Spellfire (19 page)

*    *    *

Myr stared at him for a beat, telling herself not to be an idiot. Problem was, she didn’t know which answer counted as idiocy: accepting his peace offerings and risking what little hard-won balance she’d managed to get back after their night together . . . or telling him to get lost.

The fact that she could come up with a laundry list of why she should send him away probably should’ve made the choice for her. She hesitated, though, and not just because of the brownies. It was the mix of hope and “I dare you” in his eyes, and the shimmer of heat that snapped in the air between them, one that she couldn’t quite ascribe to the fighting magic that was pumping in her veins. And, to be honest, it was the shame of knowing she had wimped out this morning.

Tell him to stay? Tell him to go?

It would’ve been easier if he’d been just another guy, like the ones she’d hooked up with in New Orleans. But there were millions of those guys out there, and only one Rabbit. He awed her, impressed her, sometimes scared the hell out of her. He had the potential to save them all . . . and the potential to destroy her. She wanted him, yearned for him, and after last night she knew damn well it would be far too easy to submerge herself once more in a relationship with him.

But he’d brought her brownies and beer, which had been a Friday night ritual during their year-plus together in college, a way to celebrate the weekend back when they’d thought they had it so tough and hadn’t had any idea what tough actually felt like. Now, she knew exactly how it felt . . . and it was asking her for a chance to get back with her, and to let things between them go deeper than she’d had any intention of going.

She should tell him to get lost. Instead, she nodded to the six-pack. “Vitamin B?”

The tense set of his shoulders eased slightly. “Something like that.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Wanna take a walk?”

She really, really shouldn’t.

She did it anyway.

They ended up at the pueblo. Nostalgia tugged as she crested the narrow, winding trail leading up and saw the wide, flat ledge and familiar round doorways. This was where Rabbit had gone when they fought, where they had gone together to get a little drunk and make love under the stars, and—although she hadn’t told him—it was where she had hidden out in the weeks after he disappeared, while she recovered from his attack and tried to come to grips with what had happened between them.

She hadn’t been back since she gained control of the magic. It didn’t look any different, though. She was the one who was different . . . or at least trying to be.

Sitting on the very edge of the cliff, she let her legs hang and felt the shimmy in her stomach that said there was nothing to keep her from falling. Rabbit sat beside her, with a few inches separating them, extinguished the foxfire he’d used to light their way, and stared out as the night closed around them. The lights of Skywatch shone in the distance, but everything else was dark, save for the glimmer of stars up above.

“About last night,” he began after a moment.

“I’m sorry I wimped out and did the tiptoe thing,” she said, knowing she owed it to both of them, especially after what he’d just said about wanting to make more of an effort with her. Wanting to, in effect, court her, even though they both knew the timing couldn’t be worse, and she wasn’t even sure it was what she wanted. “Look, last night was great. Better than great. It was incredible . . . but I didn’t want us to wake up together and be back where we started.” She paused. “I need some space, Rabbit. I went from living under the Witch’s thumb to being your girlfriend. Not that I’m saying the two are equivalent. I loved what we had together, loved learning about the magic and how to fight . . . but I never really learned how to be myself. I’m starting to figure it out now, and I don’t want to lose that.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay, yeah. I get that.” But the lines beside his mouth deepened.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Don’t be.” He took her hand, lifted it to kiss her knuckles, and shot her a crooked smile. “Like I said, I didn’t really work hard enough for you the last time around. You want space, you’ve got it. But that doesn’t change the fact that I want you in my bed—or your bed, one of the Jeeps, a closet, all of the above . . . your call.”

Her skin heated at the low rasp of his voice. She didn’t believe for a second that it was going to be that easy. Even if he stuck to a no-pressure, whatever-you-want arrangement, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stick to it, despite all her newfound determination. If the old Rabbit had fascinated her and made her feel like she wasn’t alone anymore, the man he’d become compelled her, made her yearn.

