His eyes darkened. “Myr—”
“No. Let me get this out.” She wanted to forget about the attack—of course she did. But maybe this was a necessary sacrifice. “You said I kept pushing you to try the dark magic, and you were right. I was pushing you back then. Hell, I was nagging you, even though Dez had made you promise not to experiment with it anymore.”
“It’s okay,” he said too quickly. “I always understood, always knew you were trying to help, even if it was hard to hear sometimes. You don’t have to apologize for being ambitious.”
“It wasn’t ambition. It was fear.”
He snorted. “You? Afraid? Bull.” But his eyes narrowed. “Since when?”
“Since always.” She didn’t want to remember. But maybe that had been part of the problem. “How much of my childhood did you see when you were inside my head?” She had been afraid to ask before.
“Not much in the way of details. More flashes.” He paused. “I saw a deep, dark place, heard her shouting, felt . . . I don’t know. Numb, I guess.”
“Close enough.” Numb, helpless, angry . . . forcing her shoulders square, she met his eyes. Don’t pity me. “My parents abandoned me when I was a few months old, left me in a booth of a strip club around the corner from the tea shop, with a blanket and a twenty, like that was going to cover anything.” The anger had scabbed over through the years, as had any hope that they were going to show back up and claim her. “Nobody there wanted the cops involved, and the owner figured it’d be easiest to just make me disappear. He sent his bouncer to take care of it, but the guy sold me to the Witch instead.”
“Jesus, Myr.” And, yeah, there was the pity. Or maybe it was sympathy.
She shrugged, telling herself that it didn’t matter anymore. “She never let me forget that I owed her my life. More, she told me I couldn’t expect better than what she gave me—a bed, some food, and more than enough work to earn it. And it wasn’t like anything I saw made me think any different.” The more upstanding locals had stayed the hell away from the back alleys of bars and black magic, and the Witch’s friends—including the grabby-handed strip club owner—had given her the creeps. Add in the clueless tourists who came to the shop and looked away when they saw her bruises, and the drunken man-boys who offered her strings of beads in exchange for a look at her tits, and she’d believed the Witch when she’d said she was better off in the shop than out on the streets. More, she hadn’t dared argue. Not often, anyway.
“You were ready to get out,” Rabbit reminded her. “You stole the ceremonial knife Nate and Alexis were trying to buy, and told me I could have it if I took you with me.”
“That was just a moment of temporary bravery. One of my few.” More, the Witch vanished right after that—dead, Myr had later learned—leaving the tea shop locked tight, and Myr out on the streets. And being on her own had turned out to be just as bad as her foster mother had threatened—she had been dirty, cold, hungry and scared by the time she saw Rabbit again, recognized him. Latched on to him.
“Still, you took a stand.”
“And look where it got me. Out on the streets for a few weeks, and then, when I hooked back up with you, snatched by Iago.” She didn’t remember much about the imprisonment, only that she had been cold and afraid, and had learned firsthand that all the things the Witch had threatened were nothing compared to how bad reality could get. “It . . . I don’t know. Broke something inside me, I think, to realize that the Witch was right about me not being able to handle the world outside.”
His eyes blazed. “She wasn’t. Not even close.”
“I went from being under her thumb to being at Skywatch with you, surrounded by these huge, glittery people who could do magic—real magic—and were scrambling to save the world.” She shook her head, facing the hard truths that had finally become clear to her last night, when she’d stayed awake, staring into the darkness and making herself accept that she’d played a part in what had happened with Rabbit. “The point is that my nagging you wasn’t about the power, not the way you thought. It was about me needing to feel safe. Even though I learned how to fight, how to be a warrior, it wasn’t enough. I was still scared. And the closer the end-time got, the more scared I got . . . and the more I tried to make you be strong enough to protect both of us.”
“I wanted to,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “I still do.”
She was suddenly very aware of her heart—how it beat in her chest, feeling heavy and tender. But she couldn’t let it run the show anymore. “You can’t. You’ve got to be the crossover, and gods only know what that’s going to involve.”
A shadow came over him, though the sun-dappled air hadn’t changed. “Like the dark magic.”
“Don’t.” She would have reached out to him, but he was too far away, with the fire between them. Instead, she said, “It’s part of your powers, and you’re handling it. You should be proud of that, proud of everything you’ve accomplished . . . and I’m sorry for making you feel like you should’ve been doing more.”
“You didn’t—”
“I did. Not at the beginning, granted.” The first couple of years had been the best of her life. She had been in love, surrounded by magic, and she’d been his champion when the others had treated him like the destructive kid he’d been rather than the man he was becoming. Once the Nightkeepers had accepted him as a warrior, though, she hadn’t let up. Hadn’t been able to. “But when things started getting serious—with the countdown, the xombi outbreaks, all of it—I . . . I don’t know. I freaked. I stopped feeling safe, and instead of admitting it, even to myself, I started hounding you about being stronger, better, finding a way to use both halves of your magic.” And when he’d refused, she’d pushed harder.
