Rabbit lifted a shoulder. “Nah. I appreciate your telling me about the old man. It . . . it helps to know it wasn’t just me, you know?” It wasn’t an evasion, precisely. But he still felt like shit, given how cool Jox had been to him just now, and what he’d revealed about the past.
“After what’s been going on with Jade’s mother and the
nahwal
, I think most of us are thinking about our families, particularly our mothers. But do me a favor and keep it in perspective, okay? You’re doing a good job building your own life. Don’t fuck it up trying to prove something to a dead man.”
Rabbit didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Part of him knew Jox was right, that he should let it go and concentrate on his role within the magi. He was making headway finally, and it felt good. But he already knew what Myrinne was going to say, because he was thinking it: The name of the village—his mother’s village?—couldn’t be a coincidence.
In the old tongue,
ox ajal
meant “thrice manifested,” and its strange, double-skull glyph was used to represent the Triad.
After the first few times one of the
winikin
had demonstrated a move to have Lucius not only pick it up immediately, but sometimes even improve upon it with his greater mass and strength, his ability to instinctively shift his center of gravity lower to get a knee or a hip under the heavy ball to keep it aloft or in play, Jox had called him on it, and he’d admitted to having played some pickup games while out in the field, albeit with the smaller, lighter balls used in the modern era. It had startled Jade—and, she suspected, some of the others—to realize that the game was still played as pure entertainment among the Mayan villages, and not just as the tourist-focused reenactments they had found on YouTube. Indeed, it seemed to Jade like an unfortunate statement on humanity that the ball game, which had religion at its center, had survived the conquistadors while the Mayan writing system and codices were systematically destroyed as heathen tools. The game itself had evolved over time, but its core was largely unchanged, and Lucius’s experience with the moves put him at a substantial advantage.
Watching him move lightly over the ground, completely at home in his body, entirely in control of his movements and reflexes, Jade had found herself brutally aroused despite her fatigue. Now, with the fatigue gone, the arousal remained, a sharp ache that drove her out of the mansion in search of Lucius.
She found him sitting atop one of the ball court walls, staring into the night.
She climbed up the steep stone staircase and sat beside him, so their arms brushed lightly as their legs dangled over the sheer twenty- foot drop of one of two parallel stone walls. To her right, she could just make out the moon shadow of the high-set stone ring that was the game’s ultimate goal. From down below, it had looked impossibly small in relation to the size of the game ball. From up atop the wall, it still looked damn tiny. No wonder there was also a point system of body hits and out-of-bounds penalties; the hoop seemed an impossible target.
Without preamble, he held out his right hand and flipped his palm up to reveal the quatrefoil hellmark, which looked black in the moonlight, though she knew it was the bloodred of dark magic. “Do you think it’s possible that I’m part Xibalban?”
“You—Oh.” She rocked back in startlement and fumbled for a few seconds, trying to redirect her brain from the sex buzz in the air to his question.
“Is that an ‘oh’ as in, ‘I’m thinking,’ or as in, ‘Where the fuck are my jade-tips’ ? ”
“That was ‘oh’ as in, ‘I’d like to say you’re crazy, but it would explain a few things.’ More than a few.” She paused, thinking that, unfortunately, it wasn’t the dumbest thing she’d heard lately. “One of the questions we’ve had about you from the beginning is: Why you? Why did the
makol
reach through the barrier to you, when you’re a fundamentally decent guy? Impulsive, maybe. Stubborn, definitely. Occasionally self-serving, check. But on balance, there never seemed a compelling reason why a demon would go after you, and more, why you’d be susceptible to it. What if the connection and susceptibility come from a few drops of Xibalban blood, but your makeup, your essential
you
ness, runs counter to the darkness? That could explain why the
makol
was able to come through the barrier into you, but couldn’t integrate your soul with its own . . . thus making it possible for you to survive the Prophet’s spell.”
Instead of looking appeased by the thought that his inner good guy had saved his life, he seemed pensive. “That would imply that I’ve got a part in the gods’ plan. That they intended for me to go through everything I’ve been through. For me to do the things I’ve done.” He scrubbed both hands over his face. “Hell, I just don’t know. I can’t think about it anymore or I’ll drive myself up a wall.”