Forcing herself to stay casual, she bumped him with her shoulder. “Does that mean I can still have a beer and one of those brownies?”

“You can have whatever you want,” he said simply. “Whatever, whenever, if it’s mine, it’s yours.”

“Rabbit . . .”
Don’t say stuff like that
. She wanted too badly to hear it, to believe it.

“Don’t worry, no pressure. We’ll take things as slow as you want.” He paused, smile fading. “It’s not like we won’t have other things to focus on for the next eight days. And after that . . . well, there’ll be plenty of time for us to figure things out.” He looked away as he said that, though, making her think he was just saying the words, or maybe trying to believe them. Was that because he didn’t think they could work things out, or because he thought it would be a moot point, the earth destroyed?
It doesn’t matter,
she told herself.
What matters is the next eight days
. And after that, well, he was right. If they made it through, there would be time to figure out whether to stay together or go their separate ways.

The thought made her want to scoot closer to him and cling. Instead, she pulled her hand from his, balanced a brownie on her knee and reached for a beer. “That’s true enough, I guess. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time when it comes to figuring out what to do about the gods.”

Like it or not, it was easier to talk about battle plans than it was to talk about what was happening between them.

He shot her a sidelong look that said he knew what she was thinking. But then he took a swig of his beer, leaned forward and braced his elbows on his upper thighs. “I’m trying not to let this be an easy choice. It shouldn’t be.”

Before, back when she’d been pushing him to reach the full potential she saw in him, she probably would’ve jumped right in with all sorts of opinions, probably none of which would’ve been “have faith in the sky gods.” Now, though, she hesitated. Over the past few months, she had prayed to the gods for her magic and talked to them when she was alone and uncertain. It was unsettling to think that she might’ve been praying to the enemy all this time.

“Maybe Dez is right,” she said. “Maybe we should hold off on making any decisions until we’ve looked into the info Bastet gave us.” It felt weird to call the goddess by name, but was that any weirder than the message itself? Probably not.

“Maybe.” Rabbit flicked a couple of pebbles off the ledge, tilting his head as they clinked and clanked on the way down. “The whole Egyptian thing feels right to me, though. It makes sense. But what if that’s because I’d already talked myself out of the sky gods once before? I don’t trust myself on this one. Not after what happened with Phee.”

“Well, for better or worse, it’s not really going to be about what we believe, is it? Dez is going to have the final say.”

“I hope so.”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s . . . nothing. Just something my old man said.” He paused. “Did you ever imagine your parents showing up one day, putting the smackdown on the Witch, and whisking you away to your real life?”

She lowered her beer in surprise. “Where did that come from?”

“I was thinking about what Bastet said about the
kohan
and
kax
conspiring against us, and how it would help to think that there was a reason for all the bad luck we’ve had. Not just now, but in the past, too. The rise of the Aztec, the Spanish conquest, the Trail of Tears, the Solstice Massacre . . . all those times the Nightkeepers were just starting to flourish in a new land, when
wham
, something knocked them back down again.”

“Which got you thinking about being an orphan.” The word tried to stick in her throat. It was true, though. The surviving full-blooded Nightkeepers had grown up without their parents, though in most cases their
winikin
had filled in as best they could. And Rabbit himself might’ve been better off if both his parents had been out of the picture. “What about you?” she asked him. “Did you ever imagine your mother showing up and taking you away from Red-Boar?”

“Not really.” But then he sighed. “Okay, maybe. More over the past couple of years than when I was a kid, though. Back then, I more or less believed that I was a disaster, good for nothing, all the stuff my old man kept telling me. So why would my mother—who, of course, I pictured being gentle, kind, generous and the exact opposite of him—want anything to do with me? Worse, what if she actually
did
come, and was disappointed?”

“Rabbit . . .”

