Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

You don’t give up, even when the battle seems lost, Jag’s voice whispered in his mind. But if that was true, why hadn’t he argued with her when she said it was over?

Then again, that was one of the things he did, wasn’t it? He coasted, at least when it came to her. He hadn’t worked hard enough to fix things when they went off the rails the first time, and he hadn’t fought hard enough just now. Maybe because things had happened too easily with her in the beginning he’d never learned how . . . or maybe because he still wasn’t really sure what she was doing with a guy like him.

Yeah, that resonated.

She doesn’t want you, not like this. The whisper came from the parts of himself he’d just taken back—the frustrations and insecurities that had hamstrung him too many times before, making him do dumb-ass things. She dumped you. She walked away. She didn’t look back.

But she’d been crying as she did it. More, she wasn’t just the warrior she’d become over the past few months. She was also the Goth chick he’d gone to college with, and the skinny girl who’d tried to barter a knife for her freedom from the Witch. And those people had loved him despite his temper and impulsiveness. Hell, in the beginning, she had loved him because of it—she had been as much a rebel as he was, if not more. That was what he’d first seen in her, what had brought them together. It was still there, he knew. Maybe right now it was buried beneath duty and fear, but it was there.

And he’d be damned if he gave up on her. He loved her, and he wanted her at his side for the rest of their lives, whether that was five minutes or fifty-five years.

“Hold.” Dez raised a hand, stopping the group as the pathway ahead of them shimmered and then solidified to reveal Alexis astride Nate in his giant hawk form. “Anything?” the king asked the forward scouts.

Alexis shook her head. “Not a damn thing. Either the cenote is clear, or they’re hiding behind magic that I can’t sense.”

The teammates moved off again, cautiously, as the low trees opened up to reveal the uppermost level of the Cenote Sagrada, where a hundred-foot pit gaped in the earth and plunged down to a green-blue pool at the bottom.

Rabbit’s head said to get up to the small temple and start the spell.

“Fuck this.” He turned back and headed for Myr, knowing that his magic—and his heart—would be stronger if he said what he needed to say to her.

He had gone three steps when JT shouted, “Incoming!”

“Son of a—” He twisted too late, saw wide brown wings and a puke-ugly face headed straight for him, and threw all of his power to his shield. The ’zotz crashed into it at full speed, driving him back, off the edge of the raised roadway. He tripped and fell, and the impact jarred the shit out of him, just enough that he lost control of the shield spell for a split second.

The ’zotz screeched, lashed out with its barb-tipped tail, and sliced him to the bone. “Motherfu—”

Darkness.

Within seconds, a dozen camazotz swarmed the spot where Rabbit had been, tearing at him in a frenzy. There were others nearby, blackening the air and screeching as they attacked, but the Nightkeepers’ shields held them off.

Rabbit’s shield was down, though. He was down.

“No!” The world blurred as Myrinne screamed and unleashed a massive bolt of green fire into the flock, aiming high so she didn’t hit him. The fireball detonated and the fire magic clung to the creatures, eating into them and driving them to the ground as she raced to where he lay in a bloody heap. “Rabbit!”

He was sprawled in a spreading pool of blood; she wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but there was too much of it. And there was no sign of the golden magic, no sign of life.

The nearest ’zotz began to move again, regenerating even as its flesh smoldered, but before she could react, Strike and JT closed from opposite directions, knives out, ready to dispatch the camazotz. “We’ve got this,” the winikin said. “You take care of him.”

Around them, the battle raged on. She saw the Nightkeepers bringing down camazotz and strange, fishlike creatures that sliced through the air with sharp fins and tails, and snapped with piranha jaws. They weren’t the kax or kohan, though, just minions, guards put in place to stop the Nightkeepers from getting to the cenote.

That had to mean they were in the right place. But now they were missing a key player.

“Come back, you hear me?” She clutched Rabbit’s bloodied hand and sent her energy into him through the mind-bender’s magic. “We need you.” I need you.

The truth was stark and real: she wasn’t all that mad at him about hiding the truth about the dark magic. Instead, she was terrified of him, terrified for him, and just plain terrified in general . . . He hadn’t just claimed the magic, he had reclaimed the part of himself that scared her the most, not because she was afraid he would hurt her, but because she knew that it would put him in the worst sort of danger.

So what had she done? She panicked and bolted, even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t ever run away from him again.

“Come on, come on.” She clutched his hand and sent her magic flowing faster, but his skin was chalky and cool, and there was no echo of his conscious self inside his skull. Panic sliced through her. “This isn’t working. I need Sasha!”

“I’m here.” The healer skidded to a stop on the other side of Rabbit and dropped down, breathing hard. She was sweating, and had dark spatters on her sleeves.

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Myr said. “And I can’t find him with my magic.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

As Sasha bent over him, Myr looked beyond to where the Nightkeepers fought against the enemy’s thinning ranks. As she watched, Michael fried a fish-thing out of the sky with a stream of silver death magic, and hawk-Nate brought down a camazotz on the fly and then backwinged while Alexis fried it to dust. All of the Nightkeepers and their teammates seemed to be up and moving.

Except Rabbit.

Holding his too-cool hand against her face, she said, “He was so worried about what would happen to me when the demons zeroed in on the crossover, but he forgot to worry about himself.”

“That’s because he loves you,” Sasha said, not taking her eyes off her patient. She said it with a “duh” tone in her voice, but not unkindly. More like she’d been there, done that, and come out the other side of it.

Myr ducked her head to hide the tears, and also so Sasha wouldn’t hear her whisper in his ear, “Don’t you dare leave me.”

Her voice caught on the words, her heart twisted, and pain bit so deeply that she sucked in a breath. Sudden panic crushed in on her, and she tightened her grip on him, afraid that if she didn’t hold on to him, he would disappear. Don’t leave me. Her parents had dumped her in a strip club. The Witch had disappeared, leaving her locked out of her home. At the time, Myr hadn’t known that Iago had killed her; all she had known was that she was alone and didn’t have anywhere to go until she found the Nightkeepers. But while they had given her a family of sorts, the team was poised to break up after today, one way or another.

Don’t leave me. Everyone she had depended on over the years, right or wrong, had left her. Except for Rabbit. Because this time, she had left him before he could leave her . . . but that had been a stupid move, a coward’s move. She loved him. She always had. And she was going to lose him . . . unless he came back, so she could tell him that she was sorry, that she loved him, that she’d been afraid.

“It’s not working.” Sasha shook her head. “His magic and mine just aren’t compatible.”