The word for ‘‘leader’’ or ‘‘king’’ in the old tongue rocked Strike back. ‘‘You know?’’
‘‘What do you think?’’ Mendez uncrossed his wrists, shoved up a sleeve, and offered his forearm, holding it near the light so Strike could see the serpent bloodline glyph, along with the warrior and another, unfamiliar mark. ‘‘Kinda cool how it’s working now, after all these years.’’
Shock jolted through Strike. ‘‘How did—’’
‘‘The gods showed me the way.’’ Mendez snapped his fingers, and a green glow ignited from the tip of his index finger, curled up into the darkness, then guttered and winked out.
In its wake, magic rippled on the air. Power.
Impossible, Strike thought. The winikin were sworn not to teach the magic outside the training compound. Yet Mendez knew the old language and the glyphs. If his winikin had broken those dicta, what others might he have ignored?
‘‘Let’s just say Louis pointed me in the right direction, ’’ Mendez said, as though Strike had spoken his thoughts. He shot his sleeves, so the marks were once again covered. ‘‘And don’t bother hauling him up on charges or anything. His sanity checked out a few years ago.’’ He circled a finger at his temple. ‘‘Last I knew, he was in the Parker House of Nuts.’’ He paused. ‘‘Dude was bonkers. Kept babbling on about the end of the world.’’
‘‘He was right,’’ Strike said.
‘‘I know.’’ Mendez grinned with zero humor. ‘‘Thing is, I don’t figure I owe humanity much of anything, and I sure as hell don’t owe you. Unless, of course, you’re offering something in return for my services.’’ Another snap, another flame, and though Strike could manage something similar, the color worried him.
Nightkeeper flame was yellow or red. Green and purple were the colors of the Banol Kax and the makol, but he didn’t get that sense off Mendez, either; it was as though he had dark tendencies, but hadn’t yet chosen a side.
Strike had a feeling that when he did, it was going to mean trouble. He didn’t really want this guy in the compound, but he didn’t want to fight him, either. And thirteen was their magic number. There had to be a way to make it fly, because he couldn’t walk away from one of the surviving Nightkeepers. ‘‘Come with me,’’ he said finally. ‘‘We’ll work something out.’’
Mendez snorted. ‘‘Here’s how it’s going to work. You take care of the cops and the ass-pain bounty hunter bitch they’ve got tracking me, and I’ll take a look at your setup. If I like what I see, I’ll stay and let you convince me to fight on your team. If not, I’ll give you a chance to buy the spellbook off me.’’
A nasty feeling twisted down Strike’s spine alongside a jolt of adrenaline. Did Mendez somehow have one of the lost spellbooks? How? That should’ve been impossible. ‘‘Where’s the book now?’’ he asked, as if he’d known about it all along.
‘‘Safe,’’ Mendez replied. ‘‘So why don’t you—’’
‘‘Sorry to interrupt,’’ a new, female voice said unexpectedly. ‘‘But I’m interrupting.’’ There was a zap-hiss, and an arc of blue light flared behind Mendez. The big man bowed, going rigid on a silent scream, and then collapsed.
‘‘Freeze!’’ Strike shouted, levering the MAC as a smaller figure crouched over Mendez’s prostrate form. When the figure shifted, he saw black leather and high boots, and recognized the hottie from the alley. ‘‘Back off before I put a round in you,’’ he said.
Dual clicks sounded next to his head, one in each ear, as two huge dudes came up behind him on damn silent feet with damn big guns. ‘‘Don’t be stupid,’’ Leftmost Dude said. ‘‘She doesn’t want to hurt you. Said you’re too pretty to mess up, and the car is a hoot.’’
Gods, Strike thought on a groan. Saved by a minivan. ‘‘Okay.’’ He held up the MAC and opened his fingers in the universal gesture of no harm, no foul. ‘‘Maybe we can make a deal.’’
‘‘I’m the bounty hunter the cops have tracking Snake here,’’ the hottie said without looking up. ‘‘Trust me, with what they’re offering, you can’t afford me.’’