“No.” He took her hand, threaded their fingers together. “No sympathy necessary, no pity requested. I haven’t been that kid for a long time. That didn’t stop me, though, from chasing after her ghost over the past few years, thinking there was no way she could be as bad as Red-Boar.” He snorted, though his fingers tightened on hers. “Just my luck she turned out to be worse.”

“Luck,” Myr said softly.

“Yeah. There’s that word again. Like I said, it’s tempting to think that a whole lot of what’s gone down has been because our so-called gods have been fucking with us. Which makes it really damn cool to think that there’s an even higher power out there somewhere that wants us to succeed, and is trying to get through and help us.”

“Bastet as Daddy Warbucks?”

“More like some sort of superhero who’s been blocked from the planet, and could help us out if we can manage to open up the lines of communication.”

“In eight days.”

He glanced up at the night sky. “Almost down to seven, now.”

“Scary,” she said, going for wry but aware that her voice shook. It hit her like this sometimes, the knowledge that they were coming up on the end date, and that she was going to be right there on the frontlines. For all that she was a warrior and a mage, sometimes she still felt very much like a frightened little girl.

His shoulder bumped against hers. “Yeah. Scary.”

They sat like that for a few minutes in silence.

“I thought about it,” she said then, surprising herself. “My parents showing up, I mean. Sometimes, I would hide out and watch customers come into the shop, and I would pretend they were my parents, and that they’d come to take me back. Now and then I would picture them having the Witch arrested, but mostly all I cared about was getting out of there.” She paused. “I guess it was one thing to picture it, another to do something about it.”

“Don’t be ashamed of staying. Kids are programmed to believe their parents, wrong or right.”

She toyed with her brownie. “You’re saying I stayed because of inertia, just like some of the Nightkeepers and
winikin
—maybe a lot of them—are going to want to stick with the sky gods because they’re familiar.”

“What if they’re right?”

“Was I better off letting the Witch use me as a punching bag?”

“Ah, baby. Don’t do that to yourself.” He wrapped an arm around her.

“I won’t. I’m not. I’ve moved on, damn it.” But she let herself lean into him for a few seconds. And, when she felt his breath on her cheek, his lips on her ear, she tipped her head to accept the kiss, then sought his mouth with her own.

The churn of unease in her belly warmed quickly to desire, and she slid her hand up his chest to press over the steady thud of his heart. This was what she needed; it was why she had gone walking with him, why she couldn’t stay away from him.

He made her feel important.

He broke the kiss, to press his forehead to hers, so their breaths mingled when he said, “Will you come home with me tonight?”

She nodded but said nothing, not sure she trusted what would come out of her mouth right now, with her emotions too damn close to the surface.

They climbed down from the pueblo, pausing at the flat spots to kiss. And as they headed back toward the cottage, hand in hand, with her head on his shoulder, she didn’t let herself think about tomorrow. It would be enough to go home with him, make love to him. She wouldn’t let herself give in all the way like she had last night, though, and she wouldn’t stay the night.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

December 19

Two days to the zero date

With fewer than forty-eight hours on the clock, the Nightkeepers sat in the great room while Lucius used his laptop to flash pictures of Egyptian paintings and carvings on the big screen. He’d already gone over Bastet; the ram-headed creator god, Khnum, who made the bodies of men from mud and then breathed life into them; and the sun god, Amon-Ra, who had the head of a hawk and ruled the lands of the living. All the good guys Bastet had mentioned.

“Now for the not-so-good guys,” he said. “This is Anubis.” He clicked to a statue of a pointy-eared, pointy-nosed dog cast in gold and painted black. Lying on its belly with its front paws outstretched, it was positioned like the Sphinx and had gleaming gem eyes that seemed to scan the room even in 2-D. “And so is this.” The next slide showed a tomb painting with the same foxy head, but this time on the body of a bulky, muscular man. “Since jackals were often seen scavenging near the dead and their tombs, the ancient Egyptians worshipped them as the guardians of the dead. Anubis here is the god of death and the dying.” He hit the button again, skipping a slide and stopping on another animal-headed man. This one, though, had a strangely elongated nose, almost a beak, along with square-tipped ears, and what looked like scales. “And this is Seth.”

