Dawnkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  The answer danced just out of her reach. Cursing the goddess, praying to her, Alexis tipped her head back and, compelled by instinct, or maybe a whisper from beyond, she cried, “Takaj, Ixchel!” Come, goddess!

  As though Ixchel had been waiting only for the call, the conduit came to life and a starburst exploded rainbows at the back of Alexis’s brain. Power flowed through her, passing out of her to the funnel cloud beyond. She was the goddess and the goddess was her. A contemptuous flick of her bloodstained fingers swept aside the rainbow-wrought shield that had both saved her and separated her from Nate. A word extinguished the funnel cloud. A gesture had an invisible hand plucking Nate’s limp form out of the edge of nothingness, and bringing him to where Alexis hung in midair.

  The rainbow surrounded them, bound them together as she touched him, felt the solidness of him, the reality of him. Closing her eyes, she imagined the sacred chamber and whispered the words that would send them home.

  There was no lurch or movement, no sense of transitioning from one plane to the next. There was only a flash of gold and colors, and they were there, facing each other over the altar, hanging on to each other for dear life.

  Impressions bombarded her. Snapshots. She was aware of Izzy and Carlos sitting cross-legged where the other magi had been, saw their expressions of delighted relief, heard them shouting for the others. She was aware of the stars and the moon overhead, aware that hours had passed when it had seemed like only minutes. And she was aware of Nate’s fingers holding tightly to hers, and his eyes flickering open, showing confusion first, and then darkening with memory.

  Moments later, the door flung open and Strike hustled into the chamber, followed closely by Leah and the others, who were all talking at once. But it was Nate’s voice Alexis heard. He said, “You did it, Lexie. You called the goddess.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled, tentatively at first, then wider as she realized the connection was there now, and fully formed where it had been nothing but a wish before. Joy lit her up from within, radiating outward until the air sparkled with the hint of rainbows, like light blurred through a subtle prism. “I did, didn’t I?”

  The other magi gathered around them while the winikin tried to push them back, saying something about food and rest first, questions later. But Alexis kept looking at Nate, and the rainbow joy dimmed slightly when she saw the knowledge in his eyes, and felt it in her own heart. The goddess had taught her to call the magic by herself, which meant she didn’t need Nate anymore.

  The realization should’ve been a relief.

  It wasn’t.

  PART III

  VERNAL EQUINOX

  A day of equal light and dark, and the first day of

  spring. A time of change and growth.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  March 13

  When Rabbit awoke the morning after the opposition, he found himself lying on a camping cot in a square, empty room that was paneled in wide, rough-cut pine boards. There were barred windows on each wall, through which he could see a cloudy gray sky and a smattering of pine branches. As he watched, a bright red cardinal bounced onto one of the branches and away, placing him somewhere north of the snow line, far from either Skywatch or New Orleans. The air was so cold that his breath fogged on each exhale, though he was covered in a couple of blankets, and warm enough.

  Which was so not the point. What the hell was he doing in a camping cabin?

  His head spun with the worst postmagic hangover of his life, and his body throbbed from his fight with the nahwal. For reasons known only to the gods, the magic healed cuts but not bruises.

  “Screw the bruises. You’re lucky to be alive after the stunt you pulled,” a voice said from behind him.

  Jolting hard in panic, Rabbit turned and scrambled to his feet in a single motion, calling the fire to his fingertips in an instant. He took one look at the redheaded man sitting in a folding chair and let rip with the fire magic.

  The flames stopped dead three feet or so from Iago’s face, spreading along an invisible liquidlike barrier, shield magic the likes of which Rabbit had never seen before. Groaning with the effort, he increased the power, but though the fire magic roared higher, it still wasn’t denting the shield.

  “Cut the blowtorch, will you?” the other mage called over the crackle of fire. “I’m not going to hurt you. Hell, I’m the one who pulled your ass out of that funnel last night.”

