Instead, he looked old, sad, and defeated. And nothing like the man Dez had primed himself to kill.
“Shit.” He scowled through the bars at his captive. “Now what?” His prior self would have stuck stubbornly to the original plan. The better man he was trying to be thought it might be safe to bring him back to Skywatch, after all. If he was this far gone, not even Rabbit would be able to get at the truth that needed to stay hidden.
Still looking off to the side, as if unable to meet his eyes, Keban held out the wrapped bundle and mumbled unintelligibly.
Dez hesitated. Then, dampening the shield spell so it wouldn’t fry either of them, he moved in closer. “You want me to take it?”
The winikin jerked his chin in what might have been a nod, and went to work on the rotting cloth. Within moments, he had unwrapped a fist-sized chunk of white crystal carved into a head. The face was Mayan, the accoutrements those of a god with matching “T” shapes inscribed on both cheeks.
Dez didn’t recognize the god or the glyph, but something inside him gave a liquid tug of longing. It wasn’t the same as the way the black idol made him feel—this was softer and more grounded, almost sexual—but the two sensations were definitely in the same ballpark. This was another piece of the puzzle, no question about it.
He held out a hand, careful to stay on his side of the shield spell. “Give it to me.”
Keban offered the bust, hands shaking and then sagging as he lost strength. Dez reached for the carving, stepping forward automatically to catch it before it fell.
The moment he made contact, power flashed through him, paralyzing him momentarily.
And in that terrible, vulnerable second, Keban’s eyes focused and his fingers clamped on Dez’s wrist to yank him closer. The winikin’s eyes flashed cruelly, and he was utterly focused and in control as he held up his free hand and blew a puff of white powder through the latticework of the lightning shield.
Dez yanked away as the fine particles peppered his face. “Son of a—” Pain lashed through him, starting at his nose and mouth and then racing through his body. His muscles seized up, his senses overloaded, and he doubled over in agony.
Gods! He fought for control, but crashed to the ground instead. The white god’s head rolled away from his spasming fingers and electricity arced through him as his powers raged, veering and colliding. The shield spell shorted out, freeing Keban, who looked straight and strong, and nothing like the broken old man he had pretended to be.
He moved to stand over Dez. Pulling a wide-barreled gun from the small of his back, he shook his head, expression terrifyingly blank. “You couldn’t just meet me during the fucking solstice, could you? You had to try and be the noble motherfucking Triad mage. Well, this’ll slow you down a little.” He took aim at Dez’s kneecap.
Fuck! Dez rolled as automatic gunfire split the air. Through the haze of pain and the spinning disorientation that had come from the drugged powder, it took him a second to realize that the barrage hadn’t come from the winikin’s gun. It had been one of the MAC-10s the magi used for jade-tip combat.
Backup! Dez hadn’t wanted it, didn’t know how they had found him . . . but he was damn glad for the help as the autopistol chattered again.
Cursing, Keban grabbed the god’s head and dove through a doorway as bullets chewed into the thousand-year-old masonry.
Lurching to his feet, Dez shouted, “Don’t let him get away!” He stumbled after the winikin, trying to summon his warrior’s magic as he ran, but got sparks instead of a shield or lightning. He couldn’t sense Keban’s heat signature, but he could feel the tug of the white statue’s magic, headed toward the Hubble Site at the edge of the Aztec Ruin. Pulling a small flashlight from his heavy jacket, he flicked it on. “This way!” Ducking, he veered into a tunnel he had scouted earlier.
A single set of bootfalls pounded behind him, closing the gap as he burst out of the tunnel into the open space separating the North Ruin and the Hubble Site. But Keban wasn’t headed for the second ruin. He’d made it to his vehicle.
Dez skidded to a stop, swearing over the roar of an engine as rear lights bounced hard and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
“Son of a bitch.” He spun toward his backup, aiming the flashlight. “We have to—” He broke off, the air jamming his lungs when he saw, not a Nightkeeper, but a stranger. A woman.
