Spellfire (4 page)

And right now, there was no fucking way he could use the stones without his own link to the dark magic.

But he had to follow her. Had to find a way.

Tightening his grip on his makeshift weapon, he advanced on the stones as a cloud covered the sun, throwing him back into the shadows. The temp dropped and the palm fronds rattled in a sudden downdraft, sounding like giant wings and making the back of his neck crawl, just like—

“Shit!”
Rabbit flung himself to the ground and rolled.

A huge
camazotz
hit right where he’d been, with its wings and claws outstretched and its tail scything the air. The creature wore a stone yoke tied around its hips, which didn’t just make the demon damn tough to banish; it signified that it was a ’
zotz
leader. Bigger and meaner than the soldiers, they were tough as shit to kill . . . and they rarely traveled alone.

Sure enough, as Rabbit ducked a tail-swipe and missed a grab for the barbed end, the sky went dark, clouding over with more huge
camazotz
, dozens of the fuckers, all zeroing in on their leader.

Grim reality broke over him. He was screwed, finished. He couldn’t get to the stones, couldn’t get back to the cave, couldn’t do a godsdamned thing except bare his teeth at the hoard, brandish his puny-assed knife and shout, “Come on, motherfuckers. You want a piece of me? Come and fucking take it!”

“Rabbit, get
down
!”

The sound of Dez’s voice froze his brain, but his body obeyed the king’s order, pancaking him face-first in the sand. Then the ice cracked and his mind raced. That hadn’t just happened, couldn’t have happened, he hadn’t heard—

A salvo of fireballs blasted right over him, crackling red-gold and burning like fury and proving that the impossible was real. The Nightkeepers had found him, they had come for him.

The fireballs hit the ’
zotz
line and detonated. Flames roared, and the demons shrieked as Rabbit lifted his head and squinted through watering, disbelieving eyes at the carnage. And carnage it was—a dozen of the enemy were down and smoking, including the leader. But the sky was still dark, the air still full of the leather-boom of wings and the screams of incoming demons.

He wasn’t alone anymore, though.

Lurching to his feet, he started to turn toward the others, choking out, “How in the hell did—”

“Save your questions,” said a deep, grating voice behind him, nearly drowned out by sudden bursts of gunfire, which went ripping into the oncoming
camazotz
. Rough hands spun him back around, shoved a heavy machine gun in his hands, and jammed a sheathed knife in his ragged waistband. “Fight!”

Then a hard spine slammed into Rabbit’s and he was back-to-back with something he never thought he’d have again: a teammate.

Holy shit. Holy, holy shit. The Nightkeepers were all around him—huge, strong, beautiful and so damn glossy it almost hurt to look at them. There were dozens of
winikin
, too—smaller, lighter and more agile than the magi, they fired machine guns filled with jade-tipped ammo from behind shield spells as if, while he’d been gone, they had somehow turned into an actual magic-wielding army. At their core, Sven and Cara fought shoulder to shoulder—a Nightkeeper and a
winikin
teaming up, aided not just by Sven’s huge coyote familiar, but also by a smaller, darker coyote that stayed close to Cara’s heels.

Rabbit’s head spun. Jesus fucking Christ. How long had he been gone?

A second round of fireballs detonated, biting into the enemy line and filling the air with fury and pain, but he barely flinched. He was too busy staring.

He saw Anna and Strike, huge and regal, and the closest thing he’d had to siblings; Patience and Brandt, who had taught him what a real family could feel like; Lucius, the human researcher who was more of an outsider than Rabbit had ever been, yet had somehow become one of them. And so many more . . . all familiar, yet suddenly seeming like strangers.

But there was no sign of the one person he was looking for, the one person he needed to see. Where the hell was Myrinne?

A bony elbow jabbed his ribs. “Fight, damn you!”

He didn’t know who he was backed up against—JT, maybe, given the attitude and sneer-laden voice—but the order cut through the shock and triggered what was left of his warrior’s instincts. Sudden adrenaline seared through Rabbit, pushing the other stuff aside. He raised the machine gun—how the hell had they known he would need it?—and sighted on an ugly brute that was swooping through the dissipating fireballs and beelining straight for him. Leaning into the solid weight behind him, he shouted through split lips and hit the trigger.

