Nightkeepers (24 page)

‘‘Here.’’ He handed her the knife. ‘‘Take it.’’

No,
she said, only the word didn’t come out, and instead of warding him off, she found herself reaching for the blade with unsteady hands that weren’t entirely under her control. She touched the knife, grabbed onto it blade-first, and felt the edge bite into her palm. Vince started backing away as blood flowed, and she thought he whispered something in words she didn’t comprehend.

A detonation rocked the room, sending them both staggering.

Three other people appeared in the chamber with shocking suddenness, two men and a woman, wearing black-on-black combat gear and armed to the teeth with automatics and grenades. They advanced on Vince with deadly intent, their backs to Leah.

The drumbeats stopped. The world stopped. Her head cleared, rage flared, and she swung into cop mode and launched herself into the fight. She’d lost the knife in the blast, and she didn’t know if the newcomers were part of Survivor2012 or something else, but she wasn’t waiting to find out.

‘‘Vince, get the door!’’ she screamed, and lunged for the guy closest to her, aiming for a choke hold and missing because he was way bigger than she’d thought, nearly six-five if he was an inch. Sensation zipped up her arm when she touched him, arcing from his skin to hers like static electricity. She hissed out a breath but hung on and went for the choke a second time.

He countered, spun and grabbed her, flipping her in a practiced move that put her flat on her back and drove the breath from her lungs. She lay there stunned for a second, staring up . . .

... into the cobalt-colored eyes of her dream lover.

‘‘You!’’ she hissed.

Snapshot impressions bombarded her—the angle of his jaw, the piercing dark blue of his eyes, the black-on-black combat clothes that stretched across his muscular body. Reaction sizzled through her, feeling more like desire than fear.

‘‘Don’t worry; I’ve got you,’’ he said, which was ridiculous, because as far as she could tell, she should damn well be afraid
of
him. But somehow she couldn’t make herself protest as he helped her up and crowded her with his big body, backing her across the room. His voice was a deep, sexy rasp when he said, ‘‘You don’t want to watch this.’’

‘‘Watch—’’ Her question devolved to a scream when the other guy—older and sharp featured—pulled a MAC- 10 and unloaded the clip into Vince’s chest, point-blank. The noise was deafening, the blood spray horrific as Vince’s body jerked with the rapid-fire impact.

Leah shrieked and flung herself toward her friend, but the blue-eyed guy grabbed her and held her close while she fought and scratched, still screaming. ‘‘Easy,’’ he said over her cries. ‘‘He’s not what you think.’’

Then brilliant green light flared out of nowhere, and wind whipped through the chamber, though that should’ve been impossible. Leah stopped screaming, because a buzzing noise had taken up where the chatter of gunfire left off, rising in speed and intensity as Vince’s body slid down the wall, leaving a blood trail.

In the center of the room, the altar began to glow green.

‘‘Get over here,’’ Blue Eyes ordered his companions. He held Leah tightly against his body, and as the others approached, he said quietly in her ear, ‘‘I’m sorry you had to see that, and I’m sorry that I can’t stay and explain. Trust me when I tell you I’m keeping you safer by staying away.’’ Then the others were there, hanging on to his arms, and he said, ‘‘Close your eyes.’’

A flash of motion caught her attention, and she saw Vince pull himself up the wall and start limping across the chamber. Which was impossible. Had those been blanks? What the
hell
was going on? ‘‘Vince,’’ she screamed, heart pounding in her chest,
‘‘help me!’’

Then the buzz racheted up to a scream, and the world exploded.

Everything went gray-green for a second, and there was a sideways lurch. Then the air changed and a shock wave slammed into Leah and the man who held her, sending them flying. She landed first, with him atop her, driving the breath from her lungs.

She heard him curse, heard the crash of debris all around them, and realized he’d used his body to shield her from the blast. Then she heard screams and shouts and the pound of approaching feet, the sounds echoing differently than they’d been moments earlier. The air was different, too.

She felt the press of a kiss on the side of her neck, heard him whisper, ‘‘Stay safe.’’ Then his weight was gone.

‘‘How . . . ?’’ She struggled up on her elbows. ‘‘What the . . . ?’’

She found herself lying in the hallway, staring at the sign asking people not to venture into the darkened wing. Beyond that was a wall of rubble where the hallway used to be.

