Storm Kissed Part 19

Rabbit cursed, yanked away from the circle, and strode away, boots ringing on the travel-packed ground. Myrinne followed him, but he waved her off with a sharp motion, then disappeared into the nearest hut. She stood for a moment, undecided, then unholstered her autopistol with a smoothly practiced move and headed into the next dwelling down. But she sent a long look back at the hut Rabbit had gone into, and it didn't take a mind-bender to sense her confusion.

Sven was staying out of it-being relationship-defective and all-but he had found himself way more aware of those nuances than he normally would be. Then again, he didn't used to wake up in a cold sweat, hard and aching, with his heart racing in the face of an overwhelming conviction that he was supposed to be looking for something, doing something, only he didn't know what. Carlos said that, too, would go away eventually. But he'd avoided Sven's eyes when he said it.

"Split up and search," Strike ordered, though there seemed little hope of survivors.

"I'll take the perimeter," Sven offered, and got a nod, which was a good thing. He needed to move, and he didn't know how much longer he was going to be able to hold the coyote back in the face of all the run-kill-bite-enemy stuff going through his furry head. "They're gone," he said in an undertone. "We're too late."

Mac growled deep in his chest.

"Yeah," Sven agreed as he headed out of the village, keeping a tight mental leash. "I feel the same way." The Nightkeepers couldn't continue chasing Iago's tail like this. Something needed to change . . . but it needed to be the right something. Strike had given him, Rabbit, and Myrinne a clipped report of what sounded-reading between the lines, anyway-like a major s.h.i.tstorm of Mendez proportions going down at Skywatch. But as far as Sven was concerned, prophecy or no prophecy, he and the others could-and would-take Mendez if it went that far. Strike was their king. Period and no discussion.

He let Mac range a little farther once they got a distance from the village and started making a wide loop around it. Their pa.s.sage flushed out countless bright, flashy birds and sent squadrons of b.u.t.terflies into the air. Ignoring them, Sven kept his eyes on the ground, searching for tracks while staying attuned to the coyote's thought stream, which had gone from warnings about the enemy to a growing sense of edgy frustration.

Or was that coming from him? G.o.ds knew he'd been hair-trigger lately. Carlos said the new restlessness and aggression-like the dreams and the hormone surges-came from his magic getting used to the impulses of his familiar, that he would level off soon and go back to being the guy he was. But Sven had a feeling it was the other way around, that he was finally coming into his true self and would stay that way. It felt like he had been sleepwalking for so long, and was just now waking up, just now- Mac yowled and exploded, diving into a cl.u.s.ter of bushes nearby. Enemy!

Adrenaline hammered through Sven. Yanking his knife and calling up a shield, he hollered and plunged after the big canine. Branches whipped at him, deflecting off the shield as he burst out of the middle growth and into a small, sun-dappled clearing.

There, Mac stood over a villager. For a second, Sven's heart leaped at the thought that they had found a survivor, but then he got closer and saw otherwise. The man's body was twisted unnaturally, unmoving, but his face was animated and his eyes shone luminous green as he hissed at Sven, face alight with bloodl.u.s.t.

"Nice job, Mac," Sven said, reaching for his knife and prepping himself for the head-and-heart spell. But he paused when something nagged at him. It took him a second, but then he got it: The makol wasn't regenerating. Something was wrong with it.

He started to crouch down for a closer look, but Mac pivoted over the makol and stood with his legs braced, head lowered, and teeth bared. A bloodcurdling growl rumbled in the coyote's throat.

Sven froze. "Mac? What the h.e.l.l?"

The coyote sent a stream of glyph images that spelled out friend-enemy-friend, which didn't make any more sense than him protecting the makol. But Carlos had impressed on Sven that he needed to trust his familiar, and experience had shown that Mac would get in a snit if ignored. And a hundred-pound coyote having a temper tantrum was not a pleasant experience. So think it through, Sven told himself. a.n.a.lysis had never really been his thing before, but he'd been getting better at it lately. The coyote had saved Reese's life by attacking a makol back at Skywatch, but he wouldn't let Sven near this one, and was even acting protective of it. So what was different? Did it have something to do with how this one wasn't regenerating?

