Nightkeepers notfp-1

by Jessica Andersen

  Still, Red-Boar was puffing lightly when he answered, ‘‘You said he’d left the States a month ago?’’

  ‘‘That’s what his assistant said.’’ Anna looked back in the direction of the cenote as faint waves of energy prickled across her skin. ‘‘You think he’s been dead that long?’’

  ‘‘Probably not. Critters would’ve gotten to him. I’d say a couple of days, tops.’’

  Meaning they could’ve saved him if they’d been faster.

  Red-Boar glanced over at her and shook his head. ‘‘Don’t beat yourself up. It doesn’t fix anything.’’

  ‘‘I knew him,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Don’t get the impression you liked him much.’’

  ‘‘Still,’’ she maintained. ‘‘Someone should grieve. He wasn’t a bad man, just ornery.’’

  He didn’t say another word, just bent to his work. Ten minutes later, he had a credible grave dug, deep enough to foil the scavengers, and long enough to take a body that was nearly six feet, even without the head.

  Anna frowned, looking at the corpse. How had she not noticed how big Ledbetter was before? He’d slouched, she remembered now, always hunched over some obscure text, ignoring all efforts at conversation. ‘‘He was a strange old man,’’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘‘Now he’s a dead old man. Let’s get him planted and search the area. Maybe the makol missed his campsite, or the ruin we’re looking for is nearby.’’

  Both seemed like pretty thin chances, but that was what they were down to these days.

  Steeling herself, Anna grabbed Ledbetter’s arms and lifted, helping Red-Boar angle the body toward the hole.

  ‘‘A little more to your left,’’ he ordered, and she obeyed.

  Loose dirt shifted beneath her foot and she wobbled, trying to get her balance, but lost her footing at the edge of the open grave.

  And fell with a screech.

  Red-Boar let go of the dead man’s ankles, lunged forward, and grabbed her around the waist. She knew she should let go but she didn’t move fast enough, and Ledbetter’s shirt ripped and came away in her hands.

  His body tumbled into the grave, leaving her standing in Red-Boar’s arms, holding a dead man’s shirt. Red-Boar’s pulse hammered against her spine as he held her, warm and strong and bare chested, but those sensations were lost as Anna’s heart stopped, simply stopped in her chest when she saw what Ledbetter’s shirt had hidden.

  Old, gnarled scar tissue covered the entirety of his inner right forearm, right where a Nightkeeper wore his marks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Shock gripped Anna, disbelief thrumming as she stared down into the grave and came to the only conclusion she could. ‘‘Ledbetter was a Nightkeeper.’’

  Despite the slouch, which had probably been designed to camouflage his true size, Ledbetter had been far too big to be a winikin, and there was no way the scar pattern was a coincidence.

  ‘‘Looks that way.’’ Red-Boar’s voice was nearly inflectionless.

  ‘‘He—’’ Anna broke off when her voice trembled. ‘‘Who was he?’’

  ‘‘I haven’t a clue.’’ He paused, then shrugged. ‘‘Doesn’t change the fact that we can’t take him with us and we can’t waste time. Let’s get him planted.’’

  He dropped into the grave and quickly searched the body for other marks, other evidence of who Ledbetter had been and how he’d survived the Solstice Massacre. Finding nothing, he arranged the body in a more natural position. And though Red-Boar was trying to pretend it didn’t matter, Anna could see that his shoulders were tight and that sadness shimmered in the air around him—a translucent hum of tears tinged red with anger.

  He boosted himself out of the grave, then paused and looked down at the dead man. Then he stripped a jade circlet from his upper arm and tossed it in beside the bundle. The carved armband landed on Ledbetter’s chest, just above his heart. An offering. A talisman to accompany the dead man through the underground river to Xibalba, and then out the other side to the sky.

  ‘‘Wasn’t that—’’ Anna broke off at Red-Boar’s sharp look.

  ‘‘It’s not a sacrifice if it doesn’t hurt.’’

  Anna wished she had something to give for the journey, but she wasn’t carrying anything appropriate. She touched the skull effigy, but let her hand drop without offering the precious yellow quartz. There was a line between sacrifice and stupidity. Still, her heart ached as he lifted the first shovelful of dirt and tossed it atop the carved jade.

