Spellfire (8 page)

It was ironic, really, that this man, this
human
, would be the one to shake loose a memory of those last few days when all her spells had failed. Not that the memory in question would do a damn thing to help her summon the visions, but still.

Letting out a long, slow breath that didn’t ease the tightness in her chest, she said, “Okay, here goes. You see this one?” She touched a glyph that showed a peccary with curlicue tusks beside the line-and-dot notation for a number. “It refers to King Ten-Boar. This one means there was a war or a fight, but this symbol over it means it had gone on for a very long time. And this one . . .”

Realizing that he probably didn’t care about the exact translation of each glyph and phoneme—and that she was stalling—she shrugged. “Basically, it says that King Ten-Boar had a dream he claimed the gods had sent him, telling him how he could defeat his enemies once and for all. His advisers tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t budge. Instead, he ordered his entire army to march, leaving the women and children behind to guard the city.” Her voice went flat, her insides hollow. “The dream was a lie, or maybe just wishful thinking. Either way, Ten-Boar’s enemies ambushed him, slaughtered his troops and then marched on the city and imprisoned everyone there. Some they used as sacrifices, others as slaves.”

She had dragged her fingertips along the glyphs as she’d told the story, not as it was written—in an ancient, stilted style—but as she had heard it too many times in the days leading up to the massacre. Now, her fingers rested on the last glyph in the string. Worn almost indecipherable, she knew what it was without squinting, as her fingers found the familiar sockets and gaping mouth.

It was the screaming skull, the symbol for the end-time war. A warning to those who, a thousand years later, would do their damnedest to hold the barrier when the zero date came.

What are you trying to tell me? Something? Nothing? What?

There was no answer from the gods, though.

He was watching her intently. “It bothers you. It happened centuries ago, but it still bothers you to put yourself in their places and think of what it must’ve been like.”

She shifted, glancing toward where part of the tent city was just visible beyond the ruins, fenced off and plastered with
KEEP OUT
signs in three languages, along with biohazard symbols and a spray-painted skull and crossbones. “It bothers me to see what’s happening to their descendants right now, and to know that none of us are safe.”

“So you snuck down here, thinking maybe you could help.” The suspicion had leached from his expression.

She shrugged. “It seemed worth a shot.”

“Any luck?”

“No. But I’m not giving up.” She didn’t dare, with the countdown ticking toward its end.

“You’re staying in the area?”

“Pretty close,” she said, deliberately vague. “I’ll keep out of the hot zone, though.” More or less. Then, remembering her plan to gather intel, she said, “What’s it like in there?”

He grimaced. “Brutal. Frustrating. Heartbreaking.” Seeming to catch himself wanting to say more, he drew back and stuck his hands in his pockets as he looked out over the rows of crumbling stelae. “We can’t even figure out how the disease really works. Part of it acts like a normal virus, like the flu bug or whatever. Or maybe rabies is a better comparison, since it’s transmitted through saliva bites, rapes, that sort of thing.” He shot her an uncomfortable look. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Though it was nice to be treated like a woman rather than a warrior for a change. Which made her, just for a second, wonder how he saw her. With her hair pulled back in a practical ponytail, zero makeup and field clothes that had seen better days—

Doesn’t matter. Get your intel and get out
. She didn’t have time to pretend she was normal, didn’t even really have the time she had taken for this trip.

But the doc stayed silent, still looking off at the middle distance, where the Pyramid of Kulkulkan rose with its iconic silhouette. That was why he had come out here, she realized—he’d needed to get away from the tent city, away from the frustration of not being able to find a cure.

You can’t cure it,
she could have told him.
All you can do is try to contain it
. The humans were doing a good job of slowing the spread . . . which was helpful, because the fewer
xombis
there were, the weaker the demons’ reinforcements would be on the final day. And the better the humans’ chances for survival.

The Nightkeepers and
winikin
would bear the brunt of the end-time war, but there would likely be human casualties, too. Maybe lots of them. Always before, Anna had told herself that even huge losses would be acceptable so long as mankind continued on. Now, though, she thought of the people she’d met over the years in what had become the hot zone, everyone from villagers in thatch huts to executives in high-rise penthouses, all vulnerable now. Some were probably already dead, others infected and dying.

And standing against the demons’ vile disease were men like this one—tough and determined. And human.

The doc shrugged and looked back at her, his expression tinged with grief and worry. “To be honest we’re running out of ideas. If your research turns up anything at all . . . well, I’d like to hear about it.”

“You will.” And that was a promise. More, she would put Lucius and Natalie on it, and see what they could turn up in the archives. Granted, they’d been through it all before, trying to get ahead of the first outbreak, far up in the Mayan highlands. But maybe there was something else, some subtle hint that could help the humans fight the
xombi
virus.

