
all. What if she couldn’t deal with what he was?
“Wh-what’s going on?” Her voice shook; her whole
body was trembling.
With fear of rejection lodged deep inside,
knowing there was no time for fancy explanations, Nate put himself
into a glide, his body somehow knowing just what to do even though
his brain didn’t. “It’s a long story, obviously,” he said, “but the
short version seems to be that I’m an asshole and a shape-shifter,
in whichever order you prefer. I’m the Volatile. And I love
you.”
She went very still, letting him know she’d
translated from “hawk” to English just fine. Then, moving slowly
and keeping a death grip on whatever piece of him she could get
hold of, she sat up and straddled his shoulders, hooking her legs
into the thickened chain holding the medallion, and using the
eccentric’s chain as a handhold. Then she leaned into him, getting
out of the whip of the wind as she said, “Let’s do our job,
Nightkeeper. We’ve got a barrier to seal and some demons to kick
back to hell. It’s like we agreed before: The other stuff doesn’t
belong mixed-up with the gods.”
It wasn’t what Nate had hoped to hear, wasn’t
what he’d said, and the hollow opening up inside his gut warned
that he might not get what he wanted. Not being what he was. But
she was right that they had a job to do and not much time to do it,
so even though her response cut deep inside his soul, he screeched
a battle cry of agreement. “Hang on!”
Then they were arrowing up toward the tear in
the barrier, toward where the creatures of the underworld had
gathered, waiting for the rip to reach the surface of their world,
setting them free on the next.
Trumpeting the attack, Nate gathered his
fireball magic, felt Alexis lean on her rainbow magic, and then
together, as one, they dived into the battle they’d been born
for.
Alexis was Ixchel and the goddess was she. They
were one, woven together, the ancient entity working through her,
guiding her magic as they neared the tear in the fabric of the
universe and the enemy attacked.
The boluntiku lunged,
snapping with razor-sharp teeth and claws, their lava-hot bodies
vapor one moment, solid the next. But their form didn’t seem to
matter to the magic; Alexis spread a loop of cool blue light and
threw it at the one nearest the gap. The lasso whistled into the
creature, impacted, and clung, burning cool against hot. The
boluntiku arched and screamed in pain,
clawing at the tether, alternating between vapor and solid as it
thrashed. Steam rose, along with a hissing noise and a terrible
smell as the light ate into the lava creature, cooling it to
stone.
Within minutes there was a statue where the
thing had been.
“Score!” Nate shouted. “Hang on; we’ll get those
others out in front!”
Though the words were an avian screech, she
heard them in her skull, her head translating what her heart wasn’t
sure it could cope with. Even as she formed another loop, tightened
her knees on her mount’s warm, solid neck, and they banked to meet
the next attack, part of her struggled to deal with the fact that
her mount and Nate were one and the same. He was a shifter. He was
also the Volatile, who was her protector, not her enemy. And he’d
said he loved her.
A day ago, even a few hours ago, she would’ve
given anything to hear him say that. Even now, the words thrummed
through her heart like a melody of color. But there was a discord
within that song, a splash of warning, of fear and knowing that
Nate’s being a shifter fit too well. It explained his fierce
independence and dislike of following orders. It explained his need
for freedom, for privacy, for his own space.
“Alexis, look out!” Nate’s shout warned that
she’d been thinking too much, fighting too little. She jolted to
awareness just as a fanged creature rose up out of nowhere and
grabbed at her, getting an edge of her shirt before falling free.
Nate jammed a wing tip down and spun, so his belly faced the demon
as it screamed and slashed. And scored.
Nate howled in pain and they tumbled for a
second before he recovered and beat for the sky once again, gaining
altitude, though obviously laboring.
Alexis leaned into him, calling, “That bomb
thing. Can you do it again?”
I’ll try. This time his
response was purely mental, traveling along a bond she wasn’t yet
ready to fully acknowledge or accept. She wrapped herself around
him, following the link and opening herself to him, offering up to
him all of the goddess’s power, and her own.
