Dawnkeepers n-2

by Jessica Andersen

  She was a Godkeeper; how crazy was that?

  She tried not to think of the look on Strike’s face when he’d learned that she, not Patience, had become the Godkeeper, with Nate as her mate, and that the goddess Ixchel had gained a foothold on earth. He’d been pleased, sure, but not overjoyed. She’d wanted—needed—the king’s approval, and hadn’t really gotten it. Which was why she couldn’t sleep.

  Or so she told herself. But when the knock came, she knew exactly who stood outside her door, and the true reason she was still awake.

  Wearing her robe, her hair still wet from the shower, she rose and crossed the sitting area of her three-room suite to answer. Her suite had the same layout as those of all the other single Nightkeepers, aside from Rabbit, who lived in his father’s cottage. Her place was the nicest of all of them, though.

  She’d redone it right after Nate dumped her, in part because there had been too many memories of the two of them together in the room, which they’d used almost exclusively. He’d never invited her to his suite, and had ducked the issue when she’d asked. She was proud of how her space looked now, all vibrant colors and lush fabrics, and suffered a small twinge of nerves as she waved Nate through, and a larger flash of irritation at the part of herself that cared what he thought.

  When she opened the door, though, nothing much else mattered except the sight of him. He’d showered, too; she could smell a hint of soap and moisture, with the rich undertones of arousal and magic. He was wearing dark pants and a dark button-down shirt undone at the throat to show the glint of his chain, with dress shoes, their laces tied in perfect knots though it was nearly dawn and they were both still up from the night before. On another man the outfit might’ve looked stiff and formal. On Nate it looked like what it was: the uniform of a wealthy self-made man who was comfortable with himself and in control of his environment. He’d traded his designer glasses for laser surgery a few months earlier, for the benefit of fighting, so when his eyes met hers they were unshielded by dark frames or glass, though his expression remained as inscrutable as ever.

  In that moment, standing at her door, he looked less like the mage and warrior he’d become, and more like the successful businessman who’d shown up at Skywatch in a stretch SUV the prior summer. He looked like the men she’d dated all her life, only more so. And she’d sworn off those men, hadn’t she?

  Rhetorical question, she thought. You’re a Godkeeper now. And the gods had chosen Nate for her shieldmate.

  Nerves pulsing beneath her skin, she stepped back from the doorway, nodding for him to follow.

  “Come on in.”

  He took a quick, dark look around the cream-and-teal upholstery and Bokhara rug, and curled his lip. “You’ve got expensive taste, princess.” His edgy energy rode the air between them, warning that he’d come for a fight.

  Stung, and pissed because it wasn’t like she’d chosen the new direction their lives had swerved over to either, she jerked up her chin and glared at him. “It’s not your money, so why do you care?”

  Reaching out, he pushed the door shut, closing them in together. Suddenly he was very near her, his energy surrounding her, angry, sexual, and very, very male, tempting her to reach out and touch.

  “No,” she said aloud, surprising herself. Surprising them both. She stepped back, putting a distance between them that seemed much wider than the few feet she’d created.

  He went very still. “No to what?”

  “To this.” She pointed from him to her and back. “To us. I don’t want it to be like this.”

  His brows furrowed, his eyes darkening with irritation. “This from the original author of the company line? What happened to ‘we need to do this for the Nightkeepers and mankind’ and all that crap? Was that just—”

  “Stop it,” she interrupted sharply. “Don’t you dare.”

  There was silence between them for a few heartbeats, and then he spread his hands in a thoroughly masculine gesture of I’m clueless. “You’re going to have to help me here. This isn’t what I want or how I wanted it, but I’m willing to try if you are.”

  And if that wasn’t the least romantic statement ever, she didn’t know what was. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Sex between Nightkeepers wasn’t always about romance; sometimes it was strict necessity. The thing was, she wasn’t just a Nightkeeper. She’d been raised in the human world, and had human values too. And one of those values included not having sex with a man who shouted the wrong name when he came. Which, when she’d played it back in her head, she realized Nate had done in the sacred chamber. “Who is Hera?”

  He stilled. “Where did you hear that name?”

  His tone was all the confirmation Alexis needed. She closed her eyes on a slap of pain, of shame.

  Goddamn it. She’d been the other woman and she hadn’t even known. She forced herself to meet his eyes, and kept her voice level when she said, “From you . . . in the moment, so to speak.”

  Now it was his turn to wince, only he didn’t. He just kept looking at her as though weighing a major decision. After a long moment, he held out his hand to her. “Come with me.”

  The action pulled back his sleeve to reveal his marks, both old and new. If it hadn’t been for the rainbow mark, she might’ve kicked him out. Hell, if there’d been a MAC-10 handy, she might’ve shot him. That was how furious she was over his deception, how disgusted she was to discover that she hadn’t just repeated old patterns by falling for a wealthy, too-slick charmer who hadn’t fallen as hard or far; she’d dropped right back into the familiar rut of falling for the cheater, damn him.

  But the rainbow glyph reminded her that this wasn’t just about her heart or her anger. It was about the Nightkeepers too, and the goddess. It was about the end-time war and the new part she was apparently destined to play.

