CHAPTER ONE
June 12, New Moon
Two years, six months, and nine days to the zero date
University of Texas, Austin
Two years, six months, and nine days to the zero date
University of Texas, Austin
“I just got the booty
call,” Jade announced as she let herself into Anna’s office, which
could’ve doubled as the set for a movie of the
archaeologist-slash-adventurer-saves-the-day variety, with
artifact-crammed shelves and framed photographs of rain forests and
ruins. After closing the door to make sure nobody out in the cool,
faintly damp halls of the art history building could overhear
unless they made a real effort, Jade dropped into the empty chair
opposite her friend’s desk and let out a frustrated sigh. “Thing
is, it wasn’t the booty-er calling. It was your
brother.”
Anna winced.
“Ew.”
“No kidding, huh?”
Not that Jade thought Anna’s brother was an “ew”—far from it.
Strike was massive, raven haired, and seriously drool-worthy, but
he was also thoroughly mated, and the fact that he was the
Nightkeepers’ king had added to the squick factor, taking the
uncomfortable phone call from “gee,
it’d be nice if you and Lucius hooked back up” into royal-decree
territory. Granted, Jade had volunteered for booty duty, and the
sexual mores of a mage were way more liberal than human norm, but
still.
Propping her feet on
a cracked, knee-high clay pot that showed a sacrificial scene of a
victim’s beating heart being ripped out, and which currently served
as Anna’s trash can, Jade slumped down and let her long, straight
hair fall forward around her face. It obscured her view of the trim
jeans and upscale, low- heeled sandals that would’ve looked
casually elegant on Anna, but on her just blended. As she slouched,
she swore she heard Shandi’s voice in her head, chiding,
Sit up straight, Jade. The members of the
harvester bloodline are always dutiful, diligent, and
decorous. The three “D”s. Even before she’d known she was a
Nightkeeper, or that her last name of Farmer was a modern take on
her bloodline, she’d been hearing about duty, diligence, and
decorum, along with the familiar remonstrations: Walk, don’t run;
listen, don’t talk; speak, don’t shout; follow, don’t lead; blend,
don’t stand out.
Gack.
Tucking her hair
behind her ears and straightening her spine—because she wanted to,
not because of her winikin’s remembered
chidings, dang it—Jade glanced at the black, tattoolike bloodline
glyph she wore on her inner forearm, along with the scribe’s talent
mark that tagged her as little more than a glorified librarian.
Bared by the soft white button-down sleeves she’d rolled up past
her elbows, the marks stood out in sharp relief against her pale
skin, which refused to tan despite her otherwise dark coloring of
sable hair and light green, almost sea-foam eyes. Ten bucks says Shandi never expected that the “duty” part
of the three “D”s would come down to something like this,
she thought snidely. Really, though, she had zero problem with what
she was being asked to do. Her problem was that Strike had been the
one doing the asking. Damn it,
Lucius.
“You could bail.”
Anna leaned back in her desk chair, toying with the thin metal
chain that disappeared at her neckline. The king’s sister was a
striking woman in her late thirties, wearing a moss-colored
lightweight sweater that counterpointed her dark,
russet-highlighted hair and the piercing cobalt eyes she and Strike
had both inherited from their father, King Scarred-Jaguar. Despite
her heritage, though, Anna had recently stepped up to head the
human university’s ancient civilizations department. Of the scant
dozen Nightkeepers still living, she was the only one who had
refused to take up residence at Skywatch and commit to the
Nightkeepers’ war against the Banol Kax
and the fast-approaching zero date. Although Jade knew that Anna’s
decision had caused—was still causing—problems back at Skywatch,
she considered herself lucky that the other woman had stuck to her
guns, not just because the university connection gave the
Nightkeepers access to high-level information on the ancient Maya
and the world at large, but because the campus itself had turned
into a landing spot for magi looking to get away from Skywatch
without being totally out of the loop . . . like Rabbit, who’d
needed to escape the compound’s isolation and memories of his
borderline sociopathic father, and Jade, who’d needed . . . Hell,
she didn’t know what she’d needed. Space, maybe. Perspective. A
cooling-off period, and some new skills that didn’t rely on
magic.
Now, though, she was
being called back to Skywatch. Back to duty. And back to a man who
. . . Shit.
