As if following her thoughts, he sighed against her hair. “I’m blocked—question is, who’s doing the blocking? If the true gods have been hearing me all along, shouldn’t I still be able to get through to them?”
“The true gods,” she said softly. “Are we sure we know which ones those are?”
He pulled back to look down at her. “I’m sure. Are you?”
“I’m not backing out of what we already agreed . . . but that’s not the same thing as being sure.” She wished she could tell him she was as confident as he was. Despite the way he’d challenged Anna and Dez back in the meeting, he had been ready to renounce the sky gods almost from the beginning. Maybe it was his warrior’s instincts talking, maybe faith in his sister’s magic . . . Leah hoped to hell it wasn’t because it could explain his father’s behavior as kohan-induced madness.
That question was there, though, inside her even when she wished it gone.
He didn’t say anything for a minute, just held her close and breathed her in. She let herself relax into him, trying to believe that they were on the right track, that it was all going to be okay. After a moment, he turned her toward the mirror and the altar, tucking the two of them together in the small space and letting the door swing shut.
When it did, he said softly, “Will you stay with me for a bit, my beloved detective?”
Her lips curved. “Of course, my king.” She wasn’t a detective anymore and he wasn’t a king, but gods willing, they would live long enough to be something else. They had talked about it, of course, planned for it—dreams and realities, and a whole lot of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” But now, as she stood beside him, all that mattered was that they were there, together.
Normally, she didn’t feel anything much when she prayed—she was only human, after all, though a godkeeper. Now, though, as she faced the mirror and the chac-mool, she felt a faint tingle of a magic not her own, as if Kulkulkan himself was reaching through the barrier to warn: You don’t want to do this.
And the damn thing was, he was right. She really, really didn’t want to give up the one piece of the magic that was hers, the connection to the god who had taken her and Strike flying together. Who had saved them from the Banol Kax, over and over again. But that was the point, wasn’t it? The enemy of their enemy wasn’t necessarily their friend anymore.
Please gods, let us get this right.
* * *
“Did you get it?” A blond bundle of energy and nerves whipped through the door and homed in on Brandt. “Was it there?”
He grinned and lifted the thick yellow envelope, then shook it a little so the flash drive made a noise. “Got it.”
“Oh!” Patience stopped halfway across the sitting area and clasped her hands, eyes filling. Then she covered her face and gave a watery laugh. “Shit. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry. It makes me feel like a . . . a . . . I don’t know.”
“Like a mommy?” Brandt suggested. “Hey, roll with it.” He sure as hell wasn’t going to ding her, given that he’d watered up a little when he’d gotten the end of the scavenger hunt Jox and Hannah had set up so only he or Patience could reasonably find the drop box, and he’d reached in to grab the envelope, knowing that the twins had no doubt touched it. Plopping down onto the couch, he patted the cushion beside him. “Sit. Christmas came early this year, so let’s open our presents.”
He’d meant it as a joke, but wished it back even as he said it.
The Nightkeepers didn’t celebrate the holiday per se, but most of them had fudged it to one degree or another in order to fit in with the lives they’d lived in the outside world, and they had kept up the tradition at Skywatch with a festival to honor the wayeb days at the end of December, when there were five “forgotten” days in the Mayan calendar, blanks that didn’t have any names. Either way, it had looked suspiciously like Christmas, with gifts, feasting and decorations, especially that first year, when Harry and Braden had lived at Skywatch. The presence of two active little three-year-olds had made it easy to appreciate the whole Santa thing, or a version thereof.
In the years since the boys had gone into hiding with the winikin, the holidays hadn’t seemed nearly so important—or fun—but Skywatch had still celebrated them. Last year, Brandt had taken Patience away for a long weekend, just the two of them and a familiar cheesy hotel room in Cancun, with mirrors every damn place and all the tingles and romance they could’ve wanted.
