Magic Unchained n-7

by Jessica Andersen

  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.

  Ever 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 sid
e—she looked like the hottest coed ever, like the girl who had winked at him across the dining hall and called him Pyro.

  In that moment, as the worry in her face dissolved to relief and a mist of tears, he realized that he knew three things without question: He loved her. He trusted her. And, somehow, his mother had to be wrong. He wasn’t sure how, or what he could do to prove it, but she was wrong. Myrinne was… Myrinne. She wasn’t working for anyone else, wasn’t plotting behind his back. He loved her, believed in her.

  More, she was his. And anybody who wanted to mess with her was going to have to go through him to do it… including his mother’s ghost.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  September 17

  Four days to the equinox; three months and

  four days until the zero date

  Monterey, California

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the little blue-haired docent said, “but that particular piece has been relocated. It was a last-minute substitution into the display we sent out for tonight’s gala.”

  “For—” Sven stopped himself. “Right. The gala.” He didn’t need to take another look around the wood-paneled, elegantly appointed Playa Maya Museum or at the rock on the docent’s ring finger to have his mental cash register give a cha-ching. Of course they needed funding, and a chichi party would be par for the area. “Are there any tickets left? We had planned on attending, but things came up—you know how it is—and I never got around to RSVPing.”

  Her lashes fluttered down over eyes gone suddenly bright and interested. “As a matter of fact, yes, there’s one stateroom left.”

  Cara turned from the display of three-legged pots she had been pretending to study. “Stateroom? The gala’s on a cruise ship?” She frowned prettily, somehow managing to look a little ditzy, which he would’ve thought impossible. It was the third or fourth time she had slipped into a conversation with the museum staff with a perfectly timed question, bouncing off his conversational openers until they had the information they needed without the other person ever suspecting they were being pumped.

  She was wearing sleek, upscale black, with her hair in a twist that showed the white in a repeating pattern that made him want to touch. Then again, pretty much everything about her had his hormones on red alert, and had since Anna zapped them to the drop site and disappeared, leaving them alone together, far from Skywatch. What was it Reese had said about it being good to get some distance? Shit, as far as he could tell, that was a matter of perspective. For her and Dez it might be a good break. For him and Cara… dangerous. He was far too aware that they were away from witnesses, away from judgment. And now it was looking like their quick in-and-out was going to turn into an all-night affair, unless they could figure out how to get at the screaming skull before the gala.

  “It’s just an overnight trip,” the docent said brightly. “You’ll be back bright and early in the morning. Shall I ring you up for that last stateroom, then?”

  Overnight. Brilliant. “Sure, thanks”—he belatedly glanced at her name tag—“Doris.” He touched Cara’s arm and together they followed her to the gift shop, where he handed over the magic plastic—aka one of the limitless AmExes that were linked to the Nightkeeper Fund—and didn’t let himself look at the number when he signed the slip.

  Meanwhile, Cara chirped away, pleasantly wringing Doris dry of information about when, where, and how the screaming skull was being moved and displayed. The answers pretty much added up to there being no way in hell for them to get at it before the party. Seeming entirely unfazed by the prospect of spending the night, Cara burbled, “Is there anything we need to know about the gala? Dress code, silent auction, that sort of thing?”

  “The dress is black and white.” Doris leaned over the counter toward Sven, giving him a whiff of something lavendery and old-ladyish. “And between you and me, the food isn’t very good—it’s supposed to be Mayan, but one of the board members is some sort of health nut and pitched a fit, so dinner is going to be faux-veggie Mayan. The staff did their best, I’m sure, but it’s all very… healthy.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’m smuggling in a couple of Big Macs and some homemade brownies to hold me over.”

  Despite his inner turmoil, Sven grinned. Old Doris might’ve just hustled him for a few thou—okay, he peeked—for what had to be the most expensive room on the ship, but a fellow junk-fooder couldn’t be all that bad. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he assured her, and sent her an eyebrow wiggle on his way out the door, making her laugh and shoo him away.

  Outside the museum, he and Cara found a small, secluded spot among the lush landscaping, and hunkered together to call Anna and update her on the situation. After a quick confab with Dez, she came back on the line, her voice slightly distorted as she said, “If you get in trouble, call me and I’ll come for an emergency evac. Otherwise, I’ll meet you on the dock in the morning. I’d rather not have to target a ’port onto a crowded boat in the middle of the Pacific.”

