“Which left the jaguars with the question of what to do with the rest of the serpents. So they sent them north as a ‘reward’”—Reese finger-quoted the word—“for their loyalty.” It fit. It played. And she wished it didn’t, because she could seriously use a break from thinking about the serpents and their ambitions.
Over the next couple of hours, they used the new info to narrow down the list of possible sites for Iago’s mountain temple. With Strike’s ability to teleport severely limited, the magi would be able to check out only five or six of the most likely sites. But even selecting for mountains with Mayan or Aztec connections plus a snake legend left them with fifty-two possibles and nothing more to go on, really. Reese’s temper sharpened as her rumbling stomach escalated from twinges to a bad-tempered mutter.
“There’s bread in the bowl over there.” Without looking up from the codex he was translating, which had a slim chance of being able to help Strike, Lucius made a vague gesture behind him. There, a carved stone jaguar fountained water from its mouth to gather in a bowl between its paws, while a second bowl held maize cakes. Both were always fresh and fully replenished.
“The magical bread-and-water deal is cool, but I was thinking more along the lines of a decent doughnut.” She hadn’t had a really great doughnut—plain, with just a little crunch around the edges—since arriving at Skywatch.
“Would Belgian waffles count?”
She jumped at the sound of Dez’s voice, and her edginess smoothed out some when she saw him standing in the doorway with a picnic cooler. “With whipped cream?”
“Freshly made, plus strawberries. Not to bring down the room, but apparently, Sasha cooks up a storm when she’s upset.”
Reese sobered. “I wish we had something that would help.”
“That wasn’t a complaint.” He crossed to her and kissed her cheek.
She leaned into him, closing her eyes for a second, then realizing that was a bad idea when fatigue washed through her. He was warm and solid, and smelled like breakfast and the outdoor air. In another lifetime, they would have woken up together and made leisurely love, then made breakfast together, sneaking kisses and copping feels in the process. But it wasn’t reality, she knew—she was pretty sure neither of them could cook. Not to mention that they had a world to save, and she was stuck. Sighing, she straightened away from him. “Let’s eat.”
They cleared a section of the stone table and laid out the feast he had brought—not just the waffles, but fluffy eggs, toast, and a thermos of coffee for Lucius and one of tea for her, along with a two-liter of Diet Mountain Dew and a plate of brownies that he left in the cooler with a mock-stern glare. “Those are for later. Or at least wait until I’m out the door before you dig in.”
She flipped him a salute, and made do with a waffle piled with enough whipped cream and syrupy strawberries to make him wince.
Breakfast was a brief but lively meal, with Jade and Natalie joining in halfway through. Dez caught the researchers up on the battle preparations, including the welcome news that Rabbit had gotten in contact with an older brother of his makol-abducted friend, Cheech. The older brother, who worked in Mexico City and was far more mainstream than his relatives, had heard about the village and was frantic for his family. When Rabbit, posing as a member of a secret U.S. government agency, had “recruited” him as a local asset to help locate the guerilla group responsible for the village raids, he had jumped at the chance. With the help of several trusted friends, he was redistributing the magic sensors throughout Mexico City; built atop the Aztec’s capital city, the backfilled lake region was where Iago typically hung out. “It won’t give us much warning,” Dez finished, “but that’s better than none.”
Reese squelched her instinctive bristle, well aware that her pissiness wasn’t aimed at him. She hated that the patterns weren’t coming this time, when it mattered so damn much. When they figured out the connection between the serpents and the Xibalbans, she had been so sure it would point them toward Iago’s hideout. And maybe it would, but not fast enough . . . and they were running out of time.
Lucius outlined what they had so far, finishing with, “If Strike could ’port us—”
“He can’t,” Dez said flatly. “As it is, Rabbit’s going to have to ride shotgun inside his head to get us down south when we figure out where we need to be.” He said “when” but Reese heard “if.”
“Then I should get back to work on this.” Lucius tapped the codex he’d been translating. “We need our teleporter back in action.”
