Magic Unchained n-7

by Jessica Andersen

  When he reached the ruins, he caught sight of Mac’s bristling silhouette up ahead and swerved in that direction, skidding in a patch of mud and nearly going down. He kept going, though, racing toward where the big coyote was standing splay-legged with his head down, as if guarding something—or someone.

  “I’m here,” he called over the growl of thunder. “What’s wrong?”

  There was no answer from the coyote. When Sven reached him, the foxfire spread out to shed bright white light on the scene. The rain had plastered Mac’s fur to his body, making the coyote look lean and lethal. His eyes were slitted against the sideways-whipping wind, and a growl grated at the back of his throat.

  The big animal was staring down at a churned-up section of ground that was going rapidly smooth under the pelting hammer of rain. But as Sven hunkered down, he shifted slightly and the foxfire glinted off something metallic being shielded by the big coyote’s bulk.

  “What have you got there?” Sven leaned in, reached for it… and froze for a second at the sight of a torn, muddy piece of desert-camo cloth snagged on a winikin’s wristband. It had the initials CL etched inside.

  Ice sluiced through his veins. Cara!

  Mac’s eyes met his and a wash of guilt poured through their bond, along with two piteous thought-glyphs: Gone! Hurt!

  Sven’s body kicked into action while his mind screamed inside. He went for his armband, slapping the alarm and the all-transmit in the same move. “Mayday, mayday!” he said, raising his voice above the thunder and rain. “There’s been—” He broke off because there was no signal light, no whooping alarm. The storm was screwing with the transmission.

  No. Not now. Fuck! He hit the buttons again, then the reset, saw the readout lights flicker but didn’t get a damn thing.

  He was cut off.

  Mac whined urgently, his thought-glyphs becoming a jumble of distress and, Come on, this way! as he circled the scene of the attack, his paws turning dark with mud.

  Sven hesitated. Protocol and the good of the many said he should go back for his teammates, that it was too big a risk. But Mac’s thought-stream filled with the need to hurry, follow, run—along with the smell of fear and blood.

  Cara. Her name lashed through him on the next bolt of lightning, driving him to his feet as Mac spun and bolted into the night.

  “Godsdamn it, wait!” Sven took two steps after him, then saw in the next flash that the coyote had paused at the edge of the pyramid, eyes wide and wild, lips drawn back in a snarl. There were no glyphs to his thoughts now; there was only instinct and the pounding need to chase, find, protect.

  Then Mac whirled and galloped off, disappearing into the night and the storm.

  Cursing, Sven plunged after him. And as he ran into the teeth of the wind and rain, he hoped to hell they weren’t already too late.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Cara awoke to a bone-numbing chill that was so intense that she didn’t remember ever not being cold, as if the sensation had lived in her marrow forever.

  On some level she knew that was crap, that she’d been warm before, that she’d been many, many other things. But as she swam up through the layers of unconsciousness that flowed like water and clung like mud, she knew only the cold. It bit into her, locked onto her, and made her want to sink back down to where she didn’t care that she was freezing, didn’t care about anything.

  Screw that, said some stubborn core within her. Stop whining and get your ass moving. Something bad had happened; she knew that much. But what? How? Wake up and figure it out!

  Huge shivers clamped her muscles tight, and her chattering teeth nipped the tip of her tongue and drew blood. The sharp, bright pain brought her closer to consciousness, letting sounds penetrate from the outside world: She heard the roar of thunder above her, the splash of water all around her.

  For a second she was back on the Discovery, riding out a squall on the whale-watching boat that had been as much a home for her as she’d ever known. She imagined Captain Jack up in the wheelhouse and the passengers huddled inside over cocoa and barf bags, leaving her alone on the forward deck, leaning into the wind and rain as the deck surged beneath her feet. But then the image fragmented, because the air wasn’t salty or ocean clean; instead, her mouth was foul with sandy grit and a chemical aftertaste that brought back newer, far less pleasant memories.

  The desert. Skywatch. War games.

  Heartache.

