Demonkeepers (21 page)

Jerking her eyes away from him, she took a quick look beyond the kitchen to the great room—or what was left of it. She hadn’t been in there since the previous day, and to her relief, changes were already evident. The wrecked furniture had been cleared out, the glass sliders had been replaced with their screen counterparts, the couch didn’t appear to be lurking in the pool anymore, and tarps were stretched across the conversation pit, where most of the damage had occurred. The atmosphere was damp with a combination of leftover meltwater and the humidity spilling in from the outside. Overall, she thought it looked better than it had right after the iceball incident . . . but not by much.

The odd thing was, though, that she didn’t feel all that bad about the destruction. Instead, a bubble of joy tried to push its way into her throat, making her want to do another little victory dance and say,
I did that. I’ve got magic!

She channeled her inner harvester and didn’t act on the impulse. But she sure as heck thought about it, and did a little inner dance as she turned to the group at the breakfast bar. “Shandi said you wanted to see me?”

Strike nodded. “Grab a seat.”

The only empty bar stool was one next to Lucius. She took it without comment and returned his nod of greeting with one of her own.

“Anna called me this morning,” Strike began. “She wants to talk to you and Lucius about your encounter with Kinich Ahau. She thinks she might have some ideas.”

When he paused, seeming to invite a response, she said carefully, “That’s good news, right? I mean, she’s the expert.” She glanced at Lucius. “No offense.”

“Trust me, none taken. She’s got almost a decade on me in official fieldwork, and combines her training with knowing the legends backward and forward, thanks to Jox’s teachings.”

But Jox shook his head. “I can only take part of the credit. She was good with the stories even before . . . you know. Before.” He paused, his voice softening. “She was in the nursery when the
boluntiku
attacked. She’d been telling the little ones about the hero twins traveling to Xibalba to rescue their father from the
Banol Kax
. She was always telling them the stories.”

The massacre was very close to the surface for those old enough to remember it, Jade realized, with fragments coming from many different perspectives. Jox’s focus had been getting Strike and Anna to the safe room below the mansion. Shandi had been struggling between her two callings. Vennie had arrived in the aftermath.
Flames. Dead, staring eyes
. She shivered as a chill touched the back of her neck, but resisted the urge to shift closer to the warmth beside her. “When is Anna getting here?” she asked instead.

“She wants us to come to UT,” Lucius answered.

“More accurately,” Leah put in dryly, “she’s refusing to return to Skywatch or have the convo by phone or Web conference. She’s insisting that you two come to her.”

Strike sighed. “As much I’m sorely tempted to ’port out there and drag her home, we don’t need just her; we need her talent too. And that’s not something I can control by brute force.” He turned his scarred palms upward, to the sky and the gods. “She’s asked me to give her room. I told her I’d give her as long as I could . . . which means the two of you going out to UT and having a sit-down with her.” He paused. “While you’re there, I’d like you to check up on Rabbit and Myrinne. Anna swears that they’re doing fine, no problems, but the ki—Rabbit’s been ducking my calls. I’d appreciate it if you could put eyeballs on him, maybe ask around a little and make sure he’s not into something . . . well, something Rabbit-like.”

Which could be anything from vandalism to torching half of the French Quarter, Jade knew. But beneath the wry amusement, adrenaline buzzed. She had tried not to be disappointed when the others were sent off on assignment and she was left behind. Her talents were fledgling at best, and the others were better trained and had field experience. But a trip to the university . . . it seemed like a nice middle ground. It was a few hours at most, in familiar territory. “I’m in. When do we leave?”

“Not so fast,” Strike cautioned. “I can’t teleport you there. Or rather, I can’t ’port Lucius. So you two are going to have to get there the old-fashioned way . . . which is going to exponentially increase your exposure level.”

“It . . . Oh.” She’d spent so long at the university that it hadn’t occurred to her that their being outside the warded confines of the compound would carry additional risk. But Lucius wore the hellmark, which meant that once he was outside Skywatch, he could be tracked through dark magic. More, with the solstice only five days away, all of the magi had to be on guard against early moves by the
Banol Kax
. “So, what’s the plan? Airplane?”

