Dawnkeepers n-2

by Jessica Andersen

  “Shit.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  “We’re dealing with it.”

  “I’m surprised your brother didn’t have me thrown into the Cenote Sagrado,” he said, naming the huge sacrificial well at Chichén Itzá.

  “I promised him you’d behave.”

  “I will,” he said fervently. “You have my word.”

  “I don’t need your word. I have your blood oath.” She bared her forearm, where she too had gained a new mark, a closed fist. His heart shuddered as he recognized ajawlel . . . the slave-master’s mark.

  Once Anna had handed Lucius over to Jade in the archive, she went in search of her brother. She found him in his and Leah’s quarters, the expansive royal suite once shared by their parents.

  Anna hesitated at the double entry doors, assailed by memory.

  She’d been fourteen on the night of the Solstice Massacre, which meant she had fourteen years’ worth of childhood memories from Skywatch. Strike had been only nine, and his mind had blocked off the bulk of his early years as a defense. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been so lucky. Maybe it was because she carried the seer’s mark, maybe because of the five-year difference in age. Whatever the cause, she’d been unable to outrun the memories, her brain choosing to block her power rather than the past.

  Ever since her partial return to the Nightkeepers, she’d dealt with the memories by staying at Skywatch as little as possible, and avoiding the spaces with the most ghosts . . . like the royal suite.

  Now she forced herself to knock on what she still thought of as her parents’ door, and made herself push through when her brother’s voice invited her in.

  “It’s me,” she called, standing just inside the royal suite and trying to concentrate not on the memories but on the differences, the new decor and the way the walls had been painted, the floors stripped and redone, all part of Jox’s efforts to exorcise the ghosts.

  “I’m in the altar room,” Strike said, his voice echoing from a door off to her right. “Come on back.”

  Although the royal couple’s shrine of private worship was pretty much the last place on earth Anna wanted to be, she forced herself down the short hallway leading to the ceremonial chamber. She couldn’t make herself step inside the tiny room, which was little more than a closet with stone-

  veneered walls and a gas-powered torch in each corner, with a chac-mool altar against the back and a highly polished obsidian mirror on the wall.

  Strike stood in the center of the small space, on a woven mat marked with bloodred footprints facing the altar. In ancient times the mats had symbolized a position of power or leadership; to stand on the mat was to claim the right to speak and be heard. Since then, among the Nightkeepers those mats had come to represent the king’s right to speak to—and for—the gods.

  Just then, though, Strike looked less like a god-king and more like a tired man, a former landscaper with a business degree and teleporting skills, who was in way over his head. He and Leah had made a try for Kulkulkan’s altar stone in Germany, only to find that it wasn’t where it was supposed to have been. Leah had stayed behind, following where the trail led, while Strike had come home alone to deal with the business of securing Skywatch against the Xibalbans. Anna knew that Leah could reach him instantly through the blood-link of their love, knew that he could ’port to her in a flash. He knew it too, but the separation was wearing on him, worrying him. His eyes were tired, his expression drawn.

  Anna could relate.

  Leaning against the doorframe to ground herself when the reflection in the mirror threatened to waver and show her things she didn’t want to see, she said, “It’s done.”

  Strike nodded. “He’ll help?” But what he was really asking was, Have you bound him as your slave?

  “Yes.” She hated the necessity, hated the decision, but hadn’t been able to argue either. In saving Lucius from Red-Boar’s knife she’d taken responsibility for him. The binding ritual had simply been a formal extension of that duty. Or so she was trying to tell herself.

  “And the other?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t reconsidered.”

  His lips twitched. “Wanted to see if I’d come to my senses, you mean.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Consider your objections noted.”

  Fat lot of good that would do in the long run, Anna thought, but inclined her head. “I’ll make the call.”

