Leaves and branches slashed as he plummeted through the canopy. Monkeys screamed and dove for cover; parrots burst from their perches in a fury of red and blue feathers. As Michael caught sight of the shade-dappled ground, he cast a second shield, one that pressed into the ground, giving as he approached, slowing his velocity. He hit hard, caroming around the inner sphere as it slammed into the earth and dug a hell of a crater, meteorlike.
Pain thundered through him, and his head spun from the impact, but he didn’t have time to be hurt. The moment he was down, he heard a woman’s scream. Sasha!
He dropped the shield magic and tumbled out of its embrace. The warm, moist rain forest air smelled of blood and rattled with dark magic. He could feel it in his skull, in his chest, and suddenly found himself fighting the mad lure of hellmagic, and the strength it threatened to offer the Other.
“Sasha!” He lunged into the forest, chasing the sounds of a struggle.
He broke into a clearing, saw her on the ground, pinned beneath two black, furry beasts that looked like dogs but had too-smart eyes and bared their teeth when they saw him.
Michael didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Me!” he yelled. “Fight me, damn it!”
He heard a roar from behind him, spun to meet the new attack, and gaped for a second at the sight of a nahwal on earth, nearly seven feet tall, with claws and fangs and bright, mad eyes. It went for him. Roaring, he ducked under the attack, then straightened up, inside the nahwal’s guard. He reversed his knife and jabbed the hilt into the creature’s throat in a vicious blow that sent it reeling back, gagging, as a human would have done under the same attack.
Sasha screamed, “Michael!”
Michael spun as one of the black dogs leaped upon him, jaws snapping too close to his face. Jamming a knee into the beast’s groin, he held it off long enough to get his knife up and into it. Blood gushed over his hand, hot and iron-scented. An unearthly howl split the air, and the dog disappeared. Poof, gone. Magic.
Lunging to his feet, Michael grabbed the second creature away from Sasha, cutting its throat in an automatic swipe. It went down in a spurt of blood. Seconds later it vanished.
Breathing hard, with battle rage running hot under protective instincts more intense than any he’d ever felt, he rounded on the nahwal, which had recovered from its throat jab and now bared its teeth, hissing. “Are you going to die as easily as your mutts?” Michael demanded
“No!” Sasha grabbed Michael’s arm and tugged him back. “Don’t kill it.”
Thinking he recognized the scene, the creature, he tried to shake her off. “If I can kill it here, in spirit form, it’ll be gone from the outside world, and we’ll be able to get into the temple without it bothering us.”
“You can’t kill him,” she said. “It’s Ambrose.”
Ambrose? He stared at the creature. The flinch nearly cost him.
As if in response to its name, the nahwal screeched and charged Sasha with murder and madness in its eyes. Reacting instinctively, Michael yanked Sasha against him in a hard, possessive hug and threw up a thick protective shield around them both.
The nahwal bounced off. Screaming in frustration, it clawed at the shield, trying to gouge its way through.
Inside the protective bubble, Sasha threw her arms around Michael, shaking hard. He hugged her back with equal intensity as relief crashed through him. He’d gotten to her in time.
They clung together for a few seconds, while the nahwal howled and fought the shield. Then Sasha pulled away. “I tried the ‘way’ spell. It didn’t work for me.”
“Shit.” That was not good news. Michael could feel the silver magic poised at the edges of his mind, but he shied away from its power. What if in using it to get Sasha and him home, she wound up tainted by the darkness too? He couldn’t risk it.
“We need more of a power draw to get out of here, right?” She met his eyes, her lips turning up at the corners, but her expression remained wary.
He got it. More, it was so obvious that he wondered why his thoughts had gone straight to the silver magic. Or rather, he knew why and didn’t want to accept it. “Power, it is,” he said, shifting her in his arms, blocking the Other as hard as he possibly could these days, as he leaned down. And kissed her.
Sex magic sparked around them, reassuringly red-gold, though not nearly as powerful as the silver muk. It would be enough, though. They would make it be enough.
