Heart jolting, she scrambled out from underneath the guy—a total stranger, for crap’s sake—and backed away in a defensive crouch. ‘‘What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened? ’’

‘‘Nothing,’’ he rasped. ‘‘Everything. I don’t know. Shit.’’ He sat up and dragged both hands through his dark hair, which had come free from its ponytail.

With his hair hanging to his shoulders and the close-clipped beard along his jawline, his body stunningly naked and ripped with a fighter’s muscles, and firelight flickering on the ancient carvings behind him, the whole scenario could’ve come from another age, when all this would’ve made way more sense.

Torchlight played over the long, lean lines of him as he stood and snagged his clothes. Naked, he was a statue. A fantasy. Even though they’d just had at each other and she didn’t even know his name, greedy need knotted Leah’s belly.

Then he pulled on his cutoffs and T-shirt and toed on his sandals, and he became a man again. One she was going to have to deal with, because, um, hello, they were in Mexico. And something very strange had just happened. Several somethings, in fact, starting with a botched human sacrifice and ending with an orgasm.

Brain churning, she turned away from him and got dressed while she tried to put her thoughts in order. Her pants were soaked but otherwise okay, while her shirt and bra were write-offs. Knotting the material as best she could at her midriff, she turned to face him and stuck out a hand. ‘‘Detective Leah Ann Daniels, Miami-Dade Narcotics.’’

Might as well start with the introductions. Then it’d be time for What the Christ is going on?

His wide, mobile lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. ‘‘Striking-Jaguar, last male of the Nightkeepers’ royal house. You can call me Strike.’’

And suddenly it made way too much sense. Anger and self-disgust fisted in her gut. ‘‘Oh, shit. You’re one of them.’’ She looked around. ‘‘Bastard. Where are the cameras?’’

He looked surprised. ‘‘Cameras?’’

She didn’t bother answering, instead making a wide circuit of the room, looking at the braziers, the carved skulls, trying to be a cop when the woman in her wanted to scream and start throwing things. ‘‘Of course. No sense in him staging something like this and not filming it for blackmail to get me off his back. Or, hell, he could just YouTube it and crash my career. I can see the title now: ‘MDPD detective gets down and dirty during Survivor 2012 ritual.’ What are you, one of his disciples? Nah,’’ she answered her own question. ‘‘None of them look as good as you. So, what . . . out-of-work actor?’’ Her voice climbed an octave. ‘‘Oh, bloody hell. Do not tell me I just had unprotected sex with a porn star.’’

Incipient hysteria heated her blood just as the sex had done minutes before, though with far less pleasure. Her brother’s friend Vince, the only one left who believed as she did that Zipacna was behind the serial killings, had warned her the 2012ers would go to any length to protect themselves. Of course they’d set her up. It made rational sense.

More, at least, than any of the other explanations she could come up with.

‘‘Jesus, that’s a leap.’’ He held up both hands in a stop the presses gesture. ‘‘Okay, let’s hang on here. Chill. Take a breath. I’m not anyone’s disciple, or an actor. I’m definitely not a porn star, and I’m not sure whether to be complimented or insulted by that one.’’

‘‘Then what are you? And make it good.’’ She looked around again, and panic fluttered, because if this wasn’t a setup and there weren’t any cameras, then there was a very real possibility she was losing her mind, because so much of what she remembered happening couldn’t possibly be real: the purple-black smoke touching her; the stranger—Strike? What kind of a name was that?— appearing in midair; the way he’d busted her cuffs with a word . . . and the voice in her head.

If that wasn’t crazy, she didn’t know what was.

‘‘I told you,’’ he repeated as though it were all very logical. ‘‘I’m a Nightkeeper.’’

‘‘Which means what, exactly?’’ And does it mean I’m not nuts?

He hesitated, then said, ‘‘I’m one of the guys in charge of stopping things like this from happening.’’ His gesture encompassed the chamber, the altar, all of it. ‘‘The man—the creature—who had you . . .’’

‘‘Zipacna.’’ Even saying the name filled her with hatred, more now than ever because of what he’d done to Nick, what he’d tried to do to her. ‘‘He’s mine.’’

‘‘No, he’s not.’’ There was no give in the words. ‘‘Leave him to us, Detective. He’s way out of your jurisdiction.’’

‘‘He’s a murderer.’’

‘‘He’s a makol.’’

Zipacna had used the word, too, during one of his chants. ‘‘What does that mean?’’

‘‘Roughly, a disciple of the underworld who’s offered himself for partial demonic possession in exchange for magic and a role in the coming war leading up to the 2012 end date,’’ he said. ‘‘Zipacna, in particular, is now the ajaw-makol, the top predator, the head dude. The ritual he just used you in, that means he takes his power directly from the rulers of the underworld, the Banol Kax. Over the next three months, he’ll make other makol from evil-minded humans—the more willing they are to undergo demonic possession, the more of their own human traits and intelligence they’ll retain. You can tell them by the glowing green eyes, and they’re a bitch to kill.’’ He paused, grimaced. ‘‘Or so the stories go. There hasn’t been a makol on earth in more than a thousand years.’’

Leah’s head spun. She should be so out of there. This was nuts. Insane. Completely unbelievable. But she was a cop, and cops followed the evidence. Right now, the evidence—if she could believe her own senses, anyway— was telling her there was something seriously whacked going on. She’d also done enough reading on the semireligious, semihistorical, semiscientific basis of the Survivor 2012 doctrine to know that it was, if not believable, then at least internally consistent.

That didn’t mean it was real, though. Hell, logic—and what she knew about how the world worked—said it wasn’t real. But if it wasn’t real, how did she explain what’d just happened to her?

Her options seemed to be limited to: A) magic existed, and she’d gotten caught up in something way outside her comfort zone; or B) magic didn’t exist, and she’d been kidnapped, nearly drowned, and then boffed a total stranger.

