Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

It seemed like an eon before his shoulders dropped and he shook his head, chuckling a little at himself. “Shit. I could’ve sworn . . . well, maybe you’re right that I’ve been on shift too long. You wouldn’t be the first one to suggest I’m pushing too hard.”

“You should rest.”

“Yeah. I . . . yeah.” He raised a hand, hesitated as if surprised to see that it wasn’t wearing a glove, and then scrubbed his fingers through his thick hair, leaving it rumpled and standing on end. “Sorry I got weird on you. It was just that, back there in the room with Rosa, it was like there was something else in there with us. Some sort of presence, or power, or something.” He rolled his eyes, and his accent thickened. “My ma would say I’d been listening to too many stories again.”

Anna made herself ignore the tug of his voice, and the way it made her think of open spaces far away from ground zero. “I really do need to get going, and not because I’m in trouble. I promised to meet friends. Outside the quarantine zone,” she added when he started to frown. And that much, at least, was the gods’ honest truth.

“You’re taking proper precautions?”

“I am. I swear.” Just not the kind he was talking about.

“And you’ll call if you find anything else?”

“Absolutely.” Well, once Dez cleared it.

He hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Well . . . right. I guess I’ll see you?”

“I hope so.” And that, a little to her surprise, was also the gods’ honest truth.

Still, though, as they parted with a wave and one too many over-the-shoulder looks back, her stomach was tied in serious knots over the entire exchange. As she headed for the outer perimeter, she tried to figure out why she didn’t feel good about how that had gone down. She had kept him as a contact, talked her way out of a sticky situation, and managed to preserve her cover. So why did she feel like shit? Or, more accurately, why did she hate having to lie to a virtual stranger when she’d been lying to her friends and coworkers—and even a husband—for decades?

It doesn’t matter, she told herself. What matters is getting home and getting your hands on that skull. The thought brought a renewed buzz of excitement and a stir of magic, along with the nerves that came with the thought that she would need to tread carefully if she wanted to—

A big, bulky form stepped in front of her, and a deep voice boomed, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

She stopped dead, and an “oh shit” zinged through her at the sight of a security guard. It wasn’t the guy she’d waved her way past as she’d booked it out of the clean zone, but she had a feeling that had been her mistake. It’d gotten them talking, and they had realized that nobody had signed her in. Faking surprise, she blinked at him. “I’m sorry. Is there a problem?”

He caught her arm and turned her back the way she’d come. “I’m going to need you to come with me, please.” His voice was polite, his grip inexorable, and Anna found herself being force-marched past row after row of doors that all looked the same, while her brain raced. What the hell was she supposed to do now?

She had options, of course—she could knock him down with a sleep spell, use a chameleon spell, teleport away . . . But any of those things would send up some serious red flags for her already-suspicious doctor.

A glance at her comm device showed that there weren’t any blinking lights, no evidence that anybody needed her. So, as the guard ushered her through an unmarked door into a prefab steel room that held a desk, a couple of chairs, a huge wipe board scrawled with guard shifts and notes suggesting that she was in what passed for their security hub, she followed his orders without question, figuring she would go with the flow, do her best to smooth things over, and talk her way out of starring in an incident report.

Gods knew that in a place like this, with so many people coming and going, the left hand probably wouldn’t know what the right was doing half the time. Ten bucks said she could convince this guy that she’d been waved through the checkpoint on the strength of Dr. Dave’s name, asked some volunteer for help with her protective gear, and found him on her own. And if they couldn’t track down anyone to verify, they’d just figure it’d gotten lost in the chaos.

Last resort, she’d lock herself in the bathroom and put in a call for some mind-bending support—which she was far less reluctant to do on the guards than she had been on David. Either way, she could deal with this. Hopefully, Rabbit and Myrinne could handle things on their end for a little longer without getting in major trouble.

Oc Ajal, Mexico

Rabbit faced the fire pit and tried to block everything else out—the rain forest, the remains of the village where he’d been born, the latent hiss of magic surrounding him, the Nightkeeper powers that wanted to flare and combat the darkness—all of it. He was still aware of Myr standing behind him, though, with her shield running hot, ready to protect him . . . and to protect herself against him.

Hoping it would be enough—hoping he would be enough—he sent a quick prayer to the gods he’d forsaken. Then, pulse thudding in his ears, he opened his hands and cast his blood into the cold, bare fire pit. “Cha’ik ten ee’hochen!” Bring the darkness to me!

Blam! The floodgates slammed open, giving way beneath an onslaught of power. Dark magic hammered through him, terrible yet incredible, and as he staggered back a step, flames erupted from within the stone circle, writhing like serpents.

“Rabbit!” Myr cried, her voice sounding far away.

“Stay back!” he shouted as the darkness surrounded him, swamping him with an incalculable power that gushed up from the depths of his soul. More, emotions tore at him—frustration, impotence, resentment, murderous rage, loneliness, all of it mixing together into a blinding fury that made him want to howl.

No! He fought the impulses, but he wasn’t braced for fury, wasn’t buffered against one of the red rages that used to grab on to him, making him do stupid, impulsive things. For that was what raced into his mind.

Suddenly, he wasn’t himself anymore, at least not the guy he wanted to be. Instead, he was the whipped dog he had become beneath the ’zotz’s lash. He was the pissed-off teen who had torched Jox’s garden center, the frustrated punk who’d wanted to make his mark on Skywatch. He was the impulsive asshole who’d led Iago to Oc Ajal, the gullible prick who had listened to Phee’s lies, sucking them up like soft-serve. And he was the stone-cold bastard who’d held a knife to Myr’s throat and made her bleed.

He clenched his fists as his soul overflowed with every bad decision he’d ever made, every moment that he’d been unhappy, pissed off, pissed on.

Burn it, whispered a voice inside him. Burn it all down.

The fire climbed hotter and higher, sending out billows of dark, oily smoke that tore at his throat and filled his lungs. His heart hammered as his warrior’s instincts said to back up, back off and lock himself down. But another set of instincts said he couldn’t shut himself off now. Not if he wanted to become the crossover.

“Oh, shit,” he said, not sure if he said it aloud or only in his mind. “I get it. I fucking get it.”

This was why the Nightkeepers’ ancestors had deemed the dark half of the magic too dangerous and banished the dark magi . . . and it was why they had feared the wild powers of a half blood like him—because where the light magic tapped into the good stuff, like love, sex and the power of teamwork, the dark magic drew from all the bad stuff inside its wielder. It concentrated it, encouraged it, made it real.