“We need to find the mountain,” Dez corrected.
“Exactly,” Reese agreed, chasing a last forkful of waffle. “Which means that we need to get some magi down to the potential sites to sniff around.”
But as Lucius moved to the other end of the table, where he’d been working, Dez said, “No, I mean that I need you to stop dividing your efforts and focus on the mountain. Not Lord Vulture, the serpents, or Strike’s illness. Find. Me. That. Mountain.”
Reese’s stomach knotted and the breath backed up in her lungs. His eyes held regret . . . but she thought she saw something else there too, something hard and implacable, almost daring her to argue, as if he would welcome the fight, the excuse to push her away. She knew that look, though she hadn’t seen it in a long time. Don’t overreact, she told herself. You’re tired and frustrated. What was more, like a cheater’s wife imagining another woman’s perfume or a junkie’s mother searching her kid’s room, she was primed to see problems where they may not exist. “We need Strike’s help,” she said carefully. “He’s our best bet of narrowing down the search.”
Dez shook his head. “Find another way.” Impatience tightened his face. “There’s a difference between exploring all the avenues and getting stuck in a dead end. And—” He broke off. “Shit. Sorry.” He leaned back, exhaling. “This sucks. I hate having to make this call, but someone has to. We need that mountain, guys. We’ve got to get to Iago before he activates the serpent staff.”
It was a good apology, good logic. But was it the whole story or only the tip of a lurking iceberg? Stop it, she told herself.
“You’re right.” Lucius sat heavily. “I know you’re right. It’s just . . . Shit.” He scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “No. You’re right. I’ll stop buzzing around. Damn it to hell.” He hadn’t said it, but Reese knew he was hoping that curing Strike might somehow help Anna, who still lay unconscious—not getting any worse, but not getting better, either.
Dez nodded. “Thanks. I hate having to make the call, but . . . thanks.” He paused. “We okay?” He directed the question at both of them, but he was looking at Reese.
She hesitated, then nodded. “We’re okay,” she said softly, and told herself to believe it. But as he collected the trash and cooler—leaving the soda and brownies behind—and headed out, her stomach stayed uneasy, her instincts prickling.
Ten minutes after he left, though, they got the break they needed.
“Got it,” Lucius hissed triumphantly, eyes gleaming. “I’ve fucking got it.”
Reese’s heart jolted. She had been running scenarios while waiting on hold for the past ten minutes—way longer than it should have taken her contact to check an order for the one rare ingredient found in the makol amulet: a certain type of snub-nosed snake. Now she hung up and crowded in beside him as relief spiraled through her. “Show me.”
His laptop showed a photo of an ancient ruined city with a main street, offshoots, a shit ton of building footprints, a few more complete structures, and two huge rubble mounds that had been partly restored back to pyramids. A modern suburb sprawled in the near distance—was that a Wal-Mart behind the pyramid?—and mountains loomed in the background.
“That’s Mexico City,” he said. “And this”—he indicated the ruin—“is Teotihuacan. It’s not Aztec or Maya, which is why it wasn’t a primary focus of our search. It was a sort of spiritual tourist attraction for the Aztec, though, kind of the way we treat their ruin
s now. And you see these mountains?” He highlighted the distant peaks. “Moctezuma built temples on them. When you draw lines connecting the temples with the pyramids of Teotihuacan, it measures out the Long Count.”
“Aztec temples that refer to the Mayan calendar predicting the end date.” Reese nodded. “That fits with what we’re looking for.”
“So does this.” Lucius did the tap-tap thing and brought up a line drawing of a temple made of upright pillars carved into gape-mouthed serpents. “Got this from a Spanish missionary’s journal. These are the same three mountains back in the mid–fifteen hundreds.” When he zoomed out, the temple was shown located atop the middle of three mountains, with other temples hinted at on the other two, a ruin roughed into the foreground. “This,” he said, “is the one on the left in close to real time.” He tapped and the line drawing was replaced by a bird’s-eye photograph of sparse tree cover and a jumbled ruin. Tap. “The one on the right.” Another greened-out photo, another temple footprint. Tap. “The middle.” Green. But no ruin, not even a shadowy depression or some broken rock to mark where one might have been. “Lower down, sure, the forests can grow over anything in zero time flat. But up there? We should see something . . . unless it’s been deliberately hidden. Like on another plane.”
