Which was bad enough. Worse was stepping out into the hallway to find Jox standing there, arms crossed, expression thunderous.
‘‘Don’t start.’’ Strike locked the storeroom door with an old-fashioned padlock and stuck the key in his back pocket. Then he fixed his winikin with a look. ‘‘I want your word that she stays put.’’
Jox’s face creased. ‘‘Think about what you’re doing. Please.’’
‘‘I know exactly what I’m doing. Your word.’’ Strike’s chest went tight at the knowledge that this could be the breaking point of his relationship with his winikin, too. Dropping his voice, he said, ‘‘I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t believe. Please.’’
‘‘Your father believed in his course, too.’’
‘‘Your word. Or I lock you in there with her.’’
Jox tipped his head in the barest of nods. ‘‘You have my word. And my disappointment.’’
‘‘Noted.’’ Strike turned on his heel and headed for the stairs, feeling as if the whole world were against him, and not entirely sure he gave a shit.
When Leah awoke, for a moment she thought it was a new day, that she’d somehow made it through the equinox. Then she got a good look around and remembered what had happened in the bedroom. From there, she could easily guess where she’d wound up. Locked in the freaking cellar.
‘‘Goddamn it!’’ She launched herself off the folding cot and hurled herself at the door. ‘‘Strike! Don’t do this!’’
She grabbed the knob, twisted it, and gave the heavy panel a serious hip check.
And went flying out into the hall.
She stopped, stunned, standing in a dimly lit hallway, chest heaving while her brain scrambled to catch up. The door wasn’t locked. Yet Strike had clearly set the room up as her cell . . . which meant someone else had let her out. And she could guess who’d done it.
‘‘Thank you, Jox,’’ she said under her breath, though there was a bite of sarcasm to the words, because they both knew he’d done it so she could kill herself.
Fine, she said as she headed up the stairs as quietly as she could, keeping a sharp ear for any movement up ahead. But I’m not going out alone. If she had to die, she was damn well taking Zipacna with her.
He was going to be at the sacred chamber that evening—it was a given. Strike and the others planned to arrive two hours before the equinox, when the secret door leading down to the hidden tunnels opened up.
Well, she was betting on Zipacna being earlier than that. And she was going to be waiting when he did. Carter had it all set for her—her plane tickets were waiting at the airport, and the weapons and jade-tips she’d paid too much to have smuggled across the border were waiting in a storage facility near Chichén Itzá. She just needed a change of clothes and her passport and she was good to go.
That is, until she, snagged her cell phone, and found a text message waiting for her, sent from an unfamiliar number.
Do you understand yet that the Nightkeepers must kill you to set their god free? Meet me in Pueblo Bonito if you want to live. And the bastard had the balls to sign it, Love, Vince, though he hadn’t used Vince’s phone.
Anger flared alongside adrenaline, and Leah bared her teeth in a triumphant smile. Apparently Zipacna was looking for her, too. Good. That’d save her the trip to Mexico.
Now all she had to do was make sure they both got dead before the zero hour.
Strike knelt on the footprint mat in the sacred chamber that’d been his parents’, pressed his knife-scored hands to the chac-mool where he’d loved Leah the night before, and bowed his head in prayer.
A dull ache thumped at the back of his skull, drumming with his heartbeat. The barrier was thinning—he could feel it in the anger that curled inside him, dark and tempting, and in the heat that flowed in his blood.
‘‘Gods help me make the right choice,’’ he said, hoping like hell they were listening. ‘‘Help me to know the difference between what I want to do and what I ought to do.’’ Those were the right words, the proper ones. But they weren’t at all what was in his heart, and knowing it, knowing he was in serious trouble, he said, ‘‘Kulkulkan. Creator god. There’s got to be a way to save you both. Tell me how. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.’’
For a moment there was nothing. Then there was a flicker in his peripheral vision. Another. His attention snapped to the obsidian mirror above the altar, where torchlight reflected in strange patterns. Stranger patterns, he realized, than they’d been making before.
‘‘Please,’’ he whispered, and felt the anger stir within him. The power.
