Spellfire n-8

by Jessica Andersen

  At the thought of the range, warmth kicked in his chest and an ache tugged low in his gut, letting him know that he hadn’t been heading for his cottage, after all. He’d been heading for Myrinne.

  His body knew where she was. His magic knew.

  What it didn’t know was what he was supposed to say to her.

  “Fuck it.” Deciding to let Dez and Red-Boar go the first round without him, he headed for his cottage, but ducked in only briefly to grab a couple of things. Then he kept going along the path, all the way to the range.

  When the Nightkeepers had first returned to Skywatch, the weapons training area had consisted of a boring-ass indoor range of the cubicle-and-paper-target variety, plus an outdoor sniper range that wasn’t much better. These days, thanks to Michael’s background as a government-trained assassin and his lust for gadgets, the training area included a faux Mayan ruin built in cement and rebar, along with a second indoor range inside a prefab steel building. There, trainees could work their way through an urban-jungle training course, blasting away at pop-up targets and holos, with a digital scoreboard in the corner tallying their speed, kills and collateral damage.

  Rabbit made for the big steel building, knowing that was where she would be even before he saw a flicker of reflected light and heard the generator kick on. The setup was like a full-scale video game. He couldn’t think of a better place for someone like him—or Myrinne—to burn off some aggression.

  As he approached, he heard a muffled pop-pop-pop from one of the holo-enabled training weapons, then the crackling roar of a fireball. The surge of magic lit his senses and tightened his skin as he stepped through the main door and into the small locker room that acted as an antechamber. The lights were off in the windowless room, creating a warm darkness that wrapped around him as he paused in the shadows and looked into the main room, seeing without being seen.

  Myr had changed out of the jeans and soft sweater she’d been wearing earlier, into close-fitting black workout gear that moved as fluidly as she did when she spun and snapped off a “shot” of laser light into a glowing lava demon, flung herself to the ground to avoid a hologram claw-swipe, and came up firing. Wearing her weapons belt along with the gizmos that made up the badass laser-tag system, with knives strapped to her thigh and calf, she looked deadly as hell, and twice as sexy. Her face was set in concentration, her eyes gleamed with reflected holo-light, and her moves showed the hours she’d put into her training, and the athleticism—and sharp edge—that had made her a natural at this from the very beginning. She didn’t think she was brave, didn’t think she had fought enough against the Witch, but he knew different. And could’ve stood there watching her all damn day.

  She crouched and spun, flattened three hologram camazotz in rapid succession, then nailed a fourth with a bolt of crackling green magic that surged and spit with a dangerous, feminine power that hardened his flesh. More, it brought his own fighting instincts to the fore, making him want to challenge her, tussle with her, make love to her, right here and now.

  Question was, what did she want?

  Steeling himself, he stepped out of the shadows and into her peripheral vision.

  She checked her next attack and spun to face him, cheeks flushed with exertion, eyes going wary and brittle at the sight of him. She raised her weapon but didn’t holster it, and didn’t let the magic ramp down. “I’m a little busy here. And really not in the mood for company.”

  “It’s a pretty night.” He lifted the six-pack that was the first of the bribes he’d grabbed from the cottage. “I was hoping we could sit out and watch the stars for a bit.”

  Her eyes didn’t give a damn thing away. “Why?”

  Because last night was amazing, but you still snuck out. Because you’re the one I want to be with, the only one I trust, even when I don’t trust myself. Especially then.

  He kept those answers inside, though, and went with the one that’d come to him as he’d stood there at the pathway’s fork, knowing he should go up to the mansion but wanting to be with her instead. “Because the first time around, we just sort of happened. We met, we liked each other, made sense together—at least as we saw it—and we got together and had some damn good times.” He paused. “But the thing is, I was so caught up in being a Nightkeeper, so convinced that we were destined mates that I coasted. I didn’t work for it, didn’t work for you.”

  Maybe she paled a little, but she didn’t back down, didn’t lower her defenses. “And now?”

  “Now I want to make it up to you. Hell, I don’t know what that even means, just that I hated waking up alone this morning, and I hate not knowing if you’ll be with me tonight, or ever again. What’s more, I know damn well that there’s not anybody else I want to be with right now, nobody else I want to talk to about the things that’re going down.” He reached into a pocket, pulled out a Ziploc half full of Sasha’s death-by-cacao brownies and held it out to her. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he was asking for, but he asked it anyway. “What do you say? Are you willing to give me another chance?”

  * * *

  Myr stared at him for a beat, telling herself not to be an idiot. Problem was, she didn’t know which answer counted as idiocy: accepting his peace offerings and risking what little hard-won balance she’d managed to get back after their night together . . . or telling him to get lost.

  The fact that she could come up with a laundry list of why she should send him away probably should’ve made the choice for her. She hesitated, though, and not just because of the brownies. It was the mix of hope and “I dare you” in his eyes, and the shimmer of heat that snapped in the air between them, one that she couldn’t quite ascribe to the fighting magic that was pumping in her veins. And, to be honest, it was the shame of knowing she had wimped out this morning.

