Anna avoided her eyes. “I’m not. I’m making a choice. I respect what Strike, you, and the others are doing, but I don’t believe in it anymore.”
“You don’t believe there’s going to be a war?” Lucius demanded. The question echoed back to their many debates on the subject of the Nightkeepers and the 2012 doomsday, which Anna had pretended to mock in an effort to keep him from looking too closely at the legends. Had she become convinced by her own arguments? Impossible.
She shook her head. “There’s going to be a war, no question about it. But I don’t believe that we can stop it. If we had the numbers and the skills . . . maybe. But a dozen magi? No. I’m sorry, but no. So I’ve decided that if I’ve only got another two and a half years to live, and there’s nothing I can do to change that fact, then I’d far rather spend the next thirty months living my life rather than chasing futile hope.”
Dull shock pounded through Lucius, alongside disillusionment. How could you? he wanted to demand. Anna had been his superior for the past decade-plus. She’d been his teacher, his mentor, his thesis adviser, his boss, and finally his slave- master. He had looked up to her. He’d harmlessly lusted after her, worried about her, and once he’d learned that she was one of the magi he’d spent a third of his life searching for, he’d practically worshiped her. But now . . . gods, now. How could he respect, never mind revere, someone who would willingly jettison the chance to make a difference?
But he knew her well enough to realize her emotions were already locked into her decision. So he went with logic. “According to the Dresden Codex, the Nightkeepers will need a seer during the final battle.”
“According to the codex, they’ll need Godkeepers and the Triad too. I don’t see either of those things happening.”
“They might.”
“They won’t.” Her eyes had gone hollow. “I wouldn’t do this if I had the faintest hope that we could change what’s going to happen. But do the math. There are too few of us. We’re cut off from the gods. We don’t have the prophecies or the spells we would need to defend the barrier, if we could even muster enough strength in numbers or magic.” She shook her head. “No. We can’t do it, and we’re making ourselves miserable trying.”
Low anger kindled in his gut. “You’re giving up on yourself.”
Her eyes flashed. “I’m making a choice.”
“A selfish one. You’d rather be playing house with the Dick than working your ass off like the rest of us.” She opened her mouth to fire something back, probably a reaction to his old nickname for her unlikable husband, or an accusation that he was just jealous. But that wasn’t why he was pissed. It was that she had the opportunity to be the sort of savior he’d always wanted to be, the mage he was trying to be . . . and she was just walking away from it. So he steamrolled over her response, saying, “Look, I don’t know exactly what happened to you the night of the massacre, what you saw in your visions. But think about it. . . . That night, the Banol Kax and their boluntiku killed—what—a thousand people? Try multiplying it by a million. Ten million. A hundred million. What do you think that’s going to look like?”
They didn’t know exactly what form the end-time would take. The Dresden Codex suggested a flood, while Aztec mythology called for fire. And what about the aftermath? Would there be one? The sixth-century Prophet Chilam Balam had talked about mankind turning away from machines, which suggested a massive technology loss. But would humanity survive or be destroyed entirely? Would the earth itself exist in the aftermath? The Xibalbans seemed to be banking on a shift in world order, with Iago intending to be at the top of the proverbial shitheap when everything settled out. The Banol Kax, on the other hand . . . who the hell knew what they were thinking? For all the Nightkeepers could guess, the end-time war would be akin to the Solstice Massacre, only on a global scale.
Anna blanched, but her eyes stayed steady on his. “Screw you.”
“Lucius,” Jade said in warning.
He ignored her, pressing, “How are you going to feel on that last day, when everything starts to go to shit, and you realize that maybe, just maybe, you could’ve helped stop it?”
“Then you believe the Nightkeepers are going to fail too.”
He bared his teeth. “Don’t put words in my mouth. And no, I don’t believe we’re going to fail.” He deliberately included himself in that “we.” “I do, however, believe that we’ve got a far better chance of success with you than without you.”
