Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

“Here’s the deal,” Anna said, “and hold the questions until the end, at which point you’re only allowed three. I know you too well—if I let you quiz me, we’ll be here until the solstice.” She paused until he nodded, then continued, “As you’ve figured, Skywatch is the Nightkeepers’ training compound. What you probably haven’t figured, and the reason that I’ve argued against the 2012 doomsday for so long, is that up until last summer I believed that the apocalypse had been forestalled.

Twenty-five years ago my father led the Nightkeepers against the interplanar intersection, based on a vision from the god Kauil saying he could prevent the end-time. Instead, the demon Banol Kax came through the intersection and slaughtered the warriors, then sent their creatures here to Skywatch to kill the children. All but a few of the youngest Nightkeepers died.”

Her voice shook a little and her eyes had gone a very deep blue, as though she were seeing something he couldn’t. Lucius wanted to help, to comfort her, but he didn’t dare interrupt, so he waited.

After a second she continued, “The power backlash sealed the barrier. We checked the intersection every cardinal day for years after, but it remained closed, and the magic stayed inactive. We truly thought the end-time had been averted.”

“We?” he blurted, unable to help himself.

She fixed him with a look. “That’s your first question.” But she answered, “Me, Strike, our winikin Jox, and the sole adult survivor of the Solstice Massacre, a mage named Red-Boar.” Her eyes went sad. “You met him last fall, sort of, but won’t be able to remember it. He is—he was—a mind-

bender.”

Which brought up so many questions Lucius didn’t know where to start, so he gestured for her to continue. “Go on.”

“Well, the short of it is that there was one remaining prophecy dealing with the end-time, stating that certain things would happen in the final five years before 2012. Sure enough, last year a makol —a human disciple of the underworld—used some major blood sacrifices to reopen the barrier at the summer solstice. All of a sudden the magic was working again, and the end-time countdown was back on. Strike was forced to recall the surviving Nightkeepers, who had been raised in secret by their winikin . Since then, we’ve been going through crash courses in magic and fighting skills in an effort to whip together a fighting force capable of defending the intersection at each equinox and solstice, and capable of either somehow averting the end-time, or at the very least holding the Banol Kax in Xibalba when the calendar ends in December 2012, and the barrier falls.” She paused. “There are thirteen Nightkeepers left on earth, counting a pair of three-year-old toddlers and a powerful freak show of questionable allegiance named Snake Mendez, who still has another six months before he’s eligible for parole.”

She fell silent, but it was a long moment before Lucius said, “Okay. My brain’s officially in ‘tilt’ mode.”

She sent him a warm look that recalled better days. “Join the club. You want to ask your last two questions now?”

“Sure. What’s a winikin ?”

“That’s the most important thing you can think to ask?” she said slowly.

He grinned. “No. But it’s been bugging me for almost a week.”

After a serious eye roll, she said, “They’re the blood-bound protectors of the Nightkeepers, descended from the loyal slaves who sneaked fifty or so Nightkeeper children out of Egypt when Akhenaton started killing poly-theists. The single surviving adult Nightkeeper, who came to be called the First Father, led the slaves and children to safety, eventually ending up in Olmec territory.

Knowing that history repeats, he put a spell on the winikin , binding them to the bloodlines they helped save and entrusting them with making sure the culture and the magic survived until 2012. In that way they became our partners rather than our slaves; they’re bound to protect us and guide us, though they have no magic of their own.”

Which totally dovetailed with the Nightkeeper myths Lucius had scraped together for the side project that’d slopped over into his thesis and then bitten him in the ass. It didn’t explain why the winikin were never once mentioned in the mythology he’d uncovered, but that so wasn’t the last question he needed to ask.

He took a deep breath. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Now, that’s the right question,” she said approvingly. “The simple answer is because you’re one of the best researchers I know, and our current archivist is actually a repurposed child psychologist. It’s another monumental understatement to say she’s floundering.”

“If that’s the simple answer, then there’s a more complicated one,” he said, careful not to make it be a question.

“That would be that I’m telling you a little about of our history and current situation so you’ll understand what’s at stake.”

He grimaced. “A dozen or so Nightkeepers against the fall of the barrier protecting the earth from the forces of Xibalba? I’d say the stakes are pretty high.” If, by pretty high, she meant insurmountable.

“Exactly,” she said, as if he’d uttered the last part aloud.

“Which doesn’t explain what you’re going to do with me. The term ‘busting out’ implies liberation, but I don’t see how freeing me helps, especially given what already happened with Desiree.” He paused, then said, “For what it’s worth, I’m really, really sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. It was like . . . I don’t know. Like I was somebody else for a while. Somebody I don’t like very much.”

“We go on from here,” she said, which wasn’t the same as accepting his apology. “That includes my asking you a favor.” She paused. “I want you to stay here and help us.”

The offer took a moment to register. “Me? Help the Nightkeepers?” Excitement was a quick kick, tempered by the complications she’d mentioned. “Would I have to stay locked up?”

“Not in this room.” Again with the nonanswer. “You’d have free run of the compound and access to the Nightkeepers, the winikin , and the archive, which contains a number of codices, artifacts, and original sources, along with commentaries from generations of Nightkeeper scholars, Spanish missionaries . . . pretty much everything ever written about the Nightkeepers and the end-time, along with some primary Mayan sources you won’t find anywhere else.”

His researcher’s soul sang. They have an archive! Excitement zipped through him, lighting his senses. “What’s the catch?” he asked, though there was no question that he was going to agree to whatever it was. He was being offered every Mayanist’s dream—access to a previously unknown stockpile of information. More, he was being offered a part—however small—in the end-time war.

“I’m going to need an oath of fealty,” she said.

“No problem. Where do I sign?”

“That’s not exactly how it works.” She drew the obsidian knife from her belt and balanced it on her palm. “It’s more along the lines of a spell that binds us together, making you my responsibility. You would become my k’alaj .”

His brain kicked out the translation, and he said slowly, “I’d be bound to you? Like a slave?”

“Technically, yes. My bond-slave.” Her eyes held his. “In practice, you’d be exactly who and what you are, except that you’d be restricted to the confines of this training compound, unless I’m with you or I give you a charmed eccentric granting passage through the wards surrounding the canyon.”