And then they were on top of them. Brandt whipped around a corner, caught sight of a double row of makol standing at some sort of parade rest, and slammed himself flat along the wall. The others did the same as Michael lunged to the front of the group, pulling Sasha with him. He slapped a chameleon shield across the entrance to the ceremonial chamber, which was just beyond the enemy squadron. In almost the same move, he unleashed a deadly stream of muk, hosing it from one side of the tunnel to the other.
The silver magic flared brightly, searing Brandt’s retinas with the afterimage of Michael’s face, etched with a terrible combination of exultation and grief as he wielded his death magic.
The makol died as they had stood. A couple in the back managed to get their buzz swords activated, but the magic died as quickly as they did.
When it was done, the silver muk drained away and the tunnel returned to fireball-lit darkness, with a glimmer of torchlight up ahead, past the ash-shadows that were all that was left of the Aztec makol.
Michael collapsed against the wall and waved them past. “Shield’s down. Go! ”
Brandt lunged past him, skidded on the ash, and surged through the doorway. His brain snapshotted the first frozen image: Woody lay strapped atop the crude altar, his head hanging off one end, his legs off the other, his arms out to the sides and his Hawaiian shirt open, his torso bare. Iago stood over him, holding a forearm-long knife that was made of carved stone and edged with gold. Its tip was stained with blood, and red rivulets ran from Wood’s palms to drip on the floor.
But when Brandt burst in, Wood’s head whipped up and his eyes snapped wide. “Brandt!”
Iago spun, his glowing green eyes going wide with shock. That moment of surprise, coupled with a jerky hesitation that had to be Rabbit’s work, was enough.
Roaring, Brandt unleashed a fireball straight into the Xibalban’s face, which was unprotected above black body armor. The bolt hit hard and exploded on impact, napalming to engulf the Xibalban’s head and upper body in flames.
Patience darted past Brandt, leaped in the air, and kicked the staggering Xibalban in the chest, driving him down and away from the altar. Iago roared and went down on the far side of the altar while she stood watching, her eyes bright with fury.
She looked every inch the capable warrior. The realization tightened something in Brandt’s chest.
Then she turned to him, locking eyes. He saw the fierce lust for action that he’d seen in her from the very beginning, tempered now with her loyalties: to him, their sons, their winikin, their teammates.
And something clicked deep inside him.
“I’ll get Woody,” she said, heading for the altar with her knife drawn. “Finish the bastard.”
Was it close enough to the solstice for the head-and-heart spell to work on the powerful ajaw-
makol?
Let’s find out.
Baring his teeth, Brandt unsheathed his ceremonial dagger and headed for Iago. He lay still, curled up on one side. And he stank of charred flesh.
“Brandt!” Patience’s cry was scant warning as the second group of Aztec makol erupted from the light-magic doorway and raced for Iago. Their buzz swords were whizzing, and they launched a salvo of the deadly blades as they came.
He got up a shield just in time, protecting Patience and Woody as well as himself, but it cost him: The makol got between him and Iago, covering their master and driving the Nightkeepers back with swords and flying blades.
With Michael’s death magic depleted and Rabbit sagging on Myrinne’s shoulder, too exhausted to command fire, the Nightkeepers let rip with a salvo of fireballs—or in Jade’s case iceballs—and conventional jade-tipped bullets. The weapons barely made a dent on the solstice-toughened makol.
Brandt fell back to the altar, reaching it just as Patience finished hacking through the leather straps that had held Woody bound. The winikin lurched up and off the altar, and fell when his legs gave out.
Brandt caught him on the way down, and for half a second just hung on to the slight, wiry man. “Damn good to see you.”
Wood hugged him back, but said, “Hannah and the boys are up in the other tunnel.”
In other words, Fight now. We’ll talk later. It was typical Woody, and sent a burst of relief through Brandt as he released the winikin. Some things, it seemed, didn’t change no matter what.
He caught Patience’s eye and jerked his chin toward the tunnel. She led the way, followed by Woody, with Brandt forming the rear guard.