It was a hell of a thing to think that they might not live to see another Christmas, especially when it was less than a week away. Worse to think that the boys might not, either. The winikin would keep them as safe as possible, locked down somewhere off the beaten track, in a doomsday bunker with all the amenities . . . but that wouldn’t protect them forever.
He didn’t want to think about them coming aboveground to a blasted, empty wasteland or, worse, a demon-occupied earth and a populace that had been enslaved, turned to makol and xombi. He hated, too, picturing them showing up at the prearranged meeting point on the morning of December twenty-second . . . and waiting in vain. Or having only one parent show up. Or—
“Don’t.” Patience wrapped her arm around his waist and put her head on his shoulder. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”
“Hello, pot? This is the kettle.” Gods knew that they had both been struggling with their decisions—not just to follow Dez’s lead and renounce the sky gods, but also to post an online personal with prearranged keywords that counted as their good-bye, rather than setting up another drop box, as they had planned. They had decided they couldn’t risk it, though. Not when they couldn’t even trust their own prayers not to give them away.
She nudged him in the ribs. “Just open it already!” But when he started to, she grabbed his wrist. “Wait.”
He started to laugh at her, but the impulse died when he saw the tears welling in her eyes. His voice went to a rasp. “Ah, baby. Don’t.”
“I won’t. I’m not.” She reached out a trembling hand to touch the envelope. “I just . . . gods, Brandt. Tell me that we’re going to make it. You, me, Harry, Braden, Jox . . . even if you have to lie, tell me we’re all going to be okay.”
“Hey.” He shifted, caught her chin and turned her to face him. “We’re going to be okay.” Tears broke free and trailed down her cheeks, and he forced determination into his voice, forced himself to believe it when he said, “We’re a team, Patience, you and me. Until death do us part, right? Well, that’s not happening this week.”
“Promise?” she whispered, then shook her head. “Sorry. Forget I said that.” A vow carried the force of a spell for him, after all, and she’d told him it was okay to lie.
He wanted to. He wanted to promise her that the Nightkeepers were going to win the war, that both of them were going to survive. He wanted to swear that four days from now they would be standing on the Cancun beach where they’d first met, watching Harry and Braden run toward them with the winikin walking more sedately behind them, hand in hand. He wanted to say all that, wanted it to be true. But he couldn’t make it a promise.
So instead he said, “We’re going to be okay, Patience. We’re going to win the war and make it through, and four days from now we’re going to hold our boys again. And after that, we’re never going to let them go, ever again. Because we’re a family. And I don’t care what the writs say, there’s nothing more important than family.”
There was a time when he wouldn’t have said that, and she wouldn’t have believed him if he had. It was a sign of how far they’d come since the bad days between them, how solid they were together, that she relaxed against him, letting out a watery sigh. “I know. I just . . . I needed to hear that. I needed you to say it.”
He brushed his lips across her cheek and then, when she leaned in, he found her lips. The kiss started soft, more an affirmation than any effort to incite, but then she touched her tongue to his, and things got more serious. Magic kindled low in his gut and flared out from there, making him
very aware of his own body, and hers, and the fact that they were alone in their suite, with nobody expecting them to be anywhere for a couple of hours.
Hello, afternooner, he thought, and grinned into the kiss.
But at the same time, he knew that could wait. The heat was always there between them, more now than ever before, and the anticipation would only add to the thrill of making love. So, easing away, unable to wait any longer, he tore open the envelope and dumped the contents onto the coffee table, next to the laptop he had there, ready and waiting.
Smaller envelopes cascaded out—those would be letters from Jox and Hannah, updating them on the more serious stuff the twins didn’t necessarily need to know about, along with the flash drive and a fat folder, which would contain printed-out photos, schoolwork, and letters from both boys.
