She took a deep breath. “Talk to me, Sven. Help me understand what’s going on in your head, because by the gods, right now it feels just like old times. Only it’s worse. Much, much worse, because I care about you so much more now.” She swallowed. “Please tell me you’re not bailing already.”
“I’ve been having dreams, Cara. Dreams and waking visions of being in the rain forest near Che’en Yaaxil, searching for something. They’re like the flashes I started getting right before Mac and I bonded, only they’re more… I don’t know. Frantic, I guess. Like something really bad is coming.”
She exhaled softly. “You’re afraid you won’t be able to react the way you need to if you’re caught up in managing the
winikin
and trying to watch my back.” She squeezed his hands, tried for a smile. “We can work with that.”
“That’s part of it, yeah. There’s something else, though…” He returned her squeeze, but didn’t smile. “I’m blocked, Cara.”
“You’re…”
“Blocked. My magic isn’t working right. Mac can hear me but I can’t hear him, can’t tap into his senses. Worse, I nearly used myself up zapping the skull away from Rabbit, and that was a short-range translocation. Power-wise, I’m back down to where I was before Mac and I bonded, maybe less.”
She glanced down at their joined hands, and stretched her senses toward the small trickle of warmth that was so new yet already a part of her. “I can still feel you.”
His eyes went sad. “I can feel you, but I can’t tap into that connection for power. I can’t tap into
anything,
and that’s a huge problem.”
Panic sparked. They were… what, ten minutes to teleport? Less? “Maybe it has to do with the cave, or the skull. Maybe—”
“I don’t think the blockage is related to the visions, at least not directly.” He glanced away from her, toward the horizon. “I think that it’s coming from inside me.”
Ah,
she thought, and then…
Oh
. Disappointment surged through her—disappointment in him for being who he was, in herself for forgetting. “Because you’re fighting your nature.”
His eyes flicked to hers. “You knew?”
“I… Yeah. I didn’t want to see it, though.”
“I didn’t want to feel it. These past few days have been like a dream, a fantasy. A few times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night or early in the morning, and just watched you sleep for a minute, thinking to myself, ‘There she is. After all these years, there she is.’ And I was as happy as I can ever remember being.” He met her eyes fully, and she saw everything she had been hoping for in him as he said, “I wanted—I
want
to stay here with you, be with you. I swear it, Cara.”
“Then stay. Be with me.” Emotions raced through her, jamming in a huge lump in her throat.
“I can’t. I tried to ignore it, but… this is who I am.” He raised their joined hands and pressed his lips to her knuckles in a move that shouldn’t have put distance between them, yet somehow did. “We don’t have much more time. I’m sorry as hell to do this to you, but I need you to release me from my vows to protect you and help you with the
winikin
.”
The blood rushed in her ears. “Then what?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Pressing his forehead to hers, he said, “Then I’m going to block our bond and open myself back up to the urges of my bloodline. I’ll stay and fight with you for as long as I can… but I can’t promise anything more than that.”
She told herself not to ask, to let it go until after the resurrection spell had been cast. But she asked anyway. “What about us? Is this it?”
“I hope not. I don’t want it to be.” He eased back, searching her eyes. “Cara, I’m crazy about you. I want to be right next to you every moment that I can. I want to help you, protect you, show off for you.… Hell, I’ve never felt like this about anybody, ever, and I need you to believe that.”
Her eyes filled, damn it. “So what are you suggesting?”
“We could take it day by day, see what happens.” He brushed a thumb across her lashes. “You could take me as I am. A coyote… but one who cares for you very much. Can we make that be enough for now?”
Part of her wanted to say,
Yes, absolutely. We can make it work
. Anything to not give in to the heartache that was
beginning to claw at the thought that this was the end of the fireworks. Gods, in a few short days he had become part of her world. He had been everywhere with her, done everything.
Can we make that be enough for now?
It echoed in her head, in her heart. And the thing was, it should have been enough. It was just supposed to be fireworks and good times, a way to live the next three months to their fullest in case they were her last. So it shouldn’t matter if he was there some nights and not others. She was fine on her own, after all.