  Feeling as though she were escaping from the room, if not the duty, she headed for her own suite, which was the same one she and Strike had shared as children. Jox had overseen the renovations, yielding a pleasantly neutral space with a few personal touches in the jaguar motifs of the art prints and small trinkets on the bamboo furniture. They’d all been placed by the winikin, not her, but they did serve to warm the suite, making it fairly comfortable for the short stints she was in residence, during the cardinal days and a few other ceremonial occasions.

  Now she let herself sink into the soft, earth-toned sofa and dug out her cell phone. Dialing the main university switchboard from memory, she punched in an extension and waited through two rings, then three.

  Just when she was wondering how much to say on voice mail, the line went live. “Desiree Soo speaking.”

  “I have Lucius,” Anna said without preamble.

  There was a startled pause before Desiree said, “You can keep him. He’s served his purpose.”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. We’d like to invite Iago to the compound for a parley.”

  Desiree’s surprise was palpable, but she snorted. “Parley? What is this, Pirates of the Caribbean?”

  “A meeting, Desiree, between your leader and mine. March thirteenth. And your agreement that the Xibalbans won’t come after us between now and then.”

  “The day after Saturn at Opposition? What, you think your ancestors are going to come through and tell you how to get hold of the remaining artifacts? Keep dreaming.”

  Anna dug her fingernails into her scarred palms, determined not to let the bitch bait her. “Do we have a deal?”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Where can I reach you?”

  “Leave a yes/no on my office voice mail. I’ll be back in town tomorrow, the day after at the latest.”

  “Interesting.” Desiree paused, then said sweetly, “Would you like me to let your husband know of your plans? Apparently he expected you back from your ‘meeting,’ ”—there were obvious finger-

  quotes in the words—“the day before yesterday, and couldn’t reach you on your cell.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself; I’ll call him,” Anna said through gritted teeth, and cut the connection.

  Once they’d figured out that Desiree was Xibalban, and had most likely been sent to the university solely to keep an eye on Anna, it was a logical extension to assume she’d gone after Dick for additional inside information, and probably for leverage. That didn’t make his infidelity any less galling, but it made Desiree’s part in it that much more insidious.

  Hating that she’d bought into the bitch’s manipulation, Anna dialed Dick’s cell phone, intending to apologize for not checking in sooner. She couldn’t tell him about Lucius and the Xibalbans, and would have to explain away the ajawlel mark as another on-a-whim tattoo, when he wasn’t too crazy about the ones she already wore. But though there were so many things she couldn’t tell him, so many little lies, she wanted to talk to him, wanted to hear his voice and remember her real life, and the man she’d made that life with.

  When the call dumped to voice mail, though, she didn’t know what to say. So she hung up without speaking and just sat there on the sofa, staring at the one personal touch that had found its way into her room, borrowed from the training hall with Rabbit’s permission.

  The boar-bloodline death mask might’ve been an impulse buy on Alexis’s part, but Anna was grateful for the impulse, because looking at the ma
sk made her think not of Red-Boar, but of the fact that in some cases, death was only the beginning of the great cycle, the start of the next life.

  At this point she was starting to hope she got it right in her next life, because her current one was turning into a train wreck.

  In the weeks following the trip to Belize, Nate felt like he was rattling around Skywatch, disjointed and out of step with himself.

  He and Alexis had brought the carved fragment back and united it with the main statuette, and watched in awe while the pieces had knit, going molten and then seaming together with a hum of magic and color, creating an entire whole. Then they, along with most everyone else in residence at the compound, had gathered outside later that night. When the starlight had come, the full demon prophecy had been revealed.

  Lucius had done the translation, because Anna had returned to her husband. The shaggy-haired grad student, who Jade said seemed to be alternating between fascination at being among the Nightkeepers and deep depression at being a slave, had parsed out the glyphs, copying them down on the kitted-out laptop Anna had sent from the university. Even before the program had confirmed the translation, he’d quietly intoned, “ ‘The first son of Camazotz succeeds unless the Volatile is found.’” Which told them nothing new, really, and sort of made the cave trip seem like a waste.