“Bullshit,” she said scornfully, choking on a derisive laugh. “How have I helped so far? I’ve had a couple of visions that have confused things more than they’ve clarified them, and at that, I haven’t had a vision in months.”
“Because you’re blocking them,” he pointed out, taking a guess and seeing the confirmation in her eyes.
She glared. “I forced Strike to let you live, even after you violated my space, stole my property, and generally acted like an asshole. Remember that the next time you want to poke me about my duty to the Nightkeepers and the end-time war. If I’d been adhering to the writs, I would’ve let them sacrifice you two years ago when you conjured a godsdamned makol!”
“Maybe you should have,” he said bluntly. “So far I’ve done more harm than good. But you know what? That just makes me more determined to get it right from here on out.”
Anna shook her head. “You’ve always wanted to be more; both of you have. Can’t you understand that I’ve always wanted to be less?” She addressed the question to Jade, seeking an ally.
Lucius started to answer, but Jade held up a hand. To Anna, she said, “Is that what you’re going to tell the gods? How about your ancestors?” When Anna sucked in a breath, Jade pushed harder. “What will you tell your father when you meet him in the spirit world?”
Anna’s expression darkened. “Given that I’m the only one of the three royal kids who hasn’t had a conversation with the old man’s nahwal, I’m not sure we’ll have much to talk about.”
“Your old man,” Lucius repeated softly. “Where have I heard that before?”
Her flinch was almost imperceptible, but it was there. And her voice was sharply defensive when she said, “That’s not the point. The point is that we can’t live for our parents’ goals. Sometimes we have to define our own. You guys understand that; I know you do.”
Jade nodded. “Sure. But this isn’t about your father. It’s about you being able to help save the world.”
Anna lifted her chin in a gesture he recognized as a member of the jaguar bloodline getting her stubborn on. “Not anymore it’s not.”
Lucius could see he wasn’t going to win this one. But who among them could? Strike, he thought. Maybe Jox. “We’re not going to tell the others that you’re quitting.” He indicated the polished crystal skull, gleaming softly amber on the desktop. “That’s what you’re saying by returning this, isn’t it? That you’re not coming back to Skywatch. Not ever.” Leaning in, he dropped his voice. “Think about it for a moment; really think about it. And trust me: From someone who’s been on the outside most of his life, it’s not a comfortable place to live.”
“It is if you’ve chosen it,” she fired back.
“Fine, then. Come back with us and tell them yourself.”
Her lips turned up at the corners in an utterly humorless smile, as though they’d finally gotten to the meat of things. Nudging the pendant a few centimeters closer to him on the desk, she said, “You owe me, Lucius.”
There it was, he realized. And the bitch of it was that he couldn’t say she was wrong. He owed her. Big-time. “You’re calling it all in . . . on this?”
“I am. I won’t be square with Strike and the others, I know. But I can at least leave things even between the two of us.” She rose and moved out from behind the desk, then reached down, grabbed his hands, and hauled him to his feet as she might have done before, in order to kick him back to his own office or out to the lab. Now, though, he towered over her, dwarfed her. And she kept hold of one of h
is hands once he was up, and stayed standing inside his personal space. Jade remained seated, watching with her counselor’s calm wrapped around her and faint panic at the back of her eyes.
Anna palmed a Swiss army knife, seemingly from nowhere. Lucius didn’t move, didn’t flinch as she scored a sharp stripe across his palm. Pain pinched and blood welled, but he didn’t feel any magic. All he felt was failure—his and hers.
“We don’t have to swear on blood,” he said. The ache spread through him as she blooded her own palm and he got that she really meant it. She wanted to leave the Nightkeepers behind. Or she wanted them to leave her behind; he wasn’t sure which was more accurate.
“We’re not swearing. I’m doing something I should’ve done a long time ago.” Clasping his bleeding hand in hers, she recited a string of words.