But it
did
matter. She had learned many things over the past couple of weeks—about herself, about him, about the two of them together—and although there was plenty she didn’t know yet, plenty she didn’t understand, she knew one thing for certain: Day by day wasn’t going to work for her. Not when it came to Sven.
Maybe a different woman would have been able give him the “I’ll see you when I see you” that he was looking for. She couldn’t, though. After a lifetime of being low-priority for everyone except her mom, she wanted more, damn it. She wanted what she’d had for the past few days. And she wanted to know he was there for good, and that he was staying because of her, not because of the gods, or the
nahwal
’s message, or the coming battle. For her. If she gave in now, she’d be giving up what she wanted, what she needed, so he could regain his power. But in doing so, she would lose her own power, and that was just as important.
And that wasn’t just the woman talking now; it was the
winikin
’s leader.
Her heart tore as she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him,
then ached when she saw a flicker of hope in his eyes. “I release you from your vows,” she said. “You are a free man, not bound to me in any way.”
“That’s not true. You have my heart.”
She yanked away from him to stand on her own with her hands balled into fists. “Don’t! You don’t get to say things like that if you’re not going to back them up.”
“I can’t—”
“You won’t. There’s a difference.” Aware that she was shouting, she took a breath, tried to level off. “You say you want to be with me? Then be with me. You say you want to stay? Then stay.”
“But the magic won’t—”
“Bullshit. The way I’ve heard it, the magic gets blocked when a mage shuts himself off from his emotions. Which means the problems you’re having aren’t because of your bloodline or your visions… it’s about making a commitment.”
And damned if he didn’t wince. “Cara. Babe. You don’t know for sure that’s what’s going on.”
“You don’t know it isn’t, and don’t call me ‘babe.’ Save that for your endless string of beach bunnies.” An inner churning warned her that they were out of time, but she knew that they needed to settle this now, that they both needed to go into battle as strong and whole as possible, whether together or apart. Swallowing, knowing this was her last-ditch, she continued. “You say you’ve wanted me for years, but you stayed away because of my father. Now you’ve got me—you can keep me—but you’re turning away because of the magic. Well, I’m calling a final ‘bullshit’ on that. More, I’ll bet you ten bucks—a million, name your ante—that if you open yourself up fully to
our bond, your magic will come back online, maybe even stronger than before.”
It didn’t escape her that neither of them had much practice with love and healthy relationships. If they had all the time in the world, they could have let this one develop more slowly… but time was something they didn’t have. Her throat was raw, her heart a wound in her chest, her pulse a fast, syncopated
thudda-thud
that seemed to be urging,
Say yes, say yes, say yes.
But he shook his head. “Cara… I can’t. I’ve got to go with my gut on this one, and it says I need to be true to my bloodline.”
She tried not to hear the echo of her father’s voice in that, tried not to think he’d finally come between them for good. Because this was it. She’d given Sven his last chance to prove that he could stick it out and be the kind of man she knew he could be, and he was blowing it.
“Don’t do this,” she whispered. “Please.”
His eyes glistened. “It’s already done.”
As if on cue, the compound’s alarm system gave a two-note
bleep-bleep
of warning. It was time to go.
She instinctively clutched at her wrist, as if covering her mark could prevent him from blocking her out. For a second, she thought he was mistaken; the glimmer of connection was still alive. But pain pierced her as she realized that it wasn’t the same. It was muted now, sluggish and still. A one-way street now rather than two.
Her wristband buzzed, followed by JT’s voice. “Cara? You copy?”
Eyes still locked on Sven’s, she raised her wrist to answer him. “I copy. We’re on our way.” Lowering her arm, she said stiffly, “We should go.”
“First, tell me that you’re okay.”
“No. I’m really not. But I will be.” She turned her back on him and headed for the rendezvous, hoping to hell they hadn’t just fucked things up for everyone else… and wishing that the day was already over, so she could go back to her room, pull the covers over her head, and weep.
