Spellfire n-8

by Jessica Andersen

  Now, said the booming voice inside Rabbit. It is time.

  “Dez!” Rabbit shouted. “The spell!”

  The king looked at him for a heartbeat, then nodded. He leaped to the top of the temple, filled his lungs and bellowed, “Everyone get under a big-ass shield and link up! And I mean everyone! Pass it on!”

  There was a mad scramble, a huge flare of shield magic, and the frustrated fingernail-on-blackboard screams of new kax and boluntiku erupting from the sacred well, new winged gods dropping down from the sky. The enemy lashed at the shield with flames, claws and acid, but the shield held, by the gods, it held!

  Beneath it, the Nightkeepers, winikin, human and nahwal all cut their palms and connected with each other, blood to blood. Rabbit found himself linked to Myr on one side and one of his own nahwal on the other side, and felt the uplink gain strength as more and more links were added. Boars, jaguars, eagles, iguanas, smokes, stones, harvesters . . . the powers of the different bloodlines flowed through the uplink. And as the magic passed into them, Rabbit and Myrinne smoothed it into a single flowing stream of power, blended and wonderful.

  “Ready?” Dez called to him.

  Rabbit took a look around to confirm.

  A nahwal caught his attention; it was staring at him intently. More, it was distinguished from the others by the wink of a ruby earring in one ear. Jag. The former king nodded to him, man to man, and sudden certainty filled Rabbit. This was how it was supposed to have been. This was what Scarred-Jaguar had been destined to do, only he’d tried to do it thirty years too early, and without the help of the crossover and his earth-mage mate.

  Now, though, things would be as the true gods had meant them to be.

  “Yeah,” he said, tightening his grip on Myr’s hand. “We’re ready.”

  They sent the spell words around the blood-link, so the entire Nightkeeper army, more than a thousand strong, spoke in synchrony, like the biggest, baddest nahwal ever made.

  As they began the spell, two earth-shuddering roars rose up in response—one from above and one from below—and the fabric of the air around them shivered and started to tear.

  Hurry! Myr’s mind spoke in Rabbit’s head, in his heart, but the spell was complicated, couldn’t be rushed. He kept going as a huge winged creature, black as night, came up from the depths while another, identical but pure white, dropped down from above. They were enormous, monstrous, and power crackled around them like storms. They landed together, thud-thud, on the Nightkeepers’ shield and started tearing at the magic with teeth that glinted like diamonds. The shield gave and made a wretched crackling noise.

  Behind the creatures, though, the pillar of dark and light magic shuddered and began to rotate, moved by Rabbit’s spell.

  “It’s working!” he ordered. “Give it more power!” They had finished the incantation, but the momentum was slow, the barrier frail. The Nightkeepers and their allies dug deep and gave it everything they had, and as the power amped its flow through the uplink, the pillar spun faster and faster. “More!” he shouted and then, through the uplink itself, he sent into their minds, Think of your mates, your children, your families. It went against the writs but he didn’t give a shit. Not when he’d learned firsthand that love was everything. Let your magic flow. It doesn’t matter what talent, big or small, just send it to me and Myr and we’ll make it come together.

  The stream of power coming into him became a river, then a flash flood. And beyond the shield and the monsters on their roof, the pillar went into overdrive, split apart, and started tornadoing. The twin funnels cranked and whirred, sucking in everything that had come out of the sky and underworld.

  Rabbit saw a boluntiku go, more ’zotz, a makol or three. But the huge winged beasts above them hung on and dug in. A section of the shield caved, and a clawed foot broke through. They were so fucking close, but they weren’t going to make it!

  “Myr,” he said, the word coming out broken. “Jesus Christ, Myr.”

  She looked up at him, and found a way to smile. “What a perfectly wonderful disaster this is turning out to be.”