  As reality returned with sledgehammer blows, she sucked in a breath that was a harsh sound over the other noises. Suddenly, she was sickeningly aware of all sorts of tactile sensations, none of them good: There was a solid surface beneath her, ties binding her in place at her chest, hips, wrists, and ankles. Terror lashed as it came back to her: the pyramid, the storm, a splash of rain.… And Zane coming for her with cold, determined eyes.

  Zane. Gods. That wasn’t him, couldn’t have been. It was a trick, a demon, magic. Only how was that possible? Her stomach lurched with the alternative: that he’d betrayed the winikin, the Nightkeepers. And her. Impossible, she thought, but she knew what she had seen. And now—

  “Shit, she’s waking up.” It was a woman’s voice, distorted by distance, echoes, and the noise of rippling water. A woman? Who? Why?

  “Good.” A man’s voice, familiar. Zane.

  Panic and fury slashed through Cara, breaking the last hold of whatever drug or spell they’d used. She wrenched open her eyes and blinked into a bright, harsh camp light that was hung on a folding pole very near her. It was a cave; that much she could tell from the echoes, though she couldn’t see beyond the lantern. Its glow showed only that she lay atop a flat stone altar that was on a sandy island in the center of a muddy subterranean pool. The rest of her surroundings was lost to the shadows. As her eyes adjusted, she saw down her body, where straps held her clamped to the altar. She couldn’t see the details, but she could guess what it looked like: waist-high and carved on the sides, a ritual piece of the Nightkeepers… or, worse, the Xibalbans.

  A moan bled from her lips, stirring movement from behind her, a low masculine chuckle. Moments later, she heard splashes, and then Zane and Lora came around into her view. They were both wearing black on black, armed to the teeth and wearing ceremonial daggers, like they were magi themselves.

  “Lora.” Cara whispered the word, though there was little surprise in it. The signs had been there, she supposed. Or maybe her instincts had known all along that something wasn’t right. Dismissing the sharp-eyed ex-cop as the follower she’d always been, Cara focused on Zane and felt a sharp, painful twist beneath her heart, not from betrayal, but from self-disgust. She hadn’t seen it. How had she not seen it? There was derision in his face now, a mad gleam of triumph in dark blue eyes that she had thought carried the calm of a professional soldier, but instead had been hiding his true thoughts behind a terrifying level of control. “Why?” she asked, the word pulled from deep inside her. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because the gods chose me,” he said simply, and there was a fanatic’s belief behind the statement. “I knew they had chosen you too, but I was wrong about your purpose.” He glanced beyond the circle of lantern light, to the walls of the domed cave, where she could just barely make out huge four-legged shapes, giant cave paintings that ran around the perimeter, where the rock walls met the rippling water. His lips curved, though she didn’t know why. Then she saw that the water was higher than it had been only moments before, her island smaller.

  The lake was rising!

  A whimper caught in Cara’s throat as her mind flooded with horrified understanding. Sacrificial near-drowning was part of the magic—it was how the Nightkeepers connected with their gods during the cardinal days, a way for them to access their greatest powers. But there wouldn’t be any “near” about it for her—she was no mage, and this wasn’t one of the cardinal days. And, as in the paintball game, dead for a winikin was just dead.

  “It won’t be long now,” Lora said softly. Her gleaming eyes were
locked on Zane, her lips parted in worship, or maybe hunger.

  He didn’t acknowledge her. Instead, he turned back to Cara. “It was the mark.” He tapped his forearm, where he wore the familiar glyph of the coyote bloodline. “Up until then, I thought it meant we were to be mates, that I was supposed to forgive the blood and take you as my queen. I dreamed of the mated mark, you see. But when the gods didn’t give it to us, I finally understood. It’s not about forgiving at all.” His eyes glittered suddenly. “It’s revenge.”

  “What blood?” Cara whispered through lips gone numb. She was trapped, helpless. Terrified. Keep him talking. As long as he was there, she wasn’t drowning. “What revenge? What did I do to you?”

  “Not you. Your father.”

  Carlos. The name twisted something inside her. “What? Why?” Thunder rumbled outside, vibrating the altar beneath her and letting her know that the storm was still overhead. If it was the same storm as before, she hadn’t lost much time, hadn’t traveled far. Yet she might as well have been on a different plane. Her voice broke. “He said he didn’t know your family.”

