Nightkeepers (37 page)

She waved to the barbecuers. ‘‘Did it occur to you to ask why the
winikin
are cooking while the Nightkeepers screw around?’’

‘‘Because—’’ He stopped himself.

‘‘Right. Because they’re
winikin
. Am I the only one here who has a problem with that?’’

He cut her a frustrated look. ‘‘This is a monarchy, not a commune, and the hierarchy exists for a reason. The Nightkeepers need to conserve their energy for the magic. For fighting.’’

‘‘But there’s not much magic going on at the moment, and even less fighting.’’

‘‘Don’t start,’’ he warned. He gestured to the field, where the football game was more a mess of arms and legs than a coordinated strategy. ‘‘Do they look like they’re ready to fight?’’

‘‘And whose fault is that?’’ she demanded. ‘‘If this is a monarchy, then the king’s son needs to give some serious thought to stepping up and taking over rather than hiding in the library.’’

‘‘I—’’ He broke off, practically choking on a quick flash of rage. He wanted to grab her, shake her, shout at her. Who did she think she was, talking to him like that, making it sound like he was shirking his duty, when all he’d ever
been
was duty? Every decision he’d made since the summer solstice had been for the Nightkeepers, for mankind, though he’d get no thanks from that corner. Humans were—and had always been—narrow and self-absorbed, too caught up in their small little lives to see—

Whoa.
Strike reined himself in, fighting back the anger as best he could. His body hummed with rage, with bloodlust and deep disillusionment. He wanted to run and howl, wanted to fly, though that wasn’t one of his talents. He wanted to take Leah, to possess her, absorb her very being into himself until he was complete.

And none of those were his emotions, he realized with a start. They were coming from a hard, hot place at the back of his skull, along with a pounding pressure that felt like hate. Like darkness.

Holy shit, what was going on with him?

‘‘In order to fight,’’ Leah continued, unaware of his inner turmoil, ‘‘they’re going to need to feel like a unified force. And every team needs a leader. Trust me, cops are about as independent a bunch as you’ll find, but we need to know there’s someone calling the shots. The trainees need that from you. The
winikin
keep telling them that you’re in charge, that the king has the final say, but they barely know you. You’ve left the training to Jox and Red-Boar, and you spend practically all your time in the archive. How can you possibly run this show if you don’t know the strengths and weaknesses of your people?’’

They were standing outside, yet he felt as though walls were closing in around him, suffocating him until he could barely breathe. The darkness rose up, threatening to swamp him, to take him over and leave nothing but rage and frustration.

Part of him feared it was
makol
magic that had somehow slipped through the wards surrounding the compound. But it didn’t feel like evil; it felt like anger, like the need for freedom.

And it was that last piece of the emotions, that need to escape, that made him think it wasn’t coming from an outside source at all. It was inside him—his anger, his frustration . . . and his desire to run away.

The question had dogged him for weeks now. What sort of a king could he possibly make when he didn’t really want to be king at all?

‘‘Grub’s on!’’ Jox called, his voice tinny with distance, providing a much-needed distraction.

The football game broke up and the trainees headed for the tables, pushing and shoving one another, and cursing good-naturedly about the game as they loaded their plates and grabbed drinks from a couple of coolers nearby. Strike saw a few curious glances shot his way, but nobody shouted for him to hurry his ass up so they could eat.

Instead, they started without him, which proved Leah’s point. While he’d been wrestling with his own demons, he’d lost track of what the others needed. Not only was he not their leader, he wasn’t even part of their gang.

‘‘Damn,’’ he said, which seemed to sum things up.

She took his hand and tugged him toward the barbecue. ‘‘It’s fixable.’’

Is it?
he thought, but didn’t say. Instead, he allowed himself to be led to the small barbecue, where he made a concerted effort to engage with the other magi, putting faces and impressions to Jox’s and Red-Boar’s reports, and trying to channel what he remembered of his father’s public persona, which was all he knew of how a king should act.

But as the night wore on and beer and wine flowed, and Jox even broke out the potent ceremonial
pulque
— one shot each, no more—and everyone else relaxed, Strike grew increasingly tense while he fought the red haze that threatened to coat his mind with anger, hatred, and vicious sexual frustration. A single thought kept pounding through his skull, chasing itself around in endless circles.

