Alexis returned to herself slowly, as if awakening from a deep sleep, though her body didn’t feel like she’d been motionless for long. She was aware of being wet through, and a little cold, with a hard stone surface beneath her and a heavy weight pressing on her from above. Water dripped somewhere nearby.
She cracked her eyes to find amber torchlight reflecting off carved stone walls, and Nate sprawled across her, motionless. For a second she thought she was dreaming again. Then she saw that the chamber was curved rather than rectangular, and the dripping noise came from droplets of water trickling from one stone to the next, rather than from an underground pool. More important, she wasn’t alone in her skull. There was a tiny kernel at the back of her brain, warm and sparkling with colors. When she focused her attention on it, though, it dimmed and grew distant.
Come back! she thought, quick panic sparking her fully awake. But it hadn’t gone away, she realized after a moment; it’d moved lower, the warmth shifting and the sparkles dispersing until she thought she could feel each nerve ending as a separate entity, an individual thought. Even as she reveled in the sensation, another came to her, the feel of Nate shifting against and atop her. He was sprawled facedown with his cheek on her belly, his arms loosely encircling her hips, and his big body more or less centered between her legs. The realization of their intimate positioning sparked the warmth to a blaze, and when he turned to look up at her, dragging the faintly roughened skin of his jaw across the sensitive skin above her navel, she saw the same heat reflected in his eyes.
“It’s the magic,” she said, her voice cracking around the edges. “The god.”
But Nate shook his head. “If I’d seen you in Newport, I would’ve wanted you long before I’d ever heard the word Nightkeeper.”
She would’ve argued, would’ve demanded an explanation, but he surprised her by casting a mild shield spell, one that pressed against her, held her pinned. The magic caressed her skin, sending ripples of excitement and power rolling through her, the pleasure holding her captive as much as the spell itself. Then, before she knew what he’d intended, he moved down her body, somehow taking her combat pants to her knees as he put his lips to her, his clever tongue delving deep and slicking her sensitive folds, which were already swollen and ready for him.
Alexis cried out and arched against him, or would have, but the shield kept her flat, binding her to the stone floor of the sacred chamber hard enough to excite but not hurt her. They had played with restraints once or twice before, but not like this, not so she could feel his magic. The power was brutally erotic, as were the touch of his tongue and hands as he simultaneously drove her up and held her down.
The kernel of colored light within her expanded, reaching outward and straining toward a distant, unseen goal. She writhed as pleasure suffused her, sent her outside herself, hurtling through time and space to a world of hue. The spectrum surrounded her, light and color combining into tangible shapes and audible sounds. On one level she was aware of Nate’s mouth leaving her, and his big body moving up to cover hers. Another part of her, though, was caught, spinning out in a world of blue and gold, with ribbons of color twining around her, trailing from her in all directions.
She was in the sacred chamber with Nate; but she was in the sky too, in the realm of the gods. She saw them, impossibly beautiful, impossibly colorful. She was one of them, yet not, just as she was herself, yet not.
Then the shield spell was gone and she was free to move. She didn’t go far, though, only enough to roll with Nate and rise above him. He was naked now, and so was she, their sodden clothing piled off to the side. The earth and sky combined within her for a second, letting her see his face, letting her see his reservations and his needs. Her heart cracked and bled at the knowledge that he didn’t want this, that he was sacrificing himself for a cause he didn’t fully embrace, compelled by the magic rather than choice.
Perhaps he saw her sadness, maybe just saw her hesitate; either way, he reached up, rising up to meet her, to cup her face in his hands and look into her eyes. “It’s okay, princess,” he said, and for the first time in many months, maybe ever, the term didn’t sound like an insult coming from him. It sounded like an endearment. Like a love word. “We’ll make it work.”
“Yes.” Somehow they would, she knew. There was no other option.
Letting herself sink into that promise, she touched her lips to his and let him guide her down, let his hard length fill her, stretch her until he was seated to the hilt. The feel of him inside set off a chain reaction of pleasure, each pulse showing a different color behind her eyelids as she let them drift shut.