  “Zane,” Lora said, shooting a look into the darkness. “We should go. The doorway is almost all the way underwater.”

  “I lied about who my parents were,” he said without taking his eyes off Cara. “Carlos knew them, all right. They would’ve made it out safe if it wasn’t for him. That’s why this is revenge.”

  The massacre, she thought. He was talking about the days right before the massacre, when the king cracked down on the rebels, declaring that any mage or winikin caught trying to leave would be considered guilty of treason, which was an executable offense. He hadn’t actually executed anyone, but he had sent teams of loyalists to keep the rebels in check.

  Some had gotten away. Most hadn’t.

  “My father wasn’t on one of the teams.” She’d asked him directly.

  Zane spit into the water, which had covered the small sandy island and was edging up his boots. “He did it personally, talking them back into doing their duty and saving the world for their son.” He thumped his chest. “For me. I tried to get them to leave like we had planned, but he’d brainwashed them—the whole fucking system had brainwashed them—and they locked me in my room, telling me that everything was going to be okay.” He bared his teeth. “I got away, though. They nearly caught me, nearly killed me, but I got away… and the gods led me here, so I would know what to do when the time came.”

  He shifted, and for a second she thought he was going for his dagger, that it was all over. Instead, he turned up the camping lantern full blast, so it reached the farthest reaches of the cave. And even through her terror, she gaped.

  Water surrounded them on all sides, brown and rippling, and churning to dirty foam at a narrow spot where an arch of deep darkness and a flicker of lightning said there was a way out.

  Cara yearned toward it. Please, gods.

  The huge cavern roof was decorated with cave paintings of people and animals, hunting scenes that leaped into sharp focus and left her reeling. Directly overhead, there was a throng of painted creatures—birds, mammals, reptiles, they were all there. The brown, rust, and ocher colors were vivid and breathtaking even in her panic. But it wasn’t the paintings that had Zane’s full attention; it was the lower ring of images that ran the circumference of the cave.

  Coyotes. Everywhere, coyotes.

  Zane’s eyes were lit with terrifying fanaticism. “I was injured, sunstroked, desperate, and the gods brought me here. I lay in the shade, drank the water, and waited for my parents to come for me… but they never did. And when I went back to the compound, it had disappeared.” His expression flattened. “Your father helped the Nightkeepers lead my parents to their deaths… and then the magic took the only home I’d ever known. So… I left. I survived. And for years, I thought it was all over, that the massacre had severed the magic forever. But then you came for me—a coyote came for me, and I knew the gods still favored our bloodline. I just didn’t know how until a few days ago.” He was breathing heavily now, still staring at the painted coyotes. “I dreamed of this, of you.” The island was gone now, the water up past his knees, though he didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Tears stung Cara’s eyes but didn’t fall. “Please,” she said softly. “Let me go. You can have whatever you want.”

  His eyes went back to the paintings. “I want to become what the gods intend. And you’re going to help me.” He glanced at Lora, jerked his chin toward the exit. “Let’s go. This is between her and the cave.”

  “But I thought…” Lora touched her knife with fingers that trembled slightly.

  Zane shook his head and started slogging away. Over his shoulder, he said, “No. She drowns. That’s the way the magic works.”

  Cara’s heart seized in her chest even as anger lashed through the fear. “There is no magic, damn it!” Her voice cracked with the force of her shout. “You’re a winikin!”

  “I’m a coyote winikin,” he called back over the sound of the water. “That makes all the difference in the world.”

  “It doesn’t—” She broke off—there was no point arguing with a madman—and switched her attention to Lora, who stood there with a strange look in her eyes and her hand on the hilt of her blade. “Don’t you see he’s lost it?” Cara said softly. “Let me go and we’ll fix this. We’ll fix everything; I promise.” She was pleading now, begging. Whatever it took. “Please. Don’t do this.”

  “Lora.” Zane snapped his fingers. “Come on.”