Mendez groaned and sucked in a harsh, rattling breath. ‘‘Bitch.’’
‘‘Back atcha,’’ she said, and hit the button on her Taser, sending another fifty thousand volts or so shooting through his system.
When he was finished twitching, she gestured to her men. ‘‘Let’s get this meat loaded on the wagon and get the hell out of here.’’ She crossed to Strike, stopping just shy of him. ‘‘Can I give you a word of advice? Whatever you’re looking for, find an alternative. Snake here is . . .’’ She trailed off, as if searching for exactly the right word. ‘‘Let’s just say that of all the seriously screwed-up people I deal with on a daily basis, he is by far the most damaged. He’s like a rottweiler that had a really bad puppyhood . . . you can gentle it all you want, but when it comes down to it, the thing’s going to be just as likely to bite your arm off as wag its tail.’’
Strike looked down at the unconscious man. ‘‘Shit.’’
‘‘Couldn’t have said it better myself.’’ She turned away. ‘‘Stay cool, minivan man.’’
‘‘Wait!’’
She turned back. ‘‘What? You want to kiss him good-bye or something?’’
Despite everything, Strike found himself grinning, enjoying her. ‘‘No. Your name. For reasons I can’t even begin to decipher, I’d like to know your name.’’
She sketched a bow. ‘‘Reece Montana at your service. Now, bugger off.’’
And just like that, the bounty hunter—and the thirteenth Nightkeeper—were gone.
‘‘Well, shit,’’ Strike said, and headed back for the minivan. It was sitting right where he’d left it, and still had all four tires in good working order. He’d be paying to have the thing repainted to cover up a particularly creative suggestion spray-painted across the back door, but what the hell. It could’ve been worse, given the neighborhood.
He checked his voice mail once he was on the road, and found one from Jox. The message was a simple, ‘‘Call me,’’ but the winikin’s tone was off.
A bad feeling tightened Strike’s gut as he phoned home and punched it to speaker. ‘‘What’s wrong?’’ he said the moment Jox picked up.
‘‘Carter found the twins,’’ the winikin reported, his voice flat with grief. ‘‘They’re dead.’’
Strike yanked the wheel and sent the soccer-mobile screeching across the highway, ignoring the blare of horns behind him. When he was stopped at an angle across the breakdown lane, he slapped the minivan into park. Sat and breathed. ‘‘Gods damn it.’’
‘‘They were in New Jersey, headed along Skyline Drive the night of the solstice,’’ Jox said. ‘‘They went off the road near midnight.’’
Which probably meant the barrier had reached out to them just like it’d grabbed him, Strike thought. The twin link would’ve made them more susceptible to the lure, and more powerful once they were jacked in. But fucking bad luck—destiny, whatever—had put one of them behind the wheel next to a sheer drop at exactly the wrong moment. And now the Nightkeepers were down to eleven. Ten, if he counted out Mendez.
Heart heavy, Strike said something reassuring to Jox, who sounded like he was taking it way hard, and rang off. Cranking the minivan into drive, he pulled back into traffic and headed for the car rental place. Once he’d dropped off the keys, he found a secluded spot for the ’port magic. He didn’t particularly want to go back to the training compound, but he had a duty, damn it. It was like the king’s writ said: His first duty was to the gods and his people, then to mankind and his family. His own needs barely made the list.
Closing his eyes, he touched the barrier for a boost of power and imagined his mental turbines coming to life. Once he had enough magic to work with, he thought of home, and a yellow travel thread shimmered into existence in front of him. He reached out and touched it, felt the power sing through him. When it peaked, he sent himself into the thread, into the barrier.
Except there shouldn’t have been any grass. For that matter, it was dark out, when New Mex would’ve still had light, and the air was moist and verdant rather than desert dry.
Ergo, he wasn’t in New Mex.
Heart hammering, Strike looked around. He’d zapped in at the front of a three-story house that towered over its ground-level neighbors on either side, which were nearly hidden behind tall, leafy hedges, as though the owner of the three-story liked privacy. The street out front was lined with palm trees, and the car parked by the front door had a sleek and somewhat dated silhouette.