“Newsflash: You’ve already done that.” What was more, his vibe had gone dark and sad, his expression closed. Which was high on the
not good
scale if openness was the key to his magic.
Leave it alone
, her cautious self said.
You came looking for him, not the other way around
. But there was another voice now, a stronger, more adventurous one that said,
Do it. I dare you
. Her heart hammered against her ribs as the moment gained meaning and importance. Then, taking the risk, the leap of faith, she shifted to straddle him suddenly, so they were aligned center-to-center in an instant. Heat fired in her blood. Magic. Desire. He went stiff and still and his hands came up to grip her hips. Before he could pull her close or push her away, she leaned in so her face was very close to his and their breath mingled as she asked, “Question is: Now that you’re up the wall, what are you going to do there?”
Wry amusement had his mouth curving despite his mood. “That doesn’t exactly equate to party time around here. In fact, it seems like the perfect time to brood. We’re pinning everything on a damned ball game. If this doesn’t work, we’re screwed.”
“And your sitting out here alone is going to change that?” When he didn’t respond, she nodded as though he’d answered. “Exactly.” She took his hand in hers; their scars rubbed together in an inciting echo of being blood-linked. “This doesn’t have to be complicated. Right now, for today, it can just be about the solstice.”
Deep inside, he knew he shouldn’t let it be that easy. But at the same time, there was nothing easy about the electricity that crackled between them, nothing simple about the roar of heat and need that pounded through him, or the frustration that had ridden him for the past three days. But then, unbidden, his hand rose to cup her cheek. He felt the softness of her skin, saw the wary heat in her eye, and he was lost. “Fuck it. Happy summer to me.”
Throwing thought and caution aside with almost giddy relief, he kissed her, deep and dark, and he filled his palms with her curves. Her hands fisted in his hair and she whimpered at the back of her throat, her body molding to his, her breasts pressing against his chest. On a surge, he swung around and rose to his feet with her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck.
“Lucius!” She grabbed on convulsively.
“I’ve got you.” He carried her down the steep stairs like that, their mouths fused. The man he’d been wouldn’t have dared try it. The man he’d become reveled in how easy the move was for him now, just like the ball game had been. Whereas in the past he’d struggled with his own body, now he was in total control.
When they reached his cottage, he carried her across the TV room to the bedroom, this time cradled close to his heart. In some atavistic corner of himself, he was aware of the danger, but just then he didn’t care. It was the solstice, a time for sex and magic. He set her on her feet just inside the bedroom door, sliding her against him inch by torturous inch. In unspoken agreement they shed their clothing with glorious abandon, not stopping until they were both naked. The earth-toned light reflected from the ball game scene on the TV screen limned the dip of her waist, the curve of her breast, and the long lines of her arms and legs. He reached for her, thinking to carry her Rhett- like to the bed, but she held him off with an upraised hand. “Wait. Let me.”
Before the ridiculous image of
her
carrying
him
to the bed could form, she knelt down and closed her mouth over him almost in a single move. His vision grayed and he forgot what the hell he’d been thinking, damn near forgot his own name. All he could do was lock his knees, bury his hands in her hair, and hang on for the ride.
She drained him, left him weak legged and shuddering, wholly at her mercy. At some point they collapsed together on the bed with her astride him, driving him up again as he filled his hands, his mouth, with her breasts, her lips, her tongue. He talked to her, slipping from English to Yucatec and back, saying her name, lacing it with praise and pleas, urging her up and over, saying more perhaps than he’d said to anyone since he’d nearly lost the option to say anything ever again. She shuddered against him, small climaxes building to the whole, as she rode him, drove him onward, controlled him, until finally she clenched around him, shuddering, his name seeming ripped from her throat as she came.
He followed her over, kept her going, grinding against her, pulsing into her as she said his name again, this time on a moan. Then on a whisper. Until, finally, she sagged against him, pressed her cheek to his, and went still. In fact, he was pretty sure the whole world went still for a long, drawn-out moment that laid him bare, stripped him raw. And in that moment, he thought that he would do anything to keep her with him, anything
for
her.