Reese nodded, pulse upping a notch. “Works for me. Let’s—” Her phone rang with a digital bleat; it was the snake guy. She answered, “Montana here.”
“Got the info here,” he said in accented English. “The guy’s name was M. Zuma, and they were shipped to a cantina in Pachuca.” He rattled off the address. “That help?”
“It does. I’ll put a thank-you in the mail tomorrow.”
“I take PayPal.”
“Of course you do.” What self-respecting black marketer didn’t these days? She wrote down the info, shaking her head, but as she hung up, she shot a hard-edged grin at Lucius. “M. Zuma bought three of those snub-nosed snakes last week, and has bought a couple of dozen over the past few months, all for delivery to a bar in Pachuca. How close is that to your mountain?”
“Damn close.”
“Okay, let’s pull together all the info we can find on this thing, and I’ll take it to Dez while you get back to work on that codex. And let’s not tell Dez he was right, okay?” But she was grinning as she said it, because what mattered was that they had found Coatepec Mountain . . . and they might have a fighting chance after all.
By noon of the solstice day, when the full team assembled in the great room and the briefing got under way, Dez had the beginnings of a plan and a hell of a stress headache.
The migraine had hit him the second he accepted the first of the fealty oaths: Strike’s. He suspected the shit hurt because the power that had come with the oaths—a strange and vibrant sort of feeling in the depths of his chest—wasn’t balanced by the responsibilities that came with the true kingship. Sasha had taken the edge off the headache, bringing it down to a dull roar. She hadn’t been able to do anything about the stress, though.
He wasn’t sure if he’d been too young, too stupid, or too firmly under the star demon’s control when he led the Cobras, but he didn’t remember it being this complicated. Back then, when he gave an order somebody got it done. Simple. This, on the other hand, was anything but simple. He was trying to coordinate a dozen magi who were waiting for him to screw something up, along with a bunch of winikin who weren’t sure they liked each other, never mind him. Strike was shaky and Anna was barely hanging on, which meant that the people closest to them were distracted. And Reese hadn’t said anything, but he had seen her flinch when he cracked down on Lucius. She seemed okay now, but it had put him on edge.
He couldn’t vet his orders through her, didn’t intend to—he’d been put in place partly because he was a colder-blooded leader than Strike, and he needed to be that guy. But it worried him. Hang on, baby, he urged her as she briefed the others on the discovery of Coatepec Mountain. We’ve just got to get through today, and things will settle down. He hoped.
“We should have a new set of updated images in the next thirty minutes,” she was saying, having taken over the briefing so Lucius could stay in the library. “One of my contacts thinks he can get us some penetrating radar shots as well, which could give us a better idea of the temple’s footprint, maybe even a hint at the tunnels mentioned in the missionary’s journal.” She sent it back to Dez with a nod.
To Nate, who had the ability to shape-shift into a powerful man-sized hawk called the Volatile, he said, “Once we get in there, I want you up flying recon.”
“Alexis and I are on that.”
“Not Alexis. I want you to take Patience.” Very aware of the low mutterings, he held up a hand. “I know that means splitting up two mated pairs. But think about it logically. The makol can sense Alexis’s chameleon shield because it’s a spell, but they can’t detect Patience when she goes invisible, because that’s an inborn talent. Which means she and Nate, invisible, can take recon footage without being seen or sensed, and potentially blasted out of the sky.” He thought about asking if they were cool with that, but didn’t, because this wasn’t a democracy. Moving on, he said, “We’ll ’port into this clearing here.” He indicated a spot on the satellite image being projected on the big flat screen, and glanced at Strike. The king sat beside Leah, gray-faced but otherwise looking okay. “You’re confident you can make the jump?” Not like they had another option. There wasn’t enough time for them to get to the mountain any other way.
