Spellfire

by Jessica Andersen

  Boom! Energy flared at the point of contact, and a huge explosion flung Myr across the cave. She landed hard and slid in the sand, screaming as something tore inside her—not in her body, but in her mind, at the base of her skull. The shield spell protected her from the shock wave and the pepper of rocky shrapnel, but it didn’t blunt the impact, which left her dazed and gasping for breath.

  She heard the sizzle of magic and Rabbit’s vicious curses, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t focus. Her head felt terrifyingly empty—had she banged it, injured it? No, this wasn’t pain, it was—Oh, gods. Her heart raced as she realized that she couldn’t feel their connection anymore. She couldn’t sense his emotions, his life energy or even the flow of magic between them.

  The separation spell had worked!

  Maybe it had been triggered by their kiss, maybe by something else, but it had triggered, giving him back his magic and breaking the connection between them. More, she had kept her own version of the Nightkeepers’ powers. The shield still surrounded her, and magic still pulsed in her veins. Relief and fierce joy hammered through her, brightening the threads of green flame surrounding her. She was a mage!

  “It worked!” Killing the shield, she lurched to her feet and turned toward him. “We— No!” Her heart stopped at the sight of the oily brown cloud pulsing around him.

  Dark magic. She stumbled back, lifting her hands to ward off the sight, along with the realization that their bond had been blocking his hell-link. Now that the connection was broken, the evil magic was coming for him. “Rabbit!”

  She flashed back on the memories she’d tried so hard to forget, or at least move past. Only she hadn’t moved past them, she realized now. The terror was still there, the pain still fresh and sharp.

  * * *

  He burst into the cave, eyes brilliant with fury, and for the first time she was truly afraid of him. She didn’t know the man storming across the sand toward where she knelt over a small fire. His face was set, unrecognizable, and he had his ceremonial knife in one fist.

  “Rabbit.” She rose, holding out her hands. “Wait. It’s not anything bad. I’m just—”

  “Don’t!” he thundered. “No more lies!”

  “I’m not lying. I—” She screamed as the scented oil she’d been using to purify his eccentrics blazed suddenly red, and the stones erupted in twin sprays and winged to him, landing in his outstretched palm. Flaming oil burned her face, her arms, but the pain was nothing compared to the terror of suddenly hearing the rattlesnake rasp of the dark magic he’d sworn not to use anymore. Her throat closed, strangling her whisper of, “What’s happening to you?”

  Stuffing the stones into the pocket of his jeans, he advanced on her. “Were you going to destroy them right away, or were you going to summon her first? What were you going to do to her? Damn it, tell me!”

  Tears tracked down her face. “I wasn’t going to hurt anybody. I was just trying to help. After what you said about the stones, I got this idea—”

  His lips pulled back in a feral snarl. “This was what you wanted, right? You wanted me to use the dark magic again. But why? Who are you working for?” He leaned in to yell, “Damn it, what are you trying to do to me?”

  * * *

  Mercifully, the flashback cut out, leaving her bent over and gasping for breath, dizzied by the memory and the knowledge that it had gotten worse from there. And, more from the reminder that at one point, she had pushed him to rekindle his link with the darkness.

  She hadn’t understood what it meant, not really. All she had known was that the old Xibalban shaman had named him the crossover and said he would be the key to winning the war. She had been scared—of the end of the world, of the way things had been cooling off between them—and she had pushed him to experiment with the other half of the magic.

  Gods. She didn’t want to remember that.

  She could barely see him now; he was lost in the greasy brown mist. But then a blue-white light kindled within the cloud, and her heart leaped. It was a Nightkeeper’s foxfire, made of pure light magic. He was fighting the darkness!

  “Rabbit!” She surged forward, calling up her magic, not as a shield now, but as a fireball that crackled and seethed green. But could she launch it without frying him?

  “No,” he shouted hoarsely through the fog. “Don’t, Myr! I can do this.”