  “Shit.” She scowled at him. “Fine.” She didn’t take his hand, instead marching past him with her chin up and the burn of tears in her eyes.

  The hallway was deserted; all the others were undoubtedly sleeping off the magic. Hell, she should be, and so should Nate. But she had a feeling that the restless, overtired energy that had kept her awake until his arrival was driving him, as well. She could feel the power of him at her back as he followed her the short distance to his suite.

  She paused at the door, turning and raising an eyebrow. “You sure about this? Big step for you, inviting me back to your place.”

  Before, when they’d been together, she’d figured he’d kept her out of his space because he was a private sort of guy, and because the communal living at Skywatch made him want to guard a space that was his alone. Now, knowing there was someone else, she had a sneaking suspicion she knew what she’d find in his rooms: pictures and mementos, evidence of his other life.

  Been there, done that, hadn’t meant to ever do it again. Then again, the writs said that what had happened before would happen again. She just hated proving it this way.

  Reaching past her without a word, Nate opened the door and let it swing wide. He nudged her. “Go on. You asked.”

  Yeah, she had. So she headed into his suite, braced for pictures of him with another woman, the trappings of a man she didn’t know, the private life he hadn’t yet managed to leave behind.

  Instead she got bachelor quarters.

  The walls were still the stark white all the residential rooms had been painted after the renovations necessitated by the destruction of the Solstice Massacre and the decay from the compound’s having sat empty for twenty-four years. The rug was the same neutral beige the contractors had laid down, and there wasn’t much in the way of furnishings in the main room aside from a couple of big chairs that offered far more in the way of comfort than style. A gigantic flat-screen TV took up one wall, and wire racks on either side were crammed with electronics. More electronics, a laptop, and a jumble of notes took up the low coffee table that was the only other piece of furniture in the room.

  There was no artwork or pictures, nothing persona
l about the room. There was nothing that spoke of the Nightkeepers, either, she realized, which fit with his personality but gave her a weird shimmy in her stomach when she realized just how detached he’d remained from it all. Sure, she was pretty heavy into the symbolism, but even total-slacker Sven had put up a couple of framed coyote posters and bought a hand-loomed Navajo throw with a repeating coyote-and-cactus motif. Nate’s sitting room, though, didn’t have a hawk in sight, as though he were trying to cut himself off from the bloodline, from his Nightkeeper identity.

  She’d known he didn’t want to be there, not really, but she figured he’d been working through it.

  Now she realized that wasn’t the case at all. He hadn’t even moved in, really; he was just marking time.

  Turning to look at him, she found him standing just inside the door, which he’d shut at his back. His eyes were dark and hooded; his expression gave nothing away. She raised an eyebrow. “You wanted to show me something?” Glancing at the closed bedroom door, she added, “If it’s in there, the answer is no.”

  “Really?” He sounded only mildly interested, but his body was strung tight with tension. “Could’ve fooled me a few hours ago.” He crossed to her, predator-quiet, getting inside her space and leaning close, so she could feel his body heat and the promise of the power they could create together.

  She steeled herself to push him away when she wanted to grab him and drag him close. But instead of reaching for her, he moved past her, snagging a remote control off the coffee table and using it to turn on the TV.

  The entire wall lit, going blue for a second, then flashing to the static intro screen of a gaming console. He leaned down and hit a couple of buttons on the laptop, and a new graphic popped up: a decent-looking intro screen to what she guessed was a computer game. She didn’t know much about gaming, but this one had a front panel that showed a dragon-prowed Viking ship, its occupants locked in battle with a variety of mythological creatures. A storm slashed across the scene, blurring the details, and the title read: Viking Warrior 5: Odin’s Return.

  She glanced at Nate. “One of yours?”

  He looked surprised. “You knew?”

  “I know you own Hawk Enterprises, which develops computer games for a couple of larger distributors.” She also knew his approximate net worth, and the location of the condo he used every other weekend when he returned to Denver for “business” she now suspected was named Hera.

  He looked more amused than upset. “You did a background check.”

  “Jox already had the basics.” She didn’t mention that Izzy had brought her the info behind the royal winikin’s back. Izzy had wanted Alexis to know about Nate’s criminal record, had wanted to stress that the members of the hawk bloodline weren’t realiable—that Nate wasn’t a proper match. To the winikin’s annoyance, Alexis had been more interested in his life outside the Nightkeepers, and what kept drawing him back to Denver. The file hadn’t contained that info. Now she was halfway wishing she’d hired someone to do a deeper check, one that’d included known associates.

  He frowned. “If you already knew, then why did you ask who Hera is?”

  “The info didn’t mention a girlfriend.” The last word stuck in her throat.

  “That’s because she’s not exactly a girlfriend.” Hesitating only briefly, he tapped another key, skipped over what looked like an animated introduction to the game, complete with lots of blood and guts, and fast-forwarded through a scrolling legend of the A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, blah, blah variety. When he stopped fast-forwarding, the screen showed a computer-generated image of a stacked, Valkyrie-big woman wearing what amounted to a leather-and-metal bikini that left zero to the imagination. “This is Hera.”

  It took a moment for the surprise to penetrate, another for Alexis to look past the horned helmet and see the resemblance.

