Cara took a couple of steps toward him. “Do you need something? Food? Help back to your cottage?” As much as she tried not to be a winikin, she was a nurturer at heart. Not that she would thank him for saying it, even if he could get a coherent sentence through the pounding beat of magic that filled his head.
“No. I’m fine,” he managed, though he didn’t think any of them were buying it. “Just need a bathroom.”
He made it upstairs to the one on the mansion’s main floor, locked the door, and turned on the water in the sink to cover any telltale noises. Then he yanked his knife, blooded his palms, and sank to the tiled floor opposite the john, his body going heavy and lax as he focused inward, knowing what he had to do and sensing that he was running out of time, the channel of communication threatening to fade if he didn’t get it right.
Concentrating so hard that sweat popped down his spine and chilled against the cool marble of the bathroom wall, he thought of the eccentrics, stuck in separate socks at the bottom of a drawer. Telekinesis was his weakest talent, but with all the magic rocketing through him right then, he could’ve moved a frigging mountain.
Instead, he eased the eccentrics out of their socks and slid them together, all of it happening inside his underwear drawer. He felt the pieces move, felt them click into place and fuse. The universe seemed to take a breath and hold it. Then there was a soundless detonation inside him, a boom of pressure. For a second his perceptions lurched and grayed out.… And when they cleared, he found himself standing in the middle of a blasted desert that wasn’t like anything he’d ever experienced before.
What… the… fuck?
He turned a full circle, seeing only gray and more gray: an ashen landscape of dunes and black, twisted trees with a horizon of a black, featureless sky.
It looked like the in-between, the wasteland that separated the plane of the living from that of the dead, and where souls could walk forever and never get anywhere, looping endlessly until they were ready to begin their journey through Xibalba, where they would be tested and earn their way—maybe, hopefully—to reincarnation. But the in-between didn’t have a fitful breeze that brought him the sharp, acrid smell of ashes, and it was the reddish brown of sky and soil, not corpse gray. More, this didn’t feel like any of the other planes he’d ever been to. If anything, it felt like home, like the earthly plane.
Only it sure as shit didn’t look like it.
A shiver worked its way through him. “Mother?” Although he’d called her “mama” before, that was for kids. And he didn’t know her, not really.
I am here.
He spun and found her behind him, though she hadn’t been there an instant earlier. As before, she wore flowing white and had pale, gleaming eyes. This time, though, she wasn’t translucent. Her body was solid and her bare feet left marks in the ashes. She was really there.
Hello, Rabbie. Her words still sounded in his head, not aloud, but they were stronger now, in a voice that stirred long-buried memories, as did the name.
Rabbie. It had been circling inside his head for days now, alternately warming him and depressing the shit out of him, until he’d felt like a fucking seesaw or a dippy bird or something, zigzagging between extremes of emotion underlaid with the deep, dark fear that it had been a onetime thing, that he’d never see her again.
And now here they were.
He reached for her, needing to touch, but his hand passed right through her image. His gut hollowed out on the realization that wherever they were, he was the ghost. That brought a big-ass chill crawling down his spine, as did the realization that he couldn’t feel the magic anymore, as if he’d used it up… or he was in a place where magic didn’t work.
“Where are we?” he asked. “Is this the dark barrier?” The shiver dug in and got claws, but beneath it there was a thread of excitement. Iago might have blocked him from using the dark magic, but the connection—and the fascination—remained.
It’s not where that matters, but when. This is your home at the dawn of the coming new year.
“My…” Sharp horror flooded him as the twisted black stumps around him stopped looking like random trees and started looking way too familiar. One huge, charred stump rose up above a cluster of smaller tree-skeletons. Beyond that, what he’d initially thought was a series of dunes started looking like the folded-in remains of a steel building buried beneath a layer of ash.
He didn’t need to look behind himself to know that the other dunes were more buildings set in an achingly familiar pattern. And even though he’d never fit in quite right at Skywatch, never been able to fall into lockstep with the others, his heart shuddered.
