Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

Her nerves kicked. ‘‘Yeah?’’

Close your eyes and grab on .

‘‘To what?’’ But then she closed her eyes and saw a faint glowing thread that wasn’t part of her usual eyes-closed landscape. Excitement kicked her pulse a notch as she reached out with her mind and touched the thread.

There was a soundless explosion, a sense of flying while sitting still. Then her gut wrenched. Power screamed in her ears. And the bottom dropped out of her world.

Leah shrieked as she jolted down, then sideways, and the world went gray-green. She zapped in a few feet off the ground, several yards away from Strike, and fell face-first into a sea of mist, landing on something soft and squishy and vaguely mudlike.

Heart hammering, she rolled onto her back and concentrated on breathing. ‘‘Guess we made it.’’ The relief was so sharp it was almost painful.

‘‘This far, at least.’’ Strike grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. Once she was steady, he stripped off the headdress and set it aside, then reached inside his robe and withdrew a pair of stingray spines. ‘‘Now for stage two.’’

She took the spine. Tested the point with her fingertip. ‘‘Not very sharp.’’

‘‘That’s what makes it fun. Not.’’ He paused. ‘‘You ready?’’

She took a breath and nodded. At his signal, she opened her mouth and jammed the spine into her tongue, then yanked it out again. Pain was a quick slap and a longer burn, but she held herself still as blood filled her mouth and then overflowed, spilling down her chin and splashing on the blue robe.

Then, for the first time since the aphelion, she felt something. Sudden power bloomed on her skin, in her core. She smiled through the pain of her torn tongue. ‘‘I feel it!’’

‘‘Good. Say the words.’’

She began the chant, words she’d memorized phonetically but hadn’t really thought she’d use. Strike took position at her side, holding her right hand in his, joining their blood, boosting her power with his own. At first she was afraid the spell wouldn’t work. Then, as the mist thickened nearby and a human figure took shape, she was afraid it would work. Somehow, in that moment, getting the answers to the questions that’d dogged her the past few months seemed more frightening than not knowing the answers.

‘‘Steady,’’ Strike murmured at her side. ‘‘I’m here.’’

She leaned into him as the mists parted and the three-question nahwal approached, stopping a short distance away. It was a sexless humanoid figure with dead black eyes and no forearm marks or other distinguishing features, no expression on its desiccated face. Its tanned, leathery skin was pulled tight across its bones, and it made no sound when it moved.

‘‘Ask your first question,’’ it said in a toneless voice that seemed to be made of two voices, one high, one low, speaking in synchrony.

Oh, holy freak show, Leah thought, gripping Strike’s hand even tighter than before. Drawing strength from that solid contact, she took a deep breath and said, ‘‘What is the nature of my magical power?’’

Strike, Red-Boar, and Jox had confabbed on the question, going for something broad enough to get more than a yes/no answer, yet specific enough to give them something they could use. In theory, anyway.

The nahwal tilted its head and was silent for nearly a minute, unmoving, as though carrying on an inner dialogue. Then it said to Leah, ‘‘You are the light half of the god Kulkulkan. Your brother was to be the darkness. Together, you were to be the Godkeeper, able to wield the might to oppose the crocodile lord.’’

Shock hammered through Leah. Grief. She tightened her fingers on Strike’s hand, where their cut palms channeled his power into her. Kulkulkan is a dual god, Strike said through the blood link. Light and dark halves. Since you’re human, you can’t take all his powers. He must’ve tried to split himself into two blood-linked humans—you and your brother—figuring to unite you into a single Godkeeper.

But how is that possible when Matty died long before the barrier reactivated? Leah shot back, head spinning. And where does that leave me now?

‘‘Will you ask your second question?’’ the nahwal queried.

Leah thought fast. ‘‘How can I bring the darkness into myself and become the Godkeeper alone?’’

‘‘You cannot,’’ the creature replied in its two-toned voice.

Shit. Ask where the god is now, Strike prompted.

When Leah parroted the question, the nahwal replied, ‘‘Kulkulkan’s link to you keeps him trapped between heaven and earth, within the skyroad. There, his energy fades.’’

Which is why my powers are getting weaker over time rather than stronger, she thought. But that doesn’t tell us how to fix it, and I’m out of questions .

‘‘I’m not,’’ Strike said aloud, dropping her hand and breaking the blood connection before she could protest, before she could remind him that he wasn’t supposed to burn his three questions on her.

The nahwal turned its attention to him. ‘‘Will you ask your first question, son of the jaguar kings?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ Strike said. ‘‘Why do I wear the flying-serpent glyph?’’

‘‘It represents the darkness of Kulkulkan, the war god aspect.’’

‘‘Then I am to take her brother’s place?’’

The nahwal shook its head. ‘‘No. You are a male Nightkeeper, and carry too much darkness already. If you undergo the transition, you will become a makol with the power of a god. Undefeatable evil.’’

Leah gasped and moved forward, but Strike warned her back with a look.

‘‘Will you ask your final question, son of the jaguar kings?’’ the nahwal inquired in its flat, two-tonal voice.

‘‘How can the god be returned to the sky without harm to Leah?’’

‘‘It cannot.’’ For a moment, Leah thought that was all it was going to say, that it would leave them with even more questions than before. But then it continued, ‘‘The woman must die before the equinox. If she does, the god’s link to earth will be severed and Kulkulkan will return to the sky. If she remains alive at the equinox and the god has not been fully brought to earth, then both the woman and the god will die, and the god’s death will destroy the skyroad. There will be no more Godkeepers, no more help from the sky. The enemy will bring the end-time, opposed only by you and your Nightkeepers . . . and you will fail without the power of the gods.’’

That two-toned pronouncement hung for a moment in terrible silence. Then the nahwal took a step back and started going gray-green and thinning to mist. ‘‘Your questions are done.’’ Its voice grew fainter. ‘‘Gods be with you, son. . . .’’

Then silence.

Leah couldn’t tell if it’d faded out before saying ‘‘of the jaguar kings,’’ or if it’d meant to say ‘‘son.’’ A glance up at Strike told her he didn’t know, either.

Silence reigned as the mists came together again in the wake of the nahwal ’s exit.

Then Strike said, ‘‘Leah.’’ Just her name, as though there were nothing else to say. And maybe there wasn’t. They’d gotten the answers they’d come for.

Unfortunately, the answers they’d gotten sucked.

She nodded, unable to speak past the lump of fear and grief that jammed her throat. She wished she could say she didn’t believe a word the nahwal had said, that there was no way she was buying into the idea that she had to die in order to prevent one of the Nightkeepers’ creator gods from being destroyed. But if the magic was real, how could she say the nahwal ’s answers were lies?