Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

They stared at each other for a moment in silence before Red-Boar turned away. He said a prayer for the dead in the old language, then palmed his ceremonial knife to prick his elbow, which was one of the most honored autoletting sites. He handed over the blade without a word and Anna did the same, and they let their blood drip down onto the fresh grave.

‘‘Safe journey, stranger,’’ she whispered.

When it was done, they smoothed the disturbed earth above the sinkhole, then split up to search for Ledbetter’s campsite. They could’ve searched together, might have been safer that way, but they both needed the distance. Traveling together had been bad enough. Sharing an experience like burying Ledbetter had been far worse.

Moving into the thicker growth beyond the clearing, she touched her effigy and sent out a faint questioning thread, not jacking in fully, but tapping the power and asking it to guide her to where Ledbetter had been. In theory. In practice her subconscious was blocking the hell out of her sight. And who could blame it? The last time she’d had a full-fledged vision, she’d shouted Lucius’s name in Dick’s ear.

Branches scratched her face and caught at her clothes as she pushed her way deeper into the rain forest, thorny fingers grabbing at her, begging for attention. Where have you been? the undergrowth seemed to say. Where are you going?

When she heard the words a second time and magic touched her skin, she stopped, wondering if she’d imagined it. ‘‘I can hear you,’’ she said softly. ‘‘What do you want?’’

She never in a million years expected a response.

But she got one.

The figure of a man appeared in front of her, coalescing out of the humid air. He was taller than she, but stick-thin and wrinkled, with obsidian eyes that had no whites.

Anna gasped and backpedaled, snagged her heel on a root, overbalanced, and fell on her ass. She froze there, her heart pounding as she gaped up at the figure, and pain seared the skin between her breasts where the effigy rested.

A nahwal . On earth.

Impossible.

But when she blinked and looked again, it was still there. Then it turned and disappeared into the undergrowth.

‘‘No!’’ She scrambled to her feet, pulse racing. ‘‘Come back!’’

There was movement up ahead, a flash of motion that left the foliage undisturbed. Head spinning with power and desperation and a strange sense of shifted reality, Anna followed on shaky legs, running deeper and deeper into the forest along an ancient path.

Where was— There! Power rippled along her skin and she saw another flash of motion as the nahwal passed into a low cleft in the earth. Anna followed, flying along the path and ducking through the cave without hesitation, only briefly registering the carved lintel and square walls of a temple. Two steps into the cave, she was plunged into darkness.

Four steps in, the world dropped out from beneath her and she fell, screaming. She hit hard and her head banged against rock. Pain flared and pressure snapped tight in her chest, and for a second she thought she was flying. Then she thought she was drowning. Then burning.

Then there was nothing but blackness around her, inside her. The darkness lasted for minutes, maybe hours before she felt a hand grip hers, lending solidity to the world around her, and heard a voice that called her back from the edge.

‘‘Gods help us.’’ His harsh whisper roused her, though she wasn’t capable of more than an answering moan. The world spun around her, made of blackness and pain.

‘‘Sleepy,’’ she whispered, the word coming out as little more than a puff of air. Lassitude cocooned her, warming her until even the pain seemed friendly rather than raw.

Red-Boar didn’t answer. She heard the click of him flipping open his satellite phone, heard a bitter curse. ‘‘No signal.’’ Then he was leaning over her, touching her gently, though she could barely feel it. ‘‘Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here.’’

He helped her sit up. That was when the nausea hit.

Her vision kicked back in as she doubled over, retching. She saw too-bright light filtering in from outside, saw Red-Boar’s forearm clamped across her torso, beneath her breasts, holding her upright as she gagged on bile and little else. The world slewed, but when she sagged down again, reaching for the ground and the blessed unconsciousness of sleep, he wrestled her to her feet, holding on to her forearms just beneath her elbows. ‘‘Anna,’’ he snapped. ‘‘I need you to stay with me.’’

Closing her eyes against the painful glare from outside, she sucked in a deep breath, trying to settle the heaves. That was when she smelled blood. Lots of it.

Opening her eyes, she blinked to clear the spots that danced before her. Then she realized the spots were real—spatters of blood on the stone floor she’d been lying on, and on the carved walls nearby. Even some on a small pile of camping equipment tucked into a corner, behind a statue she thought she recognized as the goddess Ixchel. They were in a temple of some sort, she realized, though she didn’t remember finding a temple. Come to think of it, she didn’t remember anything after she’d ducked into a low-hanging cave mouth in pursuit of—

Everything froze within her.

‘‘I saw a nahwal ,’’ she whispered. ‘‘I followed him.’’

‘‘Hold your arms over your head,’’ Red-Boar ordered, ignoring her. When she did as she was told, he moved away from her and started tearing strips from a man’s checkered shirt. It was Ledbetter’s, she realized. They were at his campsite. But what—

‘‘Here.’’ Red-Boar took the hands she’d crossed over her head, bringing them down to eye level. ‘‘This is going to hurt.’’

‘‘What?’’ She didn’t get it at first, but the moment she thought about it, really thought about it, she knew what she’d done. ‘‘Oh, no. I didn’t. Please tell me I didn’t.’’

She yanked her hands away from him and looked at her wrists. Bad idea. Gaping slashes crisscrossed the skin between her hands and her marks, leaking blood. ‘‘I didn’t,’’ she whispered. But she had.

Wrist cutting was the most extreme form of autosacrifice practiced by the ancient Nightkeepers, one intended to bring a warrior as close to death as possible, in the hopes that he—or she—would return with a message from the gods. That assumed, of course, that he or she didn’t die from loss of blood.

Red-Boar took her hands and began to bind her wounds with the makeshift bandages. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

‘‘How bad is it?’’ Anna asked through dry-feeling lips.

‘‘Ugly but surface on the left, deeper on the right. You got a vein on that side.’’ He finished tying off the second set of bandages, then crossed her arms over her chest with her hands just beneath her chin, and used a loop of cloth to form a makeshift sling that went behind her neck and connected one hand to the other, allowing her some freedom of motion while keeping her wrists higher than her heart.

His dark eyes locked on her with unfamiliar intensity. ‘‘Call your brother.’’

Strike could zap to their position and bring them home. They’d planned for him to do just that twelve hours from now.

Which would be too late.

Anna closed her eyes and concentrated, but got nothing. She shook her throbbing head as ravenous hunger surged alongside the nausea. ‘‘I’m tapped out.’’ She’d used up her magical energies, but doing what? She’d sacrificed herself for a message; that much was clear. But she didn’t remember getting a message, didn’t remember anything after she’d run into the cave after the nahwal .