As far as any of them had known back then, the magical backlash of the Solstice Massacre had sealed the barrier for good, averting the 2012 doomsday. She’d thought she was free to live a normal life, and had thrown herself with abandon into doing just that, meeting friends and lovers, and enjoying college, then grad school.
Always in the back of her mind had been the knowledge that she could have lovers, but wasn’t supposed to marry or have children prior to the end-time. It was one of the laws Jox had drilled into her head, that she and Strike had to remain unmarried and unmated. At the time she’d thought the winikin was just being a pain. Only later, when the barrier reactivated and Jox revealed that there were other Nightkeeper survivors, did she finally understand. He’d wanted her to stay available for a Nightkeeper mate, should the barrier reactivate and the need arise. Whereas she and Strike had survived because Jox had hidden them in a blood-warded safe room designed for the royals only, the other, younger magi had escaped the massacre because they’d been babies, too young to have been through their first binding ceremonies. That meant the surviving males were all a good dozen or more years younger than she, which might not’ve mattered if she’d stayed in the Nightkeeper milieu. But she hadn’t.
Instead she’d gone out into the world. And at twenty-five, she’d met Dick Catori, a wunderkind economist and sometimes poet who designed stunt kites as a hobby, and had taught her to fly them.
Standing out in a windy Texas field with her back pressed against his front and his clever hands atop hers, showing her how to touch the lines and tease motion from air, she’d fallen hard somewhere between the stall and the five-forty flat spin.
She’d moved in with him a month later, married him six months after that, and hadn’t told Jox or Strike for nearly another year, avoiding the topic during her biannual duty calls. Jox had thrown a fit, Strike had congratulated her, and she’d spoken to them less and less as the years passed, and her new, normal life eventually fell into a pleasing pattern, then a less pleasing one, until one day she woke up and realized she and Dick were sleeping in the same house but living separate lives, and she was too much of a wimp, too afraid of failing at her marriage, her grand act of rebellion, to do anything about it. Then the barrier had come back online and Strike had called the Nightkeepers home. Anna had fought the call for as long as she’d been able, but in the end had been forced to return to the life she didn’t want, at least part-time. Duty compelled her—and a bargain made with a dead man. But how was she supposed to balance the two pieces of her life?
She couldn’t tell Dick about her heritage, because the moment the magic intruded on her normal life it wouldn’t be normal anymore. Besides, things had been so much better between them since she’d taken her stand and called him on his infidelity. They were actually talking—really talking—for the first time in a long time. They were having date nights, and working with a therapist. Things weren’t perfect, but they were improving. There was no way in hell she was jeopardizing their reconciliation.
She didn’t tell Strike any of that, though. She loved her brother, but she didn’t really know him anymore, hadn’t for a long time. So instead of telling him the truth, she glanced at her watch, intending to make up an excuse to kick him off the phone.
Which was when she realized she didn’t need an excuse. She was late for a meeting. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “I’ve got to go. I’m due in my evil boss’s office five minutes ago for Lucius’s thesis defense.”
“How’s he doing?” The question was far from casual.
Knowing that Strike didn’t really give a crap about Lucius’s defense as long as her senior grad student didn’t mention where he’d gotten the scar on his palm, she said, “He doesn’t remember going through the transition ritual, or almost becoming a makol. Red-Boar’s mind block did the trick.”
Lucius had almost been dead meat the prior fall, and he didn’t even know it, didn’t know he was living on probation as far as the Nightkeepers were concerned. Hell, he didn’t have a clue that the Nightkeepers really existed. He liked to think they did, liked to believe in the end-time myths most Mayanists dismissed as sensationalism, but she’d deliberately steered him away from the truth, leaving him mired in fiction.
“Good to hear he doesn’t remember,” Strike said, but he didn’t sound convinced. Back before the equinox battle, when Lucius had unwittingly offered himself up on a platter for demon possession, Red-Boar would’ve sacrificed him, but Strike had made a deal with her: He’d have Red-Boar reverse the makol spell if Anna agreed to rejoin the Nightkeepers, at least during the ceremonial days.