  “In other words,” Cara said dryly after they signed off, “Dez said to leave us alone together for the day to duke it out.” She didn’t meet his eyes when she said it, though, and a faint flush stained her cheeks.

  “It’s not the worst idea.” He leaned back and looked up at the sky, which was almost painfully blue through a feathering of brilliant green leaves. The day was bright and sharp, the air subtly scented with flowers, the niche a perfect little spot for a kiss… and three months from now, it could all be gone if the Nightkeepers and winikin didn’t get their shit together. Which meant that he and Cara needed to get to work. But when he looked back and found her sitting there with her eyes closed and her face turned up to the sun, something shifted in his chest. She looked peaceful, almost happy. It wasn’t until he saw the difference in her that he realized just how tense she was at Skywatch, like she was always braced for the next disaster. And he didn’t want to put that look back on her face. “Fuck it. Let’s play hooky.”

  Her eyes flew open, then narrowed. “That’s so not happening.”

  “Why not? They’re not expecting us back until morning, and we can’t do anything with the skull until the gala. We’ve got all day.” He shifted to face her but didn’t let himself reach out. This wasn’t about sex; it was about… Shit, he didn’t know. He just knew that they needed this. “Come play with me, Cara,” he said softly. “I think we could both use a day off.”

  Come play. He used to be the guy who surfed instead of studying but aced his tests anyway, the guy who was always the first one into the pool and the last one to leave the party. When had he forgotten how to play? When had he gotten so freaking serious? The answer was right in his heart, though: He had stopped being that guy when he bonded with Mac. It was the first time in his life that he had made a real and lasting commitment to something, putting him on a different track with the magi. He was their hunter now, just as much a killer as Michael with his death magic. And, damn it, he wanted to play again.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” The shadows in her eyes tugged at him, moved him, and suddenly there was nothing he wanted to do more than take them away—for a few hours, at least.

  And he thought he knew how. “Come sailing with me.” The ocean was the one thing they had in common as actual people.

  Her gaze sharpened. “That’s not fair.”

  “So sue me.… But do me a favor and wait until after we’ve run away to sea for a few hours.” His voice dropped. “Think of it—the wind in our faces, the sound of the waves, the feeling of the boat moving under us…” And in thinking of it, he yearned for the days when that had been his whole world, back before the Nightkeepers, the magic, and Mac. Maybe he’d been young, cocky, and irresponsible, but he’d been, at his core, happy.

  He didn’t know whether she was humoring him or if she too missed her days on the water, but she hesitated only a few seconds before she nodded. “Okay. I… Okay, let’s do it.”

  Feeling like the bell had just rung on the last day of classes,
he surged to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go find ourselves a marina.”

  She joined him, eyes lighting with a glint of the excitement that was suddenly racing through him—not the toxic restlessness that dogged him when he stayed in one place too long, but the anticipation of the rush and the roar of the ocean.

  “You find the marina and charm someone into renting you a boat you’ll be happy with. Text me when you’ve got something and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Where are you going to be?”

  “Shopping.” Her lips twisted in a rueful smile. “We both need bathing suits… and unless I miss my guess, we’re short on some black and white.”

  “I’ll do it.” The words were out before he knew what he was saying.

  Her startled eyes flew to his. “Wait. What?”

  “I’ll do the shopping. You find us a boat.” And if that wasn’t a vote of trust, he didn’t know what was. But with her wearing his mark on her wrist, the last thing he wanted was for her to do his chores.

  Faint color stained her cheeks. “Are you sure?”

  Yeah, if it made her look like that… then yeah, he was sure. “Positive. Let’s go.”

  The next hour was, mercifully, a blur that mainly consisted of walking into the first high-end place he saw that had a tux in the window on one side and a sparkly dress on the other and throwing himself on the clerk’s mercy.

  The bathing suits were easy enough—after getting a baleful look for his semiobscene charade of, “She’s about this big,” he texted Cara for the info the saleslady wanted, and then went off to the other side of the store for a pair of trunks and the joy of having his inseam politely groped. The tux was a no-brainer—he just nodded and let the sales guy go to town with the caveat of, “Anything, as long as I can walk out with it”—and when the ladies’ attendant came back with three gowns she thought would work, he “eenie, meenie, miney, mo’d” it… and then picked the one he liked because it sparkled like the sea in bright sunlight, washing everything to white and glitter. And when he reached the register and a gleam of black and white caught his eye, he added it to the pile and got a gush of thanks in return.