Friend-enemy-friend came again, this time along with a sharp, mossy smell.

Moving slowly, Sven crouched down again, sending peaceful, nonlethal thoughts. Mac's growls subsided and he gave way.

The makol's human host had been a young man, maybe early twenties. He was wearing jeans and a grayed-out wife beater, and had a small, new-looking leather pouch hanging around his neck. The mossy smell Mac had noted was coming from the pouch. With a mental flick that would have been ten times more difficult before his familiar had come into his life, Sven translocated the pouch into his outstretched palm. But the second it vanished from around the makol s neck, the creature shuddered and arched, and a terrible, screaming keen ripped from the host's throat.

Luminous green flashed, blinding Sven, who dove back and yanked up his shield. When his vision cleared, though, there didn't seem to be any danger. Instead, the other man's eyes were those of a human once more, filled with pain and grief. He looked at Sven and his lips moved, but no words came out. A second later, his eyes dulled and a last breath leaked out of him.

For a moment, Sven just stood there, clutching the leather pouch that was still warm from the other man's body.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Alexis said from behind him-softly, reverently. "Did you just cure a makol?" He hadn't heard the others approach, but they were there now, staring down at the corpse, which hadn't gone to greasy ash, hadn't required a head-and-heart spell.

"He died," Sven said hollowly. "That's not much of a cure."

"But he died human, and he was killed-or at least fatally wounded-in battle. He's destined for the sky now." Which was far better than staying a makol and being automatically consigned to the ninth layer of Xibalba.

"Yeah." Sven held up the pouch, let it dangle. "The demon flashed out when I took this off him."

"Shield it and bring it with you," Strike ordered. "We're getting out of here. There's nothing more for us to do here, and work to do back home if we're going to find Iago and neutralize the f.u.c.king serpent staff before the solstice." To Rabbit, he said, "You want to take care of the body?"

The younger man nodded tightly, and made short work of the ritual cremation. Moments later, he joined the loose circle where the others were linking up for the dispirited 'port home. Sven made sure he had a really good hold on Mac, who was squirming and whining even harder than usual as Strike took a deep breath, tapped into the uplink, and triggered the 'port. And the magic went haywire.

"No!" Heart hammering, Strike lashed out with his mind, trying to recover the fat yellow thread of magic that connected him to his destination during a 'port.

He couldn't believe he'd lost the f.u.c.king thread. One moment it was there, waiting for him to grab on with his mind and give a tug. The next it had slipped through his mental muscles, whipped past the mental blockades Rabbit had set up, and got sucked into a whirl of thoughts and feelings he didn't recognize. Instead of the usual order, his head was a whirlwind of half-understood images-men and women dancing in ritual robes; warriors locked in battle with dark terrible creatures that breathed fire and bled acid; a huge house in flames.

Forcing himself to focus through the maelstrom, he thought of the great room at Skywatch, pictured it, tried to connect with it . . . and failed. Adrenaline pounded through him as, instead of the familiar sideways lurch and grayish blur of teleportation, the world spun and dropped, doing some sort of crazy carnival s.h.i.t while magic sparked and flared red, gold, and gray, and wind tornadoed around them.

"Don't let go!" he shouted to the others over the wind noise, and he clutched the hands linking him on either side-Rabbit on the left, Leah on the right, linked from there to the others. Jesus G.o.ds. He was going to kill them all and wipe out mankind's last and best hope. And Leah. Oh, Leah. My love. I am sorry.

In reply, love came pouring through their jun tan bond to fill him with warm understanding and support, along with an edge that was hers alone. A millisecond later, raw power came into him from the other side as Rabbit opened the floodgates, not trying to mind-bend him or anything, but just being there and offering himself up. I love you, whispered in his mind, coming from Leah, who hadn't believed in magic before she met him. I trust you, said Rabbit, who didn't trust anyone, not even himself.

