Skykeepers (53 page)

“This,” she said firmly, “is war. It’s justice.” She took his hand, lifted his wrist, and pressed her lips to his marks. “Neither of us is perfect. Together, though, we balance each other out. And even if we didn’t, I’d still want to be with you.”

“Despite what I am.”

“Because of
who
you are,” she countered. “Now. Let’s finish this.”

His eyes went past her. Flattened. “Shit.”

Sasha turned, her warrior’s instincts firing a second too late. Not because of an attack, but because of what the lack of attack meant. Iago, badly battered by the
makol
, sagged against the larger throne, losing blood fast. But he was still alive, having survived the edges of the close-range
muk
blast by virtue of his healing powers . . . and the
makol
bond. His color was wrong, his eyes disoriented . . . but they flicked to luminous green and back again. When they went green, his face became more angular and power seemed to glow in a halo around him, as the emperor Moctezuma fought to come through to the earth.

As his eyes settled green, ’port magic rattled in the air.

“Stop him!” Sasha cried.

Roaring, Michael lunged for Iago. The Xibalban disappeared with a pop of displaced air, leaving Michael to slam into the throne, then pound it with a fist. “Gods
damn
it!”

Sasha reeled as near-prescience gripped her. Moctezuma had come to earth. And he’d possessed the strongest of the Xibalban magi, leaving the Nightkeepers with . . . what? They had nothing, and the solstice threatened to pass without their gaining the one thing they needed most: the Prophet.

At the thought, she moved around the throne, in search of their former ally . . . who might just manage to become an ally once again. “Lucius?” she called, cursing softly when she saw his feet stretched out behind one of the planters, blood splashed on the stones. Then she rounded the planter. And cursed aloud. “Michael! Come quick.”

He came around the corner, his only reaction a hitch in his stride when he saw what Iago had done to the
makol
. Lucius’s head had been all but severed from his body, and his heart hung out of his chest cavity by a thread. His eyes were closed, but his chest still moved in a gruesome, bubbling parody of life, held by the
makol
’s healing magic.

Sasha dropped down beside him, heedless of the blood that soaked through her pants. “He’s alive. Sort of.” She felt the
makol
’s dark magic fluctuate, heard Lucius’s song cut in and out. “Iago must have said the spell. He didn’t get the head and heart all the way, though.” But the
makol
wasn’t healing; he was merely existing, his eyes flicking from hazel to green and back again.

Sasha met Michael’s eyes over the laboring near-corpse. Feeling the hard practicality of the warrior she had become, she said, “Get the library scroll. Let’s not waste the sacrifice.”

“Are you sure? He’s not a magic user.”

She grinned fiercely up at him. “Maybe not. But the
makol
is.”

Michael’s expression went blank, then fired with excitement as he went for the scroll, snagging it off the floor, where it had fallen during the melee. “
Fuck
. I can’t read it. You?”

She glanced at the glyphs, but she shook her head. “That’s beyond what Ambrose taught me. And we can’t risk my screwing it up.” She looked toward the rubble-filled tunnel. “We have to get the others in here.”

Michael’s eyes flashed acknowledgment, but he turned up a hand in question. “Can you get the ’port image to Strike through the bloodline link?”

“Not clearly enough.” She shook her head. “Maybe Rabbit . . .” He’d sent her his cry for help from the pueblo, using the connection they’d forged when he’d been inside her mind. But when she searched inwardly for a hint of that connection she found nothing. “I think it only goes one way. How about shield magic? Could you use it to clear the tunnel somehow?”

Eyes dark with frustration, he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Damn it.”

“Break the mountain,” said a faint whisper.

For a second, she thought the words were inside her head. Then she realized they’d come from behind her. She looked down to find Lucius conscious, squinting up at her. The flesh at his throat had knitted somewhat. His abdominal cavity gaped open, but as she watched, his heart drew back into place slowly, looking sad and misshapen. Yet his eyes were fixed on her, gone hazel, though he shuddered with the effort of keeping them that way. The entire effect was macabre in the extreme.

