Jessica Andersen - Final Prophecy 01 - Nightkeepers (2008)

by Jessica Andersen - Final Prophecy 01

  He looked at her for a long moment, then turned away without comment.

  Anna followed him, her eyes glued to his wide shoulders, trying not to envision the scars she knew crisscrossed his back beneath the long-sleeved shirt he wore tucked into camo pants and hitched with a stocked weapons belt. She wore the same, though her belt wasn’t loaded with nearly as much firepower. Her aim was notorious, and not in a good way.

  Shrugging beneath her light pack, she tried to resettle the load, which suddenly seemed off-kilter. Faint nausea stirred, though she wasn’t sure if it was hunger or teleport sickness. Thinking to drown whatever it was, she reached for her bottle of purified water.

  She had the bottle halfway to her lips when she realized it wasn’t nerves or hunger. It was power. Not the kind she was used to, but a deeper, darker kind that grabbed her by the gut and squeezed, making her want to run and hide.

  Ahead of her, Red-Boar stepped through a curtain of hanging vines into the sunlight.

  ‘‘Wait!’’ she cried, but he’d already stopped dead.

  He turned back, expression grim. ‘‘Stay here.’’

  ‘‘What is it?’’ Ignoring his order, she stepped up beside him.

  They stood on the edge of a small clearing. Or not a clearing, she realized. At some time in the past, a sinkhole had broken through, allowing access to one of the subterranean rivers that formed the only source of freshwater in the Yucatán. Over time, the sinkhole—called a cenote—had filled with leaves and organics that eventually became soil, capping off the cenote and creating new ground within a perfectly circular depression.

  The Maya had believed the cenotes were entrances to the underworld; they had probably thrown sacred offerings into the sinkhole. The magic of those now-buried sacrifices would have accounted for a normal power surge. But there was nothing normal about the darkness Anna sensed. Power hummed through her hiking boots, feeling purple and black and discordant.

  Drawn by the magic, simultaneously fascinated and repelled, she approached the cenote, testing each step before she put her weight down.

  ‘‘Don’t.’’ Red-Boar’s single word was less of a command than a plea, as though he already knew what she would find.

  Then again, so did she. The air stank of death.

  It wasn’t until she reached the center of the depression that she sank into the dirt beneath her feet, not because the cap sealing off access to the subterranean river was giving way, but because the ground itself had been disturbed. She didn’t need to see the churned-up earth beneath a scattering of leafy camouflage to know that she was standing atop a human grave. She could tell by the smell of death, of violence.

  Her heart ached for a man she’d barely known.

  ‘‘It might not be Ledbetter,’’ she said, knowing it probably was. The makol had beaten them there, taking away a valuable resource.

  Red-Boar didn’t argue, simply made a wide berth around her, knelt, and used the flat of his machete to scrape away the soft covering at one end. He didn’t have to go far. Only a few inches down, he uncovered fairly fresh human remains that started at the neck, with dark, raw flesh and a severed vertebral column.

  The head was gone, no doubt taken elsewhere to add to the makol’s skull pile. His powers weren’t at full strength yet, but they were growing fast. She could feel it.

  Red-Boar uncovered the torso and abdomen, and she felt an unreasonable wash of relief to find them intact. He hadn’t had his heart cut out. Somehow, beheading was so much less gruesome to contemplate than vivisection. And if that didn’t prove how screwed-up her priorities were these days, she didn’t know what would.

  ‘‘Wallet.’’ Red-Boar flipped the leather bifold. ‘‘Money’s here. Cards. License.’’ He cut a glance at Anna. ‘‘Ambrose Ledbetter.’’

  ‘‘Oh,’’ she said faintly. Just oh, as the world took a long, lazy spin around her and she dropped down onto a nearby log.

  ‘‘Damn.’’

  They hadn’t exactly been pals—Ledbetter was prickly on a good day, downright bitchy the rest of the time— but they’d known each other in passing. And now he was dead because of what he’d known. Because of what the ajaw-makol didn’t want them to know.

  Red-Boar stared down at the headless corpse but said nothing. Not that she should’ve expected anything more, but a pithy

  ‘‘Poor bastard’’ would’ve been nice.