Gathering his magic, focusing it when it wanted to scatter, Strike thought again of Skywatch, visualizing the great room where so much had happened over the past few years, good and bad. It was where the Nightkeepers had first met as a team, where they had bonded and mapped out their plans. And it was where they needed to be now.

The world spun, the wind tore at him. Then, finally, a thin thread appeared in his mind's eye. He reached for it, touched it, wrapped his mind around it. And pulled.

Crack! The great room took shape around them as the magi materialized right where they belonged. Unharmed.

Thank the freaking G.o.ds. Strike went limp as relief poured through him and his power cut out, drained by whatever the h.e.l.l just happened. He would have sagged if it hadn't been for Leah on one side, Rabbit on the other. They kept him up, made it look casual, steered him through the crowd.

Incredibly, none of the others seemed all that shaken up. He heard a few jokes about turbulence and barf bags, and Sven's coyote actually was barfing, but n.o.body seemed to realize how close they had just come to dying, or that their king had almost lived up to his father's legacy by finishing off the Nightkeepers. But once Leah and Rabbit got him to the royal suite and into bed, he stared through the gla.s.s ceiling of the solarium they used as the master and cursed himself bitterly because he, at least, knew how close it had been. And he knew something else: He couldn't keep going on like this. He had been gutting through the fogginess in his brain and rearranging things to minimize the number of 'ports he needed to do in a given day, but this . . . s.h.i.t. What the h.e.l.l was happening to him?

And it couldn't be a coincidence that the jaguar king was losing it just as a challenger was stepping up. Dez claimed he didn't want the throne, and Strike sure as s.h.i.t didn't want to lose his kingship-never mind his life here on Earth, with Leah-but there were prophecies in play, just like Anna's message said. What do you want from me? he sent into the sky, envisioning Kulkulkan, the G.o.d that had been his and Leah's special guardian before the destruction of the skyroad. What am I supposed to do?

There was no answer. Just the slant of the afternoon sun that should have been pleasant but instead was a reminder that their time was running out.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Pueblo Bonito It was sunset by the time Dez was finally finished with Keban. He had refused to cremate him on the sacred ground of Skywatch-and suspected that the others, particularly the winikin, would object if he had tried-but when it came down to it, he hadn't been able to just dump the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in a ditch, either. So he had come up to Bonito, the Chacoan castle built by their ancestors, and he had built a funeral pyre.

The humans considered the ruins a soaring mystery, the last remnants of an elusive tribe that had lived a thousand years earlier, leaving behind a grand stone-and-timber castle with many floors, dozens of kivas, hundreds of rooms, and tricky interplays of light and shadow that could be used to tell time or plot the stars. Some scholars thought it had been a trading center, others a home for the G.o.ds. In a way it had been both, though not even his serpent ancestors would have been b.a.l.l.sy enough to call themselves G.o.ds. He hoped. Either way, this was the serpents' castle, and whatever else he had been and done, Keban had served the bloodline by saving its last male descendant. So Dez built a small pyre in a sheltered spot near a curving wall and lit it with a combination of diesel and magic. He watched the smoke curl, blocked out the smell, and listened to the hiss-pop of the fire, let himself drift . . .

It was the day of the Nightkeepers' planned attack on the intersection, and the training compound was a beehive of activity overlain with tension.

Dez's vantage was all feet and knees, his perceptions those of a three-year-old, but he felt the tension in the air as the huge, battle-armored warriors and their winikin gathered in the courtyard. Knots of men and women were being kept under guard as they prepared for battle-Dez had heard them called dissy-dents; he wasn't sure what that meant, but he could see they were mad, and most everyone else was mad at them.

Elsewhere, the younger winikin were herding all the kids into the Great Hall; the grown-ups were all pretending like it was a party-a movie first, dancing later, with pizza and cake. But their eyes were worried, and Dez's mother and father had hugged him too tightly just now. They had done the same to baby Joy, making her cry. She was still sniffling as Keban tucked her into her bouncy chair.

"Son."