“Lexie,” he said, his voice ragged on the syllables, his palms bracketing her hips, his fingertips digging into her skin.
“Yes,” she said again, because there didn’t seem to be anything more to say as she leaned over him, shifting so the sensitive tips of her breasts brushed against the hard contours of his chest and her lips aligned with his as she began to move against him.
He countered the rhythm with his hands and hips, bringing new pleasure, new colors that wrung a moan from her as the ribbons of light spiraled inward, contracting around her body in a swirl of heat and power, pleasure and madness.
It was as though she were hovering above them, locked in a prism, looking down on them both, locked together in sex and madness. But she was also within herself looking out, seeing Nate’s eyes hard and hot on hers, feeling the clench of his hands, the thrust of his body. Then the world spun as he grabbed her and rolled them both and rose above her to quicken the pace, pis-toning against her as his eyes went distant and glazed.
Can you see the colors? she wanted to ask, but didn’t, because it was all she could do to hang on and lock her legs around him and rise up to meet him halfway, driving the pleasure higher, and higher still.
The orgasm grabbed her and held her poised at the precipice for a long moment. Blue and green flashed through her, and orange-red. Then Nate’s eyes sharpened and locked on hers, and it wasn’t about the colors anymore, wasn’t about the god-power that flowed through her, at least not entirely. It was about the two of them, about the connection they’d always found through the sex, if nowhere else.
He thrust fully into her and stayed there, pressing against her inside and out, and sending her over the edge.
She arched and cried his name as the throbbing pulses swept her up, tightening her around him and drawing him in, holding him fast. There were no more colors, no more god; there were only the two of them and the feel of his hard, slick flesh and the tight bands of his arm as he held her, pressed his cheek against hers, and cut loose with a low, rattling groan that didn’t sound like her name.
They held on to each other, shuddering and bucking, gripped by a force that simultaneously anchored them and sent them beyond themselves.
Eventually the pulses slowed, then faded to echoes, to rainbow tremors that floated through her, warning her that everything had changed. The kernel of power was gone from the back of her brain. In its place was a hum of connection, not to the barrier, but someplace beyond, some one beyond.
Gods, she thought, then corrected herself. Goddess. Because there was no doubt in her mind that she was connected to a female entity, one that was lush and bountiful, a goddess of the sky, the light, and all the colors of the rainbow. Ixchel, she thought, the name a soft sigh in itself.
As if aware of her thoughts, Nate levered himself away from her, rolling onto his side and propping himself on one elbow, gloriously male, gloriously naked and unashamed. His medallion glinted in the firelight as he took her right hand and turned it palm up in his own, baring the place where her sacrificial scar had already closed, the healing impelled by the magic. “Show me,” he said softly.
She didn’t know where the word came from, or how he knew to ask, but she said, “Kawak.”
Rainbow. And a glimmering colored light appeared in her hand.
The magic didn’t rise in her, but rather flowed from the s
ky to her outstretched fingers, through the conduit connection at the back of her brain, kindling a glow that started as a firefly pinprick and quickly expanded to the size of a softball, then flickered from white through each of the colors of the rainbow, slowly at first, then cycling faster and faster until the hues melded together once again, going blue-white.
“It’s beautiful.” He closed his fingers over hers, folding her hand shut and extinguishing the magic.
“But not very practical,” she said, starting to get a trapped, panicky feeling at knowing Strike had wanted a war god. “Pretty lights won’t do much against the Banol Kax.”
“Don’t,” he said, tightening his grip. “Not yet. For right now, just enjoy it.” He shifted and touched his lips to hers, murmuring, “Let’s enjoy this.”
“We can’t.” She held him off, though she was strongly tempted to give in to the heat, to the one thing that had always been easy and right between them. “We have to go back.”