  And, holy shit, he laughed out loud at that, and somewhere, somehow, let go of the last little thread of control, giving himself over to the chaos. The golden magic flared through him, into the uplink and from there to the funnel clouds, and the damn things exploded, expanding to suddenly wrap around the winged creatures, which growled and snapped, then howled as they were torn away and sucked into the vortices, one to the sky, the other to Xibalba. The one headed to hell was joined by dozens of little flickers of red and green, hundreds of them.

  “The xombis!” Anna cried. “You’re banishing the xombi magic!”

  Rabbit let his head fall back and let out a whoop. “It’s working!”

  He wanted to dance and sing, wanted to spin Myr around and around, but he held on to the spell instead, pouring himself into it, feeling the strength of the Nightkeepers’ uplink. The last of the xombi flickers whipped past them and down, and then, with a final roar, the funnel clouds folded in on themselves and sucked back to where they’d started.

  And pop. They were gone.

  It was over.

  Only it wasn’t.

  The storm was gone, the kohan and the kax were gone, and everything was the same as it had been when they got there . . . except for the nahwal. The Nightkeepers’ armies of the dead stood clustered near the last members of their bloodlines, waiting to cross over to the afterlife.

  Crossover.

  The golden magic pulsed inside Rabbit, chaotic and disordered, just like life itself. And, going on instinct, he looped an arm around Myr’s waist, pointed to the sky, and sent a stream of the magic winging up, up, and up some more, until it hit a cloud.

  Sunlight flared, bright and unexpected, and a beam speared down, descending along the stream of golden magic until it reached the ground.

  “Oh,” Myr breathed.

  Once the sunbeam was on the ground, it moved with a magic of its own, seeking out the nahwal. Some flared quickly bright and then disappeared, becoming golden glitters that flowed up the sunlight shaft and headed for the sky. Not to the realm of the kohan, but to the true sky. The reward for brave warriors.

  The few nahwal who didn’t disappear, though, grew solid. More, their eyes turned normal, clothes glistened into being around them, and they suddenly looked like real people.

  Rabbit’s heart thudded in his chest. “Holy shit,” he whispered, and felt Myr squeeze his hand.

  Anna gave a soft cry and moved toward one of them. “Mama!” She hesitated as the gold dust swirled, but when it cleared, it revealed a woman who was very familiar to Rabbit from his dreams. Asia. Scarred-Jaguar’s queen. Gods.

  The two women embraced while Sasha moved toward them, eyes alight. Strike, meanwhile, faced the nahwal with the ruby earring as the old king’s features became clear, and father and son saw each other for the first time in thirty years. And it would be the last, Rabbit saw, because after a brief exchange, the shimmers intensified and the old king streamed up into the sky.

  “Do you see?” Myr’s voice cracked and her fingers dug into his arm. “Are you seeing this?”

  It was happening all around them, for each of the Nightkeepers. Which meant . . .

  Stiffening, he turned. And found himself facing not one nahwal . . . but four of them.

  Red-Boar stood beside a pretty, perky-looking brunette with a wide smile. And in front of them, wrapped in their arms, were twin boys who looked up at Rabbit with eyes so much like his own that his heart clutched.

  He had hated them, he realized. All along, he had hated them.

  “Go on,” he told them now. “Go be together.” And he sent the crossover magic toward them.

  As the sparks gathered and surrounded the four, Red-Boar raised a hand in farewell.

  Then the golden magic streamed airborne and up onto the sunbeam, and Rabbit’s old man was gone. For real this time.

  He had been the last of them, Rabbit saw. T
he nahwal were all gone, and the winikin’s animal familiars were streaming up along the sunlight as well, being waved off with cheers and tears, and cries of thanks. When they were gone, figuring it was over, Rabbit let his magic die away. He held Myr close to his side and said, “Well, as disasters go . . .” He trailed off as the sunbeam intensified once more. “This one may not be over.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Myr pressed close to Rabbit’s side as the golden sparks flitted down from the clouds, then spun, dipped and formed the head of a giant creature, one that had the pointy features of a Doberman, but with a drooping, anteater-like nose and wide, squared-off ears that stood high at attention.