  Do what? She let the fireball fade, but kept her magic revved up. She couldn’t see him. But the darkness was threaded through now with sparks of red-gold.

  “What are you . . .” She trailed off, throat locking as she got it. She freaking got it. He wasn’t trying to fight the magic. He was trying to gain control of it. He wanted to reforge his hell-link and then shut the magic away, back behind the barriers that used to hold it. The ones that had failed before. “Dear gods.” Her voice was a whisper, her emotions a hard, hot ball lodged in her throat.

  The words from the children’s book shimmered in her mind: The Crossing Guard stands at the bridge between day and night. This was what the gods had intended; it was part of him becoming the crossover. Again, her head might’ve known that this needed to happen, but the rest of her hadn’t wanted to believe it. Her heart, stupid organ that it was, was clinging to two versions of him—one was the dark, dangerous mage she wasn’t supposed to trust, while the other was the man she’d spent the past ten days fighting alongside, the one who had kissed her just now.

  Who was he, really?

  “I can handle it.” Even as he grated the words, the red-gold sparks brightened and the dark fog began to thin. It wreathed around him, sliding along his body and then fading, until she could see his outline again, then the terrifying details—his eyes were rolled back, his face taut and haggard, like he was little more than skin stretched over a skull and animated by the dark magic that shifted and seethed within him. She could feel its poison, hear its serpent rattle.

  She took a step back without meaning to.

  He blinked, and suddenly he looked like himself again. “Myr, wait.” He reached out a hand, though they were too far apart for him to touch her. It wasn’t too far, though, for her to see the flash of red on his inner forearm.

  The trefoil hellmark had gone from black to scarlet. The hell-link was fully active.

  “No.” It was a whisper, a moan. A denial of everything they’d been through, everything that had gone wrong. Only she couldn’t deny the past, or the sight of the red hellmark.

  “Please, wait.” But the despair in his voice said he knew it was already too late.

  “I can’t.” Her voice broke on the words, which suddenly meant far more than she had realized. I can’t do this anymore, can’t trust you like this, can’t be around you. And, knowing there was no way they could go back, not now, not ever, she did what she should’ve done the first moment she saw the dark fog surrounding him.

  She turned and ran.

  * * *

  Rabbit didn’t let himself go after her—not to tell her that he’d blocked off the dark magic behind its old mental barriers; not to reassure her that he had it under control; and not to tell her that she didn’t need to be afraid of him. What was the point? She had every reason to fear the magic, and to fear him when he was under its influence.

  “Let her go,” he told himself, the words echoing hollowly in the cave.

  He didn’t need to borrow his magic from her anymore—the spell had severed their connection, setting her free and making her a mage in her own right, having apparently decided that both of them were the rightful owners of the magic. More, he had brought the dark magic under control, shoving it into the mental vault it used to inhabit, and locking the fucker down tight. But what if the vault cracked? Hell, what if it ripped wide open? Just now, it’d felt like the magic wanted to behave, as if it had gone meekly into confinement.

  He didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust himself with it. But he couldn’t refuse it, either. Not if he was going to become the crossover. Which meant that whatever had happened between him an
d Myr over the past ten days, including their kiss—especially their kiss—was gone now, nullified.

  “Fuck me.” Feeling like his soul was hollowed out and his damn bones were creaking, he headed to his Jeep, fired the engine, and aimed the vehicle back along the dirt track to Skywatch.

  He braced himself to find a not-so-welcoming committee waiting for him at the gate, looking to protect Skywatch from the dark magic. But the front parking area was deserted and nobody flagged him down as he rolled past the mansion toward his cottage. He’d intended to suck it up and go make his report, would have if there’d been any sign that it was a command performance. But the lack of an armed guard tempted him to keep on driving . . . and made him wonder what Myrinne had told the others.

  “Doesn’t matter.” She might’ve played things down in her report, but he’d seen the way she’d looked at him.

