Spellfire n-8

by Jessica Andersen

  Behind her, Rabbit shifted and muttered something. She tensed but he didn’t wake up. He just rolled over onto his side and buried his face in her pillow.

  As she slipped through the door, she heard him mutter, “No, Myr. Don’t.” Seeing that he was talking in his sleep, she didn’t answer him. Besides, it was long past time for her to go.

  * * *

  Summer solstice, 1984

  Chichén Itzá

  “The dreams said that I’m the key, that I can win the war right here, right now,” Jag said as he and Asia faced the chac-mool. Magic thrummed, coming from the shimmering air above the altar.

  She took his hand. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Gods, was there anything more terrifying than knowing that? He wanted to order her away, wanted to hide her, protect her, surround her in freaking bubble wrap and know she was going to be okay no matter what. Instead, he grated, “Stay behind me. You’re in charge of our shield.”

  And then, facing the intersection, he tapped into the joined magic of his warriors, and began the second spell. Where the first had opened the portal connecting this world to the next, the second spell would break the barrier, then seal it forever.

  He hoped.

  Raising his hands, he summoned the magic and let it rip, pouring the energy into the intersection as—

  Unexpectedly, horribly, red-orange light flared in the doorway behind him. And Asia screamed.

  * * *

  Rabbit jolted awake at the sound of a cry that wasn’t his own, yet echoed in his ears. The blue-gray of dawn was seeping in through the windows, and the other side of the bed was empty.

  Myrinne was gone, and he was having visions. This couldn’t be good.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  December 13

  Eight days until the zero date

  Skywatch

  As the sun hit its zenith overhead, Anna stood facing the chac-mool with a sledgehammer in her hands. The statue seemed to be looking straight at her, like it was asking, “What are you doing with that big-ass hammer? You’re not doing what I think you’re doing, are you?” And although she was the one who’d gotten the message about the true gods, the one who needed the magic that’d been promised, she couldn’t bring herself to take the first whack.

  Her hands shook. What if the skull wasn’t inside the altar? What if she’d gotten the message wrong?

  Gods knew she’d done it before—she’d sent the Nightkeepers after the resurrection skull with the promise of the First Father’s return, only to have the spell bring back Red-Boar in all his assholic glory. At the moment, he was over in the corner, arms crossed, glowering at Rabbit, who was ignoring him while darting glances at Myrinne, who shifted and looked away. They weren’t the only ones there, of course—the small room and the hallways beyond were crammed with bodies—but the three-way vibe was a bad sign. Then again, so was the tension that was strung bitterly tight throughout the sacred chamber.

  The Nightkeepers needed to go into the final week as a united force, yet here she was, about to bust up their ancestors.

  “I still think we should try some sort of imaging,” she said to Dez. “There are times when high tech is called for.”

  But he shook his head. “I think this is a time for faith.”

  Then why am I the one with the sledgehammer? She didn’t say it, though. Instead, she leaned forward, touched the chac-mool’s forehead with her free hand, and whispered, “Please forgive me.”

  Then, not looking back to see her own nerves and horror reflected in the faces of her teammates, she hefted the sledge over her head and brought it down right on the place she’d just touched. Metal met stone with a sickening CRACK that reverberated up the wooden handle to her hands, which stung as if she’d just opened a dozen sacrificial cuts.

  A jagged fissure slashed lightning-like down across one carved eye and then to the corner of the deity’s mouth, tracking like a tear.

  Somebody moaned; Anna didn’t think it was her, but she wasn’t sure.

  “I’m sorry.” She lifted the weapon again. “Sorry, sorry.” Another swing, another CRACK, another shot of burning pain, this time reaching up her wrists and singeing her marks. The fissure widened and one side of the chac-mool’s face slid down slightly, turning its beatific smile into a leer.

  Please gods, she whispered in her soul, but felt nothing—no lift of hope, no connection to the other side of the barrier, as if they had turned away from her.

  She couldn’t stop now, though, so she said the prayer aloud, heard it echo behind her, and swung with every ounce of her strength, both physical and magical. The sledge hit with a crunch, a different sound, a different reverb, and limestone fragmented, clattering to the stone floor as the side of the chac-mool’s face crumbled away.