  Seth, the lord of chaos, looked down at the Nightkeepers and their allies, and smiled. Which in itself was pretty damn terrifying, she decided. But at the same time, her blood thrummed.

  They had survived the war! They could handle whatever came next.

  “Well done, children of the Earth plane.” Seth spoke, as Bastet had, in all of their minds at once. But then he turned, sweeping the crowd and zeroing in on Rabbit. “Especially you, son of chaos.”

  Rabbit had gone still. “I know that voice.”

  Myr did too. It came from the vision, from Asia’s king. Only it hadn’t been Jag’s voice, she realized now. It had been the god’s.

  The great head inclined. “I spoke to you as I could, and told you what you needed to hear. You are the crossover, the embodiment of random chance. My son on this earth. You are risk and danger, change and invention. Your blood will reinvigorate the Nightkeepers, keeping the magic alive for another twenty-six thousand years, until the next Great Conjunction.”

  “We get to keep the magic?” Myr blurted. She had assumed that it would disappear now that the barrier was sealed once more, quiescent until the next cycle, like a zillion generations from now.

  Those golden eyes locked on her. “Yes and no, earth daughter. The magic still exists, but it is hidden. It will work only on the Cardinal Days, or if the earth should need its Keepers and their allies again in the future.” Seth’s eyes swept the crowd again, touching on each of them. “So teach your children well, and your children’s children, and down the line. Protect them. Hide them if necessary. And do not forget the lies of the other realms . . . or the power of love.”

  Magic hummed in the air and the golden pixels swirled and spun, beginning to break up. As Seth’s face melted away, though, he looked at Rabbit again, and sent him another of those terrifying smiles. “You are my pride, son of chaos. Never forget it.”

  And then the god was gone, leaving utter silence behind.

  Myr’s heart was lodged somewhere south of her tonsils, her fingers digging into Rabbit’s arm. He was the first one to move, taking a shuddering breath and unlocking his body to drag a hand down his face.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said raggedly. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  The lump in her throat turned into a tickle. “I’m pretty sure he’s the son of a different god.” The tickle turned into a laugh that was more than a bit hysterical.

  “Wow.” Strike shook his head. “Seriously. That was. Wow.”

  Conversation rippled outward from there, with a whole lot of “holy shit” and “did you see that?” Then Rabbit threw back his head and let out a howl of “Yahoooo!” It echoed off the confines of the sacred well and the distant ruins and came back to them.

  “Awoooo!” caroled one of the coyotes, and the second one joined in a beat later. And then everyone joined in, shouting and screaming, and making noise as it started dawning that they had survived—every one of them, with not a single fatality—and the barrier was sealed.

  “We won!” Rabbit swept Myr up and spun her around. “We won!”

  “Damn straight!” She kissed him on the lips—her beautiful, wonderful, chaotic man—and raised her hands in the air as he spun them both around. “First round’s on me!” she shouted to a chorus of cheers. “And the second one’s on Rabbit here, so save the expensive stuff for him!”

  * * *

  While the others whirled and cheered, shouting plans for a party to end all parties back at Skywatch, Anna stripped off her weapons belt and slipped away, heading for the fringes of the excitement.

  “Hey, sis.” Strike’s voice stopped her, had her turning back.

  “I’m just . . .” She made a vague gesture that wasn’t quite in the direction of the quarantine camp. “I’ll be back soon. If you need me to ’port before then, just—”

  “I just wanted to wish you all the luck in the world.”

  “Oh.” A tentative smile caught, then spread. “Thanks.”

  He waved her off. “Go on, take your time. I’ll cover the transport.”

  She glanced down at her marks. “Do you think the ’port magic will still work?”

  “While we’re still in equinox and the conjunction? Yeah. Tomorrow? We’ll have to see.” He paused. “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me.” She lifted a hand. “See you in a bit, little brother.”

  He was chuckling and saying something along the lines of “Little, my ass” as she spun up the magic, found the golden travel thread connecting her to her destination, and made the jump.