‘‘So the thing you did with the cuffs,’’ she said, trying to feel her way in a world that was shifting beneath her feet, ‘‘does that mean you’ve got demonic powers, too?’’

He shook his head. ‘‘The Nightkeepers are the good guys. We’ve got the gods on our side.’’ He paused. ‘‘Look, the short version is that I’m one of the last three surviving members of an ancient group of magi sworn to protect the earth from the 2012 apocalypse. Several hundred of us—including my parents—died in the early eighties enacting a spell designed to permanently seal the gateway to the underworld, Xibalba. Now it’s looking like someone, probably this Zipacna—not a very creative name, by the way—managed to reactivate the gateway, probably through some large-scale blood sacrifices. ’’

Leah jammed her fingertips into her temples when her spinning head threatened to float off her shoulders. ‘‘Which leaves it up to you to save the world.’’

‘‘Right,’’ he said again, and looked at her. ‘‘You’re not buying it.’’

‘‘Unfortunately, I think you are.’’ She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to slow the spins, trying not to freak right the hell out and start screaming. ‘‘And here I was last night thinking you were a fantasy, and how that was better than your being a doomsday nut.’’

‘‘Last night?’’

She realized her mistake too late, and backpedaled. ‘‘I meant just now.’’

‘‘No, you didn’t. Which means you dreamed about me.’’

Everything inside her went still. ‘‘Why do you say that?’’

Heat kindled in his dark blue eyes. ‘‘Because I sure as hell dreamed of you. Which means this isn’t a ‘wrong place, wrong time’ thing, or an accident. We were meant to meet. We were meant to be together like we were just now.’’ He held out a hand. ‘‘Give me your right wrist.’’

Resisting the urge to stick her hands behind her back, she did as he asked. ‘‘No ink.’’

‘‘What happened here?’’ His thumb lightly brushed over a lighter, roughly circular patch on her forearm.

‘‘Old scar.’’ She withdrew her arm. ‘‘No biggie. Don’t even remember how I got it.’’ Feeling trapped, she looked around the room, focusing on the doorway, which was still tightly shut. ‘‘Please tell me you know how to get us out of here.’’

He raised one dark eyebrow, but said only, ‘‘Will you do something for me first?’’

Keeping her distance, she said, ‘‘Depends.’’

‘‘It’s nothing bad. Trust me.’’ He bent and scooped the black stone knife from the floor. Offered it to her. ‘‘Take this.’’

She held up both hands. ‘‘I’m so not cutting you.’’ And none of this was real. It was all a dream. It had to be.

He flipped the knife one-handed, so he was holding on to the blade, then closed his fingers over the sharp edge, cutting himself.

‘‘Don’t!’’ She lurched forward, only to stop dead when he flipped the knife again and offered it to her haft-first, seeming unconcerned by the blood oozing from between his fingers.

‘‘Your turn.’’

The walls of unreality closed in on her, and her laugh came out tinged with hysteria. ‘‘I’m not cutting myself. No freaking way. Zipacna already . . .’’ Her words died as she glanced down at her upper arm and saw slices in the fabric of her soggy shirt, but none in the skin beneath. ‘‘What the . . . ?’’ She pawed at the shirt, pulling it down over her shoulder to see the spot where she’d been badly cut no more than an hour ago.

Instead of gashes there were three parallel scars, thin with age.

The blood drained from her head and her gut clenched with fear and denial. Her voice went thin. ‘‘There’s no such thing as magic.’’

‘‘Then this won’t work.’’ He held out the knife. ‘‘Just deep enough to draw blood.’’

She stared at the knife, hearing Zipacna’s voice in her head. Accept the power; take a master inside you. But this guy wasn’t Zipacna. He claimed he was going to track the bastard down. The enemy of her enemy was her friend, right?

Ignoring the little voice inside her that said, Not necessarily , compelled by an urge she didn’t recognize, couldn’t name, she took the knife and dragged the tip across her palm. It didn’t hurt as much as she’d expected, but the chamber took a long, lazy spin around her as blood welled up, the droplets dark red against her skin. ‘‘What now?’’

‘‘Repeat after me.’’ He slowly recited a string of words, pausing after each one and waiting while she parsed them out syllable by syllable. As she did, the air seemed to thicken around her, and the room spins upped their revs.

When he fell silent, she looked at him. ‘‘That’s it?’’

He shook his head. ‘‘Now say, ‘Pasaj och.’ ’’

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and steeled herself. ‘‘Pasaj och!’’

Nothing happened.

She waited. Still nothing.

Letting out a long, shuddering breath, she opened her eyes. The room had stopped spinning, and the wary hope that’d briefly gathered on Strike’s face had fallen away to a bleakness so terrible she almost wished she’d felt something. But she shook her head. ‘‘Sorry . . . does that mean I’m right and there’s no such thing as magic?’’

‘‘No,’’ he said softly, and crossed to take the knife from her. ‘‘It means I failed.’’ He took her hand and pressed their bleeding palms together, bringing a spark of connection and a hint of sadness. ‘‘It means this isn’t your fight.’’

‘‘Bull,’’ she said quickly, though the word came out slightly slurred as a gray curtain descended over her. ‘‘Zipacna is mine. He killed Matty and Nick. He—’’

‘‘Hush,’’ Strike whispered. ‘‘Sleep.’’ He said a few more words in that strange language and gray mist surrounded her, cushioned her.

She felt herself falling, felt strong arms catch her.

Then nothing.

‘‘Here.’’ Rabbit shoved a can of Coke across the kitchen table in Jox’s direction.

The winikin took the can and stared at it, his wits dulled with fatigue and grief, with failure. Strike had been gone for hours. The solstice had passed, and although the barrier remained active, Red-Boar hadn’t been able to find him.