  Oddly, the noise made her think of Dick. What was he doing now? What did he think about the phone message she’d left saying that she wanted to take a break from the mess their marriage had become?

  He hadn’t called her back, which was probably an answer in itself.

  ‘‘All the dead were accounted for,’’ Red-Boar said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘‘Jox checked. I was the only one who wasn’t a corpse.’’ He drove the shovel into the piled earth and heaved it into the hole, where it fell on Ledbetter’s body with a hollow, echoing sound.

  ‘‘Except for the winikin and the babies who got away.’’ She paused. ‘‘He didn’t tell you about them.’’

  ‘‘Because he doesn’t trust me. Never did.’’ Once a layer of soil covered the body, he used his booted feet to shove the bulk of the dirt back into place. ‘‘Don’t really blame him, either. Not after I beat the crap out of him and took off.’’

  Anna wanted to ask about those days, and about Rabbit’s mother, but she knew those things didn’t really matter anymore. What mattered was today. The next four years. So as Red-Boar tamped the last of the dirt into place, she asked, ‘‘Do you think Jox knew about Ledbetter? ’’

  ‘‘No. If he’d known there was another magic user out there, he would’ve called him to the compound when the barrier reactivated.’’ Red-Boar paused. ‘‘Which, along with the scars and the fact that the boluntiku didn’t get him during the massacre, begs the question of whether he was a user at all.’’

  ‘‘He must’ve been,’’ she argued. ‘‘Otherwise how did the ajaw-makol find him? And why now?’’

  ‘‘Might not’ve had anything to do with magic. Might’ve followed the same thought process you did and figured he’d take out our best source of info on Kulkulkan and the Godkeepers before we came looking for him. Question is, what would Ledbetter have told us if we’d found him with his head attached?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Anna said softly. ‘‘The real question is whether there are others like him.’’

  Red-Boar met her eyes, unblinking. ‘‘Why don’t you find out?’’

  Breath going thin because she didn’t want to try and fail, especially not in front of him, she hesitated a moment before she nodded. Kneeling, she pressed her palms into the soil covering Ledbetter’s body. Seeking the quartz effigy with her mind, she lightly jacked in, and then dropped her shields, opening herself to the impressions.

  She got darkness. Gray static. An indistinct sense of longing.

  Shaking her head, she climbed to her feet. ‘‘Nothing.’’

  ‘‘You need to practice more.’’

  ‘‘You need to step off,’’ she said with more weariness than heat. ‘‘Don’t assume I’m going to fall into line just because Strike did.’’

  ‘‘You have a responsibility to your bloodline.’’

  ‘‘I also have a responsibility to my husband and my students.’’ She glanced over at him. ‘‘Maybe that sounds small to you, but some of us are destined to do small things.’’

  ‘‘Not you. You would’ve made a good king.’’

  She stiffened at the suggestion—and the sudden spark of intensity behind it—but said only, ‘‘Thank the gods for patrilinear inheritance, then.’’

  They stared at each other for a moment in silence before Red-Boar turned away. He said a prayer for the dead in the old language, then palmed his ceremonial knife to prick his elbow, which was one of the most honored autoletting sites. He handed over the blad
e without a word and Anna did the same, and they let their blood drip down onto the fresh grave.

  ‘‘Safe journey, stranger,’’ she whispered.

  When it was done, they smoothed the disturbed earth above the sinkhole, then split up to search for Ledbetter’s campsite. They could’ve searched together, might have been safer that way, but they both needed the distance. Traveling together had been bad enough. Sharing an experience like burying Ledbetter had been far worse.

  Moving into the thicker growth beyond the clearing, she touched her effigy and sent out a faint questioning thread, not jacking in fully, but tapping the power and asking it to guide her to where Ledbetter had been. In theory. In practice her subconscious was blocking the hell out of her sight. And who could blame it? The last time she’d had a full-fledged vision, she’d shouted Lucius’s name in Dick’s ear.

  Branches scratched her face and caught at her clothes as she pushed her way deeper into the rain forest, thorny fingers grabbing at her, begging for attention. Where have you been? the undergrowth seemed to say. Where are you going?

