“Lucius, sit. Breathe.” She waved him to the generic sofa that took up most of the generically decorated sitting area. Once he was sitting, she took one of the chairs opposite him and leaned forward, folding her hands over her knees. “We need to talk.”
On the heels of shock came all the emotions he’d been sorting through over the past few days, crashing into one another until his brain was a total train wreck of half-completed thoughts. Taking a deep breath, he blew it out again and said, “I’d say that ranks pretty high on the understatement scale.”
Her eyes warmed a little. She looked good, he realized. Then again, he’d pretty much always thought she looked good. At least, he had until recently. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped noticing how her hair looked brown in one light, chestnut in another, and how her deep blue eyes seemed to look into a guy, seeing far more than was on the surface.
Had he changed or had she? Or had they both gone in different directions and wound up back in the same place once again?
She was wearing jeans and a soft blue shirt he didn’t recognize, with long sleeves pulled down over her forearm marks. The yellow quartz skull-shaped effigy she’d started wearing the previous fall hung from a chain around her neck. The thing that got and held his attention, though, was the knife tucked into her belt.
Carved from black stone—obsidian, probably—it didn’t look terribly old, but it sure looked sharp.
With his eyes locked on the knife, he said, “You mentioned something about busting me out of here? That wasn’t a euphemism for something I’m not going to like, is it? Like telling a little kid that his sick old dog went to live on a farm?”
He expected a grin. Didn’t get one.
“Here’s the deal,” Anna said, “and hold the questions until the end, at which point you’re only allowed three. I know you too well—if I let you quiz me, we’ll be here until the solstice.” She paused until he nodded, then continued, “As you’ve figured, Skywatch is the Nightkeepers’ training compound. What you probably haven’t figured, and the reason that I’ve argued against the 2012 doomsday for so long, is that up until last summer I believed that the apocalypse had been forestalled.
Twenty-five years ago my father led the Nightkeepers against the interplanar intersection, based on a vision from the god Kauil saying he could prevent the end-time. Instead, the demon Banol Kax came through the intersection and slaughtered the warriors, then sent their creatures here to Skywatch to kill the children. All but a few of the youngest Nightkeepers died.”
Her voice shook a little and her eyes had gone a very deep blue, as though she were seeing something he couldn’t. Lucius wanted to help, to comfort her, but he didn’t dare interrupt, so he waited.
After a second she continued, “The power backlash sealed the barrier. We checked the intersection every cardinal day for years after, but it remained closed, and the magic stayed inactive. We truly thought the end-time had been averted.”
“We?” he blurted, unable to help himself.
She fixed him with a look. “That’s your first question.” But she answered, “Me, Strike, our winikin Jox, and the sole adult survivor of the Solstice Massacre, a mage named Red-Boar.” Her eyes went sad. “You met him last fall, sort of, but won’t be able to remember it. He is—he was—a mind-
bender.”
Which brought up so many questions Lucius didn’t know where to start, so he gestured for her to continue. “Go on.”
“Well, the short of it is that there was one remaining prophecy dealing with the end-time, stating that certain things would happen in the final five years before 2012. Sure enough, last year a makol—a human disciple of the underworld—used some major blood sacrifices to reopen the barrier at the summer solstice. All of a sudden the magic was working again, and the end-time countdown was back on. Strike was forced to recall the surviving Nightkeepers, who had been raised in secret by their winikin. Since then, we’ve been going through crash courses in magic and fighting skills in an effort to whip together a fighting force capable of defending the intersection at each equinox and solstice, and capable of either somehow averting the end-time, or at the very least holding the Banol Kax in Xibalba when the calendar ends in December 2012, and the barrier falls.” She paused. “There are thirteen Nightkeepers left on earth, counting a pair of three-year-old toddlers and a powerful freak show of questionable allegiance named Snake Mendez, who still has another six months before he’s eligible for parole.”
She fell silent, but it was a long moment before Lucius said, “Okay. My brain’s officially in ‘tilt’ mode.”
She sent him a warm look that recalled better days. “Join the club. You want to ask your last two questions now?”
“Sure. What’s a winikin?”
“That’s the most important thing you can think to ask?” she said slowly.
He grinned. “No. But it’s been bugging me for almost a week.”
After a serious eye roll, she said, “They’re the blood-bound protectors of the Nightkeepers, descended from the loyal slaves who sneaked fifty or so Nightkeeper children out of Egypt when Akhenaton started killing poly-theists. The single surviving adult Nightkeeper, who came to be called the First Father, led the slaves and children to safety, eventually ending up in Olmec territory.
Knowing that history repeats, he put a spell on the winikin, binding them to the bloodlines they helped save and entrusting them with making sure the culture and the magic survived until 2012. In that way they became our partners rather than our slaves; they’re bound to protect us and guide us, though they have no magic of their own.”
Which totally dovetailed with the Nightkeeper myths Lucius had scraped together for the side project that’d slopped over into his thesis and then bitten him in the ass. It didn’t explain why the winikin were never once mentioned in the mythology he’d uncovered, but that so wasn’t the last question he needed to ask.