  Rabbit called back the fire but kept it close to his fingertips as his heart drummed against his ribs and he tried to remember what’d happened after the nahwal collapsed. He came up blank aside from a wash of terror and the sound of his own screams. Ignoring the chill that brought, he demanded, “Where the hell are we? What do you want? And how did you know I was thinking about the bruises?”

  “We’ll get to all that.” Iago leaned his chair back against the wall and stacked his hands behind his head, all casual. He was wearing black canvas flannel-lined pants, and heavy work boots that had tracked wet spots across the floor, along with a black turtleneck and a heavy blue fisherman’s sweater. The sleeves had pulled some when he stretched his hands over his head, baring the bloodred quatrefoil on his arm. The mage’s dark red hair was partially hidden by an earflap hat, which would’ve looked dumb if it weren’t for his eyes, which were hard-edged emerald.

  “You look like a lumberjack.” Rabbit jammed his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and whistled a few bars of the transvestite lumberjack song from Monty Python, pushing back the fear some with ’tude.

  “Stuff it, kid. I was a bigger snot at your age than you’ll ever hope to be.” He paused. “Besides, the digs are only temporary. We’ve got a sweet homestead down south. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

  “How about I leave now and you go fuck yourself?”

  Iago just rolled his eyes. “Hello? You’ve torched more real estate than a California wildfire, turned the museum job into a train wreck, and killed the three-question nahwal . If I were you, I’d be looking at my options right about now, because the Nightkeepers give fuck-all what happens to you.”

  “Shut up,” Rabbit snapped, but his voice cracked on the words.

  “It’s not like they came looking for you when you took off, right? And that was before you nearly got the new Godkeeper and her mate killed.” One reddish eyebrow climbed at Rabbit’s confused look. “Oh, right. You were unconscious for that part. Congratulations, two of your former teammates tried to use the three-question spell right after you offed the nahwal. They got barriered instead. Barely made it out alive.”

  Rabbit pressed the heels of his hands against his ears as the guilt amped. “I said shut up!”

  “Reality sucks. Get used to it.” Iago stood and moved toward him. Rabbit tried to throw up a shield, but he’d lost the magic to emotion. Getting inside his space, the mage leaned down to him, his face so close that Rabbit could see the flecks of magic that flickered in Iago’s green eyes. “I’m offering you a choice, kid. You want to switch sides, we’re happy to have you. Otherwise you’re going to be our guest until the equinox. We could use some powerful blood for the sacrifice we’re planning.”

  “Fuck you,” Rabbit spat, but all of a sudden his words were slurring and the floor was doing a slow roll beneath him. He couldn’t tell if he’d just hit the end of his reserves, or if there was something else going on—drugs, maybe, or sleep magic. Either way, he was fading fast.

  “Think about it,” Iago said. “I’ll have some food brought for you. No sense trying to figure it out if you’re half dead.” The mage headed for the door, which swung open at his approach. He looked back and smirked slightly at Rabbit, as if to say, See how much more powerful I am than your precious Nightkeepers?

  “Wait,” Rabbit croaked when he was partway out the door.

  Iago turned back. “What?”

  “Why me?”

  That seemed to startle the Xibalban. Then he started laughing. “Have they honestly not told you? Gods, that’s pathetic.” He turne
d back, eyes alight with mockery. “Why do you think they’re so afraid of your magic? Your mother was one of us.”

  The kick of emotion that hit Rabbit square in the chest and drove the breath from his lungs probably should have been surprise, only it wasn’t. Something inside him said, Of course, as though he should’ve known all along, or maybe a piece of him had guessed long ago. “Oh,” he said, only it came out more like a groan.

  “Think about it, kid. I’m offering you a family, and more power than you could possibly imagine.” Then Iago turned and left. Moments later the door swung shut and a lock clicked into place from the outside. A few seconds after that, Rabbit felt a buzz of unfamiliar ward magic settling into place, sealing him into the cabin.

  He lay there for a long moment, unmoving, thinking about Iago’s offer of more power than he could possibly imagine.

  Well, Rabbit could imagine a whole lot of power.

