Storm Kissed n-6

by Jessica Andersen

  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 their 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.”

  Reese wrinkled her nose. “Glad to hear it.”

  There was motion at the corner of the screen, and Natalie—who was one of the two recent additions to the winikin and a former hotshot archaeologist in the outside world—came into view. She was bubbly, driven, and in many ways the opposite of her mate, JT. They made it work, though, with her softening his hard edges, him pushing her out of her comfort zone.

  And Reese really needed to stop analyzing relationships.

  “I had Sasha confirm the instructions,” Natalie said into the Webcam, “but call if you get stuck.”

  Reese suffered a spasm of mild horror. “I have to cook?”

  Natalie grinned. “If you can make tea, you can probably handle this one. The ingredients are pretty common. The black cohosh—aka black snakeroot—is native to the eastern part of the U.S. and probably would’ve been a high-value trade item back in the day, but you should be okay. If the health-food stores don’t have it, try a homeopath.”

  Reese pulled up the e-mail on her phone, saw that she’d received the promised file, and nodded. “Okay. Guess I’m going shopping.”

  But as she said her good-byes and shut down her laptop, she was very aware of a low-grade churn in her stomach and the feeling that she hadn’t asked Lucius exactly the right questions. She was missing something. And that was never a good sign.

  The cashier at the natural food store sent Reese a funny look as she rang up her purchases: snakeroot, sage, maize, dried beans, measuring cups and spoons, and an industrial-strength coffee grinder. At first Reese thought the girl might have recognized the ingredients for the snake ritual . . . but when she got the same sort of look at the convenience store where she loaded up on Ho Hos and Diet Coke, she started to suspect they were looking at the tired rag that had formerly been her jacket. She had brought a couple of clean shirts and underwear on what she had anticipated would be a short trip to locate Dez, and her tough combat pants looked okay despite what they had been through in the past twenty-four hours. Her coat, though, was torn and tired, and looked like what it was: city gear that had been dragged through the mud.

  “You’re rationalizing,” she said to herself, earning another leery look from the convenience store clerk. “Admit it. You want the leather.”

  She had parked near an upscale store that seemed to cater to either biker bitches that had money, or high rollers who wanted to look like biker bitches. Maybe both. Regardless, the mannequin in the window was wearing a hell of a jacket. Cropped in the front and dipping longer in the back, it was sleek and deceptively simple, with a square collar, off-center zip, and subtle studs on the sleeves—the good kind that wouldn’t scratch the shit out of furniture or flesh.

  Reese didn’t covet often or easily, but she was feeling it now. A piece of it was probably leftover adrenaline, another piece of nostalgia. But she was also cold, and would rather have her own coat than borrow Dez’s again. That had been far too . . . intimate. So, telling herself she would make it fast, she dumped her purchases in the car, stripped out of her bedraggled city coat and headed into the store.

  “Can I help you find anything, ma’am?” The sales clerk had dark hair, decent body art, and a serious case of muffin top.

  Reese pointed. “I want that.”

  She got an up-and-down, and a cautious, “It’s handmade and one of a kind.”

  “And?”

  The clerk named a price that wasn’t nearly as bad as Reese had been expecting based on what it would’ve gone for in LA or Denver. Besides, Strike had said “unlimited expenses,” she thought with a grin, though it was doubtful she would turn in this particular receipt.

  “Do you want to get it, or do you want me to?” she asked Muffin Top.

  Five minutes later—and very conscious of the time, despite Lucius’s assurances that Dez would sleep it off even without the antidote—she slipped into what felt like a second skin. The lining was cool and slick, the cut somehow ruthlessly fitted without restricting her motion, and the longer tail at the back would cover her .38. Even better, it had hidden vents and a thin, high-tech insulation that—at least according to Muffin Top—would keep her comfortable in temperatures anywhere between frosted margarita and lightly toasted. Whatever that meant.

  Reese handed over her backup plastic. “I won’t need a bag.”

  As she drove back to the hotel with the windows cranked down so she wouldn’t sneeze her head off from the sage and other stuff, she couldn’t shake the slightly queasy feeling that she always got when she spent more than a couple of hundred dollars on something that wasn’t for work, wasn’t essential. It had been a long time since she’d been a street kid, but those neural pathways were set for life.

  I thought you had outgrown the leather phase? asked an inner voice that wasn’t her own.

  “The other one isn’t warm enough, and it looks like crap,” she retorted, then stopped when she realized she was arguing with herself. “Shit.”

  She was an independent operator. She would wear what she damn well pleased, and come and go on her own schedule, and she wouldn’t let anyone make her feel guilty about it. But although that logic sounded good, she was still going around in her head when she got back to the hotel, making it a relief to shove those problems to the back of her mind and ignore them while she focused on the job at hand. And if a whisper at the back of her brain said that things with the Nightkeepers—and Dez—had stopped being a job and become something more, she ignored that, too.

  When she opened the door to his room, overheated hotel air wafted out, prickling her pores. A trail of clothing started just past the bathroom: coat, then tank, then cargo pants, socks, and boots. Faint snores came from the bed, where a huge mound of spare blankets and comforters moved rhythmically, more a mountain of bedclothes than any recognizable human being. Despite Lucius’s reassurances, worry nagged as she hauled her purchases up from the car, using a side door so the desk clerk wouldn’t give her any “no cooking in the rooms” static.

  Then she stripped off her new leather, plugged in the in-room coffeemaker, and got cooking. By late afternoon, she had a feeling that poor Mr. Coffee had brewed his last pot—the upper chamber was gunked up and there was some gnarly sludge burned to the bottom of the p
ot—but she had about a cup of mossy-smelling syrup that, when she tried it, actually didn’t taste all that bad. More, it made her head spin and sparked warm liquid shimmers low in her belly.

  “Whoa. Potent stuff.” Weaving a little, she left her room and headed down the hall. She hesitated for a second at Dez’s door. Then she crossed her fingers, sent a small, wordless prayer to whatever higher power might be listening, and let herself into his room.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  On one level, Dez knew he was dreaming, that his mind was rebooting as his body healed and his magic rebounded. On another level, though, he was twenty-one again, and more jittery than he’d expected to be as he pushed through the door to the pawnshop a couple of blocks down from his and Reese’s apartment.

  He relaxed—some, anyway—when he saw he had timed it right: Thin-faced, cadaverous Zeke was leaning on the glass display counter and there was no sign of Afternoon Bob, who couldn’t keep a secret for shit.

  “Hey.” Zeke grinned, showing a glinting gold incisor that narrowed to a point, tagging him as a former Cobra, one of the lucky few who had gotten out and been badass enough—and useful enough—to not wind up dead in the process. “Got something good for me?”

  He had been on the receiving end of a couple of Dez’s recent jobs, which was pretty much glorified messengering of merchandise from point A to B, cash from B to A. Reese called it laundering—she had been getting tighter and tighter about that stuff alongside worrying about Hood’s getting out of jail. But the way Dez saw it, he had a plan for Hood, and the transfers weren’t hurting anybody—they were bringing high-value stuff into the neighborhood, and the jobs were low-risk for top-notch pay.

  He shook his head, playing it casual. “I’m not selling today. I was thinking about buying something.”

  “Ah.” Zeke got his “I smell a profit” look. “Something like this?” He tapped the case under his scrawny elbows, where the higher-end jewelry lived. His finger landed right over the snake ring Reese had been drooling over the other week.