He stared down into the fire, and his voice was hollow when he said, “I could’ve called you on it. Should have. Instead, I . . . I don’t know. Shut down, I guess.”
“I don’t blame you.”
But he shook his head. “I was the one who listened to Phee. You don’t need to be sorry for any of it.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Then forget it. We’re still not close to being even after the crap I put you through.”
“Let’s call it even anyway.”
“Shit,” Rabbit said finally. There was more sorrow than anger in the word, though. “What the hell happened to us, Myr? We were perfect together.” His eyes were stark and sad . . . but he didn’t look all that surprised, letting her know that he’d figured out some of it on his own. He hadn’t known how afraid she’d been, but he’d known Phee wouldn’t have been able to get to him if their relationship had been in a better place.
Tears stung the backs of her eyes. “I think maybe we just outgrew it. Took it all for granted. Something.”
He sighed heavily and looked back into the fire. “Yeah.”
Breathing out of synch, they stared into the flames for a long moment in a silence that was both easier than she would’ve expected and harder than she could’ve imagined. They couldn’t go back—she thought they probably wouldn’t even if they could. But how were they supposed to go forward from here? She didn’t want to avoid him, but she wasn’t sure she dared spend too much time near him. Their relationship might’ve crashed and burned, but the chemistry remained. Even now, she was acutely aware of his smallest movements, and the way the black marks on his forearm looked even blacker now with the red hellmark among them.
The sight should’ve scared her, should’ve reminded her how bad the darkness could get. Instead, it sent new warmth skimming through her veins as she remembered how he’d gotten it in the first place: he’d let Iago bind him to the dark magic in exchange for her life.
It had been the first time anyone had really rescued her. And it had been the beginning of her first crush. Her first love.
Don’t go there, she told herself as her heart thudded too fast. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” she asked, needing to break the silence. “Were you looking for me?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” He paused. “I was just walking, trying to clear my head.”
His sudden grimness had the warmth inside her shifting to concern. Which was safer in some respects, but not in others—because if it had Rabbit worried, it couldn’t be good. “What happened?”
“My old man ambushed me this morning and told me about my mother finally. The whole fucking story, damn him.”
“Oh. Wow.” Shock sizzled through her, chased quickly by a flash of anger at Red-Boar, who hadn’t been any more of a father to Rabbit than the Witch had been a mother to her. “You want to tell me about it?”
He hesitated, but then exhaled and said, “My mother was Anntah’s daughter.”
A shiver of instinct worked its way through her, the kind that said, This is important. “The old shaman at Oc Ajal?”
Rabbit nodded. “Which explains how he managed to contact me when Iago’s red-robes destroyed the village. We had a blood-link, even though he denied it when I asked.” His voice was flat, his eyes hollow as he stared into the guttering green flames. He leaned in and took another deep breath. Then, like he was reading off a lame-ass playlist, he repeated Red-Boar’s story, describing how the Xibalbans had purpose-bred him, and how his father had kidnapped him so he couldn’t be used as an enemy asset. “That was why he didn’t want me to get my bloodline mark or learn to use my magic.” His lips thinned. “The old bastard never could control me, though. The harder he tried to make me fall in line, the more I busted out.”
Oh, Rabbit, she thought, but didn’t say, because it wouldn’t change anything. She wanted to reach out to him, wanted to touch him, but couldn’t do either with the fire between them. Where before it had seemed like a necessary bulwark, though, now it was in the way. So she got up and moved around to sit beside him, letting their shoulders bump.
They sat like that for a minute, watching the flames gutter and send up plumes of vanilla-scented smoke. Finally, she asked, “What else did he say about the crossover?”
“Nothing that we didn’t already know, which is why he didn’t tell me sooner. At least that’s his excuse. There’s got to be something more to it, though. Some clue we’re missing.” He hesitated. “I want to go back to the village.”
“You . . . oh.” She swallowed. “Right.” It made sense, she supposed. They needed more information on the crossover—where better to look than the place where he’d been conceived? Still, though, she inched away as her mind filled with memories of Oc Ajal—bodies, burning huts, the stink of charred flesh. It had been gruesome, loathsome, heartbreaking . . . more, she dreaded the thought of the village itself, the dark magic that still lurked there.
The problems between her and Rabbit might have made him vulnerable to Phee’s seduction, but it was the stone eccentric he’d found beneath the center pole in Anntah’s hut that had summoned her.
“It’s the only thing I can think to do now that I know the truth,” Rabbit continued. “I’ll get Anna to ’port me down there today, a quick in-and-out, low risk and no bullshit.”
She wasn’t sure which one of them he was trying to convince. “What are you going to do when you get there?”
“Look around. Maybe pray for a miracle.”
Don’t go, she wanted to say. She couldn’t, though, because he was right. And, besides, she knew he wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to talk him out of it. His jaw was set and his eyes gleamed with an anticipation that had her instincts humming. So instead of arguing, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m going with you.”
The words hung in the air between them for a moment before he shifted to look at her fully, his eyes dark and unreadable. “You don’t have to.”
The hum got louder. Was he trying to spare her from the bad memories, or was there something else going on here? Damn it, she didn’t know. “I’ll go,” she said firmly. “I used to be good at watching your back.”
