Skykeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  Somewhere at the back of his brain, beyond the madness of lust and magic, a voice of reason was shouting, Abort, abort! Bad idea! She’d been Iago’s prisoner for a year, had to be in a fragile mental state. But there was nothing fragile about the feel of her as she pressed against him, demanding as much as she gave, and more. She raked her fingernails along his bare shoulders and arms, making him shiver with the raw power of his response.

  The hot, jagged magic grayed his vision and brought a flash of a high wall with narrow gates inset near the top. Warning buzzers sounded, but he was too far gone within the heat and need to do anything but take the next kiss deeper, take them both higher. He was shaking with desire; they both were.

  On the other side of the chameleon shield, he was dimly aware that the gray-robes had taken high and low positions on either side of the doorway, digging in to return the Nightkeepers’ fire.

  Part of Michael wanted to drop the shield and open fire, taking out the gray-robes from behind. He wasn’t sure if that was his warrior’s talent talking, or a thought-thread coming from behind the wall, from that hated part of himself. But his priority was keeping Sasha safe. Which he was doing; with each kiss, each caress, the magic ramped higher, the shield grew denser and thicker, seemingly in proportion to his own hard, aching flesh.

  He hissed as she loosened the Velcro waist straps of his body armor and reached beneath his tank to run her hands across his heated skin. She drew gentle, inciting trails across his stomach, along his sides, down his spine and then lower to latch onto his ass and pull him into her, anchoring them together at the point where he ached to connect them. He broke their kiss briefly to yank the armor off over his head, then tossed it aside and reached for her, so they were wrapped together, chest to chest, though still clothed.

  Her sweetness surrounded him, seeped into him, humbled him. He chased kisses along her jaw and down her neck, heat racing through him as she shuddered and clung. A moment later she pushed him away, but only to create a space between them, room to reach for his pants, and work the fly without undoing his weapons belt. He groaned when her fingers found him, closed around him. Locking his knees so he wouldn’t buckle as the blood drained from his buzzing head, he kissed her, pressed his cheek to hers and let himself feel.

  She stroked his erection, trailing soft fingers along his length. He was so hard he ached, but he held himself still, absorbing the delicious torture until he could take no more. Then, knowing only that he had to be inside her, that nothing else in the world mattered, he shifted to kiss her again as he undid the worn catch of her bush pants, causing them to fall to her feet. He hissed when his hands found her bare skin beneath, then stepped back and looked at the treasure he’d uncovered. The sweatshirt covered her to the tops of her thighs, but he didn’t want to take it off her and leave her bare to the carved stone at her back.

  Boosting her up, he cupped her sweetly rounded ass in his scarred palms as she wrapped her legs around his waist, opening to him without hesitation or pretense. He leaned in and kissed her softly, lingering over her silky lips and the taste of her passion.

  He turned the shield opaque with a thought, blotting the gray-robes from sight as he eased away from her, cupping her gorgeous, angular face between his scarred palms. He waited until her eyelids fluttered open, dark lashes framing chocolate brown eyes. When their eyes met, he said, “You said you dreamed about me. Where were we? What were we doing?”

  “We were here,” she said simply. “And we were making love.”

  Aroused, humbled, caught up in the magic they’d made together, he leaned in and touched his lips to hers in a kiss that started gentle and caught fire from there, until they were pressed together, straining together. Mind hazed red-gold with greedy need, barely aware of the firefight escalating beyond the shield, he caught her hips and boosted her up against the wall, pressing into her, rubbing himself against her slick folds. “Like this?”

  Murmuring pleasure, she bit his shoulder, the side of his neck, urging him on with a whisper of, “Don’t tease. Not now.”

  “No, not now.” He would have said more, but words left him as he thrust into her.

  Her hot wetness gloved him, rubbing with perfect friction. That first moment of joining sent a shock of sensation and pleasure through him, tightening something inside his chest.

  The battle hammered on beyond the shield; magic surrounded them; she surrounded him, locking her bare feet at the small of his back. And when he pulled back to look down, she smiled up at him and lifted a hand to cup his cheek, rubbing a thumb over the bristle on his jaw. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “We’re good.”

