“Don’t do it.” For a second, Rabbit thought the strangled words might’ve come from him. Then he realized it was Jox who’d spoken. The royal winikin stood and stared at his king, looking wrecked. “Don’t send them away.”
Strike grimaced. “It’s for the best. You know that.”
“Please,” Jox said, just please, as though having the twins leave were the worst thing he could think to have happen.
Rabbit didn’t know what that was all about, but felt sorry for Jox when Strike just shook his head, like the decision was already made. Gods knew Rabbit had been on the receiving end of that look about a zillion times before. Welcome to powerlessness, he thought. How’s it feel?
But even though he hated the idea of the rugrats leaving, Rabbit had to admit that Strike had a point—if there were questions about the security of Skywatch, better to split the Nightkeepers up as much as possible than have them all bunched together. When you were down to your last dozen, it wasn’t always practical to stand and fight. The twins had purposely been held back from their bloodline ceremonies, which normally would’ve happened on the first cardinal day after their third birthdays. Without their bloodline marks and that connection to the barrier, they were essentially invisible to the Banol Kax. They’d be safer away than they were at Skywatch; that much was clear. What wasn’t clear was why Jox was so upset. He should be happy it was a couple of winikin taking them, not a pair of full-bloods taking off and diluting their fighting force. Besides, Hannah and Woody were a couple; they’d give the kids as close to a normal family setup as possible, under the circumstances. But when Rabbit looked, he saw that Jox was gone, like he hadn’t been able to sit there and listen to Strike after the king had made his call.
What was up with that?
“The rest of us will stay here and shore up the defenses,” Strike continued, and Rabbit returned his attention to the meeting.
“Why not go after Iago?” Sven demanded. “We’ve got two gods on our side now. We should be able to kick his ass, especially if we do it on the next ceremony day, the Seville at Opposition or whatever.”
“Saturn at Opposition,” Strike gritted, glaring at Sven. “And you seem to be forgetting that we don’t have a clue how Iago’s powers work. So far we’ve seen him teleport and mind-bend, and his mind-bending worked effectively on a Nightkeeper, which is highly unusual.” He glanced at Rabbit. He didn’t say, Rabbit’s just a half-blood, though, which might explain his susceptibility. But he thought it. Rabbit knew that for sure. The king continued, “Besides, we don’t have a clue about the Xibalbans’ strength yet. There could be just the two of them; there could be hundreds. We don’t know nearly enough about them yet to think about going after them.”
“So we’re just going to sit here and wait for him to come after us?” Sven asked, sounding annoyed. “What happened to the best defense being a good offense?”
“Offense doesn’t always mean going after the other side,” Strike said evenly. “Sometimes it means making the enemy do what you want, thinking it’s their idea.”
Nate narrowed his eyes, one of which was nearly swollen shut already and rapidly darkening to a bruise. “You want Iago to come here. Why?”
“Because we don’t have a clue what we’re up against,” Strike answered. “We need to know what the Order of Xibalba intends to do between now and the end-time; we need to get an idea of their numbers and their magic; and quite frankly, I’d like to convince them that they don’t have to like us, but that we’re all better off if we live through to New Year’s Day, 2013.”
“And if their idea of a workable negotiation rests on our absence from the earth?” Nate pushed.
“Then at least we’ll learn something about the enemy.” Strike glanced at Anna. “Given that our location has almost certainly been compromised, I say we plan to use the potential security breach rather than whining about it.”
“And Lucius?” Anna asked quietly.
“He stays locked up for now.” Which wasn’t really an answer. It was only a delay.
The meeting broke up soon after that. It was about time, as far as Rabbit was concerned, because everything they’d spent the past forty minutes going over seemed like it could be pretty much summed up as, “The king’s going to do what he wants.” Hello, history repeating itself. Strike’s father had ignored his advisers and led the Nightkeepers to their deaths. What if Strike was in the process of doing the same? Was loyalty defined as going along with the flow, or, if it didn’t seem like the flow was heading the right way, doing something to change it?
Rabbit wasn’t sure, but he knew he didn’t like the way things were headed, and he had an idea that might help shed some light. Waiting until he saw that Jade was deep in convo with Strike and Anna, he made tracks for the archive.
On the first floor, tucked around a corner and down a short hall, the three-room library held the collected knowledge of generations of Nightkeepers, as well as just about everything that’d ever been written by outsiders regarding the Mayan end-time prophecy and the Great Conjunction. Jade was almost finished organizing and computerizing all of it, but the system wasn’t online yet. That was too bad, because Rabbit was pretty sure he could’ve hacked past the basic passwords she was using to protect the spells Strike had decreed off-limits without special authorization, namely his. Since the database wasn’t finished yet, if Rabbit wanted one of those spells he was going to have to get his hands on the actual books, which were locked in the second of the three rooms. Lucky for him, locks weren’t much of a challenge these days. His powers were growing faster even than he was letting on to the others, making it no strain when he slapped a palm on the door and concentrated and felt the tumblers fall into place.
