Jessica Andersen - Magic Unchained

“Yes, Tristan. Turtle. He was so cautious, where you were always on the move, hopping from place to place.” She paused, face going achingly tender and heart-rendingly sad. “You two were—”

“Twins,” he whispered, knowing it with the same bone-deep certainty that recognized her. I had a twin. Not just a brother, but another half of himself—not identical, but rather complementary, filling in the gaps and making a perfect, powerful whole.

Harsh noise roared in his brain and then downward to fill his throat and chest, tearing him with a single wrenching sob. No. Gods, no. Please. It hurts. But he couldn’t escape the memories now; they crowded him, banging against a barrier he hadn’t even realized existed in his mind. He’d had a brother. A twin. And Red-Boar had never told him. Never even hinted that there might be a reason that he’d so often felt jagged and incomplete, like he was missing part of himself.

Son of a bitch.

Rabbit hung his head, trying to fight the nausea, the dizziness, the blackness that took on the shadowy shape of a face very like his own, only not. Something cool touched the back of his neck, a gentle, feathery brush of ghostly fingertips that telescoped time, turning him once more into a child. Pain ripped through his soul as memory broke through. He sagged and cried out, dry-heaving as she touched him again, freeing the last of the long-ago pain, and sending him into the memories. And into a vision that wasn’t his own.

The small house tucked amid the trees, glittering with leaf-dappled sunlight, might’ve been made of the same wood and thatch the native Mayan villagers used, but with its blocky construction, framed windows, and silly flower boxes, it looked more like a starter home in the ’burbs. Which in a way it was, Phee thought as she followed the hidden path leading home.

The house and the family inside it were a fresh start, a do-over for both of them after her imprisonment, his bad luck, and the miracle of her and Red-Boar finding each other, healing each other to the point of moving on.

Alerted somehow of her arrival—maybe by a change in the birdsong overhead, or some residue of the mind-bender’s talent he had once wielded—he came through the front door, eyes locking on her instantly. As it always did, her heart missed a beat at the sight of him. Tall and layered with lean muscle that popped beneath nut brown skin, with his skull shaved and his shirt off, he was a fantasy she hadn’t dared dream when she’d hung, naked and shackled, in the Xibalbans’ ritual chamber of horrors. Now, though, she was free to look at him, free to run her hands over him.

Simply and wonderfully free.

He didn’t smile when he saw her; he rarely ever relaxed the fierce scowl that had grooved deep lines beside his mouth, and his eyes would probably always carry shadows, no matter how much time separated them from the massacre that had taken his first family. But Phee had learned to look beneath his fierce exterior and see the subtle easing of tension that said, “I’m glad you’re back.”

Those small signs were all she needed. That, and the sight of two small faces popping out behind their father, the sound of their voices saying, “Mommy’s home!”

Her heart lifted as the boys—both miniature versions of their father, but with her gray eyes, one light haired, the other dark—scrambled through the door and raced toward her, arms outstretched. They whumped into her knee-high and wrapped around her as if she’d been gone for days on a supply run rather than just the couple of hours she had taken to walk the perimeter of their safe zone.

Slinging her rifle over one shoulder, she crouched down and hugged them back.

“All clear?” Red-Boar asked.

“You’ve said it yourself—at this point, checking for footprints is as much a habit as anything.”

It had been four years since she had escaped, three and a half since Red-Boar had found her lying almost dead at the edge of a ruined Mayan pyramid. And it had been more than two years since the last rumor that men wearing the bloodred quatrefoil of the Werigo’s vicious Xibalban sect were searching the highlands for her. Still, though, they stayed vigilant. They had the boys to worry about now.

Oblivious to his mother’s thought process, Rabbie—aka Mr. Short Attention Span—pulled away from her and bounced back to his father, talking animatedly and so fast that only every third word was really intelligible.

Tristan wound his arms around her neck and grinned. “Rabbit and turtle?”

“Again?” she asked, laughing past the sudden tightness in her throat. “You’ve already heard it a zillion times.” The story had been the boys’ favorite even before she and Red-Boar had started using the all-too-apt nicknames.

“Rabbit and turtle!”

“Okay, okay. Let me get a drink first.” She stood, taking Triss with her and feeling the strain of his good, solid weight in her arms. As she headed for the house, a flock of parrots burst from the trees high overhead. She stopped and looked up, grinning at the flashes of red and green. “Look!” she said to Tristan. “What do you think the birdies—”

Gunfire split the air, ripping the peace to shreds, and invisible blows slammed into her—thud, thud, thud—knocking her back and down.

“Phee!” Red-Boar’s anguished bellow roared over the chatter of a second burst of machine-gun fire. A split second later, the underbrush thrashed and six red-robed Xibalbans burst into the clearing.

She didn’t know whether she screamed or not, knew only that her heartbeat was hammering in her ears as she fell. She tried to hang on to Tristan, tried to curl around him and then scramble up and away from the attack. But nothing was working right; she couldn’t hold on to him, couldn’t get up, couldn’t do anything but lie there as more shots rang out and one of the boys started crying.

Dear gods, only one. Only…

Blackness.

Sometime later she awoke. She knew it was later by the angle of the sun, which was suddenly too bright, making her squint through a haze of tears as she tried to focus on Red-Boar’s face. His eyes were swimming with moisture, his face etched as always with grief. But it wasn’t old remembered pain right now; this agony was fresh and new, and wholly focused on her.

She was dying. She didn’t need to see it in his eyes to know it. Her body was numb and cold, her heart stuttering. “Triss… tan?” she asked, forcing her lips to shape the word. “Rabbie?”

A tear broke free and tracked down his face. “Rabbie’s fine. And you’ll…” He swallowed hard. “You’ll see Triss soon.”

“Noo…” She closed her eyes as something broke inside her with utter and devastating finality. There was pain—terrible, rending agony—but there was also a strange sort of peace that said soon it wouldn’t hurt anymore. Soon it would be over—the pain, her life, all of it. Red-Boar, though, would have to live with the agony, not for his own sake, but for Rabbie’s. Her heart broke anew, because there could be no greater torture for him, she knew, than to be once more the survivor.

“Take him home,” she said, knowing that if she hadn’t been chickenshit they would’ve already been in the States with their names changed and the last surviving winikin in charge of their anonymity. But she had been too afraid of the Nightkeepers’ high-pressure, high-tech world, clinging instead to the familiar forests she’d grown up in. That was her mistake, her sin. “Keep him safe and raise him right. Promise me.”

His tears were flowing freely now and his eyes were soul-deep wounds without end. “I promise.”

She tried to respond, but the only thing that came out was her final breath as the world went dim. Then dark.