She didn’t question whether they could return to the others, or how. She could feel the power inside; it would undoubtedly decrease some as the barrier thickened with the passing of the eclipse and the skyroad was once again separated from the earth. But for now, for this moment of magic, she had no limits.
She and Nate pulled on their soggy clothes, putting themselves back together as best they could. She tried not to think about the others seeing them, and knowing what had just happened. But sacrifice and sex were the cornerstones of the magic, particularly the Godkeeper ritual. There was no shame in it.
Even as those thoughts swirled in Alexis’s brain, she felt the presence of the goddess, her quiet reassurance, not in words but in a wash of love that told her she could do this, she could. Knowing it, believing it, she turned and touched her lips to Nate’s. And the gods, feeling them together, sent them back to the antechamber to be reunited with the Nightkeepers . . . bringing the rainbow goddess, Ixchel, with them.
Nate told himself he was braced for the stares, told himself it didn’t matter what the others knew, or thought they knew. What was important was what’d just happened to—and between—him and Alexis, and how they went on from there. But when the gods zapped the two of them back to the antechamber and all eyes snapped to them, he realized he wasn’t really braced for the attention . . . and he didn’t have a frickin’ clue where he and Alexis were headed.
A glance at his forearm showed that he’d been tagged with a new glyph he had to assume was the goddess’s mark. There was no jun tan, though. No sign that they were officially mated, which was a relief.
The power—shimmering gold and rainbows—cut out when they landed, leaving him and Alexis swaying on their feet. He looped an arm around her waist so she wouldn’t stumble and fall, and felt the familiar kick of heat that always came when he touched her. Only the heat was subtly different, stronger and richer, and laced with undertones of color and temptation.
Her taste was imprinted on his neurons, and he could smell their mingled scents on her skin, on his own. The musk, the sex, the goddess . . . all of it bound them together.
Uncomfortable, he let his arm drop and stepped away from her, so they stood apart when they faced the Nightkeepers, and their king.
Strike looked them both over, and didn’t seem reassured by what he was seeing. “You guys okay?”
he asked, but they all knew he was asking so much more than that.
“Better than okay.” Alexis stepped forward, her face seeming simultaneously softer and edgier, as though the god-power had tightened her jawline and darkened the rims of her blue eyes, but plumped her lips and smoothed the corners of her mouth and her brow. She looked like herself . . . only more so.
Nate wasn’t sure whether the changes were new and god-wrought, or if they’d been a gradual shift he hadn’t noticed. Either way they looked good on her, and resonated within him, as though he’d seen this new Alexis in another time and place. Which didn’t make any freaking sense whatsoever.
She cupped her palms and smiled, and light kindled in her hands. Where before she’d needed blood and chanted spells to summon a weak fireball, now it sprang to life instantly, without blood or word, growing from a spark to a conflagration, not just the red of a Nightkeeper or the gold of a god, but both those colors, along with the greens and blues and purples he’d seen from her in the sacred chamber, all the colors of the rainbow.
“Ixchel,” Leah said, coming up to stand beside Strike. The gold of the creator god sparked in her eyes through the magic of the eclipse connection.
The imperfect human Godkeeper faced the true Godkeeper for a moment that hung suspended in time. Then the queen bent and spit at Alexis’s feet in obeisance. Moments later Strike did the same.
Then each of the others did the same, as the Nightkeepers welcomed the goddess into their midst.
Nate held himself apart, standing near Alexis because he couldn’t not be near her, but distancing himself at the same time. Nobody seemed to notice or care, though, because—for now, anyway—the goddess’s protector was ancillary.
“Thank you,” Alexis said. Her face shone with power and joy, and the colors from the fireball had extended to touch her, limning her in rainbows. She looked at Sven, the goddess power somehow prompting her to pick him out of the others. “Congratulations.”