He caught a few, missed a few; he was far more used to working with glyphs than with speaking a language that had been dead for centuries. More, as she spoke, his head started spinning: a mad whirl of thoughts and blurred sight. He heard the words, glimpsed the fake antiquities, but they glommed together, tumbling around one another in a major Auntie Em moment. Pain slashed in his forearm—a wrenching sizzle that started at his marks and zigzagged up to his chest with a ripping, tearing sensation that left him hollow when it ended.
Jade lunged to her feet, reaching for him, but he held her off with an upraised palm, suddenly grokking what was going on. He yanked his hand away from Anna’s. “No,” he started. “Don’t—” But then he stopped, because he knew it was already done. “Fuck.” The world settled down around him, his vision coming clear as he flipped his arm and confirmed that the black slave mark was gone. He wasn’t bound to her anymore. Technically, he wasn’t bound to the Nightkeepers anymore, either. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did.”
His forearm now bore only the red hellmark, startling in its geometry, deadly in its coloration. “The quatrefoil’s not balanced anymore.” His heart thudded in his chest; his thoughts played demolition derby inside his head. What was this going to mean for his ability to tap the library? Something? Nothing? Was it an entirely moot point?
Jade moved up beside him, so they were facing Anna as a couple. No, he thought, not a couple. As partners. A team. She snapped, “That was a rotten thing to do without talking it through. For all we know, that was his only link to the magic. And you just took it.” She was so angry she was practically vibrating.
“It was mine to take.” Anna turned her palms up, not to indicate the gods, but rather saying, Not my problem . In doing that, she bared her right palm, where the sacrificial slice had already closed to a thin scab. Lucius’s palm, in contrast, still bled sluggishly.
“That sucks,” Jade snapped.
“That’s life.”
Lucius followed the exchange as if from a distance, through a cool numbness that began where the slave mark had been and spread throughout his body. Anna was a Nightkeeper who didn’t want the magic. He was a human who did. “The gods have a strange sense of balance,” he muttered.
“The gods are gone.” Anna held out her hand to shake, human-style. “And as of today, so am I.”
Knowing it was futile to argue further, that he didn’t have the strength to shift an entrenched jaguar on his own, he finally nodded. “Okay. Fine. Whatever. Have it your way.” He moved to scoop up the effigy.
“No, wait,” Anna said. He paused, hopeful. But she gestured to Jade. “That’s why I asked you to be here. I want you to wear it back to Skywatch. If it’s not being carried by a member of the jaguar bloodline, it’s enough that it’s being worn by a mage I consider a friend.” Her voice caught on the last word.
Lips pressed tightly together, Jade merely scooped up the effigy, draped the chain over her head, and tucked the sacred skull beneath her yellow polo, doing up the lower two buttons to conceal the priceless artifact. Taking her hand, Lucius headed for the door, aching with the knowledge that, unless Strike and Jox worked some major magic, it would probably be the last time he’d see Anna, who’d been a big part of his life for so long. When he had the panel open, his eye caught the laminated sign. What have you got to lose? When had the answer become “Everything”?
“Lucius,” Anna said.
He glanced back. “Yeah?”
“Good luck.” Her eyes shifted to Jade. “And to you. I wish . . . I wish I could be as brave and strong as you’re learning to be. Gods keep you both.”
Jade didn’t answer, but her eyes glittered with unshed tears. Lucius tipped his head. “Good-bye, Professor Catori.”
Out in the hallway, he tried to breathe through the numbness and the sense that the squat, dark building was collapsing inward around him. Jade’s eyes were stark, her face pale, but she said only, “Do you want to grab any of the stuff from your old office? She boxed most of the things you left behind.”
“Leave it,” he said curtly. “There’s nothing here I need.”
“You up for tracking down Rabbit?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do it.” In a way, he hoped the kid was up to something. Knowing Rabbit, it’d be guaranteed to take his mind off Anna’s defection, and the fact that Jade was wearing the crystal skull.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Jade couldn’t get either Rabbit or Myrinne on her cell, she and Lucius headed over to their summer sublet. The apartment proved to be the top floor of a detached garage. The main house was a good-size, brick-faced residential house with freshly painted white trim, ruthlessly shaped shrubs, and a perfectly trimmed lawn.