The jade-tipped bullets ripped into the approaching demon and then detonated, sending fragments of the Nightkeepers’ sacred stone deep into its flesh. The thing screamed, spasmed and crashed into another, sending them both slamming to the ground. More gunfire spat from behind Rabbit as he lurched forward, yanking the knife from his belt. It was a plain military-issue blade, not the ceremonial stone knife he’d left behind at Skywatch, but it would do the job.

He went down on his knees, feeling the impact thud all the way to his jaw as he yanked at the ’
zotz
’s dick, hacked it off and grated, “Go to hell.”

The thing puffed to oily smoke and a funk at the back of his throat. After that, his vision narrowed and he went into overdrive, bringing down demon after demon and dispatching them with a hack and a curse, over and over again. And then . . .

Silence
. Suddenly there weren’t any more demons to fight, only gritty ash mixing with the churned-up white sand and the gentle lap of waves. But his blood still raced with battle madness.

Furious and unsteady, caught between his prisoner self and the warrior he’d been, Rabbit whirled on Dez. “Where is she? Where’s Myr?”

That rasping voice snapped from behind him, “How about you start with a fucking ‘thank you for saving my ass’?”

Without the muffling gunfire, the tone was suddenly all too familiar, yet impossible.

Rabbit’s blood chilled as he spun around, then froze solid when he saw who he’d been fighting with.

His godsdamned father.

Red-Boar.

It was another fucking ghost. Only it wasn’t, because sure as shit it was his old man standing there in flesh and blood, looking exactly like he had right before he died—dark-eyed, sharp-faced and condemning, with a thin line of a mouth and a salt-and-peppered skull trim. He was wearing his usual drab brown, though in combat camo rather than the ceremonial robe he’d favored, saying that brown was the color of penitence. Not that Rabbit had ever heard him apologize for shit. If anything, it was the people around him who were constantly sorry.

Red-Boar’s death had been a shock, but in reality it hadn’t left much of a hole—at least Rabbit hadn’t thought so. Now, though, an old, ugly fury kindled in his gut. “You’re dead.”

“I was. And I would’ve stayed that way if it hadn’t been for you.” Red-Boar spat on the ground, in a gesture that either meant respect for the gods or disgust for his son. Probably both. “The gods sent me back to find your ungrateful ass.”

Suddenly, the flash of magic Rabbit had felt when he killed the first ’
zotz
made far more sense. That didn’t stop the thudding pulse of what-the-fuck in his veins, though, didn’t make it any easier to say: “You used a blood-link.” Which was ironic, given that his old man hadn’t ever wanted to admit they were related.

Red-Boar nodded curtly. “I don’t know how the gods knew you were going to get your shit in trouble like this—history repeating, I guess—but rather than send me to the afterlife, they warehoused me in the fucking in-between for a while, and then gave me my marching orders and sent me back here. The reanimation spell will keep me going until after the war, and then
poof
.” He pointed to the sky. “Up I go.”

“They sent you back to find me.” It didn’t make any sense. He and the gods had forsaken each other long ago.

“Yeah. That was my first job—that, and letting the others know what happened to you, so maybe they could find a way to trust you again.” Red-Boar’s eyes were like his voice, hard and harsh. “After that, I’m supposed to bind your ass to your bloodline and fucking babysit you until the war, making sure that you’ve got your priorities straight this time, and knock off this shit about the demons being the good guys.” He made a disgusted noise. “For fuck’s sake. I—” He clamped his lips together rather than saying, “I taught you better.” Which would’ve been a joke, because they both knew he hadn’t taught his son a damn thing about the magic, or about being a man.

Before, Rabbit would’ve gotten in his old man’s face, not caring where they were or what else was going on as long as he got to defend himself and take a few hacks. Now, though, he shoved his anger deep down inside, and turned his back on Red-Boar.

He had more important things to worry about.

