Nightkeepers notfp-1

by Jessica Andersen

  And stopped dead at the sight of the girl, or rather the woman, standing in the open doorway. Sunlight spilled in behind her, gleaming on her dark, white-streaked hair and outlining her boy-slim, athletic body.

  She might have been wearing shorts, a tank, and sandals instead of jeans and a work shirt, but he knew her instantly even through the fog in his brain. The gut-punch was unmistakable.

  ‘‘Cara?’’

  She didn’t say anything, just let her gaze roam around his apartment, where surfboards and dive gear were piled atop depth charts and the odd artifact, competing for space amid what he liked to call creative clutter but suspected she would see as garbage.

  The brunette—who was still wearing his sheet, for chrissake—looked at Sven, brow furrowed. ‘‘This your girlfriend or something?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ he said quickly. ‘‘She’s—’’ Then he broke off, because he’d never been able to figure out what to call her. She wasn’t his sister, not really. She wasn’t his friend, either, not now, anyway. She was—

  ‘‘I’m his little sister,’’ she said, apparently not sharing an ounce of his dislike for the term. Focusing on him, she said, ‘‘Get dressed and pack your things. We’re leaving.’’

  Sven’s gut iced over. ‘‘Is something wrong with Carlos?’’

  ‘‘Yes and no.’’ She paused, and for a second he thought he saw a crack in the disdain she was projecting like plate armor. ‘‘Look, please don’t ask me to explain. Just pack.’’

  The brunette pouted and turned to him. ‘‘Are you going to let her talk to you like that?’’

  The look in Cara’s eyes said, You owe me.

  And the hell of it was, he did.

  Sven nodded slowly. ‘‘Yeah. I am.’’ He glanced at the brunette. ‘‘Get dressed and get out. Apparently I have a plane to catch.’’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘‘Nearly half of them have confirmed.’’ Strike went down the list. ‘‘We’ve got flight info for Alexis Gray, along with Coyote-Seven and Patience Lizbet, and their winikin , one of which is a substitute, so we can shift manpower over to Nathan Blackhawk when the time comes.’’

  He and Jox were sitting on lounge chairs out on the pool deck of the mansion, while the cleanup continued around them. They’d been at the training compound in New Mex for a week now, and after few days of DIY had sucked it up and used the Nightkeeper Fund to hire a couple of local crews to strip the junk and update the facilities. Granted, it would’ve been better to keep the place out of the public eye, but that just hadn’t been feasible. Besides, with the traffic they were expecting starting in the next few days, it would’ve been pretty tough to keep the place a secret for long.

  So far, none of the workers had mentioned the little detail that there hadn’t been any buildings in the out-of -the-way box canyon up until a week ago, yet the place clearly dated back to the turn of the twentieth century and showed a couple decades’ worth of neglect. Either the locals didn’t know about the compound’s appear-disappear -reappear routine, or they’d decided the generous pay made up for the freak factor.

  ‘‘Carlos is a good man,’’ Jox said. ‘‘A good winikin. He’ll help Blackhawk adjust.’’

  That had been the first bit of bad news after the initial buzz of learning about the survivors: At least one of their winikin hadn’t lived long.

  Jox’s list was twenty-four years old, garnered from notes dropped to a P.O. box in Shiprock, a few hundred miles north of the compound. As per the escape protocol drilled into each winikin at maturity, they’d left basic contact information and a confirmation word, and then gone underground and found their way into regular society, focusing on the child—or children—they’d saved. They’d modernized the young Nightkeepers’ names to make mainstreaming easier—the smoke, lizard, and harvester bloodlines had become the surnames Gray, Lizbet, and Farmer for the females. Among the males, Coyote-Seven had been shortened to Sven, while Blackhawk, White-Eagle, and Stone had been common enough surnames that they’d stayed as they were.

  Through the magic of Google and a private investigator named Carter, a friend of a friend of Jox’s who would cheerfully hack into the IRS database for a hefty fee, they’d found current addresses for almost all of the survivors. Unfortunately, they also learned that the winikin to the sole survivor of the hawk bloodline had succumbed to his wounds within a few days of escaping from the boluntiku. His charge had wound up in the foster system with no clue who—or what—he was. Carter had eventually turned up info indicating that Nathan Blackhawk had bounced around a bit until he wound up in Chicago, where he’d done a few years in juvie, and a few more in Greenville for grand theft auto. Since then, he seemed to have gone straight, moving to Denver and launching a small but successful computer gaming company.