  Tell him to stay? Tell him to go?

  It would’ve been easier if he’d been just another guy, like the ones she’d hooked up with in New Orleans. But there were millions of those guys out there, and only one Rabbit. He awed her, impressed her, sometimes scared the hell out of her. He had the potential to save them all . . . and the potential to destroy her. She wanted him, yearned for him, and after last night she knew damn well it would be far too easy to submerge herself once more in a relationship with him.

  But he’d brought her brownies and beer, which had been a Friday night ritual during their year-plus together in college, a way to celebrate the weekend back when they’d thought they had it so tough and hadn’t had any idea what tough actually felt like. Now, she knew exactly how it felt . . . and it was asking her for a chance to get back with her, and to let things between them go deeper than she’d had any intention of going.

  She should tell him to get lost. Instead, she nodded to the six-pack. “Vitamin B?”

  The tense set of his shoulders eased slightly. “Something like that.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Wanna take a walk?”

  She really, really shouldn’t.

  She did it anyway.

  They ended up at the pueblo. Nostalgia tugged as she crested the narrow, winding trail leading up and saw the wide, flat ledge and familiar round doorways. This was where Rabbit had gone when they fought, where they had gone together to get a little drunk and make love under the stars, and—although she hadn’t told him—it was where she had hidden out in the weeks after he disappeared, while she recovered from his attack and tried to come to grips with what had happened between them.

  She hadn’t been back since she gained control of the magic. It didn’t look any different, though. She was the one who was different . . . or at least trying to be.

  Sitting on the very edge of the cliff, she let her legs hang and felt the shimmy in her stomach that said there was nothing to keep her from falling. Rabbit sat beside her, with a few inches separating them, extinguished the foxfire he’d used to light their way, and stared out as the night closed around them. The lights of Skywatch shone in the distance, but everything else was dark, save for the
glimmer of stars up above.

  “About last night,” he began after a moment.

  “I’m sorry I wimped out and did the tiptoe thing,” she said, knowing she owed it to both of them, especially after what he’d just said about wanting to make more of an effort with her. Wanting to, in effect, court her, even though they both knew the timing couldn’t be worse, and she wasn’t even sure it was what she wanted. “Look, last night was great. Better than great. It was incredible . . . but I didn’t want us to wake up together and be back where we started.” She paused. “I need some space, Rabbit. I went from living under the Witch’s thumb to being your girlfriend. Not that I’m saying the two are equivalent. I loved what we had together, loved learning about the magic and how to fight . . . but I never really learned how to be myself. I’m starting to figure it out now, and I don’t want to lose that.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I get that.” But the lines beside his mouth deepened.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “Don’t be.” He took her hand, lifted it to kiss her knuckles, and shot her a crooked smile. “Like I said, I didn’t really work hard enough for you the last time around. You want space, you’ve got it. But that doesn’t change the fact that I want you in my bed—or your bed, one of the Jeeps, a closet, all of the above . . . your call.”

  Her skin heated at the low rasp of his voice. She didn’t believe for a second that it was going to be that easy. Even if he stuck to a no-pressure, whatever-you-want arrangement, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stick to it, despite all her newfound determination. If the old Rabbit had fascinated her and made her feel like she wasn’t alone anymore, the man he’d become compelled her, made her yearn.

  Forcing herself to stay casual, she bumped him with her shoulder. “Does that mean I can still have a beer and one of those brownies?”

  “You can have whatever you want,” he said simply. “Whatever, whenever, if it’s mine, it’s yours.”

  “Rabbit . . .” Don’t say stuff like that. She wanted too badly to hear it, to believe it.

  “Don’t worry, no pressure. We’ll take things as slow as you want.” He paused, smile fading. “It’s not like we won’t have other things to focus on for the next eight days. And after that . . . well, there’ll be plenty of time for us to figure things out.” He looked away as he said that, though, making her think he was just saying the words, or maybe trying to believe them. Was that because he didn’t think they could work things out, or because he thought it would be a moot point, the earth destroyed? It doesn’t matter, she told herself. What matters is the next eight days. And after that, well, he was right. If they made it through, there would be time to figure out whether to stay together or go their separate ways.

  The thought made her want to scoot closer to him and cling. Instead, she pulled her hand from his, balanced a brownie on her knee and reached for a beer. “That’s true enough, I guess. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time when it comes to figuring out what to do about the gods.”

  Like it or not, it was easier to talk about battle plans than it was to talk about what was happening between them.

  He shot her a sidelong look that said he knew what she was thinking. But then he took a swig of his beer, leaned forward and braced his elbows on his upper thighs. “I’m trying not to let this be an easy choice. It shouldn’t be.”

  Before, back when she’d been pushing him to reach the full potential she saw in him, she probably would’ve jumped right in with all sorts of opinions, probably none of which would’ve been “have faith in the sky gods.” Now, though, she hesitated. Over the past few months, she had prayed to the gods for her magic and talked to them when she was alone and uncertain. It was unsettling to think that she might’ve been praying to the enemy all this time.

