Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

He landed first and then Leah hit, driving the breath from both of them. They just lay there for a few heartbeats, staring at each other. Then reality returned— unreality returned?—and she scrambled off him, her heart jackrabbiting and her breath whistling in her lungs as she tried to suck in enough oxygen to get her brain back online.

‘‘Holy shit,’’ she whispered, looking around the glassed-in room to the night beyond, where high rock walls and a faint glow of dusk suggested she’d skipped a couple of time zones in the blink of an eye. Or traveled through time. Or both.

She felt Blue Eyes move up behind her, and knew it was him without turning to look because of the fine warmth that vibrated across her skin. ‘‘Easy, Blondie,’’ he murmured next to her ear. ‘‘Don’t freak-out on me.’’

‘‘Cops don’t freak.’’ But she was damn close to it as she looked at the blue robes and realized not one of them had moved. Black Robe hadn’t twitched either. In fact, none of them had responded to her and Blue Eyes’s arrival except the older guy near the door, who was doing a good impression of a guppy.

The expression quickly morphed to that of a pissed-off guppy when the guy closed his mouth, glared at her rescuer, and snapped, ‘‘We discussed this.’’

Blue Eyes set his jaw and got big. ‘‘The choice is made, winikin . Deal with it.’’

‘‘Wait a minute!’’ Leah turned on him, heart pounding, feeling like she’d stepped out of her own life and into someone else’s. ‘‘What discussion? What choice?’’

Before Blue Eyes could respond—if he was even intending to—the other nine people, the ones sitting on the floor like they’d been frozen there, snapped out of it, all simultaneously drawing convulsive breaths and coming back to life as though someone had thrown a switch.

The ones in the blue robes looked dazed as shit, shaking their heads and staring around as if they’d been someplace else and were happy to be back. In contrast, Black Robe, older and tougher and seeming just as pissed off as the guppy, shot to his feet, glanced at Leah, and immediately looked like he wanted to kill someone. Again.

He was maybe a few years younger than Jox, and had a Last of the Mohicans thing going on, with a skull trim, hawk nose, and eyes that would’ve done any predator proud. He looked scary as hell, in a don’t-want-to-meet-him -in-a-dark-alley-without-backup way. But when he crossed the room and got in Blue Eyes’s face, the two men seemed evenly matched in brawn and charisma. And pissed-offedness.

‘‘What the hell were you thinking?’’ Black Robe spat. ‘‘Two escorts means two escorts. As it was, I got kicked off course and had to come back here and follow them. If I hadn’t, they would’ve died in there. All of them. How dare you leave them like that to go chase tail? What the fuck kind of kingship is that?’’

Leah’s chest tightened, not at being called a piece of tail—hell, she’d been called worse—but at the reference to royalty, which underscored that she’d somehow wound up exactly where she’d vowed not to go—deep inside Cultsville. If this wasn’t an offshoot of Survivor 2012, then it was something similar, and at least two of its members were killers.

Yet she wasn’t nearly as afraid as she ought to have been, as though the fear and unreality were blunted somehow by the golden warmth that fuzzed her brain.

She glanced up at her dream warrior, who had taken a protective stance a little in front of her, as though he thought Black Robe might hurt her. ‘‘King?’’ she asked in a voice that sounded smaller then she’d intended.

‘‘Call me Strike,’’ he said without looking at her.

The name struck a chord, as though she’d heard it before, but the memory was gone before she could grab onto it.

‘‘I saw my father,’’ Strike said to Black Robe. ‘‘He told me to go to her. That you and the others would be okay, but she’d die if I didn’t go.’’

Black Robe’s breath hissed out. ‘‘You’d risk your people for another vision?’’

‘‘Don’t start. Besides, you got them back.’’

‘‘Barely.’’ Black Robe’s eyes flicked over to the blue robes. ‘‘There were . . . complications.’’

Some of the blue robes were still blinking stupidly, while others were shoving up their sleeves and staring at black tats on their forearms. The youngest of them, a pale teenager, sat apart, both forearms bare.

‘‘Speaking of complications,’’ Leah interrupted, putting herself between the two men so she could get in Strike’s face. ‘‘You promised me an explanation. You can start with where we are and what the hell is going on.’’

‘‘What is that?’’ The sharp question came from Black Robe.

Leah turned. ‘‘What?’’

At first she thought he was staring at her ass. Then she realized he was locked onto the oilskin packet jammed in her back pocket.

She pulled it free, feeling a little queasy when the red glow spread from the packet to her arm. ‘‘I got it from the guy Strike here killed and then vaporized. It was in a trunk of some sort. Trunk didn’t glow red like this thing, though.’’ She looked from Strike to Black Robe and back. ‘‘You guys want it? Start talking.’’

‘‘You can see the red?’’ Strike asked, his expression going intent.

‘‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’’

Strike looked at Black Robe. ‘‘Lose the blocks.’’

The older man shook his head. ‘‘Bad idea.’’

‘‘Lose. The. Blocks.’’

Black Robe scowled and looked at the smaller man, the one Strike had called winikin . ‘‘What do you think?’’ he asked, as though winikin meant ‘‘arbiter of common sense’’ in whatever fucked-up universe she’d stumbled into. At the other man’s slight nod, Black Robe crossed to her and touched her forehead, then spoke a few words.

Something clicked in Leah’s brain. A rushing noise filled her ears.

And she remembered everything: Nick’s death, Zipacna holding her prisoner in the Mayan temple, Strike rescuing her, the water filling the chamber, her nearly drowning. His kissing her awake.

She stood there, frozen in place, staring at Strike, and all she could think was, Holy shit . Because he wasn’t just a whacked-out doomsday freak with above-average sex appeal and some tricks she hadn’t even begun to process.

He was also her lover.

Strike saw it in her eyes, the moment he went from ‘‘weird guy wearing nothing but a red bathrobe’’ to the guy she’d had raunchy, no-holds-barred sex with approximately five minutes after the first time she’d laid eyes on him. Which would have been right after the ajaw-makol had tried to cut her heart out of her chest with a stone knife and she’d subsequently drowned and been reborn.

Not to mention the part where she’d dreamed of him coming to her in her attic bedroom, only it hadn’t been a dream.

When the color drained from her face and she swayed, he stepped forward to catch her if she went down. ‘‘Easy there. Lots to take in.’’

But she didn’t go down. She pulled back, swung from the shoulder, and punched him square in the mouth.

Strike reeled back, cursing and clapping a hand to the lip Jox had split an hour earlier. Not that he could blame her—he figured he’d earned that and more.

‘‘How dare you?’’ she hissed, then winced and dug her fingers into her scalp, massaging beneath the white-blond hair he’d dreamed of. ‘‘Ow, damn it.’’

He crossed to her and caught her arm when she sagged. ‘‘Postmagic hangover. You need to eat something and get some sleep. Then we’ll talk.’’