Final Prophecy 05 - Blood Spells (35 page)

Rabbit’s eyes widened. “Deal.”

Strike nodded. “Good. Now, last but not least on the list of ‘possible reasons why Iago would send the
makol
to attack Oc Ajal’ is because they were looking for something. Question is, did they find it or not? We can assume they were looking for the knife the elder mentioned—the Moctezuma connection is too obvious. But were they also looking for Rabbit’s eccentric?”

Lucius said, “Unfortunately, the eccentric isn’t showing up in the library, archive, or any of the outside searches I’ve done so far.” He looked over at Rabbit. “I’ll talk to some of the more out-there Aztec scholars I know, see if there are any rumors that might not’ve made it into the official press. My gut says that’ll be a dead end, though. Eccentrics were common, but we know almost nada about what they actually symbolized or how they were used.”

Rabbit shrugged. “Well, on the bright side, it doesn’t come with a ‘touch this and die’ curse.”

“At least not one the Xibalbans made public,” Lucius agreed. “The knife, on the other hand, was pretty easy to find—or rather the first fire ceremony was.”

Strike grimaced. “Yeah. Jox used to pull that one out when the Xibalban boogeymen stopped working. ‘Knock it off or I’ll use you to start the new fire,’ he’d say. Usually worked too.”

Jox flushed a little when the other
winikin
looked at him. “What? Like he said, it worked.”

Carlos frowned. “Never heard of it.”

“Me neither,” Brandt muttered aside to Patience. “You?”

She shook her head. She wasn’t the only one; the room seemed about equally divided.

Seeing that not everyone was up to speed, Lucius said, “There were several versions of the ritual. The basic theory was that every fire in the village—or, back in the day, the entire kingdom or the empire itself—was snuffed out simultaneously, plunging the world into darkness and essentially stripping mankind of the one big thing that separates us from the spirits and animals—the ability to use fire. Then the highest-ranking religious leader, whether a village elder or the emperor himself, would use flint and a sparker to start a new fire, and all the other fires would be relit from that one blaze. If we’re talking about a village, everyone would snag an ember and go about their business. In cases where the ritual was commanded for a kingdom or the whole empire, runners would head in all directions. Each runner would light all the village fires on his route, then pass off his flame, Olympic-style, to another runner, and another, and so on. In this way, all the fires in the land were made fresh and new again.” He paused. “One of the reasons to perform the ceremony was to encourage the sun or moon to return after an eclipse.”

“Bingo,” Brandt murmured.

Patience nodded. “We knew Iago would try to harness the solstice-eclipse. Maybe this is how he intends to do it.”

“Which means all we’ve got to do is figure out how to stop him and keep Cabrakan where he belongs.” Brandt exhaled. “No problem.” Inwardly, he added,
And we’ve got to do all that without me retaking the Akbal oath.

But that didn’t sit right either. Not after what they’d seen in the village.

Lucius went on to describe the harder-core Aztec versions of the ceremony, in which the new fires were started in the open abdominal cavities of living, eviscerated victims. He paused, clearing his throat. “There’s one more thing. I wasn’t going to mention it because we’re all pretty raw right now, and I don’t really see that there’s anything we can do about it, but . . .” He took a deep breath. “The strongest of the new-fire rituals used children. Young boys, especially.”

“Used them for wh—,” Patience began, then broke off, her face draining of color. She grabbed on to Brandt like she was drowning, digging her fingernails into his skin.

He covered her hand with his own. His stomach clutched sourly, but he said, “The twins are safe. Iago knows they exist, but there’s no way he can find them. Hannah and Woody are pros at staying hidden.”

Lucius held up his hands. “Sorry. My bad. I was more wondering about the villagers.”

“You think the
makol
took prisoners,” Brandt grated.

Lucius nodded. “The Aztecs were big on it. They even used to set up mock battles with neighboring kingdoms, as a way of capturing each other’s culls for use as human sacrifices.” He paused. “We don’t know how many kids were in the village. They might’ve captured a dozen, or none. There’s no way of knowing.”