This time when he reached behind his back, she didn’t tense up. He came up with a battered wallet of leather-edged nylon, and from there produced a business card that he held out. “Call me and we’ll meet someplace safe.”

It shouldn’t have felt like a big deal to take the card. She gave it a glance. “Well, then, Doctor Curtis.”

“David. Or Dave.” He paused expectantly.

“Anna Catori.” She rattled off her phone number, then opened her free hand to show that it was empty. “Sorry, didn’t bring a card.”

His eyes locked on her palm, where the sacrificial cut had healed to its usual scar, but blood had dried to rusty streaks. “What’d you do there?”

He reached out and caught her wrist before she could yank it back. And he stilled at the sight of her forearm—not the black glyph-marks of her bloodline and magic, which he would no doubt think were tattoos, but the raised white crisscrosses below.

“I nicked myself on a rock,” she said, meeting his eyes and daring him to mention the scars. “It’s nothing.” Nothing she wanted to talk about. Nothing he could help with. “Just a scratch.”

His eyes searched hers, but he said only, “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

He hesitated a long moment, then exhaled. “Well, call me if you find something. And be careful, will you? If the militia doesn’t shoot at you, then the real looters will.”

She didn’t tell him she could take care of herself, or that they wouldn’t see her unless she allowed it. She just nodded. “I will.” But as she reclaimed her hand, she had a strong feeling that they had just agreed to far more than a phone call.

He watched her go, no doubt trying to figure out how much of what she’d told him was a lie—which was all of it and none of it, really. Dez would be pleased. She hadn’t gotten anything out of Doctor Dave that they didn’t already know, but the possibility was there, and he was someone they could leak suggestions to, if anything came up.

More, she had a feeling that meeting him had been important. Maybe it hadn’t been gods-destined, but she had needed the reminder that the outbreak was affecting living, breathing people. Mothers, fathers, children, loved ones . . .

“Hell,” she muttered under her breath as she headed down the raised stone
sacbe
that led toward the cenote, where she could use the small temple to shield her from view while she ’ported back to Skywatch.

Her first stop was going to be the royal suite, to report back to Dez . . . but her second was going to be the library. She might not be able to summon the visions, but she was a researcher, a translator, and damn good at what she did. There had to be something more the humans could do to fight the
xombi
virus. And she was going to find it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

December 10

Eleven days until the zero date

Skywatch

In the week and a half following Rabbit’s return, Myrinne met with him two, sometimes three times a day, first to figure out the limits of the shared magic, and then to train with him. Because, like it or not, she was the only one who could trigger his powers. There was no sign of his darker side . . . but the sex magic remained a problem. She had learned how to throttle it down, muting the raw lust with meditation, crystals and chants, but the urges remained. It was as if her body cared only that he had been her lover and not why that couldn’t happen anymore.

He hadn’t been her first—there had been plenty of guys in the Quarter who’d been up for a no-harm-no-foul encounter, and her body had been one of the few things she had controlled back then. Rabbit had been the first who mattered, though . . . and he had been the first to totally consume her world, the first to break her heart. She kept that firmly in her mind as they trained, and did her damnedest not to touch him. The linked magic was bad enough. Physical contact was worse. And when it all got to be too much, she retreated to her quarters and hit the Internet, not to Web surf, but to help search for more information on the
xombi
virus and the crossover’s magic.

As the days passed, finding anything new on the crossover started to seem like an impossible quest . . . until she hit the jackpot.

Okay, it was a small jackpot, but still. It was something.

“No shit.” She stared at the picture on the page in front of her. It was a purple painting with too many five-pointed stars, but she was willing to bet that it was a reference to the crossover. Courtesy of a kid’s book she’d ordered from Amazon’s Witchcraft and Spirituality department, no less. Go figure.

The picture didn’t look like Rabbit—more like Gandalf with a touch of Martha Stewart—but the figure was clearly straddling the line between day and night, with one foot in the darkness and the other in the light. More, he was wreathed in fire, and the old doomsday standbys—bell, book and candle—were hanging suspended in front of him. Pyrokinesis, telekinesis and a text that talked about a man who was supposed to “build a bridge between the darkness and light on the day of final reckoning”?

Yeah, that was the crossover, all right, smack dab in the middle of a Wiccan-influenced children’s story about something called the Gatekeeper’s Doomsday. She didn’t know whether the story had come from the Nightkeepers and morphed from there, or if it had another, more human origin. Either way, score one for her.

The buzz of discovery didn’t last long, though. Not once she read the rest of the text beside the picture.

The Crossing Guard stands at the bridge between day and night. A lone warrior, he can free the armies of the dead when the world rests on the brink of war
.

“A lone warrior,” she said aloud, chest going hollow. “Damn it. Just . . . damn it.”