  Then again, the Nightkeeper didn’t waste sympathy on the living; why would he give it to the dead?

  After a long, shuddering moment, she forced herself to focus on the practicalities rather than the raw stump where Ledbetter’s head should’ve been attached to his shoulders. ‘‘We should bury him properly. Animals will dig him up if we leave him like this.’’

  There was no real reason to bring the body back to Skywatch, and she had a feeling he wouldn’t mind being planted near a sacred cenote. Gods knew she wouldn’t.

  And where had that thought come from? When had she started thinking like a Nightkeeper rather than a wannabe soccer mom?

  Since the barrier woke up and the pee stick started refusing to turn pink month after month, she admitted bitterly, at least to herself. If she couldn’t be a mother, and she was a pretty sad excuse for a wife, she might as well be a princess.

  There was little joy in the thought.

  ‘‘He have any family?’’

  It took her a moment to process Red-Boar’s question, another to frown. ‘‘Since when did you get sentimental?’’

  ‘‘Just wondering if anyone’s going to raise a stink when he doesn’t come home.’’

  ‘‘The university will notice, and his students. But friends and family? Um . . .’’ She frowned. ‘‘I’m pretty sure he mentioned a woman once in passing.’’

  ‘‘Girlfriend?’’

  She shook her head. ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  ‘‘You think anyone stateside is going to make trouble?’’

  Anna lifted one shoulder, staring down at the headless torso. ‘‘There’s always a risk when you come down here for fieldwork.

  Families get used to it.’’ Or they fell apart, which happened more often than the community liked to admit. ‘‘Besides, Ambrose was even more eccentric than the norm, and had the rep of disappearing for months at a time. Most likely this woman, or one of his students, will go to the university when they realize he’s overdue. They’ll contact the consulate, and either there’ll be a quick search or the government will pretend there was, and everyone will wave their hands and have benefit dinners. ‘Very sorry for your loss, he was a pioneer. Died the way he would’ve wanted, doing what he loved, blah, blah . . .’

  ’’ She trailed off, staring at the hacked-through vertebrae and ragged flesh. ‘‘We can’t bring him back with us. We’ll have to rebury him here.’’

  The question was, where?

  They couldn’t leave him where he was, first because the grave was far too shallow, and second because if another researcher discovered the site in the future, odds were that he—or she—would eventually want to punch through the cenote cap and study the artifacts that’d been tossed into the sacred well. The discovery of a modern burial atop the cenote would trigger way too many questions.

  ‘‘Let’s put him at the edge of the trees.’’ She gestured to a sunny, pleasant-looking spot she thought the dour old researcher might’ve liked, assuming he got pleasure from anything other than making other researchers look like idiots.

  Gods, she was going to miss knowing the old coot was somewhere on the earth plane with her, she thought, then winced again at hearing herself think like a Nightkeeper. In that moment, Dick and her real life seemed very far away.

  ‘‘Grab his shoulders,’’ Red-Boar ordered. ‘‘I’ll get his feet.’’

  ‘‘Can’t we—’’ Anna broke off, realizing that no, they couldn’t. There really wasn’t a better way to get Ledbetter from point A to point B.

  Holding her breath, she grabbed Ledbetter’s shirt near the
collar, and nodded. ‘‘I’m ready.’’

  He snorted. ‘‘Don’t be such a girl. Get him by the pits.’’

  ‘‘Fine,’’ she said. ‘‘Pits it is.’’ She forced herself to dig under and lift as Red-Boar tugged on the ankles, and the body came up from its thin covering of leaves and soil with a faint resistance and a noise she didn’t want to think about. As they carried him across the clearing, she tried not to breathe through her nose. Not that mouth breathing was a big improvement, but she told herself the heavy, oily taste was purely her imagination.

  ‘‘He’s lighter than I expected,’’ she said when they were about halfway across. Alive, Ledbetter had been nearly Red-Boar’s size. Now she could handle her half of his weight without too much trouble.

  ‘‘Ground’s dry in the direct sunlight,’’ Red-Boar said. ‘‘He’s partway to mummy already.’’

  ‘‘Any idea how long he’s been here?’’

