Which meant that in four hours, one way or the other, the world would be a very different place.
He waited until it read 3:45:00, then hit “send.” Seventy-some units beeped and seventy-some readouts lit, then flickered as the seconds counted down.
Shit. This was really happening.
Gesturing for Strike and Anna to take their positions on opposite sides of the group, Dez said, “Everybody link up. It’s time to go.”
* * *
Coatepec Mountain
The temple atop Coatepec Mountain was open to the air, with jaguar pillars at the corners symbolizing that Strike, Anna and Sasha were its guardians. But where before the site had thrummed with the deep, sustained magic of a hotspot, now there was only the background hum of solstice power. The Nightkeepers had looked long and hard to find another intersection after Iago destroyed the tunnel system beneath Chichén Itzá, knowing that when the Great Conjunction hit its zenith, the barrier would fall at the intersection and the Nightkeepers would go to war. But this sure as shit didn’t feel like a battlefield.
“Something’s not right,” Rabbit muttered. “There should be way more juice than this. It doesn’t even feel like an intersection.” Which put a nasty churn in his gut, matching the one that came from knowing he hadn’t had nearly enough time to work on his mental vault. His head buzzed with a faint rattle of dark magic and his emotions were way too close to the surface, leaving him feeling snarly and reactive, and way too ready to blow something up.
And now this . . . they had been expecting to ’port into the middle of a magical hotspot like he’d never felt before, maybe even into an ambush. But the mountaintop temple was throwing off less power than the average Denny’s, and there was no sign of the kax or kohan. Not even a xombi guard or a couple of ’zotz to use for target practice.
He glanced at his wristband. The conjunction was just over three hours away. Maybe they were massing behind the barrier, waiting to attack all at once.
It didn’t feel right, though.
“Do you think they’re going to come through the barrier somewhere else?” Myr asked. Wearing combat black and bristling with weapons, she looked every inch the sexy, kickass warrior he’d fought beside so many times before. Now, though, there was an added sheen of magic surrounding her, a subtle sparkle of power that stroked along his own. But there was also a hint of shadows in her expression, an unusual reserve.
He didn’t know if she was still upset about what happened earlier, or if this was her war face, didn’t know if he dared ask when he was feeling so twitchy. So he said, “It’s the only intersection that’s left. Where else would things go boom?”
“Maybe this is just the calm before the storm,” Brandt said, speaking up as the others muttered the same questions, the same concerns.
“Or maybe the kohan are already here, waiting to see if we’re going to renounce them or not,” Dez added grimly. An uncomfortable silence followed that statement, but no lightning bolts came down to blast the temple, no tornadoes dropped down to do a Wizard of Oz on them. And after a moment, the king said, “Okay. It’s time.”
“Let’s go.” Rabbit caught Myr’s hand, and together they moved into the shadows of the temple, where he would summon the sacrificial fire.
The others formed a big, loose circle—Nightkeepers, winikin, and humans all mixed together, all of them ready to renounce their gods.
All except one.
“Where’s Red-Boar?” Myr asked, like she had read his mind.
“Gone,” Rabbit said flatly. “He slipped away right after we ’ported in.” He paused. “Dez saw. He’s got our backs.”
She stared toward the scrubby tree line. “Maybe he’s running.”
“I wish.” Rabbit shook his head. “He’s still here. I can feel the blood-link.” Along with Red-Boar’s rage against the king, and his mad glee at the thought that Rabbit was going to back out of the ceremony at the last minute, screwing over his teammates and throwing the crossover’s power onto the other side.
After all these years, his old man finally thought he was about to do something right.
Well, fuck him.
“Ready?” Dez asked, taking his position next to him in the circle.
“To set a fire? Definitely.” Rabbit shot a last “it’s okay” glance at Myr, hoped he wasn’t lying to both of them, and then faced forward, blocked off the darkness and summoned his Nightkeeper magic. Spreading his fingers, he said, “Kaak.”
Brilliant red fire speared from his fingertips and filled the middle of the circle. There was no rattle, no dark magic, thank Christ.