The others were ranged shoulder to shoulder in a defensive formation, like he was as much an enemy as the
camazotz
. Even Strike—who had practically raised him, for fuck’s sake—was looking at him cold and hard, as if he’d finally given up. That hurt like hell, but Rabbit couldn’t deal with that now, either.

Instead, he did something he’d never done before, never thought he would do. He knelt in front of the king and bowed his head. He heard a murmur of surprise, hoped it would be enough.

“Look,” he said, “I’m a piece of shit, and I fucking know it. I was wrong about the underworld, about all of it, and I’m sorrier than I can say. You probably don’t believe me—shit, I wouldn’t if I were you. But you’ve got to believe me on this one: Myrinne’s in danger.” He looked up, praying that Dez saw that he meant every word when he said, “I’ll take whatever vows you want me to, the second I’m sure she’s safe and Phee is dead. Once that’s done, I’ll be your fucking slave.”

The king scowled down at him, every inch the hard-assed serpent mage. “Myrinne is fine. She stayed back at Skywatch.”

But there was a stir in the crowd and JT stepped forward with a satellite phone in his hand. “No, she didn’t. She left the compound right after we ’ported out. Took the oldest Jeep and bolted.”

Dez’s breath exploded. “What rocket scientist let her through the gate without double-checking?”

“She let herself out.” JT’s eyes narrowed. “And nobody said she was supposed to stay put.”

Rabbit surged to his feet. “Screw the blame. We need to find her!” Then, wincing, he tacked on, “Sire.”

Dez shot him a black look, but said to Strike and Anna, “Can either of you get a fix?”

Anna shook her head. “She’s off our radar, remember, unless—”

“I’ve got her,” Strike said, eyes going grim. “Which means she’s in trouble.”

Rabbit didn’t know why that followed, but there wasn’t time for an explanation. His fingers tightened on his machine gun, and he grated, “Take me there.”

“We’ll all go,” Dez said. “But first we need to destroy this place.” He gestured to the warriors, and within seconds, the air hummed with Nightkeeper power. When the vibration peaked, Dez gave a curt “Now!” and fireballs flew.

The fiery bolts slammed into the stones with a rending
boom
and sent them toppling into each other, sheared off at their bases. The noise was deafening, underscored by the sharp pings of shrapnel deflecting off a shield spell that sparked with Dez’s signature lightning sizzle.

“Again!” the king commanded, and the Nightkeepers sent a salvo into the tunnel. The ground beneath them rolled and shook, and a gout of limestone ash erupted. “Last one!” Dez called, and they hammered the tunnel mouth with a final round of detonations that blazed and blasted, collapsing the dark-magic portal in on itself and sealing off the threat.

Rabbit had to lock his legs to keep from stumbling—not just because the ground was moving, but because of the flat-out fucking power the Nightkeepers had just unleashed. Before, he had been the strongest of the magi, the only one with multiple talents and the wild magic of a half blood. Now, he had almost nothing, yet it seemed that the old legends had been right about the Nightkeepers’ powers increasing exponentially as the end date approached.

“Link up!” Strike called, and the teammates scrambled to form an intricate network of clasped palms and other handholds that would connect them to the teleporters’ magic.

Shaken, Rabbit moved into the uplink. He found himself flanked by Dez and Michael, two men he would’ve called friends before, but who now acted as an implied threat:
Don’t try anything, or we’ll fry you
.

Michael wielded death magic. If anyone could kill the crossover, it was him.

The crossover. Shit. The label had gotten slapped on Rabbit thanks to his dubious bloodlines and an enemy prophecy, but nobody had a clue what the name meant. Unless . . .

He looked over at Red-Boar, and found himself caught in the steel of his old man’s stare. Something twisted inside his chest, a logic-fuse that said
no way, impossible
,
he can’t be alive
. But he was there, flesh and blood, and maybe he would have some answers.

Then Strike and Anna triggered the ’port magic, and Rabbit was surrounded by the familiar-strange sensation of moving while staying still. And alongside the urgent need to get to Myrinne, it hit him like a ton of fucking bricks that he was leaving the island. He wasn’t going to die there, wasn’t going to be sacrificed to the
Banol Kax
—at least not yet. Instead, he was going to get another chance. More, he was going to get an opportunity for revenge . . . and maybe, if he was really fucking lucky, some sort of atonement.