  When she heard the words a second time and magic touched her skin, she stopped, wondering if she’d imagined it. ‘‘I can hear you,’’ she said softly. ‘‘What do you want?’’

  She never in a million years expected a response.

  But she got one.

  The figure of a man appeared in front of her, coalescing out of the humid air. He was taller than she, but stick-thin and wrinkled, with obsidian eyes that had no whites.

  Anna gasped and backpedaled, snagged her heel on a root, overbalanced, and fell on her ass. She froze there, her heart pounding as she gaped up at the figure, and pain seared the skin between her breasts where the effigy rested.

  A nahwal. On earth.

  Impossible.

  But when she blinked and looked again, it was still there. Then it turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  ‘‘No!’’ She scrambled to her feet, pulse racing. ‘‘Come back!’’

  There was movement up ahead, a flash of motion that left the foliage undisturbed. Head spinning with power and desperation and a strange sense of shifted reality, Anna followed on shaky legs, running deeper and deeper into the forest along an ancient path.

  Where was—There! Power rippled along her skin and she saw another flash of motion as the nahwal passed into a low cleft in the earth. Anna followed, flying along the path and ducking through the cave without hesitation, only briefly registering the carved lintel and square walls of a temple. Two steps into the cave, she was plunged into darkness.

  Four steps in, the world dropped out from beneath her and she fell, screaming. She hit hard and her head banged against rock. Pain flared and pressure snapped tight in her chest, and for a second she thought she was flying. Then she thought she was drowning. Then burning.

  Then there was nothing but blackness around her, inside her. The darkness lasted for minutes, maybe hours before she felt a hand grip hers, lending solidity to the world around her, and heard a voice that called her back from the edge.

  ‘‘Gods help us.’’ His harsh whisper roused her, though she wasn’t capable of more than an answering moan. The world spun around her, made of blackness and pain.

  ‘‘Sleepy,’’ she whispered, the word coming out as little more than a puff of air. Lassitude cocooned her, warming her until even the pain seemed friendly rather than raw.

  Red-Boar didn’t answer. She heard the click of him flipping open his satellite phone, heard a bitter curse. ‘‘No signal.’’ Then he was leaning over her, touching her gently, though she could barely feel it. ‘‘Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here.’’

  He helped her sit up. That was when the nausea hit.

  Her vision kicked back in as she doubled over, retching. She saw too-bright light filtering in from outside, saw Red-Boar’s forearm clamped across her torso, beneath her breasts, holding her upright as she gagged on bile and little else. The world slewed, but when she sagged down again, reaching for the ground and the blessed unconsciousness of sleep, he wrestled her to her feet, holding on to her forearms just beneath her elbows. ‘‘Anna,’’ he snapped. ‘‘I need you to stay with me.’’

  Closing her eyes against the painful glare from outside, she sucked in a deep breath, trying to settle the heaves. That was when she smelled blood. Lots of it.

  Opening her eyes, she blinked to clear the spots that danced before her. Then she realized the spots were real—spatters of blood on the stone floor she’d been lying on, and on the carved walls nearby. Even some on a small pile of camping equipment tucked into a corner, behind a statue she thought she recognized as the goddess Ixchel. They were in a temple of some sort, she realized, though she didn’t remember finding a temple. Come to think of it, she didn’t remember anything after she’d ducked into a low-hanging cave mouth in pursuit of—

  Everything froze within her.

  ‘‘I saw a nahwal,’’ she whispered. ‘‘I followed him.’’

  ‘‘Hold your arms over your head,’’ Red-Boar ordered, ignoring her. When she did as she was told, he moved away from her and started tearing strips from a man’s checkered shirt. It was Ledbetter’s, she realized. They were at his campsite. But what—

  ‘‘Here.’’ Red-Boar took the hands she’d crossed over her head, bringing them down to eye level. ‘‘This is going to hurt.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ She didn’t get it at first, but the moment she thought about it, really thought about it, she knew what she’d done. ‘‘Oh, no. I didn’t. Please tell me I didn’t.’’

