They stayed locked together, holding hard on to each other, for a long, long time.
Eventually, though, the heat faded to languor and reality returned. And that reality had Jade’s hands staying locked onto his shoulders, and her face remaining pressed against his throat . . . because she didn’t have a clue what to do next, what to say. She would’ve liked to keep things light and playful, as she’d meant to in the very beginning, but somewhere between desire and domination, things had turned serious.
Lucius let out a long, satisfied breath, muttered something about crushing her, and sort of flopped off to one side. Part of her would’ve been relieved if he’d landed facedown and fallen immediately unconscious, as one of her unlamented exes had habitually done after far more lukewarm sex than the room rocking that had just occurred. Lucius, though, propped himself up on one elbow and gazed at her, his expression far more intense than she would’ve preferred. She wasn’t sure what he read there; his expression was guarded and his voice gave away nothing of his inner thoughts when he said, “You okay?”
It was the sort of thing lovers said to each other when they didn’t know what else to say. In this case, though, she knew he meant it, that he truly wanted to know where her head was at in the aftermath of . . . well, in the aftermath. But she didn’t know where her head was at, wasn’t really sure if she was okay or not. The sex had been . . . amazing. They’d connected, pleased each other. But whereas her magic had kindled, flowing within her, his magic hadn’t. There had been no hint of the whirling, tugging sensation she’d experienced right before their transition to Xibalba, and again when she’d been swept into the barrier in his wake. He’d given no sign of sensing anything beyond very, very good sex.
Which means that was all it was for him
, she thought on a long, slow twist of disappointment.
“I’m—” She broke off, gut icing at what sounded like a cry of pain from outside. “Did you hear that?”
Seconds later it came again, and this time there was no mistaking the sound of a woman’s scream. It was muffled by distance, but carried terror and pain. Adrenaline jolted through Jade. She was moving even before the motion sensors guarding their perimeter went off with a loud
whoop
of alarm.
“Shit!”
Lucius scrambled off the bed and hit the floor hard, yanking on his clothes as he ran. He grabbed her folded clothes from a chair and chucked the shirt and jeans in her direction.
“Hurry.”
He disappeared into the sitting room; moments later, she heard the snick of the lockbox latches and the metallic clicks of clips being slapped home into autopistols.
Dragging on her jeans first, Jade pulled the panic button out of her pocket and activated it as she shoved her feet into her sneakers. She dropped the handheld unit in the process of jerking her shirt on over her head. Just as she bent to retrieve it, the French doors exploded inward and the chatter of machine-gun fire split the night. The bullets cut through the air where she’d just been, slicing the white canopy swags to tatters and pulping plaster to dust as she threw herself flat behind the bed.
“Jade!”
Lucius appeared in the doorway, carrying a double-barreled shotgun with deadly menace. He was wearing black body armor over his T-shirt and a black utility belt slung low across his hips over his jeans. The belt was loaded with spare clips and guns, and a military-style combat knife hung where the magi wore their bloodline blades. The combination of warrior’s gear and human casual should have jarred. Instead, it made him look deadly and capable.
“I’m here! I’m okay.” She scrabbled partway up, grabbed the skull effigy off the bedside table, and then lunged toward him while he laid down cover fire with double loads of jadeshot, spraying the night outside the ruined glass doors. The booms of the shotgun were deafening in the close quarters, but it was viscerally satisfying when they cut through the higher-toned chatter of automatic fire. It was even better when the guns outside went silent. She wasn’t willing to bet that would last for long, though.
“Hurry.” He was right behind her. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“No shit.” She yanked on the body armor Jox had found for her, and grabbed the second shotgun while Lucius loaded up on grenades. Her heartbeat drummed loudly in her ears, and she was shaking with a combination of nerves and adrenaline, but her head was clear; she was thinking, not just reacting. And she hadn’t frozen. Not yet, anyway.
Not this time
, she told herself. Which reminded her of the magic: not the spells, but the ice. “I could—”
Something flashed outside, luminous green. “Down!” Lucius shouted, and lunged for her. He hit her with his shoulder and knocked her off her feet and into the sofa, but somehow managed to get his arms around her and turn himself so he partway shielded her from the impact.
They tumbled to the floor as the sitting room windows shattered inward under a hail of gunfire. Cursing, Lucius rolled them to the sofa, flipped it over atop them, and held her so tightly she could barely breathe. The furniture was scant protection against the heavy-caliber weapons; the bullets had wasted the window glass and the curtains, and were doing a damned good job of chewing through the walls themselves, coming from all directions at once.
