Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

“Unless the Volatile does what?” Strike pressed.

“That’s it. You must’ve missed some glyphs.”

But he shook his head. “That was all of it. I’m certain. Which means . . .” He trailed off. “It means we’re missing a piece of the statuette. Fuck.”

The obscenity was echoed by another of the magi, one whom Anna didn’t know as well as some: Nate Blackhawk. The dark, handsome Nightkeeper muttered something else under his breath, then shot a look at Alexis Gray, with whom he’d been involved the year before. They must’ve come to some sort of truce, Anna realized, because Alexis met his eyes and nodded, her lips twisting in a smile that held zero humor when she said, “Current score: bad guys, two; Nightkeepers, zero-point-five.

Looks like we’ve got another artifact to find.”

Anna nodded. “And it’d help if we figured out what exactly this Volatile is supposed to be and how it works.”

“That much we managed to do,” Strike said, tone dark. He glanced at Jade, indicating that the archivist had been the one to find the record.

“And?” Anna pressed.

“It’s a damned shape-shifter.”

After the meeting broke up, Nate headed out along the narrow, rocky path that led from the training compound to the small Pueblo ruins high on the cliff face at the back of the box canyon. He needed some time alone to deal with the frustration that rose exponentially with each minute that brought them closer to the lunar eclipse. They were down to less than twenty-four hours and counting, and he could practically see magic in the air and smell sex on the breeze.

Or was it that he had sex on the brain? Either way, it was all he could think about. He was hard and horny, and pissed off at learning that the Ixchel statuette wasn’t complete. How had they missed seeing that a portion was broken off? The overturned basket or whatever the goddess sat atop had a flat side they’d assumed had been left rough on purpose, but now it was looking like a fracture plane, damn it. Which meant . . . what? They didn’t even know what the missing piece looked like. How the hell were they supposed to find it?

“For fuck’s sake,” he said aloud, trying to gain control over the irritation, which he knew was as much about the magic as real anger. Then he heard footsteps coming up the pathway behind him, and the anger redirected itself, going from fury to a raging heat that he had even less control over. He knew who it was instantly, not through magic, but because the quick, self-assured stride could’ve belonged to no one else but Alexis. The warrior-princess.

When she rounded the corner, the sight of her was a kick in his chest. She was lovely in the moonlight—not soft, never soft, but the angles of her face and jaw combined into a mysterious effect, one that made him think of secrets and shadows, and the things they’d done to each other in the dark of night.

The eclipse fire rose up, threatening to take him over, to make him do things he wouldn’t do otherwise. “What do you want?” he snapped, temptation roughening his voice.

She hesitated. “Carlos is looking for you.”

“You didn’t come all the way out here to tell me that.”

“No.” She lifted her chin in challenge. “I came to see you.”

Holding himself still was a struggle. “Bad idea.”

“Probably. But don’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.” She glanced up at the sky, where the moon shone nearly full. “It wouldn’t have to mean anything, or take us back where we were before. We could agree that it’s just the barrier talking. The magic.”

Which was exactly what he didn’t want it to be between them. Heat flared in his veins, a sharp-

edged howl of lust and need, but he dug his fingernails into his palms and forced his hands to stay still when they would’ve reached for her. “Tell Carlos I’ll talk to him in the morning,” he said, rejecting her offer by not mentioning it.

She stood there for a long moment, limned in moonlight. Then she turned and walked away, leaving him sitting alone in the night by the burial ruins of an ancient people much younger than his own. He was still there, dry eyed, exhausted, and lonely, when the sun came up and the eclipse day dawned.

The final hours before the eclipse both dragged and flew. As the day wore on, Alexis could feel the tingle of the barrier reaching out to her, making her crazy. Which was pretty much her only excuse for what she’d done—or rather tried to do—the night before.

Her cheeks burned at the memory, even though she’d already tortured herself throughout a long, sleepless night. She kept picturing the look on Nate’s face—total disinterest with a liberal dose of annoyance—as she’d pimped herself out, offering strings-free eclipse sex. What the hell had she been thinking? She hadn’t been; that was the answer. She’d simply gone back to old, bad habits.

She’d been the one to go looking for Nate that first time, just as she’d been the one to go after Aaron, and the guy before him, and the one before that, ad infinitum. She was usually the aggressor, the one who gave chase, mostly because she aimed so far out of her own league. And yeah, sometimes she got turned down. But not like this. Never like this. She was becoming that girl, the one everyone else pitied because she kept going back to the ex who hadn’t treated her all that well in the first place.

She not only took the booty call when the phone rang; she was the one doing the dialing. And where had it gotten her? No-fucking-where.

She was pathetic.

“Damn it,” she muttered, pacing away from the window of her small suite, shrugging against the chafe of her weapons belt as resentment dug, not just against Nate but against all of them. She was pissed off, and jealous of the other Nightkeepers, who’d headed out to the training center to blow some shit up. Their powers were all ramping up as the eclipse approached. Her powers—what she had, anyway—had stayed flatlined; only her hormones had ramped. Which was just so not fair. Her mother had been a powerful mage, for chrissake. How come she’d lost the magic lottery? Was it because her father had been relatively weak? Izzy had implied that his minimal talents were why she carried her mother’s bloodline name and mark; her parents had been trying to ensure that she had the best chance of gaining power, of being someone.

So far that hadn’t exactly worked out, which was another thing that had anger spiking. What if—

Take a breath, she told herself. This isn’t you. It’s the barrier. The magic was making her nuts.

Stalking into her bathroom, she gave herself a once-over, knowing it was nearly time to meet the others for transpo to the intersection for the eclipse ceremony. The combat clothes she wore had been her mother’s; Izzy had pulled them out of storage and made the necessary repairs once Alexis had graduated from the midnight blue robes of a Nightkeeper trainee. Alexis would’ve preferred to go with modern clothes, but it’d meant so much to Izzy that she hadn’t fought it. The pants were basic black, and loose enough at the waist that Alexis could wear them at her hips, but tight enough at the legs that she looked like a chick rather than a drag queen. The shirt was black as well, made of heavy, stretchable fabric, and the cuffs were worked with intricate sprays of blue and white stone beads that were arranged in stylized designs symbolizing the smoke bloodline.

Looking at her face in the mirror, Alexis tried to see the woman from the vision, tried to see her mother in herself. And failed.

Where Gray-Smoke had been willowy and elegant in every picture showing her, Alexis was sturdy and . . . well, not elegant. Where her mother had had high, narrow cheekbones and a delicately pointed chin, Alexis’s face was broad and anything but delicate. Almond-shaped eyes didn’t match wide and round, and hazel didn’t match blue.