She shot off the return text and fled to the bathroom, where she took a quick shower and pulled herself together.
Ten minutes later they left the room with only a messy bed and steamed-up bathroom to show that they had been there. She paused for a last look back as he held the hallway door for her. The mirrored decor wasn’t any less cheesy than it had been the night before, but she felt a pang at leaving it behind.
“We won’t forget this time,” Brandt said quietly.
“No, we won’t.” But as they headed downstairs to meet the others, she found herself wondering whether it would be enough for them to remember that first night. She felt so far removed from the person she’d been back then, so far away from the awestruck wonder of discovering the magic and fighting at her lover’s side, that she couldn’t see how the memories could help fix a damned thing.
Their teammates had snagged a private room at the back of the hotel restaurant, which was mercifully low-key on the themed-wedding kitsch, instead leaning toward a trellised indoor-garden feeling, with skylights that were wide-open to the sunny morning.
Patience hesitated slightly at the sight of not only Strike, Jade, Rabbit, and Myrinne, who she’d been expecting, but also Alexis, Nate, Sven, Lucius, and Leah. “Wow. The gang’s all here. Almost, anyway.”
It shouldn’t have made her claustrophobic to step into the room or take one of the two empty chairs and have Brandt’s arm bump hers as he did the same. But the walls closed in on her nonetheless.
“Sasha stayed with Anna, and Michael’s on Mendez duty,” Leah said. “The rest of us figured we’d tag along and boost Jade, on the theory that the cardinal-day spell concealing this doorway of yours could be tough to unravel on a noncardinal day.”
And also, Patience knew, because the Nightkeepers were one-hundred-percent adventure junkies.
Just look at how easily she and Brandt had talked each other into exploring the tunnels below El Rey.
The good news was that, in doing so, they had discovered something the Nightkeepers badly needed.
Without preamble, she said, “The doorway leads to an intersection.”
There was a short pause; then Sven whooped and the others started firing questions, the mood in the room shifting abruptly to one of “Oh, holy shit. Finally something might be going our way!” Ever since Iago had destroyed the intersection beneath Chichén Itzá, the magi had been searching for another skyroad, a place where the barrier was thin enough to allow the gods to contact them directly.
Rather than trying to field the questions, Patience held up a hand. “Hold on. It’s complicated. I think we should start at the beginning.” She glanced at Brandt. “Do you want to tell it, and I’ll jump in where I’ve got a different perspective?”
He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” He didn’t look at her, but beneath the table, he shifted, looping his foot around hers and pressing gently in an unseen half hug. “We used a mirror in our hotel room to trigger the etznab spell,” he began, then went on to summarize the events of that long-ago night, with her adding details as they seemed relevant. They were forced to pause several times as the waitstaff filled their orders. By the time he had described Werigo’s banishment by the gods, and the final spell he’d cast, the room was dead quiet.
When he was done, there was a moment of silence that wasn’t so much stunned as it was a case of nobody knowing what to tackle first.
“Are you guys okay?” Leah said finally.
“We’re coping,” Patience said, not wanting an open forum on her and Brandt’s relationship, then or now.
Leah’s nod seemed to accept the evasion more than the answer.
“If it’s an intersection—” Strike began.
“There isn’t any question about that,” Brandt said, “at least not in my mind. It channeled both light and dark magic, and let both demons and gods reach through. Hellroad plus skyroad equals intersection.” He paused. “But there’s a problem. Given that Ix knew about the El Rey intersection, then we have to assume that Iago does too.”
Patience hadn’t really been thinking in that direction, but now her mind leaped ahead. “But if he had access to a functional hellroad six years ago, why didn’t he use it back then?” A cold knot twisted in her stomach as she answered her own question. “Unless what happened that night destroyed the El Rey intersection.”
Brandt nodded. “There has to be some reason why the site hasn’t pulled anyone else in since then.”
“But we—” She broke off as disappointment tugged. “Damn it, you’re right. We’ve scoured the area. We wouldn’t have missed something pumping that much magic.”
“You might if it’s not using the power you’re looking for.” That came from Lucius. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. You said there were two other doors leading out of the chamber, right? What else was different from the old intersection beneath Chichén Itzá?”
Brandt said, “This one was very plain, unadorned. The outer doorway was carved, but not the tunnel or the chamber itself. The sconces were strictly functional, and the altar was just a square chunk of stone, not a chac-mool.” He paused. “Anybody got a pen?”
When Nate tossed him a ballpoint, he got busy sketching a napkin schematic. Meanwhile, Patience put in, “The torches we found just inside the tunnel were carved, but not with glyphs. Patterns, mostly.” She went on to describe the slow-burning resin and unfamiliar incense.
When they were both finished, Lucius studied the napkin map, added a couple of notes from her description, and then lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “No guarantees, but based on the lack of carvings, and there being none of the tricks that were part of the intersection at Chichén Itzá—the sliding doors, the elevator-type mechanism, and such—I’d guess that this is a very early site, maybe the first few centuries after the Nightkeepers came to this continent.”