How in the hell was he supposed to lead the Nightkeepers when he couldn’t even manage what was inside his own head?

As dinner and dessert wound down, Leah got more and more keyed up.

She’d gone into alligator-infested waters after bodies the gators considered theirs. She’d faced down gang-bangers. She’d been shot in the leg and kept up the foot chase. Hell, she’d escaped being a human sacrifice in an ancient Mayan temple. There was no reason for her to be nervous about what she had planned next.

Or so she kept telling herself. But she was getting a seriously weird vibe off Strike, one that had her thinking she should’ve waited on the second part of her scheme, the one Jox didn’t even know about. Problem was, they didn’t have the time to wait. A barbecue would get them only so far. They needed an identity, something to rally behind. Something that was theirs alone to protect.

So she stood up and cleared her throat, and waited until she had everyone’s attention. Feeling like a total freak-show fraud to be telling a bunch of magicians how they should run their own universe, she said only, ‘‘I’d appreciate it if you’d all come out to the front of the house. I have something for you.’’

For a few seconds nobody moved. Then Strike nodded and rose. ‘‘Lead on.’’

His words were neutral, even encouraging, but his expression was closed and cool, like he thought she’d already done enough damage for one night. And maybe she had . . . but she’d never known how to quit while she was ahead. Why start now?

So she led the way around the side of the mansion, conscious of Strike’s lethal warrior’s grace right behind her, the others following behind him, including the
winikin
, and even the sleepy-eyed twins, who tagged on either side of Rabbit, babbling in incomprehensible twinspeak.

She stopped by the front door of the mansion, where she’d hung the polished brass plaque earlier in the day, still covered in brown paper wrapping.

Sucking in a deep breath to settle her nerves—like that was going to happen—Leah said, ‘‘Some of you don’t think I belong here, that having me here breaks tradition.’’ She looked at Jox and Red-Boar, standing off to one side of the main crowd, and could all but hear them thinking,
Yeah, so?
‘‘And maybe you’re right. I don’t have the same magic that you do, I wasn’t raised in your culture, and I’m not related by blood. But I am a trained cop, and a good one. I can shoot. I can fight. And I know, for better or worse, how to manipulate people.’’ That got her a few shuffles, and even some frowns. She held up a hand. ‘‘I’m giving you honesty here. And honestly, what I see is a bunch of strangers with similar goals. You’re not a unit yet. You’re not the team you’re going to need to be in order to fight whatever’s coming through at the equinox.’’

She deliberately used ‘‘you’’ rather than ‘‘us’’ because she wanted them pulling together, and if uniting against her was what brought them into alignment, then so be it.

‘‘What do you suggest?’’ Strike asked, but she got the idea he was playing along so the others would think she had his support, not because she actually did.

‘‘Team Building 201,’’ Leah answered. ‘‘You need a name. Not you as a people, or your bloodlines,’’ she said quickly when the dirty looks started. ‘‘For this place.’’ Her gesture encompassed the mansion, the training compound, and the wide box canyon lost in the darkness. ‘‘For your home.’’

‘‘This isn’t—’’ Jox began, then broke off.

‘‘It wasn’t your home before,’’ she agreed. ‘‘It was a place where you gathered for feasts and training.’’ Personally, she thought it should’ve had a name back then, regardless. ‘‘But wake up. It’s a new day, and things are going to need to change. Starting now. So I’m giving this place a name.’’

Without further ceremony, she ripped the paper free, baring the intricately engraved plaque.

There was a collective indrawn breath, and in the moment of silence that followed, one of the twins laughed, the sound rising into the night high and sweet and pure.

Finally, unable to stand it one second longer, Leah turned to Strike, who’d frozen and gone pale. ‘‘What do you think?’’

I think you humble me
, Strike thought, but he couldn’t get the words out. So he took her hand and held it while he stood and stared at the name she’d given the Night-keepers’ home.

SKYWATCH.

It was engraved in big letters above a line drawing of a ceiba tree, with three Mayan words inscribed below, the letters formed from the tree’s spreading root system.

