Nightkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  He wanted to be someone.

  ‘‘Rabbit.’’

  The old man’s voice was an unpleasant jolt, as was the sight of him at the bottom of the tree, scowling straight up into the branches, making it clear he knew exactly where his son was hiding. He’d traded his robe for fatigues and boots, but his belt bore no weapons.

  For about three seconds, Rabbit was tempted to light the seat of Red-Boar’s pants, or maybe give him a hot-foot. Then sanity returned. ‘‘Yeah?’’

  ‘‘I’m leaving.’’

  The two words hit Rabbit harder than he would’ve expected, punching him in the gut and making his breath whoosh out. ‘‘For good?’’ His voice squeaked.

  Red-Boar scowled. ‘‘No, you idiot. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow.’’

  ‘‘Oh.’’ And suddenly he could breathe again. Not like he wanted the old man to know that, though. ‘‘So?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t want you to wonder. And I thought you might want to use the cottage while I’m gone.’’

  Rabbit eased down a couple of branches, so he could see the old man’s face. ‘‘Are you, like, apologizing for kicking me out?’’

  ‘‘Strike offered you a room in the big house and you took it. No kicking involved.’’

  ‘‘Whatever.’’ Rabbit headed back up.

  ‘‘Wait.’’

  He paused. Looked down. ‘‘What?’’

  His old man took a step back, into a stripe of deep shadows, so it was like his voice came from the darkness when he said, ‘‘I’m sorry.’’

  Rabbit scowled, though it helped some to hear. ‘‘Sorry for which part? Sorry for not accepting me as your son or sorry for not prepping me properly?’’

  ‘‘I’m sorry the circumstances of your birth dictate that you’ll never belong.’’ Then, before Rabbit could wheeze past the gut-punch of pain, the old man turned and walked away, leaving what he hadn’t quite said to ring in the air between them: I’m sorry you were born, period.

  It wasn’t a surprise. But it still sucked to hear.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Leah slept far better than she would’ve expected, given her level of sexual frustration—high—and the general weirdness of staying in a suite of rooms that had belonged to her not-quite-lover’s parents, the king and queen of what-the-hell-is-going-on-here. Still, she woke tired. She supposed she could blame her fatigue on the postmagic hangover, but that didn’t exactly improve the logic of the situation.

  Magic. Right.

  Pulling on her borrowed clothes, she stumbled into the ornate marble-and-chrome master bathroom and gave herself a once-over in the mirror. The results weren’t exactly impressive—the clothes were too big and she had a shiner and no makeup.

  ‘‘Note to self,’’ she said aloud. ‘‘Find a mall. Or an Internet connection to Overstock.com, whichever comes first.’’ Or, hell, she could just have Connie mail her some stuff from home. She’d need clothes and whatnot if she was going to stay.

  And yeah, she was going to stay—for the time being, anyway—because she might not appreciate Strike’s I’m-calling -the-shots attitude about Zipacna, but he’d been right about a few things. For one, it sure looked like the ajaw-makol was jonesing for a do-over of his interrupted human sacrifice, starring her, and for another, this whole mess was going way outside the usual for the MDPD, which meant it was just good policework to cultivate an expert in the field.

  And whether or not it ran the logic train right off its rails, she wanted to know more about the magic.

  She hadn’t been into D&D as a kid, and the whole Harry Potter thing had left her cold, but those had been make-believe. The things she’d experienced over the past few weeks were . . . well, whatever they were, she was betting that if it turned out she had some sort of power, and if she could learn how to use it, then she’d have that much more ammunition against Zipacna. Because whether or not Strike liked it, as soon as she found the bastard, she was going after him personally.

  Ignoring the faint twinge of disquiet brought by the thought of going behind Strike’s back—and equally ignoring the flare of heat brought by any thought of the dark-haired warrior—she prowled the suite a little, not quite ready to head for the kitchen and face the rest of the Nightkeepers and their winikin. She’d seen most of them briefly in passing the day before, and had weathered their what the hell are you still doing here? surprise, but she wasn’t looking forward to joining their magic lessons later in the morning.