“Huh,” Lucius said. “Doesn’t look like either of their styles.” It was the first thing he’d said since they left the art history building. He’d just walked beside her, grim faced and stone silent.
Jade slid a glance over at him. The fierce tension that had gripped his body seemed to have eased slightly, but his expression still had all sorts of Keep Out signs plastered across it. She didn’t blame him; the past half hour had been a serious shock to her system, and she hadn’t had nearly the relationship with Anna that he’d had. Unconsciously, she touched the bulge beneath her shirt made by the skull effigy. She felt a faint hum of power coming from it, but not one that resonated with the way she usually experienced the magic. That confirmed what Anna had said about the skulls being bloodline- and seer-specific. She didn’t think it would affect her magic, or Lucius’s . . . at least, not directly. Indirectly, though, its presence was a heavy weight between them, as was the bare spot on his forearm where the slave mark had been. She didn’t know what Strike and the others were going to think about that. Heck, she didn’t know what she thought about it. All she knew was that her plan of talking to Lucius about the emotional component of the magic on their drive home wasn’t seeming like such a good idea now. He might be standing right next to her, but he’d never seemed farther away.
Hoping he just needed time to work things out in his head, she focused on the task at hand: finding Rabbit. And Lucius had a point on the digs. Although the relative isolation was consistent with Rabbit’s fierce need for distance from everyone but Myrinne, the suburban-USA surroundings and soccer-mom minivan in the driveway didn’t jibe. If they had just been normal students, Jade would have assumed it was a cost thing, but the Nightkeeper Fund had been set up to support an army of hundreds, if not thousands. It was beyond sufficient for the two dozen survivors. Heck, she’d heard Jox urging the kid to just buy a damn house rather than worry about a sublet. Granted, the winikin had followed that by muttering something about getting as much fire insurance as possible, but still.
So why the sublet?
“Can I help you?” A dark-haired woman nudged open the storm door of the main house with one foot. She wore sweats, was jiggling a swaddled baby in one arm, and had a why the hell did I sign up for this? look on her face. In the background, an older kid was screaming something about spaghetti.
Jade took a step toward her, smiling. “We’re friends of Rabbit’s. Are he and Myrinne a
round, do you know?”
“Sorry, I haven’t got a clue if they’re home. I saw them headed out this morning; don’t know if they came back or not.” The woman tilted her head. “They expecting you?”
“Not specifically.” Though Rabbit had to know Strike wouldn’t put up with being ignored for long, and would have seen her number pop up on caller ID just now.
“You can go up and knock. Be careful on the stairs; a couple of the treads are loose. They’ll be fixed by the end of next week, though.”
“Thanks.” Jade headed toward the garage with Lucius falling in beside her, back in silent mode. Something—instinct, maybe?—told her that the apartment was empty. She figured it couldn’t hurt to fake a knock. The woman had retreated back into the main house and shut the door, but Jade would’ve bet money she was watching through one of the curtained windows. At least Rabbit seemed to have landed in a decent living situation. The surveillance would, however, limit their options in terms of peeking through windows, trying to figure out what, if anything, he and Myrinne were up to.
On the way up, they discovered more than “a few” loose steps; the whole staircase groaned precariously under Lucius’s weight. “What do you want to bet they’ve been on the fix-it list for ‘the end of next week’ for a while now?” he asked, not seeming particularly worried either way.
“She should ask Rabbit to fix them.” Jade grinned. “Might be interesting to see what he’d come up with.” Though in all fairness, the in-Skywatch buzz said that the young, powerful mage had cleaned up his act in recent months. When they reached the landing, she motioned him to shield her with his body. “Stand there so she can’t see me.”
He obliged. “What’s your plan?”
“Working on it.” She knocked, but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get an answer. The place felt empty.
“Want me to kick it in?” He paused. “It’d make me feel better.”
Final Prophecy 04: Demonkeepers Page 23