The reflected flames stirred. Intertwined. Formed a shape, then a scene, and all of a sudden he was looking at the grad student’s apartment, only not as he’d seen it, but a scene from before his arrival, when the idiot was reading from the codex fragment, his lips moving with the ancient words.
Then the fire picture was gone, and the flames were only flames.
Strike blinked. Blinked again.
And got it. It was the damn transition spell.
‘‘It’s the same spell,’’ he said aloud. ‘‘The makol, the gods. Same transition spell.’’ That was why Leah had wound up hooked to Kulkulkan at the solstice—Zipacna had enacted the transition spell to make himself an ajaw-makol , and in doing so had opened not only the passage to Xibalba, but the skyroad as well.
It was the same. Fucking. Spell. What mattered was the orientation of the user, good versus evil. Only they didn’t have the spell, he realized. Lucius had burned it.
‘‘Damn it!’’ He slammed his palms on the altar and pushed away. Then he froze.
Maybe they did have the spell. Red-Boar had wiped the guy’s memories, which meant he’d experienced them. He’d heard the spell. Odds were, he’d filed it—the brain of a mind-bender was a strange, convoluted place.
Question was, would he give it up?
‘‘Only one way to find out.’’ Strike strode from the royal suite, combat boots thudding as the thick bedroom carpet gave way to the tiled hallway. He hesitated near the stairs going down to the basement, but knew he should stay the hell away from Leah just now. The Nightkeepers were leaving in an hour; they’d be back after the equinox. That’d be soon enough to let her out and try to make amends.
Gods willing.
His heart ached with what he’d been forced to do to her, and with the fear that there wouldn’t be an ‘‘after’’ for them. But he set all that aside—or tried to—burying it deep as he strode out the back to Red-Boar’s cottage and slammed through the door without knocking. ‘‘I need you to—’’
He broke off because Red-Boar wasn’t in his usual spot at the kitchen table. Rabbit sat there instead, his hoodie pulled way down, his shoulders hunched.
‘‘Where’s your father?’’
Rabbit didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice broke. ‘‘Kuyubal-mak.’’
Strike stiffened. ‘‘What did you do that needs forgiving? ’’
‘‘I unlocked the storeroom.’’
Everything inside Strike went cold, and he slapped at his back pocket reflexively, finding the padlock key still there. ‘‘How?’’
‘‘He told me not to tell you I can telekine, too.’’ The teen looked up at Strike, his hood falling back to reveal tear-reddened eyes. ‘‘He had me text her cell, too, and tell her to meet him up at Bonito. He said he didn’t want to do it here, after everything that’s already happened.’’
This time Strike didn’t try to fight the rage. ‘‘Do what?’’ he grated out, though he already knew.
Rabbit gulped miserably. ‘‘Kill her.’’
The landscape near Pueblo Bonito was harshly beautiful, and dotted with the remains of soaring stone buildings erected in the first millennium by the Chacoans. Like the Maya, they had been great astronomers and architects. And, like the Maya, theirs had been an incredibly complex civilization that had flourished for hundreds of years—and then vanished within a few decades.
She hoped to hell it was because if she had access to the magic as the equinox approached, her chances of killing the makol were that much better.
Although Pueblo Bonito was a national park, and had its own visitors’ center up the road, the ruin itself was deserted. Which she figured was a good thing—witnesses would be a problem with what she was going to have to do next.
Trying really hard to think of it as a tactical exercise rather than the suicide mission it needed to be, she loaded her weapons belt from the knapsack, racking the MACs she’d snagged from the armory and making sure her knives were close at hand for the head-and-heart deal. Then she sat for a second, knowing that once she got out of the Jeep there was no turning back.
Closing her eyes, she sought the mental ghosts that were her constant companions. Matty. Nick. The man she’d known as Vince was gone now, dispelled by the knowledge that he’d been part of Zipacna’s elaborate setup. But the thought of her parents joined the memories of her brother and partner. Strike was there, too, heat existing alongside grief. She knew he’d never forgive her for what she was about to do, but she couldn’t stand by and watch him gamble the world on the slim chance that his crazy plan would work. He risked dooming the world with his stubbornness, and she’d be damned if she let him do it.