He’d bet his next meal she was a ’67 Mustang named Peggy Sue. He’d thought of home and his powers had brought him, not to a place, but to a person.
To Leah.
Leah knew she was dreaming, but she couldn’t be bothered to wake up when the dream was so much better than reality.
Reality was a roomful of cops looking at her sideways. Reality was Nick’s empty desk chair across from hers, and a cardboard box where her partner’s things should have been. Reality was the memorial service, and the funeral, and Selina asking her to say something at the service when she couldn’t, she just couldn’t. And reality was Matty’s memory fading bit by bit.
Basically, reality sucked.
The dream, though . . . Wow, and hello, baby. Where have you been all my life?
In tonight’s installment of her fantasy life, her dream warrior stood in the shadows of the attic eaves, staring at her. He was tall and dark, with high, slashing cheekbones, piercing eyes, and the aristocratic line of a thin beard. He was wearing black combat pants and boots and a white oxford, and held himself like a leader, like he didn’t take crap from anyone. She appreciated that in a guy, as long as he didn’t take it too far into Neanderthal territory. But this was her dream, wasn’t it? Her rules, her desires.
She lay on the futon mattress up in the attic, where she’d slept since Nick’s death. In her bedroom she’d felt hemmed in, restless. Up here, she could stretch out beneath the wide skylight and feel the starlight on her skin.
Naked, she turned on her side and let the light sheet fall away, baring herself to her dream lover, needing to let loose of the grim control she kept on herself during the day so her recent frustrations wouldn’t have her lashing out at the people around her. But here, with him, those frustrations turned to pure heat. A strange hum built in her bones, in her ears, in the air around her, and a flush climbed her skin, warming her, prickling when her pores opened and her neurons flared to life, as though they’d been dead numb all day and were just now awakening. The moon caught the edge of the skylight, dimming all but the brightest stars, and the tiny points of light called to her, sending heat throbbing beneath her skin.
Daring him, she crooked a finger. ‘‘Come here.’’
He moved out of the shadows into the moonlight, his steps soundless on the wide attic floorboards. Slowly, so slowly, he dropped to his knees beside the mattress and bent over her, but didn’t touch.
‘‘Leah,’’ he whispered, his voice rasping across her name like a caress. Like a prayer.
‘‘I don’t know your name,’’ she said softly, lifting a hand to touch his jaw, and finding it warm and solid and masculine beneath her dream fingertips.
‘‘You don’t need to.’’ Something flickered in his eyes—sorrow, perhaps, or guilt.
She wanted to argue, wanted his name, but that small desire didn’t seem as important as the larger roar of lust brought on by the feel of his strong jaw against her palm, and the rasp of his close-clipped beard as he leaned over her, leaned into her. And touched his lips to hers.
The kiss was a whisper at first, though not a question. It was more like a test, though she didn’t know if he was challenging himself or her.
Heat came quickly, digging her with sharp claws of need, and she arched up to him, offering. Demanding. And the moment of hesitation was gone.
He came down on her with a muttered oath, and then his hands were everywhere—touching and stroking and shaping her. She arched into him, gasping as pleasure flared, hard and hot. The intensity of his touch and her response would’ve been too much, too soon if it hadn’t been for the edge of tenderness in the way his tongue touched hers when she opened her mouth, strong and sure, but coaxing a response rather than demanding it.
There was no need for either a coax or a demand, though. She was right there with him. Hell, she was powering past him, ahead of him, waiting for him to catch up.
Then again, this was her dream. Why shouldn’t she be in charge?
As the kiss spiraled hotter, harder, she plastered herself against him, feeling his strength through his clothing, the nap of the fabric an exquisite torture against her bare, sensitized skin. He stiffened and hissed out a breath as she hooked his shirt from his waistband and slid her hands beneath, walking her fingernails across the hard ridges of his abs and lingering on the trail of rough, masculine hair leading down. But when she made a move for his belt he caught her wrists in one of his hands and broke the kiss to say, ‘‘Relax. This is about you, not me.’’
Of course it is, she thought. It’s my dream.