Gone. All of it… gone.
He could barely breathe as he flashed back to how it used to be, before things got serious and the fun stuff fell by the wayside. He saw bodies crowding and elbows bumping at the tables, the winikin-manned Weber grills set up off to one side, a bruising ball game working its way up and down the open area where the old Great Hall had been, and dappled shadows of sunlight coming down through the lush green leaves of the ceiba tree that marked the center of Skywatch, the heart of their tiny village.
He saw Patience and Brandt, who had taken him in after his old man died, making him feel as welcome as he ever had; he saw their twin sons, Harry and Braden, who had worshiped their Unc’ Rabbit and whom he still missed, even knowing they were safer in hiding. He saw Myrinne in the middle of the game, laughing as she fought Strike for possession of the tough rubber ball. He saw Leah, Anna, Sasha, Cara…
Gone.
“We lost the war,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Or we’re going to lose it. Is that what you’re telling me?”
No. This is one possible future. It is what will be unless you wish it otherwise. Her eyes kindled to a silver gleam that had his heart thudding once more in his chest. You are mankind’s best hope, Rabbie. The old shaman was right: You must become the crossover and persuade the Nightkeepers to turn away from the sky gods and support the Banol Kax in their fight.… Or else mankind’s champions will lose the war, and the world will become what you see around you.
The crossover. Gods. He sucked in a breath, pulse bumping as the part of him that had been sliding to despair did an about-face and beelined for wary hope. But that hope had a problem of its own. “They won’t listen to me,” he said, hating the shame of the truth. If he’d been a different person, lived a different life, maybe the Nightkeepers would’ve paid more attention. As it was, he’d blown up so much shit over the years they wouldn’t—couldn’t—take him seriously when it came to something that went against everything they’d been raised to believe.
You must make them.
“How?” He had tried. Gods knew he’d tried.
You’ll find a way. She smiled, eyes softening through the silver gleam. You’re my Rabbie. You found me… which means you can do anything.
His chest went so tight he couldn’t breathe as his heart whispered that same silly lullaby he’d heard earlier, the one he almost remembered. Rabbie and Tristan, sitting in a tree… The song lightened the gloom within and without, making it seem as if the sun might break through the thick, choking clouds.
Swallowing hard, he said, “I want to see Tristan.” He hadn’t acknowledged the need even to himself, hadn’t realized how important it was to him until his question was met with a telling silence and a dimming of her eyes, and his heart fucking fell to his toes. “Why not?”
It’s complicated, my sweet Rabbie.
“I need…”
You must be brave, baby. More important, you must work alone. Tristan can’t help you, and my powers are limited. And be warned: When you go up against the system, everyone you know will turn against you.
He shook his head. “Not Myrinne.” If anything, this would bring them closer together, because he would finally be doing what she’d been on him to try for months now. Longer.
Even her. Especially her. The answer was immediate. Absolute.
No.
Impossible. Rabbit’s brain seized and then radiated pain, like he’d just chewed his way through a half gallon of Rocky Road that’d been hanging out in liquid nitrogen. “Bullshit. That’s just bullshit.”
She is an agent of the enemy, and she’s using you.
His stomach hollowed out instantly. “You’re lying.”
She reached out to him, but was unable to touch. I’m sorry, Rabbie. I’m so sorry to take this away from you.
“You’re not. You can’t.” Hands balling into fists, he started to take a step toward her, then spun and stalked away a few paces and stood, staring out over the wreckage that had been the main mansion of Skywatch.
His mind flashed on the plaque that hung—had hung?—beside the front door, the one that showed the ceiba tree as the ancients had seen it, with its roots sunk deep in the underworld, its branches touching the sky, and its trunk supporting the earth plane and forming the heart of the village. Beneath it was—had been?—engraved the motto of the modern Nightkeepers: To protect, fight, and forgive.