  He didn’t know what she’d seen in his eyes, didn’t know why her words loosened something inside him, but they did.

  Then, unable to do otherwise, he began to move. Blood roaring through his veins and singing in his soul, he thrust on a surge of heat and power. As he did, Sasha arched against him with an abandon that nearly put him over the edge then and there in a too-quick response he hadn’t suffered since he’d been taught control by his first lover—a black belt slightly older than him who had begun his fascination with warrior women.

  Sasha might not yet believe she was a warrior, but he’d bet money on it.

  Gritting his teeth, he bowed his head and pressed his cheek to hers, straining with the effort of not coming immediately. Their joining was powerful, profound. And it shifted something within him. Magic gathered around them as he balanced on the edge between pleasure and madness. He pistoned his hips, starting slowly, but building fast to set a hard, fast pace that spurred them both through the heat and insanity. They twined together, moved together, and the incense-laden air around them sparked.

  It seemed no more than a moment before her nails dug into his shoulders and she cried out, spasming against him. He kept going, driving her beyond the first orgasm to another, driving himself beyond madness. Sensation layered atop sensation, until finally pleasure shock-waved through him in an orgasm that locked his muscles tight on a roar of magic and triumph.

  The chameleon shield went red and gold with the purest of Nightkeeper magic as he emptied himself into her and she fisted around him, the two of them locked together in thundering pleasure that drew out from one heartbeat to the next, and the next. It seemed unbelievable that the gray-robes didn’t see or sense it as they mounted a concerted rush out the door, leaving the chamber empty, the door still braced open.

  Michael was peripherally aware that they were gone, but that wasn’t his focus as passion faded to its aftermath and he sagged, bracing himself against the wall with one arm and holding Sasha against him with the other. He should’ve been wrung out, sated. Satisfied. And on one level he was.

  But on another level, fresh and greedy need clawed at him, demanding that he take more, that he take her, make her part of him. And that was a level he didn’t want to go to. One he wished he could rid himself of forever.

  Fuck. His defenses were down. She’d stripped him bare, leaving him wide open. And he’d been so caught up in her that he hadn’t noticed, hadn’t reacted to the threat.

  Closing his eyes, working fast, he tried to find the center of himself, seeking the peace that had kept him sane for the past year-plus, ever since the talent ceremony that had released the creature within him, the murderous alter ego he called the Other. But he couldn’t find his center. Instead, he found sex magic still burning hot within him, but its jagged edges growing teeth and claws, digging into him, taking him over. Heat rose again, but this time it wasn’t the need to sink himself within her.

  It was a far darker, more dangerous need. One she’d brought out in him somehow, even though he’d been able to keep it at bay for so long.

  No, he grated inwardly, struggling to keep the Other where it belonged, locked away from the outside world. Don’t you fucking do it. He envisioned the sky-high dam he’d constructed, piece by piece, at the back of his brain, envisioned locking his other self safely behind it. Instead, the dam b
ulged obscenely as the Other strained to break through, drawn by Sasha’s vital energy, darkness pulled toward the light.

  She shifted against him and murmured something into his neck. Strung tight, he pressed his cheek to hers and fought a silent and—hopefully—invisible battle to keep the halves of himself together, fought not to lose control of himself. And in doing so, he missed the moment for soft words and praise.

  “I said, your earpiece is yelling for you.” Sasha turned her face away from him, her body tense. “And let me down.”

  “Sasha—” he began.

  “Let. Me. Down.” Her voice was icy.

  Shit. He released her, and watched as she retrieved her pants with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to process what had just happened, either between the two of them or between him and the Other. The sex had touched him deeply. And that was a problem.

  But he had to say something. So he went with, “Sorry. Postcoital brain freeze. Let me check in with the others; then we’ll talk. I promise.” He waited for her nod, which was a beat slow in coming; then he zipped his fly and jammed his receiver back into his ear. He wasn’t even sure when it’d fallen out. “Stone here,” he grated after keying on his throat mike.