Surprise flashed across his features, then pride. He held out his forearm, showing that the indecipherable talent mark he’d worn since the previous fall had changed, resolving itself into a glyph that was very like Strike’s, yet not. “I’m a translocator,” he said. “Which pretty much means I can teleport inanimate shit without touching it.” But though his words might be deprecating, his eyes shone and his shoulders were square beneath his combat duds.
Alexis next turned to where Patience stood, with Brandt beside her. “I’m sorry.” This time Nate was pretty sure it was Alexis the woman, not the goddess, who was speaking.
Patience shook her head. “It was as it was meant to be.” She was holding Brandt’s hand, her grip tight, as though she were fighting not to let go. She glanced at Nate, then back to Alexis. “Better for it to be the two of you right now.”
Better for whom? Nate wondered, then wished he hadn’t, wished he could just let events unfold. But unease dogged him as the Nightkeepers headed topside to collect Jade and the winikin, and they all linked up once again for the trip home. As the teleport magic kicked in, an echo in the king’s voice reached them all, a thought he’d no doubt meant to keep private, or just between him and Leah, but had been broadcast through the bloodline link: What good will rainbows do against Camazotz?
PART II
SATURN AT OPPOSITION
Saturn is strongly associated with time. In the Dresden Codex, one of only four surviving Mayan texts, the movement of Saturn is used to help set the interlocking Mayan calendars, including the Long Count. At opposition, Saturn is at its closest point to the Earth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
February 9 Lucius nearly killed himself trying to find the location the starscript had directed him to. Granted, he probably should’ve gotten a room in Albuquerque instead of pushing on into the darkness, but it was like something was driving him, keeping him going well past his natural reserves. He wasn’t tired, though he knew he damn well ought to be. He hadn’t been chugging caffeine, didn’t even remember the last time he’d eaten anything, yet he was fully alert, and his body felt strong, supple, and ready for action.
Excitement buzzed through him at the thought that he might be close to finally meeting Sasha, finally putting a face and body to the voice on the phone, maybe even getting answers to some of the questions that plagued him. Oddly, he wasn’t really thinking of Desiree’s challenge or the doctorate, though he’d phoned in the day before and told the Dragon Lady where he was headed. Those things—
and the university—seemed far away, and inconsequential.
What mattered was the strange light coming from the thin, iridescent corona surrounding the eclipsed moon
, which had turned a bloody orange-red, and his headlights, which lit a faint track that optimistically called itself a road. He hung on to the steering wheel as his rented four-wheel-drive vehicle dropped into a pothole and bounced out again, and an ominous thumping noise started coming from the undercarriage. He didn’t care, though. All he cared about was getting to the end of his journey.
Then, finally, he topped a low ridge and saw a glitter of lights below. Hitting the gas, he sent the SUV slaloming down the backside of the ridge. Ten minutes later he was driving through the open gates of what turned out to be a fricking palace, a mansion of sandstone and marble and shit that looked totally out of place in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.
The gates swung shut behind him, sending a shiver down his spine. But that didn’t stop him from parking by the front door and climbing out of the SUV. Sasha might not be here, he cautioned himself.
You’re probably setting yourself up for some mondo disappointment. But he thought not.
He’d followed Ledbetter’s directions and found an oasis. He hoped that she’d done the same.
He saw a surveillance camera tracking him as he headed up a flagged walkway, under a pillared awning supported by columns that looked like their maker had gotten stuck halfway between Intro to Ancient Egypt and Mayan Architecture for Dummies. Nightkeeper influence, he was sure of it.
The air hummed with a strange, discordant sound—something his gut told him was ancient magic.
Nightkeeper magic. Logic said his gut was taking a hell of a flying leap on that one, but his gut told logic to fuck off, because deep down inside he knew he was right. He’d found the Nightkeepers. And not just proof that they’d existed in Mayan times, either. He’d frickin’ found the home base of their modern-day descendants.
Again with the logic leap. Again with the certainty.
His pulse was pounding as he lifted a hand to knock. Then, when the door swung inward, his heart quite simply stopped at the sight of the woman standing in the ornate entryway.
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