“No way,” Lucius said immediately. “Bad enough to stick me inside a small space crammed with bodies . . . worse if the
Banol Kax
or Xibalbans come after me and take out a planeful in the process.” He shook his head. “No plane. I’ll take one of the Jeeps, load up with jade-tips, carry a panic button, and take my chances.” For the first time since she had sat down beside him, he looked at her fully. “I was outvoted on the idea of going alone.” His tone suggested that had been less a case of keeping him safe from dark magic, and more a case of the Nightkeepers not wanting to let him loose with the hellmark, a history of debatable loyalty, a vehicle full of antimagic ammo, and intricate knowledge of Skywatch. “One option is to have Michael and me do the road trip, while Strike ’ports you straight to the university for the meeting, then back when it’s over.” In other words, Michael and his death magic could keep a careful eye on Lucius, while she took the easy way out.

It made logical sense . . . and the rebel inside Jade thought it sucked. More, she could practically feel Lucius withdrawing from her, even as they sat there only a few inches apart. If she was right about the emotional context needed for her magic—and potentially his—then withdrawing from her wasn’t going to help him get back into the library. Exactly the opposite, in fact. “What’s the other option?”

“For you and Lucius to make the trip together,” Michael answered. “Obviously, you’d be armed to the teeth and have all the necessary gadgets, including panic buttons.” More than simple buttons, the advanced communication devices not only transmitted a signal calling Skywatch for help; they also photographed their immediate vicinity and transmitted the images so Strike could teleport backup or otherwise decide on a response. “But keep in mind that neither of you has reliable fighting magic, so if it comes down to a fight, you could be badly outgunned until help arrives.”

Jade thought about the shield spell she’d tried—and failed—to morph earlier, and couldn’t argue the point. Still, though, her instincts said that she and Lucius should travel together. Question was, did that instinct come from actual logic and the slim chance that she might be able to help him regain the Prophet’s magic, or was her star DNA urging her to rash action, just for the sake of some excitement?

Knowing she could trust Michael’s opinion on any and all strategy, she glanced at him. “What do you think?”

Lucius started to say something, but Michael held up a hand, forestalling him. “We know what you’d prefer. You want her hanging back, safe. And believe me, I can sympathize. But that’s not how it’s going to work, and you know it.” To Jade, he said, “We’ve talked it over”—by “we” he meant the skeleton royal council gathered there, she knew—“and the decision is that we’re not making the decision. It’s up to you. There’s zero shame in your staying here and continuing to refine your command of the iceball spell and see what other spells you can tweak. Or, hell, even if you can put together one from scratch. That’d be huge.” He paused. “But we all know that you’ve been frustrated with your role here. Before, it didn’t seem like a viable option to send you out into the field. Now, though . . . well, it’s not unheard of for a mage to take a little while to grow into his—or her—true talents, which is what you seem to be doing. Add to that the new info that you’re half-blood star, which might incline you to more power than if your mother had come from one of the bloodlines that usually intermixed with the harvesters, and it’s tempting to think you’re on your way to becoming a warrior, with or without the mark. Obviously, we want to encourage that. Under the old training system, your skills would’ve been developed step by step under the protection of a senior warrior. But those days are gone. Most of us have achieved our full powers by being thrown into situations that were way larger than anything we wanted or expected them to be.” He spread his hands. “Here, we’re trying to hit a middle ground between the two by putting you into a moderate-risk scenario with a shit-ton of available backup, and a partner who would cut off his left nut before he let anything happen to you.”

Lucius looked away at that. Jade nearly corrected the misconception that the two of them were anywhere near that tightly bonded, but she didn’t, because what was the point? The others would believe what they believed, regardless of what she said. In a culture that orbited around the concept of destined mates, even the most alpha of males were matchmakers at heart.

“There’s a third option,” Michael added. “I could go along on the road trip, if you’d prefer. And for the record, if you stay behind, that doesn’t mean you won’t be allowed out on ops later. Once you’ve figured out your new limits, done some additional weapons training and hand-to-hand, that sort of thing, we can introduce you to the field in more controlled situations. This isn’t a one-shot deal, understand?”

