Nightkeepers notfp-1

by Jessica Andersen

  ‘‘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.

  ‘‘I’m not here,’’ he said, and headed in the opposite direction for a first-aid kit.

  The buzzer sounded again—three short, angry bursts. ‘‘Still not here.’’ He turned on the faucet and put his hand under the water. He hissed with pain as old blood swirled in the sink and ran down the drain, and when he used paper towels to blot the wound dry, they came away pinkish brown at first, then red.

  At least whoever it was got the message and stopped buzzing, he thought, debating between going for stitches and using one of those icky wound patches that bubbled up and looked seriously gross after a few days, but worked really well.

  There was a knock at the apartment door.

  Lucius’s breath whistled between his teeth and his head cleared some on a burst of adrenaline. Ignore it, he told himself. They’ll go away.

  ‘‘Hunt?’’ a pissed-off male voice shouted full-volume. ‘‘I know you’re in there.’’

  What had he done last night?

  ‘‘I’m not in here,’’ he said under his breath. ‘‘Go away.’’

  But there was another knock. Then the voice again, quieter this time, and sounding vaguely familiar. ‘‘Hunt, please. I need to talk to her.’’

  Her? Lucius took a quick look around, in case he’d missed there being someone else in the apartment, especially of the female variety. When a really, really bad thought occurred, he peeked in the other bedrooms, and let out a breath when he didn’t see anything—or anyone— out of place.

  There wasn’t another knock, but he could sense the other man leaning against the door. He heard a broken sigh and a whispered name. Anna.

  Oh, shit, Lucius thought when recognition jolted. It was the Dick. And he was looking for his wife. In a few seconds he was across the room and yanking open the door, his heart hammering far faster than it should’ve been. ‘‘Did something happen?’’

  First he saw the Dick, followed by the Dick’s fist headed toward his face.

  Then he saw stars.

  The next thing he saw was the cops.

  He watched in a numb blur as they confiscated the bloodstained stuff he’d slept in, photographed the shit out of the apartment, and took a couple of his steak knives into evidence, along with the dime bag they’d found in the fridge and a gun he hadn’t even known his freak-show roommate owned.

  The bad news—like he needed any more of it—was that the Dick knew most of the cops who covered the campus and surrounding area, so Lucius wasn’t getting too many favors. The good news was that the one cop Lucius did know happened to be the one in charge of detention and it was a slow day, so he got a cell to himself. Small favors and all that.

  He skipped his phone call. There was no way he was calling his parents until he knew the exact situation. And the person he normally would’ve called to bail him out— Anna—was apparently in the wind. His cautious optimism that she’d left her husband warred with worry. Where the hell was she?

  He supposed he could call Neenie, but what was she going to do? In a few hours or whatever, everything should get straightened out. All the blood in the kitchen was his—he was sure of that much, anyway. Even better, when the cops had asked the Dick why he’d been convinced his wife would be at Lucius’s apartment, he’d gone red-faced and refused to answer.

  Sure enough, a couple of hours after he’d been locked up, a skinny guy in jeans, a polo shirt, and sandals stopped outside Lucius’s cell. ‘‘Mr. Hunt?’’

  ‘‘You’re the public defender?’’ Lucius asked, looking him up and down and back again. ‘‘For real?’’

  ‘‘You want to get out of here, or would you rather wait for somebody in a suit?’’

  Lucius rose from the cot. ‘‘Nothing wrong with Tevas. I take it they figured out all the blood is mine?’’

  The guy gave him a look. ‘‘Please. Evidence only gets processed that quickly on TV. No, Professor Catori’s
wife called him. She’s fine.’’

  ‘‘Thank God.’’ Lucius exhaled far too much relief, earning himself a second look. ‘‘That she’s back, I mean. She’s my thesis adviser, and I’m supposed to defend soon, and—’’ And I’m babbling. I’ll shut up now.

  ‘‘I said she called,’’ the PD said, leading him out to a desk and watching while he signed off on his personal effects; such as they were. ‘‘I didn’t say she was back.’’

  Lucius held out until they got out onto the sidewalk before he said, ‘‘Where is she?’’

  He didn’t give a shit whether the PD thought the Dick was right about them having an affair. Something wasn’t right. Anna wouldn’t just up and disappear. She just wouldn’t.

  ‘‘New Mexico. Something about needing some time away, staying with a friend, et cetera, et cetera.’’ The PD handed Lucius another paper to sign, then stepped back. ‘‘You’re good. Charges dropped, very sorry, blah, blah.’’

  He turned and walked away, leaving Lucius with the distinct impression that the PD, too, was a friend—or more likely a former student—of the Dick’s. Anna and her hubby were both professors, yet the Dick had been ‘‘Professor Catori’’ and Anna had been ‘‘she.’’

  ‘‘Don’t overanalyze it,’’ he told himself aloud. ‘‘Just be glad you’re out. Go home, clean up, and get back to work.’’ Maybe with an aspirin or five added to the mix.

  Heading for the bus stop, he reminded himself that Anna was an adult—a married adult—and she didn’t owe him any explanations or schedule updates. But he couldn’t shake the sense that something monumental must’ve happened to send her to New Mex when she’d never mentioned the trip before. Maybe something connected to the Dick’s utter conviction that he’d find his wife at Lucius’s apartment. Damned if he knew what it might be.

  The bus arrived, and he climbed aboard. As he lifted his hand to grab an overhead anchor, he caught a glimpse of the slice on his palm and frowned. ‘‘Weird.’’

  The cut was almost completely healed.