Skykeepers (27 page)

Magic prickled across her skin, warning her that they weren’t just dogs. But what the hell were they?

Whatever they were, they were closing in on her, one from each side.
Don’t turn your back on them
, she told herself.
Don’t panic; don’t run
. But her heart hammered in her chest and adrenaline surged through her veins, making her want to flee and hide, to fight, to do anything other than stand her ground.

Then the branches and shadows moved again and a humanoid figure stepped out into the orange-dappled sunlight. As Sasha focused on the newcomer, her heart shuddered in her chest and a low moan escaped from her throat as she saw the creature Red-Boar had called the mad
nahwal
. . . and recognized it. The desiccated skin was that of a
nahwal
, but the creature wore bush clothing and a long gray ponytail tied back with a worn leather thong. And on its forearm was a wide, gnarled scar.

“Ambrose?” she said, her voice cracking to a whisper.

His path led him elsewhere
, the jaguar king had said, and now she understood. He’d stayed in the place of his death, waiting. But for what?

She didn’t know if he was a ghost or a man, or something in between, stuck in the process of merging with the
nahwal
of his own bloodline. His eyes weren’t the flat matte black of a true
nahwal
. . . but as he advanced on her, she saw that they weren’t normal, either—they were glazed over with the look she’d seen only once or twice, when Ambrose had been in the throes of the worst and most violent of his psychotic episodes, when he’d grown violent and mean, and Pim and Sasha had gone to a hotel for a couple of days until he returned to himself.

Only Sasha didn’t see any hope of return in his eyes now. She saw only the madness, as though his death, and whatever had happened to freeze him in this halfway state, had stripped him of his better parts, leaving the insanity in control.

“Oh, Ambrose,” she breathed, fear and sorrow flaring to life within her even as she took a step back, away from the advancing demi-
nahwal
and his snarling black familiars.

There was no recognition in his face. He just kept coming in slow, measured treads as Sasha retreated, eventually backing into a tree. She pressed against it, pulse hammering with guilt as she thought that she’d brought him to this. Because she hadn’t believed.
Gods.

“Ambrose,” she said, forcing the word from between dry lips. “It’s me, Sasha. Your princess.” That was what he had called her in his good moments. His princess. She’d never before thought it’d been anything but a nickname. “I need to talk to you about the library. I need you to tell me where you hid the scroll.”

He hesitated, and for a second she thought she saw the man she’d known in the eyes of the creature that faced her. Then that blink was gone and the demi-
nahwal
lunged at her, reached for her with fingers gone to claws, its mouth splitting in a multitonal scream of mad rage, baring pointed fangs.

“No!” Panic slashed through her and she broke. Spinning, she bolted, breath locking in her lungs as she ran for her life. Moments later, the snarling familiars lunged in pursuit.

Michael cursed and flailed against the wind and the darkness that gripped him, holding him suspended in the middle of nothingness. He twisted against the invisible force, howling with rage, with the need to get to Sasha, to protect her. As she’d been sucked into the mist he’d followed her and grabbed on tight, refusing to let go, but it hadn’t mattered. She’d been yanked away from his grip, and he’d wound up someplace black and empty, a space without light, without time.

“Sasha!” he shouted into the nothingness, and got no echoes in return.

Magic swirled around him, harder and hotter than it should have been. He grabbed onto it, threw himself into it, only then realizing that the power glinted silver in the blackness; the sluice gates had cracked and the Other was nearly loose within him, brought to the fore by the combined magic of the Nightkeepers and the lure of the blood-link with Sasha.

“No,” he grated. “Get back, damn it. She’s not yours!”

She’s not yours either
, the Other said in the deadly inner tones he hadn’t heard in a long time.
She’s ours
.

In an instant, Michael was plunged into a vision, into a memory that wasn’t his own.

“No!” Michael shouted, fighting the darkness, fighting the end of himself. Instinctively, not sure who he was, which part of himself, he tipped back his head and shouted, “
Pasaj och!
”

He was already jacked in, but now another layer of magic slammed into him, around him. The world exploded around him, detonating with Nightkeeper magic, forcing the Other out of his consciousness, out of his head. He leaned on the red-gold magic, opened himself to it, choosing life over death. This time, at least.

“Gods help us,” he yelled into the darkness. “She needs me!”

The world exploded around him again, and he blinked out of the darkness and into the light. Back on earth, or a vision version of it. He materialized within the glare of the reddish orange sun, surrounded by thin white clouds. The earth was green below him. Very far below him. The canopy of a rain forest was broken here and there by the tops of pyramid ruins.

Oh, shit
, he thought as panic spiked. He’d blinked in way too fucking high.

For a split second, he hovered. Then, howling, he fell. Air whipped past him as he tumbled, spinning, cursing up a storm, like that was going to help a godsdamned thing. Air screamed in his ears and the ground lunged up to meet him at an impossible speed. He was going to die, he realized with fatalistic certainty. That was what the Other’s vision had been trying to tell him. It hadn’t been a threat. It’d been a warning.

He couldn’t fly, couldn’t ’port, couldn’t do godsdamned anything but shield, and—

Shit
, he realized.
That’s it! A shield
. Almost too late, fighting the wall of air that pushed against him at terminal velocity, he contorted and yanked his knife from his ankle sheath. Slashing both palms, he called up the red-gold Nightkeeper magic and threw the strongest, most yielding shield he could manage, casting it in a sphere around his body.

Leaves and branches slashed as he plummeted through the canopy. Monkeys screamed and dove for cover; parrots burst from their perches in a fury of red and blue feathers. As Michael caught sight of the shade-dappled ground, he cast a second shield, one that pressed into the ground, giving as he approached, slowing his velocity. He hit hard, caroming around the inner sphere as it slammed into the earth and dug a hell of a crater, meteorlike.

