Final Prophecy 05 - Blood Spells (26 page)

In the absence of any real damage from the current quake, the new ghouls were rehashing the earlier quake atop a montage of film and still shots showing rescue efforts, stadiums turned into morgues, and tent cities of dispossessed survivors.
“Even though the epicenters of both the 1985 earthquake and today’s quake were located some 350 kilometers away, in the Pacific Ocean, Mexico City is particularly vulnerable to seismic activity because of its location atop a dry lake bed. The lake was filled during the expansion of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán, but the fill isn’t stable, creating a drumhead effect that amplifies low-frequency waves . . . like those of seismic activity.”

“Ten thousand dead,” she said to herself, not really realizing she’d said it aloud until the others fell silent.

Jox, who had taken a seat near Strike, said, “Some of the upper estimates were over fifty thousand fatalities. The Mexican government ordered a news blackout after the quake, so there’s no real confirmed number. Internationally, the general sense was that ten thousand was a low-end estimate.”

She couldn’t conceive of those numbers. Or rather, she could, and the thought of it tightened a fist around her heart. “We can’t let the next earthquake come,” she whispered. “People are going to die. Lots of people.” Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands. She looked at Brandt. “We have to stop it.”

He grimaced. “You said it yourself: The
etznab
spell needs more than the words.” He didn’t say that he wasn’t sure they had “more” just then. He didn’t need to.

Despair pricked, but she didn’t let herself give in to it. Instead, she reached into a pocket and pulled out the small, well-worn star deck. “These led me to the
etznab
spell. Maybe they’ll help us figure out what comes next.”

Realizing that the room had gone silent and she had become the center of attention, she looked around, flushing slightly. “Sorry. I’ll go—”

“Stay.” Lucius shoved a coffee table across to bump against her knees, making Jox wince at the scraping noise the hardwood made. “Show us how it works.”

“No, really. I’ll just—” She stopped herself. “Scratch that. Sure, I’ll show you.”

Knowing that her focus was scattered, she began with a prayer that defined the reading.
Please, gods
,
help me to help him earn the Triad magic.
That had to be her priority. After that . . . she didn’t know.

She shuffled the cards until they slid freely, then cut the deck three times—once for the past, once for the present, once for the future.

Setting the deck on the coffee table, then said, “Given the nature of the
etznab
spell, I’m going to use a spread called the ‘hall of mirrors.’”

She took the top three cards off the deck, then arranged them facedown in a triangle, with the top card at the lower left, the middle at the lower right, and the last forming the pinnacle of the two-dimensional pyramid. Then she tapped the lower left card. “This one is called the smoky mirror. It represents the shadow darkening my present state of being, making things unclear or asking to be revealed. The one next to it”—she touched the lower right card—“is the clear mirror. It offers truth, guidance, and vision. Finally, the card at the top shows me how to step through the mirror into self-awareness and reach an answer.”

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, centered herself, and tapped into her magic, which responded sluggishly. She kept working at it, though, seeking added power. Hearing the rustle of movement, she assumed the crowd was thinning. So she was startled when a hand touched her shoulder and her magic surged. She opened her eyes to find the magi gathered around the couch where she and Brandt were sitting. Sasha was touching her shoulder; she was connected to each of the others by a touch, forming a linked circle all the way around to Brandt.

He waited until she looked at him, until their eyes met. Then he extended his hand across the short gap separating them. His expression was all warrior, but she told herself that was the way it should be. This wasn’t about them; it was about the Triad magic and the war.

Still, her heart ached.
Oh, Brandt.

Nodding as much to herself as to any of the others, she took his hand and felt the team’s joined power swell through her. Without blood sacrifice it was a gentler magic, one that warmed rather than energized, centering her rather than pushing her beyond her normal limits.

“Okay.” She exhaled slowly. “Here we go.” She flipped the lower left card. A sense of inevitability skimmed through her at the sight of a burgundy and black glyph against a yellow sun sign. “This is Imix, the Primordial Mother. It’s the card I almost always draw in positions representing my needs.”