The other magi were fighting a battle of attrition against the makol. “Go,” the king shouted. “We’ll keep the exit open.”
But then, without warning, a new group of war cries split the air and eight more makol soldiers, entirely unexpected based on Rabbit’s psi-scouting report, poured through the dark-magic entrance.
“The sentries!” Brandt cursed, making the connection—the Nightkeepers might have made it past the outer perimeter of guards undetected, but now that stealth became a liability, as it meant the makol had reinforcements and the magi were surrounded.
He slapped a shield just inside the door, slowing the rush, but the makol attacked the shield with their buzz swords and he felt the spell give. It wouldn’t hold for long. These bastards were strong.
And when they broke through, they were going to go after Hannah and the boys. Brandt saw it in their green-hued eyes, in the way they were wholly focused on the far doorway. Gods.
“I’m going up that tunnel.” Patience’s expression was fierce. “You stay here and keep the exit open.
The others can’t hold it without you.”
The tightness in Brandt’s chest increased a thousandfold. He grabbed her arm, felt her strength, but also her softness. No, he started to say, but the word died in his throat when he saw the look in her eyes—not weakness or a plea, but a challenge. A warning.
Love me for who I am, she had said. Make me your partner. Trust me.
Brandt froze. They hadn’t been fighting about the Akbal oath, after all. It’d been about him trusting her to make her own decisions. Maybe she had said that, but it hadn’t registered. Now it did.
Woody shot a look from Brandt to Patience and back again, and shook his head. “Don’t try to do everything yourself,” he said, as he’d said a hundred times during Brandt’s teenage years. “You’re not a fucking island.”
“Shit.” He wanted to kiss her, hold her, put her behind him, protect her with every last breath in his body. Instead, he tossed her his extra ammo clips and spare flashlight. “Tell them I’m on my way. Tell them . . . tell them that I love them.”
Her eyes flashed and a fierce smile lit her face, a brief oasis in the midst of battle. “I will.”
“Go!” he barked as the shield spell gave and the makol reinforcements rushed the chamber. And, as she bolted across the room and into the tunnel, he said under his breath, “Gods, please keep them safe.”
But as Wood yanked the autopistols off his belt and fired into the onrushing makol, and Brandt spun up his magic, he was all too aware that his prayer had stayed on earth. He was still cursed.
He just hoped he hadn’t cursed all of them in the process.
Patience raced up the dark tunnel with her heart hammering so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t hear her own footfalls, couldn’t hear anything but the lub-dub of joy, excitement, and terror. Joy that Brandt had finally trusted her to do something other than watch his back. Excitement at the prospect of seeing Harry, Braden, and Hannah. Terror at what she might find up ahead.
She turned a corner and saw torchlight coming from an irregularly shaped doorway. Killing the flashlight, she went invisible, then advanced soundlessly with an autopistol at the ready.
When she reached the doorway, she crouched low and eased her head into the opening. What she saw on the other side stopped her heart’s lub-dub in its tracks.
In the plain, unadorned room lit by a trio of torches, a single Aztec makol stood guard, facing the doorway but unaware o
f her invisible self. Behind him, Hannah sat with her back against the wall. The boys were plastered up against her, one on each side. Hannah had lost her bandanna, they were all dirty and bedraggled, and tear tracks marked all three faces.
But they were alive. Intact. Thank the gods.
Her heart started beating again, flaring relief through her veins. She must have gasped or made some small noise, because the makol snapped to attention, barking a string of unfamiliar words as it activated its buzz sword. But it looked around wildly, unable to pinpoint her as she skirted the room and got behind it.
Patience saw Hannah and the boys flinch away from the makol’s agitation, saw their confusion, their weary fear. Her chest hurt; her eyes stung. She wanted to hold them, touch them, tell them she was there and everything was going to be okay. Instead, she slapped a shield spell over them, and shouted, “Stay down!”
The second the shield spell took hold, the makol spun, locking onto her magic and launching its blades in a smooth, deadly move.
