Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

Leah looked at him through eyes drenched with tears, and held out the knife. ‘‘Do it. You have no choice.’’

Either she died, or they all did.

Strike caught her to him, holding her hard, trying to give her all his energy, all his power, trying to beat back the passing time as he finally understood the impossible choice his father had died trying to avoid. He pressed his cheek to hers. ‘‘I love you. I fell in love with you when I wasn’t looking, when I was doing my damnedest to do anything but fall, just like I became king when I was trying to be anything but.’’

She touched his arm where he wore the mark of the gods, of the jaguar kings. ‘‘You’ll be a good king.’’

‘‘And?’’

Her smile went crooked. ‘‘And I love you, too. I don’t care if what I’m feeling is because of destiny and the gods, or that it’s all tangled up with the prophecies and the end of the world. I love you for you. Not because you’re king or Nightkeeper, but because you’re mine.’’

They met halfway in a searing kiss that tasted of need and desperation, and the power of the equinox. Strike felt light and dark align, felt the powers within them start to meld. He felt the dark force of the true demon Zipacna poised behind the barrier, ready to spring free at the moment of alignment, when the barrier would thin enough for the creature to burst through. He felt the god Kulkulkan straining at the bonds of the skyroad, longing to be free, longing to fight. The god’s darkness battered him, latching on to his soul and dragging him down, away from gray-green neutrality and toward the underworld, which glowed the lumious green of a makol ’s eyes.

No! he shouted in his soul. He fought the undertow, the temptation of power and madness, focusing on the feel of the woman in his arms. He poured himself into the kiss, willing love to be the thing that mattered most, the sacrifice necessary to bring the god to earth through the two of them, joined as a single keeper.

I love you, he thought, or maybe she thought it in his head somehow; it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were there, together. Forever.

At that thought, that single word, he felt a flare of power, a surge of golden light. Then the halves became whole, light blending with darkness, the two together making something so much stronger than either alone.

Deep within him something tore, a curtain ripping in half and letting through a ray of golden illumination. Instead of fighting it, he welcomed it, welcomed the light and the power and the sense of Leah that it brought. Yes , he said inside his own skull. Welcome, my love .

The kiss turned blatantly carnal, a celebration of both sex and love, and a promise made between them. He felt a cool burn on his arm, and knew from her jolt that Leah felt it, too.

There was no time to look at the new marks, though. They had to bring the god through the barrier. He took her hand and looked into her eyes, and from somewhere deep inside his soul he found the spell they needed. ‘‘Och ta kaan.’’ Become the sky.

Power detonated inside him, around him, but it was too late. Far overhead the stars aligned and the equinox came to bear without the greatest sacrifice having been made.

The barrier fell, and a demon came to earth.

Thunder blasted in the sacred chamber, driving Strike to his knees as he held Leah tight. Mist roiled within the room, thickening to dire clouds that flickered with unholy luminescence, and the stone surface beneath him began to shudder like a living thing. A roar split the air, driving his heart into his throat. On its heels, a terrible creature emerged from the mist. Its crocodilian head was the size of the room itself, all wickedly sharp teeth and dead dark eyes. Zipacna.

The demon traveled through the intersection as an insubstantial spirit, like its boluntiku brethren, filling the chamber and overlapping the stone walls on either side as it passed, first a head and stubby neck, then short, powerful legs with razor-tipped claws the length of Strike’s forearm. It moved faster and faster as it came onto the plane of mankind and accelerated toward the surface, giving Strike glimpses of leathery wings and an armored belly, then powerful hind legs and a long, scaly tail with a trio of wickedly pointed barbs at the end.

Then it was gone.

‘‘Oh, father of gods,’’ Strike said, the words coming from deep down in his chest as he realized that he’d failed before he even began. He’d run from the thirteenth prophecy, hadn’t made the sacrifice required, and Lord Zipacna had made it through the barrier.

The end-time countdown had begun. There was a demon on earth. He’d failed his bloodline and his people, failed the gods.

‘‘Not yet we haven’t,’’ Leah said, reading his thoughts through their bloodied hands. Her voice sounded strange, as though it carried the echo of trumpets. Then she turned to him, and his heart shuddered in his chest.

Her eyes were the molten gold of a Godkeeper.

‘‘Leah,’’ he said, grabbing her by the arms. ‘‘Gods, Leah!’’

‘‘It’s okay.’’ She took his hands, gripped them hard. ‘‘Boost me.’’

Instead of sharing the blood link, he cupped her face in his hands and touched his lips to hers. ‘‘I love you.’’ Then he sank deeper into the kiss, dropped the barriers that had once held their souls apart, and gave her everything that he had to give.

And together, they called the feathered serpent god to earth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Rabbit ran for his life, leading the boluntiku away from the others, then doubling back through the maze of tunnels, which were lit with bloodred light that came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

He was doing his damnedest to keep the thing away from the sacred chamber, trying to give his old man and Strike a chance to save the world, but he was losing steam. His breath burned in his lungs, and his legs were on fire as he bore down and widened the gap, running with muscle and heart and a touch of magic, a litany of, Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit, sounding in his brain.

The boluntiku screamed, sounding like a thousand fingernails scratching down a mountain-size blackboard.

‘‘Fuck!’’ Rabbit accelerated away from the scream, careened around a corner, and nearly slammed into Alexis.

‘‘Go!’’ She shoved him toward a cross-tunnel. ‘‘Shield yourself!’’ When the boluntiku appeared around the corner, she waved her arms. ‘‘Hey, over here!’’

Realizing she was trying to tag-team the lava creature— and oh, holy hell, hoping it worked—Rabbit stumbled into the cross-tunnel and cast as much of a shield spell as he could muster in the magic-damping confines of the tunnel system.

Behind him, the boluntiku screamed, spurring him on, but Rabbit’s foot snagged on something and he went sprawling on top of one of the other Nightkeepers, who was lying in the middle of the tunnel. Shit! Flipping onto his back, he checked behind him, but the heat was dimming as the boluntiku moved off, following Alexis.

Rabbit hissed and turned to see whom he’d stumbled over. ‘‘For fuck’s sake, what are you—’’

He broke off and screamed. It was his old man.

Stone dead.

Throat sliced open.

Rabbit’s breath whistled out and he didn’t suck another in. Gods, he thought. Gods-gods-gods. Oh, gods. No, gods, please, no .

‘‘Rabbit!’’ Alexis’s shriek was scant warning as the air crackled with sudden heat and the boluntiku morphed up through the floor just beyond his father’s body.

It glowed red-orange, painting Red-Boar’s slack features in sharp relief and making the jagged cut across his throat gape dark and obscene. The lava-creature hissed and reared back, extending a scaled arm and flaring its six-clawed hand for a swipe.