Nightkeepers

by Jessica Andersen

  A dark-haired man stood over him, heavily muscled, barefoot and bare chested, wearing loose black pants fastened at the ankles with intricate twists of red twine. His eyes were a bright, luminous green, one darker than the other, and he had a flying crocodile inked across his right pec. The air around him was shadowed a dark purple-black and radiated with hatred. Malice.

  Lucius opened his mouth to beg for help, for mercy, but he wasn’t sure he even formed words through the taste of evil and the stink of despair. He was suddenly very afraid he was going to die.

  Worse, he was afraid he might not.

  Strike dropped back into his earthly body with a flash of pain that he welcomed because it meant he was still alive. He blinked and felt his eyelids grate, shifted and felt his joints pop, and didn’t care because the first thing he saw was Leah on the other side of the chac-mool, blinking her cornflower blue eyes in confusion, and then, when the memories caught up, making a little, ‘‘Oh,’’ of despair.

  ‘‘We’ll figure something out,’’ he said quickly. ‘‘I promise.’’

  But they both knew he hadn’t promised to keep her safe, or even alive. Things had gotten seriously complicated way fast. The Nightkeepers couldn’t lose the skyroad or Kulkulkan. But at the same time, he couldn’t lose Leah.

  Her expression went wistful. ‘‘Yeah,’’ she said, responding to what he hadn’t said, rather than what he had. ‘‘I know.’’

  He wanted to say something but didn’t know what or how, so he stayed silent, and in the next moment Red-Boar exhaled and stirred, and the blue-robed trainees did the same as they all jacked out simultaneously. Strike felt the power surge, felt the echoed satisfaction of a job well-done, and knew that the talent ceremony had gone well.

  Thank the gods for small favors.

  Letting go of Leah’s hands, Strike pushed away from the altar and headed for the door, intending to warn Jox that he was about five minutes away from a kitchen stampede. He was halfway there when a woman’s scream echoed in his head. ‘‘Help him!’’

  The cry was followed by a mental picture that flashed along the link of a shared bloodline, powered by the magic of an itza’at seer. Anna! Strike thought on a spike of adrenaline and bloodline power.

  The image she sent was that of a young man curled up and clutching his bleeding hand to his chest as his eyes started to glow green. A dark figure stood over him. Zipacna.

  Rage flared, and Strike didn’t stop to think or ask questions, didn’t care that his legs were numb and his head pounding with a postmagic hangover, that he might not have the power to ’port accurately. He grabbed Leah with one hand and Red-Boar with the other. ‘‘Hang on!’’

  He leaned on the older Nightkeeper for a boost, fixing the transmitted image in his mind.

  And zapped.

  One minute Leah was getting her bearings in the sacred chamber at Skywatch, trying to deal with the nahwal ’s morbid information dump. Then Strike grabbed her, the world lurched, and the next thing she knew she was in some sort of student apartment, standing in a combined kitchen/living room full of yard-sale furniture and clutter.

  And Zipacna was there.

  He stood near where the kitchen tile began, his mismatched eyes glowing pure emerald green as he crouched over a young man who lay in a fetal ball, unmoving. The ajaw-makol was wearing loose black pants and held a bloody steak knife in one hand. The creature snapped his head up when the Nightkeepers appeared, and he bared his teeth in a hiss. Then his eyes fixed on Leah and the hiss became a smile.

  Rage flared through her, hard and hot and pure, and she lunged at him, screaming an incoherent battle cry. She was dimly aware that Strike shouted for her to stop and Red-Boar cursed and made a grab for her, but neither of them mattered just then. What mattered was the bastard who’d killed her brother, her friends.

  Surprise was on her side. She slammed into Zipacna, burying her shoulder in his gut and using the momentum to drive them both away from the young man. They went stumbling into the kitchen and slammed into the stove, which clattered a metallic protest. The ajaw-makol roared and pushed away, reversing their momentum and sending Leah flying across the small space to smash into the opposite cabinets.

  Without the benefit of jade-tips to slow him down, she went for the kitchen sink, which was full of nasty-ass dirty dishes. Grabbing a knife, she lunged under his swing and stabbed up, going for his heart. The weapon bit through flesh and grated on bone, and blood flowed over her hand, looking darker than it should have.