  “Don’t—” Cara began, but then broke off because it was no use. Lora heeled up like an obedience-trained retriever, warning that there had been more going on in the winikin’s wing than Cara had even begun to guess. Was she that blind? Had she been so wrapped up in her own problems that she’d failed to see that something was so wrong?

  A sob rose up and locked her throat as Zane and Lora—her teammates… hell, her team leaders—slogged through the narrowing gap and out into the night. Then they were gone, leaving her alone with a single lantern and the water more than halfway up the face of the altar.

  Cara screamed, “Help! For gods’ sake, somebody help me!” Her only answer was a flicker of lightning that made the cave paintings dance as if they were alive. She twisted against the cargo straps, unable to get any real leverage. The bonds bit into her chest and hips, drew blood from her wrists and ankles, and didn’t budge at all. Panic bit into her, raced through her, and she filled her lungs as far as she could, straining to scream, “Help me!”

  The rain rattled like bullets on the scant windshield of the ATV Sven had boosted from the firing range, and slashed into his exposed skin, cutting into him so hard he was surprised he wasn’t covered in blood. It was just water, though. And even if it’d been acid burning holes in his body, he would’ve kept going, following Mac’s trail through the rainy, shitty darkness.

  This really wasn’t good.

  They were outside the compound, vulnerable, and nobody knew where they were or what was going on, but he couldn’t stop now. He was focused on the lightning-lit glimpses of his familiar up ahead and, like now, when Mac bolted ahead and out of sight behind a rocky outcropping, the mental link that drew him onward with: Followfollowfollowfoll—

  The sudden break in the litany snapped Sven’s head up and put a nasty clutch in his gut. But then he heard a flurry of excited barks and a new glyph burst in on him: Found! Found! Foundfoundfound!

  “Cara!” he bellowed, though her name was quickly swallowed by the wind. He could still hear the barking, though, along with a new sound, a deeper-throated roar that prickled a whole lot of bad down his spine.

  It was the sound of water in the desert. A flash flood.

  Gut knotting, he whipped around the corner, hit the brakes, and brought the four-wheeler to a slithering, slewing stop, cursing as the headlights shone on a bad situation rapidly going worse. “Son of a bitch.”

  Mac was running up and down the bank of what had probably
been a dry wash or slow-moving trickle an hour ago, but was now a rushing, seething mass of muddy water. Right where the coyote was pacing in fast-forward, the water foamed slimy brown against a wall of rock and then slipped through an opening in the stone, where a cave mouth was just barely visible.

  Killing the ATV, Sven bolted toward Mac, past him, splashing to the edge of the water and staggering when the ground gave beneath him like quicksand. “Cara! Are you in there?” Please, gods. Holy fucking please. “Cara!”

  He didn’t get anything but Mac’s background litany of: Yes, yes, yes!

  “Shut it,” he snapped. “I can’t hear anything.”

  The coyote went to quivering silence, but between the pissing rain, the churning current, and the grumble that wasn’t quite thunder, he couldn’t hear dick.

  Then, faintly, his name. “Sven?” The word was nearly lost beneath the din, but it was real. By the gods, it was real.

  “Cara?”

  “Hurry! I’m trapped, and—” Thunder drowned out the rest.

  “I’m coming. Hang on!” He forged deeper into the water, forcing his feet through the shifting sand and cursing when the icy cold bit through his clothes and the current dragged like a bitch.

  Mac howled from the bank, racing up and down. Followfollowfollow!

  Sven lurched back around just as his familiar gathered to leap into the deadly current. “No!”

  The big coyote skidded into the muck at the edge, then floundered back to solid ground, barking, yipping, whining, and sending a steady stream of, Followfollowfollow!

  “You can’t follow. I need you to get help.” When that didn’t register, Sven sent it in thought-glyphs, pushing them hard through the familiar bond. Need help. Get friends. Then he pictured JT, who had unexpectedly clicked with the coyote during the xombi exterminations, playing hours of fetch and cracking a series of Lassie jokes that had gotten real old real quick, but had lightened up the horror a little. The winikin might not grasp how close they were to “Timmy fell down the well. Lassie, get help!” but he would know there was a problem, and he’d be smart enough to follow the coyote.