Spellfire

by Jessica Andersen

  “Bullshit!” JT shouted from the edge of the crowd. “This is bullshit! This is the intersection. This is where we’re supposed to be.” There were a few angry nods and a holler of “We didn’t sign on for this!”

  Dez’s hackles rose. “Renouncing the kohan was optional, not the rest of it. This isn’t a fucking democracy, and when you agreed to come here, you put yourself under my orders. There’s only one leader in this army, and it’s me.”

  “They’re not your orders. They’re his.” JT glared at Rabbit. “And none of us signed on to follow him.” The two of them had fought together, hung together, had some good times together, but the rebel winikin was looking at him now like he was the enemy.

  Rabbit tried not to blame him, but anger kicked in his gut, dark and ugly. “I’m not ordering anybody to do anything. I’m just telling you what I know.”

  “You don’t know dick. You dreamed it, just like Scarred-Jaguar.”

  “It was a vision; there’s a difference. And I wasn’t in the king’s head this time. I pictured myself standing at the edge of the cenote, and it was like I could see down to the very bottom. I saw the altar down there, felt its magic. More, when I heard the spell, I understood it.” He paused, voice going urgent. “The magic doesn’t just seal the barrier, it connects the other two realms to each other, so the kohan and the kax can duke it out themselves, leaving the earth out of the mix completely.”

  “This could be another kohan lie,” JT said, almost desperately, “another distraction.”

  Myr said, “Rabbit didn’t hear the spell until after he renounced the kohan. What if the dreams have been the true gods trying to reach him, but they couldn’t get through because the kohan were interfering? Maybe the true gods were trying to get through to Scarred-Jaguar, too, but since he was still bound to the kohan, still praying to them, the interference was even worse. More, the kax and the kohan knew the king’s plan. They were waiting for him.”

  JT made a face. “If Rabbit said the sky was purple, you’d back him up on it.”

  “Hey!” Rabbit took a step toward the winikin, fists clenched, anger pumping suddenly through him, looking for an outlet. “Don’t you dare—”

  “Enough!” Dez bellowed, cutting through the rising din. In the sudden silence, he seemed huge and golden, every inch their king. “You,” he forked a finger at Rabbit. “Dial it down. You”—this time he pointed at JT—“either shut up, or get the fuck out of here.” He glared around the muttering crowd. “Same goes for the rest of you. I said this isn’t a democracy, and it’s not. But I’ll be damned if I go into battle with soldiers I can’t trust.” He paused. “Look, I know you’re scared. We all are. But pretending this is where we’re supposed to be isn’t going to save us. We need to move, and we need to do it now. So go if you’re going. Otherwise, link up. Next stop: Chichén Itzá.”

  Rabbit exhaled a tight breath. Thank fuck.

  “No!” Red-Boar surged to his feet and flung himself to the end of his rope. “This is the intersection! This is where the gods are going to meet us!”

  “Don’t worry. You’re staying.” Dez grabbed Red-Boar’s ceremonial knife off a nearby stack of ammo, and tossed it to the mage. It fell at his feet, pinging on the stones. “It shouldn’t take you too long to cut yourself free.” Waving for the others to join hands, he checked his chrono and swore. “Hurry up. We’re burning time.”

  “Nooo!” Red-Boar howled, raising a booted foot over his knife. “Gods help me! Please!” Then he slammed his foot down on the etched stone blade, shattering it.

  Magic detonated from the powerful sacrifice, and the air tore with a sickly rriiip, showing the gray-green of the barrier beyond.

  “Shit.” Rabbit put himself in front of Myrinne, casting a shield around them both. She readied a fireball, and he did the same as other spells sprang to life.

  A figure came through the gap, solidifying when it stepped onto the earth plane. Fully eight feet tall, it was a giant Mayan warrior in full regalia, wearing a cape of woven leaves and a huge headdress of cornstalks and silk.

  “It’s the maize god,” Anna cried. “A kohan!”

  The king didn’t hesitate. “Fire!”

  A salvo of fireballs seared toward the maize god, but they deflected, slamming into the earth around the creature.

