His head pounded and spun; his senses fogged. A warning buzzer went off deep inside him, but he ignored it because this was what he’d been searching for. He was sure of it. Letting his gun hand sag, he crouched down and reached for the bundle.
A slight, wiry body slammed into him from behind, driving him to his knees.
Shit. Ambush! Adrenaline blasted through him, clearing his head in an instant. Reacting even as he cursed himself for walking dumb-assed into the trap, he jammed his shoulder into his attacker′s gut and heaved. The move should’ve sent the guy flying into next week, but the runt countered, got an arm across his throat, and cranked down with a ferocity that grayed his vision and brought a stab near his collarbone. Tingling pain lashed down Dez’s arm and the .44 skidded away.
Pissed at himself as much as at the other man, he lunged to his feet with a roar and then went over backward, using the little shit to break his fall. Something snapped—maybe bone—and the choke hold slackened.
He rolled away from his assailant and surged to his feet. “How’d that feel, mother . . . fucker.” In an instant, the world telescoped down to the sight of familiar pale eyes in a sharp, tautly drawn face slashed through with six gnarled scar lines that ran across the other man’s cheek and throat. “Keban.”
Dez hadn’t seen his godfather in almost five years. And the last time, he’d nearly killed the bastard.
“Hid yourself well, didn’t you, boy?” Louis Keban pulled himself to his feet, his sneer showing the jagged edge of a broken tooth. “But I found you. Always will.” His mad, bright eyes went to the cloth-wrapped bundle. “You felt her, didn’t you? That’s because it’s time—the war’s coming, boy. The end of the world’s coming. It’s time for you to step up and do what you were born to do.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Dez grated, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure about that. He had felt the pull, heard the voice in his head. And the air had sparked red-gold when he kissed Reese.
They were just stories, he’d been telling himself for years. There’s no magic, no doomsday countdown. It had all been part of Keban’s elaborate insanity.
Unless it hadn’t been, he thought as the world started to swim around him. What if . . . “Fuck,” he spat when his vision fuzzed and he realized it wasn’t just shock; the little bitch had drugged him. Swaying on his feet, he pawed his collarbone and cursed when his fingers hit the end of a snapped-off needle.
“Just a little something to help you get your magic.” Keban turned, scooped up the bundle, and unrolled it to reveal a small carving. “This should take care of the rest. Courtesy of Montezuma.” Made of shiny black stone and approximately the length of Dez’s thumb, it was a woman with wide hips and a big head, more grotesque than pretty.
Dez hissed out a breath as a hard, hot force suddenly surged up inside him. Mine, it said. That’s mine. He wanted to snatch the carved fragment away from Keban, wanted to hide it, to protect it, to have it as his own. He would kill to possess it, kill to protect it. Kill.
He was moving before he was aware of having made a decision, surging forward and reaching for the statuette. Mine. But when he was halfway there his knees folded and the world went gray, fog closing in on him until the only thing he could see was the flare of triumph in the other man’s eyes. Then he was down and vulnerable, cursing in dread silence as Keban handcuffed his wrists in front of his body, positioning him so he was kneeling like a damned penitent. Then the bastard pulled a knife and cut Dez’s palms along the old scar lines.
They had played this game before.
The pain sparked a searing rage that burned through the drugs. As his vision cleared, he saw that the other man was using the same stone blade he had used throughout the years—black obsidian with etched serpent glyphs that matched the one on the bastard’s forearm: The mark of the serpent bloodline. Son of a bitch, Dez thought, reeling from both shock and drugs. What if—
Then Keban pressed the black statuette into his hand, and the world went haywire.
The stone flashed from cool to hot in an instant, searing his palms, and a strange, crackling buzz sizzled through him, reaching deep and sparking anger and greed, the lust for power, approval, recognition, respect. He bared his teeth and strained against his bonds as energy stabbed through his chest and behind his eyeballs. The head and heart are the sources of a mage’s power, came Keban’s voice in his mind, drilling the lessons into him along with the strategies of a thousand battles, the workings of a hundred political systems . . . and the future as it existed inside the older man’s warped brain. Your sister died so you could live. You owe me, owe her, owe the gods. Try harder. Be better, be more, or it was all a waste.