As Rabbit frowned, trying to figure out what the hell it was, Myrinne leaned over and said in an undertone, “They had armadillos in ancient Egypt?”

He exhaled a soft snort. “That’s good news for us—if we poke it with a stick, it’ll roll into a ball and wait until we go away.”

Her grin warmed him, as did the press of her thigh against his where they sat together at one end of the big sofa. Quarters were tight with the full seventy-seven-person team crammed into the mansion’s great room, but he wasn’t complaining. Ever since that afternoon up at the pueblo, he and Myr had been hanging out pretty much every day, and things had been going well. The sex was incredible and having her back in his life was even better, though she still wouldn’t spend the night.

Even that was probably for the best, though, because it meant he didn’t have to explain why he spent almost an hour each morning sitting cross-legged in front of the altar in the spare bedroom, burning incense and staring down at the carved stone surface while he made sure the dark magic stayed contained. And it meant he didn’t have to let on that it was getting harder each day.

“It’s called the Seth beast,” Lucius said with a “shut it” look in their direction. “Seth is the lord of chaos, thunder and the desert. He’s roughly equivalent to the Christian’s devil, though he does his damage on earth. And this is Osiris.” He clicked to a tomb painting of a sharp-featured pharaoh-type guy wearing a tall white hat and the outer wrappings of a mummy. “He rules the underworld and resurrection.” He didn’t quite glance to where Red-Boar leaned against the back wall, doing his arms-folded-scowl thing.

The resurrected mage had spent the past week lobbying on behalf of the old gods, making it damn clear he thought the Nightkeepers were headed for disaster.

Lucius kept going, sketching out the Egyptian’s upper-and underworlds, and finishing with, “I think it’s worth mentioning that the Mayan religion didn’t have a good-versus-bad afterlife the way that we’ve been treating it. In fact, the Mayans believed that the sky and Xibalba were two planes that were equally populated with both good and evil gods, just like there are both good and evil people on earth.”

“Hold on,” Nate said. “You’re saying that they had it right and the Nightkeepers had it wrong? The Maya learned the religion from us in the first place!”

“Not from us,” Lucius countered. “They learned from our many-times ancestors, long before things started evolving and the Xibalbans split from the Nightkeepers, separating the light and dark magic.”

“So you believe Bastet.”

Lucius spread his hands. “Experience tells me that the
Banol Kax
are evil and that the sky gods oppose them. But that doesn’t rule out what Bastet told us.” He paused. “Not to mention that we found a new treatment for the
xombi
virus . . . in an Egyptian pharmacopeia.”

There was a restless shifting of bodies in the jam-packed room.

Anna said, “I passed it along to my contact inside the quarantine zone a couple of days ago, and as of this morning, most of the existing cases have stabilized. In addition, there haven’t been any new infections reported in the past five days.”

“Which suggests it has nothing to do with a treatment that started two days ago,” Red-Boar interjected. “For all we know, the demons just put the poor bastards in a holding pattern so they’ll be ready to use as a standing army when the calendar hits zero.”

Rabbit wanted to roll his eyes, but couldn’t. Because even though Red-Boar was looking seriously strung out these days, he was still making sense. That was the problem, in fact: the arguments were almost perfectly weighted between “it’s a trap” and “it’s for real.” Which meant that somebody needed to be the one to make the call, flip the coin, or what-the-fuck-ever.

“I guess that’s my cue.” Dez stood.

This time the rustling was louder, lasted longer. Rabbit found himself edging forward in his seat, and Myr’s nails dug into his palm. This was what they were all there for, not Lucius’s info or Anna’s report, but to hear what Dez had decided to do about Bastet’s command that the Nightkeepers reject the sky gods.