Here one second, then poof. Gone while his winikin counted pallets of cow shit and bitched about broken bags.

‘‘Drink,’’ Rabbit urged. ‘‘You know—sugar? Caffeine? The old man isn’t the only one who needs to recharge.’’

Magic consumed enormous amounts of energy, so while Red-Boar had searched, Jox had done what a winikin ought, forcing the mage to eat and drink, mostly foods that were heavy on fat, sugar, and protein. Even with that, the Nightkeeper’s strength had given out eventually. He’d staggered off to bed an hour earlier, muttering something about looking in their few remaining spellbooks when he got up.

He hadn’t bothered stating the obvious; that they might already be too late. Strike had teleported with no training, no guidance. For all they knew, he’d materialized inside a mountain.

‘‘I could help, you know,’’ Rabbit said out of nowhere.

Jox looked across the table to find the kid fiddling with his own soda can, practically vibrating with suppressed excitement. Oh, hell. This was so not what he needed right now. ‘‘Listen, Rabbit,’’ Jox said, wishing one of the others could’ve handled the convo. ‘‘You know there are . . . circumstances that’re going to make it difficult to induct you into the magic. It could be dangerous. Probably will be.’’

Rabbit scowled. ‘‘I’m a half-blood. Trust me, I got that. But it doesn’t mean I can’t do magic, just that it might be different magic. And it’s not like you’ve got a bunch of options. What have you got to lose?’’

‘‘It’s not as easy as that,’’ Jox said, but held up a hand to stem the coming protest. ‘‘But I’ll talk to your father. That’s all I can promise.’’

Slumping in his chair, the teen shrugged and pretended to be absorbed by reading the side of his Coke can. ‘‘Whatever.’’ His tone made it clear he didn’t expect squat from Red-Boar, and frankly Jox couldn’t blame him.

‘‘Look, Rabbit. I’ll—’’

The house phone rang, interrupting. Jox stared at the cordless handset as it rang again, and fear gathered in the pit of his stomach. It could be Strike, he thought. Or it could be someone calling to say they’d found Strike. Or—

Nope. It was one or the other. And until he answered, the scale was evenly balanced between the two, between hope and despair.

It rang again, and Rabbit said, ‘‘You want me to get it?’’

‘‘No.’’ Jox reached for the phone with shaking hands and hit the speakerphone button on the second try. ‘‘Hello?’’

‘‘I’m okay.’’ It was Strike’s voice, tired-sounding and on a crappy connection, but it was his voice. He was alive, and somewhere on the earth. He wasn’t stuck in the barrier, and he hadn’t become an insta-fossil.

Jox exhaled on a rush of relief so intense it would’ve floored him if he hadn’t already been sitting down. ‘‘Thank the gods.’’ He went dizzy, and pinched the bridge of his nose when his eyes prickled. ‘‘Gods damn it, you had us scared.’’

‘‘Sorry. I called as soon as I got somewhere with a signal.’’

Jox waved for Rabbit to go get his father, but he needn’t have bothered. Red-Boar came stumbling in, bleary eyed. ‘‘Where is he?’’

‘‘I’m in the apartment down by Chichén Itzá,’’ Strike answered. ‘‘It’s a long story.’’ He rapped out a quick report about a murderer who’d gone through the makol ritual, and the woman he’d planned to sacrifice.

The words sort of blurred together, though, as Jox dropped his head into his hands. Thank you, gods. Thank you for keeping him safe when his fuckup winikin was asleep at the switch. I’ll never ask you for anything ever again. I promise.

The vow lasted approximately thirty seconds or so, until Strike said something about a vision.

Jox whipped his head up. ‘‘Please gods, you did not just say what I think you said.’’

‘‘I used a sleep spell on her,’’ Strike said, ignoring the winikin. ‘‘She’ll be okay until you guys get down here, right?’’

‘‘Who cares?’’ Red-Boar said bluntly. ‘‘She’s collateral damage. We need to find the ajaw-makol before it starts multiplying. One of those green-eyed bastards is bad enough. We sure as hell don’t want an army of them.’’

‘‘We’ll find the ajaw-makol and take care of him,’’ Strike said, voice going hard. ‘‘But Leah is not collateral damage.’’

‘‘You’ve had a hell of a day,’’ Jox said quickly, before the two exhausted magi could get into it. ‘‘Put some protein into your system, and shut it down for a few hours. We can figure out the rest when we get there.’’

‘‘Don’t handle me, Jox,’’ Strike snapped. ‘‘I’ve been having the dreams for weeks. She had them, too. We recognized each other, for crap’s sake. And the ajaw-makol called her a keeper of the gods.’’

Shit. Jox and Red-Boar exchanged a look, while Rabbit grinned at the prospect of a fight.

‘‘Forget the dreams.’’ Jox tried not to hear the words echo decades into the past. ‘‘Forget the woman. She’s not your priority.’’

‘‘How can you be so sure?’’ Strike’s voice roughened. ‘‘I heard it, Jox. I heard the god begging her to let it inside. I tried to help, tried to make the connection, but—’’ He broke off with a ragged sigh. ‘‘I wasn’t fast enough, not strong enough. The solstice passed and the voice . . . left. But it was real. She’s supposed to be a Godkeeper.’’

Right. Like that made sense. Mated Nightkeeper-Godkeeper pairs were supposed to be at the apex of the power scale, second only to the Triad, the three legendary magi who could channel all the knowledge and powers of their ancestors. No way the gods had chosen a human to be a Godkeeper.

Then again, it wasn’t like they’d had their choice of Nightkeeper females.

Jox pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the monster headache he could feel brewing. ‘‘You need to eat something,’’ he said, feeling for the boy—the man—he’d raised, who was both his son and his boss. Like his father before him, Strike was always reaching for more, never exactly happy with what was in front of him. And far too ready to bend the rules to fit his theories. ‘‘Keep the sleep spell going on the woman and get some rest. We’ll be there by dawn.’’

