It wasn’t Sasha, though. It was Anna.
“Lucius,” she said on a long, sad sigh. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Holy shit, was all he could think. Shock and guilt swirled around, hammering at each other in a hell of a mental joust, as too many details that’d refused to gel in the past suddenly resolved themselves into an impossible, improbable certainty.
His boss was a goddamned Nightkeeper.
Anna could not freaking believe what she was seeing, even though the surveillance system had forewarned them of the visitor, and Strike had recognized Lucius. He’d ordered Jox to open the gates and told Anna to go meet her student and bring him inside, on the theory that it’d be better to contain the damage than try to avoid someone who’d shown up in the Nightkeepers’ sphere one too many times for coincidence.
Even forewarned, though, it was a shock for Anna to have him standing on the doorstep of Skywatch, his eyes wide and a little wild. She was also surprised, once again, to realize that he’d gained mass and muscle, and wasn’t her scrawny, geeky grad student anymore.
Which didn’t even begin to tell her what the hell she should do about him. She was exhausted from the drain of the eclipse ceremony. Her brain was spinning from the gods’ choice of a keeper, and the identity of the goddess who’d bound with Alexis. And now this.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, but she didn’t tell him to leave. It was too late for that. Stepping back, she waved him in. “Come on.”
He stood rooted, white-faced in shock, but she saw something else beneath the surprise.
Resentment. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he grated.
“Because it’s none of your business.” Though that was only because Red-Boar had mind-blocked his previous experiences with the Nightkeepers and the makol. Or had he? she thought, not wondering whether Red-Boar had neglected his work, but rather whether somehow Lucius had overcome the mental blocks. Frowning, she asked, “How did you get here?”
He stared at her for a long moment, looking like the guy she’d known for going on six years now, but also looking like the man he’d become since the prior fall, harder, tougher, and far more secretive.
Then, doing a bad Anthony Hopkins impression, he said, “Quid pro quo, Clarice.” He stepped past her into the entryway of Skywatch, adding over his shoulder, “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
Three steps inside the door, he stopped dead at the sight of Strike, who was looking big and mean.
The king scowled and said, “That’s so not how it’s going to work.”
Anna knew her brother was pissed off—not just because of Lucius’s untimely arrival, but because they had themselves a Godkeeper but weren’t really sure how the goddess of weaving and rainbows was supposed to help them, and because Nate and Alexis’s relationship was far from stable, making him fear complications. That, and they were all dragging with postmagic hangovers. They should be chowing down on foods heavy in protein and fat and then heading straight to bed, rather than dealing with an unwanted guest and the questions and dangers his arrival was sure to bring.
Which meant the king was sporting a serious ’tude. Instead of backing off, though, Lucius shot his chin out. “Who the hell are you? And where’s Sasha?”
“We’re looking for her,” Anna said, figuring there’d be time later to figure out why that’d been his first concern. She stepped between them when it looked like Strike was going to lash out first and ask questions later. “This is my brother, Strike,” she told Lucius, then paused and added, “He’s the jaguar king of the Nightkeepers.”
Lucius didn’t back down, but his color drained some. “Fuck me.”
“No, thanks.” Strike leaned in. “Get this straight. You don’t belong here. We don’t want you here.
But you’re here, and that’s a big godsdamned problem for us. Given that you showed up at the tail end of the eclipse, I’m going to have to assume that some of the shit that went down last fall is breaking through, which makes you an even bigger problem.”
Lucius glowered. “Look. I don’t know—”
“Shut. Up.” Strike snapped. He was starting to sway a little, suggesting that he’d burned through all his reserves and then some in the battle to maintain the barrier’s integrity during the eclipse ceremony. Anna should know—she’d leaked him as much power as she could, but knew he’d forced himself not to take too much during the struggle. Which meant she was in way better shape than he was. Leah, on the other hand, was already asleep.
