She scanned the road. “There are two cars coming toward you from the south and a smallish box truck coming the other way. Once they’ve gone past, you’ll have a gap.”
“Ten-four.” He waited out the traffic, his shadow-dappled body so motionless that he practically disappeared into the tree line, even though she knew exactly where to look.
When the box truck had lumbered past with a gear-jamming belch and rattle, he slipped out of concealment and ghosted over to where shattered glass glittered blue-white in the sun. From there, he walked careful parallel tracks back and forth, searching.
She kept up a constant scan, watching not just the road, but also the forest and the sky, because Keban wasn’t their only potential problem. The Nightkeepers were also fighting rearguard actions against Iago and his makol, and the missing villagers raised the gruesome possibility that a Banol Kax could already have slipped through the barrier. The sum total of it all made her feel very small.
Catching movement on the horizon, she straightened. “You’ve got company coming,” she told him. “Three pickup trucks, matching paint jobs, orange bubbles. DPW, maybe? They’re not cops, but it’d be a good idea for you to make yourself scarce.”
“Ten-four.” He headed for the trees, but stopped halfway there and crouched down near a small trio of stones at the edge of the parking area. “Wait. I’m getting something. I think he—Fuck. Reese, run!”
Vapor puffed up, and he went down hard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Dez!” Reese screamed. Fear and adrenaline hammered through her in a terrifying fusillade as she raced down the trail, scrambling, stumbling, moving as fast as she could and deathly afraid of what she would find at the bottom.
When she hit level ground, she clapped an arm across her mouth and breathed through the heavy jacket sleeve, hoping to filter out whatever had taken him down. He lay in a heap, motionless. Heart pounding, she dropped to her knees beside him; sharp gravel dug into her shins, but she barely felt the pain as she clamped her free hand around his wrist, right along the tattoo-covered scar.
His pulse throbbed beneath her thumb. Thank Christ. But then a strange, spicy musk filtered through her makeshift face mask, coating her throat and putting a foul taste on her tongue.
She went light-headed, and fear kicked, hard and hot—but she didn’t collapse, didn’t convulse. And after a moment, the symptoms passed, though the smell remained. Either the gas was dissipating or it was Nightkeeper-specific. Risking it, she dropped her arm and took a shallow breath. Nothing happened. But it was one thing for her to breathe the tainted air, another for him. She had to get him out of there, but how?
“Dez?” She shook him, but didn’t get a response, pulled off his sunglasses and cracked an eyelid, but didn’t see anything but rolled-back white.
The ground beneath her picked up a faint vibration, followed seconds later by an engine hum. Shit. Even if nobody connected her and Dez to last night’s accident and the untraceable Jeep, a trip to the ER would raise way too many questions. But if he’d been gassed, the ER might be the best place for him. Her throat tightened as she thought of Anna wandering the halls of Skywatch with her eyes unfocused, her mind far away.
She shook him harder, fingers digging into the heavy muscles of his upper arms. “Come on! Wake up. We’ve got to move.” The trucks were getting closer.
He stirred. Groaned.
Relief slashed through her. “Dez!”
White gleamed through cracked eyelids; his mouth worked. “Son of a . . . fuck.”
“That about covers it,” she said as the trucks rounded the corner and the first one did a wheel waggle of surprise and slowed down. There were forest service markings on the doors of all three, tools in the back of the first two and a big generator-compressor combo in the third.
“I told you to run,” Dez slurred, cracking an eye to glare at her.
“I did. Just not in the direction you meant.” She grinned at him. Logic said she should have been terrified, which she was. But suddenly, on another level she felt more alive than she had in a long, long time. Maybe she was reacting to the gas after all. Except that instead of being foggy, she suddenly felt functional.
The techno-magic armbands picked up some static of radio traffic, reminding her to strip them off. She snagged his gun, too, just as truck numero uno turned off and rolled in their direction. The other two rumbled past and accelerated away. Working quickly, she safetied her .38 and dumped it in one of the big inner pockets of Dez’s jacket, which was too warm now, making her sweat. The heavy weight of the weapon pulled the coat askew until she balanced it off with his .44 on the other side.