  Zipacna stiffened and roared with pain. ‘‘Bitch!’’

  Quicker than human reactions, he grabbed her and spun her, whipping her arm up behind her back and getting his own knife across her throat, pressing hard enough to have her freezing in place.

  ‘‘I thought we were friends,’’ he said softly in her ear. Only it wasn’t Zipacna’s voice anymore.

  It was Vince’s.

  Shock hammered through Leah. Betrayal. ‘‘Vince, no!’’

  Red-Boar’s expression went dark, and he hissed, ‘‘Mimic,’’ like it was the lowest form of life imaginable.

  ‘‘No shape-shifting necessary,’’ the ajaw-makol said in Vince’s voice. ‘‘She was perfectly willing to believe a wig and colored contacts, even when I was only human. Never even thought to check with his coworkers that Vince Rincon was a real person, just glommed on when I said I’d known her brother, and thought the wicked cult members had killed him.’’

  Leah nearly broke at the realization he’d played her all along. She’d been so pitifully willing to go along with the illusion, so grateful for some sort of support that she hadn’t looked hard enough at the source. ‘‘Why?’’ she said, her voice a broken whisper. ‘‘Why me?’’

  ‘‘Because twenty-four years ago the gods marked you and your brother as their own,’’ he said, leaning so close that his hot breath feathered against her cheek. ‘‘Matthew’s blood started the process. Yours will finish it.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Leah cried as something broke within her, bleeding rage and pain. ‘‘No!’’

  Strike took a step forward, his face tight. ‘‘Let. Her. Go.’’

  ‘‘Why, so you can kill her and free the serpent to fight another day? I think not. Better she comes with me and joins the other devoted followers I’ve assembled for my use, for blood or as makol.’’ The ajaw-makol took a step back, dragging her with him, and power started rattling through him, revving up, feeling black and twisted rather than the gold-red hum of the Nightkeepers.

  ‘‘No!’’ Strike shouted, and lunged forward to grab her as purple mist rose up to haze her vision. The moment he touched her, power arced, red against purple-black, teleport against teleport, as Zipacna fought to take her and Strike fought to keep her.

  Sobbing, not caring about the blade at her throat, Leah twisted in the ajaw-makol’s arms and jammed the heel of her hand into the knife still stuck in his chest, driving it deeper and feeling the spurt of hot blood.

  Zipacna shouted in pain. And disappeared.

  Leah fell to the ground half cradled in Strike’s arms. He caught her against him, breathing hard. ‘‘You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.’’

  Except she wasn’t sure whether he was trying to reassure himself or her, because if it was the latter, he shouldn’t have bothered. It wasn’t okay. It probably never would be again.

  Feeling numb, like she was already dead, she pulled away from him, lifted her right arm, and stared at the scarred patch. Twenty-four years ago, the ajaw-makol had said. And yeah, she knew exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘‘I killed him,’’ she said, her voice a broken whisper. ‘‘I killed us both.’’

  As she realized the truth, a roaring whirl of purple-black rose up to claim her mind, and she was almost grateful to let it, to let the world slip away.

  Until there was nothing. Until she was nothing.

  ‘‘Leah.’’ Terrified by her sudden immobility and fixed stare, Strike gripped her shoulders and
shook her. ‘‘Leah!’’ When she didn’t respond, he turned to Red-Boar. ‘‘I’m taking her back.’’

  ‘‘Leave her,’’ the older Nightkeeper snapped. ‘‘We deal with this first.’’

  He stood aside to reveal the ajaw-makol’s victim. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, shaggy-haired, tall and lanky, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and worn hiking boots. The ruined remains of the codex fragment were crumpled nearby, bloodstained and blackened with flame. A total loss. But Red-Boar was right: They had a more immediate problem in the form of the young man, whose eyes flickered from normal to luminous green and back. If and when they set green, he wouldn’t just be a second-generation makol created by Zipacna’s magic. He’d be a new ajaw-makol, created through the parent spell and the magic of the Banol Kax.

  ‘‘We have to kill it.’’ There was far more practicality in Red-Boar’s voice than regret. ‘‘Give me your knife.’’

  ‘‘He’s a person,’’ Strike protested. ‘‘Not an ‘it.’ ’’

  ‘‘It was a person,’’ Red-Boar corrected. ‘‘Now it’s a liability.’’ He held out his hand. ‘‘Give me the damn knife.’’