  “Godsdamn it!”Strike’s voice exploded in his ear. “What have you—Never mind. Are you in the chamber?”

  His gut fisted at the king’s tone. “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re pinned down, and you’ve got a red-robe incoming. Deal with it, and for gods’ sake, keep the woman alive!” The transmission cut out in a rattle of gunshots, or maybe magic, but Michael could fill in the rest for himself. The red-robe was one of the pilli; he’d sensed the magic flaring in the hidden chamber. His and Sasha’s luck had just run out.

  Michael spun toward her. “Sorry,” he said again. And hit her with another sleep spell.

  Her eyes flashed with anger for a second, but then she went down, crumpling and lying still, as if too drained to fight the magic this time. It wasn’t fair, he knew, but the same mental blocks that wouldn’t let him tell the others about his past didn’t want her to see what was going to happen next. He wasn’t an itza’at seer, but he knew that whichever way the next few minutes went, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Tucking her near the wall, he covered her as best he could with his body armor. Then he pulled the shield spell away from the door and put it over her instead. When he’d done the best he could do for her, he stood and turned, cross-drawing his autopistols in a smooth move that had been ingrained long before he joined the Nightkeepers. “Let’s do this.”

  The door slid open as if on cue, and a tall, thin red-robe with hollow cheeks and pale skin stepped through. His eyes went past Michael to the shield behind him, and a look of satisfaction crossed his sallow cheeks. He lifted his wrist and spoke into a comm device. “You were right; she’s in here.” Then he smirked at Michael. “You might’ve gotten away with it if you’d kept it in your pants, playboy.”

  Rage hazed Michael’s vision. He answered the taunt by opening fire, putting the autopistols to work with a spurt of dark excitement that echoed his orgasm of only minutes earlier.

  The red-robe cast a shield spell, deflecting the bullets as he spoke into his comm, talking fast. Moments later, the pilli’s shield rippled. Then, shockingly, the magic flew at Michael, wrapping around him and clinging for a second, freezing him in place. It faded quickly, but the delay gave the Xibalban time to pull a stubby black object and lever it at Michael. A Taser. Shit.

  Michael tried to dodge, but the shield residue left him slow to react as the red-robe fired. The clinging barbs tagged the bare skin of Michael’s forearm, just above his marks. He cursed and grabbed for the thing, but he was too damn slow. Electricity arced across the tether, locking him in place.

  Pain! It raced through him, freezing him, pissing him off. Mad fury rose within him, bringing with it the hard, vicious power that characterized his other self. Cold logic locked into place, and although his natural healing magic quickly fought the rigor-lock of the electric shock, dulling the pain to a throb and bringing a measure of feeling back to his paralyzed limbs, he didn’t let that on to the red-robe. Instead he lay limp and still, hoping the bastard would come over to him to yank the barbs, or to get at Sasha. I dare you, he thought coldly, keeping his eyes slitted, his face slack. I fucking dare you.

  A moment later, dark ’port magic rattled out in the hallway, and there was a thunderclap of displaced air. Michael’s earpiece was dead, no doubt shorted to shit by the Taser zap, but he didn’t need Strike to guess who had just arrived. The Xibalbans’ leader might not have the stones—or the power—to ’port straight into the uprooted Nightkeeper temple, but he obviously had no trouble getting through his own wards to the rock-shielded tunnels below. Which was just more proof the Xibalbans were light-years ahead of the Nightkeepers in terms of magic.

  Gods help me protect her, prayed the piece of Michael that still could pray. The Nightkeepers were doomed without the library.

  Iago stepped through the doorway a heartbeat later, wearing black leathers, heavy boots, and a slash-metal concert tee. He exchanged a look with the red-robe, then crouched down beside Michael.

  “Fug—” Michael began, then broke off with a gargle when the Xibalban grabbed him by the throat and squeezed hard.

  Iago leaned in, his pupils going to pinpricks. “Did you just fuck her, or was there more?”

