Patience’s heart clutched. “If Cabrakan is supposed to fight the Hero Twins . . .” She trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
The half-human deities starred in many of the old legends. In the stories, the young boys—one brave, the other studious—got themselves into and out of numerous adventures, eventually winning their ways through Xibalba itself in order to rescue their father, who had been captured by the Banol Kax.
Harry and Braden had never been bound to the barrier, and therefore couldn’t be tracked by magical means, but the parallels had always unnerved Patience. Now they terrified her, especially given that the twins weren’t babies anymore, not really. At five years old, if they had been growing up inside the old system, they would have their bloodline marks and be practicing their first small spells. Gods.
“Hannah and Woody won’t let anything happen to them,” Jox said. “They know how to stay out of sight. And how to raise good kids.”
Patience smiled faintly at that. “Yeah. They do.” She sobered. “But . . . I don’t know. Every time the Hero Twins come up in conversation, my fight-or-flight response goes into overdrive.”
“Mine too,” Brandt said, surprising her. His expression was set and uncompromising, but for a change she found the steeliness comforting. “We won’t let anything happen to them. Whatever it takes is what we’ll do. Whatever they need from us is what they’ll get.” He met her eyes. “Even if it isn’t what we really want.”
It was the closest he’d come to talking about the boys being gone in a long time. It was also, she thought, an offer of a truce in Brandt-speak.
She slipped off her stool and held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s see if the etznab spell can get us any further into either of the visions.”
The most frustrating thing about the magic was its unpredictability. At first, the magi had ascribed the problem to lack of info and proper training, but the more they learned from the library, the more it seemed that the magic was a closer to an art form than a defined set of actions and reactions. Given the increasing volatility of the barrier, which was ramping up both light and dark powers in spurts, with lull periods between, the magic was rapidly becoming a crapshoot.
Rabbit’s mind-bending talent, which had faded to almost nonexistent for a while, had rebounded in the past few months, while Lucius had lost his onetime ability to form barrier conduits. Which meant there were no guarantees when it came to the mirror spell.
Still, when Brandt took her hand, the contact brought a kick of anticipation.
“If the mirror pot doesn’t work this time, don’t be afraid to try the cards again,” Lucius put in.
When Strike shot him a “what the hell?” look, the human held up his hands. “Don’t hate the messenger. She said she needed a spell that involved a mirror, and ‘abracadabra’ or ‘et voilà’ or whatever, I put paws on the spell she needed. That’s not a coincidence.”
“It was—” just a hunch, Patience started to say, but broke off because it had been more than that.
“Look at it this way,” Jade put in. “The magi have always adapted themselves, and their powers, to their local environment. When they lived in Egypt, they worshipped cats and crocodiles. With the Maya, it was maize and chocolate. The core beliefs were the same: The astrology, the pyramids, the sun worship, and the hieroglyphic writing, those pieces of the religion were all there. But the trappings changed. Maybe something similar is happening here.”
Brandt frowned. “So you’re thinking—what?—that the Mayan Oracle is a divination ritual that leaked to the human world somehow?”
“Actually, I’m thinking the reverse: that it’s a fully human invention that resonates with Nightkeeper power, or at least with Patience’s power.” Jade paused. “There were itza’at s in her bloodline, you know.”
Strike’s head came up; his eyes narrowed on Patience. “Really?”
Patience’s pulse tapped a quick, syncopated rhythm at the thought of being able to see into the future, but not change anything she saw. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not big on genealogy.”
In fact, she hadn’t learned more than the basics about her parents and bloodline. As far as she was concerned, Hannah was her mother, and Brandt and the boys were her family. It wasn’t that she resented her parents for dying, or anything complicated like that. She just didn’t feel much of a connection to the prior generation of Nightkeepers.
Or rather, she hadn’t until the day before. Now she realized that, without her even really being aware of it, she had been subconsciously digesting her interaction with the nahwal, replaying the message and that moment when she had seen a spark of life within the creature . . . and thinking about where—or who—it had come from. Her mother might be in the nahwal’s collective consciousness; her father definitely was. Her uncles, grandfather, great-grandfather . . . an entire patriarchal iguana lineage were represented within the creature. And, apparently, an itza’at or two.
Strike nodded slowly. “All right. Use the cards. But do what you did with the mirror spell, and get some sort of independent confirmation before acting on what they tell you.”
“They won’t ‘tell’ me anything,” she said with some asperity. “They’re just a tool, a way to—” She broke off as magic rippled along her skin and the background power sink that surrounded Skywatch decreased sharply and then kicked back up over the span of a heartbeat. “What was that?”
Brandt put himself between her and the front door. “Something just came through the wards.”
Moments later, a shrill alarm blatted three short blasts to warn that someone had keyed in the combo to get through the front gate of the compound. Which meant it was one of them.
Strike uncoiled from his stool, but nobody else moved. They all held their places as the front door swung open and Nate’s voice became audible, saying, “—fucking deadweight. Thought the pilot was going to shit himself when we showed up. Lucky for us he knows Jox, and will do just about anything for a bonus.”