Jade took a deep
breath. “Sure, I could back out.” As she turned her palms up, her
forearm marks flashed a stark reminder of duty. “But then what? We
need access to the library; Lucius isn’t getting it done on his
own, and the others haven’t managed to trigger his powers using
rituals and blood. Besides, we’ve got plenty of proof that sex
magic trumps blood sacrifice. Strike and Leah used it to drive the
Banol Kax back to the underworld; Nate
and Alexis used it to repair a breach in the barrier; and Michael
and Sasha used it to defeat Iago and his Xibalbans.” Although that
last point was somewhat debatable.
Sure, the
Nightkeepers’ earthly enemies, the members of the Order of Xibalba,
had been quiet since the winter solstice, but the last time the
Nightkeepers had laid eyes on the Xibalbans’ leader, Iago, he had
been in the process of summoning the soul of the long-dead—and
seriously bloodthirsty—Aztec god-king, Moctezuma. Iago had been
trying to create an ajaw-makol: a
powerful human-demon hybrid that retained its human characteristics
in direct proportion to the degree of evil in the host’s soul. But
the transition spell had been interrupted when the Nightkeepers had
breached Iago’s mountain lair, making the outcome far less clear.
The few hints Jade had found in the Nightkeepers’ archive suggested
that an interrupted makol transition
could go one of two ways. Most often, the human host-to-be slid
into a comalike stasis for weeks or months while the demon spirit
fought to integrate itself—or not—with the host’s brain. Which was
what the Nightkeepers suspected was happening with Iago. Less
often, both the demon and human consciousnesses could coexist while
the host remained conscious, with the two souls fighting for
dominance . . . which was what had happened to Lucius. The
Nightkeepers had eventually managed to rescue him and banish the
makol, but that hadn’t actually been
their goal. What they’d really done was offer his soul to the
in-between in an effort to turn him into the Prophet: an incarnate
conduit capable of channeling badly needed intel from the
metaphysical plane. Lucius’s exorcism and survival had been a side
benefit, which galled Jade at the same time that it forced her
gratitude.
Now she tried not to
notice how Anna was just sitting there looking at her, the way she
did with her Intro to Mayan Studies students. Keep going, the look said. You’ll see where you went wrong in a minute. “Three
times now,” Jade continued doggedly, “sex magic has turned out to
be the key to unlocking the larger powers necessary for successful
high- level magic: Godkeeper magic in Leah’s and Alexis’s cases,
the Volatile’s shape-shifting ability for Nate, and the balanced
matter and antimatter of Michael’s and Sasha’s talents. So it seems
logical that sex magic could be the key that triggers the Prophet’s
power in Lucius.”
Granted, he wasn’t a
Nightkeeper. But despite the ongoing debate among the Nightkeepers,
particularly the members of the royal council, Jade didn’t think
the problem was his humanity, his former demonic connection, or the
fact that he’d retained his soul when the library spell had called
for its sacrifice. Her instincts said he just needed a jump start,
with an emphasis on the “jump” part—as in, he needed to get himself
jumped. And if that was bound to make things complicated between
them, so be it. She’d made herself scarce for the past five-plus
months since his return to Skywatch; she could leave again
afterward if she had to. It wasn’t like anyone was begging her to
come back. And didn’t that just suck?
“There’s one big
difference between your situation and the other cases you’re
talking about.” Anna raised an eyebrow. “Unless there
isn’t?”
And there was the
crux of another major debate. Was it the sex magic itself that
unlocked the bigger powers, or was the emotional pair- bonding of a
mated couple the key, with sex magic as a collateral bonus?
Hello, chicken and egg. Of the three
couples Jade had named, in the aftermath of the big battles they’d
been instrumental in winning, two had gained the jun tan marks signifying them as mated, soul-bound
pairs. And although Michael’s connection to death magic prevented
him from forming the jun tan, he and
Sasha had gotten engaged human-style, diamond ring and all. Which
suggested it wasn’t just the sex magic that was important; it was
the emotions too.
Jade had heard the
argument before—ad nauseam— but it pinched harder coming from Anna,
who had become a good friend in the months since Jade had fled from
Skywatch to the university for a crash course in Mayan epigraphy
and some breathing room . . . And Anna’s relationship with Lucius
went a good six years farther back than that—she’d been his boss,
his mentor, and briefly his bond-master under Nightkeeper
law.