Each care package had a different theme, which was announced by artwork on the carefully selected folder. Last time around, Braden picked Transformers. This time, Harry had gone with dinosaurs. The folder had an ominous background of darkness, ferns and mist, with a cartoon T. Rex giving a big cartoon “Rawr!” Across the raging Rex’s stomach, two very different hands had written I want a brontosaurus burger and Look out for the meteor!
Brandt chuckled, though the sound cracked at the end, catching against the lump in his throat.
“Oh,” Patience breathed, and reached for the folder. But then she stopped herself, and pulled back. “No. Let’s do the video first.”
“You sure?” Usually they eased into it with the photos, so it wasn’t such a shock seeing the boys, and realizing all over again how much of their childhood they were missing.
“Positive,” she said, but he was already fitting the flash drive into the laptop, and feeling his heart bump unsteadily as they waited for the video to open.
Moments later, the window popped up and a boy’s face filled the screen—just a nose and a gap-toothed grin. Then he pulled back from the in-computer camera to reveal unruly dark blond hair and a face that looked so much more grown-up since the last video they’d gotten. His green tee had a cartoon T-Rex on the chest and a smudge of something on one sleeve.
That, and the off-kilter collar made the ID a cinch. “Braden,” they said in unison, and shared a quick grin.
Then the image shifted and Harry’s face came into view—each feature was identical to his brother’s, the both of them a mixture of the best of both their parents. His blue brontosaurus tee was clean and perfectly adjusted, his hair neatly combed, his features solemn. His eyes, though, glittered with excitement and the devilishness that appeared in him just often enough to keep his brother on his toes.
The two leaned in together and mugged for the camera, giving a ragged chorus of, “Hi, Mommy! Hi, Daddy!”
“They’re so handsome,” Patience murmured tightening her grip on his hand. “Just like you. But oh, they’re growing up so fast.”
“I know.” He brushed his lips across her temple. “But they’ve got plenty of growing up left to do, and we’re going to be right there with them.”
Harry disappeared from the screen while Braden launched into a story about a winter festival at their school, and how his class had done face painting, while Harry’s had done a ball toss.
Pulling Patience closer against his side, Brandt settled in to enjoy the show, which the ticker at the bottom said was twenty-four minutes long.
Twenty-four minutes to spend with their boys. Gods, how they needed this.
The prior videos hadn’t had any real pattern. One had been shot at a nameless country fair, and had included a now-famous scene of Jox wobbling his way off a roller coaster and doing a near-violent “cut the camera” motion as he headed for some bushes. Another had been on a white-sand beach that could’ve been anywhere on either of the coasts. That was one of the keys to the video editing, that nobody—not even Patience or Brandt—should be able to use the images to figure out where the winikin were hiding with the boys.
This was a rare indoor-set video. The background seemed to be their current home, though all that was really visible was a wainscoted wall and a mantelpiece sporting family photos—including one Brandt recognized as having been taken the last time the boys had been at Skywatch, with the whole family in the frame—along with a couple of trophies and Hannah’s trademark bric-a-brac, heavy on the lavender.
Braden was still talking, going on about a bake sale table with huge brownies and the mean lady who had been taking the money, when there was a scuffling noise in the background, then the thud-thud-thud of footsteps.
“Got ’im,” Harry’s voice said from off camera. “Did-ja tell them about the booth?”
“I was waiting for you,” Braden said with an eye roll, but then grinned maniacally into the camera. “Like he said, there was a booth at the fair, from the human society. They were doing a ’doption drive!”
“Ahem,” said another voice, interrupting. Braden looked up and shifted aside, and Jox came into view. The former head winikin looked good, wearing a long-sleeved green polo, a green baseball hat made to look like a dinosaur’s head, complete with fierce eyes and cloth fangs coming down off the bill, and a shit-eating grin that didn’t look anything like the tense, stressed expression he used to sport 24-7. There were shadows there, yeah—hell, they all had shadows these days. But there was an evil sort of pleasure, too.