Brandt shook his head, hating the thought, and what it meant. “Iago is escalating. He started with individual murders, and more often than not, he took the time to do something with the body, either posing it like the first old lady, or—” He broke off with a look at Myrinne, because his second example would have been the Wiccan who had raised her. “Then the kidnappings started—Sasha first, then Rabbit and Myrinne, Lucius. . . . We got all of them back, but Sasha and Lucius both saw other prisoners. Then last year, he started leaving his own people to die, first the human acolytes, then other Xibalbans. And now . . .”

“What happened today was different,” Patience agreed.

“The profilers would call it overkill,” Michael put in. And he would know.

“That’s Moctezuma’s influence,” Lucius said. “We’re not just dealing with Iago anymore. He’s something different now, something far more powerful, far more violent.”

Brandt tipped his hand in a ‘maybe’ gesture. “I’m sure that’s part of it, but the pattern was in place before he summoned the demon.” He had watched his fair share of crime-solving TV back in the outside world. “I think he’s been learning as he goes.”

“Iago was the second son,” Patience said, catching on.

He nodded. “Think about it. Werigo was usurped by
his
younger brother—Saamal—so he probably harped on the ‘trust no one, especially your little brother’ theory when he was raising Ix.” Adrenaline kicked deep down as it came together for him. “But then Werigo died and Ix found himself in charge of a group of dark magi and nasty-ass humans, feeling his little brother breathing down his neck. I’m betting Ix wouldn’t have given Iago any details on anything he didn’t have to. So when Ix died, the information chain was broken. Iago didn’t know all of the magic or plans.” He paused. “I think that up until now he was making shit up as he went along.”

“And now he’s got Moctezuma helping him,” Patience murmured.

“Yeah. Which means it’s only going to get worse from here.” Brandt tightened his grip on her hand. To Lucius, he said, “Unless you see a problem with that theory.”

“Only that I didn’t think of it first,” the human said drily. Then his expression shifted. “The question is whether we can use it to—” He broke off at the burble of a digital tone.

Patience shot to her feet, fumbling an unfamiliar cell phone out of her back pocket. Flushing, she flipped it open and glanced at the display.

Her face went utterly blank, draining of color.

“Patience?” Brandt rose slowly, confusion turning into something far more uncertain as he connected. It was the phone she’d kept secret from him when they’d lived in the outside world, the one she’d used to talk to Hannah.

Eyes wide and scared, she turned the display so he could see the text. It read:
Put it on speaker.

A heartbeat later, the main house phone rang.

Heart hammering, Patience stared at the landline. Jox reached to punch the speaker button, then paused and looked at her. “Okay?”

She was badly afraid that things
weren’t
okay. Why the text? Why the speaker? Why was Hannah contacting her at all? It had to be her or Woody; they were the only ones who had the private number save for Rabbit, and he was in the room. And Reese Montana, granted, but she wouldn’t be calling after all this time. Which meant it was Hannah or Woody . . . and that knowledge held Patience all but paralyzed.

Good news or bad news? She didn’t know, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

“Do it,” she told Jox, her voice barely above a whisper. Brandt took her hand and moved up behind her, his body warm and solid. The
winikin
punched the button and the phone emitted the faint snake hiss of live air.

She swallowed hard, then said, “Hannah? Woody?”

“They’re here,” a man’s voice said, “but they can’t talk right now. Someone else wants to say hello.”

Patience’s knees nearly folded as Rabbit lunged to his feet with an inarticulate cry of horror. But even without that confirmation, she knew. She
knew
. Her stomach lurched and her heart hammered into ovedrive.
“Iago.”

Brandt’s fingers closed on hers hard enough to hurt, but she barely felt the pain. Every fiber of her being was focused on the phone, on the hiss of connection and the rustles of movement on the other end.

Then a small, scared voice said, “Mommy? Daddy? Are you there?”

The world stopped as she stared at the phone. She hadn’t heard the voice anywhere but in her dreams for the past two years, but she knew it instantly, intimately.
Braden.

“Nooo.” The whisper leaked from her lips, taking air and hope with it. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t possible.

Only it
was
possible. And it was happening.
Please, gods, no
.

“Sonofabitch!”
Brandt moved around her, headed for the phone. His face was dull red and etched with rage.

