Spellfire n-8

by Jessica Andersen

  The sight should’ve scared her, should’ve reminded her how bad the darkness could get. Instead, it sent new warmth skimming through her veins as she remembered how he’d gotten it in the first place: he’d let Iago bind him to the dark magic in exchange for her life.

  It had been the first time anyone had really rescued her. And it had been the beginning of her first crush. Her first love.

  Don’t go there, she told herself as her heart thudded too fast. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” she asked, needing to break the silence. “Were you looking for me?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” He paused. “I was just walking, trying to clear my head.”

  His sudden grimness had the warmth inside her shifting to concern. Which was safer in some respects, but not in others—because if it had Rabbit worried, it couldn’t be good. “What happened?”

  “My old man ambushed me this morning and told me about my mother finally. The whole fucking story, damn him.”

  “Oh. Wow.” Shock sizzled through her, chased quickly by a flash of anger at Red-Boar, who hadn’t been any more of a father to Rabbit than the Witch had been a mother to her. “You want to tell me about it?”

  He hesitated, but then exhaled and said, “My mother was Anntah’s daughter.”

  A shiver of instinct worked its way through her, the kind that said, This is important. “The old shaman at Oc Ajal?”

  Rabbit nodded. “Which explains how he managed to contact me when Iago’s red-robes destroyed the village. We had a blood-link, even though he denied it when I asked.” His voice was flat, his eyes hollow as he stared into the guttering green flames. He leaned in and took another deep breath. Then, like he was reading off a lame-ass playlist, he repeated Red-Boar’s story, describing how the Xibalbans had purpose-bred him, and how his father had kidnapped him so he couldn’t be used as an enemy asset. “That was why he didn’t want me to get my bloodline mark or learn to use my magic.” His lips thinned. “The old bastard never could control me, though. The harder he tried to make me fall in line, the more I busted out.”

  Oh, Rabbit, she thought, but didn’t say, because it wouldn’t change anything. She wanted to reach out to him, wanted to touch him, but couldn’t do either with the fire between them. Where before it had seemed like a necessary bulwark, though, now it was in the way. So she got up and moved around to sit beside him, letting their shoulders bump.

  They sat like that for a minute, watching the flames gutter and send up plumes of vanilla-scented smoke. Finally, she asked, “What else did he say about the crossover?”

  “Nothing that we didn’t already know, which is why he didn’t tell me sooner. At least that’s his excuse. There’s got to be something more to it, though. Some clue we’re missing.” He hesitated. “I want to go back to the village.”

  “You . . . oh.” She swallowed. “Right.” It made sense, she supposed. They needed more information on the crossover—where better to look than the place where he’d been conceived? Still, though, she inched away as her mind filled with memories of Oc Ajal—bodies, burning huts, the stink of charred flesh. It had been gruesome, loathsome, heartbreaking . . . more, she dreaded the thought of the village itself, the dark magic that still lurked there.

  The problems between her and Rabbit might have made him vulnerable to Phee’s seduction, but it was the stone eccentric he’d found beneath the center pole in Anntah’s hut that had summoned her.

  “It’s the only thing I can think to do now that I know the truth,” Rabbit continued. “I’ll get Anna to ’port me down there today, a quick in-and-out, low risk and no bullshit.”

  She wasn’t sure which one of them he was trying to convince. “What are you going to do when you get there?”

  “Look around. Maybe pray for a miracle.”

  Don’t go, she wanted to say. She couldn’t, though, because he was right. And, besides, she knew he wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to talk him out of it. His jaw was set and his eyes gleamed with an anticipation that had her instincts humming. So instead of arguing, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m going with you.”

  The words hung in the air between them for a moment before he shifted to look at her fully, his eyes dark and unreadable. “You don’t have to.”

  The hum got louder. Was he trying to spare her from the bad memories, or was there something else going on here? Damn it, she didn’t know. “I’ll go,” she said firmly. “I used to be good at watching your back.”

  He hesitated for a split second, but then he nodded. “Thanks. There’s nobody I trust more to have my six.”

