Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

The Nightkeepers shouted and fought, defending themselves with magic, guns and knives as the vines whipped up and wrapped around the teammates—arms, legs, weapons, everything—and then thickened, sprouting leaves and then small, wispy ears of maize. But for every vine they destroyed, three more sprouted and attacked.

At the edge of the group, green fire flared as Myrinne burned one off her left thigh, only to have another latch on to her right ankle and yank. She stumbled and nearly went down.

“Godsdamn it!” Rabbit’s throat tore with the shout. “Myr!” He struggled against the grip of the kohan’s magic as rage grabbed him by the throat, cutting off his air. He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, couldn’t do a damn thing right.

He was a boy again, eleven years old and caught stealing booze from the gas station around the corner from his and Red-Boar’s apartment; fifteen and crashing his old man’s Jeep in a flooded river during a joyride gone bad. He was eighteen and watching Jox’s warehouse burn; nineteen and watching a seedy corner of the French Quarter burn; twenty-two and watching Oc Ajal burn, proving over and over again that his old man was right. He was a fuckup, a loose cannon, the Master of Disaster. Everything he’d been called over the years. Everything he’d called himself.

“Not anymore,” he grated, fighting off all the anger and hatred that came from the boy he’d been, and pouring all the power of his better self—his more mature, more controlled self—into the seething fireball instead, trying to break through the kohan’s spell.

Please gods, he whispered inwardly. A little help here.

Then, suddenly, he wasn’t alone in his own skull anymore. There was a presence inside him, filling his head, and an almost familiar voice boomed, The things you are rejecting are all part of you, son of chaos. They are not flaws when they are balanced by the other half of you.

“Jag?” It sounded like the voice from his visions, only not.

You’re hot-tempered, impulsive and stubborn . . . but your temper makes you a fierce warrior, your impulsiveness gives you moments of brilliance, and your stubbornness means you refuse to give up. There was a pause. You punish yourself for your past sins, but do not credit your successes. You need to accept yourself—every part of you—if you mean to be the crossover.

There was a jolt and the presence disappeared as quickly and thoroughly as it had come. It didn’t leave Rabbit empty, though. Instead, his senses vibrated in its wake, his mind spun.

Yeah, it was a big foam finger moment. But did he dare trust it? More, did he dare trust himself?

And he had to decide fast, because inside the Nightkeepers’ shield, the vines were winning.

Wrapping his mind around the fireball that still spun and pulsed beside him, frozen by the kohan’s spell, Rabbit steeled himself and said, “Ten cha’ik ee’hochen!” Bring my darkness!

The tsunami came again, but this time it swept him up and carried him along with it. Fury, frustration, impotence, guilt, regret, revenge—familiar from every stage of his life except for the past few weeks—flooded through him, and he accepted all of it, embraced it.

Yes, he thought as the reckless intensity built, making him want to do something stupid, dangerous and fun. Yes. This was what he had been missing without realizing it.

No longer contained by any vault or vain attempts to be what he thought he should be, the chaos flowed free, filling him with crazy thoughts, then soldering them into place. And once that happened, the impulses didn’t seem so insane anymore. They felt sharp and edgy, yet contained. Balanced. And he felt more like himself than he had since he first heard Phee’s voice in his mind. He was the wild half blood, the pyro, the Master of Disaster . . . but he was also the guy who had turned back the first xombi outbreak, and who had stayed with the villagers in the aftermath. He had tracked down his mother, faced down his grandfather and made sure his old man didn’t hurt the Nightkeepers. He wasn’t all good, but he wasn’t all bad, either.

He was the crossover, damn it.

Chest tightening with fear and hope as magic crackled along his skin, he said, “Pasaj och.”

The barrier connection formed instantly, but the magic that raced into him wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt before. Power flared, huge and incomprehensible, and the fireball gleamed suddenly from within. The red and brown powers bled together, becoming one . . . and then they turned to pure gold.

Suddenly, the kohan’s spell dissolved. He could move again!

The maize god stood near the temple, still fully shielded. It hadn’t noticed that Rabbit was loose, but that could change at any second. He had only one chance.

Hit him hard, he told himself. No fuss, no bullshit, just bust through that shield. But beneath his warrior’s determination, a wilder, crazier part of him had a better idea. He started to push it away, but then hesitated. And went with it.

Be brilliant.

With molten gold searing through his veins, Rabbit shouted and unleashed a bolt of terrible fury . . . straight into the Nightkeepers’ sacred temple. The two-thousand-year-old structure shuddered then exploded in a conflagration of stone shrapnel and golden magic. The kohan spun with a shocked roar, its shield disintegrating under the onslaught.

“Eat this!” Rabbit didn’t even gather the power this time; he just pointed. But that was more than enough—the golden magic flew from his hand in a lethal bolt. It hit the maize god, wreathing it with golden flames.

The kohan screeched, spun and fell.

Rabbit poured more power into the fire, which roared like thunder. “Die!” he shouted, closing on the fire and watching the maize god’s headdress blaze. Fury boiled in his blood and spurred him on. This was the enemy as much as Phee, Anntah, or the kax. Worse, even. “Fucking go to hell.”

Golden flames detonated, sounding like a dozen buses crashing together, and the god disappeared. The vines vaporized. Even the tear in the barrier blinked out of existence.

In the aftermath, there was silence. Normalcy, even. Except for the temple’s destruction, it seemed as though nothing had changed.

Rabbit, though, had been through the change of his life. He stood, shaken, staring at the ruined temple while his mind spun.

He was the fucking crossover.

Anntah was right. The magic had been inside him all along.

His throat was scorched, his ribs hurt, and his eyes burned as if they were being eaten from the inside by acid. But for the first time in a really long fucking time, maybe ever, he felt whole. And not because Red-Boar was gone, either. He might’ve cleared up some of the questions surrounding Rabbit’s birth, but he’d still been an asshole. And besides, it hadn’t ever been about Rabbit missing a twin, a parent, or a part of the magic. It had been about him missing a part of himself—not because it had been taken from him, but because he’d been rejecting it, trying to be what everybody else wanted him to be, what he thought the Nightkeepers and the gods needed him to be.

What a fucking relief to discover that they needed him to be exactly who and what he always had been—a former juvenile delinquent who had learned some manners over the years.

But as he turned away from the temple, that relief vanished in an instant. Because Myr stood there, staring at him with fear in her eyes, with the others ranged behind her. And his heart fucking sank, because while most of them—maybe all—would be grateful they finally had their crossover, she already looked devastated.

She didn’t want the crossover. She wanted the self-contained, well-behaved guy she’d had for the past couple of weeks . . . and he didn’t exist anymore.