Final Prophecy 05 - Blood Spells (36 page)

She clung to him as the first terrible wave of grief and fear passed, leaving her wrung and miserable.

“We’ll get them back,” he said, whispering the words into her hair, over and over again. “We’ll do whatever it takes. I swear it.”

And even though she knew he couldn’t make that promise, she tightened her arms around him. “Thanks. I needed to hear that.”

He stilled. “I didn’t say anything.”

They pulled apart, looking at each other, and then at their forearm marks. Her
jun tan
didn’t look any different, didn’t feel any different. But she had just heard him in her mind.

 

When they returned to the main room, Strike was waiting for them, face drawn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I swore to you that they would be safe off the grid. I was sure they would be . . . but he’s stronger than any of us thought.”

Patience swallowed the surge of bile that came at the thought that, in the end, the boys probably would have been safer staying at Skywatch. Exhaling against the pain, she said only, “Then we’re going to have to be stronger than
he
thinks.”

“He won’t know what hit him,” Brandt said, voice low with menace. But she knew he was thinking about what he had been saying about Iago only minutes earlier. Things like “serial killer,” “monster,” and “escalating.”

Before, the Xibalban had been too unsure of his powers to attack them directly. Now he had no such qualms.

Strike said, “Based on the cement blocks and old radiation signs Rabbit saw through Iago’s eyes, we think he’s hiding in a bunker or a fallout shelter.”

“Carter put together a list of possibilities,” Jox reported from the kitchen, where he stood with a cell to his ear. “Jade cross-referenced them against power sinks, prioritizing Aztec and Mayan ruins, and got the list down to a hundred and twenty-four possibilities. It’s going to take time to check them out.”

“Too much time,” Strike said.

“Maybe not,” Leah countered. “Some detective work might help us narrow down the location.”

Jox said, “Carter’s also trying to run down the more distinctive tats you guys saw on the
makol
that attacked you, hoping we’ll be able to figure out where Iago’s doing his recruiting. No luck so far, though.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of doing some investigating for ourselves.” She turned to Strike. “Can you crack whatever box you set up and find out where Hannah, Woody, and the boys are living now? If Iago grabbed them from their home, there might be evidence of where the
makol
were prior to the attack. That could lead us back to Iago.”

Patience shuddered. When Brandt’s fingers brushed hers, she grabbed on tight.

Strike tipped his hand in a yes-no gesture. “I can get the address, but it’ll take some time. Lawyer one is going to have to ask lawyer two, and so forth, complete with a satellite-bounced password that changes every three days.” He paused. “I really didn’t want to know how to find them, in case . . . well, just in case.”

“In case we had a major security breach, you mean,” Rabbit said resignedly. “I’m grateful for your paranoia, because it means this wasn’t my fault. Not like Oc Ajal.”

He said something else, but Patience couldn’t make out the words over the sudden rushing in her ears.

“Oh, gods,” she whispered. Her stomach surged, knotting muscles that were already sore from retching, and felt like they were going to be at it again, real soon.
“No.”

Brandt tried to tug her closer. “What?”

“No.” She dropped his hand and backed up a step, away from them all. “Gods, no. He didn’t. He couldn’t have.” But he could have. And he had.

“Patience.” Brandt got in her face and took her shoulders. “Talk to me.”

She locked on to his gold-shot eyes and her heart broke. He would hate her. She hated herself. Gods. This was her fault for being weak, for being a liar and a sneak.

Voice shaking, she said, “In El Rey, Rabbit and I were directly blood-linked when Iago downloaded him. And I got a splitting headache right after.” She swallowed another hard, hot surge of nausea. “He said he wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without us.”

“He was talking about the intersection,” Brandt argued. “Even if he got into one of our heads through the blood-link to Rabbit, he
couldn’t
have gotten the boys’ location. None of us knew it.” He took a step toward her, hands outstretched.

She backed away. “I—” She couldn’t get it out.