  Damn her throat for closing on a lump of emotion. This wasn’t about emotion, though; it was about making sure nothing went wrong. And she still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t playing her—or himself. “Okay, then. You run it by Dez and get the go-ahead.”

  “Will do. Meet me in the great room in an hour.”

  It wasn’t until he’d melted back into the grove, though, becoming nothing more than a shadow that shifted and then disappeared, that she found herself wondering what the hell she had just gotten herself into, and why. You shouldn’t have said you’d go, her better sense whispered. He’s not your problem anymore. But both she and her better sense knew that was a lie. He’d been her problem—her weakness—since the first moment she saw him, and that hadn’t changed. Like the xombi virus, it seemed like repeated exposure didn’t lead to immunity.

  More, she knew him better than anybody . . . which meant it was up to her to make sure he wasn’t drifting again toward the darkness and telling himself it was the light.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Oc Ajal, Mexico

  The village of Oc Ajal didn’t look anything like it had the last time Rabbit was there.

  The pathway to the parking area was gone—hell, the parking area was probably gone, along with the road leading in. The rain forest had grown in from the edges of where the double row of huts and the villagers’ slash-and-burn landscaping had held back the undergrowth. The green carpet and higher secondary growth had even covered over the charred remains of the huts, which were visible now mostly as lumps of greenery. That, and the chunks of rocks poking up here and there, made it look like any of the thousands of small, unexcavated Mayan sites strewn throughout the territories, ancient rather than just a year or so old.

  Overhead, birds called and flitted, splashes of color against the background of breeze-stirred leaves.

  “It’s like they were never here,” Myr said quietly from behind and a little off to one side of him. “Like we were never here.”

  “There’s magic, though,” Anna said from the other side of him. She’d stayed instead of dropping them off and ’porting back to Skywatch, though he didn’t know if she was curious or under orders to keep an eye on him.

  “They built on a hotspot and then camouflaged it,” he commented, mostly because he needed to say something, needed to pretend that this was just another op.

  It wasn’t, though, not for him. Because as he stepped through the stone archway and into the hub of the village, he saw what was left of Anntah’s hut, where a village woman had been tied, raped and killed. He saw the places where bodies had lain, and the bushes where he had puked up a lung, knowing that Iago wouldn’t have found Oc Ajal if it hadn’t been for him. And, right in the middle of it all lay the remains of the fire pit where Anntah had died, his soul lingering just long enough to give Rabbit the information—the lies—that had put him on the path to nearly destroying himself, and Myrinne.

  Unlike the rest of the overgrown village, the fire pit was bare.

  He found himself standing there without really being aware of having moved, his toes nearly bumping one of the millstones the red-robes had used to pin the dying shaman in place. Anna and Myrinne were right behind him; he could feel their wariness, their worry. He didn’t know what they were expecting him to do, though. Shit, he didn’t know what he was expecting himself to do—there was magic here, yeah, but there wasn’
t anything really jumping out at him, waving its arms and saying “Here I am. Here’s your answer!”

  No big foam finger moment. Shit.

  Looking back over his shoulder, he met Myr’s eyes. “You getting anything?” Although he was jacked in and had his senses wide open, he had a feeling that her version of the magic gave her a different view. More, it gave him an excuse to look back at her, check on her.

  She was wearing skintight black combat gear, surrounded by the red-gold sparks of Nightkeeper magic, and carrying a machine gun across her body. She looked deadly, sexy and resolute. As much as he had wanted to leave her back at Skywatch, far away from the memories and the very real possibility that he would have to call on his dark magic to find whatever secrets the village still held, she was right that he needed a partner, someone to watch his back in the xombi-infested forest. And if things went wrong, if he started losing control of the dark magic, she would catch it before it was too late.

  He hoped.

  She shook her head. “I can feel the energy all around us, but I’m not sensing anything specific.”

  “Same here. Okay. I guess that means we need to search the site, looking for smaller hotspots. Let’s—”

  The digital bleat of Anna’s satellite phone cut him off, sounding freakishly mechanical against the background whirr of the rain forest.

