Dawnkeepers (34 page)

Maybe it wasn’t working because he was alone, because it was the wrong day. Or maybe because he was nothing but a fuckup half-blood, like his old man had always said. But he refused to give up, because frigging Juarez still couldn’t find Myrinne, and Rabbit’s urge to get to her was growing by the hour, along with his conviction that she needed him, that she was important.

His body buzzed with the power and the pain as he said the spell again, taking the magic into him and sending it outward, summoning his ancestors’ wisdom. He wasn’t sure where he ended and the mist began. He was the mist and the mist was him, and he was all alone.

Then, suddenly, he wasn’t alone anymore. The nearby fog thickened, coalescing into a vaguely human shape that stepped forward into the shadowless gray-green light.

The three-question
nahwal
looked like the bloodline-bound
nahwals
that had come to the trainees during the talent ceremony. Both types of
nahwal
looked pretty much like desiccated corpses that happened to be up and moving around; they had no nipples or genitals, and their eyes were pure black, with no whites or emotion. But where the bloodline
nahwals
were each forearm-marked with their bloodline glyphs, this one was unmarked. And although they were supposed to be emotionless, this one looked seriously pissed off, with V-grooved frown lines between its dead black eyes, and its fangs bared.

Shit, fangs?
Rabbit thought on a jolt of fear and surprise. Why hadn’t anybody mentioned the fangs?

Holding his hands away from his sides in a gesture of
I’m unarmed; please don’t fuck me up,
he said, “Ah, um. Are you here to answer my three questions?”

The thing hissed and charged, reaching for him with hands that’d grown claws.

Rabbit let out a yell and dove to one side. He felt the breeze of the
nahwal
’s swipe, but no pain. He bounced up from the springy surface underfoot and spun to face his attacker. “What the hell?”

The thing apparently wasn’t in the mood for convo, questions or otherwise. It spun and lunged for him again, scratching and snapping, and howling with rage when Rabbit danced aside. Palming his father’s knife, which he still wore on his belt, Rabbit dropped and rolled, coming up inside the
nahwal
’s guard and leading point-first when he stood. The blade cut through the thing’s skin with little resistance, but deflected off bone and skidded aside. Which just pissed the creature off worse.

Roaring, its face contorted with rage and hatred, though neither was supposed to be in its repertoire, the
nahwal
spun and dove on Rabbit, grabbing his legs and driving him to the ground. They rolled together for a few frenzied seconds before Rabbit’s control broke under the onslaught of battle rage.

Tipping his head back, he called the fire on a long scream of pain and magic:
“Kaak!”

The gray-green sky split, and flames poured down to spear straight through the
nahwal
. The burning energy lifted the thing up and off Rabbit and tossed it aside. The creature shrieked and writhed, wreathed in flames as its skin and ropy flesh burned away.

“No!” Rabbit shouted. “Stop!”

He tried to call the magic back, tried to cut it off, to do something, anything to stop the fire from consuming the
nahwal
. But nothing worked. He could only watch as the thing’s struggles slowed, then stopped, and the only visible motion became that of the greedy flames and the mists that swirled at the periphery of the blaze. Eventually—it’d probably been only a few minutes, but it felt like forever—even the flames guttered out. The gray-green mist moved back in to cover where the
nahwal
had been, and it was as though nothing had happened. Only it had, Rabbit knew, horror and guilt vising his chest and making it hard to breathe.

He’d fucking killed the three-question
nahwal
.

“Let’s try it again and give it everything we’ve got.” Nate’s eyes were steady on hers, his grip firm.

Alexis nodded, not wanting to admit defeat.
Please, goddess,
she thought,
help us. Help your warriors on earth figure out what the hell they’re supposed to do.
It wasn’t the most eloquent of prayers, perhaps, but it was heartfelt, and she thought she sensed a little power bump at the back of her brain, a shimmer of color that might’ve been a response. “Okay,” she said, reaching down deep and drawing on the magic. “Once more, with feeling.”

They started reciting the spell again, and before they’d gotten past the second grouping of words in the old language, she knew something was different this time. She could feel the power gathering and expanding outward, could hear the hum of magic.

Then, without warning, the hum escalated to a scream and wind slapped at them, driving the mists to a frenzied funnel cloud in an instant and yanking them off their feet.

“Nate!” she screamed, grabbing for him as the gale knocked her back, ripping her hands from his.

“Alexis!” He dove for her, hooking her around the waist and flinging them both to the yielding surface beneath the wind-whipped mist. “Down,” he ordered. “Stay down!”

He flattened her body beneath his and hung on tight while he cast around, trying to find a handhold to anchor them. She did the same, but there was nothing to hold on to but the moist squishiness of the barrier surface, formless and alien.

“I’m slipping,” she cried, feeling the slick surface moving beneath her, feeling the wind grab hold and not let go. “What’s happening?”

“The spell misfired.” He shouted the words over the rising howl of the wind. “I can’t find the way home!”

Cursing herself for not thinking, Alexis closed her eyes and pictured the sacred chamber back at Skywatch, imagining her and Nate on either side of the altar, the others forming a ring in the center of the circular room. Tapping the power of the barrier, she thought,
Na otot
. The words, which meant “house” or “home,” should’ve dropped her out of the barrier and back into her body.

They didn’t.

“It’s not working for me, either!” she cried.

They were moving in a circle now, being dragged along by the force of the funnel cloud as it reached down lower and lower still, coming for them. Worse, the funnel cloud didn’t stretch up to the sky, but rather folded double so the spitting mouth, which bellowed mist and wind, was pointed downward, toward the underworld. Where it touched the barrier surface, the gray-green had gone black, suggesting that they were about thirty seconds from a one-way trip to Xibalba.