  And he’d ducked every one of Strike’s calls.

  ‘‘I’m going to have to go there in person.’’ Strike grimaced and looked around. ‘‘There’s a shitload left to be done before this place is workable.’’

  They’d made some progress, granted. The kidney-shaped pool had been pumped, scrubbed, resealed, and filled, and the subcontractor had installed a new filter system and creepy-crawly pool cleaner. The pool area, a seventies-era cement deck that was pretty low on the priority list for updating, was surrounded by the mansion on three sides. The fourth side was open, with a view of the traditional ball court the Nightkeepers had used to blow off steam, and occasionally for ceremonial games. The two high parallel stone walls, with a single stone hoop set some twenty feet up on either side, had stood the test of time pretty well, as had the ‘‘real’’ ball courts in the Yucatán and Central America. Pretty much everything else in the training compound was in tough shape, though.

  The plumbing, electricals, and carpets in the mansion were being gutted and redone, and they’d made the decision to tear the barn down and start over with a steel-span building, rather than trying to salvage the sagging wreck. They would use the space not for horses and mules for pack trips into the backcountry, as before, but for what Jox was dubbing Magic 101—on the theory that it’d be best to unleash the untrained magi in a fireproof space.

  ‘‘Go to Denver,’’ Jox said, waving him off. ‘‘Admit it—you’re dying to get away from this place. Too many memories.’’

  ‘‘For all of us.’’ Strike couldn’t deny that he was edgy being back in the compound. There were ghosts in every room of every building, and around every corner. In the aftermath of the massacre he’d made it a point not to think about his life before, and over the years those memories had faded. Now, triggered by each sight and smell, they’d returned with a vengeance.

  His father had loved baseball. How had he forgotten that? Scarred-Jaguar had taught Strike to switch-hit, and had pounded fungoes for fielding practice. They’d watched the Rangers on TV, and took weekend trips twice a year for back-to-back games at Arlington Stadium.

  And his mother . . . his mother had been thin and elegant, with close-cropped dark hair and a core of steel, wearing a warrior’s mark in her own right. Yet she’d been the one to kiss his skinned knees and make them better. She’d nearly fainted at the sight of his scalp split open when he’d fallen from the pueblo ruins at the back of the compound, after trying to make it up to the walled-off kiva on a dare. How had he forgotten any of those things?

  ‘‘It hasn’t been fun for any of us,’’ Strike said. ‘‘Don’t think I haven’t seen you turn a funny color now and then, and Red-Boar . . . well, you know.’’

  The older Nightkeeper had withdrawn even more, shutting himself away in the four-room house behind the mansion where he’d lived with his family before the massacre. Rabbit lived in the second bedroom of the small cottage, helping with the demo when he felt like it, and spending the rest of the time sitting high up in the pueblo ruins with his iPod.

  The four of them were farther apart than they’d ever been before, which made Strike wonder how great a leader he was going to be if he couldn’t even manage
the team spirit of one winikin along with a zonked-out Nightkeeper and his half-blood son.

  ‘‘Your father was a good king,’’ Jox said, as if he knew Strike needed the reassurance. ‘‘In some ways you’re very like him; you walk the same, and the way you fill the room just by being in it, that’s the same. That’s genetics, and the blood-magic. But in other ways you’re not alike at all; you question yourself and others around you far more than he ever did, and you’re more a man of today than he was of his time. That’s environment, I think. Nature versus nurture. He was raised knowing every single day of his life who he was and where he fit within his people. He was taught to lead, and his warriors were taught to be led.’’

  Strike grimaced. ‘‘Not exactly the situation we’ve got now.’’

  ‘‘Blood tells,’’ Jox said. ‘‘You’re your father’s son. You’ll find a way.’’

  ‘‘I’d better, or none of this is going to matter in a few years. Or, hell, a few months.’’ There was no doubt in his mind that when the fall equinox came in just under eleven weeks, the ajaw-makol was going to try to bring a Banol Kax through the barrier, thus triggering the thirteenth prophecy by bringing a dark lord to earth in the final five years before the zero date.