‘‘I’m not going to let this drop.’’

‘‘Tell me something I don’t know. See you soon.’’ Jox punched off the phone.

‘‘Bloody stubborn jaguars.’’ Red-Boar shoved away from the kitchen table and headed for his room, snapping, ‘‘Find us a charter. I want to be on the ground in Mexico before he does something else stupid.’’

Rabbit jumped up from the table and put himself between his father and the door. ‘‘I’m coming with you.’’

‘‘No fucking way.’’

‘‘But I can help.’’

Red-Boar snorted. ‘‘How?’’

The teen flushed. ‘‘Jack me in and I’ll show you.’’

‘‘Not happening. Stay here.’’ Red-Boar pushed past his son. ‘‘And don’t fuck anything up while we’re gone.’’

Rabbit took a step after him, fists clenched.

Jox crossed to the teen. He didn’t touch him because he knew the boy didn’t like to be touched, but he said, ‘‘Stay here and chill. Once we know what’s up, I’ll talk to him.’’

‘‘I didn’t ask to be a half-blood.’’ Rabbit’s voice shook. ‘‘That was his call.’’

‘‘I know.’’ Jox clasped the boy’s shoulder. ‘‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’’

Rabbit shrugged him off. ‘‘Not your fault he’s a prick.’’

Maybe, maybe not. A winikin was supposed to guide his Nightkeeper as well as protect him. Red-Boar might not’ve been Jox’s blood-bound charge, but he’d become his responsibility by default. Jox had done his best, but that hadn’t been good enough; Red-Boar’s scars ran too deep, leaving the winikin once again in the position of trying to save the son when the father put himself beyond salvation.

‘‘I’ll talk to him,’’ Jox repeated. ‘‘If it comes to it, Strike will probably agree to jack you in without his consent.’’

‘‘But I won’t get a bloodline mark if he doesn’t accept me as his own.’’ Rabbit’s voice went rough—with anger, maybe, or tears. Or both. ‘‘No bloodline mark means no talent mark. No magic. What’s the point?’’

‘‘We’ll figure something out.’’ Jox gripped the boy’s shoulder again, and this time didn’t let himself be shaken off. ‘‘I promise.’’

‘‘Whatever.’’ Rabbit shrugged and turned away. He headed for his room and slammed the door. Moments later, the rhythmic thump of bass vibrated through the floorboards.

Jox let out a breath, knowing that Rabbit was so not a complication he needed right now. He hated what had just happened, but Strike needed him, and the king’s son was his first responsibility.

Grabbing the phone, Jox stabbed a few buttons and hit up the slightly disreputable pilot for hire he’d put on speed dial, just in case. A good winikin—or, for that matter, a fuckup winikin who occasionally got a few things right—knew to have contingency plans for just about anything.

The line went live and a thick voice growled, ‘‘This had better be goddamned good.’’

‘‘Five grand if you get us to Cancún before dawn,’’ Jox said, skipping the pleasantries.

There was a moment of silence, then, ‘‘It’ll be an extra ten if you’re carrying illegals.’’

‘‘No illegals, just two passengers, but time is critical. Family emergency.’’

‘‘My ass.’’ But the pilot didn’t press. ‘‘How soon can you be at the airport?’’

‘‘An hour.’’

‘‘See you there.’’ The line went dead.

Jox headed for his room to grab the essentials, but he paused at the kitchen doorway and looked back, not just at the kitchen and attached sitting area, but at the big picture window and the warehouse beyond, where towering stacks of pallets held his fertilizers and feed, soil and seed.

Winikin weren’t precogs, but something told him he wouldn’t be back.

Rabbit watched his old man and Jox leave, waiting until the brake lights on Jox’s Jeep flashed at the end of the sloped driveway and the vehicle pulled out into traffic and accelerated away. Then he waited another five minutes to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything worth coming back for.

Then he got on the phone and called a few people, who said they’d call a few more people, and blah, blah. He wasn’t sure if that counted as ‘‘fucking anything up,’’ and didn’t particularly care. Served the others right if they got home and he’d trashed the place. They could’ve brought him along. Wouldn’t have hurt anyone, or screwed with the Nightkeepers’ almighty rules.

But the barrier hadn’t sucked him in. Hell, he hadn’t even known it’d reactivated until he’d heard the screams and saw what Strike-out had done to himself. Then, when the old man had jacked in to look for him, Rabbit hadn’t felt shit, which probably meant the old man’d been right all along and he didn’t have a lick of power or worth. He wasn’t a Nightkeeper, wasn’t anything. He was just a half-blood screwup. And what did screwups do when their parents left them home alone?

They threw parties.

After Strike got off the phone with Jox and Red-Boar—and that convo had been a real case of can open, worms everywhere—he checked on Leah.

She lay on the pullout couch of the studio apartment, beneath a brightly colored serape that was one of the few splashes of color in the utilitarian space Jox had maintained over the years, another of his ‘‘just in case’’ contingencies.

This particular contingency plan had come in seriously handy, because there was no way in hell Strike would’ve had enough strength to teleport him and Leah back to the garden center, even if he’d been sure enough of the magic to try. So instead he’d carried her into town, weaving as he’d walked and singing off-key so the few people who’d seen them assumed they were tourists who’d had too much to drink.

Her chest rose and fell in the slow rhythm of deep sleep. The very fact that he was able to keep her asleep with such a thin spell all but proved she wasn’t a Nightkeeper. The lesser spells, like the sleep spell, worked on humans but not magi.

‘‘But you’re a hell of a human, Blondie,’’ he murmured, tracing his fingers down her porcelain-pale face and lingering on the faint puffiness of a split lip and the slight irregularity of an old scar at her temple, near her hairline. ‘‘A hell of a human.’’

