Spellfire (11 page)

The stubborn set of the old man’s jaw got harder. “That wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“You don’t know that.” Rabbit told himself not to bother, that it was enough that he knew the truth now, but the churn in his gut wouldn’t let him leave it alone. Who the hell was he supposed to be? What was he supposed to do now that he knew where he’d really come from? Ignore it? Forget it? Use it? Voice close to cracking, he got out, “Why didn’t you just kill me? Fuck knows it wasn’t like you wanted me.”

If there was ever a time for Red-Boar to say something kind—or even uncruel—this was it. But all he managed was: “Anntah would’ve known you were gone. He would’ve tried to recapture me—or find someone else he thought might work—and breed another crossover. This way, as long as I could keep us off his radar screen, I could control things and keep you from getting your hands on the magic . . . or at least I thought I could.”

Another piece of Rabbit’s childhood puzzle thudded into place—it explained why his old man had barred him from the little shrine he’d set up wherever they’d lived, and why he’d refused to tell him any of the old stories, though Jox and the others had. It explained why he’d refused to accept Rabbit as a magic user even when the evidence had been right there in front of him, and why he’d refused to let him go through an official bloodline ceremony. It even explained why his old man hadn’t ever warmed to him, even a little.

Didn’t make it right, though.

Anger settled, cold and bitter in Rabbit’s stomach, and maybe the vault cracked open a little. It was hard to tell when two decades worth of resentment felt so much like the burn of dark magic. “Sorry to disappoint you. I never was very good at controlling myself . . . or being controlled.”

Red-Boar looked past him, out the window to where the sun was beating down like it was just another day, not potentially one of the last nine. “You’re pissed, and maybe you’ve got a right to be.”

“Maybe?”

He looked back with a glint of anger. “Haven’t you learned a godsdamned thing? How about you get your head out of your ass and focus on your damned priorities? The gods sent me to bring you back here for a reason. It’s not just the Xibalbans you can help—you can help the Nightkeepers, too. And that means blocking off the dark magic. Whatever you need to do, you can do it with light magic.”

Rabbit might’ve been telling himself the same damn thing, but that didn’t stop him from baring his teeth. “Is that what the gods told you when they sent you back? Or are you just making this up as you go along?”

Red-Boar pushed abruptly to his feet. “If I knew what you were supposed to be doing—or how you were supposed to be doing it—I would’ve told you right off the fucking bat.”

“Like you told me about my mother?”

“Does any of that help with what we’re up against right now? Dez didn’t think so, and neither do I. But he told me to give you the whole story, so there it is.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rabbit muttered, not just to blaspheme and piss off his old man, but because there didn’t seem to be much else he
could
say. As his father turned for the door, though, he said, “Wait. Why did you name me ‘Rabbit’?”

Red-Boar turned back, brows drawing together. “Seriously?
That’s
your biggest question?”

“No, it’s not, but I’ll save the rest for Lucius or someone else who gives a shit about figuring this out. Because, guess what? I’m doing everything I can to get this right. I took your oath, I’m training my ass off, and I’m blocking the hell out of the dark magic. What’s more, I’m damn well going to figure out what the crossover is supposed to do, and I’m going to fucking do it, no matter what it takes.” The words came out with the force of a vow. “Right now, though, I’m asking you this one question, and you damn well owe me an answer. Why ‘Rabbit’?”

“I didn’t name you. They did . . . and you answered to it, so I didn’t bother changing it.”

Rabbit didn’t mistake that for compassion. “Fine. Why did
they
pick the name?”

There was a long pause—long enough that he thought his old man was going to blow him off. But then, grudgingly, Red-Boar said, “They named you after the Rabbit shadow in the moon. It’s an old legend. Xibalban. Aztec. Whatever. Supposedly, the god Quetzlcoatl was on a long journey, but he couldn’t find any food. He was damn near close to starving when he came on a rabbit eating grass, and rather than running away, the rabbit sacrificed itself so the god could survive. Quetzlcoatl was so grateful that he put the rabbit’s image up on the full moon, etched out in its shadow half. He said that way mankind would always know about the rabbit’s sacrifice.”

