Magic Unchained (41 page)

Which would’ve been fine… except the familiar
bond was silent. There was none of the live-wire effect that told him Mac was nearby, and when Sven opened himself all the way up, he couldn’t hear the background chatter—typically a litany of warm sun, interesting smells, and itchy balls—that he usually tuned out.

He sent a thought-glyph:
Speak?

Mac chuffed, still looking at him like he was an idiot.

What did we have for breakfast?

If the coyote could have furrowed his eyebrows, Mac would’ve been doing that and more. But there was no response… at least not one that Sven could hear.

The messages were getting out, but they weren’t coming in.

Oh, hell.
This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

Ritchie took another step back toward him. “You’re not okay. I’m going to call Cara, and—”

“No, don’t. I’ll find her myself.”

The
winikin
’s eyes narrowed. “I think I should go with you.”

Sven dredged up a reassuring smile that felt more like a grimace. “It’ll be fine. Don’t stress.”
And don’t start any rumors about how the boss’s boyfriend is off his game. That’s the last thing we need
.

Actually, the rumor was the next-to-last thing they needed. Having him actually off his game was the last.

“If you’re sure…”

“Positive. Go on. Drop that off in the hall and then you’re off the clock until ’port time.”

Finally appeased—Sven hoped—Ritchie headed toward the mansion, casting a last look over his shoulder. When he was out of sight, Sven closed his eyes, summoned magic that felt far too sluggish for an equinox, and cast a shield around him and Mac.

It failed.

“Fuck me.” A big-ass pit opened up in his gut. He had known he was risking a backfire by staying put longer than his magic wanted him to, but he had counted on his warrior’s talent to keep things working until after the battle. And now…
Shit.
He didn’t know what the right answer was going to be. All he knew was that he couldn’t help lead the
winikin
into battle without his damn magic.

Tapping his armband for a private channel, he hit up Cara’s identifier. When she answered, he said, “Hey, where are you? I need a minute.”

“I’m in my suite. Everything okay?”

“Nothing we can’t deal with.” He hoped. He honestly didn’t know what he was going to say or what he hoped to get out of talking with her, only that he needed to see her, touch her. “I’ll be there in—”

A strident
beep-beep-beep
cut him off, coming from his armband, with deeper echoes sounding elsewhere throughout the compound, and then the emergency channel went live, and JT’s voice snapped, “We need serious help in the main mansion. Rabbit’s barricaded himself into the altar room with Myrinne’s body and the screaming skull. He says he’s going to use it to resurrect her!”

“Just do your thing; that’s all I’m asking,” Rabbit said to the screaming skull’s hollow-eyed, skeletal face. Desperation hammered at him, making his hands shake as he clasped the skull between his and Myrinne’s cut palms and whispered, “
Pasaj och
.”

He felt the burn of the barrier connection and saw the red-gold of Nightkeeper power, but other than that… nothing.

Sunlight poured through the glass-and-steel roof of the circular chamber at the center of the mansion, creating patches of light and dark on the carved stone walls. The ashes from countless Nightkeeper funerals had been used in the mortar and set beneath the
chac-mool
altar, skewing the magic heavily toward the light. Which was why he’d brought her here—he needed all the good-guy vibes he could get.

“Come on, come on!” he chanted. There had to be a way to invoke the resurrection spell without being down at the First Father’s cave,
had
to be. But how? He had shields on all the doors, but soon he would be surrounded,
outnumbered. When that happened… Shit, he needed to think,
think!

He had placed her on the altar, curled on her side with her hands beneath her cheek as if sleeping. Only she wasn’t. He couldn’t find a pulse, couldn’t sense her inside her own skull anymore. If she wasn’t already gone, she was so very close.

His heart pounded a sick rhythm in his chest. Sweating, shivering, he leaned over her. “Come on, sweetheart; stay with me. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I’ll make it up to you somehow; I promise. Just stay with me.” He tried the spell again. “Come on, come
on!
”

Beneath the desperation, grief and anger blossomed. Huge, horrifying,
crippling
guilt. Of all the things he’d fucked up in his life—and there had been many—this was the worst. She had trusted him, loved him without reservation—he knew that now for certain. She had only been trying to help him. As always. And he had killed her for it.

