Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

He held her, loved her, took her over. The orgasm slapped at her, unexpected in its ferocity, which gave her no option, bowing her back and wringing a cry from deep in her throat. Her inner muscles clamped around him, feeling stronger than before, needier. She pumped him, clenched around him, and he cut loose with a roar. The pulse of his flesh within her heightened her response, prolonging the orgasm, drawing it out until she was nothing more than a bundle of neurons coalesced together, throbbing in pleasure. She hung on to the only solid objects nearby, lest she be swept away.

Then the waves passed, fading to an echo, then a fearsome memory.

Alexis clung to him with her face turned from his, her cheek pressed into his shoulder. She didn’t dare pull away and look at him, didn’t want to see how much the sex had—or hadn’t—meant to him.

And as much as she tried to tell herself that none of it was real, it’d sure as hell felt real, and the tug at her heart was real.

“Lexie,” he said, his voice cracking on the endearment. “I—” The world lurched, interrupting. The water started to swirl, and a hard, hot wind whipped through the stone chamber, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Alexis heard him shout, and screamed as they were torn apart and sucked down, as everything went to flame and then gray-green, spinning and moving and howling as though they’d insulted the gods themselves. Her heart pounded in her chest, panic slicing through her as she grabbed for something, anything she could hold on to, and found nothing but air. Wind screamed around her, howling, sounding almost like words.

All of a sudden there were words, a multitonal voice shouting, “The Volatile must be found!” Then, out of nowhere, a strong hand gripped Alexis’s wrist and yanked.

And she was back at Skywatch.

Her consciousness dropped into her body with a jarring thud. She went limp and slid sideways, saved only when Nate jammed his hip against her shoulder and shoved her back into her chair. He was still hanging on to her wrist. Somehow he’d gotten out and dragged her with him.

“Oh, gods.” Alexis sagged against him, clung to him, her fingers digging into the heavy muscles of his forearm, over the stark black of his marks. “Oh, holy hell.” She looked up at him. “What did you

—” She broke off, seeing in his eyes all of his usual intensity, along with the irritation she alone seemed to bring out. But that was it. She saw nothing of what they’d just done together.

He detached himself from her and stepped away. “What did I . . . what?” he prompted.

Izzy shouldered him aside and started fussing, checking Alexis’s color, her pulse, making Alexis acutely aware that they weren’t alone, that the other Nightkeepers and their winikin were still there in the great room, gathered around her and Nate and the suitcase containing the statuette of Ixchel. There was no temple, no torchlight. No lovemaking.

She swallowed hard. “What did you see?” Which wasn’t even close to what she’d been about to say before. “You were in there with me, right? You were there the whole time?”

He frowned. “What whole time?” He looked at Strike. “It was only a few seconds, right?”

The king nodded, but said, “Doesn’t mean she didn’t experience something that seemed longer, though. Time acts funny in the barrier.” He cut his eyes to Alexis. “That was where you wound up, right? In the barrier?”

Her defenses snapped up, born of the insecurities that had ruled too much of her life, and she nodded quickly. “Right. The barrier.”

Strike glanced at Nate, who’d jammed his hands in his pockets and was staring over her head, as though determined to distance himself from the convo. “You, too?”

“Maybe for a few seconds,” Nate allowed. “Then I got kicked back here, and she followed. Nothing complicated.”

Only it was very, very complicated, Alexis thought, staring down at the statuette, sure now that the woman’s face was buried in her hands because she was weeping with heartache . . . and the gut-

punching frustration of dealing with magic and men. The artifact had taken her to the barrier, yes, but it’d also taken her someplace else, someplace where she’d met and made love to a man who’d looked and acted like Nate, had made love like Nate, yet somehow wasn’t him.

Her hair was dry, and she was wearing the jeans and loose shirt she’d put on before the meeting, not combat gear or wet skin. Yet her body echoed with the effects of having made love. More important, it echoed with having made love with him . As much as she’d wanted to hate him in the aftermath of their belly flop of a relationship, she’d been unable to forget that with him sex felt different, echoed different.

Yet it’d either really, truly been a dream that belonged only to her . . . or for some reason he’d blocked it from his conscious mind. He wouldn’t lie about something that important. Hell, she was pretty sure he didn’t lie about anything; he was scrupulously honest, even when she hated hearing what he had to say.

Which explained absolutely nothing.

“What did you see?” Strike pressed her. “Did you speak with a nahwal ?”

“No,” Alexis said automatically. Then she paused, remembering the multitonal voice that had shouted at the end. “At least, I don’t think I did.”

The nahwals were sexless, desiccated entities that existed only within the barrier. They embodied the collective wisdom of each bloodline, and could choose to share that wisdom or not, depending on the circumstances. They never lied, but Jade’s research suggested they sometimes gave only partial answers, and that they seemed to have an agenda that even the earlier generations of Nightkeepers hadn’t understood. One thing was for sure: They spoke with two or more voices combined in harmonic descant.

“You don’t seem certain,” Nate said, turning back to look at her intently. “What did you see?”

“It wasn’t what I saw,” she evaded, “but what I heard. Just as I was coming back here, a voice said something about finding something volatile.” She turned to Jade, who as usual stood at the edge of the group. “Was Ixchel an air goddess?”

The archivist shook her head. “She was—or, rather, is —the goddess of rainbows, fertility, and weaving.” She paused, looking troubled. “I’m sure I’ve seen the term volatile recently, though, and not in a good way. Let me check into it.”

Alexis looked down at the statuette, but didn’t touch it. “You think that’s what’s written in the starscript? Something about this volatile? Maybe we need whatever it is to hold back Camazotz.”

Strike hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’ll call Anna and see if she can come out a few days early, to translate.”

The king’s sister, a Mayan studies expert at UT Austin, was staying as far away from the Nightkeepers as possible, coming to Skywatch only during the cardinal days and major ceremonies, and then only because she’d promised to do so in exchange for Red-Boar saving the life of her grad student. Anna made no secret that she wanted nothing to do with the culture and magic she’d been born to, nothing to do with her own destiny.

Sometimes, Alexis thought on a sinking sense of disappointment, the gods get it wrong . Which she knew was blasphemy and illogical. But at the same time, how did it make sense to pair up a mismatch like her and Nate, or force someone like Anna to be something she didn’t want to be?

“A volatile?” Anna frowned at her brother’s question, then took a quick look through the cracked-open doorway of her office, making sure she was alone. She didn’t want anyone at the university to hear her talking about Mayan myths and demons as though they were real, even if they were. Some divisions of the art history department might encourage funkiness, but not hers. Mayan epigraphy—the study and translation of the ancient glyphs and the legends they told—was serious science. Which, for better or worse, made her the logical person for her brother to call. Damn it. “Well,” she continued, hoping info was all he wanted for a change, “the volatiles are the thirteen symbols connected with the hours of the day and the thirteen levels of the sky. But they’re just symbols, not things or spells. I don’t see how they’d help if you’re looking to block the death bats.”