A shiver tried to crawl its way down Rabbit’s vertebrae. “So what does that make me?”

“Either a hero, or somebody’s fucking dinner. You figure it out.” With that, Red-Boar shoved through the door and stumped down the short stairs, leaving Rabbit sitting there staring after him and feeling like . . . shit, he didn’t know what he was feeling right now. All he knew was that he was glaring at the kitchen door with his stomach tied in fucking knots in a way it hadn’t been in years. Not since the old man died.

Fuck. Don’t go there
.

He wasn’t that pissed-off, lonely kid anymore. He didn’t think the world owed him an explanation or even a break. He had to think this through. What had the Xibalbans wanted from him back when he was born? What did the gods want now?
A little help here?

“Shit.” Shoving away from the table, he surged to his feet and stood there for a moment, seeing the long-gone oinking cookie jar and fridge magnets that’d been in Red-Boar’s old cottage when he and Rabbit moved back in twenty-four years after the massacre. The boar-themed dust collectors were long gone, just like his old man should’ve been, but suddenly Rabbit couldn’t stay there one second longer. But he didn’t want to be in the mansion, either, and the thought of heading back up to the pueblo made his stomach lurch.

Suck it up. Don’t be a pussy. Just fucking deal
. The words trickled through his mind, maybe in his own voice, maybe in the old man’s. But for the first time in a long time—maybe ever—they didn’t resonate. Instead, they chimed faintly wrong, like some part of him was saying,
Been there, done that
.

Yeah, he’d sucked it up, he’d dealt, and he’d ended up wound so fucking tight that it hadn’t taken much for him to implode. And maybe what had happened before would happen again, but that didn’t mean it had to happen exactly the same. He could do things different, do them better. Which meant finding someone to talk to, someone he trusted to give him a reality check.

Except there was really only one person he trusted like that . . . and she didn’t want anything to do with him.

“Leave her alone,” he said, the words echoing in the kitchen he and Myr used to share. “She’s better off without you, and you need to learn to deal with that.” Wasn’t like he had much time to make the adjustment, either.

He couldn’t do it in the cottage, though—there were too many memories there, too much old stuff pressing in on him from all sides. So he headed out, not following his old man toward the mansion, but turning the other way instead.

If the pueblo was where he’d always gone to embrace a state of temporary amnesia, the cacao grove was where he went to find some approximation of peace. He’d always felt at home in the rain forests and Mayan highlands. Maybe it was because he’d been conceived there, born there, but he didn’t want to think about that right now. And as he paused at the edge of the cacao grove, it didn’t matter why; it only mattered that his brain slowed down somewhat and the anger dulled as he inhaled the soft, tropical air.

Yeah. This would help.

Exhaling, he entered the grove, pushing past shrubby cacao trees that reached to touch him with leafy fingers. The sense that the sunlight was warmer here came from the power of suggestion, he knew, as did the phantom cry of a parrot and the smell of vanilla.

Except the scent of vanilla wasn’t his imagination, he thought, pausing as his instincts went on alert. The smell was really there. More, there was a faint crackle coming from up ahead, along with a skim of magic.

He told himself to walk away. He followed the sound instead, and when it led him to a small grove he hadn’t realized was there, he hesitated in the shadows, and stared.

Myrinne sat cross-legged at the edge of a circle of stones that danced with flickering green flames. She was wearing wide-legged jeans, a woven green belt that sparkled in the light, and a green T-shirt that moved with her body as she gestured and then whispered a chant he couldn’t quite hear, but that sent the blood thrumming through his veins and made the air around him sizzle with Nightkeeper power.

She stilled suddenly. Maybe he had made a noise, or maybe she had felt the answering surge of his magic; he didn’t know. But her head came up, her hand went for the pistol that lay beside her, and she said softly, “Hello?”

“It’s me.” He moved out of the shadows. “I didn’t know you were here. I was just . . .” He trailed off, because it didn’t matter why he’d come, or that he suddenly wondered whether some part of him had known she was here. “Never mind. I’ll go.” He took a step back.

“Wait.” The word was low, ragged.

He froze in place as her eyes softened and—incredibly, impossibly—he saw a glimmer of warmth, an echo of the way the girl she used to be had looked at the guy he’d been.