The memories hammered through Dez as Keban got in his face and rasped, “Say the words, damn it. Jack in.”
Pasaj och. The phrase whispered in his mind, but the spell wouldn’t work, hadn’t ever worked. It had just been an excuse for Keban to whale on him once a quarter, when he failed to tap into his so-called magic on the night of every solstice and—
Oh, shit. Tonight was the equinox.
And this was really happening.
A cold fist wrapped itself around Dez’s heart and squeezed, cutting through the drugged fog and the power of the statuette. “Make your own fucking magic,” he grated. “I don’t follow orders.”
The cool press of a gun muzzle touched his temple as Keban got in close and grated, “Jack the fuck in.”
“Suck. My. Dick.”
Face flushing an ugly brick red slashed with the six parallel white scars, Keban hammered Dez across the jaw with his own .44, and then took a couple of steps back to aim it two-handed. “Say it.” When Dez just glared, the other man’s eyes went frenzied. “Say it!” he screamed with spittle-flecked violence. “Say the fucking spell!”
Dez saw his godfather’s trigger finger tighten, saw murder in his eyes, and felt a flash of pure grief. I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t mean for it to end this way. I wanted—
Two shots cracked, oddly syncopated. Dez felt something sting his shoulder, but it was Keban who jerked back and grabbed his upper arm.
Dez spun toward the second shooter, instinctively knowing who it was. Even so, his heart damn near stopped at the sight of her.
Reese was wearing the same snug black jeans and zip-down sweater she’d had on earlier. Now, though, she was dripping wet despite the raincoat that hung plastered to her body, and she was packing most of their weapons stash. Her short black hair was slicked to her skull, her strange whiskey-amber eyes were hot with anger, and she looked ready to kick some serious ass.
“You okay?” she asked without taking her eyes—or her .38—off Keban, who had collapsed near the wall, unmoving.
“I’m fine. But keep your guard up,” Dez warned. “He’s—”
“I know who he is. Jocko called to say that a guy with a scarred-up face was asking about you. I put it together.”
And she had come for him even after the way he’d walked out on her. Love surged through him, further pushing back the fog of drugs and compulsion. He loosened his grip on the small statuette, making the handcuffs rattle. “He’ll have the keys—”
Keban uncurled snake-quick and fired the .44 at her, point blank.
“NO!” Dez surged upright and then crashed back down when he hit the ends of his bonds. The cuffs cut into his wrists, the statue’s hard edges dug into his slashed palm, and the whole world just fucking stopped for a heartbeat as the woman he loved went down in a motionless heap. “Reese!”
The storm, which had lulled briefly, flung itself at the warehouse with renewed fury. Lightning flared, strobing the cavernous space as wind-driven rain lashed through the broken windows. Electricity crackled around Dez, inside him, somehow expanding his senses so he saw more, heard more, felt more than he ever had before. And with it came a deeper, darker layer of hatred that was directed entirely at Keban as he raised his weapon and sighted again on Reese, his eyes carrying the same feral glee they used to get whi
le he was lashing Dez with his belt. “Sorry about your girlfr—”
Surging against the cuffs and ropes, Dez shouted, “Pasaj och!”
Thunder cracked and a fat bolt of lightning dead-eyed the warehouse, sparking the old wires and haloing the steel girders with foxfire. Then the sizzle was inside him, radiating from the carving to his head and heart and back again. He was dimly aware of the bonds melting off his ankles and the metal handcuffs arcing with blue-white flame. Then pain lashed, flesh burned, and the shackles sprang open. They hit the floor with a metallic clatter. And he was free!
He lunged to his feet, roaring Reese’s name.
Keban spun, eyes widening.
“Wait,” said the winikin—because that was what he was, a winikin. It was all true, Dez suddenly realized as the lightning—the fucking magic—raced in his blood. Every last godsdamned story was true. He was a Nightkeeper. The last in an ancient line of magic users.