But where did that leave them? The dreams—and they were visions, whether Jox and Red-Boar wanted to believe it or not—suggested they were to be lovers, but did that mean something long-term, or had the moment already come and gone? And if so, what was the point? The god hadn’t made it through the barrier and the makol had escaped. What the hell role was she meant to play in the things to come?

‘‘You’re not going to figure it out staring at her,’’ he told himself. He needed more information. So, despite Jox’s warning, he chanted the simple counterspell to wake her.

Her eyelids flickered and her skin flushed. She murmured something under her breath. Then her eyes popped open, blue and intense, and locked on him immediately.

She didn’t scream—that was the cop in her, he supposed, and felt a flash of gratitude because it gave him time to hold up both hands in an I’m unarmed gesture, and say, ‘‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to feed you.’’

That had her hesitating long enough for the rest of the memories to hit—he saw it in the way her face flushed even harder, the color riding high in her cheeks as she remembered how they’d gone at each other in the sacrificial chamber.

The blush—and his own memories—had his skin heating and his blood revving, and a whole lot of ideas jamming his skull. He wasn’t about to act on any of them, but some of the sizzle must’ve shown in his eyes, because she sat up abruptly enough that she swayed.

Draping the serape around her shoulders to cover where the ruined shirt left her half-naked, she lifted her chin. ‘‘Don’t even think it.’’

‘‘I’m a guy, which means I’m hardwired to think it.’’ He deliberately turned his back on her and headed for the kitchen. ‘‘But I’ll give you my word I won’t act on it tonight.’’

‘‘Which implies you think there’ll be another night.’’ She winced and rubbed at her temples. ‘‘What the hell did you drug me with? My head’s killing me.’’

‘‘No drug,’’ he said, which was the truth. ‘‘You just sort of passed out on me.’’ Which wasn’t exactly a lie. ‘‘We weren’t safe in the ruins, so I brought you here.’’

‘‘Where is here?’’

‘‘A friend’s apartment. He’ll be here in the morning, and he’ll help us get home.’’ Which was more or less the truth, though it left out the part where Red-Boar would block off her memories first. When he saw her glance at the door, he added, ‘‘It locks from the inside, and the key’s in my pocket. And the window is four floors up, so please don’t try it. You have my word that you’ll be home by lunchtime tomorrow.’’

He came out of the kitchen carrying a couple of spoons and an assortment of tinned meat. Jox had stocked the apartment’s small kitchenette with nonperishable proteins of the sort that’d outlive cockroaches on the evolutionary scale, but damned if SPAM, sardines, and Vienna sausages didn’t sound like manna from the gods just then.

‘‘Here.’’ He held out a tin and one of the spoons. ‘‘You need protein.’’

She stared at the tin, then up at him, her eyes very blue against her porcelain skin, which had gone pale as she’d processed everything that’d happened to them, and between them. ‘‘I don’t understand,’’ she said in a small voice, one that had a little tremor in it.

Aw, hell, Strike thought, cursing himself. She had to be terrified, and he was trying to feed her processed meat by-products. Like that was going to make it better.

He sat down beside her on the sofa, put an arm around her, and hugged her in as nonthreatening a way as he could manage. ‘‘I’ll explain what I can.’’ He could tell her anything he wanted, knowing Red-Boar would block it all anyway. ‘‘And in return, I’d like you to answer a few questions for me.’’

She sniffed and nodded. ‘‘If you think it’ll help.’’

‘‘I do.’’ He used his free hand to tip her chin up, so she would see the truth in his eyes. ‘‘You’re going to be home tomorrow. I promise.’’

He’d intended nothing more than that safe vow, that small comfort, but the moment their eyes met it was like somebody cranked his libido to ‘‘on.’’ Heat roared through him, and he wanted nothing more than to grab the long white silk of her hair and use it to bare her throat, to hold her in place as he kissed his way down, taking the time he hadn’t had before.

She sucked in a breath and held it, and damned if that color wasn’t riding her cheeks again, telling him he wasn’t alone in feeling the need.

‘‘I said I wouldn’t touch you tonight,’’ he rasped, throat tight with the horns that rode him, goading him on, urging him to screw his good intentions and take what they both wanted.

‘‘Did you?’’ she murmured, leaning in. ‘‘It seems to have slipped my mind.’’

On the heels of that permission, that invitation, he slid his hand up into the long fall of her hair, which was still faintly damp. He felt the echo of the solstice power within him, but more than that he felt the pounding lust that had ridden him since he’d first dreamed of her, since he’d first awakened thinking of her eyes, and of the way she’d felt wrapped around him.

She leaned in, so their lips were a breath apart, and whispered, ‘‘Go ahead. Kiss me.’’

A harsh groan rattled in his chest, and he closed the distance between them and touched his lips to hers, softly at first, a faint whisper of sensation. She murmured pleasure and met him for the next, taking it wetter, deeper, opening her mouth beneath his and inviting him in.

He crowded close, aligning their bodies and loosening his grip on her hair, sliding his hand down to cup the back of her neck. She whispered something, but the blood was pounding too hard in his veins, too fast in his ears for him to hear. ‘‘What was that?’’

She eased away, cupped his jaw in her hands, and stared into his eyes. ‘‘I said, ‘Thanks for the key.’’’

Then she brought up her knee and racked him in the balls.

The attack was off center enough to be kind, but hard enough to drop him. He curled in pain as she shot to her feet and bolted across the room, headed for the door. ‘‘Don’t!’’ he shouted, his words garbling on a groan of agony. " ’S not safe."

But she was already gone, pounding along the hall and down the stairs.

‘‘Shit!’’ Strike got to his hands and knees and breathed through the pain, tried to find the barrier power when he barely knew where to look, never mind how to handle it. But this was an emergency. No way was he admitting he’d lost her.