  Where it had been, bloodred crystal gleamed in the sunlight that streamed through the glass ceiling.

  “Oh,” Anna breathed, letting the sledge droop in her hands as she stared. The smooth ruby surface was huge and curved, and amber gleamed from the depths of a socket, a glowing yellow eye partially revealed.

  A ripple of shock ran through the crowd. It wasn’t an amulet at all; it was a life-sized crystal skull. And somehow, it had been there all along, hidden beneath a limestone shell.

  “Holy crap,” Dez said, voice low and reverent.

  Anna sucked in a rattling breath that burned in her lungs. “Okay, then. Crystal skull. Check.”

  The chac-mool looked decidedly Terminator-esque, with half its face still normal stone, the other gleaming red crystal, its glare not saying “What are you doing” anymore, but instead demanding “Get on with it.”

  She pulverized the other side with two well-aimed smashes. Chips of stone stung her face and arms, and clattered to the floor around her, but she didn’t stop, didn’t look back, just kept going as the other side of the skull emerged from the rubble, as if she’d stripped away the deity’s flesh to find the bones beneath.

  Then, hands burning with a strange mix of numbness and pain, she let the sledgehammer thud on the stone floor, and moved toward the ruby skull. Sitting atop the ragged neck stump it was macabre, grotesque, but it was the eyes that held her transfixed. The amber pulsed with a strange inner light, drawing her closer and closer.

  And suddenly, as if the knowledge had been inside her all along, she knew what she needed to do.

  “Tzo’o’keen,” she said softly. I am ready.

  Her magic closed around her, brushing along her skin and making her blood hum. It suddenly didn’t matter that she’d just desecrated the shrine where she’d been named, where her parents and her parents’ parents had been mated. For the first time in a long, long time, she felt like she was in the right place at the right time, that she was doing what she was meant to do.

  The skull glowed—red crystal, amber eyes. Was that power or sunlight? She couldn’t tell, but she also couldn’t look away. Tugging at her chain, she pulled the smaller yellow quartz skull free and cupped it in her hands, feeling it throb with a beat that wasn’t quite in synch with her pulse.

  “Anna,” Dez said, voice low and warning.

  “I’m fine. It’s fine.” She hoped. Deep inside her, though, fear sparked at the thought that she was about to break through the barrier inside her, the one that had blocked her talents all these years. But she couldn’t keep going on like this, blind and not good for much except transportation. So, not letting herself hesitate further, she whispered, “Tz’a teen ich.” Give me eyes.

  Throom! Twin beams of yellow light speared from the skull and straight for her. She jerked at the noise and flash, but held her ground as the air around her turned golden and strange.

  “Jesus,” Strike grated. “Back up, Anna. Back up and look!”

  For a second it was as if she was standing inside a ghost that was half again as large as she. She could see its head far above hers, its shoulders on either side of her. Then, shaking, she fell back another few steps, aware that the others backped
aled, too, keeping her front and center before the huge figure that was suddenly revealed.

  Awe raced through Anna as she faced an entity, a goddess who glowed golden from the tips of her feline ears to the edges of her long white robe. Her head was that of a golden-furred lioness, her body that of a voluptuous woman, and her vivid blue eyes had the slitted irises and soul-searing stare of a huge cat. She didn’t blink, didn’t move; she looked alive, yet stood statue-still; looked real, yet was translucent. She was there, yet she wasn’t. She was a holograph. A projection. Something.

  Behind Anna, Lucius said, “Holy shit, it’s Bastet.” He said it like he was greeting an old friend, not an ancient goddess of the wrong religion. But that was exactly what they were looking at: Bastet, the cat-headed goddess who had protected the kings and the land of the living . . . in ancient freaking Egypt.

  There was a connection, of course—the Nightkeepers had lived alongside the ancient Egyptians for thousands of years until the pharaoh Akhenaton had outlawed the old gods and slaughtered their priests, including the Nightkeepers. The few survivors had escaped to Mesoamerica, where they discovered a land with far stronger magic and a much closer connection to their gods. There, they helped create the Mayan Empire, with pyramids and writing, and a religion that was so much closer to what their ancestors had believed.