Keban had finally made him into a mage . . . And he’d used Reese to do it. Blood sacrifice. Nearby, she lay far too still, her body a dark blur in the shadows.
“No!” Pain and rage lashed through Dez, calling to something inside him, something that fed on the greed and hatred and then suddenly ignited. Power soared inside him, pressed on him, begged to be set free.
Going on instinct, he pointed at the winikin, stiff fingered. The power surged, a vicious crackle split the air, and a bolt of blue-white lightning shot from his outstretched fingers. It nailed Keban in the chest, blasting him back.
The winikin screamed and landed writhing, wreathed in sparks of blue-white electricity. His body arched; his hands and feet beat at the warehouse floor, and came away bloody.
Magic flowed through Dez. He gloried in it, heart racing. He was a mage, like Keban had always said. He could do anything, be anything, become—
Then, like someone had thrown a switch, the energy cut out, the crackle went silent, and his body shifted from fever hot to deathly cold in an instant. He sagged as fatigue hit him hard and he became, once again, just himself.
What. The. Fuck?
Weeping raggedly, Keban dragged himself to his feet and staggered for the door without a backward look, cackling a high, lunatic laugh.
“Son of a bitch!” Yanking himself out of the last dregs of magic, Dez jammed the statuette into his pocket, lunged for the fallen .44, and came up to his knees firing. The shots pinged off steel, the noise disappearing beneath a crack of thunder as Keban vanished into the storm. On one level, Dez knew he should chase the bastard, finish him off. But on another, more visceral level, he had a different priority.
“Reese!” He scrambled to his feet, bolted across the warehouse and dropped to his knees beside her. Ignoring everything he’d ever learned about first aid, he dragged her up off the floor and into his arms, cursing when her guns dug into him, feeling somehow more substantial than she did. Her body was limp and heavy. Deadweight that smelled of blood. “Godsdamn it, Reese!”
She stirred, then squinted at him through pain-blurred eyes. “Jesus, don’t yell. My head’s killing me.”
He shuddered, groaning her name and holding on to her for a long moment while his heart hammered in his ears. Then he tried to pull himself together, easing away far enough to check for injuries with shaking hands. He was bleeding from his shoulder and his wrists howled where the cuffs had burned him, but she was hurt worse. She had a raised knot on her head that matched her blown pupils, and a through-and-through in her upper arm, the wound wide and angry and weeping blood.
She’d live. But they had gotten lucky.
“He’s gone. I’ve got you. You’re okay. We’re okay.” He said it over and over, not really sure he believed it until he stuck his hand in his pocket and touched the statuette. And for a second he felt a trickle of the power—the magic—he’d tapped into before. He sure as hell hadn’t imagined the way his cuffs had come off, or the way he’d blown Keban off his feet. A guy who could do stuff like that could do anything.
Pressing his cheek to her temple, careful of the sore spots, he tightened his fingers around the statuette, as he said, “I’m sorry about what I said before. I didn’t mean it—I love you. I need you. We’ll make it work.”
But suddenly he wasn’t so sure about that, either. Because if the magic was real, then the other stuff was real, too . . . and what the hell was he going to do about that?
CHAPTER TWO
Present day
Cancún, Mexico
December 5; one year and sixteen days to the zero
date
Reese had long thought that themed wedding hotels were tacky as hell, but she was pretty sure this one took the freaking multitiered, pink-frosted cake.
In case the velvet sombreros and striped serapes plastered on every available surface of the hotel lobby were too subtle, the decorators—and she used the term lightly—had lined the halls with a series of cringe-inducing tropical signs directing her to the wedding chapel. And when she got there, she found the entryway decorated with what she suspected was meant to look like an ancient Mayan temple, but came across as papier-mâché gone horribly wrong.
Inside the chapel, a faux stone archway took the place of the usual flower-and-lattice bower, the aisle was lined with fake palm fronds, the rank-and-file chairs were wearing parrot-hued slipcovers, and the roll-away screen behind the main stage was painted with an art student’s version of Chichén Itzá in its heyday, with the city intact, the ruins unruined, and cartoonish pre-Columbian natives thronging in the foreground, staring at the papier-mâché archway with creepy, goggle-eyed intensity.