“Sit.” She pointed to the opposite side of the fire. “We need to talk.”

CHAPTER TEN

Myr cursed herself as he crossed the grove. She should’ve told him to get lost the moment she sensed him, should tell him that now. Things would be a whole lot easier if they stayed away from each other. Problem was, easier wasn’t necessarily better. Especially not now.

As he took a seat opposite her, she murmured a few words and cast a handful of salt into the fire.

Tendrils of darker green threaded within the flames and the scent changed, making her think of the sea. Leaning in, she breathed the salted smoke and felt the sharp edges smooth out. “It’s a cleansing ritual,” she told him, though he hadn’t asked. “It’s supposed to help you cast out doubt. The salt represents us anchoring ourselves to the earth, while the flames are the way we move through our fear.”

He leaned in and took a deep breath, then held the scented smoke for a moment before he let it out on a sigh, and said, “You don’t need to doubt me, Myr, or be afraid of me. I’ve learned my lessons when it comes to the dark magic.” His voice was low, his eyes intense, and even though they were no longer linked, she could sense that he was telling the absolute truth . . . at least as he saw it, right here and now.

But she shook her head. “It’s not just about me doubting you, Rabbit. It’s more about us doubting ourselves, and each other.” She paused. “I was going to come find you later today.”

“Oh?” The word carried a note of wary surprise.

She knew he must think she was afraid of him. Why wouldn’t he? She’d run away from him. She had been more overwhelmed than anything, though, and she’d had the night to think it through. And when she came down to it, their past didn’t matter right now. The kiss didn’t even matter, really. It couldn’t. What mattered was that he’d squelched the dark magic rather than give in to it. She didn’t sense it in him anymore, didn’t see it in his eyes. And he needed to become the crossover.

So she said, “I owe you an apology.”

“You don’t owe me a damn thing.”

“Maybe not on balance, but this needs to be said.” She couldn’t smell the salt anymore, couldn’t taste it at the back of her throat. Her senses had gotten used to it, she thought, just like the two of them had gotten so used to how things were between them that they hadn’t noticed when the dynamic had gradually changed. “Yesterday, when I saw you with the dark magic, I remembered something you said to me that morning.”

His eyes darkened. “Myr—”

“No. Let me get this out.” She wanted to forget about the attack—of course she did. But maybe this was a necessary sacrifice. “You said I kept pushing you to try the dark magic, and you were right. I
was
pushing you back then. Hell, I was nagging you, even though Dez had made you promise not to experiment with it anymore.”

“It’s okay,” he said too quickly. “I always understood, always knew you were trying to help, even if it was hard to hear sometimes. You don’t have to apologize for being ambitious.”

“It wasn’t ambition. It was fear.”

He snorted. “You? Afraid? Bull.” But his eyes narrowed. “Since when?”

“Since always.” She didn’t want to remember. But maybe that had been part of the problem. “How much of my childhood did you see when you were inside my head?” She had been afraid to ask before.

“Not much in the way of details. More flashes.” He paused. “I saw a deep, dark place, heard her shouting, felt . . . I don’t know. Numb, I guess.”

“Close enough.”
Numb, helpless, angry . . .
forcing her shoulders square, she met his eyes.
Don’t pity me
. “My parents abandoned me when I was a few months old, left me in a booth of a strip club around the corner from the tea shop, with a blanket and a twenty, like that was going to cover anything.” The anger had scabbed over through the years, as had any hope that they were going to show back up and claim her. “Nobody there wanted the cops involved, and the owner figured it’d be easiest to just make me disappear. He sent his bouncer to take care of it, but the guy sold me to the Witch instead.”

“Jesus, Myr.” And, yeah, there was the pity. Or maybe it was sympathy.

She shrugged, telling herself that it didn’t matter anymore. “She never let me forget that I owed her my life. More, she told me I couldn’t expect better than what she gave me—a bed, some food, and more than enough work to earn it. And it wasn’t like anything I saw made me think any different.” The more upstanding locals had stayed the hell away from the back alleys of bars and black magic, and the Witch’s friends—including the grabby-handed strip club owner—had given her the creeps. Add in the clueless tourists who came to the shop and looked away when they saw her bruises, and the drunken man-boys who offered her strings of beads in exchange for a look at her tits, and she’d believed the Witch when she’d said she was better off in the shop than out on the streets. More, she hadn’t dared argue. Not often, anyway.