“This is Paxil Mountain,” he whispered. “Break it.” His eyes stopped flickering, started to dull.

Michael’s and Sasha’s eyes went to the planters set on either side of the thrones. Maize and cacao. Was it possible?

“The gods split Paxil Mountain to release the seeds to mankind,” she said. “But we’re not gods.”

“Maybe not.” Michael took her hand, twining their fingers together. “But we’re what’s left.” He lifted her hand. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “And I’m not through fighting. Not for you, and not for justice.”

Sasha’s power kicked at his words, at the quiet certainty in them. She felt the
muk
resonating from him, reaching into her. For the first time, she didn’t push the sensation away, but rather welcomed it, welcomed him. Aware of the solstice magic raging around them, within them, she turned to face him. “I can’t do this alone. Iago said we could create incredible power together.”

“We do,” Michael said softly. “We can.” He paused, and his voice roughened. “You’ve been everything I need and want, even when I was too caught up in myself to realize it.”

Her heart shuddered and went still in her chest. She saw the truth in his eyes, felt it in his touch and his energy. And for the first time, she wasn’t looking at Michael, or the Other, or the Mictlan. She saw all of them in him, saw them as a single man, the united whole she’d fallen for. The real Michael didn’t come from an absence of darkness, she realized with sudden paralytic comprehension. He came from balance. He was a chameleon himself, shifting among aspects of himself and his magic, but the core remained. The man remained.

“I kept telling myself you weren’t real, that you were a fantasy straight out of one of Ambrose’s stories. Which you are. But you’re also real.”

He leaned down and she reached up, in that stilled moment of time, and she heard her own music, heard his, then heard the two twine together, backbeat and chords blending to form a fully realized song. And, as the solstice slid to its peak, their magics combined,
muk
to
ch’ul
.

And the world around them started to shake.

Magic poured through Michael, piercing every aspect of him: light and dark, love and revenge, murder and justice. The coming of the three-year countdown fired through him, smashing his hard-won barriers to dust and opening him to all of his dissociated pieces at once. But where before that had been one of his greatest fears—the loss of control, the loss of himself—now he gave himself up to it.

He was the Other, with all the monster’s trained strategy, killer instinct, and love of the hunt. He was Michael, brave enough to take any hand-to-hand challenge, yet coward enough to turn away from emotional pain. He was the Nightkeeper, with a mage’s fighting drive and determination to make things right; he was the human he’d been raised as, not sure it was possible to make things right. He was the mate who’d wanted Sasha too much to heed the warnings, the lover who hadn’t known what to do with her when he got her. And over it all, as the
muk
flowed through him, became him, he was the Mictlan, the wielder of an ancient magic that blended both dark and light, making a whole that was so much stronger than its parts.

Instead of fragmenting him further, the magic made him complete. His
muk
powers and Sasha’s
ch’ul
magic combined in a flare of light and dark, not canceling each other out or combusting at all, but rather complementing each other, creating a balance out of the imbalance that had plagued him for so long. His human and mage aspects blended with each other, with the killer, and he became the Mictlan. The man he was supposed to have been all along, anchored by the love of the woman he’d fought for, almost too late.

Power flowed from him to her and back again, forming a feedback loop that turned the
muk
from greasy gray to pure silver, like liquid mercury running in his veins.

Aware of the trembling roar that had built around them—not volcanic, but akin to it—he changed the angle of the kiss, deepening it and sending both of them into the sex magic that had bound them from the first. He was the Mictlan and the lover. She was the
ch’ulel
and the hot warrior princess who, incredibly, loved him.

He was aware of movement curling around them as the plants grew taller and broader, seeking the walls of the chamber. The air moistened and warmed, and, incredibly, a bright light kindled above them, warming them as though the sun shone inside. He smelled green, leafy things, and felt the ground soften beneath him.

The kiss spun on, bringing heat and magic, the energies coiling together as he and Sasha embraced. Hotter and hotter it whirled, coiling into a knot of energy that gained its own momentum, started moving faster and faster, spinning up to a peak. They broke the kiss and looked at each other; he saw love in her eyes, and the forgiveness he’d sought without knowing he was seeking it.