As he pushed through the door into the second room of the archive, where the older books and a handful of nonperishable artifacts were kept, he told himself this was the right thing to do. It was his fault Iago had gotten the knife in New Orleans, so he owed it to Strike and the others to figure out how to get it back. And he owed it to Myrinne to make sure she was safe, because he knew what it was like when nobody gave a shit.
“Okay,” he said to the rows of neatly shelved books in the librarylike room. “Will the three-question spell please step forward?”
He found the book he was looking for almost right away, recognizing the binding from last fall, when Strike and Leah had used the spell to figure out why she, a human, had sporadic power. Technically the spell was supposed to work only on the cardinal days, the equinoxes and solstices, but Rabbit was betting he could make it work for Saturn at Opposition. He was positive he could call the three-question nahwal, the spirit guide who would answer three questions per person per lifetime. Granted, the nahwal wasn’t strictly bound to answer the questions in a way that made immediate sense, but it’d be better than nothing, right?
Strike and Leah had already burned their questions, and the theory was that the rest of the Nightkeepers were supposed to save their questions for stuff that would be important to all of them, mostly dealing with the end-time. But Rabbit was so not into socialism. As far as he was concerned, it was his life, his questions.
He was a half-blood, after all. He might as well live down to expectations.
Two days later Alexis was in the weapons shed located between the ball court and the firing range at the back of the compound, prepping for the Belize trip by loading her weapons belt with spare clips of jade-tipped bullets, when she heard the scuff of a footstep in the gritty, wind-blown sand outside.
She turned, tensing. “Hello?”
Nate appeared in the doorway, his big body blocking the gap and his energy filling the small shed. He looked darker, rougher, and more dangerous than usual, the bruises on his face having gone from raw red to dark. Sensual awareness prickled across Alexis’s skin, shimmering inward to gather in her core and at the back of her brain, where the connection to Ixchel awoke at his proximity. He’s the one, the goddess seemed to be saying.
Well,
guess what? The goddess was wrong. He wasn’t the one. He was an ass.
Alexis couldn’t believe he and Michael had beaten each other up, couldn’t believe neither of them would tell her why, though guessing was easy: She was the only thing that’d changed between the men. She wasn’t flattered, either, though Anna and Jade seemed to think she ought to be. No, she was seriously annoyed. She figured it was safe to assume that Nate had gone after Michael, who’d fought back in self-defense. And that scenario was just asinine, because Nate was the one who kept distancing himself from their nonrelationship. He didn’t have any right to be pissed at Michael. Not that either of them would talk about it, of course; they were sticking together in some sort of Neanderthal code of ethics that just made her more annoyed.
When Nate simply stood there in the doorway, looking at her, she snapped, “What do you want?” Belatedly, she realized he was wearing black on black, with a bulletproof vest over the top, strapped down with a stocked weapons belt. “Where are you going?”
“Belize.” He moved past her and started collecting spare clips, turning his back on her.
“The hell you are.” She would’ve yanked him to face her, but knew from experience that he didn’t get yanked. So she moved around in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “Michael’s going with me.”
“Not anymore. Stone and I reached an agreement.” He turned away from her again, pretending to check one of his weapons, though they both knew he kept his guns in perfect working order. They all did—Jox, their resident gun junkie, had drummed that lesson home early on.
Confusion and irritation fought for dominance within Alexis, and confusion won. “Nate,” she said softly. “Look at me, please.”
He stalled the busywork, standing still for a heartbeat. Then he turned toward her, his expression guarded. He secured the autopistol in its holster, then hooked his thumbs in his belt as he faced her, looking ready for anything.
Anything, of course, except what she needed from him.
“This is nonnegotiable,” he said, as if a statement like that would actually end the discussion. “I’ll play the god card if I have to, though I’d really rather not.”
And he has a point, damn it, Alexis thought on a beat of sadness, of frustration. She knew Strike would back him up if it came down to it, as would the winikin. So she didn’t try to fight the fight she knew she wouldn’t win. She simply said, “Why?”
He flinched, looking like he would’ve preferred that she argue, but answered, “I need time.”
Whatever she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it. “How much time?” she asked, not sure what he expected to figure out in the coming days, when he hadn’t managed it over the past seven months.
“I don’t know.” He shifted, settling the Kevlar across his broad shoulders. “I’m working on it.” Which didn’t tell her anything, really.
She stood there and looked at him, really looked at him for the first time after having spent the past several months—and particularly the past few weeks—trying not to let herself look. He was brawny as ever, with a set of muscles she suspected he’d developed during the prison stint he refused to talk about, then maintained in the years since with workouts that seemed fueled as much by anger as a desire for fitness. His face was different than before, though, especially his eyes, which held a new determination.
When she’d first met him she’d seen a slick, powerful businessman who’d shown up in a stretch SUV. Now she saw a warrior-mage who had saved her more than once, a man who was trying to reconcile the person he’d been with the one the future needed him to become. He didn’t like being told what to do, didn’t accept anything at face value, including the attraction that’d bound them together from the very beginning. But for the first time he seemed to be accepting that the Nightkeepers needed more of him.
He was trying; she had to give him that. So, despite herself, she nodded slowly. “Okay, you can come to Belize. I’m not promising anything, though.”
“Understood.” He nodded to her belt. “You locked and loaded?”