And a hell of a woman, at that.
The dark-haired beauty was fully decked out for a Nightkeeper op in black Kevlar-impregnated combat pants cut trim across her waist and hips; a tight black thermal shirt under body armor that didn’t entirely camouflage her curves; a weapons belt loaded with guns, jade-tipped ammo, and a good-sized combat knife; and a gleaming black-and-chrome communications band around her upper arm that was part tech-ware, part magic.
The look packed a hell of punch, as did the shock of suddenly acquiring a new teammate, but then she took another step and her face caught the light.
And time. Fucking. Stopped.
Familiar amber-whiskey eyes framed in long, dark lashes turned a face he had labeled simply “beautiful” into something else entirely. Suddenly he saw the high cheekbones he had once ascribed to suburban royalty, the pert nose and dented chin that he’d called pixieish when he wanted to tease, and the elegantly curved mouth he had no right to dream about.
“Reese,” he whispered, heart stuttering. Logic said that he was either hallucinating or flat on his ass unconscious, because there was no way in hell Reese Montana would be wearing Nightkeeper gear and looking to back his ass up. She hated him, had cut him off, and with damn good reason.
Yet there she was. Which meant this had to be a dream. But in his dreams her hair was its natural blue-black, not a warm copper-streaked brunette. And in his dreams, she was looking at him the way she used to, before the storm and the star demon, and his mad slide into darkness. Not glaring at him like he was something she’d found stuck on the bottom of one of her silver-toed boots.
“Reese?” Shock seemed to have reduced him to that one syllable as it started connecting that this might not be a hallucination, after all.
“Guess they were right. You’re not dead.” She shoved her spare autopistol against his chest and stalked past him, headed for the second ruin. Over her shoulder, she shot, “I’m going after the winikin. And I’m not waiting for you.”
Keban. The god’s head. Oh, shit.
His warrior′s talent took over, getting his feet moving while his brain tried to catch up. Being a Nightkeeper was all about priorities, and the winikin was getting away with the statue, so he did his damnedest to focus as he followed her to a thin stand of trees beyond the ruins, where she had stashed her vehicle. But he stuttered to a halt at the edge of the clearing at the sight of her ride.
She was driving an unassuming Jeep Compass with a generic silver exterior that gave zero indication of the rabid, snorting horses under the hood, and the other mods that had been retrofitted. He knew about them because he’d done some of the work himself.
Jesus, gods. She was wearing combat clothes and driving the newest and fastest of the Nightkeepers’ cars. If he could’ve crafted a wet dream, that would be it, except for the part where she despised him. Because for all that he had remade himself, he was still the guy who had broken her heart, and worse.
“Get in,” she snapped, slinging herself into the driver′s side.
The engine roared like a racecar as he took shotgun and strapped himself in. He stared across at her. “Holy shit . . . Reese?”
“Not now.” She hit the gas and aimed for the road.
But as the acceleration punched him back in his seat, he pointed northwest. “He’s headed that way.” When she narrowed her eyes, he added, “I can sense the carving.”
She nodded tightly, spun the wheel, and sent them overland.
The next few minutes passed in a shuddering blur as they chased the winikin along a series of fire access roads that eventually joined the main road, where Reese muscled the heav
y vehicle onto the tarmac and accelerated, two-handing the steering wheel as the odometer edged past ninety.
Dez stared at her badass pixie profile, the hard line of her jaw. And wished to hell he could have a do-over. “You came after me.”
That was all he could think, that she had somehow figured out that he was alive, gone searching for him, and been recruited by the Nightkeepers. But why had she been looking? He would have thought she’d be glad to let him stay dead.
“I was hired to find you,” she corrected coolly, staring straight ahead and handling the dark curves with grim proficiency.
“Oh.” Which put a different spin on things. Due to the Triad magic, Strike wouldn’t have been able to find him with magic, so the king must’ve gone old-school and hired the only bounty hunter he’d ever met in person. Then, once he figured out that she and Dez had a history and she knew most of the Nightkeepers’ legends, he’d brought her into things all the damn way. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath.