The fire magic spluttered to life around them,
hissing and spitting and simultaneously gleaming with all colors
and none. Holding on to the magic, he flew a wide arc around the
five boluntiku closest to the barrier, and
she tossed a loop of blue light that encompassed them all. Then,
together, they threw his fire magic. White light flared, though
softer than before, not a detonation so much as a firecracker. And
when it cleared, the creatures had all turned to stone. The power
drain, though, had been incredible.
Alexis’s body had gone numb, and her brain felt
sluggish. Beneath her, the rhythm of Nate’s wings faltered and
slowed, and his mental touch was weak. But though the lava
creatures had been neutralized, the other demons weren’t far
behind, and the barrier was almost completely torn—it could be
repaired, but just barely, and she had to get there fast.
Even as she thought that, the black, tentacled
creature that had pulled her through the barrier in the first place
rose from the ground and planted itself squarely in front of the
rip. For a second she thought it was going to dive through to
earth. Then she realized it was waiting for her, planning to fend
her off while the others escaped through the barrier.
Nate sent, What do you
think?
I’m guessing the phrase
“we’re screwed” isn’t very helpful.
A ripple of amusement came down the shared link,
and his energy strengthened just a little, or maybe hers did.
Not so much, he agreed, then sobered.
You think your rainbow lasso trick will work?
I’m tapped. He’d used himself up getting to her, and saving
her, and keeping them aloft.
It’ll have to, she
thought in return, but really, the answer was no. When she came
down to it, Ixchel was a goddess of peace, not war. But failure
simply wasn’t an option. “Let’s go!” she said aloud, and kicked her
heels into his feathered sides. “Git-up!”
That got her a beady, backward glare. I’m not a polo pony, princess. But then he obeyed,
flattening his wings to his body and diving for the attack, and she
was screaming and hanging on as tightly as she could while they
dove through hell, headed for the Banol
Kax.
The word “kamikaze” came to mind, as did the
phrase “what the fuck are we doing?” but really, there wasn’t
another option, wasn’t anything to do but die trying. So she
tightened her grip and called on the rainbow magic, bringing it not
from blood sacrifice, but by thinking about Izzy, who’d raised her
the very best she’d known how to; about her mother, who’d given her
life for the former king; about her father, who’d done his part by
loving his family, simply loving them . . . and about Nate, whom
she both loved and feared now, in almost equal parts. Not because
she thought he’d hurt her intentionally—he was too much his own man
for that—but because she needed someone who needed her, who loved
her willingly and took joy in the fact. Not someone who resented
the emotion, and spent as much time away from her as with her.
She’d tried to take love on many conditions before and it hadn’t
been enough. This time—the last time—it would be all . . . or it
would be nothing.
Now wasn’t the time for those thoughts, though.
It was the time for love, the time to bring things together rather
than ripping them to pieces. So she concentrated on the good times,
on the strong times. She thought of the angle of Nate’s jaw in the
morning light and the feel of his skin against hers, remembered the
taste of him, and comfort of waking up beside him and knowing she
wasn’t going to face the day alone. And as she thought those
things, remembered those moments, the magic came.
Rainbow light flared around them, cocooning them
in a protective barrier.
Nate screeched and flew faster, searching for a
way around the Hydralike creature, which was a thick stalk of
darkness with tentacles that whipped around it in a dark cloud,
leaving no room for error. Alexis poured all that she had, all that
she was, and all that they were together into the shield magic as
they arrowed through a narrow gap between two flailing whips of
evil.
One tentacle grabbed for them while another
swiped deadly claws across her shield magic. Alexis cried out,
feeling the deep furrows in the magic as though they’d been drawn
across her own skin. Nate bellowed a challenge and dived, twisting,
pinwheeling them away from the demon, and then they were free and
arrowing up toward the gap.
The demon gave a great roar, leaped up, and
snatched them from the sky.
Alexis screamed as the thing’s grip collapsed
her shield inward. Yanking her MAC from her weapons belt, she
unloaded the clip into the demon and barely made a dent. The thing
laughed, a booming, echoing sound, and a gaping mouth opened in its
thick, stalklike trunk. The tentacle that held Nate and Alexis
started moving toward the fanged maw.