‘‘This is the only way,’’ she said, her mouth gone dry with dread.
Then, knowing there was no place for second thoughts where she was going, she focused on the dead, on the ghosts. On the people Zipacna had killed, what he’d done to them. And though she had gotten the lightness of the god, she found her own anger within, and fanned it to a flame. When she was good and pissed, and carrying a cold, murderous rage that she hoped would see her through Zipacna’s extermination and then her own, she got out of the Jeep and slammed the door.
The ruins were spread out in front of her, several acres of walls and doorways, of square rooms and sunken circular kivas connected by mazelike passageways. There was no sign of life save for the cry of a hawk high above.
‘‘You want me to come and get you?’’ she muttered, pulling the MACs so she held one in each hand and felt like a serious badass. ‘‘Then you’ve got it, because ready or not, here I come.’’
She wasn’t wearing body armor and didn’t bother to stick to cover because she knew she had one advantage: Zipacna needed her alive through the equinox. She, on the other hand, needed his ass dead. Thinking herself on the better end of the deal—for the moment, anyway— she set out.
She was three steps from the Jeep when the echoing crack of a gunshot rang out. She heard the whine-thwap of the bullet hit, felt the slap of impact. Then blood bloomed low on her shoulder, just above her right breast. She screamed and grabbed for the wound as she dove for cover, slamming to the ground behind a low wall.
Then she scrambled up, braced one of her pistols with her uninjured hand, and returned fire, aiming low near a crumbling wall where she saw a flash of motion, a swirl of brown cloth, and a familiar sharp-edged profile.
Not Zipacna, she realized. Red-Boar.
Betrayal roared up within her. The bastard had set her up, no doubt guessing what Strike meant to do and deciding it’d be better if she died sooner rather than later. Rage twisted through her—at Red-Boar for trying to kill her, at herself for not thinking clearly and guessing that the text message had been too conveniently timed. The rage bumped up against a building pressure at the back of her skull, and the contact sparked with golden light. With magic.
Her powers were definitely coming back online with the approach of the equinox, but they wouldn’t do her a damn bit of good under the circumstances. She couldn’t kill Red-Boar. Strike needed the older Nightkeeper, needed his power and his knowledge—probably more than he needed her, when she came down to it.
She had to get out of there, but she needed to leave the brown-robed bastard alive. Screaming a curse, she unloaded a full clip over Red-Boar’s head and started running back toward the Jeep. The text message had been a setup, which meant Zipacna wasn’t there, wasn’t looking for her. He was down south, preparing for the equinox. She needed to get to the airport, needed to—
Thunder boomed, and Zipacna appeared in front of her in a swirl of purple-black mist, flanked on either side by two other makol. They slammed to the ground between her and the Jeep. Heart lunging into her throat, Leah skidded to a stop and tried to backpedal. She turned the MACs on them but got only the click of empty chambers. Before she could grab a spare clip, before she could do anything but scream, Zipacna grabbed her. He grinned horribly, his mismatched eyes glowing green. ‘‘You shouldn’t have gone beyond the Nightkeepers’ wards if you didn’t want me to find you, baby.’’
"No!" she screamed, and turned one of the MACs on herself, knowing she couldn’t let herself be taken, couldn’t let them keep her alive through nightfall.
She pulled the trigger. Got a click. Still empty.
Red-Boar’s weapon chattered. Zipacna cursed and turned so the bullets plowed into his flesh rather than hers. He snapped, ‘‘Delay the Nightkeeper.’’ His men scattered, taking potshots toward Red-Boar as they ran.
Then Zipacna tightened his grip on Leah. Power surged around them.
And everything went purple-black.
‘‘No!’’ Strike landed running, heedless of the rattle of automatic weapons, his entire being focused on the sight of Leah covered in blood and struggling in the ajawmakol ’s grip as power whipped and the transport magic took hold. ‘‘NO!’’ he shouted, and flung himself toward their disappearing figures . . .