  The Egyptian deities had come along millennia before the Mayan gods, it was true. But the Mayan gods belonged to the Nightkeepers.

  So why the hell was Bastet’s image coming from the ruby skull?

  “Say something, Anna.” The hiss came from Lucius, as did the poke in her ribs. He was crowded close behind her, breathing down the back of her neck like he used to when they did fieldwork together for the university, and she uncovered something strange and wonderful. That was Lucius, though. He loved information, discovery, and the sheer fucked-uppedness of life.

  Anna couldn’t share his enthusiasm, though, because she already knew that whatever happened next, it wasn’t going to affect just her. This was bigger than her. It was going to be freaking huge.

  “I . . .” She stopped, swallowing hard. “I don’t know enough of the language.” Hell, the ancient Egyptian tongue was even deader than ancient Mayan—so many of the sounds were guesstimates, with filled-in vowels and pronunciations that changed from decade to decade.

  “Rosa gave you the message in ancient Mayan,” Lucius whispered. “Go with that.”

  “Okay. I . . . okay.” Stop stalling. She took a deep breath, found the words, and said formally, “Oolah yuum Bastet. Ba’ax ka wa’alik?” Greetings, goddess Bastet. What do you say?

  Throom! As the shock of a second sonic boom reverberated through the chamber, magic flared and the goddess’s image solidified. Suddenly, Anna could see new details of Bastet’s fur, her eyes, her robe.

  And then the goddess took a deep, shuddering breath and came alive.

  Her robes and fur ruffled in an unseen breeze, her whiskers twitched, and then she blinked and focused, looking momentarily startled to find herself in the midst of a crowd, or maybe a crowd like this one. But then she focused on Anna, and her expression cleared. “Ahh,” she said. “Itza’at. I’m glad to finally see you.”

  The words came out in a strange, guttural language that Anna didn’t recognize, but somehow translated inside her head, so she understood the words and heard what was behind them—relief, regret and a huge upwelling of power.

  She glanced back at Lucius, whose face was lit with wonder. “Did you get that?”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “Yeah, I did.”

  “We all did,” Dez said from behind them.

  Anna faced Bastet and said in English, “Greetings, goddess.” She hesitated, suddenly aware that her knees were shaking; her whole body was shaking. What was she supposed to say? What was she supposed to do? Should she meet the goddess’s eyes or look away? Mother, help me! Maybe it was real, maybe wishful thinking, but her amulet seemed to warm further in her grip, steadying her. She took a deep breath, looked up and met those blue, blue eyes. “Yes, I am of the itza’at line, though untrained. I got your message and will do whatever you ask of me.”

  “I ask nothing but that you listen and believe, all of you.”

  Anna nodded. “We will.”

  “It will be difficult.”

  There was movement all around her, a shifting of bodies and stances as the others moved up to surround Anna, so they faced Bastet as a united front.

  Dez tipped his head in a shallow bow. “We’re not scared of hard going, goddess, or even death. We only fear what will happen if we fail.”

  “As well you should.” Her image flickered, wavering and growing translucent once more.

  Feeling the skull’s magic hitch and start to fade, Anna clutched the amulet and poured all of her energy into the crystal skull. The world dimmed around her, sparking desperation. She wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t—

  A hand gripped her upper arm and she was flooded with the power of a touch-link, which was gentler than a blood-link, but still effective, especially for this. Then there was another clasp, another increase in the magic flowing through her. Then more. Relief washed through her as she looked back to find Lucius on one side of her, Dez on the other, and the rest of her teammates standing close by, all touching, linking to help her. Together, as a team.

  Gathering their joined power, she focused once more on the amulet, sending the Nightkeepers’ magic into the spell. A glow kindled deep within the bloodred skull, and the goddess’s image solidified.

  “Quickly,” Bastet said. “The kohan and the kax are trying to block this magic. Soon, they will cut it off at the barrier.”