Dez craned around, but it wasn't his dad, it was Keban's father, Keru. The two winikin hugged briefly, looking very alike, though one was old and the other young.

"We've got everything packed like you said." Keban kept his voice very low. "If things go wrong, Breese and I are out of here with the kids."

Dez sat up straight. Breese was his winikin-she was soft and nice, and smelled like strawberries. Were they all going somewhere? He wanted to ask Keban, but didn't dare. He was nice to Joy, not always so nice to everyone else.

"Be strong," Keru said. "And whatever you do, preserve the bloodline. Because G.o.ds help us if we have to go into the war without a serpent king."

The men hugged again, and Keru went off toward the warriors, where Dez's parents were helping each other with their gear. Keban turned, found Dez staring at him, and started to scowl. Then he seemed to catch himself, and sighed. "Come here, kid. Let's go find Breese. The four of us need to stick together, okay? No wandering off on your own tonight." Dez nodded, but the winikin looked unconvinced. He hunkered down and gestured for Dez to come closer. "Hold your sister's hand for a second."

Dez complied, sticking out a finger and letting Joy curl her chubby fist around it. She smiled at him, sniffles forgotten.

"Do you know what an oath is?" the winikin asked.

Surprised, because Keban didn't usually say much to him, Dez nodded.

"Okay, I want you to say, 'I swear I'll watch out for my sister tonight. I won't leave her, no matter what.'"

Dez stammered his way through the oath, feeling very grown up and protective all of a sudden. His father had told him Joy was his responsibility before, but n.o.body had ever made it his job to stay right with her. It all seemed very important, and a little scary, but it gave him the courage to ask, "What's going on?"

"Nothing you need to worry about as long as you stay right with your sister. Because if you don't, bad things are going to happen." Keban looked up when someone called his name. "There's Breese. Come on." He picked up Joy, bouncy chair and all, grabbed Dez's hand, and headed for the doors to the Great Hall. At the stairs, though, he stopped and looked back. It seemed like a lot of the winikin were doing that.

Dez looked back, too, his eyes zeroing in on his parents. His mother's laughing eyes were very serious, and his fathers face was drawn, his serpent-bare scalp hidden beneath an armored helmet. He was saying something to Keru, who was his winikin. Dez's stomach gave a funny shimmy, and he called out, "Mom! Dad!"

They didn't hear him, and Keban tugged him to keep going, but just as they went through the doors, Keru looked straight at Dez, meeting his eyes. He touched his heart and then his wrist, letting his fingers linger where rows of serpent glyphs sat above the image of a hand cupping the face of a sleeping child.

The vision dissolved, leaving Dez floundering for a moment as his perceptions shifted back to those of his adult self, the one who knew that the glyph was the aj winikin, and the gesture meant "I serve you, serpent." Keru had been swearing fealty-not just his own but that of all the serpent winikin, who had guessed that the attack would fail and had made clandestine plans to save Dez and Joy.

Staring into the fire, Dez tried not to think how different his life would have been if Breese had made it out, or if Keban had been able to save both him and Joy. If it had gone down like that, the winikin's mind wouldn't have gotten f.u.c.ked over by the magical backlash of him having sacrificed his blood-bound charge. He would've been a normal winikin instead of what he had become, and Dez would've come out a better man, maybe even a man fit to be a king. Now, though . . . the G.o.ds might have done their best to patch him back together with Triad magic, but that didn't make him the man he should have been. Which made it d.a.m.n lucky-or the will of the G.o.ds-that the Nightkeepers had Strike.

Shaking his head, he added more gas to the fire, and watched it burn. When it was over and the winikin was little more than a smudge of ash and some s.h.i.tty memories, he scattered the embers and headed back to the parking area, strides purposeful. He had given Strike and the others enough time to hash things over without him, and now it was time to step up and defend himself, make whatever promises they wanted him to.

