Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

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.

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.