Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

The stream of power coming into him became a river, then a flash flood. And beyond the shield and the monsters on their roof, the pillar went into overdrive, split apart, and started tornadoing. The twin funnels cranked and whirred, sucking in everything that had come out of the sky and underworld.

Rabbit saw a boluntiku go, more ’zotz, a makol or three. But the huge winged beasts above them hung on and dug in. A section of the shield caved, and a clawed foot broke through. They were so fucking close, but they weren’t going to make it!

“Myr,” he said, the word coming out broken. “Jesus Christ, Myr.”

She looked up at him, and found a way to smile. “What a perfectly wonderful disaster this is turning out to be.”

And, holy shit, he laughed out loud at that, and somewhere, somehow, let go of the last little thread of control, giving himself over to the chaos. The golden magic flared through him, into the uplink and from there to the funnel clouds, and the damn things exploded, expanding to suddenly wrap around the winged creatures, which growled and snapped, then howled as they were torn away and sucked into the vortices, one to the sky, the other to Xibalba. The one headed to hell was joined by dozens of little flickers of red and green, hundreds of them.

“The xombis!” Anna cried. “You’re banishing the xombi magic!”

Rabbit let his head fall back and let out a whoop. “It’s working!”

He wanted to dance and sing, wanted to spin Myr around and around, but he held on to the spell instead, pouring himself into it, feeling the strength of the Nightkeepers’ uplink. The last of the xombi flickers whipped past them and down, and then, with a final roar, the funnel clouds folded in on themselves and sucked back to where they’d started.

And pop. They were gone.

It was over.

Only it wasn’t.

The storm was gone, the kohan and the kax were gone, and everything was the same as it had been when they got there . . . except for the nahwal. The Nightkeepers’ armies of the dead stood clustered near the last members of their bloodlines, waiting to cross over to the afterlife.

Crossover.

The golden magic pulsed inside Rabbit, chaotic and disordered, just like life itself. And, going on instinct, he looped an arm around Myr’s waist, pointed to the sky, and sent a stream of the magic winging up, up, and up some more, until it hit a cloud.

Sunlight flared, bright and unexpected, and a beam speared down, descending along the stream of golden magic until it reached the ground.

“Oh,” Myr breathed.

Once the sunbeam was on the ground, it moved with a magic of its own, seeking out the nahwal. Some flared quickly bright and then disappeared, becoming golden glitters that flowed up the sunlight shaft and headed for the sky. Not to the realm of the kohan, but to the true sky. The reward for brave warriors.

The few nahwal who didn’t disappear, though, grew solid. More, their eyes turned normal, clothes glistened into being around them, and they suddenly looked like real people.

Rabbit’s heart thudded in his chest. “Holy shit,” he whispered, and felt Myr squeeze his hand.

Anna gave a soft cry and moved toward one of them. “Mama!” She hesitated as the gold dust swirled, but when it cleared, it revealed a woman who was very familiar to Rabbit from his dreams. Asia. Scarred-Jaguar’s queen. Gods.

The two women embraced while Sasha moved toward them, eyes alight. Strike, meanwhile, faced the nahwal with the ruby earring as the old king’s features became clear, and father and son saw each other for the first time in thirty years. And it would be the last, Rabbit saw, because after a brief exchange, the shimmers intensified and the old king streamed up into the sky.

“Do you see?” Myr’s voice cracked and her fingers dug into his arm. “Are you seeing this?”

It was happening all around them, for each of the Nightkeepers. Which meant . . .

Stiffening, he turned. And found himself facing not one nahwal . . . but four of them.

Red-Boar stood beside a pretty, perky-looking brunette with a wide smile. And in front of them, wrapped in their arms, were twin boys who looked up at Rabbit with eyes so much like his own that his heart clutched.

He had hated them, he realized. All along, he had hated them.

“Go on,” he told them now. “Go be together.” And he sent the crossover magic toward them.

As the sparks gathered and surrounded the four, Red-Boar raised a hand in farewell.

Then the golden magic streamed airborne and up onto the sunbeam, and Rabbit’s old man was gone. For real this time.

He had been the last of them, Rabbit saw. The nahwal were all gone, and the winikin’s animal familiars were streaming up along the sunlight as well, being waved off with cheers and tears, and cries of thanks. When they were gone, figuring it was over, Rabbit let his magic die away. He held Myr close to his side and said, “Well, as disasters go . . .” He trailed off as the sunbeam intensified once more. “This one may not be over.”

Myr pressed close to Rabbit’s side as the golden sparks flitted down from the clouds, then spun, dipped and formed the head of a giant creature, one that had the pointy features of a Doberman, but with a drooping, anteater-like nose and wide, squared-off ears that stood high at attention.

Seth, the lord of chaos, looked down at the Nightkeepers and their allies, and smiled. Which in itself was pretty damn terrifying, she decided. But at the same time, her blood thrummed.

They had survived the war! They could handle whatever came next.

“Well done, children of the Earth plane.” Seth spoke, as Bastet had, in all of their minds at once. But then he turned, sweeping the crowd and zeroing in on Rabbit. “Especially you, son of chaos.”

Rabbit had gone still. “I know that voice.”

Myr did too. It came from the vision, from Asia’s king. Only it hadn’t been Jag’s voice, she realized now. It had been the god’s.

The great head inclined. “I spoke to you as I could, and told you what you needed to hear. You are the crossover, the embodiment of random chance. My son on this earth. You are risk and danger, change and invention. Your blood will reinvigorate the Nightkeepers, keeping the magic alive for another twenty-six thousand years, until the next Great Conjunction.”

“We get to keep the magic?” Myr blurted. She had assumed that it would disappear now that the barrier was sealed once more, quiescent until the next cycle, like a zillion generations from now.

Those golden eyes locked on her. “Yes and no, earth daughter. The magic still exists, but it is hidden. It will work only on the Cardinal Days, or if the earth should need its Keepers and their allies again in the future.” Seth’s eyes swept the crowd again, touching on each of them. “So teach your children well, and your children’s children, and down the line. Protect them. Hide them if necessary. And do not forget the lies of the other realms . . . or the power of love.”

Magic hummed in the air and the golden pixels swirled and spun, beginning to break up. As Seth’s face melted away, though, he looked at Rabbit again, and sent him another of those terrifying smiles. “You are my pride, son of chaos. Never forget it.”

And then the god was gone, leaving utter silence behind.

Myr’s heart was lodged somewhere south of her tonsils, her fingers digging into Rabbit’s arm. He was the first one to move, taking a shuddering breath and unlocking his body to drag a hand down his face.

“Jesus Christ,” he said raggedly. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

The lump in her throat turned into a tickle. “I’m pretty sure he’s the son of a different god.” The tickle turned into a laugh that was more than a bit hysterical.