  “Kohan?” Dez whispered, lips barely moving.

  “Sickness,” Lucius translated, sotto voce.

  “Shut it!” Anna hissed in her do-it-or-die prof’s voice.

  “The kohan rule the upper plane, just as the humans control the middle plane and the kax control the lower plane.”

  “The sky gods, then.” Dez nodded. “Go on.”

  Bastet’s eyes flashed. “No. Not gods. Kohan. They are no more gods than you are, or the kax. All are equal in the eyes of the true gods. The upper, middle and lower planes are just places, realms where the magic exists. Your many-times-great ancestors understood this, just as they knew that the kohan and the kax each wanted the middle plane and its inhabitants for their own—a playground, with powerful playthings.”

  “That’s . . .” Impossible, Anna wanted to say, but couldn’t, because the sudden elevator drop of her stomach said otherwise.

  “Holy crap.” Lucius’s whisper was dull with shock, but his eyes were alight with wonder. “Rosa was right. There are other gods out there. True gods.”

  “There are six of us,” Bastet confirmed. “Three belonging to life, three to death.” Images flickered rapid-fire across Anna’s brain, imprinting themselves on her mind’s eye. “Your ancestors knew us, worshipped us. But the kax corrupted one of the ancient kings and turned him against us, breaking our hold on the middle plane and destroying almost all of our guardians. Those who survived moved to a new land, one that was poised at the juncture of the three planes. There, they lost faith, falling prey to the whispers of the kohan, then the kax. They split the magic and lost their way, becoming fragments of what they once were. Until now, until you.”

  “No.” Anna shook her head, denying the awful possibility of it all. But even as her heart tried to reject what the goddess was saying, she saw how it dovetailed with the Nightkeepers’ flight from Egypt and the way their magic had changed in the Mayan territories, becoming chaotic and unpredictable, and eventually splitting into its light and dark halves, wielded by the Nightkeepers and the Xibalbans. “It’s not true,” she insisted, too horrified to worry about arguing with a goddess.

  “Or is it that you do not want to know the truth?” The goddess’s image grew until it filled Anna’s vision, her senses. She didn’t know if Bastet had leaned closer, or if the goddess
had simply locked on to her magic, but in that moment she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but see, hear and feel the horrors of the past.

  Terrible visions raced through her, reminding her finally of the things she’d seen during those last few minutes of chaos during the massacre, while Jox had dragged her and Strike down into the shielded, hidden bolt-hole beneath Skywatch. She hadn’t been there, though—her mind had been in the southlands, dying with her kinswomen in the narrow tunnel system beneath Chichén Itzá.

  Anna let go of the amulet and covered her eyes, trying to shut it out. But the images flowed through her, awakened her. A woman screamed as a boluntiku rose above her, dripping with the fiery energy of lava and going solid in the last moment before it killed her. Another wept as she unleashed terrible fireballs into the smoking spot where her mate had been only seconds before. A man cried; another screamed and held his own entrails. It was all dim and dark, cloaked in carved stone and blood, closing in on her, suffocating her.

  “Enough,” she whimpered. “I get it.”

  “It’s not nearly enough,” said Bastet, uncompromising. “Know the rest, and believe in it. Believe in me.”

  More memories, more terror, this time coming from her mother’s mind. Her blessed, beloved mother. “No!” the queen screamed as the shimmering bubble of the barrier tore down its center and a terrible blackness poured through, exuding evil and horror as it became a winged serpent—a perverted, wronged form of the great creator god, Kulkulkan. “For gods’ sake, Jag, stop the spell!”

  He didn’t, though. He couldn’t. And they had died.

  Anna cried out when her mother’s perceptions ended in a flash of brilliant, lava-born orange, then moaned when she was battered by echoes of other horrors, other deaths.

  And, as the inner barriers came crashing down and she remembered everything, she had a feeling that they hadn’t been barriers so much as her subconscious mind protecting her from what it knew, deep down inside, was another kind of enemy: the kohan she had prayed to. The ones that had tried to get to her, tried to send her visions that would only confuse the Nightkeepers further.