  “Maybe Dez is right,” she said. “Maybe we should hold off on making any decisions until we’ve looked into the info Bastet gave us.” It felt weird to call the goddess by name, but was that any weirder than the message itself? Probably not.

  “Maybe.” Rabbit flicked a couple of pebbles off the ledge, tilting his head as they clinked and clanked on the way down. “The whole Egyptian thing feels right to me, though. It makes sense. But what if that’s because I’d already talked myself out of the sky gods once before? I don’t trust myself on this one. Not after what happened with Phee.”

  “Well, for better or worse, it’s not really going to be about what we believe, is it? Dez is going to have the final say.”

  “I hope so.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s . . . nothing. Just something my old man said.” He paused. “Did you ever imagine your parents showing up one day, putting the smackdown on the Witch, and whisking you away to your real life?”

  She lowered her beer in surprise. “Where did that come from?”

  “I was thinking about what Bastet said about the kohan and kax conspiring against us, and how it would help to think that there was a reason for all the bad luck we’ve had. Not just now, but in the past, too. The rise of the Aztec, the Spanish conquest, the Trail of Tears, the Solstice Massacre . . . all those times the Nightkeepers were just starting to flourish in a new land, when wham, something knocked them back down again.”

  “Which got you thinking about being an orphan.” The word tried to stick in her throat. It was true, though. The surviving full-blooded Nightkeepers had grown up without their parents, though in most cases their winikin had filled in as best they could. And Rabbit himself might’ve been better off if both his parents had been out of the picture. “What about you?” she asked him. “Did you ever imagine your mother showing up and taking you away from Red-Boar?”

  “Not really.” But then he sighed. “Okay, maybe. More over the past couple of years than when I was a kid, though. Back then, I more or less believed that I was a disaster, good for nothing, all the stuff my old man kept telling me. So why would my mother—who, of course, I pictured being gentle, kind, generous and the exact opposite of him—want anything to do with me? Worse, what if she actually did come, and was disappointed?”

  “Rabbit . . .”

  “No.” He took her hand, threaded their fingers together. “No sympathy necessary, no pity requested. I haven’t been that kid for a long time. That didn’t stop me, though, from chasing after her ghost over the past few years, thinking there was no way she could be as bad as Red-Boar.” He snorted, though his fingers tightened on hers. “Just my luck she turned out to be worse.”

  “Luck,” Myr said softly.

  “Yeah. There’s that word again. Like I said, it’s tempting to think that a whole lot of what’s gone down has been because our so-called gods have been fucking with us. Which makes it really damn cool to think that there’s an even higher power out there somewhere that wants us to succeed, and is trying to get through and help us.”

  “Bastet as Daddy Warbucks?”

  “More like some sort of superhero who’s been blocked from the planet, and could help us out if we can manage to open up the lines of communication.”

  “In eight days.”

  He glanced up at the night sky. “Almost down to seven, now.”

  “Scary,” she said, going for wry but aware that her voice shook. It hit her like this sometimes, the knowledge that they were coming up on the end date, and that she was going to be right there on the frontlines. For all that she was a warrior and a mage, sometimes she still felt very much like a frightened little girl.

  His shoulder bumped against hers. “Yeah. Scary.”

  They sat like that for a few minutes in silence.

  “I thought about it,” she said then, surprising herself. “My parents showing up, I mean. Sometimes, I would hide out and watch customers come into the shop, and I would pretend they were my parents, and that they’d come to take me back. Now and then I would picture them having the Witch arrested, but mostly all I cared about was getting out of there.” She paused. “I guess it was o
ne thing to picture it, another to do something about it.”

  “Don’t be ashamed of staying. Kids are programmed to believe their parents, wrong or right.”

  She toyed with her brownie. “You’re saying I stayed because of inertia, just like some of the Nightkeepers and winikin—maybe a lot of them—are going to want to stick with the sky gods because they’re familiar.”

  “What if they’re right?”

  “Was I better off letting the Witch use me as a punching bag?”

  “Ah, baby. Don’t do that to yourself.” He wrapped an arm around her.

  “I won’t. I’m not. I’ve moved on, damn it.” But she let herself lean into him for a few seconds. And, when she felt his breath on her cheek, his lips on her ear, she tipped her head to accept the kiss, then sought his mouth with her own.

  The churn of unease in her belly warmed quickly to desire, and she slid her hand up his chest to press over the steady thud of his heart. This was what she needed; it was why she had gone walking with him, why she couldn’t stay away from him.

  He made her feel important.

  He broke the kiss, to press his forehead to hers, so their breaths mingled when he said, “Will you come home with me tonight?”

  She nodded but said nothing, not sure she trusted what would come out of her mouth right now, with her emotions too damn close to the surface.

  They climbed down from the pueblo, pausing at the flat spots to kiss. And as they headed back toward the cottage, hand in hand, with her head on his shoulder, she didn’t let herself think about tomorrow. It would be enough to go home with him, make love to him. She wouldn’t let herself give in all the way like she had last night, though, and she wouldn’t stay the night.