Final Prophecy 05 - Blood Spells (39 page)

In the plain, unadorned room lit by a trio of torches, a single Aztec
makol
stood guard, facing the doorway but unaware of her invisible self. Behind him, Hannah sat with her back against the wall. The boys were plastered up against her, one on each side. Hannah had lost her bandanna, they were all dirty and bedraggled, and tear tracks marked all three faces.

But they were alive. Intact.
Thank the gods.

Her heart started beating again, flaring relief through her veins. She must have gasped or made some small noise, because the
makol
snapped to attention, barking a string of unfamiliar words as it activated its buzz sword. But it looked around wildly, unable to pinpoint her as she skirted the room and got behind it.

Patience saw Hannah and the boys flinch away from the
makol
’s agitation, saw their confusion, their weary fear. Her chest hurt; her eyes stung. She wanted to hold them, touch them, tell them she was there and everything was going to be okay. Instead, she slapped a shield spell over them, and shouted, “Stay down!”

The second the shield spell took hold, the
makol
spun, locking onto her magic and launching its blades in a smooth, deadly move.

She dropped and rolled, still invisible, and called a fireball, launching it almost before it fully formed.

The glowing red-orange energy pulse slammed into the creature’s chest and detonated, instantly wreathing the thing’s body in flames.

It screamed in pain, a too-human sound that made her heart clutch, not because her enemy was suffering, but because her sons were seeing it.

Wanting it over with, she slammed a second fireball into the thing’s head, vaporizing half its skull with grim purpose.
Head and heart.
When it toppled, she followed it down and said the banishment spell.

The
makol
crumbled to greasy ash.

And she was alone with her sons and
winikin
.

Hannah’s eye was locked on the air above the ash pile, slightly to the left of where she actually was. The boys were both staring straight at her, brows furrowed, as if they could sense her but weren’t sure of their perceptions.

“Patience?” Hannah asked, the single word carrying wary hope.

“Yes.” The word was almost a sob as she dropped the invisibility spell and rose to her feet. She had meant to cross the short distance between them, but once she was up, her legs refused to carry her.

She could only stare as Braden uncoiled himself, his eyes getting very big as his mouth shaped the most beautiful word in the world. “Mommy?” The first one didn’t have any sound, but when she hiccuped on a sob and nodded, he shouted it, “Mommy!”

He launched himself at her. Harry was a split second behind him.

She had just enough presence of mind to drop the shield spell that had protected them, and cast a new one across the doorway, sealing them in.

Then they hit her one-two, like automatic fire, driving her back under the impact, and she couldn’t think about anything but them. Finally. In her arms. Their whippet-lean bodies were an alien contrast to the toddler sturdiness she remembered, yet her heart knew them instantly.

Her legs gave out and she thumped inelegantly to her knees, then gathered them close and pressed their tear-streaked faces against hers, their bodies into hers. She was shaking—maybe all three of them were. Then Hannah dropped down opposite her, and they clung together.

Thank you, gods. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
She wasn’t sure if she thought the words or said them, didn’t care, cared only that she was holding her sons again, and being held by her
winikin
.

For a long, shuddering moment, she let herself be at peace.

Then, knowing the fight wasn’t over yet, she broke the huddle and drew, back, keeping contact with Hannah and the boys as she did, trying to take in the reality of them, the small changes.

She had only seen Hannah bandanna-less a few times in her life, and up close the scarred flesh and partly covered socket were discomfiting, but the strangeness lasted only a few seconds before Patience’s brain readjusted and she saw only her
winikin
. The one constant in her life.

“Is Woody okay?” Harry asked. It was the first sound he had made since her arrival.

“Your daddy and I got him away from Iago,” she said. Which was the truth, but what was the situation now? Her pulse accelerated once more.

She tried her earpiece but got only static, which left her with precious few options, all of them bad. Letting her warrior’s talent lead the way, she got to her feet. “Come on. We’re going to hide further up the tunnel.”