He took a deep breath. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Now, that’s the right question,” she said approvingly. “The simple answer is because you’re one of the best researchers I know, and our current archivist is actually a repurposed child psychologist. It’s another monumental understatement to say she’s floundering.”
“If that’s the simple answer, then there’s a more complicated one,” he said, careful not to make it be a question.
“That would be that I’m telling you a little about of our history and current situation so you’ll understand what’s at stake.”
He grimaced. “A dozen or so Nightkeepers against the fall of the barrier protecting the earth from the forces of Xibalba? I’d say the stakes are pretty high.” If, by pretty high, she meant insurmountable.
“Exactly,” she said, as if he’d uttered the last part aloud.
“Which doesn’t explain what you’re going to do with me. The term ‘busting out’ implies liberation, but I don’t see how freeing me helps, especially given what already happened with Desiree.” He paused, then said, “For what it’s worth, I’m really, really sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. It was like . . . I don’t know. Like I was somebody else for a while. Somebody I don’t like very much.”
“We go on from here,” she said, which wasn’t the same as accepting his apology. “That includes my asking you a favor.” She paused. “I want you to stay here and help us.”
The offer took a moment to register. “Me? Help the Nightkeepers?” Excitement was a quick kick, tempered by the complications she’d mentioned. “Would I have to stay locked up?”
“Not in this room.” Again with the nonanswer. “You’d have free run of the compound and access to the Nightkeepers, the winikin, and the archive, which contains a number of codices, artifacts, and original sources, along with commentaries from generations of Nightkeeper scholars, Spanish missionaries . . . pretty much everything ever written about the Nightkeepers and the end-time, along with some primary Mayan sources you won’t find anywhere else.”
His researcher’s soul sang. They have an archive! Excitement zipped through him, lighting his senses. “What’s the catch?” he asked, though there was no question that he was going to agree to whatever it was. He was being offered every Mayanist’s dream—access to a previously unknown stockpile of information. More, he was being offered a part—however small—in the end-time war.
“I’m going to need an oath of fealty,” she said.
“No problem. Where do I sign?”
“That’s not exactly how it works.” She drew the obsidian knife from her belt and balanced it on her palm. “It’s more along the lines of a spell that binds us together, making you my responsibility. You would become my k’alaj.”
His brain kicked out the translation, and he said slowly, “I’d be bound to you? Like a slave?”
“Technically, yes. My bond-slave.” Her eyes held his. “In practice, you’d be exactly who and what you are, except that you’d be restricted to the confines of this training compound, unless I’m with you or I give you a charmed eccentric granting passage through the wards surrounding the canyon.”
An eccentric was a small ritual item, usually carved from stone in the shape of a god or animal.
Stomach churning, Lucius tried to imagine himself wearing one around his neck, like a cosmic hall pass, or a collar with a rabies tag. “A slave,” he repeated, hating the idea, the word. But there was more; he could see it in her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She grimaced. “In binding myself to you, I’ll be granting you my protection, but also making myself responsible for your behavior. The bond will give me a limited sense of where you are and what you’re doing, and some degree of control over you. However, if you do anything to jeopardize or harm the Nightkeepers, it’s my duty to find and execute you, and upon my return I will also be punished as suits your crime. Which is why, as you might guess, this spell has been enacted only a handful of times throughout the Nightkeepers’ history, and then only with humans the bond-master or -mistress believe they can trust with their lives.” Her eyes showed worry fear.
Lucius couldn’t think of a response, couldn’t think of much except, “Holy shit.” He was going to be a slave. He’d be Anna’s slave, and in service to the Nightkeepers, but still. A slave. He shook his head.
“What do you mean, you’d have some control over me? Like a mind-meld or something?”
“Nothing that elaborate. I’d be able to send negative reinforcement through the bond.”
He thought about it for a second, not liking any of it, but unfortunately able to see the logic from the Nightkeeper side of life. “Would you promise not to use the bond on me?”
“I can’t do that; I’m sorry.” She paused, exhaling. “Look, this is the only way I could convince Strike to let you help.” And by that he knew she meant “let you live.” “He agrees that we need your research skills, but because of who and what you are, we can’t risk letting you go free.” She reached out and took his right hand and turned it palm up, then placed her own beside it to show that she had a scar to match his own. “You’ve already been marked by the Banol Kax. I’ll tell you the whole story later, after the bond is complete. Suffice it to say that if you leave Skywatch without Nightkeeper protection, you’ll be subject to influence by the Banol Kax. That can’t be allowed to happen.”
Lucius wanted to be able to laugh that off, but he couldn’t. It aligned too well with the feeling of a dark cloud lifting off him over the past few days. On some level he didn’t need to know anything more than that. “Shit.”
“Yeah. That about sums it up.”
He stared at his hands, not daring to look at her when he asked, “Why are you willing to risk yourself like this? If I’m connected to the demons somehow, what’s to say I won’t turn on you again, like I did by dealing with Desiree?”
“If you stay inside Skywatch, you’ll be the Lucius I know and love.”