“We’re surrounded,” she yelled into Lucius’s broad chest, barely able to hear herself over the thump of gunfire and destruction.
“Did you hit the panic button?”
She nodded into his chest. “They’re on their way.” She’d left the device in the bedroom, but if Strike couldn’t get a good ’port fix off the images from the built-in camera, there was a similar unit mounted atop the Jeep. More important, the magi could use the view from the Jeep to assess the situation, and figure out the safest place to materialize.
“We can’t wait for them here.” His voice rumbled against her cheek, carrying a grim sort of finality. “Whoever’s out there might decide to just fuck it and crater the cottage. We’re safer out in the open than pinned down here.”
Though not by much
, was the unspoken end to that statement.
“Use the grenades to get their heads down,” Jade ordered. “Then we run. I’ll shield us.”
“You’ve got shield magic?”
“No, but I’ve got ice. It’ll have to be enough.”
He nodded, his jaw tight, his expression set in lines of concentration. “It will be. I believe in you.” Leaning in, he kissed her hard and fast, and when he pulled back, there was something new in his eyes, something that made her heart lurch in her chest. “I’ll cover you.”
For a crazy moment, those three words rearranged themselves in her head to become something else entirely. So she merely gaped when he heaved against her, overturning the sofa and in the same motion yanking the pins from three jade-loaded grenades. He counted, “One . . . two . . .” On “three” he heaved the grenades through the blown-out windows. They landed on “four.”
On “five,” there was a rending, tearing explosion outside, followed by screams of agony as jade shrapnel tore into their attackers.
“Come on!” Lucius grabbed her and dragged her up, and then they were running for the door. As they ran, Jade yanked the combat knife from his belt, used it to nick her palm, and called the ice magic. Power formed around her, coalescing to include Lucius in a circular swirl of cold air convecting with hot. She had originally intended to put an actual shield of ice around them, but saw the better option immediately. Instead of casting the iceball magic, she built it around them. Ahead of them it was clear. Everywhere else around them, sleet whipped in a twenty- foot whirl, obscuring them as Lucius flung open the cottage door and they ran out into the night.
Without warning, a machine gun chattered from nearby, sweeping a wide arc that glanced off the icy shield. The bullets passed through the sleet. Jade gasped and the magic winked out.
“Jade!” Lucius grabbed her and dragged her into the lee of the next cottage over. “Are you hurt?”
“I couldn’t hold it any longer.” Her face was bloodless; she was shaking. But she hadn’t been shot.
Yet
.
They needed to buy more time. But how? Between the dim illumination from the solar walkway lights and the bright, welcoming porch lights up at the main house, he could see back to the shattered windows of what had been their cottage, and in the other direction to the cottage where the road-tripping family was—had been?—staying. Everywhere he looked there were dark, slinking shadows and the flash of luminous green eyes. “
Makol
,” he hissed, the word coming out as a curse.
A few of the figures came clear; he saw a pudgy guy in a cheap suit, another in coveralls, a third in insignia-less fatigues. Their eyes were pure
makol
but their motions were jerky and uncoordinated.
Trying to look in every direction at once, Lucius nudged her in the direction of the parking area. “We’ve got to keep moving. Head for the Jeep. Strike and the others should be—”
A whistle split the air and their cottage exploded.
“Go!” Lucius put himself between her and the blast, feeling shrapnel ping off the body armor. He shoved her toward the Jeep, then jerked her back when the next missile—RPG? fireball?—hit the ground in front of them.
Shitshitshit
. He pushed her back into their scant shelter, trying to think of a way out, trying not to think about what would happen if they couldn’t escape.
Adrenaline and denial roared through him. He wouldn’t let them have her, wouldn’t let her become what he had been. His body flared hot and cold; his head spun; his vision narrowed to pinpoint focus as six
makol
stepped into the light. He took out the first with a blast from his shotgun, nailed the second before the first had finished falling, then ducked a spray of gunfire that chewed up the corner of their hiding spot. He locked onto the third, finger tightening on the trigger—
And the bastard burst into flame. As did the
makol
next to him, and the next, the fire leaping one to the next in a mad, destructive dance. In an instant, the night was lit day-bright with flames that gouted twenty feet into the air.
Lucius stared, transfixed with horror as the
makol
screamed in agony, reeling and pinwheeling, trying to douse the inexorable flames, which burned their clothes away, melted their skin and flesh. They were still linked in a napalm chain; he followed it back into the shadows, just in time to see a man step into the light.