Her arms came up and around his neck as she leaned up on her toes up to press her body into his. He slid his hands down her sides, catching her around the waist, holding her close as he’d imagined doing so many nights since they’d been together. Her mouth opened beneath his; their tongues touched. Desire flared, hot and hard, but with an edge of tenderness that was theirs alone as they kissed and kissed again. But even as he kissed her and called the red-gold Nightkeeper magic, he was aware that the Other was there as well, called by Sasha, empowered by her.
She’s ours, his alter ego had said, and that had definitely been a threat.
I won’t let you have her, Michael thought fiercely. I won’t. He reached for the red-gold magic, hoped to hell it would be enough. Ending the kiss, he pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, “Way.” Home.
And the world disappeared, leaving the howl of the mad nahwal to trail off into a silence broken, deep down inside Michael, by the Other’s raspy whisper. Don’t make promises you aren’t man enough to keep.
Sasha clung to Michael as the world went gray-green and swept them up into the barrier on a mad whirl. They were torn apart, but she barely had time to shout his name before her soul slammed back into her body and the world took shape around her, becoming the sacred chamber back at Skywatch.
Thank the gods. They’d made it back.
Moaning, she cracked her eyes open and tried to regain feeling in her stiff body, which was all but frozen cross-legged. Expecting to see everything the same as it had been when the ritual began, it took her a moment to realize that wasn’t the case. She was holding Michael’s hand on one side, but they were the only two magi still sitting in the ceremonial circle. Most of the others had left the chamber. Strike remained, though; he stood just inside the door with Jox at his side.
They were staring at her.
Sasha didn’t know what to think about that, what to think about any of it. Her head was spinning and she was ravenous. She was also stirred up, heated by Michael’s kiss, and her head was full of the things that had happened inside the barrier. Ambrose was haunting the temple; it made sense, it fit. But at the same time it didn’t. She now remembered hearing him whisper, “Have faith” to her as Iago had taken her away. But if he’d been there, why hadn’t he saved her? Had he wanted the Xibalbans to have her? Why—
“Sasha.” Michael tugged his hand from her too-tight grip and nudged her arm. “Earth to Sasha.”
Torn from her whirling thoughts, she stared blankly at him. “What? Oh.” She flushed at the heat in his eyes, and felt an answering kick of desire within her. But then he looked past her, his expression going strange and rueful as he nodded to the others. “I think those two want to talk to you.”
“What? Why?”
“Check your wrist.”
Adrenaline shot through her system when she realized she’d all but forgotten about the point of the bloodline ceremony in the chaos of what had followed. The nahwal, she remembered. That had been Scarred-Jaguar; hadn’t it? The royal nahwal was the only one to retain personal characteristics. But why had the royal nahwal come for her?
She became acutely aware of the slight tingle that spread across her inner forearm, seeming too large for a single mark. Oh, shit, she thought, afraid to look, afraid not to. Before she could make the move, Jox crossed to her, leaned down, and offered his hand. His sleeve slid back to reveal the marks on his forearm.
Where before there had been two jaguar glyphs above the aj-winikin, now there were three.
Something inside Sasha went still. Shaking, caught in her oldest a
nd strongest fantasy, the one where she had an actual family, she pushed back the sleeve of her soiled, dragging robe. Shock slammed through her at the sight of not just one mark . . . but four. The jaguar. The royal ju. The warrior. And something she didn’t recognize—a talent she hadn’t yet tapped.
She hadn’t just gotten her bloodline mark; she’d also gotten her talent marks, along with an unexpected, terrifying glyph that couldn’t be true. The ju. The mark of the jaguar kings. “I’m not . . .” she began, then trailed off. She looked up at Strike. “Ambrose was my father.” She paused. Swallowed. Said in a smaller voice, “Wasn’t he?”
Strike’s face was crowded with emotion, but his voice was matter-of-fact when he said, “The winikin stepped in as our guardians. Apparently, Ambrose stepped in as yours.”