“Think, dumb ass.” There had to be some way to connect the skull’s power to Myrinne’s soul as it slipped away. Some kind of magic, or artifact, or…

What about the eccentrics?

He froze, feeling them weigh suddenly heavy in his pocket. They were powerful, they could forge a conduit to the dead, and the room was skewed so heavily toward light magic, his gut said there was no way the demon that had called itself his mother could break through.

Fumbling, he pulled out the stones. The blood from his cut palms streaked along their slicked surfaces, muddying the black and ocher as he placed them together and put them on her chest, above her heart. “Please,
gods,” he whispered, thinking it was fitting that he was on his knees already. “Please bring her back.”

He clasped the skull between their palms once more, and whispered, “
Pasaj och
.” And—holy shit and thank you, gods—brilliant red light flared from the eccentrics and whizzed around Myrinne, wrapping her in a cocoon of magic. “Yes, that’s it. That’s it.
Pasaj och!
”

The skull heated.

Pulse racing now, he dug down and called all the magic he could will up from deep within him. Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss, shuddering at the coolness of her lips, their unresisting softness. She was worth ten of him, a hundred, because what use was all his power if he kept losing sight of right and wrong? “Please, baby. Please come back,” he whispered against her mouth. “
Pasaj
—”

Glass crashed suddenly overhead and shards rained down. Cursing, he flung himself over Myrinne, protecting her face and upper body as he cast a shield of pure fire energy around the two of them.

Black ropes slapped the stone around him and figures descended through the unshielded skylights, and then dozens of
winikin,
lighter and faster than the magi, hit the ground running to fan out around him, weapons hot. One among them, though, was bigger and hit harder. Sven.

“No!” Rabbit shouted, and gripped the skull, frantically casting a second shield around it so—
Too late
. Power surged, and the artifact dissolved from his hand and reappeared in Sven’s grip. “Noo!”

“It’s over,” Dez said, stepping through the main doorway, which was open now that Rabbit’s shield was concentrated
around him and Myrinne. “You need to let us have her.”

Wild eyed and beyond himself, Rabbit grabbed the eccentrics, which burned to the touch, feeling strange and fleshy. “It’s not over. I won’t let it be over. I love her; don’t you get it? I love her; I’ve always loved her, ever since that very first day. Nobody but her.” He lurched to his feet, kicking his old man’s knife aside as he brandished the joined eccentrics like a weapon, and only then realizing that together they formed a sharply pointed sacrificial blade. How had he not seen that before? Had they changed, or had he? Reversing the blade, he realized the truth. He had changed the nightmare after all—it wasn’t his knife dripping blood anymore; it was the joined eccentrics… and he was the one who needed to be sacrificed. “Balance,” he rasped, finally understanding what he had to do. “A life for a life.”

The fog rose up inside him again, reaching for him, calling to him.

“Rabbit, no!” someone cried through the mist. “Don’t. Let us—”

He drove the blade into his gut, angling up for his heart. It was like being punched in the stomach by a fist made of fire—a solid thud and then burning, radiating pain.

Then something went
pop
inside him, and he knew he’d found his target.

Sadness—sweet and profound—welled up with the tears that suddenly flooded his eyes. He collapsed across Myrinne. “Take me instead,” he grated to the gods. The knife was buried in his heart, and he was giving of his own free will. “Send her back,” he said, his voice bubbling with blood. “Take me inst…”

His shield spell faltered and—
Crack
! A brilliant burst of power that originated from the eccentrics momentarily painted everything in the room with the oily brown sheen of dark magic. From inside it emerged the demon who had claimed to be his mother. She wasn’t a ghost anymore, wasn’t even human—her eyes glowed red and her teeth were pointed to fangs. Power surrounded her like an unholy halo, shielding her when the Nightkeepers attacked with fireballs, the
winikin
with guns. Seeming not to notice them, she grabbed Rabbit and dragged him off Myrinne.

He tried to struggle, to reach out for her, but couldn’t move; he was too far gone. He hung limp in the demon’s grip as she summoned the magic of the eccentrics and began a transport spell.

