Nate recognized it from what little reading he’d done on the Nightkeepers and the customs they’d shared with the ancient Maya. “It’s a death mask.”
It wasn’t just any death mask, either. The dead man had vaguely porcine features, with a flattened nose and the hint of tusks rather than teeth.
“Watch this,” Alexis said, and she rotated the disk one-eighty, so the peccary features were upside down. The action revealed a second set of eyes, nose, and mouth—another face hidden in the frown lines and shapes of the first. In the second incarnation, the pig-man was smiling and looked, if not happy, then at least at peace with himself and what had happened to cause his death.
It wasn’t a Mayan death mask, as the auction catalog had probably stated. It was Nightkeeper made, as proven by the mark of the boar in the lower corner, a match to the bloodline glyph on Rabbit’s arm.
“Nostalgic indeed,” Nate said, but this time he wasn’t teasing. Instead he felt a beat of grief for a lost comrade.
Red-Boar had been a prickly bastard, and he’d sucked as a role model and father, but he’d been one of the team. He’d been killed in the tunnels beneath Chichén Itzá, when one of the lesser makol had turned out to be a mimic, a shape-shifter capable of taking on other forms. The mimic had impersonated Leah and used the guise to slit Red-Boar’s throat.
“It spoke to me,” Alexis said of the mask. Looking at Jox, who was the unofficial arbiter of all purchases and decorating decisions around Skywatch, save for their personal quarters, she said, “I thought maybe we could hang it in here, or in the training hall, as a reminder. Sort of like having him looking down on us.”
Jox looked to Strike. “Cool by you?”
“It’s really Rabbit’s call,” the king answered.
The teen looked startled for a second, then thoughtful. Finally he nodded. “Yeah.” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Yeah, the old man’d get a kick out of that. Just . . . just make sure he can see the ceiba tree, okay? It was . . . it mattered to him.”
The tree in question, a big sucker nearly fifty feet high and about as wide, grew where the Nightkeepers’ Great Hall had stood before the massacre. In the aftermath of the attack, before he’d enacted the spell that’d banished the training compound from the face of the earth for more than two decades, Jox had piled the bodies in the Great Hall and set it ablaze as a funeral pyre. When Strike and Red-Boar had reversed the spell twenty-four years later, they’d found the ceiba tree rooted in the ashes of the fallen Nightkeepers. The tree, which the Maya and Nightkeepers had revered as the symbol of community, believing that the roots stretched to the underworld and that the branches held up the sky, was native to the Yucatán and Central America. It shouldn’t have been able to grow in the arid box canyon, and it sure as hell couldn’t have gotten so big in the time it had. But there it was.
And yeah, it mattered. Even to someone like Nate, who didn’t believe in looking back.
“The training hall it is, then,” Alexis said, looking pleased, as though she hadn’t been sure how her impulse buy was going to go over. Then she reached for the statuette. “Well, I guess I should introduce you to Ixchel. I sure hope she was worth—” The moment she touched the statuette, she stiffened, her mouth opening in a round O of surprise.
“Alexis?” Nate’s gut tightened as magic danced across his skin. Before any of the others could react, he shot out a hand, intending to pull hers away from the statuette. But the moment he touched her his muscles locked.
And the world around him disappeared.
CHAPTER THREE
Power burned up Alexis’s arm and gathered in her core, spinning and expanding and taking over until there was only the power. She didn’t know where she was, couldn’t see anything but darkness, couldn’t feel anything but magic. Worse, she couldn’t lock on, couldn’t jack in and use what little magic she possessed to get free. She could only hang suspended in the nothingness.
Panic gripped her. She would’ve fought but she couldn’t move; would’ve screamed, but she couldn’t make a sound.
Help! she screamed in her head. Help me! But there was no answer.
Gulping for air, though it seemed she wasn’t actually breathing, she fought to slow her racing brain, struggled to think it through. She’d given the death mask to Rabbit, turned to lift the statuette from the case, and then—
A flash of vibrant color, a kaleidoscope of vivid hues. Then nothing.