Knowing there was a good chance her brother was close to losing his temper or passing out, or both, Anna said, “We can figure this out tomorrow, after we’ve all had a chance to recharge. I’ll take responsibility for him.”
Strike turned on her. “And how do you plan to do that? You’re just as wiped as the rest of us.”
“Jox can—”
“No,” her brother said, doing the interrupting thing again—a habit of his when he’d hit the end of his energy reserves. “We’ll lock him downstairs in one of the storerooms.” When she would’ve protested, he fixed her with a look. “Be careful or I’ll decide Red-Boar was right in the first place.”
“We had a deal,” Anna reminded him. “His life for my return to the Nightkeepers.”
“Hasn’t been much of a return,” he pointed out, sounding more tired than snide. “And that was then; this is now. If he’s retained some memory of what happened, or worse, he’s regained some makol magic—because how else could he have found this place?—then the deal’s off.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I have to do what I think is best.”
Jarringly, that last statement echoed back in Anna’s brain to an argument she’d overheard between their parents, when their father had spoken of leading the Nightkeepers to battle and their mother had counseled patience.
Scarred-Jaquar had done what he’d thought was best, and look what had happened. Strike was a different sort of man, a different sort of king. But was he different enough?
“Fine,” she said, backing down, because it wasn’t really important where Lucius spent the night.
The larger issue of his fate wouldn’t be decided until the next day, or maybe farther out than that. “I’ll lock him downstairs.”
“Have Jox help you,” Strike said, not saying outright that he didn’t trust her to do what she said, but pretty close to it.
“Go to bed, little brother.” She turned her back on him, because she didn’t like the dynamic that was developing, the way they kept jarring against each other over the smallest of things, never mind the bigger ones. She and Strike had been close as children, distant as teens and adults. With so long apart, she supposed it stood to reason that they wouldn’t be able to fall right into an easy accord. That didn’t stop her from feeling like there was something wrong between them, something he was keeping from her. But, knowing she wasn’t going to figure it out running on empty, she turned back and grabbed Lucius’s arm. “Come on.”
He let her lead him through the first floor and down to the lower level of the main house, which held the gym on one side and a series of storerooms on the other. At the bottom of the stairs, he dug in his heels and pulled away from her, his expression accusatory. “Okay, Anna. Start talking.”
Running pretty close to the edge of her own temper and energy reserves, she said, “I don’t have to.
You’re the one who’s trespassing.”
“And you’re about to imprison me. Who’s breaking more laws, d’ya think?”
Refusing to go there, she said, “How did you find me?”
He hesitated, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “I wasn’t looking for you. I was looking for Sasha Ledbetter. Are you sure she’s not here?”
“Positive. Why would you think she would be? And again, how the hell did you find Skywatch?”
Then she paused, thinking it through. “You followed Ambrose’s trail to the haunted temple, didn’t you?”
Just prior t
o the equinox battle, Anna and Red-Boar had tracked Ambrose Ledbetter to a sacred clearing, where they’d found him buried in a shallow grave. He’d been killed and ritually beheaded. At first they’d thought the makol had killed the Mayan researcher for the blood-power of the sacrifice, and to keep the Nightkeepers from asking him about the Godkeeper ritual. However, once Anna and Red-Boar had dug up the older man’s remains to move him to a more appropriate burial site, they’d seen that his right forearm had been a knotted mass of scar tissue, as though the skin had been burned or cut away . . . exactly where a Nightkeeper’s marks would’ve been.
Originally, they’d surmised that he might have been a Nightkeeper who’d been disgraced and cast out before the Solstice Massacre, somehow without Jox or Red-Boar knowing about it. With Iago’s arrival on-scene, however, it seemed more likely that Ledbetter had been a Xibalban, perhaps one who’d seen the light and defected as the end-time drew near.
Maybe.
