Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

“I wish.” Rabbit shook his head. “He’s still here. I can feel the blood-link.” Along with Red-Boar’s rage against the king, and his mad glee at the thought that Rabbit was going to back out of the ceremony at the last minute, screwing over his teammates and throwing the crossover’s power onto the other side.

After all these years, his old man finally thought he was about to do something right.

Well, fuck him.

“Ready?” Dez asked, taking his position next to him in the circle.

“To set a fire? Definitely.” Rabbit shot a last “it’s okay” glance at Myr, hoped he wasn’t lying to both of them, and then faced forward, blocked off the darkness and summoned his Nightkeeper magic. Spreading his fingers, he said, “Kaak.”

Brilliant red fire speared from his fingertips and filled the middle of the circle. There was no rattle, no dark magic, thank Christ.

The others backed off a little, expressions frozen in dread, horror and resignation as the heat flared.

Dez, though, stepped closer, palmed his ceremonial knife, cut a deep furrow through his bloodline mark, and grated, “Pasaj och.” The magic amped as he jacked in to the barrier flux. Then, stone-faced, he held his arm out over the fire, so the blood sacrifice rained down into the flames. Sparks erupted when the droplets hit, then sizzled as the blood burned off to acrid smoke. Sounding as if the words were being ripped out of him, the king recited the renunciation spell: “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni.” I no longer recognize you.

Boom! A shock wave of red-tinged energy flared away from Dez, leaving golden sparks behind. The wave rolled through Rabbit like a tsunami in deep water—it rocked him but kept going without doing too much damage to his equilibrium. He was aware, though, that if something like that hit him in the shallows, he’d be fucked. They all would.

This was big magic, a big move. And he hoped to hell they were doing the right thing.

The king steadied himself against Reese and straightened, expression smoothing to relief. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay . . . and it’s done.” He showed the others his forearm. “It’s over.”

There was a collective gasp—his bloodline mark had healed over and gone from black to gold.

“It fits,” Lucius muttered. “The Egyptians mined gold, but not the Mayans. I bet that was another way the kax and the kohan steered our ancestors away from the true gods.”

Dez wiped his knife and returned it to his belt. Then he looked around the circle. “Okay. Your turn.” And he didn’t just mean one at a time.

Rabbit kept the fire going, holding himself apart as the others pulled their knives and blooded their palms. Some of them hesitated; others moved quickly, slashing and getting it done. Beside him, Myr stared at her knife and whispered, “Please.”

She wasn’t talking to him, but he said, “I’ve got you. And tomorrow it’s pancakes for breakfast. Be there.”

She shot him a sidelong look, but didn’t say anything. Then, pressing her lips together, she drew shallow slices through each of her talent marks, because she didn’t have a bloodline. Moving forward with the others, she let her sacrifice fall into the fire, which sparked and smoked in answer.

“Pasaj och,” they all said in a ragged chorus, and then, “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni.”

BOOM! A stronger shock wave blasted over them, away from them, nearly blowing out the fire and sending up a billow of smoke. Rabbit was ready for the tidal wave this time, and kept a sharp eye on Myr, but although she gasped and went pale as the spell took effect, she stayed on her feet.

When the smoke cleared, she and the others stood, shaken, with gold bloodline marks in place of black. All four of Myr’s talent marks had gone gold.

“You okay?” he asked her as a buzz of similar questions rose up around them.

“Yeah. I guess I am.” She stared down at her forearm, then glanced up at him. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”

“We sure are.” And he would be going last, just in case all hell broke loose.

It was the godkeepers’ turn next—they had broken their allegiance to the kohan, but still needed to renounce their godkeeper bonds. He tightened the fire to a small, hot blaze in front of the temple as Strike, Leah, Alexis and Sasha took up their positions. Their ceremonial knives flashed and their faces twisted as they carved the godkeeper marks out of their arms. Leah whimpered and Strike went gray, more worried for his mate than himself. Myr made a muffled noise and looked away as blood dripped into the fire, turning the smoke to murk. Then the four intoned, “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni. Xeen te’ealo!” We no longer recognize you. Leave us!

Power surged, but this time the explosion wasn’t a shock wave—it was fire. Rabbit shouted as the blaze flared, engulfing the godkeepers and bathing them in brilliant red flames. Leah gave a shocked scream that cut off ominously.

“No!” Nate surged forward with Michael on his heels. “Douse it!”

Rabbit yanked back on the out-of-control fire magic, reeling it in, suddenly afraid that the near-death-by-drowning of the godkeeper spell needed to be counteracted by near-death-by-flames. “Godsdamn it, I—” He broke off as the blaze died back abruptly.

The four godkeepers stood there, unscathed.

Thank fuck.

“Holy shit,” Strike said, voice shaking, reaching for his mate as the two other men closed in on theirs. “Leah, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m good.” But her voice was sad, her eyes fixed on her wrist, where there was a bare, scarred patch in place of her mark. The bonds had been broken. She wasn’t a godkeeper anymore. None of them were.

Prophecy said that the godkeepers would be key to winning the war. They could only pray that had been another of the kohan’s lies.

“Still nothing,” Myr said, looking up at the sky. “Where are they?”

Rabbit doused the last of his fire. “Not even a fucking thundercloud. I don’t like it.” His wristband showed two and a half hours on the clock. They were missing something. But what?

Sasha leaned against Michael. “It’s like breaking up with someone you really loved, someone you’ve been agonizing about dumping, and then having them shrug and say, ‘Yeah, okay. Whatever. No biggie.’”

He hugged her to his side. “They’re leaving us alone because they know we’ve figured out their lies, so there’s no point in trying to keep us.”

“Or because they’re planning something else,” Myr said softly. She pulled her wand from her pocket and gestured with it, and green flames kindled where Rabbit’s blaze had burned moments earlier. She looked up at him. “You ready?”

Her magic brushed along his skin like a touch, bringing an echo of the shadows he saw in her eyes, and a tug that came from light magic rather than dark. Ah, baby. Like the king in his recurring dreams, he wished he could bubble wrap her and lock her someplace safe. But, also like Jag, he knew better than to try to leave a warrior behind, and that if they didn’t succeed here and now, there wouldn’t be anyplace safe.

So he leaned in, brushed his lips across hers, and nodded. “Ready.”

Then he pulled his combat knife, and dragged the tip across the bloodred hellmark, and then the black glyph of the boar bloodline. “Pasaj och,” he said. Magic surged around him, inside him, filling him with solstice power. When faint rattles leaked around the edges of the vault, he clamped down on it, determined to stay in control, get this right. “Ma’ tu kah—”

“No!” The blow came without warning—a hot, heavy body in sweat-laced brown robes flying at him from the side. “You can’t!”

Red-Boar! Rabbit didn’t know where the old bastard had come from, how he’d gotten so close without being seen. Shouting, “Dez, now!” he went down and rolled with the attack, kicking his father off him. The combat knife skittered out of his hand. When he reached out to grab it with his mind, though, nothing happened.