He had done all that, damn it. He had protected his teammates and by extension all of mankind; he had fought enemies on this plane, the in-between, and even in Xibalba itself. And he’d done his damnedest to forgive his old man for being a prick and a lousy father, and himself for making some pukingly bad decisions over the years. He’d protected, fought, forgiven. He’d done his best to be a good soldier, a good mage.
Yet still he got fucked?
Hot frustration raced through him. Why wasn’t it enough? Where was his balance, his good to even out the bad?
There is more bad to get through before you reach the good, Rabbie. Please believe me. Please trust me in this, if you trust me in nothing else. Your good times will come.
“When?” His voice broke on the word. He looked around at the familiar canyon, torn to shreds and filled with ash, and the grayness that stretched in all directions to meet the lifeless sky, and his righteous fury curdled at the knowledge that it would be like this in three months if he made the wrong decisions now.
Which meant he had to abso-fucking-lutely get it right. But Myrinne… Gods. “If it weren’t for her, I’d probably be dead already.” Before she came into his life, he’d been on the fast train to self-destructing. She’d made him grow up and be a man.
She saved you because she needed you. A parade of images raced suddenly through his mind in rapid succession: Myrinne as he’d first seen her, peering cannily through racks of pseudovoodoo garbage in her foster mother’s tea shop in the French Quarter; her talking—seducing—him into trying a Wiccan scrying ritual that had gone horribly wrong; and then the two of them together more recently, with her sharp, him frustrated.
“Fine, yeah, she pushes me. But only because she not only loves me, she believes in me. She thinks the same thing you do—that the old shaman was right about my being the key to the war. That’s why she nags.”
She pushes you where she wants you to go. She wants the power for herself, as did her mother before her.
Feeling like he was clawing to keep his head above the surface of the things he refused to believe, he grated, “That witch wasn’t her mother.” Mistress Truth hadn’t even really been a witch, either. Just a shyster who’d happened to luck into a ceremonial knife that’d carried some major power. She had gotten herself killed for it too, trying to cut a deal with Iago. She was no mother to Myrinne, and hadn’t had any power in her own right.
Are you so sure of that? his own mother asked softly. Then, before Rabbit could answer—if he’d even had an answer—she filled his mind with the thing he feared and dreaded more almost than the end-time itself… the dream.
He stood in a pool of blood, blank faced and holding a dripping knife, like something out of an episode of CSI. He imagined someone ordering, “Cut to a flashback of the murder in three… two… one… mark.” Then the camera pulled back, widening the frame to show a woman’s sprawled body, a flare of dark hair, a clever, witchy face with eyes fixed and staring. Then even farther back, to show a mansion in flames.
Myrinne was dead, Skywatch burning. And Rabbit was just fucking standing there holding his father’s ceremonial dagger like he was ready to do it all over again.
He batted at the images, though he knew they were entirely inside his mind, inside him. “No, godsdamn it, I wouldn’t do that to her! I couldn’t. I love her!”
He’d first seen the vision during the scrying spell, when he’d foolishly asked how he and Myrinne could earn their jun tan mated marks. First, he’d heard his old man’s voice telling him to get rid of the hellmark that had connected him to Iago. Then he’d seen the knife. The blood. Her eyes.
Oh, gods. Her eyes. He pressed his fists against his own closed lids, trying to force away the image, which was a memory yet not, because it hadn’t happened yet even though he’d seen it over and over again in his nightmares.
“Please don’t make me,” he whispered, not sure whether he was talking to his mother or the dream, which was too vivid and unchanging to be anything but prescience. For so long he had thought it was a warning from an ancestor or the gods themselves, a chance to change his course and not make a terrible mistake. But what if the gods weren’t warning him off at all? What if they were telling him what he was supposed to do? Fuck. Agony rolled over him, centering in the place where his heart had been only moments before. “I need her. I can’t do this alone.”
The crossover is one alone, not half of a pair.
He scrubbed his face and then leaned back, squeezing his eyes shut, too broken to give a shit that the move let loose a tear. “Don’t say that. Please… no. Don’t.” There was no anger in him now, though, no denial.