She tipped her hand in a yes/no gesture. “For me, perhaps. But we’re getting down to the wire on figuring out how to save Kinich Ahau. Lucius and I were together when he opened the hellroad and then sent himself into the library. Although he hasn’t had any luck reproducing that magic so far, his odds are going to be far better if I’m there.” She glanced at Michael. “Without a chaperone.”

He nodded. “Good point.”

“No, it’s
not
a good point,” Lucius growled. “I—” He broke off. “Shit. It’s a good point.”

Triumph kicked through Jade, though buffered by nerves and a serious case of
what the hell are you thinking?
“Then it’s just me, Lucius, and a tricked-out Jeep. When do we leave?”

The fact that she hadn’t gone there should’ve been a relief. Instead, it was pissing him off. Admittedly, that put him straight in the inconsistent-asshole category, at least in his own mind. He shouldn’t want her to push him on their relationship when he had no intention of letting things go further than they already had. But still, it chapped him big-time that she seemed to have reached the same conclusion, to the point that he was down to monosyllabic growls by the time they passed the signs indicating they were inside the campus proper.

“We made good time,” she commented as he navigated them through light summer on-campus traffic, headed for the visitors’ lot closest to the art history building.

He more or less grunted in her direction.

She wore jeans and a cheerful yellow short-sleeved polo shirt that clung to the curves of her breasts and the dip of her waist. Open at the throat, it offered occasional glimpses of the hollow between her collarbones and the soft skin beneath, making him want to touch. And that ticked him off, which didn’t make any sense. They were bed buddies, right? He could look; he could even touch. He didn’t need to get all weird about it.

He turned into the lot and aimed the Jeep at a decent spot, parking legally because he didn’t want to draw attention from the campus security guards, who would have a collective cow if they found the lockbox in the back, which was loaded with weapons, jade-tipped ammo, jade-filled grenades, and a decent array of assorted techware, some of which wasn’t exactly legal for civilian use. He and Jade were both wearing semiautomatics inside their waistbands and small-caliber drop pieces in ankle holsters, which worked only because UT hadn’t yet installed metal detectors.

Figuring that they were as prepared as they were going to get, he keyed off the Jeep and got out. He hadn’t gone more than a step when the air hit him—dry and hot even under the funky sun, and smelling so damned familiar as it brought the sudden gut-punching realization that his pissy mood had nothing really to do with Jade.

He froze in place as memories unfolded around him.

From the moment he’d finally escaped his home-town and come to UT to stay, he’d rarely left campus. He’d found his place at the university, had finally felt like he’d fit somewhere. Granted, he hadn’t fit everywhere; he’d still been scrawny and geeky, obsessed with science fiction and adventure role-playing. But he’d found friends. And then, in taking Intro to Maya Studies, he’d found his passion. He’d worked his ass off so he could afford to stay through the summers rather than going home, where, when he did return for the odd holiday, he’d felt even weaker than before, felt himself backsliding into the victim he was damn tired of being. So he’d stayed at the university through four years of undergrad, then slid seamlessly into the grad program, with Anna as his adviser. And, for nearly a decade, he’d immersed himself in the university, in the pieces of it that accepted him as he was, rather than wanting him to be bigger and stronger, more charismatic.

Sure, he’d gone out into the field with Anna, sometimes with colleagues of hers, or even a few times as a team leader in his own right. But those trips had been part of his university life, allowing him to transplant a subset of his stuff, George Carlin-style. And because of that, it hadn’t felt as though he’d truly left UT . . . until the demon within him had driven him in search of the Nightkeepers. And oh, holy shit, it felt strange being back.

“How long has it been?” Jade asked softly.

She understood, he realized. She got it. Automatically, he reached for her hand, drew her to his side, and let their fingers twine together as he stared at the students walking from one place to the next, or lying sprawled in the weird sunlight. The faces might change from year to year, but everything else was the same. “Since last spring. Fifteen months or so.”

“A very busy fifteen months.”