“Wrong religion, Mendez. Or so I’m told.”
“Reese—” he began, but she cut him off.
“Are we gaining on him?”
Focus. Prioritize. “Yeah. Look for a right up ahead. He’s off the main road.” He didn’t know how he knew that.
She accelerated around the next turn. “Good. This baby will out off-road the crap out of his POS rental in a—shit!”
He barely had time to curse at the sight of the empty rental car parked across the fucking road right in front of them. Then they were on top of it, going too fast to stop. Reese locked the brakes as they flew toward the dust-covered sedan. But it wouldn’t be enough.
“Grab something!” he snapped, shooting a hand across the cab and pulling her seat belt extra tight as he called on his drug-depleted magic for a half-assed shield spell that crackled to misfiring electric life.
They hit with a slewing jolt of impact, a roar of destruction, and the muted gunshots of the airbags that thwumped into them from the front and sides. Dez’s head snapped on his neck and he tasted blood. Keban’s abandoned vehicle flew off the road and into a shallow ditch on one side, but the Compass caromed the other way and headed straight for the guardrail that marked off a steep embankment. Beyond was only darkness.
Reese’s eyes locked on his for a second; he saw a flash of grief and heard her voice crack when she said, “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
“Story of our lives. Hang on.” Spitting blood in sacrifice, he shouted, “Pasaj och!” A deeper barrier connection slammed through him, lighting him up and pouring out of him in a surge. He did his damnedest to fill the vehicle’s interior with shield magic as the Compass hit the guardrail, peeled through it, went airborne for a few seconds . . .
And fell.
CHAPTER FIVE
The SUV plummeted and hit with a bone-jarring impact, but instead of pain and the crash of breaking glass, Reese found herself surrounded by a sizzling noise and a whirl of lightning arcs. The blue-white strobes of Dez’s shield magic—which wasn’t like anything else she had seen in her five-day crash course at Skywatch—showed a rocky embankment that fell away from them on a steep slant, with jagged rocks at the bottom, trees beyond that. Not good.
Then the Compass bounced and all she could do was hang on white knuckled as the vehicle slewed sideways and rolled—wham, wham, wham—three dizzying revolutions that spun her head over ass and left her fighting for breath. They landed upright—thank Christ—and skidded down the incline, finally thudding into a pine tree that splintered and rained needles on them, but held.
It fucking held. And in doing so, it saved their lives.
In an instant that seemed to take forever, the crash chaos faded and the world went still.
And Dez’s magic skimmed across her skin like a caress.
She closed her eyes, trying not feel it, to feel him sitting way too close beside her. By the time she left Skywatch, she had almost convinced herself that this was just a job, that she was doing what anyone like her would do given the chance to be part of the whole save-the-world thing.
But that was bullshit: This was about Dez, pure and simple. That was where anything “simple” ended, though, because she didn’t have a clue if she’d come after him to get some sort of final closure, because she still felt like she owed him, because Strike said the Nightkeepers needed him, or because some weak, perpetually nineteen-year-old part of her wanted to believe he had gone back to being the boy she had loved.
It almost hadn’t mattered, either, because she’d nearly killed both of them doing the high-speed-chase thing. She was supposed to have outgrown this shit. All of it.
“Reese!” He dragged off his belt, took his knife to the airbags, slapped on the overhead light and loomed over her, his eyes worried and so damn familiar they peeled back the years in an instant. “Gods. Are you okay?”
She swallowed hard and whispered, “Yeah. I’m fine.” But she was suddenly having trouble breathing, and it wasn’t because of the crash.