“The goddess,” Nate shouted. “Call on the goddess!”

Fear rode Alexis, but the connection at the base of her brain had gone dim. Throwing power at the spot didn’t change the background glow; prayer didn’t make a dent. Knowing no other way to reach the goddess, Alexis turned beneath him and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, offering herself to the heat and the magic. Lust rose quickly, slapping a vicious whip through her body, a feverish demand that seemed sharper than before, greedier.

For a second she thought he might refuse her. Then he groaned, a harsh rattle at the back of his throat, and met her halfway in a kiss that was hard and hot and openmouthed. Something inside her said,
Thank the gods
, because this wasn’t the reserved man he’d been in recent weeks, or the one who’d given her that single, sweet kiss to celebrate her advisership and avoided her since. This was the man she’d mated with, the one who was never far from her thoughts or dreams.

Lust revved her senses, making her achingly aware of the solid strength of him, the hard bulge of muscles beneath her gripping hands, and the good weight of him atop her. They kissed again and again, touching and tugging, finding their way through the ceremonial robes to combat clothes and the bare skin beneath. She arched into his touch as he found her breast and drove her up, his hands and mouth working together, bringing heat.

Leaning into the magic that came with desire, Alexis called on the goddess, called on the powers of a Godkeeper.

Luminous green lightning split the sky, burning her retinas, interrupting the build of magic. The funnel cloud roared and twisted as if gaining strength from the lightning, which flared again and again as an ever-increasing growl of thunder pummeled them. The firmament shifted, jolting them. Wind pulled at their bodies, and Alexis howled Nate’s name as he was torn away from her and up into the funnel.

“Nate!” She reached for him, but missed as he was whipped away from her.
“Nate!”
She screamed for him, screamed for herself as the funnel plucked her up and tossed her in a wide arc. Her stomach lurched and fear grabbed her by the throat when there was no answer.

Then she saw him up ahead, at the place where the world went from gray-green to limitless black. Not thinking, not caring, she pointed her body in that direction and pressed her arms flat against her sides, like a skydiver aiming for a target midair. She arrowed toward him, crossing the intervening distance quicker than thought.

Halfway there she slammed into an invisible wall, one that shimmered with rainbows when she touched it. The moment she hit, the air went still on her side of the wall, leaving her hanging motionless in gray-green nothingness amidst deafeningly sudden silence. On the other side of the invisible barrier the funnel spun unabated, drawing Nate farther and farther away.

“No!” Alexis banged against the wall, drew her knife, and tried to hack through it. She grabbed for her holster but wasn’t wearing it; she had come to the ceremony unarmed, knowing their incorporeal selves would be brought into the barrier wearing all that they wore on earth, and thinking there was no reason to bring jade-tips into the barrier. At least, there normally wasn’t. Now, though, she was under attack, and defenseless. They had called the three-question
nahwal
and gotten chaos instead.

Nate!
her heart cried as the funnel spun him closer to her for a second and she could see his face. He mouthed something, and she knew in her gut that he was telling her to get away, to save herself. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Flipping the knife so she held it by the blade, she sliced both her palms, cutting deep, letting the blood flow freely. Then she held her hands away from her in supplication, touched them to the invisible wall she instinctively knew had been put there by the goddess in order to keep her from being sucked into the funnel. But that meant the goddess was nearby, that she could act within the barrier. If that were the case, why wasn’t she coming into Alexis?

The answer danced just out of her reach. Cursing the goddess, praying to her, Alexis tipped her head back and, compelled by instinct, or maybe a whisper from beyond, she cried, “
Takaj,
Ixchel!”
Come, goddess!

As though Ixchel had been waiting only for the call, the conduit came to life and a starburst exploded rainbows at the back of Alexis’s brain. Power flowed through her, passing out of her to the funnel cloud beyond. She was the goddess and the goddess was her. A contemptuous flick of her bloodstained fingers swept aside the rainbow-wrought shield that had both saved her and separated her from Nate. A word extinguished the funnel cloud. A gesture had an invisible hand plucking Nate’s limp form out of the edge of nothingness, and bringing him to where Alexis hung in midair.

The rainbow surrounded them, bound them together as she touched him, felt the solidness of him, the reality of him. Closing her eyes, she imagined the sacred chamber and whispered the words that would send them home.

There was no lurch or movement, no sense of transitioning from one plane to the next. There was only a flash of gold and colors, and they were there, facing each other over the altar, hanging on to each other for dear life.

Impressions bombarded her. Snapshots. She was aware of Izzy and Carlos sitting cross-legged where the other magi had been, saw their expressions of delighted relief, heard them shouting for the others. She was aware of the stars and the moon overhead, aware that hours had passed when it had seemed like only minutes. And she was aware of Nate’s fingers holding tightly to hers, and his eyes flickering open, showing confusion first, and then darkening with memory.

Moments later, the door flung open and Strike hustled into the chamber, followed closely by Leah and the others, who were all talking at once. But it was Nate’s voice Alexis heard. He said, “You did it, Lexie. You called the goddess.”

“Yeah.” She smiled, tentatively at first, then wider as she realized the connection was there now, and fully formed where it had been nothing but a wish before. Joy lit her up from within, radiating outward until the air sparkled with the hint of rainbows, like light blurred through a subtle prism. “I did, didn’t I?”

The other magi gathered around them while the
winikin
tried to push them back, saying something about food and rest first, questions later. But Alexis kept looking at Nate, and the rainbow joy dimmed slightly when she saw the knowledge in his eyes, and felt it in her own heart. The goddess had taught her to call the magic by herself, which meant she didn’t need Nate anymore.

The realization should’ve been a relief.

It wasn’t.