  Red-Boar pulled a small, collapsible shovel out of his pack, assembled it, and got to work digging a hole at the site she’d chosen. The ground was moist at the edge of the rain forest canopy, and the flimsy shovel cut through the humus with little effort.

  Still, Red-Boar was puffing lightly when he answered, ‘‘You said he’d left the States a month ago?’’

  ‘‘That’s what his assistant said.’’ Anna looked back in the direction of the cenote as faint waves of energy prickled across her skin. ‘‘You think he’s been dead that long?’’

  ‘‘Probably not. Critters would’ve gotten to him. I’d say a couple of days, tops.’’

  Meaning they could’ve saved him if they’d been faster.

  Red-Boar glanced over at her and shook his head. ‘‘Don’t beat yourself up. It doesn’t fix anything.’’

  ‘‘I knew him,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Don’t get the impression you liked him much.’’

  ‘‘Still,’’ she maintained. ‘‘Someone should grieve. He wasn’t a bad man, just ornery.’’

  He didn’t say another word, just bent to his work. Ten minutes later, he had a credible grave dug, deep enough to foil the scavengers, and long enough to take a body that was nearly six feet, even without the head.

  Anna frowned, looking at the corpse. How had she not noticed how big Ledbetter was before? He’d slouched, she remembered now, always hunched over some obscure text, ignoring all efforts at conversation. ‘‘He was a strange old man,’’

  she said thoughtfully.

  ‘‘Now he’s a dead old man. Let’s get him planted and search the area. Maybe the makol missed his campsite, or the ruin we’re looking for is nearby.’’

  Both seemed like pretty thin chances, but that was what they were down to these days.

  Steeling herself, Anna grabbed Ledbetter’s arms and lifted, helping Red-Boar angle the body toward the hole.

  ‘‘A little more to your left,’’ he ordered, and she obeyed.

  Loose dirt shifted beneath her foot and she wobbled, trying to get her balance, but lost her footing at the edge of the open grave.

  And fell with a screech.

  Red-Boar let go of the dead man’s ankles, lunged forward, and grabbed her around the waist. She knew she should let go but she didn’t move fast enough, and Ledbetter’s shirt ripped and came away in her hands.

  His body tumbled into the grave, leaving her standing in Red-Boar’s arms, holding a dead man’s shirt. Red-Boar’s pulse hammered against her spine as he held her, warm and strong and bare chested, but those sensations were lost as Anna’s heart stopped, simply stopped in her chest when she saw what Ledbetter’s shirt had hidden.

  Old, gnarled scar tissue covered the entirety of his inner right forearm, right where a Nightkeeper wore his marks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Shock gripped Anna, disbelief thrumming as she stared down into the grave and came to the only conclusion she could.

  ‘‘Ledbetter was a Nightkeeper.’’

  Despite the slouch, which had probably been designed to camouflage his true size, Ledbetter had been far too big to be a winikin, and there was no way the scar pattern was a coincidence.

  ‘‘Looks that way.’’ Red-Boar’s voice was nearly inflectionless.

  ‘‘He—’’ Anna broke off when her voice trembled. ‘‘Who was he?’’

  ‘‘I haven’t a clue.’’ He paused, then shrugged. ‘‘Doesn’t change the fact that we can’t take him with us and we can’t waste time. Let’s get him planted.’’

  He dropped into the grave and quickly searched the body for other marks, other evidence of who Ledbetter had been and how he’d survived the Solstice Massacre. Finding nothing, he arranged the body in a more natural position. And though Red-Boar was trying to pretend it didn’t matter, Anna could see that his shoulders were tight and that sadness shimmered in the air around him—a translucent hum of tears tinged red with anger.

  He boosted himself out of the grave, then paused and looked down at the dead man. Then he stripped a jade circlet from his upper arm and tossed it in beside the bundle. The carved armband landed on Ledbetter’s chest, just above his heart. An offering. A talisman to accompany the dead man through the underground river to Xibalba, and then out the other side to the sky.

  ‘‘Wasn’t that—’’ Anna broke off at Red-Boar’s sharp look.

  ‘‘It’s not a sacrifice if it doesn’t hurt.’’