Understanding shivered through Patience. “Back when they were still using muk, you mean?” That was what he’d meant about it not being the power they were looking for: Muk was the ancestral magic that combined the light and dark aspects of the power. Among the magi, only Michael could use muk, and at that, he wielded only a small piece of its total power. Yet even that much was devastating.
Lucius nodded. “Up until the Nightkeepers came to this continent, they managed to maintain the balance between light and dark spells, but something about being here ramped everything up.” He made a boom noise and pantomimed an explosion. “The magic increased by the century, permeating the emerging Mayan culture.”
Jade put in, “Which is why the culture on this continent resembles that of the original Nightkeepers so much more closely than any of the civilizations our ancestors lived with before or after.”
“Right,” Lucius said. “Eventually the boar-bloodline king couldn’t maintain the balance anymore, the darkness corrupted a dozen of his strongest magi, and”—he snapped for emphasis—“the wielders of light and dark magic split into the Nightkeepers and the Order of Xibalba.” He paused. “Before that, though, the biggest rituals were split between light and dark . . . sometimes even with separate entrances to the ritual sites.”
“That would account for two of the doors,” Patience said, hope kindling at the inner click of connection that suggested they were on to something. “The one we came through was keyed to light magic, while Ix came in through the other one. Which probably means there’s a dark-magic entrance hidden somewhere in the ruins of El Rey. But that doesn’t account for the third door.”
“You said it was a closed stone panel.” Lucius thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s not even a doorway at all, just carved into the stone, which would mean it would be more of a symbolic entrance .
. . maybe for the gods?” He frowned. “Except that if that’s the case, then there should be one for the dark lords as well, in order to keep the balance.”
“Not if the site dates back before the Nightkeeper-Xibalban split.” Surprisingly, the comment came from Rabbit, who usually kept his mouth
shut during meetings. He continued: “Back then, there wasn’t the same good-versus-evil distinction between entities that lived in the sky versus the underworld. They were all considered gods.”
Strike scowled. “Bullshit.” He inhaled to keep going, but subsided at Leah’s warning glance.
Patience had noticed several such exchanges in recent days, with Leah checking Strike’s temper against not only Rabbit but Jox and Sven as well.
Rabbit bristled, but it was Lucius who said, “Actually, it’s not BS. There’s some evidence in the library that the ancients viewed the sky and Xibalba as locations rather than moral barometers.”
Strike’s jaw flexed. “There was nothing fucking balanced about what the Banol Kax did to our parents.”
Rabbit looked away and said nothing, but Patience could guess what he was thinking: Your parents, not mine.
“None of this explains why Iago didn’t use the El Rey intersection to activate the barrier,” Brandt put in. But where before Patience would have been annoyed by his overfocusing on the job rather than the people around him, now she saw it as a redirection of the conversation. The press of his foot on hers said that he too had noticed the growing tension between Strike and Rabbit, and didn’t like the looks of it.
“Maybe he knew about it but couldn’t make it work,” Lucius offered. “It sounds like Ix had connected enough to split off the dark magic he wanted to use to open the barrier—which, in turn, summoned you guys via the leftover light magic. But he hadn’t managed to punch through. . . . It took him dying to fully activate the hellroad.”
Patience nodded. “If Iago didn’t know to try a human sacrifice, he wouldn’t have been able to open the intersection.” She paused. “Will we need a full-on sacrifice?” Human sacrifice wasn’t an aspect of most light-magic spells . . . but they weren’t talking about strictly light magic anymore, were they?
“I think it’s time to find out.” Strike signaled for the check. “Let’s go. If we can reopen the skyroad during the solstice-eclipse, we should be able to take out Cabrakan even without a Triad mage.”
Brandt’s expression flattened. “Patience’s nahwal seemed pretty certain that it’s going to be up to me. Problem is, we don’t have a fucking clue why my ancestors can’t reach me.”
Patience frowned. “Yes, we do. Don’t you remember—” She broke off at his look of utter confusion. Then her pulse started bumping unevenly as it connected. “Oh, shit. It was Werigo’s spell.”
“What was?”
“That night in the tunnel, you hinted that the gods had turned their backs on you. When I pressed, you said you’d tell me the whole story later. Then when the skyroad opened, their power came through me, not you, even though you were the one fighting Werigo. I thought it was because I was the one was touching the altar, but what if that wasn’t it? What if it was because the gods couldn’t—or wouldn’t—reach out to you?”
“I don’t remember saying anything about the gods.”
“You never do, do you?” Lucius said, eyes narrowing.
“I don’t what?”
“Call on the gods. You never say ‘gods know’ or ‘godsdamn’ or anything like that. And it’s not the
‘I’m a daddy. I don’t swear’ thing. You swear plenty, but you don’t blaspheme. What’s more, although I’ve heard you talk about the gods, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk to them.” Lucius paused. “Do you pray?”
Brandt scowled. “That’s between me and—” Breaking off, he muttered an oath that had nothing to do with the sky. “It’s not my thing.”
Surprise rattled through Patience. “Why didn’t I ever notice that?”
“Because of Werigo’s spell,” Lucius answered. “It screwed with your perceptions. He must’ve blanked not just your memories of what happened in that chamber, but all your memories of experiencing magic up to that point in your lives. In Patience’s case, that meant everything from the moment she saw Brandt on the beach. But in his case, the spell not only backtracked to earlier in the day when he first laid eyes on Patience; it also went back further to a previous event involving the magic.”