Jox had tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, child. I didn’t know. I would’ve looked for you if I did. I would’ve done whatever it took to find you.”
A hot, messy ball of emotion gathered in Sasha’s throat and clogged her chest as she realized that if this was true, if she was really a child of the jaguar bloodline, then Jox should have been her winikin. She should have been raised as Strike and Anna had been, with love and a fair-minded understanding of who and what they were. Not blood and madness.
“Who am I?” she asked Strike.
The king looked simultaneously shell-shocked and hopeful. “The nahwal said you’re his second daughter. That would make you Anna’s and my baby sister . . . the one who was supposedly stillborn two years before the Solstice Massacre.”
Sasha opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
It was Michael, solid beside her, his eyes dark with an indefinable emotion, who said, “Looks like it was more than a nickname . . . Princess.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
University of Texas, Austin
As it got on toward midnight on the night of the full moon, Rabbit killed the music, set his book aside, and started pulling himself together for his late date. Myrinne had told him to come to her room at ten of twelve, not before, and she’d been serious about the timing. So he was following orders, despite the buzz of anticipation that’d played hell with his concentration in the hours leading up to the rendezvous.
He didn’t know what sort of surprise she had planned, but he was hoping it involved getting naked. He also hoped it wouldn’t include any of the witchy stuff she’d been increasingly into lately. If Anna or any of the others knew Myrinne had been dabbling with Mistress Truth’s spell books and paraphernalia, they’d shit a brick. Rabbit was skirting deep trouble by not saying anything to them, but what was he supposed to do, rat out his girlfriend? That was so not happening. Besides, it was all harmless stuff, not even real magic, as far as he could tell. It seemed to be mostly about centering personal energy flows and crap like that, which made it little more than a glorified yoga class with some extra candles and crystals. If she got in any deeper, he figured he’d say something. For now, he was just glad the rituals seemed to have smoothed out the edges she’d developed in the first few weeks they’d been on campus, when she hadn’t wanted to spend much time with him, preferring to be on her own, or hanging with friends he never seemed to meet.
Lately, she’d been spending more and more time with him, and seemed happier overall. He figured he could overlook the yoga stuff if this was the end result. Gods knew she’d had some major life upheavals over the past year. If this was how she needed to deal, then so be it. It wasn’t like he could judge—he’d spent most of the months following his old man’s death hanging out in the pueblo ruins behind Skywatch, smashed on the drug-laced, highly alcoholic pulque he’d snagged from Jox’s not-so-hidden stash. In fact, when he thought about it that way, she was probably dealing with things better than he had.
At exactly ten to midnight, his blood buzzing pleasantly with anticipation, Rabbit crossed the hallway and knocked on her door.
Her husky voice called, “Come on in.”
He opened the door and his pulse kicked to find the lights off and fat red candles flickering, and Myrinne wearing the long black silk bathrobe he’d bought her a few weeks ago after she’d bookmarked it on his Web browser as a hint. Her hair was loose and lustrous, and she wore the jade bracelet he’d given her over the summer.
Rabbit grinned. Hello. Guess I’m getting lucky tonight!
It wasn’t until he stepped into the room and locked the door at his back that he saw that the candles weren’t ambience, after all. At least not entirely. They sat at the points of a six-pointed star that was drawn on the linoleum floor in red electrician’s tape, with a double line through the middle of the star.
Myrinne’s expression went wary at his double take. “Problem?” she said, her voice faintly challenging.
Rabbit squelched his first few responses, which were all variations of, Oh, fucking shit, baby, are you trying to get me in trouble? She deserved better than that. Of anyone at Skywatch—or anyone in his life, ever—she’d been the first to be entirely on his side, no matter what. The others kept trying to make him fit into their prophecies, their rules, not seeming to understand that a half-blood, by definition, didn’t conform to the Nightkeepers’ rules. Hell, in the past, no half-blood would’ve even been put through the bloodline ceremony and allowed to perform magic. It was a case of luck, lack of manpower, his own strong magic, and eventually Strike’s royal this is how it’s gonna be that had gained him acceptance as a Nightkeeper, over his old man’s strenuous objections and dire predictions.