  Red-Boar didn’t notice. “Tell them!” He begged the kohan, spittle flecking from his mouth. “Tell them they have to stay here and have faith! I tried. You saw how hard I tried, but—” He broke off, eyes bugging as gray-green fog erupted from the ground beneath him. His face blanked with horror. “No! You promised! You told me I could have my family back if I did what you said.”

  “You failed . . . and we lied.” The words sounded in Rabbit’s head, as Bastet’s had done.

  Red-Boar went to his knees in the fog. “Where’s my Cassie? Where are my sons? Please. Give them to me.”

  “They are in the barrier, imprisoned along with generations of their kin. As you shall be, held ready to march for us when the barrier falls.” The rip in the barrier grew wider and the fog began drawing back inward.

  “The nahwal,” Myr whispered in horror. “Your ancestors’ souls didn’t stay in the barrier to be your advisers. They’re prisoners of the kohan!”

  “Fire again!” Dez shouted, and the Nightkeepers blasted another concerted volley. But it was no use. Their magic couldn’t penetrate the kohan’s shield.

  “No!” Red-Boar shouted. “Don’t! Please, gods, don’t!” He surged up, tried to run, hit the end of his bonds, and fell. He screamed as the fog covered him, flowing through the tear in the barrier. For a second, the nahwal were visible beyond the gap—naked and genderless, with shiny skin and eerie black eyes. Always before, the ancestral beings had looked peaceful, otherworldly and faintly disdainful. Now, though, their eyes were wide and their mouths gaped open as they reached for the earth plane. Then the fog surged back through the opening, obscuring them.

  When it cleared, the nahwal were gone. And so was Red-Boar.

  A cry rose up from the Nightkeepers, and something tore inside Rabbit, sharp and vicious. He didn’t want to give a shit about his old man, but he did. Worse, there were other, far more worthy souls trapped in there with him.

  Rage soured the back of his throat and he stepped away from Myrinne. “Get back and shield yourself.”

  “Rabbit—”

  “Just do it!” he snapped. Then, dropping his shield spell and blocking her from his thoughts—blocking out everything except the kohan and the gray-green tear in the sky—he braced himself and shouted, “Cha’ik ten ee’hochen!” Bring the darkness to me!

  Wham! The tsunami hit him in the shallows this time, pummeling him not just with its own force, but with all the garbage that came with it. Frustration, resentment, impotence, fury—the dark magic rose up and hammered him with the flotsam of his life. But he knew what to expect this time. Maybe he wasn’t armored against it, or for the way some of it still resonated, but he could tamp it down enough to function.

  Concentrating on the spells rather than the dangerous impulses that had gotten him into trouble so many times before, he called two fireballs, one in each hand—the left was dark, oily and rancid; the right was brilliant red and threaded through with sparks of gold. Then he brought his hands together, and the light and dark magic slammed into each other and glommed into a seething ball of red and brown.

  With mad power singing up his arms, Rabbit shouted, “Cross this over, motherfucker!” And he launched the bolt at the kohan, which was still gloating in the rift, mocking Red-Boar and the nahwal.

  The fireball shattered the shield spell, leaving the maize god suddenly unprotected. It whipped around with a hiss of shock and rage, its tasseled headdress flaring out in a spray of silken strands.

  Rabbit summoned more magic, a killing blow of light and dark energy, and drew back his arm to—

  The kohan speared its fingers at him and shouted, “Freeze!”

  And he fucking froze
. The spell surrounded him, locking him into place and boxing the magic in with him. The red-brown fireball spun and churned, caught in stasis.

  “Rabbit!” Myr’s cry was anguished.

  “Fire!” Dez ordered, and the Nightkeepers and their allies hammered the unshielded kohan with everything they had—fireballs, ice, lightning, and exploding jade-tipped rounds.

  The maize god swatted aside the attack and cast another shield around itself. Then, glaring at Rabbit, it sneered, “Stay.” Like he was a fucking house pet. “You will come with me to the sacred well, to take control of the xombis. Then the kohan will control both of the armies of the undead.” It turned toward the others. “As for the rest of you . . .”

