CHAPTER FIVE
“Come on!” Lucius
grabbed Jade’s hand and dragged her to a skidding run that churned
up the sparkling sand and pebbles underfoot. He kept his body
between her and their pursuers, impelled by a vicious, bloodthirsty
sort of protectiveness he’d never felt before. For all that he
respected the hell out of the Nightkeepers’ egalitarian use of both
men and women in the warrior caste and on the front lines, this was
a different situation, a different woman. She shouldn’t even
be there, damn it. Neither of them
should.
As they burst from
cover, the jaguar-masked warrior shouted something that probably
translated to “Halt, intruder!” or the equivalent, though Lucius
didn’t know what language they were using. It wasn’t Mayan; at
least, not any version of it he’d ever studied or
heard.
From within the stone
enclosure, the dog stopped howling and started barking, and was
soon joined by a second set of snarling barks, feral-sounding and
mean. Then, half a heartbeat later, the barks were drowned out by a
roar that wasn’t made by anything so mundane as a canine. The noise
shook the canyon floor and made the arched top of the temple start
to seem less like an artistic flourish and more like the top of a
cage.
Lucius glanced over
his shoulder. Their pursuers were gaining fast, in a blur of
ceremonial armor, ragged flesh, and flashing fangs. And what the
hell were they? Animal- headed zombies didn’t feature in the
Nightkeepers’ legends, at least, not that he knew. A connection
nudged at him, but he couldn’t think about that right now. They
needed to find a way out of the strange canyon, which was starting
to feel too much like a gladiatorial pit. Gods knew that concept wasn’t outside the
legends.
“Look!” Jade pointed
toward one of the corners where the canyon ended—only it wasn’t a
corner anymore. As they drew nearer, the optical illusion of a dead
end gave way, showing where their canyon made a T intersection with
another running at right angles. Maybe that was a way
out!
They tore around the
corner, hand in hand. Twenty feet into the narrower canyon, they
slammed into an invisible, unyielding surface stretched across the
opening. Lucius’s breath exploded from him on an “oof” that became
a howl when unseen coils snapped tight around them both, jerking
them off their feet to dangle in midair.
“Fuck!” He struggled to get to Jade, to free
himself, to do something, anything. A harsh rattling noise
surrounded them, marking the invisible force as the dark magic
wielded by the denizens of the underworld. He had a nauseating
image of him and Jade being caught in a huge, invisible spiderweb,
with something terrible and eight-legged advancing intangibly
toward them.
If you’re ever going to connect to the magic, now would be
a good fucking time, he thought, and bit down viciously on
his tongue. Pain flared and blood welled in his mouth, but that was
it. No magic. No power. No nothing.
“Lucius!”
Jade’s shout was
scant warning as Jaguar-head grabbed Lucius’s ankles and yanked,
pulling him free of the web magic. Lucius hit the ground hard and
let himself go limp, though his heart hammered in his chest,
impelled by rage and the pounding need to get to Jade, to protect
her, to somehow get her back to safety, though he wasn’t the mage
she needed him to be.
Then Snake-head
leaned over him, hissing in satisfaction. Revulsion lent added
force as Lucius lunged to his feet, kicking hard at the demon
warrior’s kneecap. He hit his target, felt a hell of an impact, and
heard the sick pop of bone and cartilage. Snake-head howled and
went down. Lucius kicked him in the face, connecting with a
watermelon crunch that was disgustingly satisfying.
Blood pounding, he
scrambled up and spun—straight into the stubby end of Jaguar-
head’s spear. The weapon rattled and belched greasy brown smoke,
which whipped around Lucius, immobilizing him in the same invisible
coils as before. Then Wolf-head stepped up and smashed Lucius in
the temple with his short club. The impact thudded through him and
the world spun as he dropped with the grace of a corpse. Jade
screamed, but her cry cut off midway, choking to silence. Lucius
roared in answer, struggling against the unyielding bonds. “Jade.
Jade!”
As the world faded
around him, he tried to fight his way back to full consciousness,
all the while praying, Gods, don’t let it end
like this!
It didn’t. When he
came to a short time later, he was being carried head and foot
between two of the animal-headed warriors. Beside him strode
Jaguar-head, who carried Jade over his shoulder; she lay still, but
her eyes were open and reflected her relief when Lucius sent her a
wink. He didn’t dare do more, though. Not until he better
understood what the hell was going on . . . and what they could do
about it.
He couldn’t see who
had shoulders, but Snake-head was at his feet, not even limping.
The damn things have healing magic, he
realized. But what the hell were they? Not Banol Kax or makol, he
knew. The dark lords of the underworld were huge and inhuman, and
the archive said the demon souls of the makol took on a shadowy, green-eyed form when they
weren’t possessing human hosts. So what other classes of badasses
existed within Xibalba, and how could they be taken down for good?