He didn't know if the vision had come from Anntah or his own head-but it had brought home that they were all on the same team. It wasn't the serpents against the other bloodlines, or him against the world; it was about the Nightkeepers against Iago and the Banol Kax. And the Nightkeepers needed all the help they could get, even if it came from a guy like him. Which meant there was no way in h.e.l.l he was quitting the team; he was there to stay, and they were going to have to find a way to believe that he didn't want the throne, that the serpent prophecy-if it had ever been anything beyond a serpent-fueled dream-no longer applied. The same went for Reese-he wasn't letting her go without a fight. He just had to figure out a way to convince her of that, convince her to give him another chance to prove that they were meant to be together.

His steps faltered slightly when he came out from between two high stone walls and saw the remaining Jeep Compa.s.s parked next to Keban's pickup. Reese was sitting on the hood of the Compa.s.s, waiting for him, a silhouette in black leather highlighted by the oranges and reds of the setting sun. As he drew closer, he tried to read her expression, but failed. He wasn't sure if her poker face had gotten better, or if his perceptions had gotten worse, fouled up by how much this mattered. How much she mattered.

Swallowing past the fist-sized lump in his throat, he moved to stand in front of her, caging her in, yet leaving himself wide open, his defenses down in more ways than one. He took her hand and turned it over to trace the nearly healed cut. Without preamble, he said, "I was afraid you would leave if you knew about the serpent prophecy. Or that you would tell Strike and . . . well, things would blow up."

Her expression was lost in the shadows. "And now that it's happened?"

"They learned to trust me once. Hopefully I can convince them to give me another chance." He paused. "And, yeah, I should have told them everything right up front." If he had, they wouldn't be up h.e.l.l's creek without a scepter.

He expected her to tell him he'd been an idiot, which he couldn't argue. Instead, she turned her hand and twined their fingers together, giving him a jolt. "They'll forgive you eventually, because they'll see what I see in you."

The heat that had flared at her touch was joined by something strange and unfamiliar. He thought it might be hope. "What's that?"

"They'll see a man who, even after everything Keban did wrong, still does the right thing for him in the end." Her gesture encompa.s.sed the ruin. "You did good here, Mendez." And coming from Reese, that was high praise.

He exhaled, letting it go. "In his own way, he was obeying the G.o.ds."

"Um. It wasn't the G.o.ds talking to him. It was Anntah."

"It was . . . What?"

"I saw him in a dream, talked to him." She briefly described her vision. "He told Keban what to do, though not how, which was his mistake. I don't think he realized how badly losing Joy had damaged him." She paused. "He gave me a message for you. He said to tell you that you need to fulfill the prophecy or Vucub will reign. Which isn't news, but it underscores what Anna said."

They were out in the open, but invisible walls seemed to press in on him from all directions, hemming him in. He tightened his grip on her hand. "The man the prophecy was talking about doesn't exist." But he knew that wasn't good enough; the messages suggested that what mattered was fulfilling the serpent prophecy, period. "I won't challenge the king and I sure as h.e.l.l won't kill him."

Though back in Denver he had done exactly that, and history repeated. Could he really promise that he wouldn't backslide straight into being the b.a.s.t.a.r.d he'd once been?

Yes, he decided, he d.a.m.n well could.

When Reese was silent on that point, his heart sank a little, but he said only, "Was that it for Anntah's message?"

"Not exactly." She turned away so the setting sun lit her face. "I'm supposed to tell you what he said and leave, because you're supposed to fulfill the prophecy alone. And"-her voice got a little smaller-"we're not destined mates. We never were."

"Bulls.h.i.t," he said flatly.

She lifted a shoulder. "I'm just telling you what he said."

It wasn't until that moment that he realized he'd been taking it as a given that she was his G.o.ds-chosen mate. Why else had he locked on to her from that very first moment? Why else had he known he had to save her, keep her, be with her? Why else would she have come back into his life now? It had to be magic. Nothing else made sense.

When he didn't say anything, she put in, "According to him, you would have fallen for the star twins if they had lived. They were your true mates."

"Twins? Really? d.a.m.n."

She scowled. "Be serious."