  Anna wished she had something to give for the journey, but she wasn’t carrying anything appropriate. She touched the skull effigy, but let her hand drop without offering the precious yellow quartz. There was a line between sacrifice and stupidity. Still, her heart ached as he lifted the first shovelful of dirt and tossed it atop the carved jade.

  Oddly, the noise made her think of Dick. What was he doing now? What did he think about the phone message she’d left saying that she wanted to take a break from the mess their marriage had become?

  He hadn’t called her back, which was probably an answer in itself.

  ‘‘All the dead were accounted for,’’ Red-Boar said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘‘Jox checked. I was the only one who wasn’t a corpse.’’ He drove the shovel into the piled earth and heaved it into the hole, where it fell on Ledbetter’s body with a hollow, echoing sound.

  ‘‘Except for the winikin and the babies who got away.’’ She paused. ‘‘He didn’t tell you about them.’’

  ‘‘Because he doesn’t trust me. Never did.’’ Once a layer of soil covered the body, he used his booted feet to shove the bulk of the dirt back into place. ‘‘Don’t really blame him, either. Not after I beat the crap out of him and took off.’’

  Anna wanted to ask about those days, and about Rabbit’s mother, but she knew those things didn’t really matter anymore.

  What mattered was today. The next four years. So as Red-Boar tamped the last of the dirt into place, she asked, ‘‘Do you think Jox knew about Ledbetter? ’’

  ‘‘No. If he’d known there was another magic user out there, he would’ve called him to the compound when the barrier reactivated.’’ Red-Boar paused. ‘‘Which, along with the scars and the fact that the boluntiku didn’t get him during the massacre, begs the question of whether he was a user at all.’’

  ‘‘He must’ve been,’’ she argued. ‘‘Otherwise how did the ajaw-makol find him? And why now?’’

  ‘‘Might not’ve had anything to do with magic. Might’ve followed the same thought process you did and figured he’d take out our best source of info on Kulkulkan and the Godkeepers before we came looking for him. Question is, what would Ledbetter have told us if we’d found him with his head attached?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Anna said softly. ‘‘The real question is whether there are others like him.’’

  Red-Boar met her eyes, unblinking. ‘‘Why don’t you find out?’’

  Breath going thin because she didn’t want to try and fail, especially not in front of him, she hesitated a moment before she nodded. Kneeling, she pressed her palms into t
he soil covering Ledbetter’s body. Seeking the quartz effigy with her mind, she lightly jacked in, and then dropped her shields, opening herself to the impressions.

  She got darkness. Gray static. An indistinct sense of longing.

  Shaking her head, she climbed to her feet. ‘‘Nothing.’’

  ‘‘You need to practice more.’’

  ‘‘You need to step off,’’ she said with more weariness than heat. ‘‘Don’t assume I’m going to fall into line just because Strike did.’’

  ‘‘You have a responsibility to your bloodline.’’

  ‘‘I also have a responsibility to my husband and my students.’’ She glanced over at him. ‘‘Maybe that sounds small to you, but some of us are destined to do small things.’’

  ‘‘Not you. You would’ve made a good king.’’

  She stiffened at the suggestion—and the sudden spark of intensity behind it—but said only, ‘‘Thank the gods for patrilinear inheritance, then.’’

  They stared at each other for a moment in silence before Red-Boar turned away. He said a prayer for the dead in the old language, then palmed his ceremonial knife to prick his elbow, which was one of the most honored autoletting sites. He handed over the blade without a word and Anna did the same, and they let their blood drip down onto the fresh grave.

  ‘‘Safe journey, stranger,’’ she whispered.

  When it was done, they smoothed the disturbed earth above the sinkhole, then split up to search for Ledbetter’s campsite.

  They could’ve searched together, might have been safer that way, but they both needed the distance. Traveling together had been bad enough. Sharing an experience like burying Ledbetter had been far worse.

  Moving into the thicker growth beyond the clearing, she touched her effigy and sent out a faint questioning thread, not jacking in fully, but tapping the power and asking it to guide her to where Ledbetter had been. In theory. In practice her subconscious was blocking the hell out of her sight. And who could blame it? The last time she’d had a full-fledged vision, she’d shouted Lucius’s name in Dick’s ear.