“You were ready to get out,” Rabbit reminded her. “You stole the ceremonial knife Nate and Alexis were trying to buy, and told me I could have it if I took you with me.”

“That was just a moment of temporary bravery. One of my few.” More, the Witch vanished right after that—dead, Myr had later learned—leaving the tea shop locked tight, and Myr out on the streets. And being on her own had turned out to be just as bad as her foster mother had threatened—she had been dirty, cold, hungry and scared by the time she saw Rabbit again, recognized him. Latched on to him.

“Still, you took a stand.”

“And look where it got me. Out on the streets for a few weeks, and then, when I hooked back up with you, snatched by Iago.” She didn’t remember much about the imprisonment, only that she had been cold and afraid, and had learned firsthand that all the things the Witch had threatened were nothing compared to how bad reality could get. “It . . . I don’t know. Broke something inside me, I think, to realize that the Witch was right about me not being able to handle the world outside.”

His eyes blazed. “She wasn’t. Not even close.”

“I went from being under her thumb to being at Skywatch with you, surrounded by these huge, glittery people who could do magic—
real
magic—and were scrambling to save the world.” She shook her head, facing the hard truths that had finally become clear to her last night, when she’d stayed awake, staring into the darkness and making herself accept that she’d played a part in what had happened with Rabbit. “The point is that my nagging you wasn’t about the power, not the way you thought. It was about me needing to feel safe. Even though I learned how to fight, how to be a warrior, it wasn’t enough. I was still scared. And the closer the end-time got, the more scared I got . . . and the more I tried to make you be strong enough to protect both of us.”

“I wanted to,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “I still do.”

She was suddenly very aware of her heart—how it beat in her chest, feeling heavy and tender. But she couldn’t let it run the show anymore. “You can’t. You’ve got to be the crossover, and gods only know what that’s going to involve.”

A shadow came over him, though the sun-dappled air hadn’t changed. “Like the dark magic.”

“Don’t.” She would have reached out to him, but he was too far away, with the fire between them. Instead, she said, “It’s part of your powers, and you’re handling it. You should be proud of that, proud of everything you’ve accomplished . . . and I’m sorry for making you feel like you should’ve been doing more.”

“You didn’t—”

“I did. Not at the beginning, granted.” The first couple of years had been the best of her life. She had been in love, surrounded by magic, and she’d been his champion when the others had treated him like the destructive kid he’d been rather than the man he was becoming. Once the Nightkeepers had accepted him as a warrior, though, she hadn’t let up. Hadn’t been able to. “But when things started getting serious—with the countdown, the
xombi
outbreaks, all of it—I . . . I don’t know. I freaked. I stopped feeling safe, and instead of admitting it, even to myself, I started hounding you about being stronger, better, finding a way to use both halves of your magic.” And when he’d refused, she’d pushed harder.

He stared down into the fire, and his voice was hollow when he said, “I could’ve called you on it. Should have. Instead, I . . . I don’t know. Shut down, I guess.”

“I don’t blame you.”

But he shook his head. “I was the one who listened to Phee. You don’t need to be sorry for any of it.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Then forget it. We’re still not close to being even after the crap I put you through.”

“Let’s call it even anyway.”

“Shit,” Rabbit said finally. There was more sorrow than anger in the word, though. “What the hell happened to us, Myr? We were perfect together.” His eyes were stark and sad . . . but he didn’t look all that surprised, letting her know that he’d figured out some of it on his own. He hadn’t known how afraid she’d been, but he’d known Phee wouldn’t have been able to get to him if their relationship had been in a better place.

Tears stung the backs of her eyes. “I think maybe we just outgrew it. Took it all for granted. Something.”

He sighed heavily and looked back into the fire. “Yeah.”

