“I . . .” She stopped, swallowing hard. “I don’t know enough of the language.” Hell, the ancient Egyptian tongue was even deader than ancient Mayan—so many of the sounds were guesstimates, with filled-in vowels and pronunciations that changed from decade to decade.
“Rosa gave you the message in ancient Mayan,” Lucius whispered. “Go with that.”
“Okay. I . . . okay.” Stop stalling. She took a deep breath, found the words, and said formally, “Oolah yuum Bastet. Ba’ax ka wa’alik?” Greetings, goddess Bastet. What do you say?
Throom! As the shock of a second sonic boom reverberated through the chamber, magic flared and the goddess’s image solidified. Suddenly, Anna could see new details of Bastet’s fur, her eyes, her robe.
And then the goddess took a deep, shuddering breath and came alive.
Her robes and fur ruffled in an unseen breeze, her whiskers twitched, and then she blinked and focused, looking momentarily startled to find herself in the midst of a crowd, or maybe a crowd like this one. But then she focused on Anna, and her expression cleared. “Ahh,” she said. “Itza’at. I’m glad to finally see you.”
The words came out in a strange, guttural language that Anna didn’t recognize, but somehow translated inside her head, so she understood the words and heard what was behind them—relief, regret and a huge upwelling of power.
She glanced back at Lucius, whose face was lit with wonder. “Did you get that?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “Yeah, I did.”
“We all did,” Dez said from behind them.
Anna faced Bastet and said in English, “Greetings, goddess.” She hesitated, suddenly aware that her knees were shaking; her whole body was shaking. What was she supposed to say? What was she supposed to do? Should she meet the goddess’s eyes or look away? Mother, help me! Maybe it was real, maybe wishful thinking, but her amulet seemed to warm further in her grip, steadying her. She took a deep breath, looked up and met those blue, blue eyes. “Yes, I am of the itza’at line, though untrained. I got your message and will do whatever you ask of me.”
“I ask nothing but that you listen and believe, all of you.”
Anna nodded. “We will.”
“It will be difficult.”
There was movement all around her, a shifting of bodies and stances as the others moved up to surround Anna, so they faced Bastet as a united front.
Dez tipped his head in a shallow bow. “We’re not scared of hard going, goddess, or even death. We only fear what will happen if we fail.”
“As well you should.” Her image flickered, wavering and growing translucent once more.
Feeling the skull’s magic hitch and start to fade, Anna clutched the amulet and poured all of her energy into the crystal skull. The world dimmed around her, sparking desperation. She wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t—
A hand gripped her upper arm and she was flooded with the power of a touch-link, which was gentler than a blood-link, but still effective, especially for this. Then there was another clasp, another increase in the magic flowing through her. Then more. Relief washed through her as she looked back to find Lucius on one side of her, Dez on the other, and the rest of her teammates standing close by, all touching, linking to help her. Together, as a team.
Gathering their joined power, she focused once more on the amulet, sending the Nightkeepers’ magic into the spell. A glow kindled deep within the bloodred skull, and the goddess’s image solidified.
“Quickly,” Bastet said. “The kohan and the kax are trying to block this magic. Soon, they will cut it off at the barrier.”
“Kohan?” Dez whispered, lips barely moving.
“Sickness,” Lucius translated, sotto voce.
“Shut it!” Anna hissed in her do-it-or-die prof’s voice.
“The kohan rule the upper plane, just as the humans control the middle plane and the kax control the lower plane.”
“The sky gods, then.” Dez nodded. “Go on.”
Bastet’s eyes flashed. “No. Not gods. Kohan. They are no more gods than you are, or the kax. All are equal in the eyes of the true gods. The upper, middle and lower planes are just places, realms where the magic exists. Your many-times-great ancestors understood this, just as they knew that the kohan and the kax each wanted the middle plane and its inhabitants for their own—a playground, with powerful playthings.”
“That’s . . .” Impossible, Anna wanted to say, but couldn’t, because the sudden elevator drop of her stomach said otherwise.