Now, she knew, he regretted having made the deal, and considered Lucius a liability. The younger man had undergone the transition spell once already, and his natural inclinations had called upon the Banol Kax rather than the gods—which perplexed the hell out of Anna, because Lucius didn’t have much in the way of a dark side, but still, it’d happened. And because it had happened once, she knew Strike was worried that it would happen again.
Basically, Lucius was living on her good graces, and the knowledge weighed, especially given the political crap going on in the art history department these days. The department head, Desiree Soo, had never been warm or fuzzy, but she’d grown increasingly critical over the past half year, particularly when it came to the Mayan studies department. Anna couldn’t prove it, but she was pretty sure Desiree had chased off her last intern, Neenee, who’d taken off around Christmas, leaving only a terse e-mail of nonexplanation. Since then, Anna’s lab had had reimbursement requests kicked back from admin over tiny quibbles, room assignments were constantly getting screwed up, and Anna had found herself loaded down with intro-level lectures that were usually handed straight to the TAs. And then there was Lucius’s thesis defense.
Desiree had been acting professionally enough back when Lucius had asked her to chair his thesis committee. Given the way she’d been behaving lately, though, Anna could pretty much guarantee there was going to be a problem.
Sighing, feeling a hundred years old rather than her own thirty-nine, Anna said, “Seriously. I’ve gotta go.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Call Jox with your flight info and he’ll meet you at the airport.”
“Will do.” She hung up and headed for the dragon’s lair.
Okay, so it wasn’t literally Desiree’s lair—they were meeting in the conference room across the hall from the department head’s office—but Anna had the distinct feeling she was headed into enemy territory as she stepped through the doors. She was the last one in, which meant the entire committee was arranged on one side of the conference table, all facing a slump-shouldered Lucius.
Desiree was seated in the center of the long side of the conference table, flanked on either side by the lower-ranking committee members. She almost always wore long-sleeved, high-collared shirts in jewel tones that enhanced the red highlights in her hair, accessorizing the outfits with a heavy silver cuff on her right wrist. The cuff was embossed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Anna didn’t remember ever seeing her without it. Desiree was long and lean and gorgeous, with high cheekbones, almond-
shaped eyes, and shoulder-length hair that fell pin-straight from an off-center widow’s peak. Her eyes were an unusually pale hazel that might’ve looked dreamy on another woman, but somehow managed to look vaguely reptilian in her face.
Or maybe Anna was projecting on that one. As far as she was concerned, the woman was a bitch, pure and simple.
The other committee members included a stout, bearded Greek mythology expert named—
ironically—Thor; a cheerful, round-cheeked classics professor named Holly; and a gaunt, aged relic of an art historian whom everyone called Dr. Young. Anna was pretty sure that wasn’t his name, more of a joke that’d stuck. The committee members acknowledged Anna when she came through the door, with nods from the two men, a little wave from Holly. Desiree made a mean little moue.
Lucius, on the other hand, whipped around in hi
s chair and gave her a where the hell have you been? look liberally dosed with nerves.
He was tall and skinny, and typically moved with an awkward sort of grace. Now, though, sitting folded into the conference room chair, he looked pointy and angular, like a praying mantis that someone had bent the wrong way. Or maybe that was the strangeness of seeing him in a shirt and tie rather than his usual grad student uniform of bar-logo tee and ratty jeans. He’d traded his sandals for hiking boots that made a stab at formality, and somewhere over the past twelve hours had subjected his normally shaggy brown hair to an unfortunate trim that screamed “eight-dollar walk-in.”
The overall effect was one of quiet desperation.