Suddenly golden light bloomed all around them,
and trumpets sounded, seeming to come from everywhere at once. The
Hydralike demon roared denial as a sinuous crimson-and-gold serpent
shape arrowed through the gap in the barrier and dived, all full of
anger and righteous wrath and justice, the creator god Kulkulkan
come to save his children, the king and queen of the Nightkeepers
coming to free their advisers.
Gold light sparked and hissed as the feathered
serpent beat its red-plumed wings and scraped a huge, furrowed gash
in the demon’s flesh. The creature howled in pain, losing its grip
on Nate and Alexis, who fell free.
Go! they heard Strike
call, his mental touch borne on the skyroad. Close the gap! We’ll buy you some time. Kulkulkan
dived, hissing and scratching as the demon reached to grab the god
and other Banol Kax moved in, flanking the
feathered serpent, surrounding him.
“Get to the gap!” Alexis shouted, not sure if
Nate had heard Strike’s instructions. “We’ve got to fix it!”
Even now she could feel the planets moving past
the equinox, could feel the barrier starting to thicken and set in
place. In a few more minutes there would be no hope of closing the
tear. She had to work fast.
When they reached the gigantic rip, she was
shaking with fatigue and nerves, and the sinking fear that she
wasn’t going to be strong enough, that she had already lost before
she’d begun. Nate grabbed on to an edge of the barrier with his
hooked talons, perching precariously in the gap itself. Do your thing, babe.
“I don’t know if I can.” Failure pressed at her,
alongside the knowledge that she wasn’t just disappointing the
Nightkeepers; she could very well be dooming the world, and all
because she’d used up her magic, because she wasn’t strong enough,
wasn’t good enough. She was a pale shadow of what she should’ve
been, what she would’ve been if she’d been raised as had been
meant, if she’d known all that she was supposed to know.
She knew Nate sensed all those things from her,
thought that he would try to reassure her. Instead, though, he
said, very softly, I love you, Lexie. And
then he opened to her, sending her all the love that was inside
him, all his respect for her, his fascination with her, his awe at
the person she was—imperfectly human, and perfect for the man he’d
become while knowing her.
The emotions were colors, but to call them
rainbows was too little, too weak a term. They were sparkles and
illumination, loving blues and purples and greens so much deeper
and more vibrant than anything that had ever come from cool white
light, and sensual reds, oranges, and yellows that kindled fires in
her nerve endings, reminding her of the slide of skin on skin, the
explosion of orgasm. The strength of those feelings lit her up from
within, leveling her, strengthening her, and bringing magic from
love rather than sacrifice.
She raised her hands, and colors flowed from her
fingertips, the strands of light taking flight and heading
unerringly for the jagged edges of the barrier. She started at the
top, high into the sky, and began to weave, folding the colors
together and fighting the darkness onto one side of the barrier,
light onto the other. When the anchors were set, she held her
breath and tugged on the rainbows.
And watched the gap draw together at the
top.
Way to go, babe! The
hawk’s screech was so full of manly pride it almost sounded human.
Or maybe it was human; she hadn’t fully
dealt with that yet. All she knew was that she couldn’t do this
without him, that she needed his love, his strength. He was her
anchor, her support, just as she had been his during the fight.
They’d deal with the rest later, as people rather than warriors.
She hoped.
She kept working, weaving the strands of light
into the barrier and tying them off, forming a magical patch over
the blockade built by her ancestors. It was easy at the top, but
grew increasingly more difficult lower down, partly because tension
was pulling the edges apart, partly because the equinox was fading,
and partly because she was fading. Her head pounded in synchrony
with her heart, and sweat beaded her brow and trickled down her
spine. Her hands shook as she heard trumpeting behind and below,
and knew the king and queen were fighting a rear-guard action,
buying time.
Move it, she told
herself. She had to hurry! The adviser in her couldn’t believe she
was letting Strike and Leah fight for her when it should’ve been
the other way around. But the Godkeeper in her knew this was her
battle, her destiny, and—
Focus, love. It was
Nate’s voice, cool and blue with calm, tinted red with love. He
poured more energy into her, poured love into her, supporting her
and steadying her. She let herself lean, let herself believe in
him, in them, for the moment at least. She got past the midpoint of
the patch job and the tension lessened, though the barrier was
thickening as she worked, making it more difficult to draw the
edges together, more difficult even to thread the tear with rainbow
light. But the gap drew together; the opening narrowed.