Heavy footsteps sounded in the short hallway that ran past the dining room turned war chamber, and then the small group came into sight. Alexis led the way, schlepping a battered black duffel bag.
Behind her, Nate and Sven carried a folding stretcher between them. On it lay an unconscious man who was immobilized beneath a cocoonlike layer of cargo straps that might have seemed overkill if it hadn’t been for the sheer size of the guy, who was huge even by Nightkeeper standards. His head wore the stubble of a week-old skull trim, and his features were wide and strong, with a prominent beak of a nose that made Patience think of ancient carvings, Mayan kings and gods.
Even in repose, he emanated an aura of power on both the physical and psi levels, one that seemed to announce, Here I am. What are you going to do about it?
Seeing that most of Skywatch was standing there, gaping, Nate stopped and raised a sardonic brow in the king’s direction. “Guest suite or basement?”
Strike didn’t hesitate. “Basement. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred.” What the lower-
level storerooms lacked in amenities, they made up for with the absence of windows and the presence of heavy doors that could be securely locked with dead bolts and magic.
Nate nodded. “No argument coming from me.” As the two men hauled their deadweight cargo in the direction of the stairs leading down, Sven called back, “This guy gives off a major ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibe even when he’s barely breathing. You think that’s the Triad magic?”
“Nope.” Strike shook his head. “That’s one hundred percent Mendez. Be warned. And for fuck’s sake, don’t turn your back on him.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
December 18 Three days until the solstice-eclipse Skywatch For Patience, the thirty or so hours after Brandt reawakened passed in a blur of fruitless etznab magic, failed hypnosis, and an uncomfortable trip to New Hampshire, where visits with the dead boys’ families and a trip to the scene of the long-ago accident succeeded only in turning Brandt’s mood dark.
Mendez and Anna were both still deeply comatose, and there was still no sign of Mendez’s winikin.
Fortunately, there hadn’t been any sign of Iago either. Lucius speculated that the Xibalban would be physically weak after his long period of stasis, so was probably recuperating. Even given the accelerated healing of a demon-human hybrid makol, he might be out of action through the solstice, gods willing. With the time ticking down, Rabbit and Myrinne were down in the Yucatán, trying to open the passageway beneath the El Rey pyramid, but so far that was a no-go.Which left the Nightkeepers with three days until the solstice and no idea how they were supposed to stop the earthquake demon.
Worse, earth tremors had hit Albuquerque and northern Honduras almost simultaneously the prior evening. They’d been below four on the Richter scale, but left little doubt that Cabrakan was stirring.
The threat permeated Skywatch, making the air tense and tight, and driving Patience outside in search of some fresh air . . . and some privacy.
Even though Strike had asked her to see if the cards could provide another clue like they had with the mirror spell, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to start laying spreads in the kitchen or great room, or even in the suite where Brandt was brooding. Or maybe—probably—it was because she was under orders that she couldn’t settle to the task. There was pressure now. Expectations.
She had been planning to hunker down in a corner of the training hall, where she’d put in hundreds of hours drilling the others on hand-to-hand and evasive maneuvers. But as she pushed through the glass doors at the back of the great room and started across the pool deck, her eyes lit on the pool house that stood off to one side.
The small building—just a single room with a tiny attached bathroom—had been Strike’s chosen quarters when they had all first gathered at Skywatch. Once he moved into the royal suite with Leah, the pool house had become one of the twins’ favorite hangouts, a grown-up-sized playhouse of their very own.
They hadn’t been allowed there unsupervised, of course, not with the pool right there. But Hannah had brought them there often, as had Patience. Best of all—at least as far as the twins had been concerned—was when they had been able to persuade Rabbit to bring them to the pool house, shut the door . . . and tell them the Hero Twin stories.
Back then, Patience hadn’t been able to figure out what made Rabbit’s stories so cool for Harry and Braden; they were more or less the same legends she and Hannah told. Now she wondered if Rabbit’s nascent mind-bending ability had been starting to break through even that early on, allowing him to paint word pictures in the boys’ minds.
Regardless, as she pushed through the door into the pool house, she was hit with a vivid memory of one particular night when she’d peeked in to check on her boys, and found them there with their
“uncle Rabbit.”
They had dragged cushions off the daybed and sat on the woven rug-covered floor, with lit candles providing sufficiently creepy flickering light. Harry had been neatly cross-legged, his hands folded in his lap, his eyes locked on Rabbit, his only movement that of one thumb tapping atop the other in the perpetual motion of a three-year-old boy. Braden had been sprawled on his belly nearby, toes drumming, face rapt.
Rabbit had looked so much younger than he did now, lean and rangy with only his bloodline and fire-talent marks on his forearm; he hadn’t worn the hellmark back then and hadn’t yet grown into himself. But the same wild intensity had burned in his gray-blue eyes as he shaped the air with his hands and described how the twins, Xblanque and Hun Hunapu, had gotten trapped in Xibalba while searching for their father, and hid from the Banol Kax by making themselves very small and hiding inside Hunapu’s blowpipe.