  It was all just too freaking weird.

  Her prowling brought her to the locked door she’d found the day before when she’d toured the suite, checking all the drawers and closets—because, hey, she was a cop—and finding nothing but bland decor and hotel-neat conveniences. And the locked door just before the solarium.

  It was an utterly normal-looking door, save for a pair of glyphs carved into the upper half of the panel, both of which she recognized from Strike’s arm: a jaguar’s head and a long-nosed, highly stylized human figure holding a staff of some sort.

  She didn’t need to be able to translate the writing to know what it meant: family only. Which didn’t include her, as Jox had so clearly pointed out the day before. But she’d never been able to resist a locked door.

  ‘‘It’s not much of a lock, either,’’ she said aloud, giving the knob a shake. The door rattled in its frame, far looser than it needed to be for the sake of security. Heck, it was more like a suggestion than a real lock.

  Her conscience told her they would’ve left the key if she was supposed to open the door, but that didn’t stop her from pushing the panel to the edge of the bolt, twisting the knob, and giving it a hip check.

  The lock popped free.

  ‘‘Oops.’’ Feeling only a little guilty, she stepped through the door into a dark, windowless chamber and fumbled for the lights. There was no switch plate, but the moment her foot hit the floor, torches flared to life at each corner of the square, closet-size space.

  She froze, partly because, damn, that was weird, and partly because she couldn’t go very far. Right in front of her, a mat lay on the tiled floor. Made of some sort of natural fiber, the neutral beige rug had a green border of strange symbols, and two bright red footprints woven into its center. The footprints faced a waist-high statue that looked like the one in the ritual chamber from the night before, the one Vince had called a chac-mool. Behind the statue, a circular plate was set into the wall. Made of highly polished black stone—obsidian, maybe?— it showed her torchlit reflection.

  And that of a large man sneaking up behind her.

  Leah spun automatically and threw a punch straight from the shoulder.

  ‘‘Whoa!’’ Strike feinted and the blow grazed his ear.

  ‘‘Sorry!’’ She pulled the follow-up, which put her off balance and sent her stumbling into him. He caught her against his chest, and she felt the vibration of his chuckle.

  ‘‘Does this mean we can add assault and battery to the B and E charge?’’ he asked, holding her easily. He was wearing jeans and rope sandals, as he had been the night before, with a worn-soft oxford rolled up to his elbows, showing off the ink. Marks. Whatever. She didn’t know what they were exactly, but the sight of the symbols made her hot and cold, thirsty and hungry all at once.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the marks. Maybe it was him, or the room. Or the both of them together. Whatever the cause, where she’d been able to buffer herself against the attraction—more or less—the day before, now the gut-deep chemistry flared between them, making the air crackle with tension.

  Flushing with sudden warmth, she pushed away from him. ‘‘Sorry. I was just—’’ She broke off, then sucked it up and said, ‘‘I was just snooping where I had absolutely no business being. I’ve never been able to resist a locked door.’’

  But it was more than the door, she realized as her eye was drawn back to the statue. It was as though the contents of the room had called to her. Compelled, she stepped onto the mat, fitting her feet to the
red shapes on the thatch. The woven footprints were larger than her own, creating a bloodred halo around her feet as she leaned forward and touched the altar.

  The stone was cool and slick to the touch, and it felt like, well, stone. Leah frowned slightly. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it. Then Strike stepped onto the mat, crowding behind her, pressing up against her and covering her hands with his, and suddenly the woven footprints weren’t too large at all . . . and the altar didn’t feel like stone.

  The surface warmed beneath her palms, turning liquid and strange, and an image flashed in her mind, an impression, really—that of her and Strike naked and intertwined in the torchlit darkness, making love atop that very altar, their joined reflection showing in the black mirror.

  Need swamped her, making it almost impossible to breathe.

  Strike’s fingers tightened on hers. Heat poured off his skin, surrounding her, radiating into her where his chest pressed against her back, and where the brush of hard flesh where it hadn’t been moments earlier suggested she wasn’t the only one having a waking fantasy.