“The car crash,” Brandt said flatly. “That’s the only other missing memory I’m aware of.”
“Oxymoron alert. But, yeah. I’m willing to bet that your near death by drowning could have had enough magical oomph to punch through the barrier, even that far back.” Lucius paused. “Did it happen the night of the winter solstice?”
“It was early during winter break, before Christmas. It could’ve been. . . .” Brandt trailed off, frowning. “Yeah, it was the night of the solstice. But . . . I didn’t remember that until you asked, just like I never thought about the accident.”
Patience’s thoughts raced. “Werigo’s spell blocked us from remembering that the magic works. If the gods intervened that night and something happened to create a debt and make them turn against you, the spell would’ve blocked all of it.”
And deep down inside her, a new thought exploded through her mind: What if Werigo’s magic had also messed with their mated bond? It wouldn’t have bothered them out in the human world . . . but the effects could have manifested once she and Brandt were bound to the magic and started functioning as mates within the Nightkeeper milieu. Which was exactly when things had started going wrong between them.
Question was, would that change now that they had broken at least part of the spell? Gods, she hoped so.
“Regardless, the central issue remains,” Brandt said. “I can’t fix the problem until we know what I did wrong.”
Patience caught the bleakness at the back of his eyes. She touched his hand. “The gods didn’t shut you off because you somehow sacrificed your friends to save yourself. That’s not what happened.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you,” she said firmly.
“Michael’s magic got screwed up because he came into his powers with too much of a sin burden on his soul. The same thing could be happening to me.”
“There’s a fundamental difference between being in an accident and being an assassin.” She didn’t think she would’ve had the guts to put it quite that bluntly if Michael had been there.
For a second she thought he was going to pull away from her. But he didn’t. Instead, he nodded. “I hope to hell you’re right. But hoping and theorizing aren’t going to be enough here. I need to see the rest of that vision.”
Sharp relief kicked through Patience when he didn’t go back into shutdown mode on her. But it didn’t count until they managed to keep things working back at Skywatch, where loving each other wasn’t nearly so easy.
Telling herself to deal with one crisis at a time, she said, “It seems to me that the etznab spell doesn’t just need the words and props; it also needs the right atmosphere. I don’t think it’ll work again here at the hotel.”
“Maybe not. But what about our cave?”
At the thought of going back down there—with him—her stomach tightened. “That might work.”
He stood and offered her his hand. “Then let’s see if we can find the way in.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As the others headed out of the restaurant, Rabbit hung back and signaled for Strike to wait up.
Myrinne stalled too, so the three of them wound up alone just outside a pair of restroom doors bearing sombrero-wearing stick figures of either sex, and labeled SE-NORS and SENORITAS in case the pictures weren’t obvious enough. Duh.
“Problem?” Strike asked, cutting a look between them.
Rabbit hesitated, but then went ahead and said it: “I’ve been feeling funky ever since we touched down here, kind of itchy, or like I’m coming down with something.” That wasn’t likely, though; the magi didn’t get sick, at least not from germs.
Strike stilled. “You didn’t feel it when you were here two days ago?”
“No. Just this time. I wasn’t even going to say anything, just figured I was tired from all the running around.” After leaving
Oc Ajal, he and Myrinne had driven to three different ruins that had included sacrificial skull platforms— tzomplanti—dedicated to Cabrakan, but had come up dry in the clue department. Since they’d needed to do the two-day trip in one, in order to make up for the time they’d spent up in the mountains, they were both pretty short on sleep. “But between Brandt saying that this place buzzes different for him and Patience, and then us figuring out that there might be a dark-magic intersection entrance somewhere in the area, I figured you should know.”
“Does it feel like dark magic?”
Rabbit glanced at his forearm, at the scarlet quatrefoil above the black glyphs. “It doesn’t feel light or dark, really.”
“Please tell me it’s not muk.”
“Nah. I’m not even sure it’s magic. It’s more like—I don’t know, an itch between my shoulder blades, maybe. Like something’s going to happen soon.”
“You’re not going prescient on me, are you?” Strike tried to play it like he was kidding, but they both knew he wasn’t.
Nightkeeper males occasionally envisioned their destined mates before meeting them, but that was where Y-chromosome foretelling left off. What was more, precognition tended to have nasty-assed repercussions within the magic. So while the approach of the end date continued to increase the scope of the Nightkeepers’ powers—for example, allowing the warriors to cast shield spells at greater distances for longer times—there were some talents, like prescience, that they were hoping wouldn’t go on the rise.
Forcing aside the memory of the things he’d seen the night Myrinne had tried her foretelling spell on him, Rabbit shook his head. “It’s not prescience. It’s just . . . I don’t know. An itch.” The more he talked about it, the dumber it sounded. He wouldn’t even have said anything, but didn’t want to jeopardize the team by being a dumbass and keeping quiet about something that was probably nothing.
Strike thought for a minute. “Could you be sensing the solstice-eclipse ahead of the rest of us?”
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