Pain thundered through him, and his head spun from the impact, but he didn’t have time to be hurt. The moment he was down, he heard a woman’s scream.
Sasha!

He dropped the shield magic and tumbled out of its embrace. The warm, moist rain forest air smelled of blood and rattled with dark magic. He could feel it in his skull, in his chest, and suddenly found himself fighting the mad lure of hellmagic, and the strength it threatened to offer the Other.

“Sasha!” He lunged into the forest, chasing the sounds of a struggle.

He broke into a clearing, saw her on the ground, pinned beneath two black, furry beasts that looked like dogs but had too-smart eyes and bared their teeth when they saw him.

Michael didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Me!” he yelled. “Fight me, damn it!”

He heard a roar from behind him, spun to meet the new attack, and gaped for a second at the sight of a
nahwal
on earth, nearly seven feet tall, with claws and fangs and bright, mad eyes. It went for him. Roaring, he ducked under the attack, then straightened up, inside the
nahwal
’s guard. He reversed his knife and jabbed the hilt into the creature’s throat in a vicious blow that sent it reeling back, gagging, as a human would have done under the same attack.

Sasha screamed, “Michael!”

Michael spun as one of the black dogs leaped upon him, jaws snapping too close to his face. Jamming a knee into the beast’s groin, he held it off long enough to get his knife up and into it. Blood gushed over his hand, hot and iron-scented. An unearthly howl split the air, and the dog disappeared.
Poof
, gone.
Magic
.

Lunging to his feet, Michael grabbed the second creature away from Sasha, cutting its throat in an automatic swipe. It went down in a spurt of blood. Seconds later it vanished.

Breathing hard, with battle rage running hot under protective instincts more intense than any he’d ever felt, he rounded on the
nahwal
, which had recovered from its throat jab and now bared its teeth, hissing. “Are you going to die as easily as your mutts?” Michael demanded

“No!” Sasha grabbed Michael’s arm and tugged him back. “Don’t kill it.”

Thinking he recognized the scene, the creature, he tried to shake her off. “If I can kill it here, in spirit form, it’ll be gone from the outside world, and we’ll be able to get into the temple without it bothering us.”

“You can’t kill him,” she said. “It’s Ambrose.”

Ambrose?
He stared at the creature. The flinch nearly cost him.

As if in response to its name, the
nahwal
screeched and charged Sasha with murder and madness in its eyes. Reacting instinctively, Michael yanked Sasha against him in a hard, possessive hug and threw up a thick protective shield around them both.

The
nahwal
bounced off. Screaming in frustration, it clawed at the shield, trying to gouge its way through.

Inside the protective bubble, Sasha threw her arms around Michael, shaking hard. He hugged her back with equal intensity as relief crashed through him. He’d gotten to her in time.

They clung together for a few seconds, while the
nahwal
howled and fought the shield. Then Sasha pulled away. “I tried the ‘
way
’ spell. It didn’t work for me.”

“Shit.” That was not good news. Michael could feel the silver magic poised at the edges of his mind, but he shied away from its power. What if in using it to get Sasha and him home, she wound up tainted by the darkness too? He couldn’t risk it.

“We need more of a power draw to get out of here, right?” She met his eyes, her lips turning up at the corners, but her expression remained wary.

He got it. More, it was so obvious that he wondered why his thoughts had gone straight to the silver magic. Or rather, he knew why and didn’t want to accept it. “Power, it is,” he said, shifting her in his arms, blocking the Other as hard as he possibly could these days, as he leaned down. And kissed her.

Sex magic sparked around them, reassuringly red-gold, though not nearly as powerful as the silver
muk
. It would be enough, though. They would make it be enough.

Her arms came up and around his neck as she leaned up on her toes up to press her body into his. He slid his hands down her sides, catching her around the waist, holding her close as he’d imagined doing so many nights since they’d been together. Her mouth opened beneath his; their tongues touched. Desire flared, hot and hard, but with an edge of tenderness that was theirs alone as they kissed and kissed again. But even as he kissed her and called the red-gold Nightkeeper magic, he was aware that the Other was there as well, called by Sasha, empowered by her.

She’s ours
, his alter ego had said, and that had definitely been a threat.

I won’t let you have her
, Michael thought fiercely.
I won’t
. He reached for the red-gold magic, hoped to hell it would be enough. Ending the kiss, he pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, “
Way
.” Home.

And the world disappeared, leaving the howl of the mad
nahwal
to trail off into a silence broken, deep down inside Michael, by the Other’s raspy whisper.
Don’t make promises you aren’t man enough to keep
.

Sasha clung to Michael as the world went gray-green and swept them up into the barrier on a mad whirl. They were torn apart, but she barely had time to shout his name before her soul slammed back into her body and the world took shape around her, becoming the sacred chamber back at Skywatch.

Thank the gods.
They’d made it back.

Moaning, she cracked her eyes open and tried to regain feeling in her stiff body, which was all but frozen cross-legged. Expecting to see everything the same as it had been when the ritual began, it took her a moment to realize that wasn’t the case. She was holding Michael’s hand on one side, but they were the only two magi still sitting in the ceremonial circle. Most of the others had left the chamber. Strike remained, though; he stood just inside the door with Jox at his side.

They were staring at her.

Sasha didn’t know what to think about that, what to think about any of it. Her head was spinning and she was ravenous. She was also stirred up, heated by Michael’s kiss, and her head was full of the things that had happened inside the barrier. Ambrose was haunting the temple; it made sense, it fit. But at the same time it didn’t. She now remembered hearing him whisper, “Have faith” to her as Iago had taken her away. But if he’d been there, why hadn’t he saved her? Had he
wanted
the Xibalbans to have her? Why—