The newcomer was tall and built, his hair trimmed into a military brush cut. Sharp featured, looking to be somewhere in his twenties, he was wearing ass-hanging, ripped-up jeans and a tight wife-beater, and bore the hellmark on his inner forearm along with three Nightkeeper glyphs in black: the peccary, the warrior, and the pyrokine.
It was Rabbit, Lucius realized with a hard, hot jolt of relief. Their backup had arrived.
The young man’s face was set, his eyes hot and hard, and flames laced from his outstretched hands as he fed power to the fire magic, driving it higher and higher still while the
makol
folded, slumped to the ground, and broke apart into dark, hard lumps of char.
Then, abruptly, Rabbit dropped his hands and the magic winked out.
The afterimage burned into Lucius’s retinas left him momentarily blinded, blinking. By the time his vision cleared, it was all over. The
makol
were briquettes and he and Jade were surrounded by heavily armed Nightkeepers. With a few terse orders, Strike sent Nate and Alexis—apparently back from Ecuador, just as Rabbit seemed to have reappeared—to sweep the perimeter and set a watch.
The abrupt shift from threat to rescue left Lucius feeling badly off balance. Or was that the aftereffects of the strange sensation he’d felt just before Rabbit showed up and played human blowtorch? Had he been on the verge of breaking through to magic of his own? Had he sensed the incoming teleport? Or had it been some sort of entirely human altered consciousness associated with imminent death?
“What the fuck happened here?” Strike demanded.
The question seemed evenly divided between him and Jade, who had moved up to stand beside him. When she didn’t answer right away, Lucius said, “Your guess is as good as mine right now. We heard the—” He broke off when it registered. “Willow. The innkeeper. We heard her scream.”
Michael nodded as he joined the group. “I count five human casualties in the other buildings, a family in one cottage, an older woman in the main house. The
makol
were—” He broke off. “Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life. This was pretty bad.”
Gods
. Lucius didn’t let himself close his eyes, though he very badly wanted to. His stomach pitched with the knowledge that Willow and the road-tripping family of four would’ve been snoozing in safe oblivion if he hadn’t turned off the highway and followed the arrows.
“After the scream,” Jade said, picking up his report, “the
makol
breached our perimeter.” She sketched out the attack, her voice impassive, her mien gone counselor-cool.
Lucius told himself it was a good thing she could pull herself together so quickly and thoroughly, that he shouldn’t resent her recovery. But he was still reeling, and the blood ran hot in his veins. He wanted to shoot something, wanted to tear into someone and let off some steam. Crazy impulses pounded through him, strange and unfamiliar.
Forcing himself to focus, he grated, “The
makol
were new, and they were locals.”
The magi zeroed in on him. Strike ordered, “Keep going.”
“Their movements were slow and jerky, like the
makol
controlling the bodies weren’t used to all the synapses yet. Which was lucky for us, as it made them inaccurate, if well armed. There wasn’t any continuity of clothing, so they weren’t an assembled fighting unit. There was a mechanic, a guy in a suit, a soldier-wannabe type in military surplus. I bet we’ll find a bunch of cars parked down the road.” He looked at the charred lumps, wondering if the magi had known Rabbit’s magic didn’t require the head-and-heart spell to nuke
makol
. From the looks the kid was getting, he suspected that would be a “not.”
Michael nodded grimly. “I took down four of them in the main house. One was wearing a T-shirt from a gun shop with a local address. The other three were in military surplus. What do you want to bet there’s a private militia quartered somewhere in these hills?” He paused. “It’d be a good hunting ground for someone looking for bad guys.”
“Like an
ajaw-makol
,” Strike agreed. He looked back at Lucius. “That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
“It plays,” Jade said, her voice strong, even if her color wasn’t. “We’ve suspected there might be an
ajaw-makol
on the earth plane. Either the
Banol Kax
sensed that Lucius and I were outside the Skywatch wards and sent the demon after us, or the thing sensed us and came on its own.”
“I’d guess the latter,” Lucius said. When the others looked at him, he lifted a shoulder. “My impression—and that’s all it is—was that
makol
are similar to the magi in that they have different skill sets. I didn’t get the sense that Cizin was in constant contact with its masters, more that it phoned home now and then, probably during the cardinal days.”
“What was in your demon’s toolbox?” Michael challenged.