“Come on.” She crouched, grabbed him under one arm and around the back of his neck and helped him sit up. His body was heavy, his skin smooth and warm. “I need you to play pukingly hungover for me. Got it?”
“No problem,” he slurred. “Son of a bitch left a trip wire, and . . .” His eyes rolled again and his head lolled to rest between her breasts.
New fear spurted through her as she realized that whatever the winikin had used this time, it was hitting harder, lasting longer. Keban doesn’t want him dead, she reminded herself, just slowed down for a few days. Then again, the winikin had also spent nearly a decade in a mental hospital.
“Are you okay?” The guy who got out of the truck was in his late twenties, sandy haired and fine boned. Wearing a gray-buff uniform with black stripes at the shoulders and pockets, and with a quick, jerky way of moving, he looked like a sandpiper picking its way across a beach.
Thinking fast, she dropped into fluttery female mode and gave him a wide-eyed, you’re-my-hero look. “Oh, thank you so much for stopping!”
He puffed up. “I’ve got a first aid kit in the truck, or I could call for an—”
“He’s not hurt, just hungover,” she cut in before he called in more sirens and flashing lights. “He swore he’d be fine for a hike, but . . .” She trailed off, sending him a ‘please-won’t-you-save-me’ moue. “Could you help me get him to the car?”
“I tole you I’m fiiine,” Dez slurred. “You want to hike, lesss get going.”
“Right,” she said to him while shooting a conspiratorial eye roll at the sandpiper. “We’re going. Straight back to the hotel.”
“Oh.” Rescue fantasies deflating, the spindly ranger nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a counterweight. But then his expression went dubious as he scanned the empty shoulder, then looked up to the plateau. “Your car isn’t all the way up there, is it? He looks kind of, uh, big.”
Not to mention that the ranger probably only hit one fifty after a heavy meal, her neck was already sore, and Dez was leaning heavily against her like he was settling in to stay. “How about you wait here with him, and I’ll go get the car?”
The sandpiper′s face brightened. “I’ve got water.”
“Perfect.” Together, they got Dez the dozen or so feet to the shade of the truck and propped him up against a rear tire that smelled faintly of dog piss. As she headed up the trail, she got a parting image of big, badass Snake Mendez being force-fed bottled water.
Not willing to bet that Keban was long gone, she kept a sharp watch on her surroundings as she retrieved the car, helped load Dez into it, thanked the sandpiper profusely, and got them on the road. Once they were rolling, she reholstered her .38 and headed back toward Farmington in case it turned out that they needed that ER, after all.
Then the shakes hit.
“Oh, shit.” She gripped the steering wheel two-handed as her stomach rolled sickly and her muscles knotted in a series of whole-body shudders that left her feeling disconnected from the vehicle, from everything, really.
What the hell was she doing? This was way out of her league, way beyond the adventure she had been looking for when she boarded the plane for Cancún. She was sneaking away from the cops—or at least away from a government official—for the second time in two days, and that so wasn’t her. This whole deal wasn’t her. Where
the Nightkeepers operated outside the system, she worked right smack in the middle of it. She had a Social Security number; she paid her taxes; she voted. She had a year-long lease on a third-floor apartment she rarely used, fifteen payments left on a spunky little Mazda, and an off-and-on lover who wanted to be much more. That was her world. This wasn’t.
Beside her, Dez’s breath rattled oddly in his chest.
Her hand shook as she reached for her armband.
“Don’t.” His eyes were still closed, his skin still gray, his voice a hard, painful-sounding rasp, but his words weren’t as slurred as before. “I’ll be fine in a few minutes. And if you call in the cavalry, this’ll turn into a clusterfuck.”
She told herself to ignore him and hit the panic button. Instead, she snapped, “You won’t be fine in a few minutes. This wasn’t the same as the powder.”