  ‘‘Don’t.’’ But it wasn’t Strike who said that. It was a woman’s voice.

  Anna’s voice.

  Strike turned and saw her in the apartment doorway, and even through his worry for Leah, everything inside him went still. She was older than she had been—they all were—but he saw his sister in the woman who stood before him, saw the same blue eyes that met his in the mirror each day.

  ‘‘Anna.’’ The word hurt.

  ‘‘Hey, little brother.’’ But her attention was fixed on Red-Boar. ‘‘Don’t kill him.’’

  Sudden tension crackled in the air between them. ‘‘It is my right and duty,’’ the older Nightkeeper said. ‘‘He is makol.’’

  ‘‘Lucius is my student, my responsibility.’’ She fixed him with a look. ‘‘And you gave him the codex.’’

  Strike rounded on Red-Boar. ‘‘You what?’’ Red-Boar dismissed the accusation. ‘‘Two months ago, and I told him to give it straight to Anna, who then mailed it back to you. I can only assume you returned it, and this idiot’’—he nudged the young man with his toe—‘‘snagged it once he realized what it was.’’

  ‘‘He had no idea what it was,’’ she hissed. ‘‘Fix him.’’

  ‘‘Why should I?’’ Red-Boar snapped, looking as much at Strike as Anna, as if he were accusing them both of having seriously skewed priorities.

  ‘‘Because we need Anna, and that’s the trade,’’ Strike said. ‘‘The student for her power added to ours during the equinox.’’

  She nodded as though she’d known from the start that would be the deal. ‘‘I’ll come with you, but I’m not promising to stay.’’

  ‘‘We’ll discuss that later.’’ Strike reached down and gathered Leah’s limp form to his chest. He turned to Red-Boar. ‘‘Can you save him?’’

  The mind-bender touched Lucius’s shoulder and frowned in concentration. Then he grimaced and nodded. ‘‘He didn’t finish reciting the spell, so the demon doesn’t have a full grasp on him yet. I should be able to push it back beyond the barrier and blank his memories.’’

  Strike nodded. ‘‘Do it. I’ll be back for you in ten minutes. ’’ Then he held out his hand to Anna. ‘‘Let’s go.’’

  And he brought his sister home.

  Anna might’ve left the Nightkeeper way of life without fanfare, but she returned with a bang when Strike materialized them a few feet above a tiled floor. They hovered for a second, like Road Runner going off a cliff, then dropped in the middle of a group twenty-somethings wearing the blue robes of Nightkeeper trainees.

  She hit hard, saw stars, and bit her tongue, and the blood added to the power humming in her veins. When she shifted, she saw a new mark on her arm, the itza’at seer’s mark. She’d gotten it on the pass through the barrier, whether she wanted it or not. But it wasn’t the mark, the pain, the power, or the trainees that grabbed her full attention. It was the nausea of teleport sickness. She’d never been a good traveler.

  ‘‘Oh, God.’’ She curled up on her side. ‘‘I think I’m going to be sick.’’

  ‘‘I’ve got you.’’ One of the blue robes—a strikingly tall blonde with blue eyes and a no-nonsense air—helped Anna up and steered her out the door. ‘‘Bathroom’s this way,’’ she said. ‘‘But you probably know that.’’

  That wasn’t nearly enough warning for Anna, because the moment she stepped outside the ceremonial chamber and got a good look at the hallway, she recognized the training compound from her childhood. From her nightmares.

  She clapped a hand across her mouth and bolted for the john, where she was miserably, wretchedly ill.

  Images pounded at her, some of them from memory, some of them from the sight. All of them bloody and terrible, spewing past the barriers she’d set in her mind long ago, which were breached in an instant by the power of the stars and the horror of being back in a place she’d thought had been destroyed long ago.

  When the heaves passed, leaving her dizzy and wrung-out, she stayed hunched over the bowl and pressed her face to the cool porcelain of the outer rim, not caring how gross that was. ‘‘I’m dreaming,’’ she said weakly. ‘‘I’m going to wake up in Austin, and Dick’ll either be there or he won’t, but even if he’s not that’s okay, because I’m not really here. I’m there, and this is all a dream.’’