The PI, Carter, had been unable to learn much about Ledbetter beyond the common-knowledge stuff available through his university, and the fact that he had a daughter—or maybe a goddaughter, depending on the source of the info—named Sasha. Anna had tried to contact the young woman right after the fall equinox, got one missed return phone call, and then the girl had effectively dropped out of sight. Strike hadn’t even been able to lock onto her for a ’port. The Nightkeepers had assumed she’d been killed too, and had turned their focus to other matters.
Now Anna wondered if they’d been too hasty on that one.
Lucius nodded. “Yeah. I saw the temple.” His eyes changed. “Those were your bootprints just inside the door, weren’t they? The ones that disappeared into the pitfall?” His eyes sharpened, went feral.
“What was down there?”
“Nothing good,” she said faintly. After reburying Ledbetter’s headless corpse at the edge of the forest, she and Red-Boar had split up to look for the Nightkeeper temple they suspected Ledbetter had discovered. In finding it, Anna had been . . . she still didn’t know how to describe it, though “partially possessed” was probably close enough . . . by a nahwal, which never should’ve been able to exist on the earth outside of its normal barrier milieu. Under its influence, she’d cut her wrists in sacrifice, nearly bleeding out before Red-Boar had managed to carry her into satellite phone range and call for help. Since then, none of the Nightkeepers had been back to the ruin, which they’d taken to calling the haunted temple because of the nahwal’s odd behavior. Without access to Red-Boar’s mind-bending skills, which he’d used to pull her back when the nahwal tried to drag her into the barrier for good, Strike had decided there was too much of a risk. Anna had been scared enough of the place not to argue, but if Lucius had been there, if he’d seen something she and Red-Boar had missed . . .
“I found Ledbetter’s head,” Lucius answered, his voice going ragged. “And the address of this place, written in starscript. There were signs of a struggle, footprints that didn’t add up.” He swallowed hard. “I hoped Sasha read the ’script and came here. Since she didn’t, and since nobody’s seen her since she went south . . .”
When he trailed off, Anna finished, “Either the Xibalbans grabbed her from the haunted temple, or she’s dead. Or both.”
“Xibalbans?”
“I’ll tell you later.” Maybe. “What else did you see in the temple?”
He glanced along the basement hallway. “You going to lock me up?”
“I have no choice.”
“Then I didn’t see anything.”
“Bullshit.”
He raised an eyebrow, and something faintly malevolent glittered in the depths of his eyes, which were greener than she remembered. “Prove it.”
Frustration slapped at her. “Damn it, Lucius.” She was too tired to deal with this now, too drained.
Without being told, he headed for the first of the doors on the right, then paused and looked back.
“This one?”
“Two down,” Anna answered, knowing there really wasn’t much more to say. She followed him to the storeroom, which Strike had outfitted as a holding cell back when he’d planned to imprison Leah rather than letting her sacrifice herself. Her incarceration had lasted approximately five minutes, until Rabbit had let her out and Red-Boar had lured her to the Chaco Canyon ruins, where he’d tried to gun her down in cold blood, thinking to save Strike from repeating his father’s mistake by choosing love over duty and dooming them all. In the end, though, Red-Boar had died for loyalty and love of his king. That sacrifice had washed away all the other sins.
And why do you keep thinking of Red-Boar? Anna asked herself with a stab of guilt. She’d called her husband from the road and made some excuse about her meeting being moved up a couple of days, and hadn’t talked to him since. In the meantime, her heartache had eased some and logic had returned.
They’d dealt with the affair already, and were working to move past it. And there was nothing concrete to suggest he’d encouraged Desiree. There was no reason for her to be thinking of another man. Especially one who was not only dead, but had been an asshole when he was alive. He’d had his reasons, but still. . . . She made a mental note to call Dick when she woke up the next morning. Maybe they could plan to take some time away when she got back.
“It’s not as bad as I expected.” Lucius shrugged at the accommodations. “No worse than fieldwork.”