The others backed off a little, expressions frozen in dread, horror and resignation as the heat flared.
Dez, though, stepped closer, palmed his ceremonial knife, cut a deep furrow through his bloodline mark, and grated, “Pasaj och.” The magic amped as he jacked in to the barrier flux. Then, stone-faced, he held his arm out over the fire, so the blood sacrifice rained down into the flames. Sparks erupted when the droplets hit, then sizzled as the blood burned off to acrid smoke. Sounding as if the words were being ripped out of him, the king recited the renunciation spell: “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni.” I no longer recognize you.
Boom! A shock wave of red-tinged energy flared away from Dez, leaving golden sparks behind. The wave rolled through Rabbit like a tsunami in deep water—it rocked him but kept going without doing too much damage to his equilibrium. He was aware, though, that if something like that hit him in the shallows, he’d be fucked. They all would.
This was big magic, a big move. And he hoped to hell they were doing the right thing.
The king steadied himself against Reese and straightened, expression smoothing to relief. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay . . . and it’s done.” He showed the others his forearm. “It’s over.”
There was a collective gasp—his bloodline mark had healed over and gone from black to gold.
“It fits,” Lucius muttered. “The Egyptians mined gold, but not the Mayans. I bet that was another way the kax and the kohan steered our ancestors away from the true gods.”
Dez wiped his knife and returned it to his belt. Then he looked around the circle. “Okay. Your turn.” And he didn’t just mean one at a time.
Rabbit kept the fire going, holding himself apart as the others pulled their knives and blooded their palms. Some of them hesitated; others moved quickly, slashing and getting it done. Beside him, Myr stared at her knife and whispered, “Please.”
She wasn’t talking to him, but he said, “I’ve got you. And tomorrow it’s pancakes for breakfast. Be there.”
She shot him a sidelong look, but didn’t say anything. Then, pressing her lips together, she drew shallow slices through each of her talent marks, because she didn’t have a bloodline. Moving forward with the others, she let her sacrifice fall into the fire, which sparked and smoked in answer.
“Pasaj och,” they all said in a ragged chorus, and then, “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni.”
BOOM! A stronger shock wave blasted over them, away from them, nearly blowing out the fire and sending up a billow of smoke. Rabbit was ready for the tidal wave this time, and kept a sharp eye on Myr, but although she gasped and went pale as the spell took effect, she stayed on her feet.
When the smoke cleared, she and the others stood, shaken, with gold bloodline marks in place of black. All four of Myr’s talent marks had gone gold.
“You okay?” he asked her as a buzz of similar questions rose up around them.
“Yeah. I guess I am.” She stared down at her forearm, then glanced up at him. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
“We sure are.” And he would be going last, just in case all hell broke loose.
It was the godkeepers’ turn next—they had broken their allegiance to the kohan, but still needed to renounce their godkeeper bonds. He tightened the fire to a small, hot blaze in front of the temple as Strike, Leah, Alexis and Sasha took up their positions. Their ceremonial knives
flashed and their faces twisted as they carved the godkeeper marks out of their arms. Leah whimpered and Strike went gray, more worried for his mate than himself. Myr made a muffled noise and looked away as blood dripped into the fire, turning the smoke to murk. Then the four intoned, “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni. Xeen te’ealo!” We no longer recognize you. Leave us!
Power surged, but this time the explosion wasn’t a shock wave—it was fire. Rabbit shouted as the blaze flared, engulfing the godkeepers and bathing them in brilliant red flames. Leah gave a shocked scream that cut off ominously.
“No!” Nate surged forward with Michael on his heels. “Douse it!”
Rabbit yanked back on the out-of-control fire magic, reeling it in, suddenly afraid that the near-death-by-drowning of the godkeeper spell needed to be counteracted by near-death-by-flames. “Godsdamn it, I—” He broke off as the blaze died back abruptly.
The four godkeepers stood there, unscathed.
Thank fuck.