  Then she froze, because it was way more than a resemblance.

  She could’ve been looking into a computerized mirror, one that reflected her physical appearance exactly down to the pixel, then added an edge of the go to hell confidence she’d always wanted and never quite managed to project. The woman in the faux Viking costume could’ve been Alexis’s twin.

  Or rather, she could’ve been the woman in the dream-visions, the one who was a better version of the real Alexis.

  Shock flared through her. “Who modeled for this?”

  Did she have a twin? Excitement spiked at the thought, because the Nightkeepers revered the twin bond. But that excitement drained quickly in the face of knowing that a twin wasn’t something Izzy would’ve kept secret. But if not a twin, then what?

  “There was no other model,” Nate said grimly.

  Alexis went very still. “You based this on me?”

  “Nope. The first VW game came out four years ago.” He grimaced, looking partly proud, partly uncomfortable. “For what it’s worth, Hera has a huge following. Mostly of the under-twenty gamer variety, but still.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said numbly, but she was very afraid she did. Afraid . . . and rapidly getting angry at the realization that he’d known her long before he’d met her, and had hidden the connection.

  Narrowing her eyes she said, “How in the bloody blazes of hell can you design something like this years before you met me, yet not believe in destiny?”

  “I never said I didn’t believe it, just that I wasn’t going to roll over for it.”

  She waited for more. Didn’t get it. Fisting her hand on her hips, she prompted, “And?”

  He exhaled a long, frustrated breath. “Look, do you think I’m comfortable with this? Trust me, the answer is a big old ‘not.’ Hera is . . . she’s a fantasy, an amalgam of all the stuff that tests high in market research, along with a few of my own preferences. She was living inside my head years before I started working on the first VW game, and she’s been with me on a daily basis ever since. She’s got a fan club, for chrissake.”

  Alexis didn’t like the way he was talking about this computer construct as if she were a real woman, and suspected she was seriously going to hate where this was going. “Tell me about her,” she said carefully.

  Not looking at her, he said, “She’s brash and bossy, she’s a top fighter, she can do low-level magic .

  . . and she’s big and loud and scary, and pretty much guaranteed to rip the balls off of any guy who gets in her way.” He glanced at Alexis now, and she couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes when he said, “She looks like you, or you look like her; I’m not sure which is more accurate. The first time I saw you, when I came looking for Strike and you opened the front door, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

  “That was why you fainted?” She’d always wondered about that, why a big, tough guy like him had done the eye-roll-and-drop thing about thirty seconds after he’d stepped through the front door of Skywatch.

  “That was dehydration,” he said, sticking to the story he’d maintained ever since the incident. But something in his voice suggested there had been a good bit of shock in the mix, as well.

  Alexis just stared at the TV screen, which was so big that her—or, rather, Hera’s—image was nearly life-size. “You can create something like this, years before we met, and still deny that we’re supposed to be mated?”

  “Just because Strike saw Leah in a dream doesn’t mean we’re meant to be together,” he said quietly, answering the question she hadn’t asked.

  She told herself not to ask, but it came out anyway. “Why not? We’re good in bed. Am I really so awful outside of it?”

  He exhaled a long, slow breath. “That’s not what this is about.”

  Which didn’t answer her question in the slightest. “Then what is it about?”

  He was staring at Hera when he said, “I don’t do well with the idea of sex as a commodity.”

  Everything inside her went still. “I don’t remember offering to pay you.”

  “But you’d be trading sex for power. We both would be.” Som
ething in his eyes said he wasn’t talking solely about Nightkeeper magic, and the idea unnerved her.

  She didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say, because it was both true and untrue. For her, the sex was a joy and a revelation, but yeah, it was also a means to an end. And when she looked at it that way, she got a strange, squirrelly feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Besides,” Nate continued, “I don’t do well being told what to do.” His expression, and the locked-

  tight rigor of his muscles, suggested there was more to it than even that, but she wasn’t sure she had the strength to keep fighting him right now.

  “That’s an understatement.” Her voice came out a little choked as the held-off exhaustion started to hit. She was suddenly tired and sore, and so depressed she could barely think straight, never mind getting the rest of the story out of Nate, and trying to understand where he was coming from, and where they could go from there. Besides, why bother? she thought, realizing she’d made her decision without being aware of it. She was done trying to make it work with him, done trying to meet the gods halfway. Nate didn’t want her, plain and simple. Or rather, he wanted her body, but not much else about her, and she was finished trying to fight that fight.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said softly, “I’m sorry. I wish it could be different.”

  “Me too.” To her mortification, the words came out choked with tears. She spun on her heel and headed for the door.

  “Alexis, wait.”

  She stopped, but didn’t turn back. “What.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “What are you going to do?”

  She swallowed hard, knowing what she had to do, and hating it. “You don’t want to work within the prophecies? Fine, then neither will I. I’ll find myself another protector. That’ll let you off the hook.”

  “Who?” His eyes were dark and angry, but he didn’t seem at all surprised, which meant that he’d been thinking about it, too, about how, if she took another one of the guys as a lover, she might be able to transfer the protector’s bond. Maybe.