Candelaria Caverns
Guatemala
According to Lucius’s report, the Candelaria cave system had probably been the cradle of the ancient Mayan religion, because it was the one place that had all the elements symbolized by the pyramids: a mountain climb leading to a cave mouth, with a river inside it that descended down into the earth to a hidden tomb. And since the river was supposed to lead the dead to the afterlife, that made Che’en Yaaxil—a hollowed-out cavern buried deep in the forest and well off the radar screens of Candelaria’s tourists and researchers alike—a damn good place for a resurrection.
In theory, anyway. In reality, there was a big question mark all of a sudden, because where the Nightkeepers’ early scouts had reported that the place practically vibrated with power, it had suddenly become a dead zone, and not just of the radio variety. Yes, the communications were down because of the equinox’s power
fluxes… but there also wasn’t a scrap of magic to be felt.
“You’re sure this is the right cave?” Dez asked, keeping his voice down so the others nearby—mostly
winikin
setting up the stone-shield perimeter—wouldn’t hear.
“It’s the one we saw in the vision,” Cara confirmed, not letting herself glance across the cavern to where Sven was helping with the setup. She was holding it together, but just barely, caught in a tug-of-war between grief and guilt, with a heaping side of anger—at him for not wanting her enough to fight for it, at herself for falling so hard that it had suddenly become all or nothing.
She was pretty sure the timing of the blowout had come from the magic, though. Maybe Carlos had been right that she had been reaching all along, that the signs hadn’t meant what she’d wanted them to.
“You’re positive this is the place,” the king pressed.
She nodded. The circular cavern, the irregular domed roof with the fallen-in spot that let sunlight filter through, the waterway and sandy beach were all the same. “This is where the
nahwal
told us we needed to be.”
“Okay. Then let’s do this, and let’s hope to hell the spell can bring the power level back up and that Rabbit didn’t damage the skull. Without his magic amplifying the uplink…” Dez shook his head. “I’ve got a bad feeling.”
Me too,
Cara thought as Dez strode to the spit of dry sand, where the skull had been placed on a tripod altar made from carved bones.
“You okay?” Natalie asked, coming up beside her and sending a look in Sven’s direction.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only to me, and only because I’ve seen that look
before in the mirror when JT’s being particularly irascible. I recommend chocolate, alcohol, a chick flick, and some target practice, not necessarily in that order.”
A laugh bubbled up in Cara’s throat, where it choked to a sob. “I think I’ll have to take a rain check. And I don’t… Damn it.” Sudden tears burned her eyes, and she turned away from the others. “I can’t do this now.”
“Are you sure? What if—”
“Don’t,” Cara said sharply, having already done the what-ifs herself. What if he didn’t make it through the op? What if she didn’t? What if they’d met as normal people doing normal things, and discovered fireworks? What if, what if, what if. “We’re at an impasse, and talking about it any more now would only distract us from our priorities.”
“That sounds like something your father would say.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t make it wrong.”
“Places, everyone!” Dez called, waving for the magic wielders to form an inner circle and the
winikin
to form the perimeter, along with the two magi who would be acting as their backup.
Cara’s eyes skimmed over Brandt and went to Sven, who was checking weapons and ammo. As if sensing her gaze on him, he looked up, and their eyes locked. She caught a flash of pain in his face, felt it in her soul, and, without thinking, took a step toward him.
“Go on,” Natalie urged. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, not right now.”
But then, from outside the cavern, Mac let out a shivering howl, followed by a flurry of furious barks. Sven’s head whipped around. And Cara’s heart sank as he hesitated a split second and looked back at her with heartache and apology written on his face. Then he turned
and bolted for the short tunnel that led out of the cave, chasing after the sound.
And he was gone.
It was only a few seconds from the first howl to the moment he disappeared into the tunnel’s darkness. But Cara stood staring at the empty tunnel entrance for nearly half a minute. One part of her couldn’t comprehend that it had happened so quickly; another said it had been inevitable.
Oh, gods. It had really happened.
Dez waved for Patience to join Brandt in the
winikin
line, and she did so without missing a beat, which told Cara that the king had known about Sven’s visions, probably before she did. That should have hurt far more than it did, but it seemed that the parts of her that handled grief and pain had overloaded. She felt dead inside. Dull. And so very cold, partly from shock and partly because there wasn’t any warmth coming through the connection anymore, not even a trickle.