And whether because of those predictions or because he was truly a screwup at heart, he’d blown up one opportunity after another, most of the time literally . . . until he met Myrinne. She’d been the first one to appreciate him—and maybe even love him?—for who and what he was, for what he could do. She wasn’t afraid of him, hadn’t been from the first. In fact, she was always encouraging him to practice more, work harder, develop the multi-pronged talent that set him apart from the others.
Could he do any less for her?
So he took a deep breath and forced himself not to freak out at the sign of the star on the floor and the suspicion that this wasn’t exactly the kind of date he’d had in mind. Unable to think of a better response off the cuff, he said, “Nice candles.”
Some of the fight drained out of her, and she smiled at him, candlelight catching her eyes. “The star represents the two of us. You’re the fire sign—no-brainer—which is the upward triangle, and I’m earth, which is the downward triangle with the line through the middle. Put the two together, and you get the transected star.”
He liked the symbolism just fine, with it joining the two of them together and all. But he wasn’t sure he liked where he thought she was going with the rest of it. “Myr . . . you know we can’t do magic, right? We swore blood oaths to Strike and Anna.”
She crossed to him, moving through the star with a smooth sweep of her robe, somehow avoiding all the candles in the process. On one level, Rabbit thought sourly that if he ever tried that while wearing, say, his ceremonial robes back at Skywatch, he would’ve lit his shit right up. On another, more primal level, his skin tightened at her approach, and his jeans, baggy though they were, grew uncomfortably tight in the crotch.
Stopping very close to him, close enough to kiss, to touch, she did neither, instead raising an eyebrow in challenge. “We swore a blood oath not to do Nightkeeper magic. This isn’t.”
Rabbit’s breath left him in a whoosh, and his brain clicked back into oh, shit mode. Technically, she was right, but he knew damn well that the technicality wouldn’t save him from getting his ass handed to him if Strike or Anna found out. Or Jox. Or, hell, any of the gang back at Skywatch.
But you’re not at Skywatch, are you? said a small, sly voice inside him. They sent you away to grow up. Who’s to say this isn’t part of the process? It’s called making your own decisions, asshole. You might want to give it a try sometime.
“Besides,” Myrinne continued, lifting his right hand to press a
small kiss at his wrist, over the bloodred Xibalban mark he’d accepted from Iago in order to save her life, “don’t you have questions?”
He went still. “You’ve got an answer spell?”
“It’s called scrying,” she corrected, “and yeah. Especially since tonight is the esbat—the full moon—I think we should be able to figure out where you can find the spell to call a new three-question nahwal. Or heck, maybe we’ll even call up the spell itself.” She paused tellingly. “That’s assuming that you get behind this a hundred percent. It won’t work if you’re not into it, or if you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you,” he said immediately, realizing that he’d begun to sweat lightly, which sucked, because he was wearing the last of his clean shirts. “It’s just . . . if it’s not Nightkeeper magic—”
“It’s not,” she broke in. “No blood sacrifice, no barrier. It’s all about flames and mirrors.”
“Then are you sure it’ll answer questions about Nightkeeper magic? Does it . . . I don’t know . . . acknowledge other magic systems?”
It was the right thing to say, he saw immediately from the gleam in her eyes. “It’s more along the lines of self-hypnosis, allowing you to access your own natural visions and your connection to other levels of sight and knowledge,” she said. “It’s all very low-impact, very natural. Honest.”
He shouldn’t do it, he knew. He should back out as gracefully as possible, hoping she didn’t take it the wrong way. But even as he told himself that, he couldn’t help thinking about everything that’d gotten fucked up because he’d killed the three-question nahwal. If the Nightkeepers still had access to its answers, they might’ve rescued Sasha sooner, found the library, found a new intersection . . . hell, they might’ve even dealt with Iago by now. Who knew?
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