CHAPTER THREE

Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

When the Nightkeepers materialized in the badlands northwest of Skywatch, rapid-fire impressions slapped at Rabbit like physical blows: He felt the cooler, drier air of New Mexico, saw the yellowed-out sun, the wind-tortured rocks, and the jagged outline of a stone-block Chacoan ruin. Its upper levels had fallen in, but the ground floor was relatively intact, with rows of tall, dark windows the width of arrow-slits and a single narrow door. An older Jeep leaned at a drunken angle in the sand some thirty feet from the road, near the turnoff to the ruin.

Stomach dropping, Rabbit stepped away from the others. “Is she—”

He broke off as a white-robed figure darted around a corner and swept through the narrow doorway into the ruin, followed by a dark, winged blur.

“No!”
He bolted for the ruin, not waiting for orders or permission.

His boots skidded in loose grit and pounded over rock, and if Dez yelled for him to wait the hell up, he didn’t hear it over the hammering of his pulse. The machine gun was an awkward weight that banged as he ran, but he flipped the clip and slapped it home, and then did his damnedest to be quiet as he reached the ruin and slipped inside.

The single door led to a narrow hallway. He headed for the far end, where the fallen-through roof let in the fresh air. The room beyond stank of dark magic, making him want to howl and fling himself into the attack. Instead, he paused in the shadows, pulse thudding. He might get only one chance. He had to make it good.

The far doorway opened to a larger space, where several rooms had fallen in to form one. There, Phee and the ’
zotz
stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to him. Faced opposite them, cornered, was Myrinne.

The first sight of her in so long punched a fist beneath his heart, and he felt a twisted mess of relief, guilt, love, shame and a thousand other things that he couldn’t deal with right now. But there was also surprise, because she didn’t look like he had expected, like he remembered. She had her dark hair swept back in a soft, loose braid, but there was nothing soft about the set of her jaw or the anger in her eyes. She was wearing low-slung jeans he recognized and a curve-hugging hoodie he didn’t, and she was brandishing a small wooden stick, a freaking magic wand, like it was going to do something against Phee and the ’
zotz
.

The last time he’d seen her, she had been weak and broken, barely alive. Even before that, she had wanted to fight but hadn’t always trusted her skills. Now she looked strong, capable and somehow brilliant, like she was in sharper focus than everything around her. But she wouldn’t be for long if he didn’t get in there and save her.
Please gods.

His prayers had gone unanswered for so long that he almost didn’t feel the click at the back of his brain, almost didn’t recognize it. But then the heat of battle readiness changed inside him, gaining a subsonic hum and suddenly feeling like magic. Liquid energy flowed from deep inside him, bubbling up to fill the empty spaces, and the air around him glistened with red-gold sparks.

His heart clutched. Holy shit. This was really happening.

Through suddenly numb-feeling lips, he whispered,
“Pasaj och
.
”
And, as if it had never been blocked, the barrier connection formed.

Power hammered through him, lighting him up and making him feel like he could do damn near anything. He didn’t stop to question why or how. He just summoned the magic into him, knowing there wasn’t a second to lose.

Phee hadn’t sensed him yet; she was too focused on Myrinne. Dark energy crackled in the air as the demoness raised her hands to cast a spell. “
Xibal
—”

“No!” Rabbit shouted, lunging through the doorway, out of the shadows and into the light. And, as Phee and the ’
zotz
spun toward him, he slammed a thick, fiery shield spell around Myrinne, protecting her.

The flame-threaded shield blurred the details, but he saw her jolt and heard her cry his name in a tone of horror. But then, without warning, emotions blasted through him: shock and anger, followed by a sharp lash of resentment.

What the fuck?
His senses spun under the sudden onslaught, which was coming from the magic, from Myrinne. It was like they were mentally connected all of a sudden, like his mind-bender’s talent had fused their perceptions. Only he wasn’t using that part of his magic. This was something else.

