Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

With no suspects to chase, the cop inside her gave way to the woman. Grief slashed through confusion, battering her to her knees. ‘‘No!’’

She’d lost first Matty, then Nick. Now Vince. And in a way, she’d lost her dream warrior too, because there was no way she could knowingly lust after a guy who ran with killers, with terrorists who used explosives to . . . what? Make a statement? Kill a man? And what was with the green light and the noises? Special effects, or something more?

For the first time, Leah seriously considered that she might be losing her mind.

Tears welled up and sobs tore at her chest. Giving in, she bowed her head and wept for the dead, and for a reality that seemed to be falling to pieces around her.

Strike took two steps toward her before he forced himself to stop. Or, more accurately, before Red-Boar’s grip on his arm made stopping the only option.

He couldn’t pull away, because Patience needed a chain of contact in order to keep up their invisibility. But damn, he wanted to go to Leah, wanted to explain that he’d just made her safe. The makol Red-Boar had shot—and who’d triggered some sort of timed detonation from the altar—wasn’t Zipacna and had been wearing contacts that concealed his green-hued eyes, but magic knew magic. The bastard had lured her to the chamber somehow. But why? Did his master want to complete the blood sacrifice he’d begun at the equinox?

If it weren’t for the protection spell, he wouldn’t have known to teleport directly to Leah, and might not have gotten there in time. The very thought was beyond chilling.

‘‘We should bring her back with us,’’ he said quietly, low enough that only Patience and Red-Boar could hear, as the mob of partygoers filled the hallway, everyone talking at once.

‘‘Out of the question,’’ Red-Boar hissed. ‘‘Get it through your damn head that she’s not for you.’’

Strike gritted his teeth. ‘‘She’s in danger.’’

‘‘And she’ll be safer with you?’’ The older Nightkeeper let the question hang for a beat, then said, ‘‘I didn’t think so. You said it yourself. You’re protecting her by staying the hell away.’’

Was he? Strike wasn’t even sure of that anymore. His attempt to protect her by giving her space had wound up with her going one-on-one with a makol . He was going to have to do better. He just didn’t know how yet, and wasn’t about to figure it out with Red-Boar standing right next to him. All three of them might be invisible, but he could still feel the weight of the older man’s glare.

‘‘Hey, lady, are you okay?’’ a stranger crouched down beside Leah as random people milled around, some rubbernecking the debris from the blast, others talking excitedly. ‘‘Are you hurt?’’ another voice asked, and then it all degenerated into a babble of questions without answers.

‘‘Come on.’’ Red-Boar tugged at Strike. ‘‘Let’s go.’’ Strike waited a moment longer, until he heard sirens nearby, and the clipped orders of rescue personnel. Then, when he knew Leah was as safe as she could be right now, surrounded by other cops, he closed his eyes, found the travel thread, and took his people home.

CHAPTER TEN

The next few days were a blur of training sessions and preparations for the binding ceremony, which should’ve left Strike with zero time to worry about Leah. But somehow he managed to do exactly that.

She’d treated the makol , Vince, like a friend. He’d presumably been a second-generation critter, one created by the ajaw-makol after the solstice. There hadn’t been any sense of a second source of evil in the Survivor 2012 compound, meaning that Carter’s info had been wrong and Zipacna was somewhere else.

But where?

Shit, he didn’t know, and he didn’t know what else to have Carter be on the lookout for. He needed an itza’at , that was what he needed. A good seer—hell, even a half-assed one—could track the ajaw-makol by its magic.

If he was seriously lucky, either Alexis or Jade would get the seer’s mark during the talent ceremony, and they’d have a prayer of getting some answers.

If not, well, it was time for coloring outside the lines, which was exactly what had him leaving the mansion on the evening before the aphelion, braced for a fight.

When he reached Red-Boar’s cottage, he knocked. ‘‘It’s me.’’

After a long moment, the door swung open to reveal Rabbit in full-on sulk mode, wearing cutoffs that showed his thin calves to no great effect, and a dark blue hoodie over his T-shirt. ‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘I need to talk to your father. Could you give us fifteen minutes alone?’’

Rabbit shrugged. ‘‘Whatever.’’

He slouched out and Strike stepped through, straight into the kitchen of the four-room bungalow. Red-Boar was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing the brown robes of a penitent.

Strike hadn’t seen him in the robes—which signified a magi atoning for great sin—in a long time. Initially, Jox had asked him to quit wearing the robes around the garden center because they made the customers nervous. After a while, Red-Boar had gotten out of the habit, and it’d been a nice change to see him in normal clothes day in and day out.

Which left Strike wondering what else in the older Nightkeeper’s psyche had backslid.

‘‘We need to talk,’’ Strike said, crossing the kitchen to rummage in the fridge. He pulled out a Coke for himself, tossed Red-Boar a bottle of water without asking, and took the chair opposite him, cracking the soda open as he did so. He drained half of it, welcoming the kick of sugar and caffeine, before he said, ‘‘We need Rabbit to make thirteen.’’

‘‘Bad idea,’’ Red-Boar said, his voice nearly inflectionless.

‘‘The way I see it, we’re better off having him on the team than not, especially after the stunt he pulled at the garden center,’’ Strike countered. ‘‘And it’s not fair to keep him out of the classes.’’

Red-Boar stared into the bottled water. ‘‘I won’t accept him into the bloodline. I can’t.’’

It was an old argument Strike and Jox had never won. But they had their theories why.

‘‘Does it have something to do with his mother?’’ Strike asked. Red-Boar had never spoken of her, had never acknowledged her existence, though the proof stood in the form of their son.

‘‘It has everything to do with his mother,’’ the older man said suddenly, his voice descending to a hiss.

‘‘Who was she?’’

‘‘Better to ask where I met her. And the answer to that would be in the highlands.’’

Strike’s breath whistled between his teeth. ‘‘Mexico?’’

‘‘Guatemala.’’

‘‘Shit.’’

‘‘Precisely.’’

Before the conquistadors drove the Nightkeepers north to Hopi territory, the magic users had coexisted with the Maya for centuries. The two cultures had lived in parallel, and maybe because of that, or because of their own fascination with the stars, the Maya had developed a magic system of their own. Some said rogue Nightkeepers had shared their magic, others that the Maya had been in contact with the nahwal , ghosts of the Nightkeepers’ ancestors, or even with the Banol Kax themselves. Whatever the source of their power, the Order of Xibalba, an offshoot cult of Mayan shaman-priests, had developed spells unlike anything the Nightkeepers had ever seen. Something they came to fear.

Members of the order had brought the Banol Kax to earth in A.D. 869. The demons had destroyed the city of Tikal before the Nightkeepers had managed to drive them back behind the barrier. In the aftermath, the cultural center of the Maya shifted to Chichén Itzá, and the Order of Xibalba had been banned.