The warrior and his companions were gone.

Leah lunged to her feet as a mob of half-naked 2012ers and dressed-up partygoers jammed the hallway, some running toward the explosion, some away, creating a milling, screaming chaos.

With no suspects to chase, the cop inside her gave way to the woman. Grief slashed through confusion, battering her to her knees.
‘‘No!’’

She’d lost first Matty, then Nick. Now Vince. And in a way, she’d lost her dream warrior too, because there was no way she could knowingly lust after a guy who ran with killers, with terrorists who used explosives to . . . what? Make a statement? Kill a man? And what was with the green light and the noises? Special effects, or something more?

For the first time, Leah seriously considered that she might be losing her mind.

Tears welled up and sobs tore at her chest. Giving in, she bowed her head and wept for the dead, and for a reality that seemed to be falling to pieces around her.

Strike took two steps toward her before he forced himself to stop. Or, more accurately, before Red-Boar’s grip on his arm made stopping the only option.

He couldn’t pull away, because Patience needed a chain of contact in order to keep up their invisibility. But damn, he wanted to go to Leah, wanted to explain that he’d just made her safe. The
makol
Red-Boar had shot—and who’d triggered some sort of timed detonation from the altar—wasn’t Zipacna and had been wearing contacts that concealed his green-hued eyes, but magic knew magic. The bastard had lured her to the chamber somehow. But why? Did his master want to complete the blood sacrifice he’d begun at the equinox?

If it weren’t for the protection spell, he wouldn’t have known to teleport directly to Leah, and might not have gotten there in time. The very thought was beyond chilling.

‘‘We should bring her back with us,’’ he said quietly, low enough that only Patience and Red-Boar could hear, as the mob of partygoers filled the hallway, everyone talking at once.

‘‘Out of the question,’’ Red-Boar hissed. ‘‘Get it through your damn head that she’s not for you.’’

Strike gritted his teeth. ‘‘She’s in danger.’’

‘‘And she’ll be safer with you?’’ The older Nightkeeper let the question hang for a beat, then said, ‘‘I didn’t think so. You said it yourself. You’re protecting her by staying the hell away.’’

Was he? Strike wasn’t even sure of that anymore. His attempt to protect her by giving her space had wound up with her going one-on-one with a
makol
. He was going to have to do better. He just didn’t know how yet, and wasn’t about to figure it out with Red-Boar standing right next to him. All three of them might be invisible, but he could still feel the weight of the older man’s glare.

‘‘Hey, lady, are you okay?’’ a stranger crouched down beside Leah as random people milled around, some rubbernecking the debris from the blast, others talking excitedly. ‘‘Are you hurt?’’ another voice asked, and then it all degenerated into a babble of questions without answers.

‘‘Come on.’’ Red-Boar tugged at Strike. ‘‘Let’s go.’’ Strike waited a moment longer, until he heard sirens nearby, and the clipped orders of rescue personnel. Then, when he knew Leah was as safe as she could be right now, surrounded by other cops, he closed his eyes, found the travel thread, and took his people home.

The next few days were a blur of training sessions and preparations for the binding ceremony, which should’ve left Strike with zero time to worry about Leah. But somehow he managed to do exactly that.

She’d treated the
makol
, Vince, like a friend. He’d presumably been a second-generation critter, one created by the
ajaw-makol
after the solstice. There hadn’t been any sense of a second source of evil in the Survivor 2012 compound, meaning that Carter’s info had been wrong and Zipacna was somewhere else.

But where?

Shit, he didn’t know, and he didn’t know what else to have Carter be on the lookout for. He needed an
itza’at
, that was what he needed. A good seer—hell, even a half-assed one—could track the
ajaw-makol
by its magic.

If he was seriously lucky, either Alexis or Jade would get the seer’s mark during the talent ceremony, and they’d have a prayer of getting some answers.

If not, well, it was time for coloring outside the lines, which was exactly what had him leaving the mansion on the evening before the aphelion, braced for a fight.

When he reached Red-Boar’s cottage, he knocked. ‘‘It’s me.’’

After a long moment, the door swung open to reveal Rabbit in full-on sulk mode, wearing cutoffs that showed his thin calves to no great effect, and a dark blue hoodie over his T-shirt. ‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘I need to talk to your father. Could you give us fifteen minutes alone?’’