His color drained. “No. Tell me you didn’t.” She would’ve given anything to deny it. When she didn’t, his hands fell to his sides.
“Patience.”

“I knew.” The words felt like they’d been ripped from the place where her heart used to be. “The address I found on Strike’s laptop was out-of-date. I couldn’t use Carter, so I went into the archived files and found Strike’s report of his first meeting with Mendez, when the bounty hunter grabbed him. I wanted her name.”

“You hired Reese Montana to find your boys?” Strike asked. He was staring at her like he’d never seen her before.

She knew the feeling.

“She found them within a few days and texted me the address. I memorized it, deleted the text, and started making plans to go see them . . . but when it came down to it, I couldn’t do it. I don’t know if it was my warrior’s talent, rationality, or what, but I finally admitted that you guys had been right. I couldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk
them
, just to make myself feel better. So I made myself forget the address and stop pretending that seeing the boys was going to make everything better.”

“Oh, Patience.” Brandt’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“If I had thought there was even the slightest chance Iago would . . .” She trailed off. Forcing herself to meet his eyes, where the gold flecks were buried beneath dark anguish, she said, “I’m sorry.” Her voice broke on the inadequacy of the words.

She was braced for his wrath.

She wasn’t prepared for him to cross the few feet separating them and take her in his arms.

“We’ll get them back,” he said, voice low and determined, as much a vow as if he’d shed blood and sworn to the gods themselves. “You’re not the enemy. Iago is.”

Then he kissed her temple. And she lost it again.

Clinging to Brandt’s solidity, she buried her face in his chest and wept silently, pushed beyond sobs to long, shuddering wails of tears, grief, and misery. Through it all, he held her, the two of them standing there, leaning on each other in the middle of the great room, as the others melted away.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to tell her it was going to be okay, that he was always going to be there for her, or any of the other platitudes they both knew he couldn’t guarantee. He just held on to her and let her cry herself dry.

When it was over, when the storm of weeping had passed, leaving her headachy, wrung out, and dry mouthed, she held him a moment longer, pressing her cheek against the wet fabric of his shirt, and listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart. Then, finally, she pushed away and looked up at him.

His face was deeply etched with strain and wore the impassive self-control of a warrior, but he was looking
at
her rather than past her.

Her voice shook. “If I hadn’t gone looking for them—”

He silenced her with a finger to her lips. “If I hadn’t gotten stuck inside my own head, you wouldn’t have needed to.” He brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “But I’m here for you now, and we’re going to get them back.”

She let herself lean into him for a moment longer, thinking that maybe she could count on him this time. But if she’d learned anything over the past couple of years, it was that she also needed to be able to count on herself.

Easing away from him, she inhaled a shuddering breath, and focused. “I know where they were living as of six months ago. We can start there.”

 

Under an hour later, Patience stood at the side door of a neat, unremarkable house in a neat, unremarkable suburban neighborhood, fighting the shakes as Rabbit worked on the lock. Brandt was beside her; the others were ranged behind them, a chameleon shield hiding them from view. But neither her teammates nor the shield spell could change whatever was waiting for them on the other side of the door.

She was trying not to imagine blood, but it painted her mind.

“The boys said the
winikin
were with them,” Brandt said under his breath. “He said they were sleeping.” He’d repeated it so often that it sounded like a mantra. She wasn’t sure which of them he was trying to convince.

“Got it.” Rabbit twisted the knob and opened the door, but stepped back to let them lead the way.

Brandt went in first, pushing past her like he wanted to shield her from whatever was inside. She was right behind him, though, nearly piling into him when he got halfway across the room and stopped dead.

She saw blue Formica, dark wooden cabinets, glossy black appliances, and a neutral tiled floor. The refrigerator was covered with cartoon-character magnets, newspaper clippings, and childish pictures drawn with more enthusiasm than skill. A Bose radio took up counter space and played jazz—one of Hannah’s favorite styles—with the volume set low.

There was no blood spatter, no sign of a struggle. That wasn’t why he’d stopped. His attention was locked on a framed photograph that sat beside the radio.