He sobered, willing her to believe him when he said, "I am serious . . . about you. I always have been, even when I had my head up my a.s.s." He moved in closer, putting a hand on the Compa.s.s's hood on either side of her and leaning over her, crowding her back on the vehicle's hood. "If you're planning on leaving because Anntah told you to, or because the G.o.ds, or destiny, or what the f.u.c.k ever didn't mean for us to be together, think again. Because I say we belong together. So what if it wasn't magic? We'll call it something else and move on. The only destiny I give a s.h.i.t about is the one that's right in front of me, right here, right now."

He was braced for an argument, pumped for it, even. Instead, she looped her arms around his neck and touched her forehead to his, so they were leaning on each other. "Say that again."

"Which part?" But he knew. He lowered his voice and whispered, "We belong together, baby." And then he kissed her for real, because he was through waiting for the perfect moment.

Reese's heart raced, heating her blood and making her exquisitely conscious of the cooling night air when it brushed against her skin and rushed to cool the dampness as he kissed her cheeks, her throat. She caught his ear between her lips and savored his groan, tugged up his shirt to revel in the feel of muscles strung tight with need.

Driving up here, she had known it would end like this, or at least she had hoped so. It might not be what she had pictured when she woke up-G.o.d, had it been just this morning?-but that didn't make it wrong. The overa.n.a.lytical part of her wanted to worry that she was making excuses, but the rest of her knew better. He wasn't the boy she had loved or the criminal she had hated, or even a mix of the two. He was a new, better man, a mage. And that was who she wanted.

Flashes of desire built quickly to greed as they kissed and touched, twining together. Then he pulled away and stared down at her, his eyes unreadable in the gathering darkness. He touched her cheek, traced her jaw, brushed his thumb across her lips. "Come home with me?"

Something shivered deep inside her at the way those four simple words suddenly took on greater meaning. Once, she had dreamed of making a home with him. Now, she was dreaming of tonight. Tomorrow. The day after. But no more than that. She didn't dare. Brushing aside a poignant sting at the thought, she kissed the thumb he held pressed to her lips, took the tip in her mouth for a longer, moister kiss, and had the satisfaction of hearing his breath catch. He urged her legs up around his hips and slid his hands to cup her a.s.s, his thumbs working delicious pressure through her jeans as they kissed. The world spun around her and she cried out as a small o.r.g.a.s.m caught her unawares, bowing her against him in a rush of unexpected pleasure.

He shuddered against her. "G.o.ds, Reese. That was so f.u.c.king sweet."

The rasp of pa.s.sion in his voice set off chain reactions inside her, turning the fluttering nerves to an imperative: She had to have him. Now. She slid off the Compa.s.s's hood, letting her body graze down his. Then, when he reached for her, she dodged and shoved him toward the drivers side. "You're driving."

She might be channeling some of her inner nineteen-year-old's long-ago crush, but now it came with a woman's experiences and fantasies. And this was one of them. Because if the world was on the brink of disaster, the future unclear, she was taking this for herself.

Once they were off the road and onto a relatively flat stretch of hardpan where they couldn't get into too much vehicular trouble, she checked her armband to make sure there weren't any messages or emergency transmits. Rea.s.sured that no new s.h.i.t had hit the fan-or at least none that they had needed her for-she gave herself permission to take tonight, starting now. So she stretched her belt to the limit and slid over to him, enjoying his hiss of pleasure when she slipped an arm around his neck and caught his ear in her teeth. He stroked his free hand along her ribs to her hip, then lower to trail across her upper thigh and inward.

Her heart raced and her breath caught, but no more so than his did when she got his fly undone and freed his hard, thick length. When she ringed him with her hand, he surged up into her touch in a reflex arc that skewed his foot off the gas.

"Keep going," she whispered, "I'll make it worth the trouble."

He responded with a stream of curses in a low, reverent voice that shivered along her nerve endings and sent fire into her bloodstream. But he followed orders and accelerated, though going slower than before, breaking his shaky concentration to skim his hand down to her knee and back up, trailing fire to her center even through her jeans.