Rabbit shrugged. ‘‘Whatever.’’

He slouched out and Strike stepped through, straight into the kitchen of the four-room bungalow. Red-Boar was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing the brown robes of a penitent.

Strike hadn’t seen him in the robes—which signified a magi atoning for great sin—in a long time. Initially, Jox had asked him to quit wearing the robes around the garden center because they made the customers nervous. After a while, Red-Boar had gotten out of the habit, and it’d been a nice change to see him in normal clothes day in and day out.

Which left Strike wondering what else in the older Nightkeeper’s psyche had backslid.

‘‘We need to talk,’’ Strike said, crossing the kitchen to rummage in the fridge. He pulled out a Coke for himself, tossed Red-Boar a bottle of water without asking, and took the chair opposite him, cracking the soda open as he did so. He drained half of it, welcoming the kick of sugar and caffeine, before he said, ‘‘We need Rabbit to make thirteen.’’

‘‘Bad idea,’’ Red-Boar said, his voice nearly inflectionless.

‘‘The way I see it, we’re better off having him on the team than not, especially after the stunt he pulled at the garden center,’’ Strike countered. ‘‘And it’s not fair to keep him out of the classes.’’

Red-Boar stared into the bottled water. ‘‘I won’t accept him into the bloodline. I can’t.’’

It was an old argument Strike and Jox had never won. But they had their theories why.

‘‘Does it have something to do with his mother?’’ Strike asked. Red-Boar had never spoken of her, had never acknowledged her existence, though the proof stood in the form of their son.

‘‘It has
everything
to do with his mother,’’ the older man said suddenly, his voice descending to a hiss.

‘‘Who was she?’’

‘‘Better to ask where I met her. And the answer to that would be in the highlands.’’

Strike’s breath whistled between his teeth. ‘‘Mexico?’’

‘‘Guatemala.’’

‘‘Shit.’’

‘‘Precisely.’’

Before the conquistadors drove the Nightkeepers north to Hopi territory, the magic users had coexisted with the Maya for centuries. The two cultures had lived in parallel, and maybe because of that, or because of their own fascination with the stars, the Maya had developed a magic system of their own. Some said rogue Nightkeepers had shared their magic, others that the Maya had been in contact with the
nahwal
, ghosts of the Nightkeepers’ ancestors, or even with the
Banol Kax
themselves. Whatever the source of their power, the Order of Xibalba, an offshoot cult of Mayan shaman-priests, had developed spells unlike anything the Nightkeepers had ever seen. Something they came to fear.

Members of the order had brought the
Banol Kax
to earth in A.D. 869. The demons had destroyed the city of Tikal before the Nightkeepers had managed to drive them back behind the barrier. In the aftermath, the cultural center of the Maya shifted to Chichén Itzá, and the Order of Xibalba had been banned.

Rumors said it had lived on in secret, though.

Strike pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to ward off the headache he knew was in his future. ‘‘Please don’t tell me she was a disciple of the order.’’

Red-Boar said nothing.

‘‘Shit.’’ Needing to move, Strike drained the rest of the Coke, crumpled the can, and got up to toss it in the recycling bin beneath the sink. ‘‘I guess that explains a few things.’’

‘‘Exactly.’’ Red-Boar grimaced. ‘‘Order magic and Nightkeeper magic aren’t the same; we can’t know how they mixed in Rabbit. Which is why I can’t claim him into the bloodline, and why I absolutely don’t want him jacked in. If he goes through the binding ritual—’’

‘‘He’s already jacked in once with no help from us,’’ Strike pointed out. ‘‘He’s a tough kid. He’ll make it.’’

‘‘I’m not worried about whether or not he’ll survive,’’ Red-Boar said flatly. ‘‘I’m worried about what will come out on the other side. He’s already a punk. What do you think he’d be like with even more power?’’

Rabbit’s problems aren’t entirely his fault,
Strike wanted to say, but he didn’t have time for an argument he knew he wouldn’t win, so instead he said, ‘‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take that risk. I want him to go through the ceremony tomorrow.’’ He had to believe it would work. If not, they were stuck at twelve, and that was nowhere near a magic number.