“No!” Dez shouted, and lunged, only to come up against the demoness’s shield.

Rabbit saw the king’s face etched with rage and horror, saw the others trying to get to him, saw their despair. But what mattered in the last instant before the ’port spell took effect was seeing the faintest flutter of Myrinne’s lashes. Then the spell took hold and
crack!
Skywatch was gone.

Over the next hour, even though her heart was heavy with Rabbit’s disappearance and the inability of the magi to track him, Cara did her damnedest to hold herself—and her
winikin
—together as the minutes ticked down to their planned departure for Che’en Yaaxil.

Myrinne was barely alive, and nobody had a clue what had happened, or what sort of apparition had taken Rabbit. It hadn’t been a god or
nahwal,
hadn’t been anything the magi had seen before. So what, exactly, was it?
How had it gotten inside Skywatch? What did it mean for the coming battle? They still had the screaming skull and it appeared undamaged, but would it work to bring back the First Father? Gods, she hoped so.

Regardless, the
winikin
had their marching orders:
Defend the magi, and no matter what happens, don’t let the enemy interrupt the resurrection spell
.

“Fifteen minutes to teleport,” Strike called from the hallway, his voice ragged. He’d been hit particularly hard; Rabbit was his younger brother in every way that mattered.

Cara and several other volunteers were cleaning up the sacred chamber, which had originally looked like something out of a TV crime scene. It was still pretty bad, though, so when a broad-shouldered figure filled the doorway, she held up a hand, thinking it was Strike. “Stop there. Don’t…” She faltered at the sight of Sven. “Oh. Hey.”

He tipped his head toward the hallway. “Can I have a few minutes?”

She hadn’t forgotten that he’d called her right before the alarms went off, or how serious he’d sounded. And, as she took in his grim expression, she knew that was a big part of why she had found some busywork to do with her last half hour before the teleport. She tried to tell herself it was a good sign that he’d come looking for her now, that he wouldn’t do anything to damage their rapport right before the battle… but her heart lumped in her throat as she stripped off her gloves and moved to join him, and her stomach shimmied as he guided her through a little-used door off the east side of the mansion.

It opened to a small tree-filled courtyard that was
tucked behind the garage and faced away from the main compound, so all that could be seen beyond the mansion was sand and sky, and a lone bird riding an airstream high above them. The sight stirred something inside Cara, making her want to run fast and far, and never look back. But that was his MO, not hers, so she faced him squarely and said, “Tell me. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”

“I know you can.” He brushed a few strands of hair back from her cheek, tucking them behind her ear. “I think you can handle anything you set your mind to. I just wish you didn’t have to. I wish… Shit. I’m not doing this right.” He took both of her hands in his own, so they were facing each other, fingers intertwined.

The scene was suddenly very like that first vision, making her instantly aware of their clothing. He was wearing combat black and she was in a white T-shirt, albeit with camo pants and combat boots. Black and white, hands joined beneath a bower. Her heart went
thudda-thudda
and her throat dried to dust at the sudden crazy thought.
No, impossible. There’s no way. He’s not—

“I need you to release me from the promises I’ve made to you.”

“You… Wait. What?” That was so far from where her head had gone that she stuttered for a second while her stomach went freefalling. “Which one?”

“All of them.”

“Bullshit.” But his expression held grim apology rather than any hint of an ill-timed joke.

He squeezed her hands like he never wanted to let go. But he said, “I’m sorry, Cara. I need you to set me free.”

Nausea surged as she flashed on the sight of him standing at the window last night, staring out at the
world. But that didn’t do a damn thing to take the edge off the shock that raced through her, didn’t come close to filling the yawning pit that opened up inside her. Yes, she’d seen his restlessness, felt him pulling away, but she’d thought they had more time. She had thought he would settle down, get into the rhythm of being back at Skywatch… and being with her. But he hadn’t even given it a chance.

Anger flaring, she burst out, “Seriously? You’re doing this
now?
”

“I have to.” His face was stark, his voice flat, and something in his expression made her think that this wasn’t just about him getting squirrelly.