  The moment contracted around her, until there was nothing beyond the small sacred chamber and the two of them, and the sexual attraction that bound them together in raw need and magic. It didn’t matter that they came from different worlds and had different agendas, didn’t matter that he was every tough guy she’d ever dated all rolled up into one über-virile package, or that she fully intended to go her own way the moment she had a good handle on Zipacna’s whereabouts and how to kill him. What mattered was the man pressed against her, his front to her back, and the searing heat that flowed at the points of contact.

  That and the altar. The mirror. The pounding promise of sex.

  She slid her hands from beneath his and turned around, and as she did, he moved back a pace but kept his hands on the altar, giving her room but bracketing her with his arms, as though he meant to keep her from escaping. But escape was the last thing on her mind as she hiked herself up onto the altar so they were eye level with each other.

  ‘‘Leah,’’ he said. Only her name, but with a warning growl in his voice.

  She didn’t know if he was warning her not to tease, or not to give in when they both knew it wasn’t just the two of them in the room. There was power, too, the golden glory of it binding them, bringing them together until their lips hovered just a whisper apart, until she could feel the rasp of his harsh breathing as if it were her own, feel her heart thunder in time with his.

  Then the distance was gone and their lips touched. Brushed. Clung.

  Held.

  His mouth fused to hers. Their tongues touched. And something clicked inside her, a feeling of, There you are; where have you been?

  It was their first kiss. And yet it wasn’t.

  She remembered his taste and feel from her dreams and newly regained memories, but all of those encounters seemed like fantasies, cushioned in the gray-green fog of unreality. Now, though, he was here. This was reality. This was real.

  He moved into her, stepping between her legs so they aligned center-to-center, hard to soft, and she felt complete, united, whole for the first time since . . . well, since ever. Leaning into him, she slipped her arms around his waist, then higher, so her breasts pressed against his chest. Deep within her, a poignant ache gathered and grew until it became a compulsion, an almost painful need to bind herself to the man she’d dreamed of, the warrior she’d made love to but barely knew.

  She wrapped her legs around him, drawing him close, holding him fast as kiss flowed into kiss. She worked her hands under his shirt and higher, desperate to touch him, to bind herself to him. Groaning, he rocked against her, hips pistoning as he got a hand under her shirt and cupped her breast, shaping her, pleasuring her until she bowed against him and shuddered.

  Then he broke the kiss and dropped his forehead to her shoulder, pressing his hot cheek to hers. His chest heaved with deep, gulping breaths, moving them both with a rhythmical surge as he withdrew his hand from her shirt and gripped the edge of the altar on either side of her, his muscles so tight they’d gone to cords beneath her fingers. ‘‘We have to stop.’’

  It took a second for the words to penetrate, another for Leah to comprehend. ‘‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’’

  ‘‘No. I can’t do this. We can’t do this.’’ He pulled away from her and straightened, stepping off the mat and backing to the doorway, so there was a gap separating them.

  Irritated—and ridiculously needy, damn him—she dropped down off the altar and stood facing him, hands fisted at her sides. ‘‘News flash, Ace. We’ve already done it at least once. Twice, if unreciprocated oral counts as ‘this’ in your book.’’

  ‘‘Don’t,’’ he said softly, his face etched with strain. ‘‘Don’t make it less than it was.’’

  ‘‘Okay, but apparently I made just now into more than it was supposed to be. Want to explain the difference to me?’’ Her volume was climbing, both with embarrassment that he’d turned her down, and with self-directed anger because she knew better, damn it. Hadn’t she warned herself against him only the night before? Hadn’t she decided to get her ass out of there as soon as she had a lock on Zipacna and some sense of what she could do to take him down? She was a walking relationship disaster, and as usual had picked the most complicated guy possible to get interested in. Yet she’d done it again, wrapping herself around him, offering herself to him.

  And he’d turned her down.

  ‘‘It’s—’’

  ‘‘If the next word out of your mouth is ‘complicated,’ you’d better be ready to race me to the bedroom for the MAC, because so help me, God, I’ll shoot you.’’