  A terrible force pressed behind Michael’s eyes, driving a knife into his brain and paralyzing him once again. He would’ve screamed, but he had no breath, would’ve writhed, but his muscles were still lax. Then Iago let go of his throat and the pressure snapped out of existence, as though it had never been, leaving Michael to groan with the absence of pain and the sudden flood of feeling returning to the rest of his body.

  “His magic’s for shit,” Iago said dismissively. Lifting an arm, he spoke into a wristwatch comm device. “Set the timer for five minutes, collect the Nightkeepers, and wait for me at the rendezvous. I’ll zap the prisoners to the mountain and come back for you before this place turns crater.”

  He wanted one of the Nightkeepers. But for what? Was he looking to borrow a specific talent? Michael’s thoughts churned. Then the redheaded mage moved past him and crouched down beside Sasha, and Michael wasn’t thinking about anything but keeping the bastard from touching her.

  The shield spell had quit when the red-robe shocked Michael; the sleep spell would wear off more gradually. In sleep, curled on her side, she looked soft and vulnerable as the Xibalban reached out and stroked her pale cheek. Icy rage slammed through Michael. Get away from her! he howled inwardly, not giving voice to the words because he didn’t want them to hear their clarity and know he was almost back in control of his body, if not his power. And for the first time since the talent ceremony, when his ancestral nahwal had helped him recapture the Other and warned him not to touch its power or risk his soul, he didn’t give a shit whether he was in control.

  Sasha! he raged. Gods, help me protect her!

  With the skyroad gone, the gods had no access to earth, yet he was suddenly flooded with a heavy, silver, strange magic that wasn’t Nightkeeper or Xibalban, but somewhere between the two.

  “Shock him again,” Iago said to the red-robe. “I’m not taking any chances with this guy.”

  Letting the strange magic have him, Michael roared and exploded upward, attacking Iago in one continuous, deadly movement. The red-robe hit the Taser trigger and fifty thousand volts lit Michael from within, but this time it didn’t shut him down. Instead, the energy smashed through the last of his carefully constructed inner barriers—he felt them give, felt the Other come through fully for the first time since his talent ceremony.

  Aided by the element of surprise, he caught Iago in a flying tackle, slamming them both to the stone floor. The red-robe howled and went for his guns, but Michael cast a thick shield spell fueled by blood rage and h
atred, sealing him inside with his enemy. Iago shouted and tried to fight back, but he was far better at magic than hand-to-hand. Michael got in under the Xibalban’s weak guard and pinned him to the floor, straddling him and getting his hands around the bastard’s throat. Iago’s eyes bugged and he tried to pull shield magic of his own, but Michael countered it and bore down, leaning in so he could see his victim’s fear, the knowledge of his own death.

  Only it wasn’t fear he saw in Iago’s eyes. It was fear . . . and satisfaction.

  Michael’s grip loosened slightly, just enough for Iago to rasp, “It is you . . . or it will be.” The Xibalban’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “I can wait until you finish your transformation and understand what you really are, why you belong to me.”

  “Fuck you.” Michael leaned in, silver magic spinning up within him. “What am I?”

  “She’ll show you. And you’ll both be mine by the height of the solstice. If you don’t come to me, I’ll come for you. That’s a promise.” Then, without warning, dark magic cycled up, ’port lock engaged, and the Xibalban vanished from beneath Michael.

  “No!” Slamming palm-first into the stone floor, briefly off balance with his quarry’s disappearance, Michael roared with fury and disappointment. Unable to stanch the flow of violence within him, the need to kill, he dropped the shield magic and lunged to his feet—just in time to see the red-robe headed out the door with Sasha’s limp body over his shoulder. At the sight, the rage within him redirected itself to killing hatred.

  The man’s carotid under his thumbs. His pulse stilling in death.

  Snarling, Michael moved to cut off the red-robe’s escape. The man’s face went slack with terror, almost making Michael wonder what the other man saw in him. What he feared. There was no pity within him, though; there was only the hatred, the need for revenge, and the all-consuming call for him to protect what was his.