The pyramid’s collapse had blocked it as an escape route, but anything was better than staying where Iago expected them to be.

“Will Daddy be able to find us?” asked Braden, his blue eyes wide and worried.

“Always.” She squeezed their joined hands, healed deep inside by the feeling of the small fingers in hers. “He wanted me to tell you that he loves you very much.”

“Is he coming soon?”

“As soon as he and the others are finished with Iago and the rest of the
makol
,” she said aloud. But when her eyes met Hannah’s, she saw her own fear reflected back.

Worse, she thought she felt a faint vibration beneath her feet. She didn’t know if it came from fighting magic or a miniquake. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But as they headed up the tunnel, carrying a couple of the torches, moving away from the fight and toward the cave-in, she sent a whisper of thought toward the
jun tan
:
We’re okay. But you guys need to hurry.

The solstice was coming, and with it, Cabrakan.

 

Rabbit battled through his growing exhaustion and kept the fireballs coming, because the fucking
makol
kept coming too.

Any other time, he would’ve been totally jacked by the way Myrinne stood right beside him, expression fierce as she ran through her clips and knocked the green-eyed bastards back. Now, though, he was more panicked than turned on, because he could barely protect himself, never mind her.

His head was splitting, partly because of the power he’d pulled to cloak their initial attack, and partly because he hadn’t been able to get out of Iago’s mind fast enough when he caught on. The bastard had tried to slam the door shut, and Rabbit had only gotten out because Myrinne had jammed the circlet back on him, cutting the connection before it was too late. The pain of severing the link had been excruciating, though. The agony lingered, sapping his strength.

“Get that one,” she said, pointing at a downed
makol
that was barely moving. “I’ll hold the others off.” She fired off two short bursts, one on each autopistol. Standing hipshot in her combat gear, with her hair in a long, dark ponytail pulled through the back of a black ball cap, she looked kick-ass sexy. And she fit with the team, after all this time.

He snapped off a sluggish-feeling salute. “Yes, ma’am!”

Reversing his gore-spattered knife, he went for the incapacitated
makol
, steeling himself for the messy chore of finishing it off before it managed to regenerate. He crouched down by the bullet-riddled body, set his knife to its neck, and—

“Rabbit,” Strike bellowed, “
move
!”

Obeying without stopping to look or think, Rabbit flung himself to the side, rolled, and came up with an autopistol in one hand, his knife in the other. He spun back at the sound of Myrinne firing and screaming, not in pain, but in anger.

She was unloading her clips at Iago, who was bearing down on him with gruesome fury. The Xibalban had regenerated to the point of having eyes, nose, and mouth, but his flesh was waxy and fire-ravaged, and his luminous green eyes were bright with rage.

Myrinne’s bullets stopped short of him and pinged to the ground, the jade tips deadened by the
ajaw-makol
’s powerful shield magic. Strike launched a fireball and Michael followed with a thin stream of
muk
, but both bounced. The others were trying to get through to help, but the
makol
fought fiercely and with purpose: They were gradually bunching the Nightkeepers up against the altar, away from the doorways, trapping them together

In the split second it took Rabbit to see and react, Iago slammed a layer of dark shield magic around the two of them, shutting them off from the others.

Howling with rage and desperation, Rabbit buried his old man’s knife in Iago’s armpit, where the body armor provided thin entry. The knife came out slick with blood and Iago hunched, snarling. But he didn’t back down, didn’t slow down. He grabbed Rabbit’s knife hand by the wrist and bore it back, twisting hard.

Wrenching agony flared, first in his arm and then in his head, as the touch link allowed Iago to override the protection of the jade circlet.

Little fucker,
the Xibalban hissed inside Rabbit’s skull.
Hope you enjoyed sneaking in here, because that’s the last trick you’ll ever play on me.

Agony flared from the place where Iago gripped his wrist, his blood-wet palm centered over the hellmark. Rabbit shrieked and bowed as something tore inside him, not muscle, flesh, or skin, but on the level of his consciousness, his magic, his very soul.