Intellectually, she had accepted that he was alive, that he had come into his full powers, not just as a warrior but as a Triad mage. And the five days she had spent at Skywatch had helped her get over her awe—or most of it, anyway—when it came to the Nightkeepers she had grown up dreaming about. The magi were big and glossy, yes, and they had powers she didn’t. But on another level, they were normal people. Sasha shared her sweet tooth, Alexis had a thing for shoes, and Nate had kicked her ass twice on Grand Theft Auto before admitting that he’d been a game developer in his previous life. Strike was more distant, and seemed troubled, but she had gotten him talking baseball one evening and he’d seemed grateful for the diversion. Over the past week the magi had become acquaintances, some even friends, and she had thought, Okay, I can do this. I can deal with seeing Dez.
But she couldn’t, she realized now. Because thinking about seeing him again wasn’t the same as actually seeing him again.
She hadn’t been prepared for the way the Triad spell had rendered him hairless, like his bloodline totem. His scalp was sleek instead of trimmed to stubble, his jaw unshadowed, his brows smooth. Where the sleeve of his jacket rode up as he leaned over her, his muscular forearm gleamed in the dashboard lights, which caught the edge of his bloodline mark: a gape-mouthed, plumed serpent. And she hadn’t been braced for that. She hadn’t been expecting him to be wearing army surplus that looked far more like the second-hands they had scrounged as kids than the slick designers he had worn in later years. And she sure as hell hadn’t been prepared for the way the years—or maybe the magic?—had honed his wide cheekbones, ridged nose, and sardonic mouth. How, when he lifted a hand to touch her cheek as if needing to prove to himself that she was really there, the fine tremor in his hand would make her heart shudder.
“Damn it, Dez,” she said. She wasn’t sure whether she would have invited him closer or warned him away, because her throat locked.
The moment spun out between them.
Then a car roared by up on the road, snapping her back to reality. The engine noise didn’t change and there was no flash of brakes—the driver had either managed to miss the signs of a crash, or was pretending to—but the next one might not. “We can’t stay here,” she said softly.
He started to say something, then thought better of it and nodded instead. A shadow shifted across his expression, distancing him; it was his warrior’s talent coming on line, she thought, blunting his emotions and shifting his priorities. Or maybe she just wanted to think that.
“I’ll see how bad the damage is.” He shouldered open his door and hauled himself up and out. Winter air rushed in to fill the void as he headed around to the back of the Compass, where the darkness swallowed him up.
She knew she should go with him, but instead sagged back against the seat, head spinning with the realization that she was in big trouble. She had told herself she was taking the job partly to prove how far she had come. Instead it was clear that she hadn’t changed at all,
not deep down inside: She was still the same adrenaline junkie who had damn near self-destructed.
Shaking her head in an effort to rattle some sense back into her brain succeeded only in waking a dull throb of a headache and making her neck twinge in protest. The pain got her up and moving, though.
The Compass was an accordioned mess of spider-webbed glass and skewed wheels, lit by a glowing foxfire spell that followed Dez like a ghost, floating near his shoulder as he tried a crumpled door, muttering under his breath.
She touched the high-tech armband that connected her to Skywatch. “I’ll call in, get us a ’port back to the compound,” she said, sticking with the practicalities. They had lost Keban and killed the car. It was time to fall back and regroup.
“Don’t,” Dez said sharply, turning to face her. The foxfire trailed behind his shoulder, throwing his face into shadow.
The word carried the punch of a command, but she lifted her chin and met the darkness that hid his eyes. “Newsflash: I don’t work for you.”
His face went unreadable. “Don’t turn me in this time. Please.”
The jab lumped a hard pressure in her chest, as did him ducking her question. “I’ve got a job to do.”
“Keban is my responsibility.” He paused, the shadows deepening. “Go home, Reese. This isn’t your fight.”
She shouldn’t have been disappointed . . . but, damn it, she was. She had told herself not to make excuses for why he had let her believe he was dead, not to think that the Triad spell was what had stopped him from reaching out to her because she wasn’t a mage like him. Strike and the others believed that her long-ago brush with the magic had marked her, putting her under the gods’ notice and making her part of the fight. More, they thought that she and Dez might have been destined mates, and that the gods were trying to make things right now by sparking the coincidences that had brought them together once more.
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