Focus!
His self-directed snap was almost too late, because Phee quickly shook off her shock, and when she saw that he was riding high on the Nightkeeper magic she coveted, her eyes went bright and brilliant. Her arms swept wide and she flung a bolt of dark magic at him.

Rabbit raised his hands, spread his fingers and shouted:
“Kaak!”
And for the first time in months, the fire came at his command. Pure and cleansing, it poured from him in a brilliant stream of Nightkeeper power.

Dark magic met light and detonated, hammering him back with its shockwave. The ’
zotz
screeched and took wing, narrowly escaping the blast. But the bat demon recovered almost immediately, and beelined straight for him with its fangs bared and its talons outstretched, attacking before he could call more fire.

Shit!
He threw himself flat and rolled aside.

Without warning, a streak of green fire—like his, only not—seared through the place where he’d been, hit the
camazotz
and blasted it back. The strange flames clung like napalm and spread, engulfing the bat demon, which fell to the ground and lay writhing, emitting shrill shrieks.

As it died to ash, a suddenly wild-eyed Phee cast a shield spell around herself, yanked a pair of carved stones from her robe, and started a transport spell. The bitch was trying to escape!

“She’s mine!” he bellowed, not sure which of the others had taken out the ’
zotz
or how they’d summoned the green flames, but not really giving a shit as long as they gave him a clear shot.

The knife was suddenly in his hand, his palms bleeding, though he didn’t remember making the sacrifice. It added to his power as he called the fire magic, gathering it from the depths of a soul he’d thought was dead and gone, used up and kicked aside when he’d betrayed his teammates. Now, though, he felt whole in a way he hadn’t for a long time—farther back even than his imprisonment. He wasn’t the whipped dog anymore, wasn’t the betrayer, the prisoner or the mage.

He was all of those things and none of them.

Magic pumped harder and higher, flowing through his synapses and setting fire to neurons long unused. He could do this. He could.

Raising his bleeding palms, he drew breath and shouted the command again:
“Kaak!”

Sound, heat and fury detonated; flames speared from his outstretched fingers and hammered into the demoness. Her dark-magic shield cracked and then imploded, sucking back into its maker as she screamed, flung her arms wide, and caught fire.

“Rabbie!”
she cried. The word trailed up at the end, going to an inhuman screech as she began morphing away from the human form she’d flaunted. Her fire-wreathed shape stretched, blurred, elongated . . . and became a huge dark shadow, with glowing green eyes that blazed with hatred and pain.

“Son of a
bitch
,” Rabbit grated. It was a
makol
, a soul of such terrible evil that it had descended to the lowest of the nine levels of Xibalba, to be tortured there, honed by fire and pain until it emerged as a green-eyed wraith.

The luminous eyes dominated his vision, locking him in place as her voice spoke deep inside his head.
In time you will know me for real . . . Son
.

“No!” He poured himself into the spell, into the flames, aware that the others had arrived and were adding their magic to his as he shouted a final: “Go to hell!”

The fire flared higher and the
makol
writhed, screeched and clawed the air, fighting hard enough to make him think it wasn’t simply being dumped back in the underworld, but was being destroyed utterly. And who knew? Maybe it was. The rules were changing as they got closer to the end date; the magic was stronger, the stakes higher. Good fucking riddance.

Her face appeared in the flames, human once more, and tortured as it screamed, “Rabb-ieeeeee!” Then the luminous green eyes winked out, the shadow disappeared, and the flames guttered and died. And Phee was gone, leaving behind only a few char marks scored deeply into the stones.

Rabbit stood, staring at the scorched spots.

Phee was gone.

Dead. Kaput. No more.

The burning need for revenge drained suddenly, leaving him hollow and aching, with no clue what he was supposed to do next. He could hear the thud of his own heart, the rasp of his breathing. He was very aware of the others standing behind him, partly as backup and partly—no doubt—to protect Myrinne from him. Which was a hell of a thought.
I won’t hurt her
, he wanted to tell them, but history said otherwise, driving home the fact that one part of the battle might be over, but another had only just begun.

Taking a deep breath, he turned his back on the Nightkeepers—on his resurrected father, his king, all the people who had every right to hate him—and faced Myrinne. Who had the most right of all of them to hate his ass.