He found the barrier, chanted the jack-in spell, and thought of Leah. The travel thread popped up in front of him immediately. Here goes nothing, he thought, and grabbed onto the thread with a mental touch and yanked.

The world went gray-green and slewed sideways, and he crashed into an alley two streets over from the apartment, smack in front of Leah.

This time she did scream.

He grabbed her, envisioned the apartment, and zapped them back hard and fast. They landed in a tangle of arms and legs, and she immediately started thrashing, screaming at the top of her lungs. Worse, the world was starting to spin and go fuzzy at the edges, warning Strike that he was running out of magic fast.

With his last ounce of power he put the sleep spell back on her, and she went limp against him.

Breathing hard, he lay there for a minute while the world did doughnuts around him, and he thanked the gods that he’d managed to get her back before the locals noticed her half-naked self parading around the not-very -nice neighborhood. Then he thanked them some more that he’d managed to pull off two teleports and a sleep spell, which meant he wouldn’t have to admit to Jox that he’d nearly screwed the pooch and lost her.

Then he lay there a minute longer because his balls hurt and he didn’t want to move.

Eventually, though, the floor got hard and he forced himself to his feet. He laid Leah back on the couch and covered her up with the serape, and she murmured something in a soft, sweet voice and turned on her side, tucking her hands beneath her cheek. With her face smoothed out in sleep, she looked very young and vulnerable.

‘‘Vulnerable.’’ He snorted. ‘‘Not exactly accurate, eh, Blondie?’’

He hadn’t enjoyed the experience, but he admired her flair. She’d played him hard and he’d fallen easy, and props to her. She might’ve gotten away, too, if it weren’t for the magic.

Damn, he liked what he knew of her. She was tough and resourceful, soft and sexy, and she’d held her own against the makol. She was gorgeous and quick-minded and—

And whether he liked her or not, dreamed of her or not, she hadn’t retained any magic past the equinox, which meant she wasn’t part of what was coming. And really, that was for the best, given the prophecy.

At the thought, he looked at the far wall, where a framed piece of parchment hung on a bent nail. It wasn’t a decorative touch. It was a reminder of what was important. Ascribed to the god Kauil, whose origins and allegiances were unknown, the thirteenth prophecy read: In the final five years / The king stands ready / To make his greatest sacrifice. / If the dark lord comes / The end begins.

He sighed. Though he wasn’t the king yet, he was next in line, and the only jaguar male left. That meant the prophecy drove him, shadowed him. For so long he’d hoped it meant nothing, that the five-year mark would come and go, that 2012 would come and go. But now the barrier had churned back online, right on schedule, and now there was an ajaw-makol on the earthly plane, with the power to bring a dark lord through the barrier on the next cardinal day. It wasn’t much of a stretch to think the greatest sacrifice would be coming right on its heels.

And didn’t that just suck. Cursing, he pushed away from the wall, intending to pace.

He nearly fell on his ass.

All of a sudden, his legs felt like bungees hooked to nothing, limp and elastic. The urge to sleep was almost overwhelming, and the floor was looking soft as a mattress, but he knew he couldn’t pass out. Not now. Not here.

No way in hell was he leaving Leah unprotected. Not with a makol on the loose. So he headed back into the main room and scrounged the tinned meat he’d pulled out for their interrupted snack. By his fourth can of by-products, the world had stopped spinning. By his sixth— when the SPAM started tasting like SPAM, which wasn’t saying much—he was feeling almost normal, except for the part about needing to sleep for a week. Since that wasn’t an option, he went for caffeine instead, raiding the coffee supply and drinking the stuff black, because powdered creamer was just wrong.

Fortified with a mug of sludgelike caffeine, he snagged a package of stale cookies from a cabinet, then headed back to Leah. He tucked the serape more tightly around her, set a chair near her head, facing the door, and sat himself down with the cookies and coffee within reach, along with the MAC-10 autopistol he’d pulled out of the gun locker hidden behind a secret panel in the bathroom closet. With the gun on his lap and a spare clip of jade-tipped bullets nearby, he watched the door. And waited.

And waited.

He was still waiting and watching, and was on his third pot of coffee when the dawn broke with quiet ferocity.

In the aftermath of the solstice, the sun rose almost directly behind the great pyramid at Chichén Itzá, a black step-sided silhouette against the fiery red of dawn. The pyramid—dedicated to the creator god Kulkulkan— was a monumental calendar, with ninety-one steps on each of the four sides, plus the top platform, equaling the 365 days of a solar year. Built atop an earlier temple dedicated to the jaguars gods believed to hold up the four corners of the world, the pyramid of Kulkulkan was designed so a serpent shadow descended the stairs at the exact moment of each equinox, in spring and fall. It overlooked the city of Chichén Itzá, which had been the center of religious and military power in the Yucatán from 800-1100 or so, A.D., housing upward of fifty thousand Maya and Nightkeepers at its peak.

Now, as the sun rose over the ancient city, Strike could just see the parking area that would fill with buses and rental cars in the next few hours, as tourists thronged the ruins, oohing and aahing over the ball court, where teams had competed to toss a heavy ball through stone rings set high on the parallel walls of the court. Little would the tourists know that the ball had represented the sun and the ring had symbolized the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which the Maya had believed was the entrance to Xibalba. In that way, they had reenacted the Great Conjunction over and over again, with the game’s winners offering blood sacrifices— and sometimes their lives—to the gods in the hopes of preventing the end-time.

The tourists also wouldn’t know that the Sacred Cenote, a giant sinkhole opening onto the underground waterways that were the only source of freshwater in the Yucatán, was not only a sacrifical well into which the Maya had thrown thousands of offerings, it was also one of the two entrances to the sacred underground tunnels of the Nightkeepers. Because, hello, nobody even knew the Nightkeepers existed anymore. Thanks to the conquistadors and their missionaries, knowledge of the Great Conjunction had faded to an astronomical oddity, and the Nightkeeper-inspired Mayan pantheon had been lost to monotheism.