In it, the foursome had been caught midpicnic, laughing, with sandwiches and drinks spread haphazardly on a wooden table. Hannah’s hair was shorter and had more highlights, but the purple pirate’s bandanna and the lively sparkle in her good eye were the same. Woody’s hair might’ve gained more threads of gray, but his casual dress and easygoing smile were unchanged. The boys were tall and lean for their age, with Brandt’s intensity in eyes the color of her own. Braden, handsome and perfectly groomed, stared directly into the camera with a charmer’s smile, while Harry looked into the distance with a dreamy smile, his clothing faintly rumpled, his hair sticking up over his ears.

“They’re growing up.” Brandt’s voice broke. “And the
winikin
. . . gods, I miss them. I want them back, not just safe, but with us. For good.”

Before, she would’ve given anything to hear him admit that, to know that he felt it too.

Now, she moved up beside him, leaned on him briefly, and pressed her cheek to his shoulder. “We’re in this together,” she said, meaning not just the two of them but the entire team.

His fingers brushed hers, caught, and held. He squeezed, then let go and nodded once, a short, businesslike chin jerk. “Let’s do this.”

The magi fanned through the house. Patience and Brandt took the upstairs, first checking the big, brightly painted master that held an odd mix of neatness and jumble that reflected the twins’ personalities. She wanted to sit there and inhale the fragrance of crayons and the well-oiled baseball gloves that sat on a shelf, one splayed flat, the other with a ball carefully fitted into the pocket. Instead, she kept moving, touching Brandt’s hand on the way by.

On the other side of the hall, the
winikin
had separate rooms, which messed with her mental picture of the four of them as a tightly knit nuclear family.

Standing just inside a neat room done in masculine neutrals but with Wood’s distinctive flare in the velvet Elvis on the wall, she murmured, “Did something go wrong between you two, or does Woody snore like a chain saw?”

She hoped it was the latter. She wanted to believe they were happy.

“Maybe he couldn’t sleep with all the purple,” Brandt suggested from the next doorway down.

Patience joined him and glanced in.
Oh, Hannah,
she thought, her throat closing at the sight of purple and more purple—it was in the curtains, the bedclothes, and a small herd of stuffed dragons and dinosaurs on the bed, a profusion that went beyond garish to playful, and made her smile through a mist of tears.

“We should go.” But although his voice was clipped, his eyes were dark with strain and grief, and he lingered for a last look in the boys’ room, his shoulders bowed.

The team regrouped downstairs in the main room, where the TV was on, glasses of juice sat half-finished on a coffee table, and a remote-controlled robot marched listlessly in a corner, going nowhere, its batteries wearing down. There, as elsewhere in the house, there was no sign of a struggle, no hint of the
makol
having been there.

Brandt crouched down to turn off the robot, his big hands lingering on the remote, touching something his sons had been playing with—what, two hours earlier? Less?

Leah shook her head, frustrated. “Nothing. It’s like they were ghosts.”

Ghosts.
Patience glanced at Brandt as the word sent a cool shiver through her, a reminder that Iago wasn’t their only enemy and the first-fire ceremony wasn’t the only threat. Time was running out on the Akbal oath.

He looked up at her, jaw set. “They’ll be okay,” he grated.

But the gold was gone from his eyes.

Winter solstice-eclipse

 

For Brandt, the night passed in a gut-gnawing blur of fruitless research and burning frustration. He wanted to fucking
do something
.

But Lucius and Jade hadn’t been able to find a way for him to renegotiate the Akbal oath, and the list of possible Xibalban bunkers was still too long, so the plans had shifted to staking out the dark-magic entrance and grabbing Iago and his prisoners on the way in. And in order to do that, they had to
find
the dark-magic entrance.

It had been Patience’s idea for Rabbit to mind-link with Jade and attempt to blend her de-cloaking talent with his dark magic, in order to search for the second doorway. Brandt had been proud of her for the potential breakthrough . . . but he hadn’t told her so.