Unfortunately, that was yet another example of the Nightkeepers’
critical need to fill in the gaps. Someone, at some point in the
past, must’ve known what these things were, and how to kill them.
But that knowledge, like so much else, had been lost.
So think it through, he told himself. There’s got to be something we
can do here. But unfortunately, the whole “everything
happens for a reason” religious tenet of the magi had a major flaw
in this case: With the skyroad destroyed and the gods unable to
communicate with the Nightkeepers or directly influence things on
the earthly plane, logic said that it hadn’t been a god that had
brought them to the canyon. More likely, one of the Banol Kax or a powerful demon underling had
detected the sex magic and the stirring of the Prophet’s powers and
usurped the energy flows somehow. Which would suggest that he and
Jade didn’t have a destined role to play in the underworld; the
dark lords were just looking to cut down on their
enemies.
Okay, so maybe
thinking it through hadn’t been such a great idea.
Try the homing spell, he mouthed to Jade, chancing
the communication. When she got a mulish I’m
not going without you look on her face, he added,
If you can get back, you can bring
help.
Maybe. Maybe not, but
at least she’d be safe.
The small party
passed through the stone pillars, clearly heading for the pyramid
and whatever had made that terrible noise earlier. They were
running out of time. “Do it!” he hissed.
Eyes bleak, Jade
nodded. But when she whispered the ritual word, nothing happened.
Not one freaking thing.
Lucius cursed
inwardly as that brief hope guttered and died. He had no illusion
that he could summon the power on his own, and he doubted sex magic
would be an option anytime soon. So what the hell else could he do?
There had to be something, damn it.
Problem was, he knew that was a self-serving lie. Sometimes life
just wasn’t fucking fair.
The group came within
view of the pyramid, which loomed ever larger in Lucius’s limited
field of vision, bringing a mixture of awe and dread. Awe because
he’d spent a third of his lifetime studying a dead culture suddenly
coming alive in front of him. Dread because . . . well, he wasn’t
an idiot. But that didn’t mean he was giving up,
either.
The whistle-blower
wasn’t on the ramparts anymore, and the dogs—and whatever else was
inside—had gone ominously quiet as the procession stopped short of
the temple structure. Lucius’s captors unceremoniously dumped him
facedown in the scuffed dirt. He landed cursing, and rolled onto
his side as Jade thumped down on her butt next to him. She cried
out when she hit, but then snapped her mouth shut and glared
instead.
Good girl, Lucius thought. He didn’t get a chance
to do more than lock eyes with her before Snake-head and Pig-head
moved in and dragged him to his feet. Still bound in the relentless
yet invisible shield magic, he had zero choice in the matter. He
hung between his captors, glaring when two of the others hauled
Jade to her feet, so the captives and their animal- headed guards
stood facing one of the low- linteled doorways that led into the
pyramid’s lower tier.
Brain racing in
search of a clue, explanation, or escape route, Lucius scanned the
intricate Mayan glyphwork carved into the surrounding stones,
automatically starting to arrange the phonemes into words and
meanings. But before he’d gotten beyond, “On this cardinal day of .
. .” there was movement within the temple and four newcomers
emerged. They looked like men—in that they had all their flesh and
normal human faces—and they wore elaborate cloaks over
jewel-encrusted armor plates and armbands. But, incongruously, the
armor wasn’t made of wood, leather, and stone, as were the
traditional trappings worn by the animal-heads. Instead, it was
made of burnished metal: copper, or maybe gold. Which didn’t make
sense, because the Maya hadn’t been metalworkers, and the Mayan
paradigm prevailed in Xibalba.
At least, he thought
it did. But the more he looked at the metal-armored men, the more
he became convinced that they were outfitted like pharaohs’ guards,
pure Egyptian from their kohl- lined eyes to the rayed-sun symbols
on their cloaks. Before he could do the necessary brain shift to
figure out what the hell it meant, there was another stir of
movement from within the temple, followed by a glint of luminous
green that obliterated every other thought inside Lucius’s skull.
Rage and revulsion surged to tunnel his vision as a smoky shadow
emerged, becoming a dark, man-shaped ghost with glowing green eyes.
Makol!
The demon soul
drifted across the ground, moving toward him. The air went cold and
Lucius’s bones ached with death and damnation, and the things he’d
sworn he would never be, ever again. Clamping his teeth against a
stream of foul curses, he strained against the unyielding shield
magic. As the makol drew nearer, the
shifting shadow morphed and solidified, becoming almost a man, one
that wore a tall diadem marked with the sun symbol that had been in
use for only a single Egyptian dynasty, that of the pharaoh who had
converted the empire to monotheistic sun worship, largely by
killing off anyone who preferred the polytheistic religion that had
been entrenched for thousands of years.
