Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

Or else that was wishful thinking and she was already as strong as she was ever going to get.

“Ready?” Sven asked from her left side, holding out his bloodied palm in invitation.

Alexis nodded and grabbed on. The power boost hummed through her bones as she reached out to clasp Patience’s hand on her other side, continuing the circle of Nightkeepers. The winikin formed an outer circle, touching the magi so they’d be included in the ’port magic, even though they didn’t add to the boost. When the circle was complete except for Strike and Leah, the royal couple stepped in and finished the connection.

When they did, the power whiplashed through Alexis, untold magic using her as a conduit, though not a wielder. She threw her head back and let her body arch into it as the world tilted sideways, then accelerated when Strike triggered the ’port magic.

Everything went gray-green, and mist whipped past. Then the universe decelerated around her, spun sideways, and slammed into the soles of her feet.

The air changed, going humid and earthy, and a room materialized around her, whitewashed and sparsely furnished in Early Particleboard, with a couple of serapes thrown around and a red velvet mariachi hat hung on one wall in a weak effort at local color.

Welcome to the Yucatán, low-rent style, Alexis thought. She’d been to the safe house once before, during the winter solstice, but hadn’t noticed the lame decor so much. Maybe it bugged her now because she’d been making a real effort to brighten up Skywatch. Or maybe, she acknowledged, she was looking for something to focus on other than the ceremony.

Strike’s low whistle caught her attention, and she looked to her king. He sent Jox and Michael to a locked back room that was filled with surveillance monitors, and gestured for the rest of them to wait.

When Jox signaled the all-clear, Strike waved the Nightkeeper warriors out of the house, leaving Jade and the winikin males behind. Jade looked simultaneously relieved and miserable as the others filed out. She was the only one of them lacking any fighting magic. The only other Nightkeeper lacking the warrior’s mark was Anna, but although the king’s sister wasn’t able to call upon her itza’at seer’s powers, she’d proven able to boost any of the others with her power, so she was going with the warriors as backup.

Alexis sketched a wave at Jade on the way out, thinking that it might suck being on the low end of the warriors’ talent range, but at least she was a warrior and not a librarian.

It was cloudy outside, providing an unexpected continuity with the weather where they’d come from, but the similarities pretty much stopped there. Where the land surrounding Skywatch was arid and red-cast, with little wildlife beyond the occasional hawk, snake, or coyote, the Yucatán was lush and verdant, and before Alexis had gone three steps she’d been bitten by a buzzing insect. Parrots called to one another through the trees despite the gloom and the darkness, and monkeys chattered from farther away.

Giving a second low whistle, Strike sent them into the forest along the narrow path they’d scouted, cleared, and then hidden again a few months earlier. It led through the trees to a squat stone temple made of simple blocks fitted together. The structure was uncarved and unadorned from the outside, almost forgettable until they stepped through the low doorway. The inside of the unprepossessing structure was a rectangular room that during the day looked like nothing much, with little more than a few badly eroded carvings. At night, though, when the stars were bright, the walls showed instructions for opening a secret passageway that was viable for only an hour on either side of an equinox, solstice, or major event like an eclipse.

There were no stars tonight, and the writing didn’t glow quicksilver-bright, but the spell was already familiar. Strike and Leah knelt together, pressed their bloodied palms to the stones at the back of the narrow temple space, and recited the ancient words in synchrony.

When the doorway opened Alexis hung back a little, partially so she could scan the forest for any sign of trouble, and partly so she could avoid being too close to Nate as Strike and Leah led the Nightkeepers down the narrow passageway, and the others started falling in, moving single-file toward the sacred chambers, lighting the way with cheap flashlights.

Magic hummed in the air, heating Alexis’s blood and setting up vibrations where they didn’t belong, drawing her to a man whom didn’t want her, and who she didn’t want. Liar, her inner voice chided, but she ignored it and took up a position at the back of the line, with only Michael behind her.

He always took the rearmost position, because he was the best among them at shield magic. Very few spells worked down in the tunnels, but the shield did, and it could buy them valuable time if they were attacked.

Which left Alexis feeling like a spare wheel, because her shield was for shit.

And you so need to get over yourself, she thought fiercely, not sure where the negativity was coming from, but figuring it had to do with the eclipse, and the things that had happened—real or imagined—

between her and Nate over the past week.

The tunnel sloped gently down, and as the small group moved onward, the sound of running water quickly became audible. They would parallel the river all the way to their destination, which was a rectangular altar room deep beneath the ruins of Chichén Itzá. There they would initiate the ceremony, and if—gods willing—a god accepted Patience as its keeper, she and Brandt would in theory get their asses zapped into the circular chamber where Strike and Leah had first met. Now buried beneath a shit-ton of rubble, the sacred chamber was where the Godkeeper ceremony was supposed to take place.

In theory, anyway. In practice, the Nightkeepers had performed the same calling ritual during the winter solstice, and had returned to the surface without a Godkeeper. There was no guarantee that this time would be any different.

When they reached the temple, which was fairly plain, save for sconces set at regular intervals and a large chac-mool altar that took up most of one end of the chamber, they set their flashlights on the floor and reblooded their palms. Alexis barely felt the pain through the humming that’d taken up residence in her brain. The buzz was one of warm urgency and temptation, though she couldn’t have said what it was tempting her to do.

Joining up again, the Nightkeepers spoke the words necessary to jack into the barrier: “Pasaj och.”

Alexis felt the kick of power, felt the split in her brain as part of her went into the barrier and part stayed behind. As planned, Patience began reciting the Godkeeper spell as the others boosted her power. The intersection was a weak spot in the barrier, supposedly created when the Xibalbans had called the demons to earth in the first millennium A.D. There, the earth, sky, and underworld were very close together, though the skyroad was long and winding by comparison to the hellmouth. As such, the intersection was where the Nightkeepers gathered for their strongest spells, especially those designed to call a god. Yet at the same time it opened the way for a demon as well, which was why Strike and Leah joined up and called on their god, Kulkulkan, to cast blockade magic and help keep the Banol Kax from coming through the portal formed by the Godkeeper spell. As they did so, the king and queen were surrounded by a golden shimmer: the light of love, and of the gods.

Alexis turned away from them, her throat closing on a beat of grief for what could’ve been, yet wasn’t. Telling herself that she was an important part of the battle regardless, she opened herself to the magic, reciting the Godkeeper spell in her head only a beat after hearing it in Patience’s sweet voice, supporting rather than ascending, following rather than leading.