Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

An eccentric was a small ritual item, usually carved from stone in the shape of a god or animal.

Stomach churning, Lucius tried to imagine himself wearing one around his neck, like a cosmic hall pass, or a collar with a rabies tag. “A slave,” he repeated, hating the idea, the word. But there was more; he could see it in her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She grimaced. “In binding myself to you, I’ll be granting you my protection, but also making myself responsible for your behavior. The bond will give me a limited sense of where you are and what you’re doing, and some degree of control over you. However, if you do anything to jeopardize or harm the Nightkeepers, it’s my duty to find and execute you, and upon my return I will also be punished as suits your crime. Which is why, as you might guess, this spell has been enacted only a handful of times throughout the Nightkeepers’ history, and then only with humans the bond-master or -mistress believe they can trust with their lives.” Her eyes showed worry fear.

Lucius couldn’t think of a response, couldn’t think of much except, “Holy shit.” He was going to be a slave. He’d be Anna’s slave, and in service to the Nightkeepers, but still. A slave. He shook his head.

“What do you mean, you’d have some control over me? Like a mind-meld or something?”

“Nothing that elaborate. I’d be able to send negative reinforcement through the bond.”

He thought about it for a second, not liking any of it, but unfortunately able to see the logic from the Nightkeeper side of life. “Would you promise not to use the bond on me?”

“I can’t do that; I’m sorry.” She paused, exhaling. “Look, this is the only way I could convince Strike to let you help.” And by that he knew she meant “let you live.” “He agrees that we need your research skills, but because of who and what you are, we can’t risk letting you go free.” She reached out and took his right hand and turned it palm up, then placed her own beside it to show that she had a scar to match his own. “You’ve already been marked by the Banol Kax . I’ll tell you the whole story later, after the bond is complete. Suffice it to say that if you leave Skywatch without Nightkeeper protection, you’ll be subject to influence by the Banol Kax . That can’t be allowed to happen.”

Lucius wanted to be able to laugh that off, but he couldn’t. It aligned too well with the feeling of a dark cloud lifting off him over the past few days. On some level he didn’t need to know anything more than that. “Shit.”

“Yeah. That about sums it up.”

He stared at his hands, not daring to look at her when he asked, “Why are you willing to risk yourself like this? If I’m connected to the demons somehow, what’s to say I won’t turn on you again, like I did by dealing with Desiree?”

“If you stay inside Skywatch, you’ll be the Lucius I know and love.”

The statement brought his head up as he thought, just for a second, that maybe the occasional flash of interest he’d seen in her eyes was for real.

But she shook her head. “Not that way. As a friend only. I owe you, though, in more ways than I can count. I traded my freedom from the Nightkeepers for your life last fall because it was my fault you crossed paths with the Banol Kax . I’m offering to bind myself to you now because I think you can help us, and because of our friendship. You let me lean on you when things got bad with Dick, let me wallow when I needed to, and kicked my butt out of the funk when it got to be too much.”

He looked away. “I didn’t tell you about Desiree.”

“No, you didn’t. But I can see how that’d be a tough judgment call . . . and I’m not sure much would’ve happened differently if I’d known she was Dick’s mistress. It’s a sucky situation, but it had nothing to do with you . . . and not much to do with Dick, either, if she is what we think she is.

Besides, I’m dealing with it as best I can. Part of that involves your staying here and helping Jade when I head back home.”

Lucius closed his eyes and tested out the idea of never going back to the university, and was surprised to find it didn’t hurt that much. He had lots of friends but few close ones, and he could call home from Skywatch just as easily as from Austin. It wasn’t as simple as that, of course, but the lure of the Nightkeepers overshadowed the other issues. He’d spent a big chunk of his life defending their existence. How could he not help them when asked?

He took a long, deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

She hesitated. “In the interest of full disclosure—”

“Will any of it change what has to happen?” he interrupted.

“No.”

“Then tell me later.” He nodded to the knife, his gut tightening in anticipation of pain, his brain blocking out the concept of servitude. “Do it.” But when she lifted the obsidian blade, he said, “Wait.

What about Sasha?”

She gave him a long look, but said, “We’ve reopened the search already. There’s a chance her father was one of us, probably a better chance that he was Xibalban. Either way, we need to know where she is. Strike has his PI, Carter, looking for her, and also for the Xibalbans, on the theory that they probably know where she is.”

“You won’t give up on her this time?” Lucius pressed as something tightened in his chest, making him feel that finding Sasha was somehow more important than the question of his own servitude.

“You promise?”

“I promise.” Without another word she slashed her own palm, then his. Pain slapped at him, wringing a hiss, but he didn’t pull away, couldn’t move. His body was locked in place, frozen by the sight of the blood that welled up and spilled over.

Gripping his bloodied hand in hers, she closed her eyes and rapped out a string of words he couldn’t parse, coming so quickly, when his brain was more used to sounding out the syllables from glyph strings.

Something stirred beyond his being, a sense that there were things going on at a level he couldn’t perceive. A sudden gust of wind slapped through the room, though the windows were closed. The disembodied gust blew his hair in his eyes and whipped around the two of them, forming a sharp funnel cloud with them in the center. Above the wind roar, a buzzing noise sang a high, discordant note.

Then Anna said a final word, and the world shifted sideways, tilting and swerving around him. He slid off the sofa, landing hard on his knees while Anna hung on to his hand. The note racheted up to a scream, and pain lanced through him, centered not on his bleeding palm but on his forearm. He cried out and bowed his head as something snapped into place around him, an invisible force that vised his body, then inside to grip his heart, which went still. The wind quit abruptly, leaving only silence inside his skull.

He couldn’t even hear his heartbeat.

Panic gripped him, but he couldn’t struggle, couldn’t scream. He could only wait in the silence.

Finally he heard it. Lub. Then lub-dub . Another, lub-dub . The beats stuttered and then sped, finally dropping into normal sinus rhythm. The moment they did, the force field disappeared, leaving him to sag back against the sofa.

He sucked in a shuddering breath. “Jesus Christ.”

“Wrong pantheon,” she said, voice wry. Shifting her grip, she lifted his arm and turned his hand palm up. He saw blood but no cut, only the scar he’d gotten last fall, ostensibly in a drunken kitchen accident that he now realized had been far more than that.

Awe gathered in Lucius’s chest at the sight of the healed wound. “Magic,” he breathed.

“Yep.” She pushed his shirtsleeve up across his forearm, revealing something else, something that made his heart stutter in his chest when she said, “Welcome to the family.”