That’s right, Patience thought now. They can’t see you if you make yourself disappear.
Slowly the image faded, leaving her alone in the pool house. Everything was clean and neat, but the air smelled sterile and unloved, like she was in a guest room rather than an integral part of the compound. Which she supposed was true now. The magi had more important things to do these days than hang out by the pool.
The room looked the same: The daybed was there with the same pillows and throw, and the same woven rug covered the floor. The half-open bathroom door revealed a large mirror, fresh towels, and a loaded soap dish. Another mirror hung in the main room, this one full-length and showing her wide-
eyed reflection. Logic said the big mirror was a hold-over from when the little playhouse had functioned as a changing area, but still . . . There’s no such thing as coincidence; it’s all just the will of the gods.
“Okay.” She blew out a breath. “I get it.”
She closed the door and crossed to the daybed, where she sat cross-legged with the pillows at her back. She didn’t let herself dwell on the knowledge that Harry and Braden had napped on those pillows and wrestled on that bed. Still, the knowledge warmed her with a gentle ache of sorrow. She opened herself to the emotions, knowing that it was all too easy to block the flow of magic, and that foretelling was one of the most fickle talents of all.
She fanned the large purple-backed deck, and set the accompanying book off to the side, in case she wanted to check herself on anything. She had memorized the major connections for each glyph card, but there were also subtler associations listed for each: symbols, numbers, flowers, scents, stones, and elements. In addition, each glyph had a shadow aspect, a darker set of foretellings. She would need the book for those readings.
Figuring more magic was better than less, she used her ceremonial knife to nick her palm, and murmured, “Pasaj och.”
The power link with the barrier formed instantly; the magic skimming across her skin was far stronger than it had been even three months earlier, during the autumnal equinox. Things were changing so fast, and they were still two years out from the end time. What would the world look like in a year? Two years? Three? Gods help us get this right so Harry and Braden will have a world to grow up in.
Feeling the power wrap around her, warming her and making her yearn—for her sons, for the future —she whispered, “How can I help Brandt become a Triad mage?” Then she selected three cards from the fan, held them for a moment, then laid them side by side in front of her.
There were numerous types of spread, ranging from the single-card quick-and-dirty reading she had done when she pulled the etznab cards, to a full array of stars, lenses, and oracles, placed in intricate patterns of meaning. For this reading, she had chosen a simple three-card line called the “tree of choice.” Trees were sacred; their roots tapped the underworld, their trunks lived in the realm of mankind, and their canopies touched the sky and protected the villages. In the oracle spread, the three cards represented, in order from right to left, the root of the problem implied by her question; the core —and potentially flawed—beliefs surrounding the problem; and the branches through which the answer could be achieved.
At least that was the theory.
Taking a deep breath, she flipped the first card. On it, four parallel yellow curves crossed a maroon square that was outlined in black. Behind the square rose a yellow, rayed sun. “Imix,” she said, pronouncing it “ee-meesh” in the ancient tongue. The Divine Mother card, it symbolized trust, nourishment, maternal support, and receptivity.
Her stomach flutter-hopped, because she pulled Imix almost every time she did a reading for herself. It was her totem card.
But pulling the card now made her grimace with twisted amusement. “Great. I’m the root of the problem.”
She couldn’t sustain the self-directed humor, though, because that seemed all too likely. Brandt had tried to get her to back off the family stuff and focus on her magecraft, but she hadn’t been able to make that switch. Loving him and the twins wasn’t something she could step away from, and it pissed her off that he’d done it so seamlessly. If they needed to work together to regain his lost memories, then it was certainly possible that her negative emotions could be blocking things.
T
aking a deep breath, she reached for the book. Flipping through the worn pages, she found Imix, and read down its associations. Most of them didn’t seem related to the issue at hand, but one pinged: Imix was connected to the earth element, and they were racing to counter the earthquake demon. It wasn’t exactly a neon sign, but it was something.
Then again, in the outside world she’d been a champion at reading deep meanings in her fortune cookie fortunes.
Moving on, she skimmed over the light aspects of Imix, which she knew by heart. The card was a call for her to look below the surface of her life, to give and receive love. She was trying to do that, damn it.
She paused, though, when she got to the first line of the next section.
“‘The shadow aspects of Imix are issues of trust and survival, feelings of being unsupported or unworthy, and the need for outside validation,’” she read aloud, feeling a tingle run through her body.
Except for the validation part, that described the person she’d been during her depression, and the temptations she still had to fight against.
The reading seemed to say that her thought processes were at the root of the problem. Which sucked. But at least that was something she might be able to fix. “Okay, fine. Be that way. So what’s the core belief I need to use or get past in order to move forward?”
Not letting herself hesitate, she flipped the second card. It showed a royal blue square in the middle, with yellow circles at each corner. In the center of the blue square, a diamond-shaped cutout showed a starscape beyond. Behind all of that was the same yellow sun as on the first card. The continuity of pulling two sun cards in a row seemed to point at the involvement of Kinich Ahau, which played. This particular card, though, wasn’t familiar. She didn’t think she’d ever drawn it before.
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