“I don’t think it’s a
question of love,” Jade said, glancing past Anna’s shoulder to the
shelf beyond, where a crudely faked statuette of Flower Quetzal,
the Aztec goddess of love and female sexuality, seemed to be
smirking at her. Doggedly, she continued: “I think in each of the
prior cases, the couples were struggling with identity issues,
trying not to lose their senses of self to the magic or their
feelings for each other. That won’t be a problem for Lucius and me.
I don’t have much in the way of magic, and we’re not . . . Well, we
had sex once; that was it.” And oh, holy shit, had that been a
disaster. Not the sex, but the way she’d flubbed the aftermath.
“We’re just friends now,” she finished. Sort
of.
“The jun tan the others earned through sex magic doesn’t
symbolize friendship . . . and neither does what Strike wants you
to do.”
“It’s just sex.” Jade
glanced at her friend as a new reason for the cross-examination
occurred. “Unless you think he’s still too fragile?” Even with his
grisly wounds on the mend, thanks to Sasha’s healing magic, Lucius
had been badly depleted in the weeks following his return to the
Nightkeepers. He’d been disconnected and clumsy, as though, even
with the makol gone from his head, he
wasn’t at home inside his own body. More, he’d been deeply ashamed
of the weakness, thanks to a childhood spent as the weakling nerd
in a family of hard-core jocks. Had his condition
deteriorated?
“Fragile is
not the word that comes to mind.” There
was an odd note in Anna’s voice.
“Then what’s with the
‘don’t do it’ vibes?”
“I think . . .” Anna
trailed off, then shook her head. “You know? Forget I said
anything. It’s not fair for me to say on one hand that I want
Strike to deal me out of the hierarchy, then on the other go
running around trying to subvert the royal council’s
plan.”
Jade winced at
learning the should-Jade-jump-Lucius discussion hadn’t just been a
three- way of her, Strike, and Anna, as she’d thought, but had also
included the other members of the royal council: Leah, Jox, Nate,
and Alexis. Michael had probably been involved too, as he was
practically a council member; and if he knew what was going on,
then so did Sasha. Shandi had also likely been in on the
conversation, though the winikin
probably hadn’t added much beyond, “Whatever you think is best,
sire.” Jade was determined not to let any of that matter, though.
For once, she was the one taking action while the others hung back
and played supporting roles. The harvester bloodline might have
traditionally produced shield bearers rather than fighters, and she
might be the only living Nightkeeper aside from Anna who didn’t
wear the warrior ’s talent mark, but this time she was on the front
lines, ready to take one for the team.
So to
speak.
Anna touched her
chain again. Though Jade couldn’t see the heavy pendant it held,
she could easily picture the yellow crystal skull. Handed down
through the maternal lineage, the quartz effigy was the focus of an
itza’at seer’s visionary gift. Normally
Anna blocked her talent, which was glitchy at best, but Jade
thought she caught a faint hum of power in the air as Anna said,
“I’m not sure. . . .” She trailed off, eyes dark and
distant.
Jade straightened.
“Are you seeing something?”
“Gods, no.” Anna
self-consciously dropped her hand from her throat, pressing her
palm to the solid wood of the desk. “It’s just a feeling, probably
coming from the fact that I care deeply about both of you, and hate
that I can’t be there for Lucius without breaking promises that
I’ve made to people here.”
Jade didn’t bother
pointing out that vows made to humans were pretty far down in the
writs when it came to the list of a mage’s priorities. Anna was
forging her own path, which wasn’t necessarily the same one set
down by the First Father and the generations of magi since. “Will
it help if I promise to be gentle?”
Anna made a face.
“Again. Ew.”
Jade laughed, but the
humor was strictly on the surface. Underneath it all, she wanted to
press further—about whether Anna was having visions, about how
Lucius had looked when she’d last seen him . . . and whether he’d
asked about her. But, just as Jade had cut off Strike and Anna
whenever they had tried to tell her about Lucius’s progress before,
she didn’t ask now. In the end, what mattered most were the
results. Besides, she’d given her word to her king, and according
to the writs, a vow made to him was second only to a promise made
to the gods. Since the gods were currently incommunicado, thanks to
Iago’s destruction of the skyroad . . .
She had a booty call
to answer.