Gut tightening
further with the ID, Lucius bared his teeth. “I thought you’d had
yourself declared a god. Is this your idea of a deity’s fitting
reward . . . Akhenaton?” Although the pharaoh’s animal- headed
minions—which he belatedly recognized as perverted versions of the
Egyptian pantheon Akhenaton had outlawed—might still speak their
native tongue, he had no doubt the makol understood him. The damn things could see
straight inside a man.
“Akhenaton.” Jade spat
the name of one of the Nightkeepers’ most ancient enemies: the
pharaoh who had been responsible for the first of the three
massacres that had driven the Nightkeepers nearly to
extinction.
At her gasp, the
demon spirit turned. Started drifting toward her.
“Stay the hell away
from her,” Lucius snarled. The demon’s dark presence scraped along
his nerve endings; worse, he could feel its interest in Jade, its
dismissal of him. What makol would want
a human when a Nightkeeper was available? The thought of Jade going
through the transition sickened him beyond reason, past caution. “I
said, hands off!” Deep within, the rage
spun higher, becoming a strange, edgy energy that buzzed through
him, coalescing at the places where the shield magic held him
fast.
From within the
temple, the dogs suddenly started barking again, their cries sharp
and frenzied. Excited.
Akhenaton hesitated
at the sound, and Lucius thought he caught a thread of satisfaction
coming from the damned soul. Some message must have passed, because
the four pharaoh’s guards broke from their positions and closed on
Jade.
“Lucius!” She craned
her head, looking back at him as the guards started dragging her
into the fortress. The dogs went nuts, barking and howling,
sounding almost human in their cries.
“Jade!” Anguish hammered through Lucius, catching
him up and taking him someplace within himself, someplace he hadn’t
been before. Pain ripped through him, his vision washed red-gold,
and pressure detonated inside his head. Liquid flame poured through
his veins, bringing a burning agony that he latched onto,
instinctively sending it toward the places where the shield magic
held him immobile.
A terrible roar of
rage split the air; for a second he thought it had come from him.
Then the air went instantaneously from cool to blistering hot, huge
feathered wings boomed in the air, and a red-orange specter rose
into sight, lifting from behind the step-sided wall, flapping hard
to stay aloft on ragged, bleeding wings. The sky lit supernova
bright in an instant, driving back those standing below on the
sand.
Squinting into the
flare, Lucius couldn’t pinpoint the thing’s image: One second it
seemed a terrible winged and feathered demon with curling horns and
fangs, its outline wreathed in fire; then in the next it shifted,
seeming to flash the image of a huge figure, that of a masked man,
his face obscured behind the symbols of a god. More important,
Lucius knew the symbols. Was he really
seeing what he thought he was seeing, or was this another of
Akhenaton’s creations?
He didn’t know, but
he had to chance it. Throwing back his head, he shouted, “Kinich
Ahau!”
The horned Mayan
firebird, one aspect of the great sun god itself, roared in answer,
beating its wings against the stone bars that held it contained.
Flames poured from its beak and eyes, licking along the bars and
turning them gradually molten. And, as Lucius squinted against the
blazing light, he remembered having seen this before.
Or rather,
he hadn’t seen it . . . but Cizin had.
His demon possessor had been a double agent, planted within the
Order of Xibalba to keep Iago in check when the dark lords began to
worry that their earthly namesakes were getting above themselves.
The Banol Kax didn’t want Iago to ally
with Moctezuma’s demon soul, not just because the bloodthirsty
Aztec king had once led powerful armies and plotted his own version
of the end-time, but also because he’d elevated himself to the
status of a god, one affiliated with the sun itself . . . and the
Banol Kax didn’t want that to happen
because they already had plans to put in place a sun god of their
own choosing: the sun king Akhenaton.
They had captured the
true sun god, Kinich Ahau, along with his canine companions. When
the barrier’s activity peaked during the summer solstice of the
first triad year—aka in nine fucking days—the dark lords were going
to sacrifice the true sun god and elevate Akhenaton in his
place.
And oh, holy fuck,
that couldn’t be allowed to happen.
Snarling, Akhenaton
turned on the firebird, lifted shadowy arms, and chanted a spell.
In an instant, a chill wind blew, the air cooled, and the molten
stone bars turned solid; they were slightly deformed, but not by
enough to free the god. But that hadn’t been the firebird’s aim,
Lucius realized seconds later, when two dark blurs hurtled through
the widened openings between two pairs of archways: pony-size black
dogs with sharp white teeth and red eyes.