“It’s close enough, though stronger. Actually, it feels like a hell of a postmagic crash.” He cracked an eyelid; the whites had gone pink. “Just find me protein, carbs, and someplace to sleep it off. I’ll be fine once I recharge.”
“For all you know, your brain could be leaking inside that thick skull of yours.”
He reached across and touched her hand, brushing his fingertips across the inside of her wrist. “This isn’t like what happened to Anna.”
She could have held out against stubbornness. She had no defense against understanding. “Hands off,” she snapped.
He withdrew, lay back against the far door, and closed his eyes with a tired sigh. But his color was better, his voice stronger when he said, “Just find me some food and a bed. While I’m sawing logs, you can do your thing.”
Dump him on his people and go home, said her better sense. But beneath the fear was a thread of adrenaline, a stir of heat . . . and the knowledge that he needed her.
“You just don’t learn, do you, Montana?” she muttered. And she pulled into a Wendy’s drive-through and ordered one of everything.
With Dez snoring softly beside her, she got back on the road, called Lucius, got his voice mail, and left him a rundown on the latest. Then she picked a chain hotel and used her alternate ID to rent two rooms. When the clerk asked if she wanted to pay the extra for early check-in, she was startled to realize that it was just shy of eleven a.m.
She hadn’t even been around Dez a full day yet.
Returning to the car, she woke him up far enough to get him to his room. He leaned heavily on the wall as she swiped his key card and held it out to him, keeping a copy for herself in case she needed to get into his room. Like if he went catatonic. When the door opened, he grabbed the two big bags of Wendy’s that she held out to him, and lurched through, saying over his shoulder, “Give me six hours before you even think of knocking.” The door thunked solidly in her face.
Not letting herself be offended, and hoping to hell that she had made the right call, she left him and got to work.
Normally when she was off on a job, she liked to work in the hotel lobby or a café or something, surrounded by people and activity. But since she needed to be able to talk magic, she hit the vending machine for a Diet Coke and locked herself in her room to set up her computer and get down to business. She shot off a text to Lucius: Wheels down. Hit me up as bulletins warrant.
He bounced back a return almost immediately: Consider yourself hit. Meet me on Webcam. Got something for you.
“Finally, some good news.” She hoped.
When the Webcam went live, it showed the stone walls of the library and the first few rows of racked artifacts. Moments later, Lucius crutched his way into the picture, looking as tired and strung out as she felt. He sat for a second, then shook his head as if orienting. “Okay. Okay, I’m here.”
Uh-oh. She was afraid to ask, but she had to know. “Is the team back?”
He focused on her, his expression going rueful. “They’re okay. Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. In fact, it was over before they got there—they walked into an empty village. Rabbit’s friend, Cheech, had lived there with three of his brothers, but now . . . there’s no sign of any of them. Poof. Sixty, seventy people. Men, women, kids . . . just gone.” He paused. “The team found Cheech’s cell at the edge of the village, in a pile with a bunch of other personal shit. There was a little girl there, dead. Eight, maybe nine years old.”
“Oh.” Reese pushed aside her soda as her stomach knotted on the image. “Poor Rabbit.” She hadn’t gotten to know the youngest of the magi all that well—he had been in and out during her stay at Skywatch and had a territorial girlfriend—but she had the impression of a fiery but hardworking guy who was well endowed with both magic and opinions. She’d liked him instantly, and hurt for him now.
“He and Myrinne stayed down there.”
“How is Jade taking it?”
“She’s . . .” He exhaled. “Pretty broken up. But she’ll deal. She’s a fighter.”
Which was different from being a warrior, she knew. Jade wore a tough outer shell, but was highly empathetic and lacked the emotional shields that came with the warrior′s talent. But she had Lucius, who supported her in a thousand quiet ways, tried to send her off as strong as she could possibly be, and then waited behind, cursing his too-human healing rate and hoping—praying—she would come back safe. He didn’t put that on her, though, just as he didn’t try to coddle her, overprotect her, or guilt her into staying home. He was a good man. A good mate.