  The supply closet she ’ported into was deserted, but the hallway outside was anything but. She stepped out into a scene of utter chaos.

  It was glorious and fan-freaking-tastic chaos, though, because it didn’t come from doctors running around, trying to deal with some new medical crisis. Instead, it came from the johnny-clad people thronging the hallways, all talking at once in a mix of English, Spanish and Maya, and the shouts of the security officers trying to herd them along.

  Over the cranked-loud intercom, a woman’s voice blared, “Please follow the exit signs out to the central courtyard. Officers will direct you to the mess hall, where you will be given further information.” The message repeated in the other two languages.

  A bubble of joy lifted in Anna’s throat, coming out as a delighted laugh. They were awake! The xombis were up and moving, and out of their restraints. She wasn’t sure how that had happened or why, as it seemed there could’ve been a more organized release protocol in place. But that wasn’t her call; she wasn’t in charge.

  And speaking of the man in charge . . . she looked but didn’t see any of the volunteers she’d gotten to know, and the few scrub-wearing nurses and techs within range were wide-eyed, overwhelmed, and doing their best to keep the human tide moving. But that was okay. Anna had a feeling she knew where she could find David.

  It took her a long five minutes to make it to the far patient wing, even with some subtle magical nudges, but she finally reached her destination. She paused for a moment outside Rosa’s door, sudden nerves kicking. The panel was closed and the KEEP OUT signs were still posted. What if she was too late? What if . . . ?

  “Knock it off,” she told herself, then took a deep breath and let herself through.

  Rosa was there, still curled up beneath the teddy bears. And David was there, sitting at her bedside in jeans and a rolled-up shirt, with a beard-shadow and dark circles under his eyes, looking as if he hadn’t moved since last night. The lab coat tossed over the back of his chair said he’d been with the others, though, and the worry in his face told her the news wasn’t good, at least in this one room.

  When he saw Anna, his expression blanked for a second, then flared. He rose and crossed to her, stopping short with a move that made her think he wanted to reach out, wanted to touch her, but didn’t know whether he should. And she felt the same sudden shyness, the realization that their e-mails had gotten far more intimate than their physical selves.

  He cleared his throat. “I should probably snarl at you for still being in this area, but I’m not sure I’ve really got the right to yell at you, and, besides, it’d be a total lie because damn, I’m glad to see you.”

  And there it was, the e-mail voice she’d started looking for, needing. Fighting for, even. She grinned as his online and rea
l selves merged once more in her mind. “Let’s just say I didn’t go all that far.” Her smile faded, though, as she looked past him. “She didn’t wake up when the others did?”

  “How did you know about that?” He waved it off. “Never mind. Rumor mill. God knows I’m surprised the families haven’t rushed the fence line yet to get to the patients, or vice versa. We need to run some tests first, make sure this isn’t some weird lull before another outbreak, or . . . shit. I’m stalling. Because yeah, Rosa didn’t wake up. Probably ninety percent of the patients just clicked on about twenty minutes ago, bing, the lights went on and somebody was home. Almost all of the ones who didn’t wake up had been really far gone before they went into stasis, so starved there’s a good chance they were brain-dead or close to it.” He turned back to the bed, eyes hollowing out. “Rosa, though . . . I just don’t know what’s going on, whether it’s still the disease, or if there’s something else. For all I know, she’s staying under because of the shock of seeing her parents kill each other. But even then, how can I help her?” His voice lowered, went soft as he said to the child in Spanish, “You can come back, little one. I know you’ve had a bad time of it, but you’ve got people here on your side. We’ll take care of you. I promise.”

  Anna’s heart tugged for them both, yet ached a little for herself. Because what she was about to do was a hell of a risk. “I brought something I think might help her.”

  His head came up. “More homeopathics?”

  “Something like that.” She reached into a pocket and came up with the sturdy stoppered bottle she had carried into battle as a talisman. The liquid inside was brown, greasy and brackish, and reminded her of dark magic. It was the good stuff, though. And maybe it would work.