Thank Christ the room was empty. It was bad enough she was semi-crashing. Be worse if she walked in and started laughing her ass off during the I-dos.
This so wasn’t what she had been expecting. But then again, the expectations were her own fault: The moment she opened the FedEx to find a plane ticket to Mexico and a request for her to come talk about a job, her brain had gone straight to a tropical fantasyland, complete with umbrellaed drinks and bare-chested bartenders, far from Denver′s drab gray winter.
Hell, it was probably just a run-of-the-mill deal for aging parents who had lost track of a kid and were feeling guilty in the middle of the sib’s wedding prep. Typical locator gig.
But those cases still paid better—and were way safer—than her old job.
Tracking a low drone of voices that said “the party’s over here,” she crunched across the fake palm fronds to where an open doorway led to the reception area. Looking for a little advance intel—run-of-the-mill job or not, it was pretty extreme to fly her across the border just for a meet-and-greet—she tucked herself into the shadows and peered through to where a couple of dozen bodies thronged an open-air dining area.
Then she exhaled in surprise and eased back further into the shadows. Because whatever these guys were, it wasn’t run-of-the-mill.
The twenty or so people, an even mix of men and women, were knotted together on one side of the room, the men in decent suits, the women in an eclectic mix of high-end, with no rent-a-tux’d groom or Barbie-doll bride in evidence. They were all wearing long sleeves, which was weird; it might be shitty with early December back home, but it was still pretty damn tropical down in the Yucatan.
Going into the figure-it-out-fast survival mode that used to be her only option, she scanned the room. Six of the wedding guests—three men, three women—were small and compact, their gestures quick, their eyes always on the move. Four of the six were in their sixties or so and hung together like family or old friends, while the remaining two were younger and new-coupleish: a military type in his early forties holding hands with a thirtyish cutie who had dark hair and laughing eyes. Overall, aside from a strange air of uniformity, those guys weren’t too far off ordinary.
The rest of them, though . . . Whoa. Way not ordinary. Most in their late twenties, early thirties, they were uniformly huge—in height and muscle, with zero flab—gorgeous, and somehow glossy, like the overhea
d lights bounced off them differently from the others. More, they all held themselves at the ready, their body language saying they knew how to fight and would do it at a split second’s notice.
There were a few exceptions: Two of the women, one blond, one dark, were closer to average size, while a third—coppery dark hair, maybe a few years older than the others—sat at a table, staring vacantly, with a funny half smile on her lips. Beside her sat one of the men; he was huge and muscled like the others, but had his left leg strapped into a high-tech brace and propped on a chair. A pair of crutches leaned on the wall behind him.
None of those details changed the overall impression of deadly competence, though. Not one iota.
Reese’s instincts checked in, making sure she was aware that she might, in fact, be an idiot. Suddenly, accepting the anonymous invite south of the border seemed less like a welcome getaway and more like a dumb idea.
Her new, more cautious self said she should do a vanishing act. But at the same time, another part of her—a trusted part—said that she should stay put. Because what if these guys were trying to locate someone worth saving? She’d seen it before. Hell, she’d been it before.
You can’t help everyone, she reminded herself. But instead of doing a Casper and ghosting it, she hitched her small black carryall a little higher on her shoulder and checked out the setup.
The reception area was an open-air stone patio surrounded by a high, vine-covered fence. An overhead latticework hung with a gazillion fairy lights failed to disguise the fact that the hotel was smack in the middle of a bunch of other high-rises. There was only one door, which didn’t compute, and not just because she was big on backup exits. In her experience, groups like this didn’t let themselves get boxed in. Which meant they had another way out . . . Unless she’d misread them? She didn’t think so. Even while doing the civilized wedding-brunch thing, they practically screamed “paramilitary.” Or maybe something official, with an acronym most people wouldn’t recognize.
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