He hesitated for a split second, but then he nodded. “Thanks. There’s nobody I trust more to have my six.”
Damn her throat for closing on a lump of emotion. This wasn’t about emotion, though; it was about making sure nothing went wrong. And she still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t playing her—or himself. “Okay, then. You run it by Dez and get the go-ahead.”
“Will do. Meet me in the great room in an hour.”
It wasn’t until he’d melted back into the grove, though, becoming nothing more than a shadow that shifted and then disappeared, that she found herself wondering what the hell she had just gotten herself into, and why. You shouldn’t have said you’d go, her better sense whispered. He’s not your problem anymore. But both she and her better sense knew that was a lie. He’d been her problem—her weakness—since the first moment she saw him, and that hadn’t changed. Like the xombi virus, it seemed like repeated exposure didn’t lead to immunity.
More, she knew him better than anybody . . . which meant it was up to her to make sure he wasn’t drifting again toward the darkness and telling himself it was the light.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Oc Ajal, Mexico
The village of Oc Ajal didn’t look anything like it had the last time Rabbit was there.
The pathway to the parking area was gone—hell, the parking area was probably gone, along with the road leading in. The rain forest had grown in from the edges of where the double row of huts and the villagers’ slash-and-burn landscaping had held back the undergrowth. The green carpet and higher secondary growth had even covered over the charred remains of the huts, which were visible now mostly as lumps of greenery. That, and the chunks of rocks poking up here and there, made it look like any of the thousands of small, unexcavated Mayan sites strewn throughout the territories, ancient rather than just a year or so old.
Overhead, birds called and flitted, splashes of color against the background of breeze-stirred leaves.
“It’s like they were never here,” Myr said quietly from behind and a little off to one side of him. “Like we were never here.”
“There’s magic, though,” Anna said from the other side of him. She’d stayed instead of dropping them off and ’porting back to Skywatch, though he didn’t know if she was curious or under orders to keep an eye on him.
“They built on a hotspot and then camouflaged it,” he commented, mostly because he needed to say something, needed to pretend that this was just another op.
It wasn’t, though, not for him. Because as he stepped through the stone archway and into the hub of the village, he saw what was left of Anntah’s hut, where a village woman had been tied, raped and killed. He saw the places where bodies had lain, and the bushes where he had puked up a lung, knowing that Iago wouldn’t have found Oc Ajal if it hadn’t been for him. And, right in the middle of it all lay the remains of the fire pit where Anntah had died, his soul lingering just long enough to give Rabbit the information—the lies—that had put him on the path to nearly destroying himself, and Myrinne.
Unlike the rest of the overgrown village, the fire pit was bare.
He found himself standing there without really being aware of having moved, his toes nearly bumping one of the millstones the red-robes had used to pin the dying shaman in place. Anna and Myrinne were right behind him; he could feel their wariness, their worry. He didn’t know what they were expecting him to do, though. Shit, he didn’t know what he was expecting himself to do—there was magic here, yeah, but there wasn’t anything really jumping out at him, waving its arms and saying “Here I am. Here’s your answer!”
No big foam finger moment. Shit.
Looking back over his shoulder, he met Myr’s eyes. “You getting anything?” Although he was jacked in and had his senses wide open, he had a feeling that her version of the magic gave her a different view. More, it gave him an excuse to look back at her, check on her.
She was wearing skintight black combat gear, surrounded by the red-gold sparks of Nightkeeper magic, and carrying a machine gun across her body. She looked deadly, sexy
and resolute. As much as he had wanted to leave her back at Skywatch, far away from the memories and the very real possibility that he would have to call on his dark magic to find whatever secrets the village still held, she was right that he needed a partner, someone to watch his back in the xombi-infested forest. And if things went wrong, if he started losing control of the dark magic, she would catch it before it was too late.
He hoped.
She shook her head. “I can feel the energy all around us, but I’m not sensing anything specific.”
“Same here. Okay. I guess that means we need to search the site, looking for smaller hotspots. Let’s—”
The digital bleat of Anna’s satellite phone cut him off, sounding freakishly mechanical against the background whirr of the rain forest.
She shook her head. “Damn phone doesn’t get a signal half the time in downtown Denver, but picks it up here. Go figure.” She pulled out the unit—military, bigger than a regular cell but still pretty streamlined for what it could do—checked the ID, and shrugged. “No name coming up. Wrong number, maybe?”
Moments later it stopped ringing, but then a second tone indicated there was a voice mail. When she punched it up and put it on speaker, a man’s voice said, “Anna, this is Dr. Curtis. Dave. Dr. Dave.” Her eyes went wide and her mouth shaped an oh, shit. The message continued: “Are you still down here? If so, I could really use your help. Please call me back at this number if you can. Or better yet, just come to the camp. I know I told you to stay the hell away, but this is important. I’ll leave your name at the main gate and tell them to have all the gear waiting for you. And . . .” He hesitated. “Well, please come if you can, or at least call. I don’t know who else to ask.”
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