  That was assuming they didn’t find a way to neutralize the creature first. Since they didn’t have an itza’at seer to track the evil, they’d had to improvise. He’d asked the investigator, Carter, to get all the background info possible on the man Leah had known as Zipacna, and his Survivor2012 group. According to the PI, the 2012ers hadn’t seen their leader since the solstice, and when Strike had teleported Red-Boar to their group’s head-quarters, neither of them had detected makol magic from within, suggesting that the bastard was in the wind.

  Carter was watching for Zipacna to reappear, and the PI was tracking bulk purchases of several rare ingredients necessary to the magic of the Banol Kax. Hopefully, one of those lines of investigation would lead them to the ajaw-makol.

  In the meantime, Strike had a fighting force to assemble.

  He said, ‘‘We don’t have arrival info for the eagle, stone, or harvester bloodlines, but I spoke with their winikin, who’ve promised to get their Nightkeepers here by the first of next month at the absolute latest . . . which is cutting it close.’’

  Although the barrier was most active during each solstice and equinox, other conjunctions could be used for ceremonies if necessary. The next one on the calendar was the aphelion, which fell, ironically, on the Fourth of July. Strike and Red-Boar were planning to use that day to jack in the new trainees and get them their bloodline marks, and their first taste of power. That’d give them a little over two months to cram in an entire childhood of magic theory before the next ceremonial day, the Venus conjunction, when they’d perform the talent ceremony that would give the newbies their talent marks and increase the Nightkeepers’ ranks from two to lucky thirteen.

  After the Venus conjunction, they would have a scant nine days until the fall equinox, when the ajaw-makol was most likely to make his move, and when the skyroad connecting the heavens and earth would once again open up, providing the Nightkeepers an opportunity to bring a god to earth and create a Godkeeper.

  Again, in theory.

  ‘‘The trainees will be here in time,’’ Jox said. ‘‘Their winikin won’t let you down.’’ His tone indicated that they’d better damn well not. He held out a hand. ‘‘Give me the list. I’ll make a few more calls and see about tracking down the stragglers.’’

  They hadn’t been able to contact the last two winikin. The star twins’ winikin wasn’t returning calls, and the serpent boy’s winikin was nowhere to be found.

  ‘‘Sounds like a plan.’’ Strike rose. ‘‘And do me a favor? See if you can get Rabbit interested in the construction projects. I don’t like how much time he’s spending by himself.’’

  ‘‘Like father, like son.’’ But Jox nodded. ‘‘I’ll see what I can do.’’

  ‘‘Thanks.’’ Strike paused. ‘‘I guess I’ve got a date in Denver, then.’’ Not like he was going to make an appointment. Nathan Blackhawk was in for a surprise.

  ‘‘Make sure that’s where you go.’’ Jox fixed him with a look. ‘‘No detours.’’

  ‘‘Shit.’’ Strike scowled at his winikin. ‘‘You sure you’re not an itza’at?’’

  ‘‘Doesn’t take a seer to know you’ve got a woman on your mind, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out which one. Remember, ‘The king’s duty is to the gods above all others, then to his people; all else comes after,’ ’’ the winikin said, quoting from the writs. He paused, then said, ‘‘Red-Boar and I talked about this some. His theory is that the dreams came from the barrier as it was reactivating. In the last few months before a mage hits puberty, the hormones go totally wonky. Since you didn’t get your talent mark back when you were a teenager, there’s a good chance all those hormones got packed into a few weeks once Zipacna’s sacrifices thinned the barrier enough that the magic started to leak through.’’

  ‘‘I’ve heard Red-Boar’s wet-dream theory,’’ Strike muttered. ‘‘That’s not what it was.’’

  ‘‘You’ve always had a thing for blue-eyed blondes with a bit of an edge to them. Is there any wonder that’s what your subconscious fixed on?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t see just any blue-eyed blonde. I saw Leah.’’

  ‘‘The mind can play tricks.’’ The winikin laid a hand on his shoulder, a fatherly gesture that irked the shit right out of him. ‘‘Five of the survivors are female, including the twins.’’