Tearing her thoughts from Dick and Red-Boar, Anna looked at Lucius and saw a stranger. Feeling fatigue drag, she said, “I’ll come for you in the morning.”
“Yeah.” He turned away, and didn’t look back as she shut and padlocked the door and set the key on a shelf nearby. Then, just to be on the safe side, she set a magical ward that a human could pass through, but which would stop a magical creature in its tracks.
In theory.
Lucius heard the key turn in the lock and knew he should feel trapped, knew he should be freaking right the hell out. Hello, mental overload. The Nightkeepers not only had existed, they still did, and Anna was one of them. He had his proof, had his doctorate, if he still wanted to play Desiree’s game.
But there was more here than just that, wasn’t there? The convo out in the entryway suggested that the other Nightkeepers already knew about him somehow, that Anna had bargained for his life. How, exactly, had he missed that?
At the same time, though, that part of his mental process seemed dull and foggy, less important than the building burn of anger that rode low in his gut, telling him that she’d lied to him, that she’d made a fool of him. That she needed to be punished.
At the thought, the single light in the small room flickered.
Great. Lucius scowled up at the fluorescent tube. Just what I need, wonky wiring. Or maybe that was the idea. Maybe there’d be an “accidental” electrical fire in his cell, taking care of him while retaining some sort of plausible deniability if Anna complained to her brother about his death.
Not that she’d be likely to, he thought. The anger built, sparking heat into his veins as he paced the small room, past a narrow cot and a bucket that served as the so-called amenities. Anna had enjoyed being around him back when he’d been a student, a newbie. The more he’d learned, though, the more he’d questioned her conviction that the Nightkeepers were a myth, the less she’d wanted to be around him and the more she’d tried to narrow his research focus, directing it away from the Nightkeepers.
Even now, understanding why she’d insisted he leave the issue of the Nightkeepers alone, he couldn’t forgive how she’d pulled away from him when he’d started questioning her translations and interpretations. More than ever, he was convinced that she’d altered his files, removing the vital screaming-skull glyph and weakening his thesis work.
Rage washed over and through him, hammering in his skull like pain. Like pleasure.
“Damn it!” Lucius dropped to sit at the edge of the low camping cot, which gave a rickety squeak under his weight. He dug his fingers through his
hair, rubbing at his scalp, which had tightened with the beginnings of a headache at best, one of his very rare migraines at the worst. And it wasn’t like he had any way to ask for an aspirin.
His head spun and nausea churned, and he saw a flash of green, strange and luminous. It cleared when he blinked, but the afterimage stayed burned on his retinas for several seconds.
Deep inside, a small voice asked, What the hell is happening to me? He didn’t feel like himself, didn’t know where the anger was coming from, the pain. He should’ve been psyched to have found the Nightkeepers. And now that he understood what Anna had been wrestling with, he should’ve been relieved to know why she’d been strange around him lately. He should’ve been sympathetic, maybe even excited that they could move to a new level of trust now that he knew.
Instead, he wanted to snap and tear at her, wanted to hurt her. And that was so not him.
Curling onto his side, he moaned low in his throat, crossed his arms over his abdomen, and wrapped himself in a self-hug, feeling alone and angry. Out of control. The pounding in his head gripped him, took him over. He slapped for the light switch and plunged the room into darkness, which was a blessed relief.
The surface beneath him spun and dipped, and he longed for unconsciousness, reached for it when it came. But as he dropped off, a fragment of thought that felt more like his own than any of the others swirling in his head warned him that he’d forgotten something important, something that he needed to tell Anna immediately. But the thought, and the compulsion, slipped away as the green-tinged darkness rose up and claimed him.
Alexis was flat-out exhausted by the time the eclipse night edged toward the next day’s dawn. She’d eaten and showered, and knew she should sleep for half a day or so, allowing her body to recharge from the magic and get accustomed to the conduit she could feel at the back of her brain, granting her access to the goddess Ixchel. But it was that last bit that kept her awake.
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