Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

Slowly, very slowly, the tear began to narrow.

A trumpet scream sounded behind her, and she glanced back to see a snakelike slide of motion, a glowing gold-and-crimson dragon with an elongated snout and whip-like tail. Kulkulkan.

The creator god rose up in the sky and spread his great feathered wings as he hovered above the rainbow, bugling a battle cry, becoming the serpent and the rainbow as they had been carved on the ceiling of the stone temple. Then Kulkulkan screamed again and pinwheeled in the air, locking onto the death bats, directed by the mental link he shared with Leah and Strike, who stood near the hellmouth with their warriors.

The king and queen had her back, Alexis thought, and was warmed by the knowledge, steadied by knowing she wasn’t alone, even though she felt so lonely up there in the sky, sitting on a rainbow, sewing the world back together. But the rainbow strands held. The barrier was closing. Slowly, but it was closing.

For a second she actually thought she was going to pull it off. Then there was a massive heaving on the other side of the barrier, a concerted rush as the Banol Kax sent their forces toward the weak spot, a massive battering ram of evil seeking to force its way through to earth. The creatures hit the barrier at a spot below the tear, and the fabric of psi energy bowed under the pressure, straining at the torn spot.

Shouting, Alexis pulled on the threads with both hands and hung on to the rainbow with her legs, fighting to keep the gap from widening. Then a long, squidlike tendril of evil snaked through the opening, wrapped around her, and yanked her off the rainbow.

And pulled her through the gap to hell.

The moment Alexis broke contact with the sacred circle and physically stepped into the rainbow, Nate knew she was in serious trouble. When he saw her shimmer and start to fade, he didn’t hesitate. He flung himself after her.

Instead of the rainbow, though, he found agony.

Flames lashed at him; lightning struck at him as he was transported someplace else, someplace between the earth and sky, another layer that wasn’t the barrier, but was so much worse. He twisted in the lashing wind and rain, suspended in the midst of a terrible storm. “Alexis!” he cried, shouting so hard his voice cracked on the word. “Lexie!”

But she wasn’t there. They’d been separated by the magic, because she belonged in the rainbow and he didn’t, never had.

He thrashed, screaming, not with the pain, but because he needed to get to her, needed to protect her. “Gods damn it!” he shouted into the storm. “She needs me! I won’t let it end like this. I can’t. For gods’ sake, let me help her. She’ll die without me!”

And, he realized in the extreme of his panic, he would die without her. A sudden parade of impressions flashed through his mind, kaleidoscoping images of the two of them together in the past, the good times and the bad. Then he saw himself in two different futures, one that continued for many years, one that cut short in 2012, both without her in them. Both unacceptable. Lightning slapped at him, arching him double in pain as he contemplated a future without Alexis and realized that all along his so-called honesty had been a front, a terrible lie. He’d been trying to be honest with her, and in the process had lied to himself. He might not have started out wanting a life with her, a future with her, but now that he was facing one without her, he realized it was the last thing he wanted. The one thing he wouldn’t tolerate.

“Give her back!” he shouted to the storm, to the gods. “She’s mine. I love her!”

The moment he said the words, the moment he truly accepted them for what they were and what they meant, his powers bolted wildly, careening to a new level he’d never experienced before. The magic whiplashed through him, fighting the storm, fighting captivity.

Feeding on the power, he tipped back his head into the storm and roared, “I. Love. Her!”

The universe seemed to pause, seemed to take a breath. In the sudden stillness a door unlocked in his mind, and he suddenly saw his own dreams. He’d dreamed of his mother and father as his infant self remembered them. He’d dreamed of being with Alexis in the temple cave, of losing himself in her as she’d pressed back against a twin column of stalagmites and cried his name at the back of her throat.

And all along he’d dreamed of flying. Of being free, not of love or duty, but free of gravity. Free of the earth.

A warm, magical glow kindled in his heart. Only it wasn’t his heart. It was the hawk medallion.

Son of a bitch, he thought. The fucking thing really is magic.

Acting on instinct, on impulse, he palmed his knife from his belt. Only it wasn’t his usual knife; it was the ceremonial blade Strike had given him. The weapon felt like an extension of his own arm, cool on his flesh as he nicked first his tongue, then each of his palms in sacrifice.

Cupping both bloodstained hands around the medallion, he lifted it and pressed a kiss to the etching, where the hawk became the man, and the man became the hawk. “I love her,” he said simply. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” And, in accepting that deep down inside, he let himself go fully to the magic, relinquished control, and gave himself to destiny. He tipped his head back as the storm began anew, now rotating around him in a funnel cloud of gray-black and lightning, and he roared, “Gods take me!”

And, keeping Alexis in his mind, his love for her at the forefront, he dived headfirst into the funnel.

The winds whipped at him, ripping at his clothing, at his flesh. His skin stretched tight and tore; his whole body split apart. Pain slashed through him, beat at him, and he screamed with the pain, with the power. His clothes shredded and fell away. The wind screamed with him, and then he heard another voice, an inhuman screech that reached deep inside him and brought recognition, longing, and a sense of the freedom he’d always sought, the freedom he’d thought love was trying to take away.

He flailed his arms and legs against the whirling vortex, screaming again and again, the creature’s cries drowning out his own. His skin burned, his bones ached, his flesh and tendons sang with unfamiliar tension.

Gradually, though, his flailing gained purpose and rhythm. He waved his arms and felt them bite into the storm winds, arched his spine and felt the motion alter his course. An unfamiliar slapping noise surrounded him, filled him up, and he waved his arms harder, and started to make progress.

Then he saw a flash of color and light up ahead; a place where the storm had cleared, leaving a rainbow behind. “Alexis,” he shouted, and heard only the creature’s scream, but didn’t care about that, cared only about getting to her. He started swimming through the air, flapping arms that had become fifteen-foot wings, spreading something that felt like fingers but seemed to have sprouted out of his ass, wide and flat and feathered—a tail? what the fuck?—and letting his legs flatten out behind him, curling his talons, each the size of the forearm of his human self.

Understanding was both a shock and a relief, and a sense of rightness like he’d never before experienced.

He was the sacred black hawk-eagle, and the hawk-eagle was him.

The medallion banged against his breastbone as he flew. It was still hanging around his neck alongside the king’s eccentric, both of the chains having somehow grown to accommodate his new size and shape. He carried the sacred knife with him too; it had changed when he did, becoming an obsidian band that hung around his ankle, marking him not just as a shifter, but as the Volatile.