  The memory tightened his chest, making him feel restless and hemmed in. Suddenly he couldn’t handle the thought of being inside the mansion, or even his cottage. Instead, he floored it, headed for the back of the canyon.

  The others could come after him if they wanted to.

  Gravel spurted beneath the Jeep’s tires as he bounced along the dirt track, and again when he skidded to a stop at the base of the narrow trail that led up to the ancient pueblo. The footpath was overgrown, as was the wide ledge in front of the pueblo’s lower level, showing just how long it’d been since he’d last been up there.

  Before, when he’d first come to Skywatch, he had hung out at the ruins for hours, sometimes even days, listening to his iPod and getting high on weed, hard liquor, pulque, and anything else he could find that came under the heading of “shit that alters consciousness.” Now, as he tugged aside the dusty serape that covered his stash, he saw there wasn’t much left. It should be enough to fog things out for a few hours, though. And right now, he’d take what he could get.

  CHAPTER NINE

  December 12

  Nine days until the zero date

  Skywatch

  Rabbit grogged his way to consciousness near daybreak and stared at the mud-daubed ceiling of his hideout, which had two round openings that let in the light and smelled of the animals that used it for shelter when he wasn’t around.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in the pueblo, wrapped in the musty-smelling serape, with his head pounding with the “hey, hello” of a hangover. It also wasn’t the first time he’d lain there studying the mud daub, with its ancient handprints and carved zigzag lines, and wishing like hell he didn’t have to go back down to the compound. But it was the first time he dreaded going back because it would mean facing Myrinne.

  “Damn it.” He dragged himself vertical anyway. He needed to report in and see how the others were taking the whole dark-magic thing.

  At the moment, it was buttoned up safely in the vault, behaving itself. But as he picked his way down the trail, he wasn’t so sure he was in the clear, or even that he should be. If the things that’d happened with Phee were any indication, the dark magic wasn’t good for him. Or maybe it was that he wasn’t good with it, that he wasn’t strong enough to control it, his grip on Nightkeeper magic too weak, his moral compass too fucking imprecise. And if some of that started sounding like his old man—you’re not smart enough, not tough enough, not worth my time—maybe that wasn’t an accident.

  “Fuck him. You can handle it this time.” He’d learned his lessons the hard way, and he was determined not to screw up again.

  Still, the whispers dogged him as he drove the Jeep back to his cottage, grateful that he hadn’t seen anyone coming or going. Right now, he didn’t want to have any conversations that started with “Hey, how are you” or even “What the fuck happened to you yesterday?”

  “Damn it.” With irritation riding him hard, putting his gut into a knot of what-ifs, he shouldered through the kitchen door . . . and stopped dead at the sight of Red-Boar sitting at the kitchen table, scowling at a couple of Cokes.

  Well, that explained the feeling of impending doom.

  “Don’t even start,” Rabbit said, heading across the kitchen for the main room without giving his father a second look. “I need to shower and get some food in me before I can even think of dealing with you.”

  “Or you could sit the fuck down and listen.”

  “Blow me.” But Rabbit couldn’t make himself walk away. Not knowing that the king could’ve sent his old man to lay the last order of the Boar Oath on him, in the hopes of taming the dark magic. And that maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing. He stopped in the far doorway, and turned back. “Fuck it. What? Did Dez give you an order?”

  “Yeah. But not for you.” Red-Boar scowled and took a hit of his soda. “When he heard about the dark magic, he leaned on me to tell him where you really came from.”

  That cut right through what was left of Rabbit’s hangover—thud, instant clarity, or close to it.

  Back when he’d first returned to Skywatch, he had given the Nightkeepers a full report on his conversations with Phee, hoping there might be something in there that could help them figure out what the Banol Kax were planning. At the time, Red-Boar had listened, stone-faced, and said it was all bullshit. Repeatedly. That was all he’d said on the subject, though. Until now.