  She yanked her hands away from him and looked at her wrists. Bad idea. Gaping slashes crisscrossed the skin between her hands and her marks, leaking blood. ‘‘I didn’t,’’ she whispered. But she had.

  Wrist cutting was the most extreme form of autosacrifice practiced by the ancient Nightkeepers, one intended to bring a warrior as close to death as possible, in the hopes that he—or she—would return with a message from the gods. That assumed, of course, that he or she didn’t die from loss of blood.

  Red-Boar took her hands and began to bind her wounds with the makeshift bandages. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

  ‘‘How bad is it?’’ Anna asked through dry-feeling lips.

  ‘‘Ugly but surface on the left, deeper on the right. You got a vein on that side.’’ He finished tying off the second set of bandages, then crossed her arms over her chest with her hands just beneath her chin, and used a loop of cloth to form a makeshift sling that went behind her neck and connected one hand to the other, allowing her some freedom of motion while keeping her wrists higher than her heart.

  His dark eyes locked on her with unfamiliar intensity. ‘‘Call your brother.’’

  Strike could zap to their position and bring them home. They’d planned for him to do just that twelve hours from now.

  Which would be too late.

  Anna closed her eyes and concentrated, but got nothing. She shook her throbbing head as ravenous hunger surged alongside the nausea. ‘‘I’m tapped out.’’ She’d used up her magical energies, but doing what? She’d sacrificed herself for a message; that much was clear. But she didn’t remember getting a message, didn’t remember anything after she’d run into the cave after the nahwal.

  ‘‘The satellite phone’s no good—I’m not sure if it’s the signal, the battery, the system, or what.’’ His throat worked when he swallowed. He locked eyes with her. ‘‘Can you walk?’’

  She shook her head. ‘‘You go. You’ll get to satellite range or another phone faster if I’m not with you.’’

  ‘‘No way,’’ he said flatly. ‘‘Not after what just happened. The . . . thing you saw, whatever it was, could come back.’’

  She shivered at the thought, and at the strange sense of longing it brought. Would that be so bad? something whispered inside her. Gray-green lassitude stole over her, making her want to lie down and nap. Dream.

  ‘‘Anna!’’ Red-Boar sh
ook her, snapping her back to painful reality. ‘‘Can. You. Walk?’’

  She whimpered, wanting to sleep, but nodded jerkily. ‘‘I’ll try.’’

  ‘‘Good enough.’’ He combined the contents of both their packs, jettisoning all but the absolute necessities, then shouldered his bag along with Ledbetter’s duffel. At her look, he shook his head. ‘‘I didn’t shake out his underwear, but nothing jumped out at me.’’ He looked around at the temple they were in. ‘‘This isn’t the temple we’re looking for. The information Strike wants may have died with Ledbetter.’’

  Or else it’s inside me. Anna frowned, trying to find a message amid the mush her brain had become. She got a faint sense of copan and grief, but nothing more. And she was tired. So very tired.

  ‘‘Anna.’’ Red-Boar shook her awake once again, his touch more gentle this time, his dark eyes worried. ‘‘Come on. We need to move.’’

  She nodded numbly and followed him out, followed him along the machete-hacked trail until her entire world was concentrated in the center of his back, where she fixed her eyes and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. She stumbled and fell, but righted herself and forged on. Stumbled and fell again, and this time couldn’t get up.

  Sleep, the voices told her. Stay with us.

  Then strong arms gathered her up, lifting her. And the world slipped away.

  Leah was tucked in next to Strike on the sofa in the great room of the mansion, reading another of Ambrose Ledbetter’s journal articles on the Pyramid of Kulkulkan at Chichén Itzá, when the landline phone rang.

  ‘‘Jox?’’ Strike called in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘‘Got it.’’

  Leah glanced over. ‘‘There’s a phone right beside you, you know. You could’ve answered.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, but that’s why I pay him the big bucks.’’ She snorted. ‘‘Please.’’ Jox might not be on her buddy list, but she wasn’t backing down on the winikin-are-people -too soapbox. Before she could say more, though, Jox stuck his head through the kitchen pass, his face sheet white. ‘‘Hit the speaker. We’ve got a problem.’’