Jessica Andersen - Nightkeepers

Only they weren’t her eyes, Strike saw with dawning horror. They were flat obsidian black.

‘‘I have a message for you,’’ she said, but it wasn’t her speaking. It was the nahwal , staring up at nothing and speaking with its emotionless, multitonal voice.

Everything inside Strike went cold and hard in an instant. ‘‘Tell me,’’ he grated.

‘‘The creator god dies because you have not acted.’’

Leah dug her nails into his palm. Strike tightened his grip on her and said, ‘‘Tell me how to save them both, the god and the woman.’’ Please, gods, let there be a way .

‘‘For the god to live the woman must die. There is no other way.’’

‘‘There must be,’’ he rasped. He refused to believe the gods had set him up only to fail her, only to force him to make a choice between the life he wanted and the duty he’d been born into. There had to be another way.

‘‘There is not.’’ The nahwal locked its flat black eyes on him. ‘‘Make your choice, Nightkeeper. Make it well.’’

With that, the nahwal ’s time was up. Anna didn’t know how she knew that, but she did, just as she knew that she’d be going with the creature when it returned to the mists. They were bound now. Inseparable. She hadn’t just come close to dying back at the temple; she had died. The nahwal had simply kept her alive until the god-bound power of Leah and Strike together had triggered the message.

Now, it was time for her to leave.

The gray-green mist swirled around her, forming a funnel, a vacuum that drew her away from the reality of Skywatch. She felt herself being sucked down, felt herself accelerating without moving.

The outside world dimmed, and her heart cried out for the people she’d loved—for Dick and Lucius, for her brother and the others.

She heard Strike call her name from far away, heard the crash of furniture being overturned, and men shouting. Arguing. Then pain flared in her palm, bright and white amidst the deepening dark gray, and a hand gripped hers.

Power blasted through the connection, jolting through the mist, and suddenly that someone was there, inside her head, shouting at her.

‘‘Gods damn it, this way!’’ He tugged her away from the funnel, away from the nahwal ’s might, and she heard the creature roar in denial. Then the vortex collapsed.

And she woke up staring into Red-Boar’s eyes.

That night, which was the night before the equinox, Leah eased away from Strike’s sleeping form and watched the faint light of the desert starscape play across his strong features.

Something lodged tight in her throat: a wish, maybe, or a prayer.

Don’t make him choose, she wanted to ask the gods, but didn’t know how. Besides, the nahwal had already said the choice was his to make.

Or maybe, in the end, it was hers, too.

She touched his face and the strong line of his shoulder, and saw his fierce expression lighten, as though he’d felt her caress even in sleep. Her emotions shuddered very near the surface, strong and frightening. Technically, they’d known each other for nearly three months, since the summer solstice. If she believed that what had happened before would happen again, then by her relationship clock their time was up. But she didn’t want it to be, damn it. She wanted . . .

She wanted the impossible. She wanted him to choose her even though it meant going against logic, against his advisers, hell, against the gods.

Restless, she rose from the mattress, pulled on a pair of loose yoga pants and one of his T-shirts, and padded from the room, headed for the kitchen. The halls were dark, the mansion quiet around her, suggesting that everyone else was asleep, or close to it.

It was a freeing thought. She’d grown used to living with the others and having to create the illusion of privacy. Now, it felt good to be alone in the night.

Until she stepped into the kitchen and saw Jox.

The winikin sat at the marble-topped breakfast bar, with his skinny ass perched on a stool and his pointy chin in his hands. His eyes were closed, and a small pipe sat in a saucer nearby, emitting a thin curl of copan -scented smoke.

Leah slammed on the brakes and was in the process of doing a one-eighty when he said, ‘‘We could both pretend we didn’t see each other, but that’s not really the point, is it?’’

She stopped and stiffened her spine before she turned. ‘‘And what is the point?’’

A piece of her really wished the two of them could find a way to get along. She admired the hell out of the winikin ’s fierce loyalty to Strike and Anna, and the traditions of their culture. Unfortunately, it was those very traditions that put them at odds. She didn’t fit into his worldview. Never would.

He said simply, ‘‘Neither of us wants him to have to choose.’’

She stilled as he echoed the sentiment she’d been thinking only moments earlier. She gave a cautious nod. ‘‘Agreed.’’

‘‘So what are you going to do about it?’’ The winikin ’s expression remained impassive, but there was something new in his voice, something that wasn’t usually there on the rare occasion he spoke to her. It sounded an awful lot like sympathy, which Leah didn’t like one bit.

‘‘Don’t go there,’’ she said. Please don’t go there .

‘‘Do you have an alternative?’’

She took a deep breath that did nothing to settle the sudden queasiness in her stomach, and looked away. ‘‘No.’’

After a silent moment, he said, ‘‘Self-sacrifice isn’t a sin to the Nightkeepers. It’s the ultimate way for a magic user to honor the gods.’’

She wet her lips, forced the words. ‘‘And wouldn’t that be convenient? It’d get me out of your precious house and leave the field free for one of the others.’’ She paused, hating the hollow ache that took over her chest at the thought. ‘‘Who would you hook him up with? Alexis? Jade? Someone else? Wonder if Ledbetter’s got a daughter.’’

‘‘It wouldn’t matter if he did,’’ Jox said softly. ‘‘It doesn’t take an itza’at to know that you’re it for Strike. If you die, he’ll rule alone.’’

Emotion was a brutal gut-punch that had tears welling. ‘‘Yet you’d rather that than have us try again to bring the god through during the equinox.’’

‘‘My duty is to protect the son of the jaguar king, and the Nightkeepers.’’ He glanced at her. ‘‘For what it’s worth, I’m very sorry.’’

‘‘Maybe Jade will find something useful in Ledbetter’s journal.’’

The winikin nodded. ‘‘Maybe.’’

But what was the likelihood she’d manage it in the next twenty hours or so?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Red-Boar stayed with Anna through the night, making sure she didn’t succumb again to the nahwal ’s pull. Problem was, having him in her bedroom seriously freaked her out. The two of them had always rubbed each other wrong, partly because they understood each other too well. Now he was sitting in a chair next to her bed, wearing drawstring pants and a fleece, both in penitent’s brown. Like she was really going to fall asleep with him there.

‘‘I’m fine, really,’’ she said. ‘‘You can leave anytime.’’

‘‘And if the nahwal comes back, they’d have to come get me to climb inside your head and kick the bastard out again, which would take time you wouldn’t have.’’ He folded his arms across his chest, and she worked very hard not to notice the slide of muscle beneath the soft material of his shirt.

Forcing herself to focus on what he’d said rather than how he looked—and since when did that matter to her?—she said, ‘‘You wouldn’t be here unless you wanted to be, so ergo, you want to talk to me about something. So spill it, old man, and get out of my room so I can rest.’’