“Holy shit,” Strike said, voice shaking, reaching for his mate as the two other men closed in on theirs. “Leah, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m good.” But her voice was sad, her eyes fixed on her wrist, where there was a bare, scarred patch in place of her mark. The bonds had been broken. She wasn’t a godkeeper anymore. None of them were.
Prophecy said that the godkeepers would be key to winning the war. They could only pray that had been another of the kohan’s lies.
“Still nothing,” Myr said, looking up at the sky. “Where are they?”
Rabbit doused the last of his fire. “Not even a fucking thundercloud. I don’t like it.” His wristband showed two and a half hours on the clock. They were missing something. But what?
Sasha leaned against Michael. “It’s like breaking up with someone you really loved, someone you’ve been agonizing about dumping, and then having them shrug and say, ‘Yeah, okay. Whatever. No biggie.’”
He hugged her to his side. “They’re leaving us alone because they know we’ve figured out their lies, so there’s no point in trying to keep us.”
“Or because they’re planning something else,” Myr said softly. She pulled her wand from her pocket and gestured with it, and green flames kindled where Rabbit’s blaze had burned moments earlier. She looked up at him. “You ready?”
Her magic brushed along his skin like a touch, bringing an echo of the shadows he saw in her eyes, and a tug that came from light magic rather than dark. Ah, baby. Like the king in his recurring dreams, he wished he could bubble wrap her and lock her someplace safe. But, also like Jag, he knew better than to try to leave a warrior behind, and that if they didn’t succeed here and now, there wouldn’t be anyplace safe.
So he leaned in, brushed his lips across hers, and nodded. “Ready.”
Then he pulled his combat knife, and dragged the tip across the bloodred hellmark, and then the black glyph of the boar bloodline. “Pasaj och,” he said. Magic surged around him, inside him, filling him with solstice power. When faint rattles leaked around the edges of the vault, he clamped down on it, determined to stay in control, get this right. “Ma’ tu kah—”
“No!” The blow came without warning—a hot, heavy body in sweat-laced brown robes flying at him from the side. “You can’t!”
Red-Boar! Rabbit didn’t know where the old bastard had come from, how he’d gotten so close without being seen. Shouting, “Dez, now!” he went down and rolled with the attack, kicking his father off him. The combat knife skittered out of his hand. When he reached out to grab it with his mind, though, nothing happened.
I’ve got your magic, you disloyal fuck, the hated voice said inside his head. I’m going to make you— “Aaah!” Red-Boar flew backward as if he’d been yanked by an invisible giant, sailing thirty feet and hitting hard. A shield spell slammed down around him, sparking with Dez’s lightning powers and threaded through with Michael’s silver death magic. “No!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet and slapping his hands against the impenetrable shield. “You can’t do this! You swore on your blood!”
Rabbit came to his feet and faced his old man as wrath and righteousness pounded through him. “You screwed up, old man. I swore not to follow the false gods. And as far as I’m concerned, your gods are full of shit, and so are you.”
Red-Boar flushed an angry, ugly purple. “No! You can’t do it. You can’t—” The rant cut off abruptly, though his mouth still moved, screaming spittle-flecked imprecations.
“Volume control,” Michael said with grim satisfaction. “Shield magic is my friend.”
“Thanks.” Rabbit looked past him to Dez, knowing that the two of them together were strong enough to hold his old man, no matter what. “Seriously. Thanks.” And he didn’t just mean for the shield spell or the silence. If they hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t backed him up, there was no telling what would’ve happened. Red-Boar brought out the darkness in him.
Even now it stirred inside him, seething and whispering, You’re stronger, better than he is. You can show him, show them all.
Yeah, he could. By fucking holding his shit together.
The king nodded. “Hey. You can’t pick your family.”
“Amen.” But to Rabbit’s surprise there was no satisfaction in seeing Red-Boar trapped and silenced, either. There was only the blink of his chrono: 2:50:36. And still nothing from the enemy.
“Here. You’re going to need this.” Myr levitated his combat knife and sent it winging toward him.
He caught it on the fly. “Sorry I didn’t tell you the whole plan.”
“Like you said earlier, he’s a mind-bender. He could’ve read me.” But she didn’t quite meet his eyes as she restarted the fire.