“I love you,” he said simply.

“And I you.”

Triggered by the affirmation, the energy crested and broke, climaxing away from them in a tidal wave of pleasure and pressure, of life and growth and mad, pure power. The maize and cacao, grown to epic proportions, strained at the cavern, thrusting outward, seeking the sky.

A horrendous rending crack split the air, and the mountain shuddered and began to tear. Rocks rained down from above, but were caught by twining leaves and vines, a cushioning bower that protected Sasha and Michael and the dying man who would soon be their sacrificial victim. The plants shuddered with power, the volcano with protest.

The magic crested and ebbed as Michael and Sasha clung to each other, hearts pounding in unison. When the power cleared and settled, when everything settled, there was a huge, gaping crack in the side of Paxil Mountain, lined with a carpet of leafy greenery he suspected would prove to be maize and cacao, growing from the split out into the world.

The night beyond was dark, the air moist with highland vapor. Within moments, though, the night gave way to the warm glow of a rainbow fireball held by a blond Valkyrie, who sat astride a giant hawk.

Within minutes, Anna stood over her onetime friend, onetime student, onetime slave. Tears ran down her cheeks as she read from the Prophet’s scroll.

Sasha sat at his head, keeping Lucius alive as best she could. Jade sat on one side of him, holding his hand, deadly pale, her eyes intent on the rise and fall of his chest, which had closed over, but just barely. She gripped Michael’s hand, not just for the power, but for support, and because part of her wasn’t yet ready to believe that they’d finally found their way to each other. But even she couldn’t have imagined something like what had just happened—they’d broken a
mountain
together.

More, he loved her. And she loved him. That wasn’t a story or a dream; it was real. And even though his status as the Mictlan meant he could never form the
jun tan
with her, she knew they had their own form of commitment, one to the other. They were bound, even without the words or the symbols. And surprisingly, she didn’t need more than that. She simply needed
him
.

Anna broke off reading the spell, looking down at Lucius with deep concern. “We’re losing both of them.”

Sasha couldn’t argue that; she could feel it in the
ch’ul
connection, the faintness of his song. “I’m giving him all I can pull through the blood-link.” But then she remembered what Jox had said once when they’d been discussing her talent over seedlings and cow manure: that the
ch’ulel
power might not work best through blood. That sometimes talents were sparked by love. “I think,” she began, not sure how to say it, “I think we need to go deeper than the blood-magic in order to conquer death.” It wasn’t until she’d said the words that she realized she was smack in the middle of her own prophecy. She faltered, felt Michael’s grip tighten, and steadied herself. “I need you all to open yourself to love, or at least respect, for Lucius. Forgiveness. He needs . . . we need to not just heal him, but give him a reason to stay.”

Strike’s expression clouded, but at pleading looks from Anna and Jade, he nodded reluctantly. “Whatever he needs, we’ll do. He’s part of this war now. One of us.”

The words held the power of a vow, rippling away from the small group in a wash of magic.

The magi linked palm-to-palm, not in blood but in support. With each member added to the circle, Sasha felt an added kick of power, a notch of life pouring through her. Or not life, she realized now. Love. Acceptance.

As they linked themselves, not with blood but with the bonds of friends, lovers, and teammates, the solstice peak began to fade, the window of opportunity to close.

“Work fast,” Michael added under his breath.

Anna once again began to read from the librarian’s scroll.

Sasha fed the life energy toward Lucius’s song, opening herself to the stranger who’d saved her before she’d even known his name, marking her palm and helping her defeat Iago’s drugs so she’d be ready to run when the time came.
I owe you one
.

Still, though, it wasn’t enough. The connection fluctuated. Faded. “Rabbit. I need you to go into his mind and see if you can find him.”

The teen started in surprise, but then nodded, lips firming. “I’ll need to cut—”

“No. No blood. Love him. Or if you can’t do that, at least respect him for what he’s fought against. Anchor him here, so the
makol
goes but he doesn’t.”