“Holy crap.” Lucius’s whisper was dull with shock, but his eyes were alight with wonder. “Rosa was right. There are other gods out there. True gods.”
“There are six of us,” Bastet confirmed. “Three belonging to life, three to death.” Images flickered rapid-fire across Anna’s brain, imprinting themselves on her mind’s eye. “Your ancestors knew us, worshipped us. But the kax corrupted one of the ancient kings and turned him against us, breaking our hold on the middle plane and destroying almost all of our guardians. Those who survived moved to a new land, one that was poised at the juncture of the three planes. There, they lost faith, falling prey to the whispers of the kohan, then the kax. They split the magic and lost their way, becoming fragments of what they once were. Until now, until you.”
“No.” Anna shook her head, denying the awful possibility of it all. But even as her heart tried to reject what the goddess was saying, she saw how it dovetailed with the Nightkeepers’ flight from Egypt and the way their magic had changed in the Mayan territories, becoming chaotic and unpredictable, and eventually splitting into its light and dark halves, wielded by the Nightkeepers and the Xibalbans. “It’s not true,” she insisted, too horrified to worry about arguing with a goddess.
“Or is it that you do not want to know the truth?” The goddess’s image grew until it filled Anna’s vision, her senses. She didn’t know if Bastet had leaned closer, or if the goddess had simply locked on to her magic, but in that moment she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but see, hear and feel the horrors of the past.
Terrible visions raced through her, reminding her finally of the things she’d seen during those last few minutes of chaos during the massacre, while Jox had dragged her and Strike down into the shielded, hidden bolt-hole beneath Skywatch. She hadn’t been there, though—her mind had been in the southlands, dying with her kinswomen in the narrow tunnel system beneath Chichén Itzá.
Anna let go of the amulet and covered her eyes, trying to shut it out. But the images flowed through her, awakened her. A woman screamed as a boluntiku rose above her, dripping with the fiery energy of lava and going solid in the last moment before it killed her. Another wept as she unleashed terrible fireballs into the smoking spot where her mate had been only seconds before. A man cried; another screamed and held his own entrails. It was all dim and dark, cloaked in carved stone and blood, closing in on her, suffocating her.
“Enough,” she whimpered. “I get it.”
“It’s not nearly enough,” said Bastet, uncompromising. “Know the rest, and believe in it. Believe in me.”
More memories, more terror, this time coming from her mother’s mind. Her blessed, beloved mother. “No!” the queen screamed as the shimmering bubble of the barrier tore down its center and a terrible blackness poured through, exuding evil and horror as it became a winged serpent—a perverted, wronged form of the great creator god, Kulkulkan. “For gods’ sake, Jag, stop the spell!”
He didn’t, though. He couldn’t. And they had died.
Anna cried out when her mother’s perceptions ended in a flash of brilliant, lava-born orange, then moaned when she was battered by echoes of other horrors, other deaths.
And, as the inner barriers came crashing down and she remembered everything, she had a feeling that they hadn’t been barriers so much as her subconscious mind protecting her from what it knew, deep down inside, was another kind of enemy: the kohan she had prayed to. The ones that had tried to get to her, tried to send her v
isions that would only confuse the Nightkeepers further.
Or was she buying into the logic too quickly, too fully? How was this any different from what Rabbit had gone through with the demoness?
“Use your senses and know the truth.” Bastet’s command was inviolate, inarguable and aimed at all of them. “Use the talents given to you by the true gods.” Sudden images flashed in the air around Anna, coming from her magic, but projecting for everyone else to see.
The smoky picture was distorted at the edges, as if seen through a fish-eye lens, but the scene of utter destruction was all too clear. There was rubble, fire . . . and the skeleton of a massive tree that had fallen into the steel-fab building below it.
Anna sucked in a breath on a low moan. Skywatch!
Bastet said, “This is what will be if you do not act now, all of you.”
“It can be stopped?” Dez demanded. “I thought an itza’at’s visions were immutable.”