  She shook her head. “Damn phone doesn’t get a signal half the time in downtown Denver, but picks it up here. Go figure.” She pulled out the unit—military, bigger than a regular cell but still pretty streamlined for what it could do—checked the ID, and shrugged. “No name coming up. Wrong number, maybe?”

  Moments later it stopped ringing, but then a second tone indicated there was a voice mail. When she punched it up and put it on speaker, a man’s voice said, “Anna, this is Dr. Curtis. Dave. Dr. Dave.” Her eyes went wide and her mouth shaped an oh, shit. The message continued: “Are you still down here? If so, I could really use your help. Please call me back at this number if you can. Or better yet, just come to the camp. I know I told you to stay the hell away, but this is important. I’ll leave your name at the main gate and tell them to have all the gear waiting for you. And . . .” He hesitated. “Well, please come if you can, or at least call. I don’t know who else to ask.”

  After that, there was a moment of silence in the grove, broken only by the sounds of the rain forest, which didn’t give a crap about a weird-assed phone call coming in the middle of a ghost town.

  Myr turned to Anna. “You gave the xombi doctor your real number?”

  She flushed. “I meant to have JT change it. Guess I forgot.”

  “I guess.” Myr seemed amused. “Well? You going to go?”

  “I . . . damn it. It can wait until we’re done here.”

  But Rabbit shook his head. “Go ahead and go. That’s the guy Dez wants to liaise with right? And it sounded important.”

  “So is this.”

  “Yeah, but—and no offense intended—whatever happens here, either Myr and I will be able to handle it on our own, or else we’re going to need the whole freaking team. Since we’ve got Strike and the others standing by for our Mayday”—he lifted his wrist, where his comm device was primed and ready to transmit—“we’ll be covered. So go. See what the xombi doctor wants.”

  Anna’s gaze went from him to Myr. “That okay with you?”

  Myr hesitated, but then nodded. “We’ll be fine. And if there’s anything you can do to help with the outbreak, you should do it.”

  Rabbit didn’t let himself take that as a sign of faith. It was more a sign of just how close they were getting to D-day, which was forcing the Nightkeepers to split up, spread out and do their best.

  Anna put in a call to Skywatch and got Dez’s okay for the change in plans. She looked a little flustered as she moved away from the fire pit and gave herself a once-over to make sure she was dressed down enough to pass in the human world. Then she fixed her eyes on Rabbit and Myrinne and said, “Behave yourself.”

  Knowing damn well she was talking to him, he nodded. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Right.” To Myr, she said, “Call me the second you think you might need me. Or, better yet, sound the general alarm. These days it’s better to overreact than play hero.” Then she disappeared, leaving behind only a faint handclap as air rushed in to fill the vacuum her bodyprint had left behind.

  When even that noise had faded and the normal rain forest chatter had resumed, Rabbit took a breath and turned to Myr. “Ready to check out what’s left of Anntah’s hut?”

  It was where he’d found the first eccentric, after all. Maybe they’d get lucky and find something else there. He hoped to hell they would, because otherwise they were going to have to go to plan B. And Myr wasn’t going to like plan B. At all.

  * * *

  Chichén Itzá, Mexico

  As Anna slipped into the quarantine zone, shielded from human view by the faint distortion of a chameleon shield, she wasn’t sure which was worse: forgetting to have JT change her cell number, or jumping to answer Dr. Dave’s page.

  Sure, she had sent him what little she’d managed to put together on the virus, along with Sasha’s suggestions on herbal remedies that borderlined on spell territory. Dez had approved it, though, wanting to foster the relationship. Which was all she was doing now, she told herself as she slipped into what looked like a main tent, following right on the heels of a laundry-laden volunteer. But it didn’t take an inner “yeah right” for her to know that was bull. She was here because . . . well, she was here. And she needed to make it snappy before Rabbit and Myrinne got into too much trouble.