And landed on his face in the sand, his outstretched hands clutching nothing.
Bullets whined and automatic fire barked, the impact marks walking toward him as two lesser makol fired on him from the shelter of a small stone-walled room.
‘‘Stay down!’’ Red-Boar shouted, and lobbed a jade-packed grenade toward the makol’s shelter. It detonated seconds later, and the gunfire ceased.
Strike didn’t stop to process. He was on his feet and in the room with the two bleeding, shrapnel-stung makol in an instant. He got one by the throat and the other by the scruff and smashed their heads together so hard their glowing green eyes winked out simultaneously. Then he got his knife off his belt and sank the blade in the first one’s chest, carving deep until he could shove his hand in there and rip out the fucker’s heart.
Glory surged through him. Rage. Red-gold light. And for a second, as he held the makol’s heart aloft, he felt like a god.
He did the other one’s heart, then both heads, and roared victory when the bastards puffed to nothingness. Then he sagged and took two shuddering breaths as Red-Boar’s footsteps approached, moving fast.
Leah, he thought, his heart tearing in his chest. Gods, Leah.
Straightening, he grabbed Red-Boar by the throat, spun, and slammed the traitor into the nearest stone wall, hard enough that rocks tumbled and broke free. ‘‘Why?’’ he grated, fury twisting inside him. Despair. ‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Don’t play a bigger fool than you already are,’’ the older man spat, his voice rasping against the choke hold. ‘‘I’m trying to stop you from making the worst mistake of your life.’’
‘‘No.’’ Strike tightened his grip as betrayal and killing rage washing his vision red. ‘‘You’re punishing me for my father’s choices.’’
But Red-Boar’s breath rattled in his constricted throat. ‘‘At least he made his choices. You’re acting like a spoiled brat, sitting around and waiting for a godsdamned miracle.’’
‘‘I’m—’’ But Strike broke off when the accusation resonated too close to what Leah had said to him that morning, when she’d called him an arrogant prince who wanted everything his way. Was that really what was goin
g on? No, he thought. That wasn’t him, wasn’t the man he wanted to be.
But maybe it was what the darkness inside him had made him become, he thought, loosening his fingers and letting Red-Boar slide down the wall.
Kulkulkan’s influence had shaded Leah’s brother toward easy living and self-justification. Was that so different from what his most trusted advisers were warning him against now? Or was that explanation in itself too easy? Was it more comfortable to blame the darkness on the god than himself?
In the end it didn’t matter where it came from, he realized. Because he knew what he had to do about it. He owed it to his people to give them a ruler, owed it to Leah to make choices not just for them in the moment, but for the hope of a future.
It’s time, his father’s voice whispered in his mind, though he couldn’t have said whether it was a message or a memory. But either way, the whisper was right. It was time. Avoiding the scepter hadn’t stopped the prophesied events from coming any more than avoiding Leah had stopped him from falling for her. And turning away from his people now would only cause more destruction.
He was his father’s son, which meant more than a fondness for dreams. It meant the blood of kings ran through his veins, and the duty, the responsibility wasn’t his to set aside.
It was only his to take.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Leah swam in and out of consciousness, sick and sore and feverish, her brain fuzzed with drugs. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction before her vision went red-gold and blurry, but she didn’t need to see that far to know where she was. The stone slab beneath her, the echoes, and the hum of power told her everything she needed to know.
She was back where it’d all started—strapped to the chac-mool altar in the ritual chamber that guarded the intersection of the earth, sky, and underworld.
Worse, she was alive, and so was Zipacna. And the clock was ticking.
Eventually her fever broke, or the drugs wore off, or both. Her brain cleared and the pain lessened, and she was able to take stock. She was still dressed in her combat clothes, but the weapons belt was gone. That wasn’t a surprise, but it was definitely a problem. Without the jade-tips and knives, she’d be powerless against the ajaw-makol, even if she did manage to escape. The spell was no good without a knife, and even at that it was going to be a long shot.
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