Lucius had grown up in middle America, a dreamer misfit in a large extended family of jocks. He’d escaped to the university on a scholarship and had discovered Mayan studies when he’d taken an undergrad intro course on pre-Columbian civilization as a frosh, in a bid to avoid the foreign language requirement. In the nearly ten years since—four years as an undergrad and almost six as Anna’s grad student—he’d proven to be both the best and most frustrating student she’d ever dealt with. He was an intuitive epigrapher, able to tease out the most worn inscriptions and decipher them into translations that stood up remarkably well to scrutiny from even the toughest of critics, including her.
Unfortunately, that same level of intuition caused him to see patterns where there weren’t any—or, as in the case with the Nightkeeper myths, in places where she’d rather he not see them. When he saw such patterns, his scientific method sometimes went out the window while he focused on the answer he’d convinced himself was right, searching for evidence that proved his theory and ignoring anything that suggested otherwise.
That was not a good trait in a scientist, regardless of the field. Add to it his penchant for playing fast and loose with personal-property laws—like the time he’d broken into her office and stolen the codex fragment bearing the transition spell that’d nearly turned him into a makol—and he was something of a loose cannon.
The thing was, he was her loose cannon. He was sweet and funny, and when things had been at their worst with Dick, Lucius had been there for her to lean on. And if there had been a spark or two, neither of them had acted on the temptation. Instead they had let it deepen their working friendship until it was a strong, steady piece of her life. That, along with knowing he wouldn’t have come into contact with the codex fragment if she’d been more careful about keeping it hidden, meant there had been no real choice to be made when she’d faced Strike and Red-Boar over Lucius’s rigor-contorted body, while his eyes flickered from luminous green to hazel and back. She’d traded her normal life for his, and though she regretted the choice, she wouldn’t undo it. Nor would she admit to Strike just how much Lucius had changed in the months since his partial possession, becoming withdrawn and secretive. Hell, she was doing her best not to admit it to herself. What she hadn’t been able to ignore, however, was how Lucius had started focusing his research more on the things she’d managed to steer him away from in the past . . . like the zero date, and the few sketchy rumors of a superhuman race of warrior-magi sworn to protect mankind.
She’d made him promise not to go there during his thesis defense, knowing that Desiree would crucify him if he so much as breathed a word about things the establishment considered barely a step up from tinfoil hats and Area 51, namely the 2012 doomsday and the Nightkeepers. Which was why she sent him a warning look and mouthed, You promised.
He nodded, but there was something in his eyes that made her wonder whether he was accepting her warning or telling her to mind her own damn business.
“Since we’re finally all here,” Desiree said pointedly, “I’d like to get started. If that’s okay with Anna, of course.”
Bitch, Anna thought, but didn’t say. Instead she took the chair beside Thor and nodded. “By all means, let’s get started.”
By the time Lucius was about twenty minutes into his presentation, Anna was starting to relax a little, because he was sticking to the script, thank the gods. Then Desiree held up a hand, interrupting.
Lucius broke off in the middle of explaining his translation of a panel deep within the Pyramid of Kulkulkan at Chichén Itzá. “Yes?”
Desiree pointed to a badly eroded glyph at the lower right corner of the screen. “What about that one?”
Anna stiffened and tried to catch Lucius’s eye. Don’t do it, she mouthed. Say you don’t know.
He avoided her gaze, but answered carefully enough. “There’s some debate about that particular glyph.”
“We’re working on it,” Anna interjected. “As you can see, it’s not in the best condition, which unfortunately means that we may never have a conclusive answer. Or maybe we’ll find a second occurrence of the glyph in the future. Regardless, it should be considered outside the scope of this project.” Which was academia-speak for back off, bitch.
“Your opinion is noted, Professor Catori.” Desiree didn’t even glance at Anna; she kept her unblinking focus on Lucius, a predator sensing weakness. “However, it’s not really a question of scope; it’s a question of propriety. I’m well aware of what Mr. Hunt thinks this glyph represents, and frankly I’m not convinced that the university is best represented by an academician who publicly defends the validity of the Nightkeeper myth.”