The king nodded. “Yeah. Rabbit’s going to do the driving. We’ve done a few practice hops, and we’re good to go.”
“We’ll use the clearing as a staging area,” Dez said, because there was really no point in dwelling on the teleport. It would work because it had to work. “From there, we’ll monitor the recon and figure whether we can ’port into the temple, whether we’ll have to fight our way in, or if there’s a third option, maybe using the tunnels.” He continued, hitting the necessary points and then tagging the warriors with their areas of responsibility, keeping it vague because the whole damn plan was too damn foggy. He didn’t like how much of it was going to come down to last-minute decisions and thinking on the fly. “That’ll do it for now,” he said, and dismissed them.
As the others filtered out, Reese came up beside him. “Nice job.” At his sidelong look, she lifted a shoulder. “I’m not a big fan of breaking up the mated pairs, but I can see the logic. And the rest of it is as good as it’s going to get, I think.”
“All thanks to you and Lucius finding Coatepec.”
“I wish we could’ve done better—a map of the tunnels, a cure for Strike, something more concrete than a vanishing temple.”
“Well, a vanishing temple is all we have to go on at the moment.” And he was stalling. He took a deep breath, knowing what he had to do next . . . and that she wasn’t going to like it one bit. He had even tried to talk himself out of it, but his warrior ’s instincts, which in the wake of the oath ceremony had become so powerful they were almost tangible, said: This is the only way. The right way.
Hopefully, she would understand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As Dez fell silent, no doubt running through the plan yet again in his head, Reese turned to watch the winikin, who had started bringing in the heavy plastic crates that contained jade-tipped ammo, and the high-and low-tech communication devices that the Nightkeepers would be taking with them. Catching sight of the box containing the computer stuff, she said, “I assume you’ll want me on the satellite?” Computer work wasn’t her favorite, but she was good at it.
“Actually, I’m going to have you stay here and run this end of the uplink.”
She turned and rolled her eyes at him. “Like hell you are. Try again.” But then she faltered, because he didn’t look like he was teasing. In fact, he looked wary, as though he knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to say. Which meant it was for real, and made her stomach give an unsteady churn.
Voice too se
rious, he said, “Having you back here will let Lucius keep working until the last possible second, and it’ll give us two sets of very good eyes analyzing the recon footage with Skywatch’s equipment.”
Staring at him, she tried to see past the wariness to the truth below. She wasn’t sure what she found, but it wasn’t good. “This isn’t about equipment or the recon,” she said slowly. “What’s really going on here?”
He hesitated, then glanced around to make sure nobody else was in earshot. Lowering his voice to a near whisper, but sounding far more like the Dez she knew, he said, “I don’t feel good about this, Reese. There are too many damn unknowns, too many gaps in the plan.” When she drew breath, he held up a hand. “I’m not trying to box you in or overprotect you, or if I am, it’s for my own benefit.”
She told herself not to overreact. “Because you’d be worried about me? That’s thin, Mendez.”
“It’s more than that.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. “My damn head isn’t just killing me, it’s stuffed full. I’m trying to juggle too many pieces of intel right now, and I’m afraid that if I get distracted, even for a second, I’m going to drop the wrong one at exactly the wrong moment, make the wrong decision, and get someone killed. Or, worse, get us all killed.”
She saw the truth in his eyes, read it in the trickle of energy between them. “Then let me help.”
“I would, I swear. But you’ve never been in one of these things before. Take the bloodiest gang skirmish you can imagine and triple it, and then imagine that everybody on the other side keeps getting back up and walking back into the line of fire. Take Iago as you saw him in the ice cave and make him ten times more powerful, because he’ll be on his own turf and channeling the solstice. And then put the Nightkeepers in the middle of that. Yeah, we’ll be amped up on the solstice, too, but we’re going to be making it up as we go along, and we’ll probably be fighting our asses off the whole way.”
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