  The blonde crouched down so they were at eye level. ‘‘I tried talking myself out of it, too. Didn’t work.’’ She held out a hand. ‘‘You want to get cleaned up?’’

  Anna stared at the other woman’s marked forearm. ‘‘Who are you?’’

  ‘‘Alexis Gray. You’re Anna, right?’’

  ‘‘That’s me,’’ Anna said faintly.

  ‘‘You’ve got his eyes,’’ Alexis said. ‘‘Or I suppose you’ve both got your father’s eyes.’’

  Anna went cold. ‘‘I’m nothing like him.’’

  ‘‘Oo-kay.’’ Alexis held up both hands. ‘‘Touched a nerve. Sorry.’’ She stood. ‘‘You want some time alone to decompress?’’

  ‘‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.’’

  ‘‘No harm done.’’ Alexis popped open the mirrored cabinet above the sink, pulled out a couple of hand towels and a travel-size bottle of Listerine, and offered them. ‘‘If you’re done hurling, we should probably get back out there.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. I need to tell Strike to have Red-Boar blank the codex from my intern, Neenie, too.’’ And how weird was it to say those names after all this time? Anna thought. She took the tiny mouthwash, saying, ‘‘This has Jox written all over it. No way Strike or Red-Boar thought to lay in guest toiletries.’’

  ‘‘Good call. Jox and the other winikin have the details nailed.’’

  Inhaling sharply, Anna swallowed a mouthful of Listerine and gagged. ‘‘What do you mean, ‘other winikin’? Jox was the last.’’

  ‘‘Long story. How about you get cleaned up and we’ll go find Strike? I’m sure he’ll do a better job explaining than I could.’’

  But Anna thought back to her arrival, and the others crowding the sacred chamber. They’d been bigger than average, gorgeous and young. As was Alexis. Her heart started hammering in her ears as she reached an impossible conclusion. ‘‘You’re Nightkeepers.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  Her legs went weak, and she whispered, ‘‘How?’’ Alexis pushed open the bathroom door. ‘‘Come on. I really don’t think I’m the person who should be telling you this.’’

  ‘‘Wait.’’ Anna grabbed her arm. ‘‘How many are there?’’

  Sympathy crept into the other woman’s eyes. ‘‘Counting the toddlers and the convict? You make it lucky thirteen.’’

  And the equinox was nine days away.

  PART IV

  AUTUMNAL EQUINOX

  A day of equally balanced night and day, containing the moment
when the center of the Sun is directly over the Earth’s equator. The first day of fall.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  September 13

  Lucius woke up with a hangover so big, there wasn’t a word sufficient to describe it. He rolled over in his bed and groaned, then tried to sit partway up. When that sent a lightning bolt through his skull, he flopped back down. ‘‘Ohhhh, crap. What the— Oh, crap.’’

  There was a reason—beyond the whole alcoholic-father -codependent-mother thing—that he rarely drank. He was pretty sure he was allergic. Which begged the question: What the hell had he been thinking? Had he been celebrating something good? Drowning something bad?

  Fuck, even thinking hurt. Okay, no more thinking.

  Food, he realized when his stomach grumbled. He needed food. Which didn’t make much sense if he was hungover, but figuring that out would’ve required thinking, so he just rolled with it.

  ‘‘Okay,’’ he mumbled between dry, cracked lips. ‘‘Step one. Get vertical.’’ When that more or less worked, he followed up with steps two—cross bedroom—and three—open door. He didn’t need to bother with step four—get dressed—because he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. They were streaked with rusty brown, like he’d gone mud wrestling or something, and there was a funky smell coming from somewhere, but his roomies were both off on field assignments, so he figured he could eat first, then clean himself up.

  Then he shuffled into the kitchen and stopped dead. There were more of the rust stains splashed everywhere, like something out of CSI.

  ‘‘Ohhh.’’ He looked down at his clothes as the stains started making way more sense. Then a fragment of memory broke through and he looked at his right hand, where a gaping cut was scabbed over with a big, nasty clot. ‘‘Fuck me.’’

  It didn’t start hurting until he looked at it. Then it hurt like the dickens.

  What the hell had gone down last night? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, just stood there staring from his hand to the kitchen and back, before the downstairs buzzer sounded, jolting him.