A few of the other references had hinted that the crossover was supposed to go into the war alone, without a fighting partner at his side. Worse, Lucius had come up with a spell he thought would shift her magic back to Rabbit. So far, Dez hadn’t ordered them to make the transfer, but she had a feeling that one more reference—like this one—would tip the scales.

Lose it,
said a small voice inside her, and it was tempting. She couldn’t, though; she just couldn’t. So instead she took the book to the royal wing, holding it against her chest as she knocked on the carved doors leading to Dez and Reese’s quarters.

“It’s open,” he called.

She found the king in the main sitting area, going over something on his laptop. Holding out the book, she flipped to the right page, and said, “You’re going to want to read this.”

He took it, skimmed it, and grimaced. “A lone warrior. Damn it.”

“That’s pretty much what I said.” She jammed her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders. “I’ll do it, though. It’s time.” Her voice didn’t shake, didn’t do anything to betray how much she hated the idea of losing the magic.

Dez reached out and squeezed her shoulder in a rare show of sympathy. “I’m truly sorry. And to be honest, I hope the spell doesn’t work, because you make a hell of a mage . . . But if it does work, remember that you’re one of us, Myrinne. Whether you’re kicking ass with magic or a machine gun, I’d want you on my side any damn day, even if it’s the last day. Especially if it’s the last day.”

“Thanks. That matters.” She didn’t let him see just how much it mattered. “But before you show me too much more love, I need to ask you for a couple of favors.”

“Such as?”

“No offense, but I’m done with public performances. I want this to be just me and Rabbit.”

He hesitated, then tipped his head in acknowledgement. “I can’t say I blame you. And it’s not like you can’t handle yourself with him. You’ve made that plenty clear since he got back.”

Which just went to show that she was a better actress than she thought. But all she said was, “Thanks.” Then, taking a deep breath, she added in a rush, “Next favor . . . I want to do it in the
winikin
’s cave.”

The cave, which was painted with the strange, ghostly animals that the
winikin
could call from beyond the barrier, was where she had taken Rabbit’s prized stone eccentrics, hoping to purify them of whatever evil spells they were casting on him. Instead, he had followed her, held a knife to her throat, and accused her of being the enemy.

She hadn’t set foot near the cave since that day, hadn’t ever planned to . . . but her gut said that if she wanted to move forward, she first had to go back.

Dez scowled. “That’s outside the blood-ward.”

“I don’t like it, either, but you have to admit that it makes sense. What has happened before, and all that.” She swallowed. “I need to bring this full circle, Dez.”

More, she had to do whatever the Nightkeepers needed her to do, at least for the next week and a half. And after that . . . hell, she didn’t know. Whenever she tried to picture her life after the twenty-first of December, all she got was a blank screen and some static, like her inner Cablevision was on the fritz. She didn’t have a clue what she was going to do in the aftermath.

The others had their plans—Patience and Brandt were itching to reunite with their twins, and would probably move to New England, where Jox and Hannah—the boys’
winikin
and current guardians—would reopen the garden center that had long been Jox’s dream. VR game designer Nate and fashion-forward Alexis would undoubtedly go somewhere and be creative, successful and disgustingly happy; Jade and Lucius would probably fund an esoteric Mayan dig somewhere and eat weird food; Strike and Leah would get into law enforcement or private security and have a half dozen kids; and Myrinne . . . well, she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do. She didn’t have a mate, didn’t have any real skills or hobbies, didn’t have much going for her beyond the magic, and soon she might not even have that.

And she fucking refused to open up a tea shop, sell crappy crystals and illegal voodoo concoctions, pick pockets, and pass off cold reads as fortune-telling. Even if that was all she was really trained to do in the outside world.

“I don’t like it,” Dez grumbled.

“Me either,” she said, then realized he was talking about the cave. Regrouping, she added, “But if we’re going to try this, we need to give it the best chance of succeeding.”
Duty first,
she thought,
blah, blah, blah and yadda-yadda
. It was the truth, though. Now more than ever, their priorities needed to be to the war, the gods, their leader, and from there on down, with personal wants way at the bottom of the list.

Thus, the cave.

She and Dez went back and forth for a few more minutes, but in the end he agreed to her plan with a few choice expletives and a worried sigh that touched her more than it probably should have, warning her that her emotions were way too close to the surface right now, and she needed to find a way to dial them down before she met with Rabbit.

“Do you want to tell him, or should I?” Dez asked.

“Can you take care of it?”

“Consider it done.” Hell glanced down at the book, then closed it and handed it back to her with a scowl of
well, hell
. “Looking at this from an earth-magic angle was good thinking, by the way. Very good thinking. In fact, I’m going to have Lucius and the rest of the brain trust do a broader search along these lines and see what else they can come up with. Okay with you if they give a shout-out with any questions?”

“Of course.” The vindication helped some.