Reese had found herself studying the two of them together, not because theirs was one of the two human-mage pairings at Skywatch, but because it was so different from her own experiences with the opposite sex. “She’s lucky to have you,” she said softly.
“We’re lucky to have each other.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’ve got something for you. Several somethings, in fact. I spent last night tracking down info on the injection and the powder Keban had used on Dez previously. Once I had an idea of what was going on there, it wasn’t too hard to figure out the gas he was using today.”
Reese closed her eyes on a surge of relief. “Tell me Dez is going to be okay.”
Lucius nodded. “He’ll sleep it off on his own, but I found an antidote that will speed up the process and immunize him against future attacks.”
“Okay.” She breathed through a too-strong punch of relief. “Okay. That’s good.”
“I’ll shoot you the recipe in a minute—Natalie is transcribing it now. While we’re waiting on that, I’d like to tell you what I’ve found so far on these potions, see if you pick up on something I’ve missed.”
She gave him a “go ahead” finger wiggle. “Bring it on.” It wasn’t the first time one of the Nightkeepers had asked her to run through a pattern with them—they appreciated her special skills, especially given how much of their ancestral knowledge had been lost over the centuries.
“Well, the library came up dry, so I figured we must be dealing with bloodline-specific knowledge that Keban should’ve passed down to Dez, but didn’t. I read up on the serpents, trying to figure out if they had a hidden guardianship, like the way the star bloodline was responsible for protecting the library.” He shook his head. “If they did, they buried it well. But I found a reference that talked about how, around the turn of the first millennium, the members of the serpent bloodline left the Mayan Empire to establish a Nightkeeper presence among the native tribes to the north.”
Reese narrowed her eyes. “How far north?”
“This far.” Lucius tapped the stone table to indicate Skywatch. “They built the ruins later ascribed to the mysterious Chacoans and integrated into life up here. When the Conquistadors forced the other Nightkeepers out of the southern territories, the serpent bloodline helped them get resettled among their tribal allies. Hopi, mostly, though there were others.”
“Thus, all the serpent myths in this area.” It fit, Reese thought. It played. So why was she getting a low-grade itch that said there was more to the story?
Lucius nodded. “The Nightkeepers shared thei
r technology with their allies, which would have made enemy tribes seriously jealous. That could account for the inconsistency of snake myths among the tribes of the Southwest, where they’re either messengers for the gods or deceitful spirits that bring death and disease.”
Reese nodded. “Okay. So how does that tie in with what Keban’s been doing?”
“The native tribes didn’t practice magic in the same sense that the Nightkeepers did, but they discovered certain plants and other materials could impact the magic, especially that of the serpents, who relied so heavily on the senses of smell and taste. The first formula Keban used, the liquid he injected into Dez the night of the storm, somehow kick-started his powers. So far I’m drawing a blank there, which may mean it’s something the magi and winikin of the serpent bloodline kept to themselves.”
“If it was part of the serpents’ initiation into the magic, we don’t need it.” Dez already had more than his share.
He nodded. “For the other two potions, I looked for tribes that had ‘bad snake’ myths, and came up with a dozen or so candidates. I think the powder was a general antimagic charm, probably something that Keban kept on hand in case he ran up against a Nightkeeper, regardless of bloodline. Then, once he realized Dez was trying to stop him from getting the artifacts, he cooked up something specific to members of the serpent bloodline. Assuming I’ve called it right, the formula is similar to the powder but has a few additional ingredients . . . one of which is the New Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake.”
His eyes gained a glint that upped her pulse. “I take it that’s a regulated species?”
“It’s endangered at the state level, threatened at the federal level, and tough to find at any level. I’ve already got Carter looking into possible sources. He’ll e-mail you a list as soon as he’s pulled it together.” A low murmur off camera had Lucius looking up and away, then grinning. “Thanks, Nat.” To Reese, he said, “Okay, the recipe for the antidote is headed for your in-box. It’s part of the Hopi snake dance ritual, minus the two weeks of preparation and the actual snake-handling part.”
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