The king met Red-Boar’s narrow-eyed glare. “Don’t worry. We all know how you’d vote if this was a democracy.” To the rest of them, he said, “The thing is, it’s not a democracy. Our ancestors set things up with a king and a fealty oath . . . maybe because they knew it would come down to this. I don’t know. It’s a hell of a decision to put on one guy, king or not.”

“Shades of ’eighty-four,” somebody muttered from up near the kitchen, where most of the
winikin
were gathered.

A shiver crawled down Rabbit’s spine. He’d had another of the dreams last night, where he was inside Scarred-Jaguar’s head in the minutes leading up to the Solstice Massacre. He was pretty sure it was a warning, a pointed reminder that one wrong decision by a powerful mage could make the whole fucking world go
boom
. It wasn’t as if he needed the reminder, though. The knowledge haunted him, gnawed at him, and had him staring at the ceiling each night while Myr’s pillow cooled beside him. And when the dawn broke, it drove him into the spare room, determined to lock his brain down tight.

When the time came, he would use the dark magic. But he would do it on his terms, and he wouldn’t give in to the anger and chaos that came with it. The magic was just magic; the other garbage belonged to the parts of himself that he’d left behind.

“There’s one major difference between the old king and me.” Dez shot a sharp look at the
winikin
, then scanned the room, so it was clear he was talking to all of them when he said, “I’m not going to force anybody to do anything.”

There was a startled silence. Rabbit glanced at Myr, got a “no clue” headshake, and looked back at the king. His own warrior’s talent was humming, amping his senses and sending adrenaline into his bloodstream. It was time. Whatever came next, it was going to change the course of human history.

After giving that a moment to sink in, Dez continued. “I realize that our ancestors intended for the king to order his troops into battle . . . but we’re not our ancestors. We’re the last survivors, the children of the massacre. We didn’t ask for the lives we were born into, but each and every one of us stepped up and answered the call when it came.”

His eyes went around the room, and when they hit Rabbit, he felt a bit of the old “holy shit, this is real” that he used to get when they all first gathered at Skywatch, back when the whole save-the-world thing had felt so damn faraway. Myr’s fingers tightened on his fingers, as if she felt it, too.

When he’d locked eyes with each and every one of them, Dez reached for Reese’s hand and brought her to stand beside him. “Now I’m going to ask all of you to step up once more, this time going against so much of what we were taught.” He paused while a murmur went through the room—one that seemed, to Rabbit anyway, more resigned than truly surprised. Then the king said, “In forty hours, Reese and I are going to ’port to Coatepec Mountain, stand at the intersection and renounce the
kohan
. I’m asking all of you to join us. More, I’m asking the godkeepers to break their bonds. I believe what the goddess told us. I believe that it’s up to the Nightkeepers to defend the earth against both the sky and the underworld.”

“You’re asking us?” Red-Boar’s eyes narrowed. “Not ordering us?”

“You heard me.” Dez swept the crowd once more. “If you choose not to join us, you will be released from your fealty oath and given weapons, cash and a ’port wherever you want to go.” He dropped his voice. “Wherever you think you can defend yourself best.”

From up near the kitchen, JT called, “You’re assuming the deserters—”

“Not deserters,” Reese put in. “Just no longer allies.”

“Whatever. You’re assuming you won’t wind up fighting them.”

Dez shook his head. “I’m not assuming anything. I’m hoping that won’t happen, but I’ll be damned to the hell of your choice if I lock people up in the basement just because they believe differently than I do, and I’ll fucking step down before I conscript an army the way Scarred-Jaguar did.” He nodded to Strike, then Anna and Sasha. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Strike rumbled. But his knuckles were white where he gripped Leah’s hand.

Dez continued. “It’d be stupid for me to tell you to think about it—gods know that’s all I’ve been doing for the past week and I’m sure you’ve all been doing the same. But if you figured I was going to make the decision for you, you’re out of luck. You’ve got twenty-four hours to let me or Reese know if you want us to arrange to teleport you out, forty if you don’t.”