Jox leaned in to the camera and said in a stage whisper, “In case you’re wondering, that would be ‘humane society.’ And you can probably guess the rest. For the record, Hannah was the one who caved.”
“Baloney!” An elegant, purple-manicured hand came into the screen and poked him in the shoulder. “You were just as bad as the boys, with the big sad eyes and the ‘we’ll take good care of him’!”
“Uh-oh,” Patience said, covering her mouth with her free hand. “They didn’t.”
Jox disappeared as Harry and Braden both came back into view, hauling between them the squirming body of a half-grown black dog. It looked to be about the size of a cocker spaniel, but had the wiry hair of a schnauzer. Or maybe a Brillo pad. Its feet were fuzzy, its head triangular, and its belly was unappealingly naked.
“They did,” Brandt confirmed.
Harry, who was in charge of the front end, had been holding the pup’s muzzle shut. Now he let go, and the animal let loose with a string of half-hysterical yips, while thrashing its head side-to-side in an effort to lick Harry. Or maybe consume him.
Probably lick, Brandt decided. Jox and Hannah might’ve succumbed to puppy breath, but only if they thought it was safe.
And, what the hell. It seemed like they had a dog, like it or not.
Not that he had anything against the critters. He’d just figured it would be more of a family decision, maybe even a way for them to celebrate all being back together. Not to mention that he’d been envisioning something more along the lines of a Rottweiler.
“I was going to talk to you about getting them a dachshund,” Patience said mournfully.
Brandt’s opinion of the black mutt notched up significantly.
“We were gonna call him Wolfie,” Harry chirped, “but the first day he was here, when we went to buy him a collar and stuff, he got out of his cage, broke Hannah’s big bowl and the purple vase Jox got her for her birthday, ate the garbage out of the kitchen, puked under the dining table and then chewed up Jox’s boots.”
“Only one,” Braden said defensively, hauling the pup into his arms in an awkward hug that left its face smooshed off to one side and one ragged ear sticking straight up. The puppy didn’t look like it cared, though. In fact, it looked like it was having the time of its little life. Either that, or its doggy smile meant it was planning to eat the computer next.
“Jox can’t wear only one shoe,” Harry said with a serious tone of “duh” in his voice. “Anyway, after that, Jox said we should name him after Unc’ Rabbit.”
Now it was Brandt’s turn to say, “Oh, no, they didn’t.” But there was a laugh in his voice.
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After Red-Boar’s death, Rabbit had lived with them and had become the boys’ favorite playmate. And to everyone’s surprise, he had taken to them in return. He’d played with them, hung out with them, told them all the old stories, and become their unofficial uncle. So for Harry and Braden to name their puppy after him was a sign of love. For Jox, it was more along the lines of passive-aggressive revenge. And more apropos than ever, now, though the winikin wouldn’t know it.
Brandt paused the video and glanced at his wife. “Well,” he said, torn between amusement and horror. “That was unexpected.”
“Yes, it was.” She paused, lips turning up with wry acceptance. “Apparently we’ve got one more dependent to add to the list.”
“Yeah.” He kissed her cheek, tucked her tighter against his side, and tapped the touchpad to unpause things. And, as the video kept going with the boys talking over each other in an effort to describe their efforts to housebreak the new puppy, he inwardly promised the true gods that he was going to do his absolute best to honor his creators and ancestors, fight the enemy, defend the barrier, the earth and mankind . . . and protect his family. Which apparently now included a terminally destructive mutt named Rabbit.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Quarantine camp
Chichén Itzá, Mexico
“Only a couple have left so far, both older, more traditional winikin who just couldn’t give up on their gods.” Anna tugged at the edge of the teddy bear blanket, though it wasn’t really wrinkled. She needed to do something, make some sort of contact, yet she didn’t feel like she had the right to hold Rosa’s hand, given that she’d ’ported straight into her room in the middle of the night.
Not that the little girl minded. She was still unconscious and nonresponsive. Waiting for a miracle.
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