The Witch’s spells might’ve been the bastard child of voodoo, devil worship and ancient Aztec rituals, but she’d kept a few Wiccan texts on the shelves for the sake of appearances. Myr had memorized the incantations and practiced them in secret, hiding her small crystals and hoarded scents. And now, at Skywatch, the earth magic was hers alone. More, there was no blood or violence, no sacrificing or swearing away bits of her soul; there was only the peace of incense, the solidity of crystal, the supple strength of wood and a sense of connecting to something far bigger than herself that welcomed her, supported her, and asked nothing in return.

It appealed to the person she sometimes thought she would’ve been if she hadn’t wound up with the Witch. Heck, it still appealed to the person she was, despite everything.

So use it
, she told herself, and felt the fear recede a little. Who knew—maybe she could find other pieces of real magic in the books she’d bought. Maybe she wouldn’t be giving all her powers to Rabbit.

Still, though, dread pinched.

“When do you want to do it?” Dez asked.

She wanted to close her eyes and block out the sympathy in his. It would still be in his voice, though, and in the air between them. “Let’s get it over with. Say, an hour? Tell him I’ll meet him at the cave.”

The king hesitated, looking like he wanted to say a whole bunch of things, but in the end settled for, “Wear your armband, park as close to the entrance as you can, and keep your panic button primed.” The newer Jeeps were fitted with transponders that could pick up her signal and bounce it to Skywatch, hopefully overcoming the reception problems that had been getting worse and worse as the zero date approached and the barrier flux increased.

“Will do. And Dez?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for always treating me like I’ve got a right to an opinion.”

Rather than the platitudes she would’ve gotten from most of the others—the ones who’d been raised by their
winikin
and had always been given choices—he nodded. “Street smarts recognize street smarts, Myrinne, and ambition recognizes ambition. You’ve got more than your share of both, and I’m the last guy who’s going to ding you for that.”

Her spine straightened. “Is that a warning?”

“Nope. I’m not that subtle—if I thought you were heading for trouble, I’d tell you straight out. It was an observation, nothing more.”

But as she left the royal suite, she was pretty darned sure Dez was far more subtle than he let on. In his own way he was as much of a manipulator as the Witch had been, though with far better intentions. And right now, those intentions involved protecting the Nightkeepers’ agenda—which meant her giving up the magic to Rabbit.

“I’m doing it, aren’t I?” she muttered as she headed down the hall. But that didn’t stop her from feeling the pressure of being involved in something so much bigger than herself. It dogged her as she stalked out of the royal wing and across the main kitchen, and had her turning away from her suite.

Her rooms were too quiet, too empty and at the same time too hemmed in, sparking a sense of suffocation that chased her out a side door. There, a stone-lined path flanked the garage, but she didn’t want to snag a Jeep and keep on driving today. Instead, she headed for the magic-imbued cacao grove beyond the
winikin
’s hall, where the air was rainforest humid, the ground soft and the trees green and fragrant.

She slipped into the grove and picked her way to the open space at its center. There, she sat cross-legged, with her hands open on her folded knees. And—for a little while, at least—she found peace in the whirring sound the leaves made in the faint breeze, and the feeling of the earth surrounding her.

“I’m trying to get it right,” she said aloud. “I’m doing my best.” Deep down inside, though, she wondered whether that was the truth. Because when she came down to it, she didn’t want to give back the magic, not one bit.

It wasn’t fucking fair.

*    *    *

At the appointed time, Rabbit sat outside the
winikin
’s cave for a good five minutes before he managed to make himself get out of the damn Jeep. He didn’t want to be here. More, he wished he could forget the way he’d acted the last time he’d been at the cave, wished he didn’t see the parallels. And he wished to hell his knuckles weren’t throbbing like a bitch from punching his damned fridge when he got Dez’s message.

It was a dumb fucking idea to go around punching appliances, no matter how pissed off he was. More, he couldn’t let himself get pissed off, not like that. For a few minutes, he’d felt like the guy he used to be, the one who’d lashed out without thinking, doing major damage. He needed to be better than that, damn it. He needed to control the part of him that used to take over and make him do dumb things—not the stripped-down creature he’d become while imprisoned, but the angry, unloved kid who wanted to set the world on fire and watch it burn.

Or maybe the two were flip sides of the same anger.

“Pull your shit together,” he muttered. He owed Myr his absolute best self, even today. Especially today.

He hated that it had come to this, hated that she was going to be the one making the sacrifice when she deserved the magic a hell of a lot more than he did. He hated it . . . and he respected the hell out of her for making the call. She would be dreading the mind-meld that the spell required, he knew, and was determined to make it as easy as he could for her, just as he’d done his damnedest to quell the raw gut punch of lust that had nailed him every time he had gotten near her over the past week and a half.