The statement brought his head up as he thought, just for a second, that maybe the occasional flash of interest he’d seen in her eyes was for real.
But she shook her head. “Not that way. As a friend only. I owe you, though, in more ways than I can count. I traded my freedom from the Nightkeepers for your life last fall because it was my fault you crossed paths with the Banol Kax. I’m offering to bind myself to you now because I think you can help us, and because of our friendship. You let me lean on you when things got bad with Dick, let me wallow when I needed to, and kicked my butt out of the funk when it got to be too much.”
He looked away. “I didn’t tell you about Desiree.”
“No, you didn’t. But I can see how that’d be a tough judgment call . . . and I’m not sure much would’ve happened differently if I’d known she was Dick’s mistress. It’s a sucky situation, but it had nothing to do with you . . . and not much to do with Dick, either, if she is what we think she is.
Besides, I’m dealing with it as best I can. Part of that involves your staying here and helping Jade when I head back home.”
Lucius closed his eyes and tested out the idea of never going back to the university, and was surprised to find it didn’t hurt that much. He had lots of friends but few close ones, and he could call home from Skywatch just as easily as from Austin. It wasn’t as simple as that, of course, but the lure of the Nightkeepers overshadowed the other issues. He’d spent a big chunk of his life defending their existence. How could he not help them when asked?
He took a long, deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
She hesitated. “In the interest of full disclosure—”
“Will any of it change what has to happen?” he interrupted.
“No.”
“Then tell me later.” He nodded to the knife, his gut tightening in anticipation of pain, his brain blocking out the concept of servitude. “Do it.” But when she lifted the obsidian blade, he said, “Wait.
What about Sasha?”
She gave him a long look, but said, “We’ve reopened the search already. There’s a chance her father was one of us, probably a better chance that he was Xibalban. Either way, we need to know where she is. Strike has his PI, Carter, looking for her, and also for the Xibalbans, on the theory that they probably know where she is.”
“You won’t give up on her this time?” Lucius pressed as something tightened in his chest, making him feel that finding Sasha was somehow more important than the question of his own servitude.
“You promise?”
“I promise.” Without another word she slashed her own palm, then his. Pain slapped at him, wringing a hiss, but he didn’t pull away, couldn’t move. His body was locked in place, frozen by the sight of the blood that welled up and spilled over.
Gripping his bloodied hand in hers, she closed her eyes and rapped out a string of words he couldn’t parse, coming so quickly, when his brain was more used to sounding out the syllables from glyph strings.
Something stirred beyond his being, a sense that there were things going on at a level he couldn’t perceive. A sudden gust of wind slapped through the room, though the windows were closed. The disembodied gust blew his hair in his eyes and whipped around the two of them, forming a sharp funnel cloud with them in the center. Above the wind roar, a buzzing noise sang a high, discordant note.
Then Anna said a final word, and the world shifted sideways, tilting and swerving around him. He slid off the sofa, landing hard on his knees while Anna hung on to his hand. The note racheted up to a scream, and pain lanced through him, centered not on his bleeding palm but on his forearm. He cried out and bowed his head as something snapped into place around him, an invisible force that vised his body, then inside to grip his heart, which went still. The wind quit abruptly, leaving only silence inside his skull.
He couldn’t even hear his heartbeat.
Panic gripped him, but he couldn’t struggle, couldn’t scream. He could only wait in the silence.
Finally he heard it. Lub. Then lub-dub. Another, lub-dub. The b
eats stuttered and then sped, finally dropping into normal sinus rhythm. The moment they did, the force field disappeared, leaving him to sag back against the sofa.
He sucked in a shuddering breath. “Jesus Christ.”
“Wrong pantheon,” she said, voice wry. Shifting her grip, she lifted his arm and turned his hand palm up. He saw blood but no cut, only the scar he’d gotten last fall, ostensibly in a drunken kitchen accident that he now realized had been far more than that.
Awe gathered in Lucius’s chest at the sight of the healed wound. “Magic,” he breathed.
“Yep.” She pushed his shirtsleeve up across his forearm, revealing something else, something that made his heart stutter in his chest when she said, “Welcome to the family.”
His forearm was marked like hers, with two glyphs. One was the same jaguar she wore, only smaller. The other was the k’alaj glyph representing the back of a human hand and a length of rope or sinew: the “was bound” mark, used for slaves and captured enemies . . . and sacrifices.
He took a deep breath. Let it out. Looked at Anna, the woman of his dreams, who was now his mistress, and not in the way he’d wished. “Okay, boss,” he said, doing his best to act like everything was okay when he wasn’t yet sure that was the case, “take me to your library and tell me what I’m looking for.”
“That’s easy,” she said. “We want everything you can find on the Order of Xibalba.”
His heart, so recently knocked off-kilter, took another stutter step. “You’re kidding me.”
“Wish I were.”
“The order’s real too?” It was a little like learning that not only was the Loch Ness monster real, so was Godzilla.
Anna nodded. “Worse, we’re pretty sure Desiree is a member.”
“Desiree is—” He broke off, slamming his eyes shut as an awful gulf of guilt opened up inside him.
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Still not.”
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