  Thumping into a chair opposite his old man, Rabbit reached for the unopened Coke. “You going to tell me or not?” He wouldn’t put it past the old bastard to make an announcement like that, then remind him that he’d never sworn an oath to the current king—Dez had taken over for Strike pretty recently—and clam up.

  “For starters, everything the demon told you was a fucking lie. Your mother didn’t escape from the Xibalbans, and she and I didn’t fall for each other and live in some godsdamned rain forest paradise until they tracked us down and killed her. And you never had a twin brother. That was all a bullshit fairy tale.”

  Rabbit didn’t give his old man the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. “How about you tell me something I don’t already know?”

  Disappointment stung, though, warning that some part of him had wanted to think that maybe there had been a romance between his parents, a tragedy that explained why his father hadn’t ever been able to love him, or even like him just a little. And that there had been a twin brother whose absence accounted for the holes inside him, the broken, ragged places that not even Myrinne had been able to fill.

  “How much do you already know?” Red-Boar demanded.

  Frustration stirred, old and ugly, but Rabbit didn’t let that show, either. “Fine, we’ll play it your way. Fucking whatever. Jox told me that not long after the massacre you lost your shit and disappeared into the rain forest, and he gave me the name of a village: Oc Ajal. I went there and discovered that it was full of Xibalbans—not members of Werigo’s sect of wack-jobs, but peaceful dark-magic shamans led by a guy named Anntah. I met him on his deathbed.” In fact, it had been his fault Anntah and the others had been murdered. Iago—Werigo’s son and Anntah’s sworn enemy—had followed him there and razed the village.

  Voice thickening, Rabbit continued, “He said that you had stayed with them for a day or so and then moved on. You were looking for Cassie and the boys, convinced they were still alive somewhere.” As far as Red-Boar had been concerned, then or now, his real life had ended with the Solstice Massacre, when his Nightkeeper wife and their twin sons were killed. “He thought my mother had probably been part of Werigo’s sect, either voluntarily or as a prisoner. As far as he knew, the villagers of Oc Ajal were the last of the pacifist Xibalbans.” And because of him, they were all dead now. He drained his Coke, which bit like hundred-fifty-proof pulque. “Anyway, that’s where the trail went cold for me.” He left it hanging, though he didn’t trust his old man to pick up the story. Didn’t trust him to do anything, really.

  But Red-Boar gave one of his “you’re an idiot” snorts, and said, “You’ve got it right up to the part where I visited Oc Ajal, but you’re dead-ass wrong about the rest of it.
For one, the villagers were far from pacifists. And for another, Anntah wasn’t one of the good guys. Fucking far from it.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  Maybe not. Visiting Oc Ajal and meeting the elder had been a turning point for Rabbit. The village was where he’d learned to think twice before giving in to the impulses that had ruled his life up to that point, where he’d started to learn to control himself rather than hurting the people around him. But it was also where he’d gotten one of the two eccentrics that had summoned Phee. Anntah had given it to him, fuck it all.

  Closing his fingers around the empty soda can and not letting himself crumple it, he nodded. “Go on.”

  “When I showed up in Oc Ajal, I was pretty fucking out of it, raving about the massacre, the Nightkeepers, all of it. So it took Anntah and the others about two minutes to figure out who and what I was.” Red-Boar glanced down at his forearm, which bore the distinctive black marks of a Nightkeeper warrior. “He got me to admit that I was the only surviving Nightkeeper mage—I didn’t tell him about Strike, Anna and Jox, thank fuck. I kept that much to myself. Anyway, he kept saying that the gods had sent me to him, that he could give me what I wanted.”

  “Your family.”

  Red-Boar was back to staring at his soda can. “That’s what I thought he meant, what he wanted me to think. He said I should eat and rest. My wife was out hunting, he said. She’d be back soon and she’d be so excited to see me.” His mouth twisted. “I don’t know what he put in the food, but by the time the hunting party got back, I was hammered, horny, and not feeling picky.”