Bathed in the warmth of desire, she lay back at his urging and spread her legs, offering herself to the night sky and feeling the weight of his eyes, the pressure of a thousand stars burning down from above.
Heat roared within her when they kissed. Need hammered when he touched her breasts, which were heavy and ached with desire. The world spun when he touched her with his clever fingers, his agile tongue; then she felt the rasp of his beard against the skin of her belly, and lower. Then he was tonguing her, nipping at her sensitized flesh and making her squirm, making the heat spiral harder, making the world contract inward until there was nothing but the two of them and the dream haze.
She turned toward him, lifting and bending one leg to tilt herself more fully open to him, and her breath came in short, staccato bursts as tension coiled within, tighter and tighter still until she couldn’t breathe. She buried her fingers in his hair and urged him up her body, so they were pressed chest-to-chest, tangled in each other, wrapped around each other. She tasted herself on his lips, tasted him, his need and frustrated desire, and though he’d said it was about her she wanted it to be about the two of them. Together.
When she opened her eyes to say as much, she found his eyes open as well, found herself caught in their depths. Then he touched her where his mouth had just been, slipped two fingers inside her, and set a hard, fast rhythm that mimicked the beat of her heart, and matched the stroke of his tongue against hers.
Gasping, she strained against him as a rush of sensation built, coalescing around his fingers, around them both. Then the universe exploded. Golden light flared in her mind, in her body, warming her, pleasuring her. She cried out and clung to him as the orgasm gripped her, rolled over her, washed through her.
When it was done, the world spun around her and she clung to him still, his solid body her only anchor in an existence suddenly gone unsteady. She stirred against him, opened her eyes to look at him and found them still in her attic, still in each other’s arms.
Suddenly, the fantasy seemed awfully real. The dreams had never taken her this far before, never continued through completion to the aftermath. They’d never left her feeling both satisfied and terribly alone.
‘‘This is real, isn’t it?’’ she whispered, not sure whether the huge emotion that welled up inside her was hope or fear.
His cobalt eyes went sharp with regret, and he shook his head slightly. ‘‘No. It’s a dream. It’s all a dream.’’
He touched his lips to her forehead and said something, two words in a language she didn’t
know, but which sounded familiar somehow. But before she could ask how she knew the sounds, gray-green mist crept to the edges of her vision, cocooning her in warm lassitude.
She fought the pull, fought a sudden, overwhelming sleepiness. ‘‘Wait! What—’’
‘‘Sleep,’’ he said softly. ‘‘This is all just a dream.’’
He cut off her protest with a kiss. And as she slid into the kiss, she tumbled off the edge to sleep, taking with her the power of his touch and the safety of his arms.
Strike was hard and sore, and his body burned for release, for completion, but he denied both and turned Leah in his arms, fitting her up against him so they were nestled together back-to-front. Then he pulled the light sheet off the floor to cover them both.
The sleep spell wasn’t as comprehensive as Red-Boar’s mind-wipe, but she’d already thought she was dreaming. She’d wake and think of him as a pleasant fantasy, which would have to be enough.
He knew he should feel guilty, and maybe that would come later. For now, there was only the satisfaction of holding her in his arms. She fit against him perfectly, small enough that he could tuck her head beneath his chin, tough enough that she could hold her own against him, against the makol.
Deep down inside him there was a faint warning tug, a twitch of unease that his connection to her was too strong to be anything but meant by the fates, by the gods.
‘‘No,’’ he said aloud. He wanted—needed—to claim something for himself. A moment of private humanity. His feelings for Leah, which he was careful not to examine too closely, weren’t part of his being a Nightkeeper or the son of the king. Maybe they had been at first, but not anymore. Now, the attraction was about his being a man and her being a woman.
Jox was right—he’d always had a thing for edgy blondes. More, he respected the loyalty to family and friends that had driven her after Zipacna. Her need to fight for what she believed in. She was a cop, a protector in her own right, one who didn’t let herself get pushed around even in situations far beyond her understanding. Yet at the same time, she was all woman in her responses, in her unabashed enjoyment of her own body, and his.
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