Jessica Andersen - Skykeepers

Relief was a hard, hot wash. At least some of the others were still alive—gods willing, all of them were.

The makol breathed against her neck. Holding her tightly, its skin and breath disconcertingly cool, the creature switched the choke hold for the sharp edge of its combat knife, digging it into her throat hard enough to bring blood.

“You’re dead. You’re all dead.” Michael’s eyes were those of the killer, but Sasha wasn’t afraid.

Instead, her heart leaped gladly and her blood raced with red-gold battle magic

“Take her.” The makol handed off Sasha to two of the red-robes, one of whom dug an autopistol into her left kidney, prodding her around to face Iago. Michael was shoved around similarly, though he cursed and struggled despite the pistols.

Iago checked his watch, then the sky. “It’s time. Fuck the crucifixes; get them over to the thrones.”

In under a minute, Sasha found herself kneeling in front of the larger throne with a pistol to her head. Michael knelt beside her, blood running from a split lip earned in his struggles, eyes anguished when they met hers. She thought she saw a flash of silver, and whispered, “Use the muk .”

“I can’t. He’s blocking it.”

Damn .

Using a ceremonial knife made of cloudy gray stone, Iago cut himself deeply, digging until blood poured from his hands and tongue. The makol did the same with its combat knife. Eyes glowing green, all signs of Lucius banished, the demon stood opposite Michael and began an ancient chant—the transition spell that would call a makol from the lowest level of Xibalba. Meanwhile, Iago faced Sasha, unfurled the library scroll, and began reading from it.

When Iago paused and closed in on her, Sasha surged up, only to be slammed back down by the red-

robes who held her still. She screamed as Iago sliced through her stretchy black combat shirt, then traced a line just below her ribs, where the eviscerating slash would allow her killer to pull her heart from her body in one yank. Hatred and anger wrapped around her; she leaned on them rather than letting the fear inside her.

Iago stepped back and continued to read from the library scroll as, beside him, Lucius read the makol -summoning spell, calling the soul of Moctezuma into Michael. Magic gathered, both dark and light, Nightkeeper and Xibalban. The magic, formerly direction-less, began to take terrible shape.

Images flashed across Sasha’s inner eye: herself blank eyed and soulless, sitting in a featureless ten-

by-ten cell, channeling information from the library into a voice-activated digital recorder; Michael, with his gorgeous bedroom eyes gone luminous green as he sat enthroned, his body under Moctezuma’s control. She quailed inwardly, making a desperate grab for the magic; to her surprise, she felt a touch of ch’ul and caught a soft rustle. Glancing over as Iago recited the spell, she looked toward the planters only a few feet away. In them, maize and cacao plants undulated gently, though there was no breeze.

She breathed a prayer and sent them energy, having some thought of the plants bowing down to grab her red-robed captors. The maize and cacao responded, but the small amount of growth she managed to trigger wasn’t going to do her any good.

Then Iago shouted the final words of the spell, raised his ceremonial knife, and advanced on Sasha, while the red-robes held her tightly.

The makol , too, advanced, knife raised. Only it didn’t go for Michael. Still green eyed, still in makol form, it turned and buried its knife in Iago’s chest. There was a moment of frozen shock as, grinning horribly, the makol said, “Compliments of the Banol Kax , human. My masters bid you remember who rules you in this war. They do not wish to lose Moctezuma’s service in Mictlan. And they want to talk to you.”

Iago went stark white, eyes rolling as he reeled back, grabbing at the knife. The makol closed in tighter, grabbed the haft, and started twisting and hacking. Blood sprayed a gory arc and Sasha screamed, as much in disbelief as in horror. Even as she did, though, she elbowed one of her captors in the gonads and dropped the other with a foot sweep. Bullets sprayed, but bounced harmlessly.

Michael, too, was moving. He took out his red-robes with a leg-sweep-punch combo, snagged one of the autopistols, and beckoned her. “Come on!”

Michael and Sasha broke for the thrones and took the high ground, leaping atop the stone seats and using the leverage to kick at the red-robes who tried to grab for them. Iago shouted something, his words lost to her beneath a rising buzz of magic. Sasha looked back, shocked that he was still alive.

“The spell has turned on him. He’s becoming an ajaw-makol ,” Michael said. “He’s already got the healing power. Soon, the only way to kill him will be to cut off his head, hack out his heart, and recite the banishing spell.”

The red-robes opened fire, aiming low, trying to wound, not kill.

“Down!” Michael grabbed her and dragged her off the throne. He caught her against his strong, solid body and turned her toward the stone slab, shielding her, then fired off a quick burst with his captured autopistol, forcing the six remaining red-robes to take cover. Two were down already, not moving.

Sasha tried to feel grief, tried to find horror, and found only rage and emptiness. A need to stop the Xibalbans from doing to another what they had done to her, a drive to survive long enough to make a difference. In the end, this was the war.

Looking up at Michael, who was fierce and bloodied, she touched his cheek and said, “Can you call the muk now that we’re not on the dais?”

His eyes flared, but he bowed his head, pressed his brow to hers. “I don’t want to be the Other. Not ever again. It’s a monster.”

“Not a monster. A weapon. And it’s your talent; it’s not you.” She cupped his jaw in her bloodied hands and stared into his eyes, willing him to hear her, believe her. “I was wrong about that—dead wrong. Whether or not all your kills were in battle, they were part of a larger war, on the orders of your king. That is the Nightkeeper way. It doesn’t make you anything more than a mage who found his calling sooner than most of us. The magic is a tool; it’s not you. Just like my magic isn’t all me. I wield life but I think I’ve proven that doesn’t make me an angel, right?”

Air escaped from him in a hiss, but she saw a spark in the depths of him—rage going to power.

“Depends on your definition of ‘angel,’ babe.” But there was such desperate need in him.

“I’m no angel,” she said firmly. “And you’re not a devil or a monster. Your talent is a tool from the gods, a weapon in the war. You’re not any of those things. You’re a man.” She paused, searching inside herself for hesitation, for reservation, and finding none when she said, “You’re my man.”

He held very still for a long, breathless moment. Then he touched his lips to hers, a brief, fleeting press that promised more than a thousand words.

In a single move of deadly elegance, he flowed to his feet and moved away from their shallow concealment, stepping out into the cross fire of his enemies. His hair was slicked back close to his skull, his black combat clothes torn and tattered as they clung to his fighter’s muscles. He spread his arms away from his body, indicating he was unarmed, or offering himself up as the sacrifice Iago had intended him to be. As he did, he called the muk . It gathered to him, clung to him, greasy and gray in her mind’s eye.

The red-robes let loose, firing low, still trying to preserve their sacrificial victim. The bullets sped inward in a deadly hail, only to reverse outward when Michael let loose the Mictlan’s power. It exploded from him in a thunderclap of gray death, taking the red-robes where they crouched, puffing them to dust in an instant.