  As far as Nate was concerned, by inviting Iago for a parley, the Nightkeepers were just asking for trouble.

  Strike thought it was imperative that they at least talk to the bastard, given how few Nightkeepers there were. Nate thought it was fucking stupid, and told the king that in so many words the day after the opposition ceremony, when he was still running hot on magic and frustration, and an edge of hurt that Alexis didn’t need him anymore. He and Strike had gotten into it, had gotten loud, and then Alexis had waded in, shouting right back. Nate wasn’t sure if she really thought the meeting was a good idea or if she just wanted to argue with him, but they’d gone at it for a bit before the king separated them and announced that he wanted Nate to be part of the group that would meet Iago outside the front door of the training compound, beyond the wards.

  Which was why, two days after the opposition ceremony that’d nearly killed him and Alexis and had liberated her instead, Nate found himself standing beside her, with Strike and Leah on his other side. Anna was there too. She and the members of the royal council had spent a chunk of the prior evening hashing something out, so Nate had a feeling they were planning more than a simple parley, but he wasn’t in on that piece of things. He was just window dressing, another body standing by the front gate, waiting for Iago.

  Who was late.

  “Maybe it’s a trick,” Nate said after ten minutes had turned to fifteen and there was no rattle of ’port magic in the air. “A distraction.”

  “Allowing them to do what?” Alexis asked. “If he had the ability and the desire to ’port straight into Skywatch, he would’ve done it by now.” She didn’t look at him; at least, he didn’t think she did. It was hard to tell, when she was wearing a pair of three-hundred-dollar sunglasses that shaded her eyes and hid her expression.

  “Isn’t the whole point that we don’t have a clue what he can and can’t do?” he challenged.

  Before she could say anything, Strike interrupted. “Incoming.”

  Moments later Nate felt it too: the rattle of magic that felt like Nightkeeper power, but wasn’t. It geared up to a roar, displaced air exploded outward in a cloud of brown smoke, and Iago and a striking-looking woman appeared several feet away, zapping in with their feet planted on terra firma with no stumbling, no awkwardness.

  Wearing hiking boots, jeans, and a white T-shirt, with a long black duster over the top, Iago looked like just another guy with a bit of cool on. But Nate saw disdain in his face, and thought how he’d promised the old woman in the doily cottage that he would make sure her killer was punished.

  Iago’s eyes skimmed over the Nightkeepers, pausing briefly on Nate as though feeling the hatred, or maybe seeing it in his eyes. Then he moved on, his message clear: You don’t scare me.

  No? Nate thought on a flare of anger. We’ll have to fix that.

  The woman at his side locked onto Anna immediately, and her lips tipped up in a small, mean smile. That’d be Desiree, then. Nate wasn’t sure who she was to the Xibalbans, or why she was at the meeting, but one thing was for sure: Malice radiated off her in waves. Anna, in contrast, seemed detached, disinterested, standing there with her eyes unfocused and her hands jammed in her pockets. Which didn’t totally make sense, given that she’d flown all the way to New Mex in order to go at it with her enemy on the Nightkeepers’ turf.

  “Nochem,” Iago said to Strike, who stood slightly ahead of the others and had rolled up the right sleeve of his black T-shirt to reveal the hunab ku, the geometric mark of kingship that was located on his upper arm, where only kings and gods were marked.

  “Call me Strike.”

  “Then I’m Iago.” The mage looked past the king. As he did so, a faint rattle of background magic started up, an annoying buzz that made Nate’s jaw ache. “I assume these are your advisers?”

  “Yes,” Strike said simply.

  Nate quashed a knee-jerk protest. It didn’t matter what they called him; he was just there to counteract some of Alexis’s less rational ideas. That didn’t make him an adviser.

  Iago snorted. “Fine, I get it. You’re not inviting me in for tea and cookies or whatever. You’re the one who asked for a meeting, so let’s meet. What do you want?”