  He clamped his mouth shut.

  ‘‘I thought so. Do better. I think I deserve at least that much.’’ She hated that her voice shook, hated that all this mattered way more than it ought to.

  He took a long, deep breath, then said, ‘‘There’s a prophecy.’’

  ‘‘Right. World’s going to end. Got that.’’

  But he shook his head, his expression tight. ‘‘The end-time prophecy is something every Mayan knew about. I’m talking about a different set of them, called the Nightkeepers’ prophecies. There were thirteen of them handed down by the god Kauil; they were a way of tracking the progress of the spiritual end date. We’re up to the last one, lucky number thirteen.’’

  Leah took it down a notch, realizing this was something more than, It’s not you, it’s me. ‘‘What does it say?’’

  ‘‘To paraphrase, in the last five years before the zero date, the king will have to perform a great sacrifice in order to prevent the Banol Kax from coming to earth and starting a series of events that will lead to the apocalypse.’’

  A touch of cool air tickled across the back of Leah’s neck, bringing gooseflesh. ‘‘What sort of sacrifice? Like human sacrifice? You?’’

  He nodded. ‘‘I think so. My father thought so, too. We all figured he’d still be king when the time came, which is why he . . . did what he did. He believed the ‘greatest sacrifice’ meant he’d have to put my mother, sister, and me under the knife. He was trying to save us by making an end run around the thirteenth prophecy.’’

  And he led his people into a massacre, Leah thought with a wince. ‘‘So you think . . .’’ She trailed off, making the connection. ‘‘You think the dreams mean we’re supposed to fall in love, and then you kill me.’’

  ‘‘It’s more than that. I think you were supposed to become a Godkeeper at the solstice, and then we were supposed to fall in love and become a mated Nightkeeper/ Godkeeper pair. That way, when the time comes, I wouldn’t just be killing you.’’

  ‘‘You’d be killing one of your own gods,’’ Leah said, her lips feeling numb as they shaped the words.

  This was crazy talk. It made no sense, didn’t align with anything she’d grown up believing about the way religion worked. Yet there was a terrifying sort of internal logic to it,
and the things she’d seen had been too damn real for her to dismiss anything at this point.

  ‘‘That’s why I sent you away,’’ Strike said, his voice gone raw. ‘‘It’s why I made you forget. Red-Boar said you didn’t have any connection to the heavens. He said you were clean.’’

  ‘‘Zipacna doesn’t think so,’’ she said, knowing that was why Itchy had taken her prisoner a second time.

  ‘‘Neither do I. Not anymore.’’

  ‘‘Which leaves us where?’’ she asked, though she already knew the answer was something along the lines of, ‘‘Up Shit Creek.’’

  ‘‘I’d send you away if I thought you’d be safe.’’ His expression went hard. ‘‘Since I can’t do that, I think it’d be best if we don’t spend much time alone.’’

  Leah lifted her chin. ‘‘You’re assuming that if we have sex, we’ll fall in love. News flash, Ace. My relationships have an automatic end-time of their own: three months from date one. I’ve never made it past that, and the hotter the attraction the shorter it lasts. Given the sizzle, I give us three weeks, tops. So why not just do it and get it out of our systems?’’

  He pushed himself away from the door frame so smoothly he was inside her personal space before she realized he’d moved. He stood too close, making her feel crowded, making her feel wanted. ‘‘Because it was more than sex and you know it,’’ he said, his voice a low rasp. ‘‘Because I think we’d be good together, and not just in bed. And most of all, because I. Don’t. Fizzle.’’

  She knew that shouldn’t have felt like the sexiest line any man had ever laid on her. But it did, and that was a problem. ‘‘Okay,’’ she whispered, staring up into his eyes. ‘‘No sex. Got it.’’ Which should’ve settled things. But he kept looking at her so intently that she started to wonder if he could read her thoughts . . . and if so, what he was picking up, because she was hell-and-all confused. ‘‘What?’’ she finally said.