She grabbed his arm and tried to yank him back. It was like trying to stop a moving vehicle by pulling on a door handle—impossible—but she couldn’t let him get to the handset. Training and instinct took over, and she spun, kicked out, and caught him with a foot sweep. By the time he’d regained his balance, almost beyond himself with fury, she had darted around him and put herself between him and the phone, arms outstretched.

“Don’t,” she warned in a low voice. “That’s not Iago right now. It’s Braden, and he’s terrified.”

She was shaking. Behind her, small breathing sounds came down the line, making her picture Braden clutching a phone and trying to be brave while Harry watched, wide-eyed. The image nearly killed her. But at the same time it brought her the strength to stare down Brandt, holding him off until some of the wildness left his eyes.

He let out a long breath, then stepped up beside her as she turned back to the phone. He took her hand, gripping hard. He was shaking. They both were. Voice almost breaking with the effort of holding it together, she whispered, “We’re here, baby. Are you and Harry okay?”

“I’m here,” said a second version of the same voice, this one softer and more hesitant, not from shyness but because Harry weighed each word so carefully. He added, “We’re okay.”

“Hey there, champ,” Brandt said, using the daddy voice she hadn’t heard from him in so long. Hearing it now nearly broke her. He continued: “You’re going to have to help each other be brave. We’ll be there soon.” The promise was underlain with a threat aimed in Iago’s direction.

“Are Hannah and Woody there?” Patience asked.

“They’re in the other room, sleeping. When are you—” The heartbreakingly young voice shifted away, followed by a yelp of “Mommy!”

“Wait!” She reached for the phone, but stopped herself because it wouldn’t do any good.

Brandt put his arms around her, holding her close. She leaned on him hard, but didn’t take her eyes off the phone, knowing her babies and the
winikin
were on the other end.

In a low, dangerous voice, Brandt grated, “Talk to us, Iago. What do you want in exchange?”

“Who said anything about an exchange?” The Xibalban’s voice was as oily as his magic.

“You didn’t just call to torture us,” Brandt said flatly.

“Didn’t I? I’m getting a kick out of it, actually. Better yet is telling you that I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without you two. Ix lied and said he was going to the hellmouth down in the cloud forest that night. Once I knew which ruin he’d actually been at, it was easy to find the dark-magic entrance. I’ll be there when the passageway opens. Me and the other members of your little family.”

“Please,” Patience whispered without really meaning to.

“Which is worse, I wonder—for me to have my brother vanish, leaving me with little more than spellbooks and lies . . . or for you to know that your sons and
winikin
are going to help me start the new fire and call an army?”

She swallowed a sob, refusing to give Iago the satisfaction. But she couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but cling to Brandt.

Voice resonating with fury, he rasped, “Patience and I killed Ix, not the boys and the
winikin
. What’s more, I’m a Triad mage. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? You want the power of the Triad backing up your magic. Even better, you want to take one of the Triad magi out of the equation. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“You’re not a Triad mage yet,” Iago countered.

“Your intel is dated,” Brandt said without hesitating. When Patience frowned up at him, he glanced at Rabbit and tapped his temple, indicating the jade circlet that had—they hoped—cut off Iago’s connection with his embedded spy. Then, hardening his voice to a
last chance, asshole
growl, he said, “Do you want to make the trade or not?”

“Four for one? I don’t think so.” A beat of silence. “You and wifey-poo together. Four for two.”

Half a second before Brandt could no-fucking-way Iago’s counteroffer, Patience said, “It’s a deal. When and where?”

“Eight tomorrow night, on the other side of El Rey, near the palace.” Iago paused. “Don’t be late.” There was a click, and the line went dead.

Silence filled the great room.

A shudder racked Patience. “Oh, gods.” She let go of Brandt and staggered away, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth as vicious nausea ripped through her, nearly folding her double. “Oh, shit. I’m—”

She broke and bolted for the bathroom just past the kitchen, cracked her knees on the marble flooring, and puked miserably in the toilet, hanging on to the seat and sobbing in between bouts. Then she was just hanging on to herself and sobbing, folded into a huddle on the bathroom floor. Brandt didn’t try to get her up. He just sat on the bathroom floor to gather her against him and hold on tightly, rocking her as long shudders ran through his big body.