Lucius’s color drained, and he sent Anna an oh, shit look.
“With all due respect,” she said quickly, “that is absolutely beyond the scope of this thesis. There’s no reference to that particular myth anywhere in the text or supporting material.”
“With all due respect,” Desiree parroted, “it’s my call what is and isn’t within the scope of this committee meeting.” She shuffled through a small pile of papers, pointedly pausing at what looked like a printed screen capture of a message board dialogue. Glancing at Lucius, she said, “You go by the screen name ‘LuHunt’ on a number of the 2012 doomsday bulletin boards, right?”
Anna would’ve protested again, but didn’t figure it’d get her anywhere. The best she could do would be to sit back and let this play out, hoping Thor, Holly, and Dr. Young would see there was an agenda at work that had nothing to do with Lucius’s skills as a Mayanist . . . and further hoping they’d say as much when she brought a formal university complaint against Desiree.
Lucius looked at her as if he expected her to say something, to defend him, but what more could she do? To an extent, he’d dug his own grave. She’d told him to stay the hell away from that crap until after his defense. If he’d been posting on message boards with the dooms-dayers, there wasn’t much she could do about it now.
When he saw there would be no help forthcoming, his expression darkened, something shifting in his face so he almost looked like a different person—older and less open—as he met Desiree’s smirk with a glare. “I don’t see how my online presence should concern this committee. I’ve never put myself forth as a representative of this university or a member of Professor Catori’s staff while on those boards.”
Desiree arched one elegant eyebrow. “Shall I take your nonanswer of my question as an answer in and of itself?”
He hesitated so long that Anna thought he was going to play it smart. Then he sat up straight and squared his shoulders, suddenly looking less like a praying mantis and more like a taller-than-average guy who’d broadened out through the shoulders and gained twenty pounds or so of muscle while she hadn’t been paying attention. Before she could process that realization, he said to Desiree, “I believe in the Nightkeeper myth. So what?”
Anna winced, even though she’d warned him. Not that having an out-there opinion was a crime, but with Desiree gunning for the entire Mayan studies department and not being real picky about the actual legalities of the matter, he was effectively throwing himself on the academic sword.
Desiree tapped her manicured fingernails—which were pale mauve, rather than the more appropriate bloodred—against her lips. “You actually belie
ve that ancient magicians from Atlantis — Atlantis, mind you—survived the flooding that came the last time this so-called Great Conjunction rolled through, twenty-six thousand years ago, and went on to shape, not just the Mayan Empire, but the Egyptians before them?”
“There are demonstrable parallels,” Lucius said before Anna could intervene. “For example, the dating of the Maya Long Count calendar begins circa 3114 B.C., which is well before the Maya were a people, before even their predecessors, the Olmec, started thinking about being more than scattered pastoralists and hunter-gatherers. It was, however, right about the time the first ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs started popping up, which many people consider the beginning of legitimate human civilization.”
Thor perked up a little. “You’re talking about von Däniken?”
Anna cringed. The Dutch pseudoscientist’s publication of Chariots of the Gods? in the sixties had been good in that it’d popularized the idea of connections and parallels amongst a number of ancient civilizations, prompting “real” researchers to investigate the possibility of trans-oceanic voyages long before the time of the Vikings. On the downside, it’d also popularized what Lucius often called the Stargate effect, i.e., the notion that most of early human civilization had been shaped by aliens.
Welcome to the tinfoil-hat zone.
“Not von Däniken per se, though he wasn’t entirely wrong,” Lucius told Thor. “The Nightkeepers were—maybe even are—far more than that. They were mentors, magi who lived in parallel with several of the most successful early civilizations, teaching them math and science, especially astronomy.” There was a subtle shift in Lucius’s face, making his features sharper, more mature as he said, “The commonalities between the Egyptians and Maya are too close to be coincidental—both religions were based on the sun and sky, and on the movement of the stars.”
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