The companions!
One of the dogs went
for Jade’s captors, the other for Lucius’s. Dark blood sprayed as
the ravening canine ripped out Snake-head’s throat; the man-beast
went down and stayed down. When it did, the shield magic
surrounding Lucius disappeared.
The old Lucius wanted
to stand and gape at legends come to life. The better man he was
becoming landed running. He lunged for Jade; three of the pharaoh’s
guards were using their elongated pikes to keep the big black dogs
at bay while the fourth force-marched her toward the fortress,
following the demon shadow as it disappeared into the darkness
within. Inside the pyramid, the sun god shrieked in rage and
pain.
“No!” Lucius bolted
after them, catching up with the rearmost guard just outside the
temple. The guard spun and leveled his pike, his eyes lighting with
battle glee as dark magic rattled. Seconds later, though, they
flattened to terror, and a dark blur flashed past Lucius and hit
the guard in the chest, sending the bastard down and away from
Jade. Blood sprayed and vertebrae crunched. Lucius charged forward
and grabbed Jade, who stood where the guard had left her, blank
eyed and shocky-looking. The magic that had been holding her fast
was gone.
“Lucius!” She sagged
into him, grabbed onto him. She might’ve said something else, but
he couldn’t hear her over the tidal roar that was rising within
him. His body heated to flash point and beyond; he was burning
without flames, writhing in agony without screams. The world closed
in on him from all sides until he could feel only hot agony and the
press of Jade’s body. A howling scream slammed through him, out of
him.
He felt that same
slipping, sliding sensation from before, only this time it was
sucking him up, not down. There was a
jolt of movement; he heard the makol’s
screech of anger, Kinich Ahau’s roar of satisfaction, the
companions’ howls . . . and then it was all gone. The world whipped
past him; he caught a glimpse of the hellmouth, the cloud forest,
and what he thought might be the barrier, followed by the outlines
of his cottage at Skywatch. Then there was a dizzying jolt and he
was back in his body, sprawled inelegantly on the living room
floor.
Home.
He lay still for a
moment, blinking as his body came back online. When a few of his
larger muscle groups checked in, he used them to roll over and
stretch out a hand to where Jade lay, an arm’s length away. Her
eyes were open, though blurred with disorientation. She was there,
though. She was okay. Thank you, gods,
he thought, but then jolted as the rest of it returned. “The
firebird! We have to”—go back and rescue the
sun god, he started to say, but couldn’t get the words past
a sudden rushing noise in his head. His vision blurred. He heard
her call his name, felt her grab his hand, but those inputs seemed
very far away, and so much less important than the powerful surge
that caught him up, feeling very different from the magic that had
yanked the two of them to Xibalba. He saw her worried eyes through
the whirling tunnel of power as he was yanked back into the magic .
. . this time alone.
“Lucius!” Jade
screamed his name, even though deep down inside, she knew he was
already gone. His eyes were rolled back in his head; his body had
gone limp. She told herself not to freak, that it was normal for
that to happen when a mage entered the barrier. Except that he
wasn’t a mage . . . and the magic had already gone very wrong once
tonight. Which meant . . . what? What should she do
now?
Her hands were
shaking; her whole body was trembling. But strangely, the memories
of what she’d just been through seemed oddly blunted, allowing her
to think and react rather than just freaking the hell out. She’d
heard the others talk about the preternatural focus conferred by
the warrior’s talent, and how it helped them function under
terrifying conditions. She thought she might be experiencing
something like that now, only coming from shock rather than innate
talent.
Pushing to her feet,
she reached for her pocket, intending to call Strike, both to
report in and to get help with Lucius. She didn’t know where he’d
gone, hadn’t even felt the magic that had taken him, and that
worried her. If their shared magic had dumped them in Xibalba,
where would he wind up now that he was flying solo? If they were
lucky, he’d make it to the library . . . but it wasn’t as if luck
had been with them so far.
She had the earpiece
partway to her ear when a whispery word echoed through the room:
“Jade.”
It was a woman’s
voice. The same one she’d heard just before being yanked into
Xibalba.
Freezing, she looked
around. “Who is that? Where are you?”
“I’m here. Come to me.” The world wavered. Red-gold
magic flared, surrounding Jade unbidden.
This time, the power
jolted her in the familiar sidelong direction of the barrier, but
she hadn’t performed any transition spell, hadn’t called the magic.
Lifting the earpiece, she screamed, “Help
me!”
But as Lucius’s
cottage shimmered and disappeared, she realized she’d forgotten to
turn the damned earpiece on. The others wouldn’t know there was a
problem for hours, maybe longer. And by then it might be too
late.