She dropped and rolled, still invisible, and called a fireball, launching it almost before it fully formed.
The glowing red-orange energy pulse slammed into the creature’s chest and detonated, instantly wreathing the thing’s body in flames.
It screamed in pain, a too-human sound that made her heart clutch, not because her enemy was suffering, but because her sons were seeing it.
Wanting it over with, she slammed a second fireball into the thing’s head, vaporizing half its skull with grim purpose. Head and heart. When it toppled, she followed it down and said the banishment spell.
The makol crumbled to greasy ash.
And she was alone with her sons and winikin.
Hannah’s eye was locked on the air above the ash pile, slightly to the left of where she actually was.
The boys were both staring straight at her, brows furrowed, as if they could sense her but weren’t sure of their perceptions.
“Patience?” Hannah asked, the single word carrying wary hope.
“Yes.” The word was almost a sob as she dropped the invisibility spell and rose to her feet. She had meant to cross the short distance between them, but once she was up, her legs refused to carry her.
She could only stare as Braden uncoiled himself, his eyes getting very big as his mouth shaped the most beautiful word in the world. “Mommy?” The first one didn’t have any sound, but when she hiccuped on a sob and nodded, he shouted it, “Mommy!”
He launched himself at her. Harry was a split second behind him.
She had just enough presence of mind to drop the shield spell that had protected them, and cast a new one across the doorway, sealing them in.
Then they hit her one-two, like automatic fire, driving her back under the impact, and she couldn’t think about anything but them. Finally. In her arms. Their whippet-lean bodies were an alien contrast to the toddler sturdiness she remembered, yet her heart knew them instantly.
Her legs gave out and she thumped inelegantly to her knees, then gathered them close and pressed their tear-streaked faces against hers, their bodies into hers. She was shaking—maybe all three of them were. Then Hannah dropped down opposite her, and they clung together.
Thank you, gods. Thank you, thank you, thank you. She wasn’t sure if she thought the words or said them, didn’t care, cared only that she was holding her sons again, and being held by her winikin.
For a long, shuddering moment, she let herself be at peace.
Then, knowing the fight wasn’t over yet, she broke the huddle and drew, back, keeping contact with Hannah and the boys as she did, trying to take in the reality of them, the small changes.
She had only seen Hannah bandanna-less a few times in her life, and up close the scarred flesh and partly covered socket were discomfiting, but the strangeness lasted only a few seconds before Patience’s brain readjusted and she saw only her winikin . The one constant in her life.
“Is Woody okay?” Harry asked. It was the first sound he had made since her arrival.
“Your daddy and I got him away from Iago,” she said. Which was the truth, but what was the situation now? Her pulse accelerated once more.
She tried her earpiece but got only static, which left her with precious few options, all of them bad.
Letting her warrior’s talent lead the way, she got to her feet. “Come on. We’re going to hide further up the tunnel.”
The pyramid’s collapse had blocked it as an escape route, but anything was better than staying where Iago expected them to be.
“Will Daddy be able to find us?” asked Braden, his blue eyes wide and worried.
“Always.” She squeezed their joined hands, healed deep inside by the feeling of the small fingers in hers. “He wanted me to tell you that he loves you very much.”
“Is he coming soon?”
“As soon as he and the others are finished with Iago and the rest of the makol,” she said aloud. But when her eyes met Hannah’s, she saw her own fear reflected back.
Worse, she thought she felt a faint vibration beneath her feet. She didn’t know if it came from fighting magic or a miniquake. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But as they headed up the tunnel, carrying a couple of the torches, moving away from the fight and toward the cave-in, she sent a whisper of thought toward the jun tan: We’re okay. But you guys need to hurry.
The solstice was coming, and with it, Cabrakan.
Rabbit battled through his growing exhaustion and kept the fireballs coming, because the fucking makol kept coming too.
Any other time, he would’ve been totally jacked by the way Myrinne stood right beside him, expression fierce as she ran through her clips and knocked the green-eyed bastards back. Now, though, he was more panicked than turned on, because he could barely protect himself, never mind her.