When it was as small as she dared, she said,
“Let’s switch sides.” Nate obligingly ducked through, so they were
on the earth side of the barrier, where they belonged. She kept
working, threading and pulling madly, bringing the torn edges
together as she sent, Nochem? Time for you guys
to haul ass, or we’re going to have to come in there after
you.
Coming! came Strike’s
reply. There was a trumpet fanfare that ended on what sounded
suspiciously like a raspberry, and then a golden blur arrowed
through the last narrow gap. When the flying serpent god was
through, back in the thin air of the Andes mountains, high above
the cloud forest, Alexis worked as fast as she could, as fast as
she dared, threading and pulling like a madwoman.
She tied off the final suture just as the
Hydralike demon hit the gap, slamming into the seam and straining
the rainbow weft. The patch job parted and groaned, stretching
slightly. But it didn’t give.
“It’s holding!” Alexis called, and was answered
by Nate’s screech of joy and Kulkulkan’s clarion bugle. And as they
watched, the hold grew stronger still, the barrier knitting
together along the sewn line, healing along a seam of magic. Her
heart kicked at the sight. “We did it!”
Congratulations! Strike
sent. Come back down, okay? He and Leah
were on the ground near the hellmouth, she knew; Kulkulkan was a
separate entity, one they could call to earth and link with
mentally on the cardinal days. When the equinox was past and his
job was done, he would return back up the skyroad.
As if knowing that time was near, the flying
serpent bugled a trumpet blast of joy and approval, and turned
north, powering up for the race back to Chichén Itzá. Though the
demons could come through Iago’s hellmouth, the gods had to use the
intersection. Alexis raised a hand in farewell as she flew through
the sky astride a giant hawk.
And that was pretty messed-up, she realized as
the fight drained and reality began to intrude. She was riding
Nate, and Nate was a hawk. A shape-shifter. The Volatile.
Like her thoughts, the sky went dark, returning
to the blackness of night with the passing of the magic.
When we get home I’m going
to eat about a gallon of mac and cheese and crash for a week,
he sent along their mental link. How about
you? She knew he felt her unease, and was trying for something
light, something that would avoid the strangeness that suddenly
loomed between them.
“Chocolate and Tylenol,” she said as her stomach
growled in syncopation with her headache. “And a bubble
bath.”
I could get behind the bath
idea, he said, projecting an image that made her blush and
heated her blood to boiling.
But her response was tempered with unease.
“Nate, listen. I—” She broke off, not because she didn’t know what
to say, but because she suddenly couldn’t breathe. Her lungs were
locked, not shut, but bloating, like they were full of water. Heart
hammering, she grabbed for her throat, mouth working, trying to
scream but unable to get out a sound.
What’s wrong? Nate asked
quickly.
The goddess, she sent
along their mental link. Something bad is
happening!
In the distance Kulkulkan’s glowing golden form
faltered, and they heard a trumpet of distress. The creator managed
another few faltering wing beats, then began to lose altitude. Soon
he disappeared from sight.
Alexis felt the world constricting around her,
inside her. The rainbow magic sparked within her head, arcing
wildly, loving magic gone wrong. Help, she
cried as she slumped sideways and started to slide. Help me!
Hang on! Nate folded his
wings and dived for the earth, for the Nightkeepers, but it was
already too late. Alexis’s vision went dim, then dark.
The last thing she heard was Rabbit’s voice
screaming, Stop it; you’re killing
them!
Iago shrugged off Rabbit’s attack and shoved him
into a mental corner, leaving him weak and impotent as the Xibalban
renewed his attack on the intersection.
The mage stood in the altar room beneath Chichén
Itzá. The torches belched purple-black smoke, and the air rattled
with foul magic. Desiree’s body lay sprawled on the now-cracked
chac-mool altar, leaking blood. The crimson
wetness filled the lines carved into the stone, highlighting the
sacred patterns and pooling in a horrible parody of the good, pure
magic the Nightkeepers had performed in that same chamber. On the
floor lay what was left of the ancient artifacts bearing the demon
prophecies, which had been broken to dust beneath Iago’s boots as
an added source of power.