He lay there drained, reveling in the languor of an orgasm that had devastated him, seeming akin to an apocalypse in its own right. Unable to move, he lay sprawled and satiated while his senses spun and a faint breeze seemed to come from nowhere to tug at him.
It took him a few precious heartbeats to recognize the sensation through the postcoital haze. Then exultation slammed through him.
Magic!
It was there;
he
was there. He reached for it, grabbed on to it, opened himself to it—
And the world hazed luminous green around him.
“No!” He lunged upright, pawing at the night. “Godsdamn it,
no
!”
He saw Jade’s face swim into his vision, saw her mouth moving but couldn’t hear the words; he couldn’t hear anything over the hammer of his heartbeat. His vision flickered back to normal and the world lurched, or maybe he was the one moving. Jade’s voice cut in, soothing: “It’s okay, it’s—”
“It is godsdamned well
not
okay,” he snarled, then froze when the words came out instead of being trapped inside his skull, and he snapped back to awareness of his own body. The world solidified around him. “Fuck. Oh, fuck.” He doubled over, leaning against her. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Up,” she ordered. “Into the shower.”
“Yeah.” His voice was thick; his mouth tasted like shit. He staggered to the bathroom, got the shower on, and stuck his head under the fiery spray. Nauseated and shaking, he stayed under the stream, heat on max, until his skin was red and he was back under control.
Then he stayed another couple of minutes as his brain came back online and things started making sense, and not in a good way. He toweled off, found clean jeans and a tee waiting for him, and dragged them on, his heart pinching at the expectation of things to come.
Jade had gotten dressed and was waiting for him in the main room. She’d shut off the TV and turned on a light. When he appeared in the doorway, she looked up at him, her eyes huge in her face. “Why did you fight the magic?”
“I wasn’t fighting the magic. I was fighting the
makol
.”
She paled. “You weren’t.”
“Trust me, I’d know that green eye slime anywhere, anytime. The bastard is still inside me. If I hadn’t yanked myself out of there, I might have—” He broke off, had to swallow hard so he wouldn’t gag on his own bile. It was like before, only worse, because this time he’d thought he was finished being a slave. “I can’t go back there. I fucking
won’t
.”
She stood to face him. “You’re not going anywhere, Lucius. The
makol
is dead; its soul was destroyed during the spell, just like my sister’s was. There’s no way it’s still connected to you.
It doesn’t exist anymore
. If it did, you wouldn’t have been able to access the library even the first time. Get it? The only place that demon still lives on is in your memories.”
He went very still. “You think I’m making this up?”
“I think . . .” She blew out a breath. “How about we sit down?”
Eyeing the sofa, he said softly, “Would you rather I lie down while you pull the chair around? I’ve told you I don’t want to be your patient, Jade. Don’t try to therapize me.”
“There’s no such word as ‘therapize.’ And another word for therapy is a two-way conversation, Lucius.” But the way she said his name, he knew she was thinking “asshole.”
Deciding she was probably right about that, he sat on the damn couch, and he didn’t move away when she sat beside him and took both of his hands in hers. In fact, he was tempted to lean into her, lean
on
her. He compromised by tipping his head to rest lightly atop hers. “The sex was fabulous. Sorry about the postcoital girlie screaming.”
Her fingers tightened fractionally on his. “That was more than sex. And there’s no
makol
. Whatever you felt just now was your psyche’s way of warning you away from the powerlessness and lack of control that comes from caring for another person. You’re not afraid of the
makol
. You’re afraid of what’s happening between the two of us.”
For a second he thought he’d misheard. When he went over the words and they didn’t change in his head, he bared his teeth. “In what way?”