“Which means that the magic’s working,” Jade offered.

“I think so. The question is going to be whether I can correctly interpret the cards I pull. Getting Imix in the smoky-mirror position suggests that I need to reveal myself, or that in the past I’ve been my own worst enemy.”

“Which could apply to most of us,” Brandt pointed out.

Trying not to read too far into that, she turned over the card on the lower right, and jolted at the sight of a deep blue-black design with a starscape in the center and the sun behind it. “Lamat. Wow.”

“What is it?” Lucius pressed, seeming fascinated.

“I drew the same two cards in the same order the other day. That can’t be an accident.” Exhaling to settle the sudden churn of her stomach, she continued: “I think of Lamat as Brandt’s card.” She didn’t elaborate; there was no need to broadcast that it was his card because its shadow aspect was disconnection and a rigid adherence to dogma. “For his card to appear in the clear-mirror position means that he holds the answer we’re looking for. Which is a given, really, since he’s the only one who knows—consciously or not—why the gods won’t speak to him.”

“Could the Lamat card refer to anything else?” he asked. She couldn’t quite read his expression.

“Possibly. Maybe the third card will help clarify things.” She flipped the apex card, and her stomach sank at the sight of a jagged “X” symbol. “
Etznab.
Shit.” She shook her head as disappointment rolled through her. “We already know we need to step through the mirror. That’s what we’re
trying
to do, damn it. But what mirror? Where?” Looking up at the others, she made a helpless gesture. “I’m sorry. It’s a real reading—there’s no way I could accidentally pull a reading that says Brandt and I should step through the mirror. But it doesn’t tell us anything new.”

They all stared down at the triangle of cards for a long moment. She was surprised when Brandt was the one to break the silence. “What if it’s trying to tell you something new, but you’re not listening?” When her head snapped up, he held up his free hand. “Whoa. Not trying to start a fight. I’m just wondering whether you’re making assumptions here based on past readings. What if you—I don’t know—try to look at this with completely fresh eyes? No preconceptions.”

“Right. Because I’m my own worst enemy.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No. The cards did.” And as much as it sucked to admit it, he could be right. She stared down at the spread, trying to blank her mind and start over. “Okay. Imix is the mother figure, period. In the shadow position, it deals with issues of trust and revelation. I’m confident of that interpretation.” She’d been through the book so many times in the past week that she didn’t need to look anymore. She knew the aspects by heart. “But you might have a point about Lamat. Not everything about it connects to you. The shadow aspects are a perfect fit, but this isn’t a shadow card.” Thinking fast, she recalled, “In its light aspects, Lamat is the One Who Shows the Way. He’s a leader who seeks to harmonize disparate things. He’s connected to the rabbit, fire, and the path of destiny.” Light dawned; she turned to Strike. “Hell.
You’re
Lamat here. I would’ve thought you’d be Ahau, the king’s card, but you’re not, at least not in this spread. Here, you’re the clear mirror.”

“Keep going,” Brandt urged.

Thinking out loud, she said, “Strike holds the clarity I’m seeking. To reach it, I need to reveal myself. In doing so, I’ll step through—” She broke off as dismay rattled and her stomach knotted. “Oh.”
Oh, shit.
The cards had practically been beating her over the head with it, but she hadn’t seen it until now.

In the end, it was all about the hall of mirrors.

Brandt tightened his grip on her hand. “You’ve figured it out.” It wasn’t a question.

“I think so.” And in revealing herself to her king, she was going to have to out Brandt as a coconspirator, when the incident in question had been one of the few times he’d really come through for her at Skywatch.

Then again, she thought, revelation, like sacrifice, wasn’t supposed to be easy.

She released Brandt’s hand. As if that had been a signal, the other magi dropped their touch links. Taking a deep breath, she stood and faced Strike fully. “Brandt and I need to use the shrine.”

“The ceremonial chamber?” Strike said, referring to the sanctified room near the center of the mansion, where a glass roof let in the sun and stars, and the ashes of their ancestors provided a power sink. “Of course. No problem.”