Rabbit could feel the equinox, could feel a
battle raging on the magic plane, light against dark, but he
couldn’t follow it. All he knew was the part he was being forced to
play, his magic joined with Iago’s as the Xibalban’s plan came to
fruition.
When the Nightkeepers had appeared at the
hellmouth and joined battle against the death bats and the
Banol Kax, Rabbit had expected Iago to
throw his powers on the dark side of the battle, to swing the fight
in his favor. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d smiled and ’ported
directly into the altar room, and begun a set of spells Rabbit had
never heard before. Hell, he’d never heard of them before, didn’t
know what they were intended to do. But though he wasn’t able to
follow the intricate spell casting in the old language, he’d
readily pulled the intent from Iago’s mind.
The bastard was dismantling the skyroad.
If he succeeded, Strike, Leah, and Alexis were
all in jeopardy, as they were linked to their gods. Even worse—if
there was anything worse than losing, like, a quarter of the
Nightkeepers’ fighting force, along with the royal couple—if the
Xibalban succeeded in destroying the skyroad, there would be no
more hope of the gods coming to earth. No more Godkeepers.
Potentially no more visions, save for those sent by the ancestors,
who were on a lower plane than the gods.
Rabbit knew he had to stop the Xibalban. Too bad
he didn’t have a fucking clue how he was supposed to do that. Iago
controlled both of their minds, and his magic was so much
stronger.
Think, Rabbit told
himself. Fucking think! It was hard to
focus as Iago repeated the short spell for the eighth time and the
chamber started shaking itself apart, locked in an earth tremor
that felt like it was going to take out most of Mexico, never mind
just the tunnels.
The Xibalban stepped up to the broken altar and
withdrew a sharp stone tool from his belt—not a knife, but an awl
of sorts. Bracing his chin against the edge of the broken chac-mool, he stuck out his tongue and drove the awl
directly through it.
Agony flared in Rabbit’s mouth as though he’d
made the sacrifice himself. He tasted blood and magic as Iago stood
and felt in the pocket of his dark robe, then pulled out a long
string that was knotted at regular intervals, with each knot
holding a wickedly pointed thorn. The thorn rope was one of the
oldest of the Maya’s sacrificial tools, one that had been used to
allow the kings to talk to the gods.
Now the Xibalban used it to close the lines of
communication. He threaded the string through the hole he’d punched
in his tongue and started pulling it through as he recited the
spell one last time, nine repetitions for the nine layers of hell
that would hold sway once the earth was cut off from the thirteen
layers of heaven. As he did so, the tremors became a quake, not
just on the physical plane, but on the magical one as well. Rabbit
could feel the barrier itself shudder with the force of the attack,
could feel the skyroad starting to come apart.
Don’t be such a girl, he
heard a familiar voice whisper at the back of his mind. Do something!
His old man wasn’t there; he was long gone. But
he was right too, Rabbit knew. So he gathered his magic and scraped
his tired self together, preparing for one final attack. Iago
wasn’t paying attention to him except to drain his power and use
his strange half-blood magic to fuel a spell that shouldn’t have
existed, shouldn’t have worked. Rabbit knew he couldn’t cut off the
connection; he’d tried and failed already. He couldn’t take over
Iago’s mind, either, because the bastard was watching for that. But
what if he added to it? Could he use a power surge to kick the
bastard offline, maybe fry his synapses?
Maybe, he thought.
Possibly. It was worth a shot. And if he
fried his own cortex in the process, that’d suck, but at least he
would’ve been a hero once in his life. The thought of dying made
him sad. But the idea of taking Iago with him almost made it okay.
Almost.
Knowing there was no hope for it, no other
option, Rabbit closed his eyes and thought of fire. Thought of
telekinesis. Thought of mind-bending. Thought, quite simply, of
magic in all its forms and glory. He felt the power grow within
him, felt the madness and heat of it batter him, swirl around him,
making him feel larger and smaller all at once. When it reached its
apex, when he could call no more magic, contain no more power, he
turned out of the small corner of Iago’s mind that he’d been
occupying and flung himself at the mage’s consciousness.
He sensed Iago’s focus shift in the last second
before impact, felt the Xibalban bring his own magic to bear. Then
they collided, and the world blew apart.