  Strike gritted his teeth. ‘‘Matchmaking, Jox?’’

  The winikin didn’t bother looking ashamed. ‘‘Matebonded Nightkeepers are stronger together than they are apart. You’d serve your people better to choose one of your own kind.’’

  Thoroughly annoyed, and halfway wishing his father had been a dogcatcher or something, Strike pushed himself to his feet. ‘‘I’ll call you from Denver.’’

  Nathan Blackhawk scowled as he scanned his laptop screen. Handheld computer sales were up, indicating that the gamers had latched on to the upgraded pod, which gave players near VR quality control over their characters. Problem was, the games themselves weren’t showing the same spike, whereas his competitors’ products were flying off the shelves.

  ‘‘Goddamn violent-ass kids,’’ he muttered under his breath, spinning in his chair and glaring at his office walls, which were painted the same glossy black as his furniture. ‘‘They’d rather blow shit up than use their brains.’’

  It didn’t escape him that he’d been exactly that sort of kid until a stint in juvie and a social worker who hadn’t taken ‘‘fuck off and die’’ as an answer had set him more or less straight. But it probably served him right for thinking he could change the thought process of an entire generation with the physics of extreme sports and a handful of quest sagas that contained far more actual history than your average LOTR rip-off.

  It’d taken balls—and admittedly a bit of bloodless disregard—to leave the software company that’d given him his start, promoting him to developer despite his lack of a formal degree. It’d taken even more testicular fortitude to hire a bunch of nobodies like himself and call the whole mess a software gaming company, but he’d made it work; for the first three years Hawk Enterprises had made obscene amounts of money selling the same sort of bloodthirsty pap the rest of the industry spewed out. When Nathan had started tweaking things a year ago, though, sales hadn’t kept up, and now the frigging profit-and-loss charts were looking grim.

  ‘‘Hey, boss?’’ A quick knock on the door frame followed Denjie’s hail. Before Nathan could answer—or not—the sandy-haired programmer, rotund and wearing tight black jeans, an obscene concert T-shirt, and electric blue-framed glasses, stuck his head through the door.

  Nate held up a hand before Den could start. ‘‘I know, I know. I’ll have a decision for you on the new blood’n’ -guts slasherfest by this afternoon.’’

&n
bsp; The programmer drew himself up to his full five-seven. ‘‘If you’re referring to EmoPunk III, then I’m not sure why there’s any question in your puny excuse for a brain. EP3 is going to be a freakin’ best seller.’’

  ‘‘It’s also freakin’ nasty, and guaranteed to curdle the gray matter of anyone stupid enough to play it.’’

  ‘‘Which is why it’s going to outsell the shit out of your pathetic Viking Warrior franchise, and do double the numbers of all the celebrity skateboarder VRs combined. But that’s not why I’m in here.’’ Den hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘‘Guy’s here to see you.’’

  Nate frowned. ‘‘What guy?’’

  ‘‘Dunno. Dark hair, cool tats. He buzzed from downstairs, said he had an appointment. I put him in the conference room.’’

  ‘‘I don’t have any—’’ Nate broke off as Den ducked out again, clearly not giving a shit whether or not the guy’s story was true. ‘‘Damn it.’’

  Nate knew he really ought to get a receptionist, someone who’d help him organize things and run interference. But he’d never bothered, mostly because their games were sold under the aegis of a bigger company, which meant that Hawk Enterprises flew pretty far under the radars of most gaming crazies, leaving them relatively unmolested.

  That, and the fact that he liked to do things his way, all the way.

  The bad news was that the lack of a receptionist meant he was sometimes ambushed by ambitious low-level developers, along with the occasional wacko who wanted to meet Hera, the stacked blond heroine from the Viking Warrior games. Not to mention that he got to personally field the weird-ass phone calls, like the one he’d gotten the week before from some guy who claimed to have information about Nate’s parents. Yeah, like he’d never heard that one before.

  The good news about having no receptionist, though, was that it left him free to ignore people until they went away. He seriously considered doing exactly that with the guy in the conference room, but since his other options seemed limited to P&L statements or going over the EP3 projections again, he climbed to his feet and headed for the conference room.