Breathing out of synch, they stared into the flames for a long moment in a silence that was both easier than she would’ve expected and harder than she could’ve imagined. They couldn’t go back—she thought they probably wouldn’t even if they could. But how were they supposed to go forward from here? She didn’t want to avoid him, but she wasn’t sure she dared spend too much time near him. Their relationship might’ve crashed and burned, but the chemistry remained. Even now, she was acutely aware of his smallest movements, and the way the black marks on his forearm looked even blacker now with the red hellmark among them.

The sight should’ve scared her, should’ve reminded her how bad the darkness could get. Instead, it sent new warmth skimming through her veins as she remembered how he’d gotten it in the first place: he’d let Iago bind him to the dark magic in exchange for her life.

It had been the first time anyone had really rescued her. And it had been the beginning of her first crush. Her first love.

Don’t go there,
she told herself as her heart thudded too fast. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” she asked, needing to break the silence. “Were you looking for me?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” He paused. “I was just walking, trying to clear my head.”

His sudden grimness had the warmth inside her shifting to concern. Which was safer in some respects, but not in others—because if it had Rabbit worried, it couldn’t be good. “What happened?”

“My old man ambushed me this morning and told me about my mother finally. The whole fucking story, damn him.”

“Oh. Wow.” Shock sizzled through her, chased quickly by a flash of anger at Red-Boar, who hadn’t been any more of a father to Rabbit than the Witch had been a mother to her. “You want to tell me about it?”

He hesitated, but then exhaled and said, “My mother was Anntah’s daughter.”

A shiver of instinct worked its way through her, the kind that said,
This is important
. “The old shaman at Oc Ajal?”

Rabbit nodded. “Which explains how he managed to contact me when Iago’s red-robes destroyed the village. We had a blood-link, even though he denied it when I asked.” His voice was flat, his eyes hollow as he stared into the guttering green flames. He leaned in and took another deep breath. Then, like he was reading off a lame-ass playlist, he repeated Red-Boar’s story, describing how the Xibalbans had purpose-bred him, and how his father had kidnapped him so he couldn’t be used as an enemy asset. “That was why he didn’t want me to get my bloodline mark or learn to use my magic.” His lips thinned. “The old bastard never could control me, though. The harder he tried to make me fall in line, the more I busted out.”

Oh, Rabbit,
she thought, but didn’t say, because it wouldn’t change anything. She wanted to reach out to him, wanted to touch him, but couldn’t do either with the fire between them. Where before it had seemed like a necessary bulwark, though, now it was in the way. So she got up and moved around to sit beside him, letting their shoulders bump.

They sat like that for a minute, watching the flames gutter and send up plumes of vanilla-scented smoke. Finally, she asked, “What else did he say about the crossover?”

“Nothing that we didn’t already know, which is why he didn’t tell me sooner. At least that’s his excuse. There’s got to be something more to it, though. Some clue we’re missing.” He hesitated. “I want to go back to the village.”

“You . . . oh.” She swallowed. “Right.” It made sense, she supposed. They needed more information on the crossover—where better to look than the place where he’d been conceived? Still, though, she inched away as her mind filled with memories of Oc Ajal—bodies, burning huts, the stink of charred flesh. It had been gruesome, loathsome, heartbreaking . . . more, she dreaded the thought of the village itself, the dark magic that still lurked there.

The problems between her and Rabbit might have made him vulnerable to Phee’s seduction, but it was the stone eccentric he’d found beneath the center pole in Anntah’s hut that had summoned her.

“It’s the only thing I can think to do now that I know the truth,” Rabbit continued. “I’ll get Anna to ’port me down there today, a quick in-and-out, low risk and no bullshit.”

She wasn’t sure which one of them he was trying to convince. “What are you going to do when you get there?”

“Look around. Maybe pray for a miracle.”

Don’t go
, she wanted to say. She couldn’t, though, because he was right. And, besides, she knew he wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to talk him out of it. His jaw was set and his eyes gleamed with an anticipation that had her instincts humming. So instead of arguing, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m going with you.”

The words hung in the air between them for a moment before he shifted to look at her fully, his eyes dark and unreadable. “You don’t have to.”

The hum got louder. Was he trying to spare her from the bad memories, or was there something else going on here? Damn it, she didn’t know. “I’ll go,” she said firmly. “I used to be good at watching your back.”