“That was what the kax and kohan wanted you to think, for they wanted to play with you, knowing that the itza’at were meant to be the voices of the True Gods here in the middle plane. And they wanted to prove their superiority by making our guardians—all of you—do as they wished, wanted to improve their chances now by weakening you, over and over again. So they sent corrupted visions to the seers . . . and even to the old king.”
“Father.” The word came out of Strike on a low groan, once again lining up with what they knew, what they believed . . . yet requiring a leap of faith like none they’d ever been asked to make before.
“They believe you are no longer a threat to them. We believe you can be.” Bastet’s blue eyes narrowed at Anna. “Are you willing to try, warrior?”
“I’m not . . .” she faltered and turned to Dez. “Help.”
The king’s face had gone to granite, gray-pallored and hard as stone. It was Reese who said, “What do you want us to do?”
Some of the others muttered darkly, and even Dez shot her a sidelong look. But Reese wasn’t just their ultra-practical, tough-girl queen; she was also human, like Lucius and Leah. They had already given up their religion in the face of evidence. They weren’t being asked to do it now on faith.
Which didn’t mean the Nightkeepers were going to. No way, Anna swore to herself, trying to ignore the twisting disquiet deep inside that kept whispering, What if it’s real? What then?
“Your godkeepers must break their bonds, and all of you must renounce your allegiance to your so-called sky gods on the morning of the Cardinal Day. Only then will you be free to fight for the middle plane.”
There was a moment of profoundly unhappy silence.
After a moment, a shaken Reese said, “How can the godkeeper bonds be broken?” It had taken near-death by drowning, along with devastating magic to link Strike, Leah, Alexis and Sasha with their gods.
Prophecy had said those bonds were crucial to the war . . . but those prophecies had come from the kohan.
Or had they?
“Cut your marks from your flesh and cast the blood in the fire, and the earth will reclaim its children.” Suddenly, Bastet’s magic dimmed, and the low throoming sound rose up once more, vibrating the stones beneath them. Eyes dimming, she said, “I must go.”
“When can we summon you again?” Anna said quickly, taking a step toward the apparition.
“You cannot. This is your war to fight, not ours.”
“Wait!” Anna cried as the light flickered, then faded. “Why—”
“The three planes must remain in balance. That is how we created them. If one falls, they all fall.” Then . . . flicker-flicker-FLASH! And the goddess disappeared.
Anna stood swaying, blinking into the amber eyes of the crystal skull.
Someone in the back muttered, “Fucking hell.”
“Well,” Lucius drawled, voice rough with emotion. “That was . . . unexpected.” He was still hanging on to Anna’s arm, but now he drew her toward the altar. “You should sit.”
“Not there.” She couldn’t handle seeing the ragged neck stump or the bloodred skull that had been inside the chac-mool’s head all along. She could only guess that one of her ancestors had put it there, that the women of the itza’at’s line had somehow known it was important to keep it a secret, but not why.
Or was this the trick, and the other the truth?
Her head spun and she leaned into Lucius for a moment, drawing strength from their long history together. They had been friends in the outside world and were friends now. And he was going to be a valuable voice of reason now, in a time when she could pretty much guarantee that the rest of them—Nightkeepers and winikin alike—were going to have a hard time being reasonable.
It had been bad enough when Rabbit had tried to convince them that the Nightkeepers had it wrong and the Banol Kax—or the kax, apparently—were somehow the good guys. That, at least, they had been able to ascribe to Rabbit’s flair for the dramatic, his mix of dark and light powers, and his constant quest to find a place where he felt like he fit in.
This, though . . . gods, she thought, and felt a twinge at the prayer, a quick spurt of fear that she’d been praying to the wrong entities all along.
“Then let’s get you out of here.” Lucius steered her toward the door, through a parting sea of shell-shocked teammates who stared at her, wide-eyed, as if seeking a reassurance that she couldn’t give. “Let’s everybody get out of here and take a breath, okay?”
“No!” Red-Boar put himself between her and the door, his earlier glower gone to a near-manic snarl. “This is bullshit! The demons are trying to trap you just like they trapped Rabbit, godsdamn it. And you’re fucking walking right into it!”