I’m sorry.
He realized he’d wrapped his arms around himself like a fucking girl, which just drove home how much he’d gotten used to having someone holding on to him, telling him he was going to be okay. Not someone. Myrinne. She was his first, his one and only. His—
Betrayer.
“Never.” But he was losing steam. “There’s got to be something else going on. I’ll talk to her,” he decided. “I’ll see—”
You cannot let on that you know. Better to watch her closely and discover her plan, her allies.
“I can…” But he couldn’t mind-bend her. At her request he’d installed a mental block that prevented him from getting inside her. He couldn’t remove it without her knowing what he’d done.
Why do you think she insisted? She couldn’t let you see inside, couldn’t let you know her true agenda. She was the one who called the creatures; she was the one who sent whispers into the winikin soldier’s mind, telling him he could become a mage if he killed one of his own. She wants to disrupt the Nightkeepers while she convinces you to seek the dark magic on her terms—those of the sky gods who control her—because then the magic will destroy you and the dark barrier together. And humanity will be left with this. Her gesture encompassed the remains of Skywatch, which was the earth’s only real hope of surviving the end of days, even though mankind didn’t have a freaking clue.
“Stop. Jesus, please stop.” Desperation closed around him, making it seem as if the dim, ash-darkened skyline were drawing inward and making him want to claw his way out, screaming.
I will stop. I must. My time is up. Her mental tone was suddenly thready and fading, as if she had moved past him and he was getting the tail end of the Doppler shift. But remember this, sweet Rabbie. Your brother and I are watching over you even when you can’t see or feel us. Which means you’re not really alone. The last was a soft whisper, almost inaudible.
Then she was gone, leaving him in the desolation.
And despite what she had said, he sure as shit felt alone.
The solitude echoed through him, around him, as he realized he could be the only person for miles, maybe even the only living creature. Was this, then, the way it was all going to end? One possible future, she had called it, and him the crossover. Mankind’s best hope.
Ev
er since the shaman had suggested the destiny, Rabbit had been wrestling with the utter fucktarded insecurity of being named the savior of mankind. But he didn’t know if he could do it without Myrinne. She was his cornerstone, supporting him, lifting him up, and making him believe that he could do so many more things than he had thought.
How could that be wrong?
“Rabbit.” His name—nickname?—was a thread of sound in the gray-on-gray world, coming in her voice as if he’d conjured her with his thoughts. When it came again, though, it was accompanied by a lurch of the world around him, like it—or he—had just been shaken. “Come on, Pyro. Time to wake up.”
Pyro. That was a nickname he dug, one that reminded him not only of his first and best talent, but also their too-short time together at college, when he’d actually been popular, not just because he had a hot girlfriend, but because he’d actually found things he was good at, and people who thought he was cool. He’d played the part of a normal guy there, and it hadn’t fit all that badly. More, it had given the two of them a secret to share, a little wink-wink-nudge-nudge when she called him “Pyro” and warned him not to burn anything down.
The game had been fun. It had been very them, and had given him a secret warmth to carry with him when they were apart.
That same warmth pulled him out of the vision now, drawing him back into his body so he could feel the heavy lassitude of his limbs, the quiet, drugging fatigue of having pulled lots of magic without carb loading. There was a mattress beneath him, blankets piled on top of him. And, when he opened his eyes, a dark angel looking down at him.
“You’re awake! When we found you in the john, we thought… Gods. I’m glad you’re back.” Relief flooded her eyes, and a wave of emotion slammed into him so hard and fast that it took his damn breath away before he’d even had a chance to catch it in the first place. With her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and her face bare of makeup save for a touch of something dark at the corners of her eyes, and wearing one of his sweatshirts—so big that it fell off her shoulder at one side—she looked like the hottest coed ever, like the girl who had winked at him across the dining hall and called him Pyro.
Magic Unchained Page 23