  She checked her wrist, but there was no sign of the yellow flasher that would signal an emergency recall. So she took the few minutes to find a supply area and snag the thin, disposable safety gear she’d seen the others wearing, which was consistent with the xombi virus’s tendency to transmit through bites rather than by air. The Nightkeepers weren’t susceptible to the virus—or any other germ they knew of—but she wanted to blend. More, the pause gave her a few seconds to breathe, and remind herself that she was okay. She wasn’t the patient this time, wasn’t coming out of a spell-cast coma to discover that Dick had divorced her and sold the house, Strike had given up the throne, and the others were expecting her to step up as a Triad mage and an itza’at seer, do not pass go, do not pay two hundred bucks.

  That had been another hospital, another time. Practically another lifetime.

  You’re okay, she told herself, then closed her eyes and counted to five, breathing deeply through the full face mask. Then she dropped her shield spell and stepped out into the busy hallway.

  A sea of humanity surrounded her in an instant. Or maybe it just seemed that way because she spent so much time alone. Either way, she found herself adrift in a hustling mass of scrubs, gloves, face masks, sterility, filth, sickness and health. This, she thought, tempted to take a moment to feel the energy, this was what the Nightkeepers were fighting to save. This anthill-scurry of humanity—overcrowded and hurry-hurry-hurry.

  She stepped in front of a clipboard-carrying nurse, summoned an authoritative I-belong-here voice, and said, “Dr. David Curtis, please. He sent for me.”

  “Back there,” the woman said, gesturing over her shoulder. “Just follow the noise.”

  “Thank—” Anna didn’t bother finishing, because the woman had darted around her. Then again, this wasn’t exactly a polite chitchat sort of place. So she followed the high-pitched, babbling howl coming from the hallway the woman had indicated.

  As she got closer, Anna distinguished a single voice, female, speaking Spanish with an edge of hysteria. “She’s a blue-eyed devil, an abomination! She did this. She’ll kill us all!”

  Her breath caught as she edged around the door to find a small room crammed with four beds, all occupied. Three held the restrained, motionless bodies of two men and a woman in the final stages of the xombi virus—at least the final stage when they weren’t allowed to
feed on human flesh, and thus starved to death. Their faces were ruddy and dark, the skin sunken over their bones, pulled so tight that their lips had pulled back over their teeth, making them look like mummified corpses.

  Or screaming skulls.

  A shiver rippled down Anna’s spine. Then an unearthly cry yanked her attention to the fourth bed, where three protective-suited figures were struggling to contain a thrashing woman who was early enough in the disease to still be able to screech and fight, and cast curses and threats sprinkled with the words “demon” and “possessed.”

  “Hold her, for the love of God,” said the guy in the middle. “She’s going to hurt herself.” His accent was Australian, his cuffs rolled up to reveal tanned forearms, in defiance of sterile protocol. David.

  “Or one of us,” puffed the beefy guy on his left as he struggled to get a strap on one of her wrists. “Or, more likely, the kid.”

  “Bless her little soul,” said the third—a smaller figure, female but still plenty tough as she wrestled with an ankle strap. “Where are the meds, damn it?”

  “On their way,” said Dr. Dave, followed by, “Got her,” as he pulled the last strap snug across the patient’s chest. Then, flattening his palm on her sternum, he leaned in and switched to Spanish. “You’re sick, Mrs. Espinoza. You’re in the hospital, and we’re going to take care of you.”

  Her eyes flashed suddenly, going the telltale red of a xombi as the demon spirit pushed the human soul further and further toward death. But there was human terror in her expression as she howled, “You can do nothing as long as that thing lives.”

  The doctor straightened. “Christ. I don’t . . . I need the translator.”

  Anna stepped into the doorway. “She’s here . . . I think, anyway.”

  He spun, hazel eyes lighting behind his plastic face shield. “Good. You got my message.” He gave her a quick once-over, checking that she was protected. “No trouble getting in here? I left word with the security guys, but you never know.”

  “It was fine.” Telling herself there was no reason for the low-grade shimmy in her stomach, she added, “I’m not sure why you need me to translate, though. Your Spanish is excellent.”