Skywatch. It clicked. It was right. The sky was the realm of the gods they served, the gods who’d charged them with watching over the barrier. More,
waatch
was the Mayan word for ‘‘soldier,’’ though she might not have known that. Or maybe she did, he thought, looking at the words carved below the tree of life.

She’d not only given them a name; she’d given them a motto. A coat of arms. A battle cry in modern Quiche Mayan.
Waquqik
—to fight.
Cajij
—to protect. And—

He frowned. ‘‘What’s
kuyubal-mak
?’’

‘‘It means ‘to forgive,’ ’’ Jox said, his voice rough. ‘‘But there’s nothing to forgive.’’

‘‘I think there is,’’ Leah countered. ‘‘If there weren’t, you would’ve pressured him to take charge long before this. You would’ve dragged him out of the pool house and locked him in the royal suite, and you sure as hell wouldn’t have let him hide out in the library for the past two months. You would’ve forced him to take the crown— or whatever it is that your king wears. But neither you nor Red-Boar did any of those things. Thus, I have to assume there’s a reason.’’ Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘‘I’m thinking it’s because, deep down inside, you’re not sure you want him to be king.’’

Strike didn’t know which was worse—that she’d said it, or that there was dead silence in the aftermath.

Finally, Jox said, ‘‘You presume too much, Detective. You don’t know us, and you sure as hell don’t know Strike.’’

‘‘I think I do.’’ Her eyes met Strike’s. ‘‘And I don’t think he wants to be king. If he did, he’d be arguing with me right now.’’ She closed the distance between them, said softly. ‘‘I think you’re afraid you’ll make the same mistakes your father did. And I think you’re figuring that if you don’t become king you’ll nullify the thirteenth prophecy. No king, no greatest sacrifice.’’

Strike told himself the rage wasn’t him, the hatred wasn’t him. But that was all he could see or feel, all he could be just then. A scream built in his soul, and he felt the darkness closing in on him. Suffocating him. He tried to find words to tell her—to tell any of them—what was going on, but he was afraid that if he opened his mouth something terrible would come out, something vicious and violent.

So he didn’t say anything. He just closed his eyes and imagined being someplace else, someplace alone. He was so revved on anger, on power, that he zapped blind before he’d intended to, the world dissolving around him before he’d envisioned the travel thread or picked a destination.

Then the universe jolted sideways, the floor fell out from beneath him, and he dropped with a yell.

He fell too long, and hit bottom too hard, but the spongy surface yielded beneath him, cushioning the impact. He felt the feathery touch of mist on his face, and knew where he was even before he opened his eyes and saw a world of gray-green.

He’d zapped himself into the frigging barrier. And the anger—oh, the anger rose up, gripping him, tearing into him. He arched and screamed with the rage, with the bloodlust and mad hatred that came from outside him, from within him, until he wasn’t sure where he left off and the craziness began.

Gods.
His mouth drew back in a rictus, his eyes rolled wildly, and his heart stuttered in his chest. Darkness blurred the edges of his vision, and he was pretty sure he was dying. Panic closed in.

He was barely conscious of the mist swirling nearby, thickening and taking on the shape of a stick-thin Nightkeeper with obsidian eyes and a ruby stud in one ear. The
nahwal
.

‘‘Father!’’ he shouted, though he wasn’t sure if he said the word aloud or only thought it in the small corner of his mind that was still his to control.

‘‘It is time,’’ the
nahwal
said in its voice-of-many-voices. It leaned down and gripped Strike’s wrist, and its touch burned like flame and acid, the worst pain he’d ever known.

He threw back his head and screamed.

The gray-green mist disappeared.

And he was home, reappearing exactly where he’d left from, standing in front of the main door, staring at the sign that said, SKYWATCH: TO FIGHT, TO PROTECT, TO FORGIVE.

The others were gone. The anger was gone, too, leaving him hollow and drained. He only had the strength left to whisper, ‘‘Forgive me, Father.’’

Then he collapsed on the welcome mat and passed the hell out.

After Strike pulled his disappearing act, leaving Leah standing there looking like a complete idiot, she held it together until she reached her rooms. His rooms. Whatever.