  Strike nodded. “Okay, here goes. Your order has gotten some seriously shitty press over the millennia, but I’m thinking that we may have a common goal at this point. Doesn’t do you any good to have the world end any more than it does us. So I thought we might be able to come to terms, maybe cooperate. You’ve got some of the demon prophecies; we’ve got some of them. What if we combined our forces?”

  Iago smirked. “You’ve got one of them, and I’ve got the other six, you mean. I should thank you for the last three, by the way. Your archives must’ve contained info that mine didn’t, because I couldn’t find Cabrakan’s bowl, the Volatile’s knife, or the Ixchel statuette for love or money until your archivist started Googling them and my filters caught the keywords.” He grinned and flexed his fingers. “Gotta love the Internet.”

  Which unfortunately meant he’d already found Kulkulkan’s altar stone, Nate realized, his gut knotting on anger and disappointment, made worse by the annoying subsonic buzz of magic. Gods damn it. But some of the other information was new, namely that the knife they’d almost gotten in New Orleans was connected to the Volatile. Which meant it was vital that they get the thing back.

  “We have a common goal,” Strike persisted. “Both groups want to stop the apocalypse.”

  Desiree shifted her attention from Anna to Strike and sneered. “You’re trying to stop the inevitable.”

  “Perhaps,” Anna said, and Nate got the distinct impression that she wasn’t just talking about the end-time. “But what’s the alternative? You think you’re going to rule in hell? Think again. The Banol Kax don’t deal that way.”

  “And how do you know that for certain? From your precious gods? Not exactly an unbiased source.” Desiree bared her teeth. “Speaking of sources, how is Lucius getting along? Tell me, has he—”

  “Enough.” Iago’s voice was quiet, but it silenced her immediately. Focusing on Strike, he said, “I have ten times your numbers, Nightkeeper, and I have the other six prophecies. Moreover, I’m not bound by the traditions that you are. We have no winikin, no writs. We’ve adapted. We’ve grown. We need nothing from you.”

  “Then why even bother to come?” Strike asked, his frustration obvious. “I fail to see—”

  Automatic weaponry chattered behind them, coming from inside the compound.

  “Son of a bitch!” Nate snapped, making the connection between the buzzing sound and the sense of magic. “He’s overriding the wards. He’s got someone inside the compound! Bastard!”

  Without stopping to think, Nate lunged at Iago. With surprise on his side, he nailed the mage waist-high with his shoulder, sending them both to the ground. He wound up astride Iago, and got in three good punches before the chirr of dark ’port magic surrounded him.

  Roaring, Nate grabbed on to the lapels of Iago’s jacket and hung on, intending to go with him. He didn’t have a plan, didn’
t have a weapon, knew only that he owed it to the old lady, to his king and his people. Seconds later he was flying through the air, slapped aside by an unseen giant’s fist to land hard, face-first in the dust.

  Iago and Desiree had vanished.

  “Come on!” Alexis was dragging him up and along before he could get a breath. Strike and the others were gone, undoubtedly having ’ported into the compound the second the gunfire started.

  It’d stopped, leaving ominous silence behind.

  Nate and Alexis ran for the mansion together, dragging each other along. When they reached the main room he heard a babble of familiar voices all talking over one another, and followed the sound. He found the winikin and Nightkeepers gathered in the hallway outside the archive, with some inside the first room. He pushed through, with Alexis right behind him, and stopped dead when he got a clear view. “Oh, shit.”

  The archive was a disaster area.

  It looked like somebody had unloaded two or three MAC clips into the bookcases holding centuries’ worth of rare texts. Lucius was folded up in one corner, looking shell-shocked but alive, and clutching an autopistol. Jade was standing in the middle of the room with tears tracking down her face, her mouth open in an “O” of horror, a bullet-riddled book clutched against her breasts. The locked door leading to the second room hung from one hinge, and blast marks marred the doorframe.

  Nate didn’t even need to ask. He already knew.

  “Ixchel,” Alexis whispered, taking two steps toward the battered door and stopping. She raised her hand to her mouth, then let it fall away. She turned to Nate, reached out for his hand, and he felt her sorrow in the link of palm to palm. “They took the statuette.”