His head was splitting, partly because of the power he’d pulled to cloak their initial attack, and partly because he hadn’t been able to get out of Iago’s mind fast enough when he caught on. The bastard had tried to slam the door shut, and Rabbit had only gotten out because Myrinne had jammed the circlet back on him, cutting the connection before it was too late. The pain of severing the link had been excruciating, though. The agony lingered, sapping his strength.
“Get that one,” she said, pointing at a downed makol that was barely moving. “I’ll hold the others off.” She fired off two short bursts, one on each autopistol. Standing hipshot in her combat gear, with her hair in a long, dark ponytail pulled through the back of a black ball cap, she looked kick-ass sexy.
And she fit with the team, after all this time.
He snapped off a sluggish-feeling salute. “Yes, ma’am!”
Reversing his gore-spattered knife, he went for the incapacitated makol, steeling himself for the messy chore of finishing it off before it managed to regenerate. He crouched down by the bullet-
riddled body, set his knife to its neck, and—
“Rabbit,” Strike bellowed, “move!”
Obeying without stopping to look or think, Rabbit flung himself to the side, rolled, and came up with an autopistol in one hand, his knife in the other. He spun back at the sound of Myrinne firing and screaming, not in pain, but in anger.
She was unloading her clips at Iago, who was bearing down on him with gruesome fury. The Xibalban had regenerated to the point of having eyes, nose, and mouth, but his flesh was waxy and fire-ravaged, and his luminous green eyes were bright with rage.
Myrinne’s bullets stopped short of him and pinged to the ground, the jade tips deadened by the ajaw-makol ’s powerful shield magic. Strike launched a fireball and Michael followed with a thin stream of muk, but both bounced. The others were trying to get through to help, but the makol fought fiercely and with purpose: They were gradually bunching the Nightkeepers up against the altar, away from the doorways, trapping them together In the split second it took Rabbit to see and react, Iago slammed a layer of dark shield magic around the two of them, shutting them off from the others
.
Howling with rage and desperation, Rabbit buried his old man’s knife in Iago’s armpit, where the body armor provided thin entry. The knife came out slick with blood and Iago hunched, snarling. But he didn’t back down, didn’t slow down. He grabbed Rabbit’s knife hand by the wrist and bore it back, twisting hard.
Wrenching agony flared, first in his arm and then in his head, as the touch link allowed Iago to override the protection of the jade circlet.
Little fucker, the Xibalban hissed inside Rabbit’s skull. Hope you enjoyed sneaking in here, because that’s the last trick you’ll ever play on me.
Agony flared from the place where Iago gripped his wrist, his blood-wet palm centered over the hellmark. Rabbit shrieked and bowed as something tore inside him, not muscle, flesh, or skin, but on the level of his consciousness, his magic, his very soul.
The Xibalban’s waxy, burn-ravaged lips pulled back from heat-cracked teeth and his eyes changed, going from featureless luminosity to a hint of irises and pupils, all in glowing green.
In them, Rabbit saw Iago. He saw the god-king Moctezuma. And he saw his own death.
Then, past Iago’s shoulder, through the greasy swirl of dark shield magic, he saw Myrinne. She had her hands pressed to the shield, though he knew it must be burning her with acid and electricity. Her face was etched with pain, and her lips shaped his name.
The sight brought a spurt of power from the deepest depths of him, one that flared hard and hot and whispered: Kaak. Fire.
It was his first talent, his best talent, the one that had come to him even before he’d earned his bloodline mark.
Wrenching his mind free, he shouted, “Kaak!”
Flames erupted from his wrist, searing Iago’s hand and climbing his arm. The Xibalban jerked in astonishment. He recovered almost immediately, but it was just enough for Rabbit to push himself upstream along the agony into the other man’s mind. Iago roared and grabbed onto his consciousness in the same hurtful grip he was using in the physical world. Gotcha, you little shit!
But on a far more basic level, Rabbit had him. Because while Iago was focused inward, Rabbit was busy disabling the Xibalban’s shield spell.
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