Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

When Nate simply stood there in the doorway, looking at her, she snapped, “What do you want?”

Belatedly, she realized he was wearing black on black, with a bulletproof vest over the top, strapped down with a stocked weapons belt. “Where are you going?”

“Belize.” He moved past her and started collecting spare clips, turning his back on her.

“The hell you are.” She would’ve yanked him to face her, but knew from experience that he didn’t get yanked. So she moved around in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “Michael’s going with me.”

“Not anymore. Stone and I reached an agreement.” He turned away from her again, pretending to check one of his weapons, though they both knew he kept his guns in perfect working order. They all did—Jox, their resident gun junkie, had drummed that lesson home early on.

Confusion and irritation fought for dominance within Alexis, and confusion won. “Nate,” she said softly. “Look at me, please.”

He stalled the busywork, standing still for a heartbeat. Then he turned toward her, his expression guarded. He secured the autopistol in its holster, then hooked his thumbs in his belt as he faced her, looking ready for anything.

Anything, of course, except what she needed from him.

“This is nonnegotiable,” he said, as if a statement like that would actually end the discussion. “I’ll play the god card if I have to, though I’d really rather not.”

And he has a point, damn it, Alexis thought on a beat of sadness, of frustration. She knew Strike would back him up if it came down to it, as would the winikin . So she didn’t try to fight the fight she knew she wouldn’t win. She simply said, “Why?”

He flinched, looking like he would’ve preferred that she argue, but answered, “I need time.”

Whatever she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it. “How much time?” she asked, not sure what he expected to figure out in the coming days, when he hadn’t managed it over the past seven months.

“I don’t know.” He shifted, settling the Kevlar across his broad shoulders. “I’m working on it.”

Which didn’t tell her anything, really.

She stood there and looked at him, really looked at him for the first time after having spent the past several months—and particularly the past few weeks—trying not to let herself look. He was brawny as ever, with a set of muscles she suspected he’d developed during the prison stint he refused to talk about, then maintained in the years since with workouts that seemed fueled as much by anger as a desire for fitness. His face was different than before, though, especially his eyes, which held a new determination.

When she’d first met him she’d seen a slick, powerful businessman who’d shown up in a stretch SUV. Now she saw a warrior-mage who had saved her more than once, a man who was trying to reconcile the person he’d been with the one the future needed him to become. He didn’t like being told what to do, didn’t accept anything at face value, including the attraction that’d bound them together from the very beginning. But for the first time he seemed to be accepting that the Nightkeepers needed more of him.

He was trying; she had to give him that. So, despite herself, she nodded slowly. “Okay, you can come to Belize. I’m not promising anything, though.”

“Understood.” He nodded to her belt. “You locked and loaded?”

She took a deep breath to settle the sudden flutter in her stomach, then nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

“Then let’s get our backpacks and get rolling. Next stop, Belize.”

Using one of the photos Jade had pulled off the Web as a visual anchor, Strike teleported Nate and Alexis to a point just outside the ATM caves. The three of them were linked hand to hand, with her in the middle and the men, holding autopistols at the ready in their free hands. The weapons proved unnecessary, though. They were alone, thanks to Jox, who’d cleared the site by calling to book a tour, paying a premium to ensure that his group would be the only ones allowed in the caves that day, and then bailing on the reservation without demanding a refund.

Pulling away from the men, Alexis let her hands drop to her sides and tipped her head back. “Wow.”

There didn’t seem to be much else to say. The place was fricking gorgeous. They stood in a small clearing near where a slow-moving river widened to a stone-strewn pool that fed into the mouth of an arching cave. Sunlight dappled through the leafy canopy high overhead, and everywhere she looked there were jewel-green leaves and growing things. The abundant fertility was a shock, after they’d come from the mostly red-brown plant and animal life in New Mexico’s canyon country. Alexis had been to the Yucatán for the cardinal days and the eclipse ceremony, of course, but those had been furtive trips, in and gone during the night, under the cover of darkness.

Now she took a moment to fill her lungs with air that was moist and fecund rather than desert dry.

She smiled up at the chitters and cries of wild animals high above. She saw the flash of colorful birds and dark, long-armed shapes playing in the trees.

“Howler monkeys,” Nate said, coming up beside her. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to make friends.”

“No worries on that account.” She turned back to Strike. “Thanks for the lift. We’ll call you for a pickup.” She patted her knapsack, which held the satellite phone that would form their main link to Skywatch. Granted, a satellite glitch had forced Red-Boar to carry a wounded Anna out of the jungle the year before, and had meant that Strike had barely reached them in time . . . but without a true telepath among the Nightkeepers, they didn’t really have a better option than the sat phones.

Strike nodded. “Be careful. And good luck.” He raised a hand in farewell. Power hummed in the air, sparking royal red for a second and then coalescing inward, snapping to nothingness as he disappeared, leaving Alexis and Nate alone outside the ATM caves.

According to Jade, all the signs pointed to its having been one of the Nightkeepers’ most sacred caves. To the Maya and Nightkeepers, all caves had been sacred, as had mountains and rivers. Those three components together—a cave at high elevation, with a subterranean river running within—

characterized the entrance to Xibalba itself. Most of the Mayan pyramids were built on that idea, with the sloping sides ascending up to an open platform, often with a boxlike room at the top that mimicked the mouth of a cave and led to tunnels heading back down into the body of the pyramid and even beyond, down to underground tombs, waterways, and sacred sacrificial places. In that way, the dead kings entombed within the pyramids had metaphorically acted out the journey through the nine-

layered hell of Xibalba and out the other side, to join the gods in the sky.

Those pyramids were man-made, though. Places where the mountain-river-cave conjunction occurred naturally were considered even more special, and only the highest-ranking shaman-priests dared enter such caves, lest they anger the gods or Banol Kax . Even now, a thousand years after the main fall of the Classical Mayan Empire, when the ATM caves had ceased being a center of worship, Alexis could feel the importance of the site and the crinkle of magic on her skin. The power wasn’t the gold of the gods, the red of the Nightkeepers, or the purple-green of the makol and Banol Kax . Instead, it was a pale, colorless magic, a wellspring to be used for good or ill. It was a neutral, waiting sort of magic.

Hopefully, it was waiting for them.

“Ready?” she asked, and headed down the shallow slope to the pool before Nate could answer, trusting that he had her back on this, at least. “Please tell me Jade was right on the ‘not enough piranhas to worry about and you’ll see the poisonous water snakes and fanged reptiles coming’ thing.”