  The leaves of its cloak rustled as if coming alive, and the silken strands atop its headdress lifted like cobras preparing to strike as the kohan forked its fingers and rattled off a spell. The magic flung toward the Nightkeepers’ gleaming shield. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the ground shook suddenly, and green tendrils erupted inside the shield.

  The Nightkeepers shouted and fought, defending themselves with magic, guns and knives as the vines whipped up and wrapped around the teammates—arms, legs, weapons, everything—and then thickened, sprouting leaves and then small, wispy ears of maize. But for every vine they destroyed, three more sprouted and attacked.

  At the edge of the group, green fire flared as Myrinne burned one off her left thigh, only to have another latch on to her right ankle and yank. She stumbled and nearly went down.

  “Godsdamn it!” Rabbit’s throat tore with the shout. “Myr!” He struggled against the grip of the kohan’s magic as rage grabbed him by the throat, cutting off his air. He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, couldn’t do a damn thing right.

  He was a boy again, eleven years old and caught stealing booze from the gas station around the corner from his and Red-Boar’s apartment; fifteen and crashing his old man’s Jeep in a flooded river during a joyride gone bad. He was eighteen and watching Jox’s warehouse burn; nineteen and watching a seedy corner of the French Quarter burn; twenty-two and watching Oc Ajal burn, proving over and over again that his old man was right. He was a fuckup, a loose cannon, the Master of Disaster. Everything he’d been called over the years. Everything he’d called himself.

  “Not anymore,” he grated, fighting off all the anger and hatred that came from the boy he’d been, and pouring all the power of his better self—his more mature, more controlled self—into the seething fireball instead, trying to break through the kohan’s spell.

  Please gods, he whispered inwardly. A little help here.

  Then, suddenly, he wasn’t alone in his own skull anymore. There was a presence inside him, filling his head, and an almost familiar voice boomed, The things you are rejecting are all part of you, son of chaos. They are not flaws when they are balanced by the other half of you.

  “Jag?” It sounded like the voice from his visions, only not.

  You’re hot-tempered, impulsive and stubborn . . . but your temper makes you a fierce warrior, your impulsiveness gives you moments of brilliance, and your stubbornness means you refuse to give up. There was a pause. You punish yourself for your past sins, but do not credit your successes. You need to accept yourself—every part of you—if you mean to be the crossover.

  There was a jolt and the presence disappeared as quickly and thoroughly as it had come. It didn’t leave Rabbit empty, though. Instead, his senses vibrated in its wake, his mind spun.

  Yeah, it was a big foam finger moment. But did he dare trust it? More, did he dare trust himself?

  And he had to decide fast, because inside the Nightkeepers’ shield, the vines were winning.

  Wrapping his mind around the fireball that still spun and pulsed beside him, frozen by the kohan’s spell, Rabbit steeled himself and said, “Ten cha’ik ee’hochen!” Bring my darkness!

  The tsunami came again, but this time it swept him up and carried him along with it. Fury, frustration, impotence, guilt, regret, revenge—familiar from every stage of his life except for the past few weeks—flooded through him, and he accepted all of it, embraced it.

  Yes, he thought as the reckless intensity built, making him want to do something stupid, dangerous and fun. Yes. This was what he had been missing without realizing it.

  No longer contained by any vault or vain attempts to be what he thought he should be, the chaos flowed free, filling him with crazy thoughts, then soldering them into place. And once that happened, the impulses didn’t seem so insane anymore. They felt sharp and edgy, yet contained. Balanced. And he felt more like himself than he had since he first heard Phee’s voice in his mind. He was the wild half blood, the pyro, the Master of Disaster . . . but he was also the guy who had turned back the first xombi outbreak, and who had stayed with the villagers in the aftermath. He had tracked down his mother, faced down his grandfather and made sure his old man didn’t hurt the Nightkeepers. He wasn’t all good, but he wasn’t all bad, either.

  He was the crossover, damn it.

  Chest tightening with fear and hope as magic crackled along his skin, he said, “Pasaj och.”

  The barrier connection formed instantly, but the magic that raced into him wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt before. Power flared, huge and incomprehensible, and the fireball gleamed suddenly from within. The red and brown powers bled together, becoming one . . . and then they turned to pure gold.

  Suddenly, the kohan’s spell dissolved. He could move again!