She seemed to miss the danger signs, instead rolling on: “I accessed my magic by opening myself up to my feelings for you; I was hoping you’d eventually come around to the point of doing the same thing on your own. You finally did just now, and the Prophet’s magic started to come back online, but—and here I am therapizing a little, to use your word for it, but bear with me, because it plays—I think the magic triggered some of the fears you carry from your experiences with the
makol
, namely those of being trapped and out of your own control. Your psyche knee- jerked that into a signal it knew you’d react to, namely the green glow of
makol
possession.”
He ground out, “Back up to the part about hoping I’d come around, will you? Exactly how long have you been working on this theory?”
Her encouraging smile—her counselor’s smile—faltered. “Since I started being able to access the scribe’s talent by thinking about you.”
If he hadn’t been so shaken by the
makol
’s reappearance, the fear that it would block him from getting back to the library, and, yes, the intensity of the sex, he might have appreciated the irony. Here he was, facing down a lover who was looking up at him as if he were the answer to her freaking prayers, and all he could think about was escaping. From his own damn house.
Hello, shoe on the other foot.
He hadn’t gone into this looking for a relationship. He’d been looking to grow up and move on, and stop getting caught up in old patterns. He’d gotten caught, though, in reverse. And with a woman he cared about, one he hadn’t meant to hurt.
Bullshit
, a voice said inside him, sounding like Cizin all of a sudden.
If you really didn’t want to hurt her, you would’ve cooled things off days ago. You knew she was falling, but you kept coming back. Hell, you carried her over the damn threshold. What the fuck was she supposed to think?
He was suddenly chilled, both by the familiar mental tone of a creature that logic said was dead, and by the realization that whatever the source, the inner bitch-slap had a point. He’d been telling himself one thing while doing what felt good. Those weren’t the actions of the nice guy she’d painted him as. It was the sort of thing
makol
bait would do.
There was a flicker of nerves in Jade’s eyes now, but she continued. “What just happened is good news, really, because it means that the next time, if you ignore the green and let the magic take over, you’ll wind up in the library.”
“Maybe,” he said coldly. “Or maybe you’ll wind up with another
ajaw-makol
loose inside Skywatch. And maybe this time I won’t be strong enough to stop it.”
She paled. “There’s no
makol
here right now. It’s your way of processing the fear of being vulnerable.”
His anger drained, leaving a hollow ache behind. “Damn it, Jade, they were your rules. Just friends, you said. I was the one who started off wanting more, back before, and you let me down easy.” He shook his head. “Now I guess it’s my turn, for the first time ever, to try to do this right. So I’ll start off with the cliché: It’s not you; it’s me. If I’ve learned anything over the past nine days, it’s that love means putting the other person first, even over your own safety and life, and despite what the writs say about loyalty to the king and the war.” He paused, trying to get it right, and trying not to falter as her face fell. In the end, he said simply: “I can’t put you first.”
Her eyes flared for a second and she snapped, “That’s—” Then she clicked her teeth shut on whatever she was about to say, and shook her head. “Forget it. Just forget it. I guess I misread what I thought I was seeing. I thought we were on the same page.”
“So did I.” He was going to feel like unholy ravening shit in a few minutes, he thought. For the moment, he just felt numb and gray. Like all the color and life had leeched out of him. Was this what it felt like to break up with someone you liked but didn’t love?
Gods.
He’d thought it sucked to be on the other end. This was ten times worse. A hundred. He felt as if a piece of his world were suddenly out of joint.
“I . . . I guess I’ll go. It’ll be morning soon.”
Reminded that it was the cardinal day, Lucius fleetingly wondered whether he should have let the magic take him, on the chance that he’d been wrong somehow about the green. No, he knew that had been
makol
green. No question about it. He’d done the right thing, just as he was doing the right thing now. He didn’t know how to love as people like Shandi or Willow did. He had no basis for it, and didn’t want to learn. Jade had been right in the first place when she’d said that love destroyed lives. Love wasn’t the answer. Inner strength was.
He watched in silence as she crossed the TV room and turned back at the kitchen threshold he’d carried her across less than an hour before. Her face was calm, composed, but he could see the strain beneath. “I’m sorry things got messy. I’ll see you on the ball court in a few hours. We’ve got a game to play.”
She turned and left. He didn’t call her back.