She’d touched the statuette, and the contact had sent her . . . where? She wasn’t in the barrier; she knew that much. There was no gray-green mist, no squishy surface underfoot and gray-green sky above. There was no up or down where she’d been transported, no surface or sky. There was just blackness and power. Then, suddenly, the colors returned in shimmering ribbons of light. They caressed her, curled around her, then dissipated. When they cleared she was in a ceremonial chamber she’d never seen before.
She stood on a slender ledge that ran along one side of the narrow room. A vaulted stone ceiling arched overhead, spanning a rectangular pool of dark water. Stalactites hung down in gorgeous stone droplets, and stalagmites thrust up from the water, causing the sluggish flow to eddy and swirl in overlapping ripple patterns. Light came from torches that were set in stone sconces on either side of the narrow room. In the flickering illumination, she saw that the room was closed at either end, creating a long, narrow arcade with water instead of a floor. There were no doors or windows, but the torch smoke, which smelled faintly of sacred incense, moved along the ceiling to a narrow crack halfway down one of the long walls.
One entire short side was taken up with an elaborate thronelike structure built out of limestone blocks and carved from the living subterranean stone itself. She wasn’t sure if it was a throne or an altar; the flat space in the middle could have served as either. Arching columns rose up on either side, carved with a serpent and feather pattern that made her think of Kulkulkan, along with a sinuous motif she didn’t recognize. The other three walls and the vaulted ceiling were carved with human figures, not the intricate hieroglyphs used for writing, but a single extended scene, a grand mural of Mayan men and women with the flattened, elongated foreheads that had been created early in childhood with binding boards, and the exaggerated cheekbones and noses often made from clay or jade, all of it intended to make the wearer look more like a god. Hundreds of figures were carved on either side of the black pool, some bowing or kneeling, others raising their hands in supplication. All of them faced the throne at the far end.
Overhead, the archway and the stalactites themselves were carved with rippling patterns of feathers and scales and that same wavy motif, which gave the impression of wind, or the gods, or both. Some the rippling lines were painted with brilliant reds and blues, vibrant yellows and purples, oranges and greens, the hues shining impossibly true in the amber torchlight.
Drawn by the captured motion of the carvings, Alexis walked along the narrow stone ledge that ran around the pool, moving toward the throne. As she passed, her shadow danced in the flickering torchlight, making the carvings seem to come alive, to reach for her. She thought she heard them whisper her name in the soft rippling noise coming from the water.
They didn’t whisper, “Alexis,” though. They said something else, something that called to her, made her feel as though she were a stranger to herself. Indeed, she was wearing a stranger’s clothes—
not the jeans and shirt she’d put on in place of her ruined suit back at Skywatch, but combat wear of stretchy black-on-black that molded itself to her figure and moved with her.
She had seen this before, she realized suddenly. This was what she remembered when she awoke sobbing softly, hearing her mother’s voice. In the dreams, she hadn’t been sure if she was her mother or herself, or someone else entirely. Only now, unlike in the dreams, her senses were heightened rather than dulled by the mists of her subconscious. The crunch of limestone gravel beneath her feet was very loud, the alkaline smell of the water very sharp, and the pr
ickle of moisture on her skin—from the air, from her pores—left her nerve endings acutely sensitized.
And as she walked to the throne, she knew she was alone, yet not alone. He was here, too—the lover of her dreams, the one who was Nate yet not, the one who loved her like he had, but didn’t break her heart. That was how she had always known it was a dream before. Now, though, she wasn’t sure what to call it. She’d touched the statuette and been transported into a dark, formless corner of the barrier, yet now she was back on earth—she knew it from the taste of the air, and the strong sense of being underground.
When she reached the end of the arcade, the pathway curved and widened, forming a platform in front of the throne. There, in the center of the flat space, she saw shadowy footprints in the dust, human and barefooted, standing facing the throne.