Magic was a firestorm, a power surge that
overloaded Iago’s mind and derailed his spell casting. Rabbit
grabbed on to the mage’s consciousness, hung on, refused to let go.
The Xibalban tried to flee back along the connection to Rabbit’s
body, but there was no way Rabbit was letting the bastard wake up
in Skywatch, so he dug in, feeding power into the spell, pumping it
up. He sensed Strike, Leah, and Alexis caught in the dying skyroad.
Instinctively knowing that he couldn’t do anything to repair the
road, that it was already too late, Rabbit turned his attention to
his teammates, feeding them all the magic he could muster, trying
to overload the connections and kick them free.
Iago roared and fought his hold, scoring at him
with harsh, destructive magic that burned like cold fire, biting
deep into Rabbit’s mental self. But Rabbit just screamed and held
on, and kept pushing power to his friends, trying to save them if
he couldn’t save himself.
As he reached the absolute end of his power, and
his consciousness flickered and dimmed, he sensed the others
starting to blink out of the skyroad: Strike first, then Leah, then
Alexis. After that, Rabbit’s consciousness went blank.
Then there was nothing, only darkness.
Some time later he cut back in, just long enough
to realize that he wasn’t inside Iago anymore. He was back in his
own body, only not. It was more like he was floating over it,
waiting. Then, finally, he started floating away, up toward the
sky, where warriors went directly after they died in battle.
As he did, he found himself wishing he’d kissed
Myrinne when he’d had the chance.
Alexis woke slowly, fighting through the layers
of sleep. Her head hurt and her stomach was an empty ache, but even
more, her soul felt hollow and her skull felt too big, as though
her brain had shrunk, or something else had been taken from the
space.
“That’s it,” a voice said from somewhere above
her. “Come on; you can do it.”
It was Nate’s voice, she realized, just as it
was Nate’s hand holding hers; she knew the good, solid feel of him
like she knew herself. Only did she really? As the mists cleared,
she remembered the hawk, and Nate’s newly discovered talent, which
left them . . . where? She didn’t know. And as she opened her eyes
and found herself lying on the ground outside of the torchlit
hellmouth, she knew Nate saw her fear, because his expression
blanked as he squeezed her hand once and let go.
“Nate,” she said, just his name, then fell
silent because everything was too much, too confusing. He was
wearing someone’s shirt tied around his waist like a loincloth, and
another thrown over his shoulders but not buttoned. Apparently
clothes didn’t shift with the man.
That detail, that confirmation that what she
remembered had really happened, was almost more than she could
handle.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” He held out a hand. “You
ready to sit up?”
The rest of the Nightkeepers were clustered
behind him, including Strike and Leah, who looked as ragged as
Alexis felt. “The gods are gone, aren’t they?” she said dully. “The
skyroad is gone.”
“We’re still here,” Strike said. He lifted his
satellite phone. “The winikin are okay. Jox
thinks there was enough of Lucius left in the makol that he forced the creature to escape rather
than killing anyone, though I guess it was a pretty close thing.
And Rabbit . . . we’ll have to see about him when we get back.” He
paused, exhaling. “At least the barrier is still intact, thanks to
you.”
“Me and Nate,” she corrected.
“Yeah.” The king nodded. “Blackhawk too.” It
didn’t escape her notice that he’d gone back to Nate’s bloodline
name, though, or that the others were giving him a wide berth. The
realization angered her, but shamed her too, because wasn’t she
doing the very same thing? He was no different from the man he’d
been before. He’d simply discovered his talent.
It was a small effort to put her hand in Nate’s,
but well rewarded by the glint of thanks in his eyes as he pulled
her to her feet. She kept hold of him when he would’ve let go, and
together they linked up with Leah as they formed the sacred circle
that would allow Strike to ’port them back to Skywatch.
The king initiated the ’port, and as the magic
took hold, Alexis sent a prayer into the barrier, even though she
suspected the gods couldn’t hear them anymore: Please let Rabbit be okay. He’d saved her, she knew,
somehow pushing her out of the Godkeeper link just as the skyroad
collapsed.
She hoped to hell it hadn’t been his final act
on earth.