  The maize god stood near the temple, still fully shielded. It hadn’t noticed that Rabbit was loose, but that could change at any second. He had only one chance.

  Hit him hard, he told himself. No fuss, no bullshit, just bust through that shield. But beneath his warrior’s determination, a wilder, crazier part of him had a better idea. He started to push it away, but then hesitated. And went with it.

  Be brilliant.

  With molten gold searing through his veins, Rabbit shouted and unleashed a bolt of terrible fury . . . straight into the Nightkeepers’ sacred temple. The two-thousand-year-old structure shuddered then exploded in a conflagration of stone shrapnel and golden magic. The kohan spun with a shocked roar, its shield disintegrating under the onslaught.

  “Eat this!” Rabbit didn’t even gather the power this time; he just pointed. But that was more than enough—the golden magic flew from his hand in a lethal bolt. It hit the maize god, wreathing it with golden flames.

  The kohan screeched, spun and fell.

  Rabbit poured more power into the fire, which roared like thunder. “Die!” he shouted, closing on the fire and watching the maize god’s headdress blaze. Fury boiled in his blood and spurred him on. This was the enemy as much as Phee, Anntah, or the kax. Worse, even. “Fucking go to hell.”

  Golden flames detonated, sounding like a dozen buses crashing together, and the god disappeared. The vines vaporized. Even the tear in the barrier blinked out of existence.

  In the aftermath, there was silence. Normalcy, even. Except for the temple’s destruction, it seemed as though nothing had changed.

  Rabbit, though, had been through the change of his life. He stood, shaken, staring at the ruined temple while his mind spun.

  He was the fucking crossover.

  Anntah was right. The magic had been inside him all along.

  His throat was scorched, his ribs hurt, and his eyes burned as if they were being eaten from the inside by acid. But for the first time in a really long fucking time, maybe ever, he felt whole. And not because Red-Boar was gone, either. He might’ve cleared up some of the questions surrounding Rabbit’s birth, but he’d still been an asshole. And besides, it hadn’t ever been about Rabbit missing a twin, a parent, or a part of the magic. It had been about him missing a part of himself—not because it had been taken from him, but because he’d been rejecting it, trying to be what everybody else wanted him to be, what he thought the Nightkeepers and the gods needed him to be.

  What a fucking relief
to discover that they needed him to be exactly who and what he always had been—a former juvenile delinquent who had learned some manners over the years.

  But as he turned away from the temple, that relief vanished in an instant. Because Myr stood there, staring at him with fear in her eyes, with the others ranged behind her. And his heart fucking sank, because while most of them—maybe all—would be grateful they finally had their crossover, she already looked devastated.

  She didn’t want the crossover. She wanted the self-contained, well-behaved guy she’d had for the past couple of weeks . . . and he didn’t exist anymore.

  And whoever he was now, his wristband read 1:01:34.

  * * *

  “Rabbit?” Myr didn’t care that her voice shook. Her arms and legs throbbed where she had wrestled with the vines, but that was nothing compared to the pain and fear that was suddenly lodged deep within her heart. “Are you okay?”

  It should’ve been a dumb question, because he certainly looked okay. Hell, he looked amazing, standing there with the ruined temple at his back, looking bigger and badder than he ever had before. His hair moved in the faint breeze, but other than that, he was utterly still.

  She stopped just a few feet away from him. Tell me you’re okay. Tell me what I just saw wasn’t as scary as it looked. Because even as she and the others had fought off the maize god’s attack, they had seen the golden magic and felt Rabbit’s new power.

  He had become the crossover . . . but she wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “I’m not hurt,” he said. His eyes, though, were bleak.

  “Talk to me,” she urged. “You’re scaring me.” More, he was shutting her out again.

  He looked beyond her to where the others had dispersed to gather up the equipment. After what just happened, it was a no-brainer that they needed to head for Chichén Itzá. “We should go.”

  He’s right, she told herself. Deal with it after. This isn’t the right time. Or maybe, like Anna said, it was exactly the right time to focus on the personal stuff and remember what they were fighting for. More, Myr was still the one who knew him best, the one who needed to warn the others if he was going off the rails.