Which meant what in practical terms? Nothing, really, Strike admitted to himself as the sun continued to climb the sky above the step-sided pyramid belonging to a god who might’ve been forgotten, but was far from gone. The Nightkeepers’ duties had been set long ago, codified into the thirteen prophecies. The Great Conjunction was coming whether mankind cared or not. The Banol Kax would seek to breach the barrier.

And the Nightkeepers—what was left of them, anyway— would stand and fight.

Exhaustion drummed through him. Or maybe that was depression. Grief. It was impossible not to think about the massacre, about what it’d meant. If the barrier was fully back online and the Banol Kax had sent their ajaw-makol to prepare the stage for a dark lord’s arrival, then everything was happening right on schedule despite the ultimate sacrifice represented by the massacre. Which meant his father’s dreams had been lies. Or maybe he’d failed to follow the visions to their conclusion? Nobody knew at this point, which was a real bugger, because it didn’t give Strike a damn bit of insight into how to deal with his own dreams. Or Leah’s.

‘‘We’ve known each other only a few hours, Blondie, and we’re already up against it,’’ he said to the sleeping woman. He ached over the necessity of wiping her memories and sending her back where she belonged, but the alternative was impossible.

Nightkeepers were born, not recruited.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the apartment, jolting Strike from his reverie. He rose to his feet, autopistol at the ready, and relaxed only marginally when he heard the tapping rhythm on the door that signaled friend.

Moments later, a key turned in the lock and the door opened, and he saw the relief in Jox’s face, the condemnation in Red-Boar’s.

The sight of the two men loosened something inside Strike, making him feel a little less alone in the world. The second the door shut at their backs, the exhaustion he’d been fighting back all night rose up to claim him. ‘‘Don’t hurt her,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s an order.’’

And he pitched to the floor, out cold.

The party at the garden center was in full swing by two a.m. Music pumped from the surround-sound speakers in the apartment, and someone had rigged the intercom to blast the tunes out in the warehouse. It was so loud, nobody cared that it sounded like shit.

The apartment above the store was jammed, and there were probably fifty or so kids packed into the warehouse. They were dancing in the main aisle and climbing on the stacked pallets of seeds and fertilizer, jumping from one leaning tower to the next and making bets on who’d fall first. A stack of 5-10-10 had already bitten the dust, and it looked like the leaning tower of diatomaceous earth was next. The dancers ground the fertilizer granules to dust beneath their feet, making the air sparkle faintly in the red-tinged emergency lights.

Rabbit stood above it all, watching from behind the wide picture window that opened from Jox’s office onto the warehouse. He’d declared the room off-limits by slapping a crisscross of yellow-and-black caution tape over the door and locking it behind him, and so far the barricade had held.

The office lights were off, leaving him watching in the darkness as somebody started lobbing five-pounders of birdseed from the top racks of the thirty-foot-high warehouse. The bags exploded when they hit, sending up millet and sunflower shrapnel and making the dancers scream with laughter.

Rabbit knew he should be out there. This was his frigging party, and he was going to catch hell for it when the others got back. But he didn’t move, just sat and watched instead, wishing he’d had the guts to go toe-to-toe with the old man when it’d counted. But he hadn’t, so here he was, stuck in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing important. As usual.

‘‘Rabbit?’’ There was a knock on the door. ‘‘You in there?’’

The voice was female, which pretty much guaranteed he was going to answer. He cracked the door and saw Tracy Lindh, a dark-haired junior cheerleader he knew in passing, who scored about a seven of ten on the do-ability scale, mostly because her breasts balanced out her chunky legs. ‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘I, uh, don’t want to interrupt or anything.’’

‘‘I’m alone. Just taking a time-out. You want in?’’ He let the door swing wide enough that she could get through, but kept it tight so she’d have to slide up past him.

But she stayed put. ‘‘No, I, uh . . . You know that room in the apartment? The one with the padlock? Well, Ben Stanley and a couple of his buddies—’’

Rabbit was out the door before she finished.

He should’ve been cursing whatever asshole’d invited the terrible trio, when pretty much everyone who was anyone knew they’d made Rabbit’s life a living hell since junior high. It’d gotten so bad he’d actually studied so he could graduate early and get away from them.

But all he could think as he bolted up the hallway and skidded through the front door of the apartment, heart pounding in his ears, was, Oh, shit. Oh, no. No, shit, please, no—

He broke off when he saw that the door to the ritual room was splintered wide-open, with the padlock still attached to its hasp. Raucous male laughter sounded from within.

Lunging for the door, hoping like hell he wasn’t too late, he shouted, ‘‘Hey, get out of—’’

He stopped dead, heart slamming in his chest at the sight of three guys standing over the chac-mool altar, drinking beer from the ritual bowls.

Ben Stanley—a big, arrogant blond jerk who was a second-stringer on the football team and acted like he was captain—stood in the middle. Rabbit didn’t recognize the guys on either side of him, because they were wearing the Nightkeepers’ sacred robes, one red, one black, with the hoods pulled forward to shadow their faces. The hems and sleeve points dragged on the floor, which was littered with broken nachos and what looked like a big spooge of string cheese.

‘‘Get. Out.’’ Rabbit tried to keep his voice even, but it shook with rage.

They shouldn’t be in the ritual chamber. Hell, he shouldn’t even be in there. Not if the barrier had reactivated.

He’d never doubted the magic, even when it failed to work year after year. Somehow he’d always known it’d work someday; he just hadn’t counted on being left behind. And in response, he was just now realizing, he’d made a big fucking mistake.

Probably the biggest of his life.

‘‘Hey, Bunny-boy,’’ the black-robed guy said. ‘‘What the fuck is this? You part of a cult? You and your fucked-up father worship the devil or something?’’