  Jade and Lucius’s research had turned up a couple of references to the Volatile, indicating that he was male and a shape-shifter, which put him firmly on the bad-guy side of life, as far as the Nightkeepers were concerned. A great deal of post-Classical Mayan religious practices were based on the idea that their kings were gods, and capable of turning into sacred creatures, mostly jaguars. That, however, was due to the influence of the Order of Xibalba, which seemed to have worshiped a mimiclike shape-shifter that could take on many forms. The Nightkeepers, in contrast, wanted nothing to do with shifters, who had the rep of being fiercely independent at best, dangerously unstable at worst.

  At the same time, the word “volatile” was also associated with the daylight hours and the levels of heaven. Which meant there was no telling whether the Volatile named in the demon prophecy was a Xibalban—maybe even Iago himself?—or something else. They weren’t even sure the Volatile was a shifter; the info was that foggy. It was also perplexing that the demon prophecy discussing the Volatile had been written on the statuette of the rainbow goddess, yet didn’t say jack about what Ixchel was supposed to do.

  The facts that the rainbow goddess’s statuette held the prophecy and that she’d formed the Godkeeper bond with Alexis suggested that Ixchel should be instrumental in defeating the first of Camazotz’s sons . . . yet the prophecy directed them to the Volatile. Did that mean they were supposed to hand over Alexis to the Xibalbans? That was so not happening as far as Nate was concerned.

  Alexis had become more and more withdrawn as the debate had dragged on. Nate had tried to engage her, tried to have a sit-down, but she’d been distant and had quickly excused herself each time.

  He couldn’t blame her, really. And in a way her detachment was a bonus, because it had somehow weakened the crackle of magic between them, blunting the sexual energy. Maybe the statuette was somehow helping her channel the goddess’s powers without his help. Maybe the magic was lessening as the barrier thickened, cycling between the eclipse and the approaching opposition. Or maybe he’d finally managed to gain control over his attraction to her, to the point that he could make a decision for himself, one that wasn’t dictated by politics or power.

  That should’ve made him feel better. Thing was, he didn’t, not in the slightest. He was snarly and out of sorts, humming with an edgy energy that he didn’t recognize. Working himself into exhaustion down in the gym didn’t help; if anything that made his mood worse, with the added annoyance of sore hamstrings. Training didn’t help; research didn’t help. Hell, he couldn’t even work on VW6; Hera was still stuck midstory, not sure if she wanted to partner with Nameless or behead him.

  And yeah, Nate could see the parallels between the storyboard and his and Alexis’s on-again, off-

  again relationship; he wasn’t an idiot. Seeing it didn’t mean he knew what to do about it, though.

  Which was why he headed out to the Pueblo ruins near dusk in early March, five days before the opposition ceremony, needing some serious time to himself. Instead of going all the way out to the pueblo, though, he wound up detouring over to his parents’ cottage, knowing that was where he’d meant to go all along.

  When he opened the door and stepped through, he found someone waiting for him in the sitting room, and stopped dead. “Carlos.” Shit.

  “Are you ready to listen yet?” the winikin asked, making it sound as if he were willing to wait as long as he needed to, even though they both knew time was running out. The equinox was nine days after the opposition, and Alexis needed to have full access to the goddess’s powers by then if she hoped to have even a prayer of battling the first of the foretold demons. That meant having her Nightkeeper mate’s full support.

  The operative word there being “mate.”

  “I can’t pull hearts and flowers out of my ass just because it’s convenient for everyone else,” Nate snapped. “And for what it’s worth, I offered. She turned me down. End of story.” Okay, so technically he’d offered some fairly clinical, no-strings sex approximately sixty seconds before she’d asked him about Hera and realized she’d been a stand-in. Or was Hera the stand-in? Fucked if he knew; they were all mixed-up together in his head.

  “I wasn’t talking about you and Alexis,” Carlos said mildly. “Although if you’d like to talk about the two of you, I’m more than happy to listen. I had twenty wonderful years with my Essie. I could probably teach you a few things.”

