Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

“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.”