Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

The cry was followed by a mental picture that flashed along the link of a shared bloodline, powered by the magic of an itza’at seer. Anna! Strike thought on a spike of adrenaline and bloodline power.

The image she sent was that of a young man curled up and clutching his bleeding hand to his chest as his eyes started to glow green. A dark figure stood over him. Zipacna.

Rage flared, and Strike didn’t stop to think or ask questions, didn’t care that his legs were numb and his head pounding with a postmagic hangover, that he might not have the power to ’port accurately. He grabbed Leah with one hand and Red-Boar with the other. ‘‘Hang on!’’

He leaned on the older Nightkeeper for a boost, fixing the transmitted image in his mind.

And zapped.

One minute Leah was getting her bearings in the sacred chamber at Skywatch, trying to deal with the nahwal ’s morbid information dump. Then Strike grabbed her, the world lurched, and the next thing she knew she was in some sort of student apartment, standing in a combined kitchen/living room full of yard-sale furniture and clutter.

And Zipacna was there.

He stood near where the kitchen tile began, his mismatched eyes glowing pure emerald green as he crouched over a young man who lay in a fetal ball, unmoving. The ajaw-makol was wearing loose black pants and held a bloody steak knife in one hand. The creature snapped his head up when the Nightkeepers appeared, and he bared his teeth in a hiss. Then his eyes fixed on Leah and the hiss became a smile.

Rage flared through her, hard and hot and pure, and she lunged at him, screaming an incoherent battle cry. She was dimly aware that Strike shouted for her to stop and Red-Boar cursed and made a grab for her, but neither of them mattered just then. What mattered was the bastard who’d killed her brother, her friends.

Surprise was on her side. She slammed into Zipacna, burying her shoulder in his gut and using the momentum to drive them both away from the young man. They went stumbling into the kitchen and slammed into the stove, which clattered a metallic protest. The ajaw-makol roared and pushed away, reversing their momentum and sending Leah flying across the small space to smash into the opposite cabinets.

Without the benefit of jade-tips to slow him down, she went for the kitchen sink, which was full of nasty-ass dirty dishes. Grabbing a knife, she lunged under his swing and stabbed up, going for his heart. The weapon bit through flesh and grated on bone, and blood flowed over her hand, looking darker than it should have.

Zipacna stiffened and roared with pain. ‘‘Bitch!’’

Quicker than human reactions, he grabbed her and spun her, whipping her arm up behind her back and getting his own knife across her throat, pressing hard enough to have her freezing in place.

‘‘I thought we were friends,’’ he said softly in her ear. Only it wasn’t Zipacna’s voice anymore.

It was Vince’s.

Shock hammered through Leah. Betrayal. ‘‘Vince, no!’’

Red-Boar’s expression went dark, and he hissed, ‘‘Mimic,’’ like it was the lowest form of life imaginable.

‘‘No shape-shifting necessary,’’ the ajaw-makol said in Vince’s voice. ‘‘She was perfectly willing to believe a wig and colored contacts, even when I was only human. Never even thought to check with his coworkers that Vince Rincon was a real person, just glommed on when I said I’d known her brother, and thought the wicked cult members had killed him.’’

Leah nearly broke at the realization he’d played her all along. She’d been so pitifully willing to go along with the illusion, so grateful for some sort of support that she hadn’t looked hard enough at the source. ‘‘Why?’’ she said, her voice a broken whisper. ‘‘Why me?’’

‘‘Because twenty-four years ago the gods marked you and your brother as their own,’’ he said, leaning so close that his hot breath feathered against her cheek. ‘‘Matthew’s blood started the process. Yours will finish it.’’

‘‘No,’’ Leah cried as something broke within her, bleeding rage and pain. ‘‘No!’’

Strike took a step forward, his face tight. ‘‘Let. Her. Go.’’

‘‘Why, so you can kill her and free the serpent to fight another day? I think not. Better she comes with me and joins the other devoted followers I’ve assembled for my use, for blood or as makol .’’ The ajaw-makol took a step back, dragging her with him, and power started rattling through him, revving up, feeling black and twisted rather than the gold-red hum of the Nightkeepers.

‘‘No!’’ Strike shouted, and lunged forward to grab her as purple mist rose up to haze her vision. The moment he touched her, power arced, red against purple-black, teleport against teleport, as Zipacna fought to take her and Strike fought to keep her.

Sobbing, not caring about the blade at her throat, Leah twisted in the ajaw-makol ’s arms and jammed the heel of her hand into the knife still stuck in his chest, driving it deeper and feeling the spurt of hot blood.

Zipacna shouted in pain. And disappeared.

Leah fell to the ground half cradled in Strike’s arms. He caught her against him, breathing hard. ‘‘You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.’’

Except she wasn’t sure whether he was trying to reassure himself or her, because if it was the latter, he shouldn’t have bothered. It wasn’t okay. It probably never would be again.

Feeling numb, like she was already dead, she pulled away from him, lifted her right arm, and stared at the scarred patch. Twenty-four years ago, the ajaw-makol had said. And yeah, she knew exactly what he was talking about.

‘‘I killed him,’’ she said, her voice a broken whisper. ‘‘I killed us both.’’

As she realized the truth, a roaring whirl of purple-black rose up to claim her mind, and she was almost grateful to let it, to let the world slip away.

Until there was nothing. Until she was nothing.

‘‘Leah.’’ Terrified by her sudden immobility and fixed stare, Strike gripped her shoulders and shook her. ‘‘Leah!’’ When she didn’t respond, he turned to Red-Boar. ‘‘I’m taking her back.’’

‘‘Leave her,’’ the older Nightkeeper snapped. ‘‘We deal with this first.’’

He stood aside to reveal the ajaw-makol ’s victim. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, shaggy-haired, tall and lanky, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and worn hiking boots. The ruined remains of the codex fragment were crumpled nearby, bloodstained and blackened with flame. A total loss. But Red-Boar was right: They had a more immediate problem in the form of the young man, whose eyes flickered from normal to luminous green and back. If and when they set green, he wouldn’t just be a second-generation makol created by Zipacna’s magic. He’d be a new ajaw-makol , created through the parent spell and the magic of the Banol Kax .

‘‘We have to kill it.’’ There was far more practicality in Red-Boar’s voice than regret. ‘‘Give me your knife.’’

‘‘He’s a person,’’ Strike protested. ‘‘Not an ‘it.’ ’’

‘‘It was a person,’’ Red-Boar corrected. ‘‘Now it’s a liability.’’ He held out his hand. ‘‘Give me the damn knife.’’

‘‘Don’t.’’ But it wasn’t Strike who said that. It was a woman’s voice.

Anna’s voice.

Strike turned and saw her in the apartment doorway, and even through his worry for Leah, everything inside him went still. She was older than she had been—they all were—but he saw his sister in the woman who stood before him, saw the same blue eyes that met his in the mirror each day.