Almost without conscious volition, acting as she had done in the dream, she toed off her shoes and stepped into the footprints. They fit perfectly, as they had in her fantasies. The certainty that she had been in this chamber before, that she’d done this before, was overwhelming, as was the knowledge that the moment she blooded herself, placed her hands on the altar, and said his name, he would be there with her.
The certainty—and the nerves—had her hesitating. Then, knowing she didn’t have a choice, not really, she pulled a ceremonial knife she didn’t recognize from a weapons belt she didn’t remember putting on, and drew the blade sharply across her palm. She hissed against the pain as blood flowed, dark crimson in the amber torchlight. Then she reversed hands and cut her other palm. Her bloodied fingers slipped on the haft of the knife as she set it aside.
“Gods,” she whispered, hope and fear spiraling up within her, “help me to be worthy.”
Izzy had raised her on stories of the Nightkeepers and the heroic warrior-priestess Gray-Smoke, who had been adviser to the king. As a child, Alexis had wished Gray-Smoke was real, wished the Nightkeepers were real. It hadn’t been until the previous year, when the barrier came back online and Strike recalled the Nightkeepers, that Izzy had revealed that not only had Gray-Smoke been a real person, she’d been Alexis’s mother. Ever since then, Alexis had felt as if she were trying to keep up, trying to live up. Now, feeling another consciousness beside her own, feeling another’s life overlap with hers, and knowing deep down inside that it was Gray-Smoke, or at least the memory of her, the essence of her, Alexis could only pray she’d be worthy of the mother she’d never known.
More, she prayed for the gods to help her understand what the dream was telling her. About her mother. About herself. About the man who wore the hawk medallion.
Knowing there was no other way, she closed her eyes and pressed her bloodstained palms to the altar, and said the words that had come to her in a dream, though she was no seer: “Tzakaw muwan.”
Summon the hawk.
A detonation rocked the room. Water splashed on the footpath, and the sound of ripples turned to thin screams coming from the people carved on the walls, who hadn’t moved, yet somehow seemed to gape in awe.
She turned, knowing what she would see.
He stood opposite her, at the edge where the stone and the water met. His eyes bored into hers, hard and intense and no-nonsense. He wore combat gear, with his black shirt unbuttoned at the top to show a glint of gold. He was Nate, yet not, just as she was Alexis, yet not.
She was the smoke and he was the hawk. And that was all that really mattered as his eyes darkened and he strode toward her, his intent as clear as the need inside her.
Sex.
It was a vision, Nate knew, yet it wasn’t. He was part of it, yet apart from it, distancing himself even as his heart pounded and the scent of her touched him, wrapping around his soul and digging in deep, a combination of arousal, musk, and the moist warmth of the tropics. He was vaguely aware of the carved chamber, and the fact that he should be wondering how he’d gotten there. The last thing he remembered was reaching for Alexis, intending to pull her away from the statuette of Ixchel. Then the world had gone gray-green, then black, and now he was here. He didn’t have a clue where “here” was, but that didn’t seem to matter so much. What mattered was the woman standing near the carved stone altar, her bloodstained hands held out to him.
She was Alexis, yet she was someone else. Her features were slightly sharper, her breasts slightly fuller, and when he took her hands he felt confidence exuding from her that was lacking in the woman he knew. He felt different, as well, more centered, more in tune with his body’s demand that he take her here and now, that it was his right and duty.
They were, he thought in a flash of insight, the people they would have become if King Scarred-
Jaguar hadn’t led his people to their deaths. They were the fully trained versions of themselves, warriors who had been thoroughly indoctrinated into the magic and culture of the Nightkeepers, soldiers of the end-time war who were willing to do whatever was necessary, even if it meant pimping themselves out to the gods.
