Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

But shock slowed the mimic’s reactions. She charged him, slammed her foot into the side of his knee, and sent him flying. Then she turned back for Zipacna, intending to finish him, finish them both—only to see him puff out in a cloud of purple-black.

The mimic roared and charged her, and she turned and fled. Bolting through the door into the sand-floored tunnel leading to the sunken river, she ran in search of Zipacna. She had less than forty minutes to make sure neither of them lived past the equinox.

Strike peered through a leafy rain forest curtain, his body humming with the need to move, and move fast. ‘‘Come on, come on,’’ he chanted under his breath.

‘‘What are you waiting for?’’ Behind him, Red-Boar and Anna crouched in silence. The west-side team of Nate, Alexis, Michael, and Jade were waiting nearer the tunnel entrance, preparing to attack.

Then a single shot rang out from the bushes on the east side of the tunnel mouth. Another. The makol started to shuffle and move, shifting to the side of the cave overhang.

Strike tensed. ‘‘Get ready.’’

Suddenly, Sven leaped out of the vegetation, stood at the edge of the clearing, and unloaded most of a MAC clip into the tunnel mouth. The makol scattered, then spun and returned fire as Sven bolted for cover. Mindless with the killing rage, and only as smart as the degree to which their human hosts had accepted the evil, the makol followed.

‘‘Go!’’ Strike lunged to his feet and pounded the short distance to the tunnel mouth, with Anna and Red-Boar right behind him.

A makol at the back of the pack turned and shouted in alarm, only to be cut down in a hail of jade-tips as Nate burst from the undergrowth nearby, with Alexis and Michael right behind him, Jade bringing up the rear.

‘‘Go!’’ Nate shouted. ‘‘We’ve got this.’’

Strike didn’t argue; he bolted for the tunnel, gaining the mouth and disappearing down the stone throat, leaving the sounds of battle behind. But as he pounded down the tunnel with Anna and Red-Boar on his heels, he knew they were cutting it way too close.

The equinox hummed in his bones, stronger than the song of the summer solstice had been, stronger than he’d expected, but still he couldn’t pinpoint Leah. He kept trying to throw her a travel thread, kept getting bounced by whatever sort of shielding was at work within the tunnels.

They reached the underground river after what felt like an eternity, turned, and booked it toward the chamber. As they passed an intersecting tunnel, Strike caught a hint of motion, a flash of luminous green, and flung himself to the side with a shout of, ‘‘Makol!’’

Anna hit the deck as the creature lunged. Red-Boar roared a battle cry, grabbed the thing by the throat, and brought his pistol to its forehead. Then he froze.

It was Leah.

‘‘No!’’ Strike shouted, hiis voice cracking on the word. ‘‘Don’t!’’

Red-Boar looked at him. Hesitated.

And Leah drove a black-handled knife into Red-Boar’s gut, yanked it out, and slashed his throat on the backhand. Blood spurted, geysering in an obscene arc as the Nightkeeper’s knees buckled.

Anna screamed and reached for him, cradling him in her arms as he fell.

Leah—or the thing that had been Leah—turned on Strike. Her eyes glowed scary strange, and her mouth was distorted in a rictus of bloodlust. But when he looked at her he felt nothing but revulsion. There was no connection. No love.

‘‘Gods help us,’’ Strike said as he raised his MAC.

And fired point-blank.

Anna screamed in horror. Leah’s head exploded and she went down in a heap. Ribs heaving, heart hammering inside his chest, Strike followed her down, unsheathing his knife. Working fast, telling himself not to look at her face, he cut her heart out, hacked off her head, and recited the banishment spell, sending the makol back to hell where it belonged.

When it was gone, Leah’s body went limp.

Strike stood, horror taking root when the corpse remained exactly as it was. ‘‘Please, gods,’’ he whispered. ‘‘Not like this. Please, not like this.’’ He’d been so sure it wasn’t her, so sure he was making the right call.

Then, finally, the body shimmered. Shifted. And changed into that of a skinny man wearing a fungus-colored robe and a tattoo of a winged crocodile. Then purple-green light flashed, and the thing was gone.

Strike’s bones went to water and he sagged in relief. ‘‘Thank you, Jesus. Gods. Whatever.’’ He exhaled, tried to get his breathing under control. ‘‘Shit. Oh, boy. Oh, shit. A mimic. It was a mimic.’’

‘‘How did you know?’’ Anna asked, her voice shaky.

‘‘I just knew. I had faith. I knew it wasn’t her.’’ Except for a few seconds when he’d thought he had it wrong, thought he’d bought into the thirteenth prophecy without even knowing it.

But the attack had not been without a sacrifice, he knew. He turned to see Anna crouched on the ground with Red-Boar sprawled across her lap, both of them covered in the blood that still pumped from the older man’s torn throat in slowing spurts driven by a faltering heart.

Sorrow cut through Strike, and he dropped to his knees beside the dying man. ‘‘Gods, no.’’

Red-Boar’s eyes flickered open and locked on even as the life faded. ‘‘Happy now, boy?’’

‘‘Step off, old man.’’ But Strike choked on the words. He touched Red-Boar’s forehead, leaking him power, buffering the pain. ‘‘Safe journey,’’ he whispered. ‘‘Say hello to the king for me.’’

But Red-Boar shook his head ever so slightly. ‘‘You’re . . . king now.’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ Strike said. ‘‘I am.’’

As his life drained, Red-Boar murmured, ‘‘Forgive.’’ Then his breath faded and stopped, and his body went limp in Anna’s arms as she bent over him and wept, the soft sound lost beneath the burble of the underground river that flowed nearby.

Shit, Strike thought. Just shit.

The loss hurt keenly on too many levels to count, but they couldn’t stop to mourn. They’d already wasted too much time. The equinox was close now, very close.

‘‘Anna.’’ He touched her arm. ‘‘We’ve got to go.’’ She nodded miserably, shifted Red-Boar’s body to the side, and climbed to her feet, wiping her bloodstained hands on her blood-soaked pants. ‘‘We’ll come back for him. After.’’

‘‘Of course. He’s one of us.’’ Whatever he’d done, or hadn’t done, Red-Boar had been his own version of loyal. All else was washed clean by the sacrifice.

They tugged the corpse into an offshoot tunnel and made a stab at obscuring the tracks and bloodstains. And then they ran for their lives.

Crouching in the underbrush, fighting green fire with red, Rabbit felt as if he were burning up from the inside.

His mouth was parchment dry, and his eyelids rasped across his corneas without the benefit of moisture. His skin crinkled as he labored by rote: lifting his arms, holding his hands a few inches apart, concentrating until flame flared to life between them, and then pivoting and throwing to block the incoming green flame, so the two streams met in a brilliant blast of white.

His right shoulder hurt like hell. He was thirsty, hungry, and exhausted beyond all rationality, and his head felt like it was about to split open and spill his brains onto the rain forest floor. And he couldn’t have been happier.

With Patience and Brandt fighting together on his right and Sven on his left as they worked with the other team, squeezing the makol forces and picking off the bastards one by one, he was part of something. He belonged. Even better, he was good at something.