Damn. Rabbit’s heart thudded with dismay. He didn’t want to shut her out like this. He wanted to kiss her, hold her, make everything okay. Later, he promised himself, just like he’d promised her pancakes. Later, when the solstice magic wasn’t gnawing at him. Later, when he’d proven himself once and for all.
Later, when they’d won the war.
Facing the fire, he used his knife to freshen the half-healed cuts, leaned in so his blood fell into the fire, and said, “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni.”
The shock wave didn’t flare out this time; it flared in, turning his vision suddenly to gold. He hissed out a breath and fought to keep his balance, heard shouts but couldn’t understand the words. Then he fell and hit hard, launching himself into a vision, into the same dream he’d been having for weeks now. Except it wasn’t the same anymore.
* * *
Rabbit stood in front of the chac-mool, watching the barrier writhe in the air above the altar. Only this time he was alone . . . and he wasn’t underground. Instead, he stood at the edge of a huge sinkhole, which was sixty feet across and plunged a hundred feet down to a huge, circular pool of blackish water.
Oh, gods. He knew this place.
And, as he felt himself lift his bleeding palms, heard himself chant Scarred-Jaguar’s spell and sensed it burning its way into his mind, he knew what he was supposed to do, what the dreams—or, rather, the true gods—had been trying to tell him all along.
The Nightkeepers were going to shit a fucking brick when they found out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ninety minutes to the Great Conjunction
Coatepec Mountain
“Rabbit?” Myr’s face was the first thing he saw in the too-bright sunlight when he awakened, her hand the first thing he reached for. Relief flooded her features and she gripped his fingers for a moment, then pulled away to call over her shoulder, “Hey! He’s back!”
There was a shuffle of movement around him, and then Dez appeared in Rabbit’s field of vision. After a quick once-over, the king grabbed his arm and hauled him up. “What happened?”
Irritation rattled. “Jeez, give me a . . .” He trailed off at the sight of an armed encampment surrounding him. The equipment had been broken out and dug in, surveillance was up and running, and there we
re warriors positioned along the perimeter, watching the temple, the tree line, the sky, and Red-Boar, who sat near the temple with his hands tied behind his back, tethered to one of the jaguar pillars. More, the air sang with power . . . and Rabbit’s chrono said 1:28:08. “Fuck me.”
He’d been out for more than an hour.
Myr said, “Talk to us. Did you have another vision?”
“Yeah. This time it was different, though. This time, I got what the true gods have been trying to tell me.” To Dez—to all of them—he said, “We’re in the wrong place. We need to go to Chichén Itzá. . . . and when we get there, we need to use Scarred-Jaguar’s spell to seal the barrier.”
Myr gasped and took a step back, and a ripple of “Oh, hell, no” flung away from them and raced through the encampment, like he’d just dropped a boulder in a kiddie pool. Which he pretty much had.
Dez froze for a split second, but then his face went thunderous. Moving in, he grabbed Rabbit’s shirt and got in his face to hiss, “Godsdamn it, don’t you dare. Not fucking now.”
Rabbit snapped, “You think I want this? You think—” He broke off, seeing that the other man’s anger was more defensive than anything. Dez didn’t want to believe he was going to be the second king to lead the Nightkeepers into battle at Chichén Itzá on the strength of some dreams, didn’t want to think about enacting the same spell that had wiped out their parents. Let the brick shitting begin. “Think about it,” Rabbit said, taking it down a notch, but all too aware of the seconds flickering on his wristband. “That’s why the kohan haven’t attacked us here. They don’t give a damn what we’re doing as long as we’re not at the intersection.”
“This is the intersection.”
“It’s a decoy. They wanted us to think Iago destroyed the real intersection at Chichén Itzá, but he didn’t. The sacred chamber is still there, sunk deep in the cenote.” Rabbit paused. “I think that’s why I’m so important. I’m the only telekinetic left. It’s my weakest talent, but if I give it everything I’ve got, I should be able to bring the altar back up to the surface.” He looked at Myr. “I think the dreams—”
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