Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

Moments later Nate felt it too: the rattle of magic that felt like Nightkeeper power, but wasn’t. It geared up to a roar, displaced air exploded outward in a cloud of brown smoke, and Iago and a striking-looking woman appeared several feet away, zapping in with their feet planted on terra firma with no stumbling, no awkwardness.

Wearing hiking boots, jeans, and a white T-shirt, with a long black duster over the top, Iago looked like just another guy with a bit of cool on. But Nate saw disdain in his face, and thought how he’d promised the old woman in the doily cottage that he would make sure her killer was punished.

Iago’s eyes skimmed over the Nightkeepers, pausing briefly on Nate as though feeling the hatred, or maybe seeing it in his eyes. Then he moved on, his message clear: You don’t scare me.

No? Nate thought on a flare of anger. We’ll have to fix that.

The woman at his side locked onto Anna immediately, and her lips tipped up in a small, mean smile. That’d be Desiree, then. Nate wasn’t sure who she was to the Xibalbans, or why she was at the meeting, but one thing was for sure: Malice radiated off her in waves. Anna, in contrast, seemed detached, disinterested, standing there with her eyes unfocused and her hands jammed in her pockets.

Which didn’t totally make sense, given that she’d flown all the way to New Mex in order to go at it with her enemy on the Nightkeepers’ turf.

“Nochem,” Iago said to Strike, who stood slightly ahead of the others and had rolled up the right sleeve of his black T-shirt to reveal the hunab ku , the geometric mark of kingship that was located on his upper arm, where only kings and gods were marked.

“Call me Strike.”

“Then I’m Iago.” The mage looked past the king. As he did so, a faint rattle of background magic started up, an annoying buzz that made Nate’s jaw ache. “I assume these are your advisers?”

“Yes,” Strike said simply.

Nate quashed a knee-jerk protest. It didn’t matter what they called him; he was just there to counteract some of Alexis’s less rational ideas. That didn’t make him an adviser.

Iago snorted. “Fine, I get it. You’re not inviting me in for tea and cookies or whatever. You’re the one who asked for a meeting, so let’s meet. What do you want?”

Strike nodded. “Okay, here goes. Your order has gotten some seriously shitty press over the millennia, but I’m thinking that we may have a common goal at this point. Doesn’t do you any good to have the world end any more than it does us. So I thought we might be able to come to terms, maybe cooperate. You’ve got some of the demon prophecies; we’ve got some of them. What if we combined our forces?”

Iago smirked. “You’ve got one of them, and I’ve got the other six, you mean. I should thank you for the last three, by the way. Your archives must’ve contained info that mine didn’t, because I couldn’t find Cabrakan’s bowl, the Volatile’s knife, or the Ixchel statuette for love or money until your archivist started Googling them and my filters caught the keywords.” He grinned and flexed his fingers. “Gotta love the Internet.”

Which unfortunately meant he’d already found Kulkulkan’s altar stone, Nate realized, his gut knotting on anger and disappointment, made worse by the annoying subsonic buzz of magic. Gods damn it. But some of the other information was new, namely that the knife they’d almost gotten in New Orleans was connected to the Volatile. Which meant it was vital that they get the thing back.

“We have a common goal,” Strike persisted. “Both groups want to stop the apocalypse.”

Desiree shifted her attention from Anna to Strike and sneered. “You’re trying to stop the inevitable.”

“Perhaps,” Anna said, and Nate got the distinct impression that she wasn’t just talking about the end-time. “But what’s the alternative? You think you’re going to rule in hell? Think again. The Banol Kax don’t deal that way.”

“And how do you know that for certain? From your precious gods? Not exactly an unbiased source.”

Desiree bared her teeth. “Speaking of sources, how is Lucius getting along? Tell me, has he—”

“Enough.” Iago’s voice was quiet, but it silenced her immediately. Focusing on Strike, he said, “I have ten times your numbers, Nightkeeper, and I have the other six prophecies. Moreover, I’m not bound by the traditions that you are. We have no winikin , no writs. We’ve adapted. We’ve grown. We need nothing from you.”

“Then why even bother to come?” Strike asked, his frustration obvious. “I fail to see—” Automatic weaponry chattered behind them, coming from inside the compound.

“Son of a bitch!” Nate snapped, making the connection between the buzzing sound and the sense of magic. “He’s overriding the wards. He’s got someone inside the compound! Bastard! ”

Without stopping to think, Nate lunged at Iago. With surprise on his side, he nailed the mage waist-

high with his shoulder, sending them both to the ground. He wound up astride Iago, and got in three good punches before the chirr of dark ’port magic surrounded him.

Roaring, Nate grabbed on to the lapels of Iago’s jacket and hung on, intending to go with him. He didn’t have a plan, didn’t have a weapon, knew only that he owed it to the old lady, to his king and his people. Seconds later he was flying through the air, slapped aside by an unseen giant’s fist to land hard, face-first in the dust.

Iago and Desiree had vanished.

“Come on!” Alexis was dragging him up and along before he could get a breath. Strike and the others were gone, undoubtedly having ’ported into the compound the second the gunfire started.

It’d stopped, leaving ominous silence behind.

Nate and Alexis ran for the mansion together, dragging each other along. When they reached the main room he heard a babble of familiar voices all talking over one another, and followed the sound.

He found the winikin and Nightkeepers gathered in the hallway outside the archive, with some inside the first room. He pushed through, with Alexis right behind him, and stopped dead when he got a clear view. “Oh, shit .”

The archive was a disaster area.

It looked like somebody had unloaded two or three MAC clips into the bookcases holding centuries’ worth of rare texts. Lucius was folded up in one corner, looking shell-shocked but alive, and clutching an autopistol. Jade was standing in the middle of the room with tears tracking down her face, her mouth open in an “O” of horror, a bullet-riddled book clutched against her breasts. The locked door leading to the second room hung from one hinge, and blast marks marred the doorframe.

Nate didn’t even need to ask. He already knew.

“Ixchel,” Alexis whispered, taking two steps toward the battered door and stopping. She raised her hand to her mouth, then let it fall away. She turned to Nate, reached out for his hand, and he felt her sorrow in the link of palm to palm. “They took the statuette.”

“Yeah.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, figuring their problems had been momentarily back-burnered by the disaster. Glancing over at Strike, who looked royally pissed, he asked, “Was anyone hurt?”

The king shook his head. “No, thank the gods. And we’ve still got all the translations from the statuette, right?” He directed the question at Jade.

It was Lucius who answered, “Yeah. And digital pictures from every angle, under both natural light and starlight, which means we still have a chance of figuring out how to block the first prophecy.”

“It’s not just the first one we have to worry about,” Anna said, pushing through the crowd, looking way more connected and focused than she had during the meeting.