“I’m not talking about the chamber. I’m talking about the shrine in your suite. The one with the torches, the
chac-mool
, and the obsidian mirror on the back wall.”

A mirror that, as she’d stood there, heart pounding with the fear of being discovered, had created the illusion of her being in a torchlit hall of mirrors instead of a tiny closet hidden within the royal suite.

Jox and Leah looked startled. The rest of the magi and
winikin
looked confused with the exception of Strike, whose expression darkened. “That’s a private room. Why would you—” He broke off, looking disgusted and rapidly heading for pissed-off territory. “My laptop. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Patience glanced over at the muted TV, which was back to cycling through the destructo-montage of images from the big quake.
Ten thousand dead,
she reminded herself.
Brandt can stop it from happening if he becomes the Triad mage.
And to do that, they needed access to the king’s hall of mirrors.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “Earlier this year, I snuck into your suite and searched it, looking for information on where Woody and Hannah were hiding with the twins. I figured you’d have it on a nonnetworked computer, so I kept looking until I found it.”

“In the shrine.” The words came from Jox, who was glaring at Strike. “Thanks for the fucking vote of confidence.”

Although the royal suite was off-limits to the others without invitation, the royal
winikin
had free access to Strike and Leah’s living space. He wouldn’t have gone into the mages-only shrine, though . . . which was why Strike had hidden the laptop there, removing the temptation. At least, that was what Patience had guessed when she had found the machine, and now it seemed that Jox had made the same leap.

Strike’s lips thinned. “I thought it would be easier that way. You took it so hard when Hannah left.”

The
winikin
drew himself up to his full height, which suddenly seemed much more than his actual five-nine or so. “Right. So you figured that I might jeopardize, not just her safety, but also that of Woody, who I respect the hell out of, along with Harry and Braden, who are the last Nightkeeper twins on the earth plane—by tracking her down and . . . what? Popping out for a visit?” Jox’s face had gone a dull, furious red. “And this was based on what? The way I turned my back on her during the massacre, and got you and Anna to safety, even though Hannah was
screaming my name
? Or how I
didn’t
go looking for her over the next two decades so I could focus on raising you kids and keeping Red-Boar as sane as possible?

“Or maybe it was because of the way I kept my distance from her once we were all back here, or how I lectured her, like a pious little twerp, on how us
winikin
—especially me—needed to put duty and responsibility ahead of personal feelings? Was that it?” The
winikin
was shaking, but his voice was razor sharp, his eyes cold. “Well, fuck you. I deserve better than that after everything I’ve done for your kingship and this fucking place.” He waved a hand around Skywatch, and maybe even the earth plane itself.

“Wait. Jox.” Strike held up a hand. “Please.”

“Screw that.” Jox looked around, expression edging toward wild, as if he’d just realized that he’d gone off on his king in front of his subjects, and contrary to everything the
winikin
stood for, he wasn’t sure if he gave a shit. “And screw this.” Wheeling, he stalked off.

“Jox!” Strike called, his voice caught somewhere between a royal command and a plea. The
winikin
didn’t look back as he headed down the hallway that led to the huge garage.

In the stunned silence that followed his exit, Patience realized she’d stopped breathing. She was afraid to keep looking at Strike, but couldn’t look away from the grief and guilt written on his face, knowing she had helped put it there.

Leah started after Jox. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“No,” Rabbit said. “Let me.” At her startled look, he lifted a shoulder. “I owe him. He put up with my old man for all those years so he could make sure things didn’t get too bad for me. He did that even after—” He broke off. “I just owe him. Okay?”

Leah held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. You go. But tell him . . . tell him we were trying to make things better, not worse.”

Rabbit’s lips twitched, but with zero humor. “Yeah. Been there.” He sketched a wave at Myrinne and disappeared in the
winikin
’s wake.

When he was gone, Strike fixed a glare on Patience. “I thought the cards said you were supposed to reveal yourself to your leader, not fuck him over.”