She took a deep breath to settle the sudden flutter in her stomach, then nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
“Then let’s get our backpacks and get rolling. Next stop, Belize.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Using one of the photos Jade had pulled off the Web as a visual anchor, Strike teleported Nate and Alexis to a point just outside the ATM caves. The three of them were linked hand to hand, with her in the middle and the men, holding autopistols at the ready in their free hands. The weapons proved unnecessary, though. They were alone, thanks to Jox, who’d cleared the site by calling to book a tour, paying a premium to ensure that his group would be the only ones allowed in the caves that day, and then bailing on the reservation without demanding a refund.
Pulling away from the men, Alexis let her hands drop to her sides and tipped her head back. “Wow.”
There didn’t seem to be much else to say. The place was fricking gorgeous. They stood in a small clearing near where a slow-moving river widened to a stone-strewn pool that fed into the mouth of an arching cave. Sunlight dappled through the leafy canopy high overhead, and everywhere she looked there were jewel-green leaves and growing things. The abundant fertility was a shock, after they’d come from the mostly red-brown plant and animal life in New Mexico’s canyon country. Alexis had been to the Yucatán for the cardinal days and the eclipse ceremony, of course, but those had been furtive trips, in and gone during the night, under the cover of darkness.
Now she took a moment to fill her lungs with air that was moist and fecund rather than desert dry. She smiled up at the chitters and cries of wild animals high above. She saw the flash of colorful birds and dark, long-armed shapes playing in the trees.
“Howler monkeys,” Nate said, coming up beside her. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to make friends.”
“No worries on that account.” She turned back to Strike. “Thanks for the lift. We’ll call you for a pickup.” She patted her knapsack, which held the satellite phone that would form their main link to Skywatch. Granted, a satellite glitch had forced Red-Boar to carry a wounded Anna out of the jungle the year before, and had meant that Strike had barely reached them in time . . . but without a true telepath among the Nightkeepers, they didn’t really have a better option than the sat phones.
Strike nodded. “Be careful. And good luck.” He raised a hand in farewell. Power hummed in the air, sparking royal red for a second and then coalescing inward, snapping to nothingness as he disappeared, leaving Alexis and Nate alone outside the ATM caves.
According to Jade, all the signs pointed to its having been one of the Nightkeepers’ most sacred caves. To the Maya and Nightkeepers, all caves had been sacred, as had mountains and rivers. Those three components together—a cave at high elevation, with a subterranean river running within—characterized the entrance to Xibalba itself. Most of the Mayan pyramids were built on that idea, with the sloping sides ascending up to an open platform, often with a boxlike room at the top that mimicked the mouth of a cave and led to tunnels heading back down into the body of the pyramid and even beyond, down to underground tombs, waterways, and sacred sacrificial places. In that way, the dead kings entombed within the pyramids had metaphorically acted out the journey through the nine-layered hell of Xibalba and out the other side, to join the gods in the sky.
Those pyramids were man-made, though. Places where the mountain-river-cave conjunction occurred naturally were considered even more special, and only the highest-ranking shaman-priests dared enter such caves, lest they anger the gods or Banol Kax. Even now, a thousand years after the main fall of the Classical Mayan Empire, when the ATM caves had ceased being a center of worship, Alexis could feel the importance of the site and the crinkle of magic on her skin. The power wasn’t the gold of the gods, the red of the Nightkeepers, or the purple-green of the makol and Banol Kax. Instead, it was a pale, colorless magic, a wellspring to be used for good or ill. It was a neutr
al, waiting sort of magic.
Hopefully, it was waiting for them.
“Ready?” she asked, and headed down the shallow slope to the pool before Nate could answer, trusting that he had her back on this, at least. “Please tell me Jade was right on the ‘not enough piranhas to worry about and you’ll see the poisonous water snakes and fanged reptiles coming’ thing.”
“We won’t be in the water too long,” he said. “Watch your weapons.”
“Right.” She unclipped her belt and tucked it in her knapsack, which was lined and would supposedly be completely waterproof once she engaged the double seal at the top. With her possessions secured, she stepped into the pool and started wading toward the cave mouth, then wound up having to swim when the faintly squishy bottom fell away. It was only a short distance across to where her feet touched the bottom, and then she was wading again, passing under the stone archway of the cave mouth.
Nate was right behind her, unspeaking, his solid presence helping settle her. She wouldn’t have admitted it to him for anything, but part of her was glad he was there instead of Michael. She and Nate admittedly had their problems, but she was comfortable with him, knew his body language and how he moved. Whether either of them liked it or not, they worked well together, at least on the physical level.
The ATM cave was like a cathedral at first, open and echoing with the slosh and slap of water as they waded onward. Rock formations flanked the waterway, larger, stubbier, and softer-edged than the ones she’d seen in her vision. Was that because of a difference in time frame, or would the stalactites and stalagmites grow sharper and narrower, more fanglike as they worked their way into the cave system? She didn’t know.
When they reached a section where a dry-land trail opened up alongside the waterway, they climbed out and sluiced off what water they could, then pulled water-resistant flashlights out of the packs, clicking them on for light as they moved deeper into the caves.
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