Rabbit ID’d the voice as belonging to one of Ben’s two usual partners in crime: brown-haired, pockmarked Zits Vicker. That meant Jason Tremblay, skinhead extraordinaire, was wearing the royal red.

‘‘Come on, guys,’’ Tracy said, surprising Rabbit because she’d followed him into the apartment. ‘‘Lay off. You’ve gotta admit this is a pretty cool place. You want to be invited back, right?’’

Rabbit turned to her. ‘‘Go downstairs, okay? I’ve got this.’’

He didn’t want her to see him get his shit knocked loose.

‘‘Aw, let her stay,’’ Zits whined. ‘‘We’re just gonna have a little fun.’’ He shook the black robe, making the stingray spines dance. ‘‘Is this your dress, Bunny? Or does your daddy like you in the red one better?’’

‘‘Go,’’ Rabbit whispered, his heart bumping unevenly in his chest. ‘‘Please.’’

Tracy finally left, and Ben shut the door after her, giving it a shove so it wedged against the busted part and stuck fast. Then he crossed to the altar and dropped the bowl he’d been drinking from, giving it a spin so beer sloshed over the edges.

Rabbit was tempted to tell them that the last thing to hit those bowls had been human blood. He was going to take a pounding anyway. Why not deserve it?

But where before he’d more or less taken what they’d dished out—because resistance was futile and just earned him more of a beating—now he found himself squaring off opposite Ben as Zits and Jason moved up on either side of their leader.

Outside the sacred chamber, somebody swapped out the music, and a heavy throb of drumbeats sounded, seeming to echo up through the floor.

‘‘Wanna tell us what goes on in here?’’ Zits asked. He slurped from his bowl, beer sloshing down the front of the sacred black robe.

Rabbit wanted to kill him. Really and truly kill him— a quick slash across the throat would do it, or even better, he could cut the bastard’s heart out of his chest and watch as Zits’s blood pressure crashed, his brain cut out, and he dropped dead. Better still, he could burn him, robes and all, and listen to him scream.

For a second the image of it was so vivid in his mind, so perfect, Rabbit thought he’d already crisped the son of a bitch. Then the fantasy winked out and he was stuck back in the reality of high school torment, three months after he’d escaped the halls of hell.

This time, though, he wasn’t the skinny kid who’d moved to town halfway through junior high and got caught doodling a black-robed wizard in his algebra notebook. This time he was . . .

Nothing. He was nothing. A half-blood who couldn’t even jack in.

‘‘He’s not gonna tell us,’’ Ben said. ‘‘Guess we’ll have to make him.’’ He slapped the ceremonial bowl off the altar, sending it across the room. The thin jade shattered when it hit the wall, and the air hummed off-key.

‘‘Hey! Knock it off.’’ Heart hammering in his chest, feeling faintly sick, Rabbit crouched down and picked up the largest piece of jade, which had broken off in an elongated triangle with knife-sharp edges.

Ben stuck his chin out. ‘‘Make me.’’

The humming got louder, reverberating in Rabbit’s ears. ‘‘Just go,’’ he whispered, gripping the shard of jade and feeling it cut into his palm. ‘‘Please, just go.’’

Heat surrounded him. Built inside him.

There must’ve been something in his eyes or voice, or maybe the heat and the humming weren’t just his imagination, because Jason started edging toward the door. He pulled off the red robe and dropped it on the floor. ‘‘Come on, guys. We don’t want to get in trouble with the ’rents. This shit looks expensive.’’

‘‘There aren’t any ’rents,’’ Ben scoffed. ‘‘Just his stoner dad. You ever see him wandering around here in his brown bathrobe? What a loser.’’ His eyes flicked to Rabbit’s hand. ‘‘What’re you gonna do, stab me with that?’’ He spread his hands and stuck out the beginnings of a gut. ‘‘Have at it, Bunny. You don’t have the stones.’’

Red washed Rabbit’s vision, narrowing it to a pinprick focused on Ben’s face. All the jeers and indignities, every kick and punch, came back to him in a flare of humiliation.

‘‘Go,’’ he said again, his voice shaking with fear, not of them, but of what was happening inside him. Say it, a voice whispered. Say the word.

‘‘His hand’s bleeding,’’ Zits said suddenly. ‘‘And I think he’s gonna puke. Come on; let’s blow before he does.’’ He yanked the door and took off with Jason on his heels, tripping on the too-long robe and crushing the stingray spines into a twisted mess. But Rabbit was only peripherally aware of those small details.

His whole focus was on Ben. His enemy.

The humming in his head turned into a scream. The heat flared higher and higher still. Finally, Ben realized he was in trouble. His eyes got big and he started edging away, but it was too late for him to escape, too late to stop the thing that built within Rabbit, taking him over, thrilling him. Terrifying him.

Pressure grew inside Rabbit’s skull and his fingertips burned, pain erupting as if the skin were peeling away. He tipped back his head and screamed, not sure whether he was trying to make it stop or urge it to keep going.

Ben made a run for it, bolting for the door. He skidded on the nacho crumbs and string cheese and went down on his hands and knees, but kept going, crawling out of the room as Rabbit screamed.

Finally, a word emerged, one he didn’t even know he knew—not even a word, really, more a long syllable. A cry for mercy. For vengeance. ‘‘Kaak!’’

Power blasted from him like an orgasm. Flames rose up around him like lovers, touching him, stroking him, urging him on, and he said the word again, calling the fire to him and sending it higher and higher still.

Dimly, far away, he heard screams and running feet. He felt the terror and pain of the others, and drank it in.

‘‘Kaak!’’ he said a third time, and clapped his bleeding palms together.

Force and flame exploded outward, away from him, flattening everything in its path and leaving him untouched. Leaving him in control.

Rabbit had a moment of pure, perfect joy as the apartment burned around him. Then he passed the hell out.