He opened his mouth to speak, to ask her what the hell this was—a piece of the barrier or something else?—but before he could formulate the question, she had raised herself up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. He wanted to pull away, to protest, but her kiss had the new maturity of the woman she’d become, the new confidence, and the added thrill nearly dropped him. Heat slashed through him at the feel and taste of her, familiar yet not, with deeper, darker layers than before. His hands, which he’d lifted to ease her away, wound up dragging her closer instead.
“This isn’t us,” he managed to say in the space between one kiss and the next. “This isn’t real.”
She let go of him and stepped back, but she sure as hell wasn’t retreating. No, she was loosening her weapons belt and letting it fall in a blatant invitation. “It’s as real as we let it be. This is a better version of us. One that doesn’t go beyond these walls, beyond this dream.”
Was that what it was, a dream? He’d never been much of a dreamer, had never remembered his dreams once he awoke, except for the ones about the glowing orange monsters, the ones the therapists had told him were Oedipal projections of his mother and had turned out to be actual glowing orange monsters, the boluntiku that had slaughtered his playmates during the Solstice Massacre.
Aside from those nightmares, he’d never dreamed. Or, at least, not that he remembered.
“If this is what dreaming is like,” he murmured as her hands went to the hem of her clingy black shirt, “then I’ve been missing out.”
Her expression changed at that, showing a flash of uncertainty, a hint of vulnerability he would’ve expected more from the Alexis he knew than from this brighter, shinier version. But then she shimmied out of her shirt and bra, exposing herself, her nipples puckering in the golden torchlight and soft air.
He moved without being aware of making the decision, closed in on her like a hunter, his body moving under the direction of another, one who had absolutely no reservations about the two of them being together. This is meant, that other him thought. This is how it should be.
Nate balked at that, nearly drew away, because it was exactly what he was struggling to avoid—that sense of inevitability and fate, the dogma that came with the Nightkeeper way of life. He wanted to win his woman, not have her handed to him by the gods, or destiny, or some such shit. He wanted freedom, wanted—
Before he could complete the thought, that other, baser part of him kissed her and brought his hands to her creamy flesh. In an instant everything gave way to a roar of heat and need, and the two of him melded into one man—one incredibly turned-on guy who knew exactly how she felt and tasted, yet each time discovered something new about her, about the two of them together. He’d sworn he wouldn’t do this again, wouldn’t be with her, because it wasn’t fair if he didn’t intend to fall in with the gods’ plans for the two of them.
This is a dream, he told himself. Dreams don’t count. And if that played false in the back of his brain, the knowledge was quickly lost to the heat an
d the needs of the man who both was and wasn’t him.
He pressed into her, crowding her against the throne—altar, whatever—at her back. She braced herself against the soft curves of limestone that had been built up and worn smooth by centuries of dripping water. She grabbed onto a pair of protruding bumps carved by an ancient hand into the shapes of serpents’ heads, their mouths gaping open, their fangs dropping down in menace, or maybe reverence. Nate was filled with that same reverence when he brought his hands up to cup the dip of her waist and the small of her back, then higher, to the heavy weight of her breasts, which were crowned with the tight buds of her nipples.
She moaned and arched against him, digging her blunt, manicured fingernails into his biceps, then shifting to run her fingers up his chest and get to work on his shirt, freeing the top three buttons.
Boosting herself up onto the altar, she leaned into him, curling her hands around his neck to find the sensitive spot at the back, just beneath his hairline.
Heat speared through him, lust flaring as that small gesture reminded him of the past. They’d been together only two short months, but they’d packed a hell of a lot of sex into those weeks, when they’d been ridden hard by pretalent hormones and the magic that had sought to bind them together. Had almost succeeded.
Memory gentled his touch, had him cupping her, shaping her the way he’d learned she liked. Her eyes went glassy and her head fell back, baring her throat to his lips. Time stretched out, spiraled inward. In that instant there were only the two of them and the small stone room, the carved audience frozen timeless on the walls, and the moving floor of water, pierced with stone teeth and ripples of movement.
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