“Except for the part where I was sitting on my ass in the in-between.” He tugged on their joined hands, giving himself the luxury of keeping that small connection between them, despite whether he deserved to. “Come on. Let’s go see what Anna wants.”

Lucius led her in the direction of the art history building. As he did so, a funky shiver crawled down the back of his neck, bringing a serious case of déjà vu. He didn’t think he’d ever before walked a date home from that particular parking lot, but he felt as though he’d played out this scene before, but with one major difference: He’d stopped being invisible. Back then he could’ve walked around the entire campus without getting hassled—which had been a welcome improvement over high school—but also without attracting much in the way of attention. He would’ve gotten a handful of waves and “hey”s from his few hangout buddies and a wider circle of nodding acquaintances, most of whom he would’ve met through one of the classes he TA’d. Some would’ve been girls. Most would’ve been guys. And the likelihood that he would’ve been walking beside a woman who looked anything like Jade would’ve been approximately a zillion to one.

Now, as they walked along, he got five times the nods and “hey”s he would’ve gotten before, and all from strangers. Women looked him in the eye, actually noticing him. And guys—even big ones with football-thick necks—sketched waves in his direction, gave way on the path, then turned to watch Jade’s rear view, glancing quickly away when they saw that he’d noticed. The unreality of it only increased when he finally saw someone he recognized—a friend of one of his former roommates—and the guy walked right past him with a nod, a hint of wariness, and zero recognition.

“Is it everything you thought it would be?” Jade murmured.

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It is . . . and it isn’t. I can’t pretend I haven’t thought about what it would be like to come back here, looking the way I do now. And yeah, that part is pretty cool. But at the same time, the campus itself is different. . . . Okay, it’s not, but
I
am.” He gestured around them. “This used to be my whole world. This and the ruins down south. Now . . .” He trailed off, not sure how to put it into words.

“Now the whole world
is
your world. And not just figuratively.”

He exhaled. “Yeah.” They walked a moment in silence. Then, as they hooked the last turn heading to the art history building, he said, “Back when I was growing up, I used to picture myself living the adventure, you know? I’d read Tolkein or Bujold or whatnot, and I’d imagine myself in the starring role.” He didn’t need a former therapist to point out that both authors had often focused on smaller, weaker protagonists who fought with their wits rather than their bodies. That was then; this was now. “I’d think about what I would do if it were my job to save the world, and, of course, I always got everything right, always picked the right battles, fought the right enemies. The harder I fought, the better I did. But now . . . I don’t know. I’m doing my best, and I’m still not getting where I need to be.”

“Maybe you need to relax and stop trying so hard,” she said cryptically. “Besides, to paraphrase Strike, our best is all the gods can ask us to do.”

“And if that’s not enough?”

“Mankind is fucked.”

Her bluntly profane answer startled a laugh out of him. “Such language from a harvester,” he chided. He stopped in his tracks, just short of the moat leading to the office that had once been the focus of his life. Tugging on their joined hands, he spun her into his arms. The sparse foot traffic eddied around them, and the strange orange sun slipped behind an ocher cloud, but he was hardly aware of those peripherals. His entire attention was focused on the woman in his arms, the lover he never could’ve imagined having when he’d been a part of the UT world.

Their bodies brushed, then pressed together as she slid her arms around his neck and leaned in, her eyes and mouth laughing, but darker shadows lingering beneath. Suddenly wishing he could take those shadows away, that he could make it all go away, he leaned in and kissed her, not a friendly feel-good kiss, or one of the oh-yes-there-more kisses of their lovemaking, but a carnal kiss, a full-on public display of possession.
Mine
, he thought, wanting to snarl it at the other men he sensed watching them, wanting to say it to her.
You’re mine
. He spread his hands on either side of her waist, his fingers touching the outline of the nine-millimeter hidden beneath her shirt. If anything, the contrast between soft woman and hard-edged weapon made his blood burn hotter, made him want to wrap himself around her and protect the hell out of her, despite whether she could handle herself as a fighter, a mage, or both. More, he wanted to hear the same things from her, wanted to hear her say she wanted more than he was giving.