Lucius bared his teeth. “How about the ability to reach through the barrier and compel an otherwise decent guy to steal from someone he respected?” But that brought his thoughts circling back to what he’d been thinking on the drive, about birthrights and tendencies. Shelving that for the moment, he continued. “Regardless of who or what gave the order, my guess is that the
ajaw-makol
got here and recruited a couple of dozen locals, pulling the gnarliest and nastiest, and handpicking a couple of specifics, like the gun store owner and the militants, both of whom came with access to firepower.”
Strike considered that for a few seconds before nodding. “It plays. Now for the million- dollar question: How did they track you? Or, more important, what changed between last night and tonight? Was it just a question of timing, or was there something more?”
Lucius didn’t say anything about the whirling buzz that might or might not have been his magic, because that had happened after the attack began.
Jade, though, said, “I think I know.” She loosened her hastily applied body armor, reached in, and lifted Anna’s pendant from around her neck. Letting the chain flow through her fingers, she held it out to him. “On the way home, I was carrying this.”
The king stared at the skull effigy, which glinted in the porch lights of the main house. His face ran through a range of emotions, none of them comfortable. In the end, he settled not on the fury that Lucius had anticipated, but on a sharp grief of the sort Lucius had seen before at the gravesides of loved ones cut down unexpectedly. Leah touched Strike’s arm and murmured something in his ear. The king blinked, his face went to stone, and he took the pendant from Jade with an almost violent swipe.
“I’m sor—” Jade began, but Leah cut her off with a lifted finger that said,
Not now
, and Jade subsided.
Strike folded the chain carefully and slipped the pendant into his pocket before refocusing on the others, his cobalt eyes gone hollow. “That probably explains it. She should’ve brought it back to Skywatch herself. It’s not safe to separate these sorts of things from their bound bloodlines.”
Lucius didn’t have an answer to that, so he stayed silent. Inwardly, though, he cursed Anna. Bad enough that she’d given up on the Nightkeepers; worse that she’d endangered Jade in her cowardice.
Four dark shadows melted from the darkness: the sweep teams reporting back that the site was clear. Strike nodded. “Okay. Michael, you and Lucius wait for Rabbit and take the Jeep. I’ll ’port everyone else back with me.” He moved away to an open space, and he and the others started forming the palm-to-palm link he typically used for group ’ports.
Neither Jade nor Lucius argued against their separation. As far as he was concerned, if there was a demon out there hunting Nightkeepers and their relics, he wanted her safely back at Skywatch ASAP.
When they were gone, Michael tapped his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get the Jeep.” The mage claimed the driver’s position and waved Lucius to shotgun.
“Isn’t Rabbit coming with us?”
“In a minute.” Michael burned rubber out of the parking area and didn’t stop until they’d hit the top of the hill. Then he spun a quick one-eighty and parked, leaving the vehicle idling as he looked down at the Weeping Willow Inn.
The first lick of flames came from an upper floor of the main house. The second came from one of the cottages. Then it was hard to keep track of where the fire was tracking as it danced back and forth, lighting the buildings, consuming them. Rabbit stood at the edge of the visitor’s parking lot, visible in silhouette against the firelight, as he conducted the destruction with wide sweeps of his arms, a maestro of fire.
“Oh,” Lucius said as understanding dawned.
“I did my best with the bodies,” Michael said quietly. “If their families ask questions, the sort of investigation there’s likely to be out here will conclude that they died quickly in their beds, with no suffering.”
“Which is a lie,” Lucius said hollowly. “They suffered.”
“Yeah, they did. But it won’t help for the people left behind to know it.”
Lucius thought of what he’d yelled at Anna, sanctimoniously bitching at her to think about how she would feel to know that people were dying and she could have done something to stop it.
Well, now you know, asshole. How does it feel?
The ranch was fully involved now, the fire tongues reaching up to the sky where the deaf gods lived. He pressed his forehead against the now-warm glass of the Jeep’s window and watched the flames, how they swirled and slashed, almost but not quite making pictures that seemed they should have meaning. In them he saw the garrulous innkeeper, not as she’d been that evening, but as the young woman in the framed picture that had sat on the front desk. In it, she’d had her arms wrapped around a smiling GI, neither of them knowing they would both die under enemy fire, some fifty years apart.
She’d never remarried, she’d told him; had never really even dated. Her Bobby had been her man, her one true love. She might not have died for him, as Jade’s mother had done for her family, but in a way, Willow had given her life just as surely to love.
Gods, how do people do it?
Lucius wondered, making himself watch as Rabbit conducted events down below.
Why do they do it?
What was the upside of love, when there seemed to be so many downsides?
“You kept Jade safe,” Michael said suddenly, unexpectedly. “You got her out of the cottage.”