  “I don’t,” Nate said between gritted teeth, “want to talk about me and Alexis. I don’t want to talk at all.” But he didn’t turn around and leave, either, just stood in the middle of the sitting room, glaring at his father’s paintings. “Not everything that happened before will happen again, goddamn it. I don’t need to know the history of my bloodline to be a warrior.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” The winikin should’ve looked out of place, but somehow his snap-studded shirt and big old belt buckle fit into the subtle—albeit dated—elegance of the furnishings and decor.

  Which, damn it, made Nate wonder about the others who’d sat on that same couch. His mother and father. Their friends. Hell, Alexis’s mother had probably been there a time or two, if only to bitch at his father for something. He didn’t know much about the goings-on at Skywatch prior to the Solstice Massacre, but it would’ve been impossible to miss knowing that Gray-Smoke and his father had spent a good chunk of their time as royal advisers trying to argue each other into the ground.

  Kind of like him and Alexis. Not that he believed in history repeating itself. Shit.

  Nate dropped down to the sofa and let his head bang against the backrest. He tried not to look at the paintings again, because he already knew from experience that he’d stare at them way too long if he gave himself the luxury.

  “I’ve never even seen a picture of them,” he said after a moment, damning himself because he knew he was losing the battle.

  Carlos had the good grace not to do a victory dance, saying only, “Have you looked around?”

  “Hell, no.” Nate glanced back at the open front door and the fading light of freedom beyond. He’d been toying with the idea of trying the ball court and figuring out the game Lucius kept going on about. Maybe that’d help the restlessness. And, hell, it couldn’t be much harder than basketball, right?

  The hoops were higher and set vertical rather than horizontal, but there was no dribbling to worry about on the pounded-dirt surface; it was mostly knees and elbows. He bet he could get the others into the idea, maybe use the game to burn off some frustrations.

  He should get started now, he thought. But he stayed put.

  Carlos rose. “Come on. I’ll help you find some snapshots.”
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  “No,” Nate said again, but it was more of a plea than a denial.

  T h e winikin ignored him and headed for the second bedroom. Unable to do otherwise, Nate followed.

  And stopped dead in the doorway of a frigging nursery.

  He didn’t recognize the crib or toys, or the spinning mobile of stars and moons above the bed. He had no memory of the rain-forest scenes painted on the walls, or the birds of prey painted on the ceiling. But his gut confirmed what logic said had to be true: that this was where he’d slept for the first two years of his life.

  It wasn’t just any nursery; it was his nursery.

  Sucking a breath past a punch of pain, he cursed and turned to retreat. Except his feet didn’t move, planting him there in the doorway as Carlos crossed the room and opened a large closet, which was stacked with toys, clothes, and baby stuff on one side, neatly labeled boxes on the other.

  “You snooped,” Nate said, the words coming out on a wheeze. “You cased the joint before I got here.”

  The winikin didn’t turn back. “You’re a tough case, Blackhawk. I’ll take whatever leverage I can get.”

  Which was pretty much what Carol Rose, his social worker, had said about him. She’d refused to take “fuck off and die” as an answer, and had ridden his ass until he straightened up and made something of himself. He was starting to get a feeling that Carol and Carlos had more in common than the similarities in their names. And that was simple fucking coincidence, he thought bitterly. Not fate.

  “So what exactly do you want from me?” he finally asked.

  “Nothing much.” Now Carlos did glance back, and his lips twitched. “I just want you to help save the world.”

  It should’ve been a joke, probably had been meant as one, at least in part. But the winikin’s words shot straight to the heart of Nate’s frustration, his pounding sense that he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing, yet he couldn’t do what the others wanted him to. Letting his legs unlock, he slid down the wall just inside his nursery until he was sitting on the floor, his spine propped against the doorjamb. Looking up at the stand-in father figure he hadn’t met until seven months earlier, he said, “I don’t know how.”