Heat flared through him, coiling hard and greedy inside him. His blood buzzed in his veins; colors sparked behind his closed eyelids. He wanted—

He wanted the hot girlfriend he’d dreamed of having on campus, he realized suddenly, the heat and buzz dying in the wake of the realization that he mostly wanted Jade as his arm candy for the next hour or so, wanted to know that the other guys envied the hell out of him. And that had nothing to do with him and Jade, and everything to do with his own stunted-ass psyche and a need to prove that he wasn’t still a scrawny, too-tall praying mantis of a dork with a history of
Notting Hill
-like public protestations of love that ended in monstrous flameouts rather than happily-ever-after.

Gods, could he be a bigger asshole?

Jade just stood there watching him, her expression making him wonder just what she saw in his face, what she took away from it. After a moment, she smiled softly and said, “It’s this place. It changes our perceptions, I think. Skywatch seems very far away. So does 2012. But at the same time, they both seem very important.”

Which totally wasn’t what he’d been thinking. It was a relief to know she was oblivious to the fact that he’d almost just imploded the good stuff they had going on, solely from a dorky need to prove a point that nobody but him gave a flying crap about. “Yeah,” he said, exhaling. “And we need to keep moving.”

Taking her hand once again, he led her across the moat and into the art history building. The heavy layers of reinforced concrete closed around them, swallowing him up. And for a moment, he was kicked back into the past.

The first time he’d visited Anna’s office, a little less than a decade earlier, he’d been a sophomore, tall and skinny, and practically quivering in his Reeboks as he’d made the trek, clutching a folder that contained his sacrificial offering: three crumpled pieces of paper that he’d picked up a week earlier, when Professor Catori had first announced that she was looking for an undergrad intern to put in some hours with her group, and she was leaving applications outside her office. The pages asked about the applicant’s basic stats . . . and included a glyph translation for them to take a crack at, if they wanted to.

And holy shit, did he ever want to.

He had snagged one of the first sets; they were all gone now. He knew, because he’d come back to get a fresh set when his originals started looking too sad for words. Without a spare, he was going to have to turn in the set he had, even though the last page had a big- ass coffee stain on it from where he’d upended the morning dregs in the process of reaching for a pen.
Dumb ass
. He’d tried to wipe it off, but that had just made things worse. His only hope was that he’d gotten close enough with the translation that she would overlook the fact that he was an almost complete disaster in all other facets of life. He was dying to work with her, to be around her, and maybe get a chance to work with some of the artifacts she’d shown them on PowerPoint slides projected up at the front of the stadium-seating lecture hall.

Those pictures had been too far away. He wanted the real thing. And the more he Web- surfed, soaking up pictures of Mayan ruins and the artifacts that had come from them, the more he wanted to know everything there was to know about a civilization that should have seemed strange and foreign to his modern viewpoint, but instead made
sense
to him. He’d understood their religion as if he were being reminded of it rather than learning it fresh. Human sacrifice might not be part of modern life, but he got where they’d been coming from: They’d been trying to protect themselves against the downfall portended by the stars, and the prophecies that said great white gods would arrive from the east, bringing the end of life as the Maya had known it.
Hello, Cortes
.

And the more he learned, the more he wanted to know.

He wanted to touch the pieces of that past culture, wanted to absorb all the information he could find on them. And when he’d been working on the glyph string she’d handed out, looking up each image in the seminal dictionary put together by Montgomery in the fifties, when archaeologists and linguists had finally cracked the Maya code, he’d gotten a glimmer of something bigger than himself, a kick of excitement when he realized it wasn’t just a translation. . . . It was a puzzle. There wasn’t much standardization among the glyphs, which had been as much an art form as a language. A given word could be represented by a pictograph or a string of syllables making up the word, or sometimes both. Then the syllables themselves could be represented by many different glyphs, or the same glyphs could look entirely different, depending on the artist who’d rendered them. That very fact had slowed his shit down when he’d gotten to the translation. He still wasn’t sure if the third glyph was a hook-nosed god’s face with suns where its eyes should be, or a really whacked version of a jaguar’s head, but he’d gotten up against deadline day and had to go with what he had.