Anna snapped back, “Nobody’s walking into anything.”
“You bought it, though. Didn’t you?” Red-Boar grabbed her. “Didn’t you!”
Lucius stiff-armed him in the chest, sending him back a couple of steps. “Back off. Right fucking now.”
Red-Boar sneered. “Easy for a human to say.” The air cracked with sudden magic; it wreathed the senior mage, crisping the air with the threat of a fireball. “Especially one who’s been on the other side. Tell me, do you still dream of the things you did when you were a makol? Have you ever—”
“Enough!” Dez’s roar drowned out the rest of the question. The king got big and loomed over Red-Boar. “That’s enough. We’re not deciding a damn thing right now. We’ve got work to do before that. Research.”
The older mage sneered. “Research. Right. That’ll win the war.”
“A full-on frontal assault didn’t do your generation much good.”
Red-Boar flushed a dull, furious red. “You son of a bitch. You have no idea . . .” His eyes flicked to Reese. “Well, I guess you’re in line to find out, aren’t you?” He spat at the king’s feet. “Fuck this. What do I care? I’m already dead.” He spun and stalked out, leaving a crack of angry magic in his wake.
Nate started after him, but Dez waved him back. “Don’t. Let him be. This is . . . Shit. Just let him go.” He sent a look around the room. “In fact, I think Lucius is right. We all need to get out of here, clear our heads a little.”
Anna couldn’t help it. She looked back at the ruined altar, and the skull that sat atop it. “What do you want to do about that?”
The king’s eyes didn’t show a hint of his thoughts. “It’s your skull. You tell me.”
She winced, but then nodded reluctantly. “Yeah. I should work with it. Even if it can’t get through to . . . well, whatever that was, maybe I’ll finally get control of my visions.” Her attempt at a smile fell flat, though, as she pulled away from Lucius and forced her legs to carry her all the way to the altar.
Her heart tugged at the sight of the sledgehammer lying on the floor near a chunk of limestone that showed the curve of a cheek and one kind eye. She didn’t apologize to the chac-mool again, though, because she didn’t dare pray, not even to it. Not when she didn’t know who she was talking to anymore.
Where before the air had hummed with magic, now it was as flat and dead as the skull’s dull yellow eyes. Still, though, their facets seemed to watch her.
Do you dare? those eyes seemed to ask her.
“I already did,” she said softly. Then, steeling herself, she stuck a thumb in one ear hole and a finger in the nasal cavity, and lifted the skull from the last of the enclosing limestone, holding it like some sort of demented bowling ball.
Trying not to let the others see how much its cool, slick surface made her skin crawl, she tucked it under her arm and made for the door. And, as she headed down the hall toward the royal quarters and the childhood suite she’d redone as her own, she did her damnedest not to picture how the thing was going to be staring at her while she slept.
Then again, given what they’d just learned, nightmares were going to be the least of her problems.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I won’t let you do it.”
Rabbit stopped at the sound of his old man’s voice, surprised to feel a bump of compulsion coming from the Boar Oath. He’d been so damn well behaved that he’d almost forgotten about the fucking thing.
He turned back on the pathway leading out to the cottages. He wasn’t even sure why he’d gone that way—it wasn’t like he wanted to be back home right now. Not when every last square inch of the place would remind him of Myr and leave him wondering what the hell came next for the two of them. Should he go after her? Leave her alone? He didn’t have a clue. She hadn’t just been his first lover; she’d been his first everything. He didn’t have any practice with breakups, post-breakup hookups, or whatever the hell that had been last night. And it wasn’t like he could ask one of the others. They all had bigger, badder things to think about right now—like whether or not they’d been praying to the wrong gods all along.
Which left him and his old man squaring off opposite each other on the beaten-smooth footpath, with the sun coming down on them and no breeze to stir the dust. If they’d had revolvers, he would’ve been tempted to count down the draw.
Rabbit shoved his thumbs in his pockets but didn’t slouch, mostly because he knew it would annoy Red-Boar that he was a couple inches taller and wider. “You won’t let me do what?”
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