“Who’s going to be doing this ’porting?” Strike asked.

Anna said, “I’m already in. The message, the skull . . . I have no doubts.”

“This is strictly voluntary,” Dez reiterated. “But I hope you’ll all step up and keep the team intact. I believe with all my heart and soul that this is the right thing to do.”

There were more questions after that, especially from the
winikin
, who seemed to be looking for loopholes in the king’s offer to release them. They might have their magic now, but some still didn’t trust their freedom.

While those questions and answers were ping-ponging, Myr leaned in and whispered, “Dez has balls of steel.”

Rabbit nodded. “And a legacy he’s trying like hell not to live down to.”

“Rabbit?” Dez called. “A word?”

The meeting had started breaking up around them, so he rose, caught Myr’s hand and tugged her with him when he headed toward where the king was standing with Reese and his advisers. Rabbit didn’t miss the way Red-Boar’s eyes tracked him, seeming to say:
Remember your loyalties, boy . . . I won’t even need to touch her
.

Fury spurted through him, lighting his senses and bringing a surge of magic. Tensing, he fought it down. Deep inside him, though, his own voice whispered,
You can take him. You’re better than him, stronger than him, and—

“What’s wrong?” Myr’s voice echoed strangely in his ears, and when he looked down at her, all he could see were her eyes, gone dark and worried. When he focused on her, though, the fog cleared and the magic receded. Within a few seconds, it was as if it hadn’t ever been there at all.

More, his inner vault was still secure, sealed shut by this morning’s meditation. So where the hell had that come from?

Or was he fooling himself with the whole vault thing? Was the dark magic playing him?

“I’m okay,” he said, even though he was anything but. “Come on.”

They joined Dez, who said without preamble, “Okay, Rabbit. Here’s the thing. You know how you’re usually the exception to every rule? Well, the same thing goes here. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you the same choice as the others.”

“You’re ordering me to renounce the sky gods?”

The king snorted. “I don’t care what kind of spell your father cast, I don’t believe for a second that I could force you into betraying something you truly believe in.” He paused. “I’m asking you to renounce the sky gods and fight with me . . . but if you choose not to, I’m going to lock you in the basement for the duration. I just can’t risk having you running loose.”

“What makes you think I’ll stay put if there’s no spell that’ll hold me?”

“Welded cuffs with a shield spell will.”

He couldn’t picture himself in the storeroom. But he couldn’t picture himself renouncing the gods, either. “How long do I have to decide?”

“Forty hours, just like the others.”

“Right.” Because there wouldn’t be any ’port escape for him. “What about Myr?”

The glint in Dez’s eyes might’ve been sympathy. “It’s her decision.”

And although Rabbit had been the one to say he didn’t want her fighting beside him when the time came, now he wanted the king to say that he and Myr were a pair, that they needed to stay that way, fight that way. Hell, he wanted to say it himself.

Instead, he nodded woodenly. “Yeah, good. That’s . . . good.” He caught Myr’s frown out of the corner of his eye, and squeezed her hand.

“Forty hours,” Dez repeated, then paused. His voice roughened. “I don’t know if this’ll mean much—you and I aren’t tight like you and Strike or some of the others. We just don’t have that kind of history. But as one former fuckup to another, I hope you’ll fight with me. I’d really, really like to know you’re on my side, and not just because you’re the crossover, but because you’re a hell of a warrior. A good Nightkeeper.”

Rabbit heard a muttered oath behind him, from where his old man was standing. Ignoring that, he stuck out a hand. “For what it’s worth, I think you did something good here today. Something very, very worth saving. And I’ll have an answer for you in a few hours.” More, he would catch the king in private and warn him about Red-Boar. He’d been putting it off, waiting to see what happened. He couldn’t put it off any longer, though.