The Xibalban’s waxy, burn-ravaged lips pulled back from heat-cracked teeth and his eyes changed, going from featureless luminosity to a hint of irises and pupils, all in glowing green.

In them, Rabbit saw Iago. He saw the god-king Moctezuma. And he saw his own death.

Then, past Iago’s shoulder, through the greasy swirl of dark shield magic, he saw Myrinne. She had her hands pressed to the shield, though he knew it must be burning her with acid and electricity. Her face was etched with pain, and her lips shaped his name.

The sight brought a spurt of power from the deepest depths of him, one that flared hard and hot and whispered:
Kaak.
Fire.

It was his first talent, his best talent, the one that had come to him even before he’d earned his bloodline mark.

Wrenching his mind free, he shouted,
“Kaak!”

Flames erupted from his wrist, searing Iago’s hand and climbing his arm. The Xibalban jerked in astonishment. He recovered almost immediately, but it was just enough for Rabbit to push himself upstream along the agony into the other man’s mind. Iago roared and grabbed onto his consciousness in the same hurtful grip he was using in the physical world.
Gotcha, you little shit!

But on a far more basic level, Rabbit had
him
. Because while Iago was focused inward, Rabbit was busy disabling the Xibalban’s shield spell.

For a split second, he saw through both his own eyes and Iago’s, bringing a double-vision view of Myrinne’s fierce relief as the shield went down, then her mad battle fury as she brought up her autopistol and unloaded the clip into Iago’s face.

Rabbit screamed as pain slashed through him, coming from Iago’s new injuries and the severing of their mind-link as the
makol
was flung away from him, breaking the touch link. Then the circlet’s protection snapped back into place, cutting off the mental connection and slamming the air locks shut.

But a piece of him tore loose from his mind and went with Iago.

“No.” He crumpled to the ground.
“No!”
He didn’t know what Iago had taken, didn’t know how bad the damage was; he knew only that he
was
damaged.

“Rabbit!” Myrinne dropped down beside him. She touched his face; her hands came away slick and red. He tasted blood, felt it prickling in his sinuses, suspected it was mixed with his tears. His head pounded; magic spasmed wildly through him, formless and hurting. Gods, what had Iago
done
to him?

“I’m—”
Okay,
he started to say, but even that one word was too much for him, sending his system spinning. Panic licked at him; if he passed out, Myrinne would be unprotected. She would be—

“I’ve got you,” she whispered, leaning over him. Her expression was bare of the sardonic reserve that usually left him guessing at her true feelings; instead he saw her fear for him, her growing determination.

“I won’t let you down.”

His senses fluctuated strangely, expanding and narrowed. He heard the Nightkeepers’ shouts, the sounds of battle, and knew that the fight wasn’t over yet. Far from it.

“Help them,” he whispered. “We can’t let Iago win.”

Or he thought he said it aloud; he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that as the gray closed in, his senses narrowed to a point, so all he saw was his own forearm, blood-smeared and blistered.

Shock hammered through him, sending him the rest of the way into unconsciousness.

His hellmark had gone from red to black. Iago had broken their bond.

“Brandt!” Woody bellowed over the chatter of jade-tipped ammo. “The tunnel!”

“I see him,” Brandt grated, agony slashing through him as Iago’s shambling form disappeared through the far doorway. He roared and unloaded a volley of fireballs into the
makol
lines, but they barely made a dent, just as they had done every other time he’d tried to break through and follow Patience up the tunnel.

The green-eyed bastards had the Nightkeepers pushed back to the altar and trapped against the wall. Rabbit and Myrinne were outside the
makol
line, but Rabbit was down, with Myrinne bent over him. Michael’s death magic was shot and the other magi were sagging, their united shield magic flickering in and out.

They were fucking trapped. And Iago was headed for Patience and the boys. Brandt had sent her up there, and then he hadn’t protected her six like he’d promised. And he was getting only static through his earpiece.
Please be okay.

“I’ve got to get through!” he shouted to the others. “I have to—”