She was standing at the midway point between him and the far wall, at the edge of where he’d set his shield spell—gone now, though he didn’t know when or how it had fallen—and very close to the smudgy ash pile that was all that was left of the
camazotz
.

As their eyes met, she lowered her ridiculous magic wand. And his power went out—
poof
, gone.

“I didn’t need your help,” she said coolly. “I had it under control. So, hey, thanks for nothing, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

Shock seared through him and he took a step toward her. “Myr?” There were a dozen questions in that one word, but he couldn’t articulate a damn one of them, not when she was staring at him the same as he’d stared at his old man, like he had come back from the dead and wasn’t all that welcome. And when a gesture from her had severed his link to the magic.

What was he supposed to do now? What was he supposed to say? An apology would be a good place to start, but there was really no way to apologize for what he’d done to her. Still, he wiped his freshly healed palms on his grubby rag-pants and started toward her, holding out his hands in a gesture of
no harm, no foul,
and hoping to hell that was the truth. He had harmed her, he knew, had fouled their relationship beyond repair. But if he could just—

She flicked the wand up and a shield spell slammed into place an inch from his nose.

He froze as another shock piled up on top of the others. “What the
hell
?”

The force field was clear, but threaded through with an almost imperceptible gleam of the same green he’d seen in the flames that had killed the
camazotz
. And suddenly things started lining up, sort of. His magic had come back when he got near her. He had sensed her emotions, felt a connection. Green fire magic—like his own, only not—had taken out the ’
zotz
. And his magic had cut off with a flick of her magic wand.

Holy shit. Had he somehow transferred his barrier connection when he traded his life for hers, linking their energies and giving her some of his magic?

Impossible
.

“Not. One. More. Step.” Her eyes were hard now, implacable. “In fact, how about you just back the fuck off?”

He started to say something—anything—but then she pushed up her right sleeve and the air vacated his lungs with a quick
sayonara
at the sight of four marks in stark black on her forearm: the warrior, the fire starter, the telekyne and the mind-bender.

They were Nightkeeper marks.

More, they were
his
marks. All of them, save for the dark-magic trefoil.

“Holy shit, Myr,” he blurted, forgetting himself, forgetting the situation in the sheer impossibility of it all. “You got my magic!”

*    *    *

Myrinne hated how her nickname came out differently in his voice somehow, becoming more important, more intimate than it should’ve been. Hell,
everything
was too important and intimate all of a sudden, because—damn it—the magic had reached out to him. And now, even though she’d cut the connection, she couldn’t stop herself from looking at him and feeling an unwanted pang.

He was filthy and ragged, his hair grown out from its usual buzzed Mohawk to punkish spikes. The magic had healed him and kept his broad frame covered with a warrior’s muscles, but whip marks formed an X on his bare chest, as if a single arm had wielded the lash in an unvarying pattern. His back was even worse. More, the deep creases beside his mouth and the haunted strain in his pale blue eyes said that he had suffered over the past two months, and badly.

Part of her—dark and vindictive—whispered,
Good, I’m glad
. But the rest of her knew there was nothing good about any of this.

She wanted to tell him to fuck off, wanted to walk away. Unfortunately, she knew damn well that the magic was going to force her to deal with him. More, she didn’t want the others to see her wimp out. So, keeping her voice level, she steeled herself and said, “After you disappeared, I was unconscious for almost three days. When I woke up, I was wearing the marks and hearing voices in my head, reading minds.” It had been terrifying, yet illuminating, as if a whole new world was opening up in front of her. “The other talents came online soon after. Our best guess is that the gods wanted to keep the crossover’s magic with the Nightkeepers, and somehow managed to shunt the power into me when you went bad.”

The new lines beside his mouth deepened, but whatever pain she’d just caused him wasn’t nearly enough payback. He had accused her of spying for the demons when he was the one being influenced, and he had nearly offered her up to them as a sacrifice.
Bastard,
she thought grimly, because while he’d believed her in the end, saved her in the end, she’d had to let him into her mind to prove her innocence.