The moment she was through the carved double doors, though, she let go of the control she’d been holding on to by the last thread. She halfway expected tears, though she’d never been a weeper, halfway expected destructive, lamp-throwing anger, which was more typical for her. But either the two canceled each other out or she’d used up all her emotional space and had nothing left.
She sank to the couch in the sitting area, exhausted. Empty. There were no skitters of warmth or electricity. She doubted she could kill a gnat, never mind a coffeemaker. Her supposed powers were long gone, leaving her as nothing more than what she was—a cop with a big mouth and zero subtlety who didn’t really belong in Skywatch.
Skywatch. She hoped the name—and the motto— stuck. Her timing and delivery might’ve sucked, but she was right, damn it. They needed something to rally around, and Red-Boar and the
winikin
needed to accept that the past was gone and it wasn’t going to repeat itself, no matter what their writs said about the cyclical nature of time. The trainees weren’t going to fight because their
winikin
told them to. They needed to believe in the cause, in themselves, and in one another. And more important, they needed to believe in their leader. She didn’t care if he called himself king or Papa Smurf; he needed to step up.
Instead, he’d brushed her off and then freaking zapped himself straight out of the argument, which was against the rules of fighting. And he’d been really pissed, too, like he hated the fact that she was standing up to him.
‘‘Which is way too bad,’’ she said aloud. ‘‘If he doesn’t like a woman who gets in his face and tells him where to get off occasionally, then he can—’’ She broke off, because he didn’t have to do a flipping thing. The decision was going to have to be hers.
She could stay—if they’d let her—and add whatever weight she might have to the coming battle. Or she could go home, fast-talk her way back onto the job—which would undoubtedly include some serious shrink action— and keep hammering at Survivor2012.
She didn’t want to go back . . . but she wasn’t sure she could stay, either. Strike was using her as an excuse to avoid the others—which wasn’t fair to any of them— and his disappearing act suggested he wasn’t looking to change that strategy. Besides, she knew how to kill Zipacna now; she just had to find him, and she could do that as effectively from the outside as she could in the compound. She could defend herself. She didn’t need to stay.
More important, she didn’t have any reason to. She wasn’t Strike’s Godkeeper, and she wasn’t his mate. Hell, after tonight, she probably didn’t even rank as a friend.
‘‘Shit,’’ she said, hearing the single word echo in the too-big suite. Then she started packing.
Twenty minutes later, figuring she’d ‘‘borrow’’ a car and call Jox later to let him know where to pick it up, she slung her duffel over her shoulder and headed out without saying good-bye to anyone, because she didn’t particularly want to see the looks of relief when she said she was leaving. Telling herself she wasn’t going to cry, she swung open the front door, slamming it into something lying on the welcome mat outside.
It took her a second. Then her heart stopped in her chest. ‘‘Strike!’’
She dropped down beside him, scrambling for a pulse. She found it—sort of—but it wasn’t the thready beat that held her attention as she raised her voice and shouted, ‘‘Jox! Need some help here!’’
No, what drew her attention was the new mark on his forearm, one that hadn’t been there an hour earlier . . . and which looked a hell of a lot like a flying snake.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Strike awoke profoundly pissed off, which was unusual for him. Even more unusual was the fact that he was holding a woman’s hand.
He cracked an eye and took stock. He was in his bed in the pool house, and it was well past dawn. He was naked save for a pair of cutoff shorts—Jox’s idea of sleepwear?—and Leah was sitting in a chair beside his bed, her head pillowed at the edge of his mattress on one folded arm. Her other hand was holding his. The sight of her face smoothed out in repose and their fingers intertwined atop the covers softened the edge of anger that rode him for no good reason.
‘‘Hey,’’ he said quietly, wincing at the crack in his voice, and again he remembered the events of the night before.
She opened her eyes and stared at him for a moment, unblinking. Then she straightened and slid her hand from his, trying to make it seem like no big deal. But the withdrawal was intentional, he knew. And it stung.
Worse, he deserved it.
‘‘You were right,’’ he said before his mood could take over and make him say something stupid. ‘‘About me hiding in the archive, about us needing something to rally behind. You were right about all of it. And the name is perfect. The motto’s perfect.’’ He levered himself up and swung his legs over the side so they were sitting facing each other, knees bumping. Leaning in, he caught the hand she’d just reclaimed. He raised it to his lips, then pressed it against his cheek even though he was about a day and a half past needing a shave. ‘‘Thank you.’’
Her eyes filled. ‘‘You took off. I felt like an idiot.’’
More than that, he realized, she’d felt rejected. And why wouldn’t she? It wasn’t as though he’d bothered explaining what had been going on inside him. What still was going on inside him, he knew, feeling the anger roil within. He glanced at his arm, at the mark of the flying serpent, and wished he knew what the hell it all meant. It was probably a reference to the creator god Kulkulkan, but beyond that he was clueless. Worse, he couldn’t settle his brain enough to think it through.
How was he supposed to lead the others when he could barely control himself?
‘‘I’m sorry.’’ When she tried to pull away, he pressed his hand over hers on his cheek, which was as much of a hug as he dared give her until he got said what needed to be said. ‘‘Over the last few days I’ve been having . . . moods, I guess you could call them. Anger attacks. Only it’s not my anger, not really me, like it’s coming from outside me.’’
Her eyes sharpened. ‘‘From the barrier?’’
‘‘Or something.’’ He wasn’t yet ready to verbalize his deepest fear: that somehow the
Banol Kax
had gotten a foothold inside his head. Looking at his forearm, he said, ‘‘And then there’s this. The flying serpent.’’
‘‘Jade couldn’t find that specific mark in the archive, and none of the
winikin
remember having seen anything like it before,’’ Leah said before he could ask. ‘‘Red-Boar thinks it probably means you’re bound to the creator god Kulkulkan through your Godkeeper mate.’’ She paused. Grimaced. ‘‘You know, the Godkeeper mate you don’t have because one, the god didn’t come through the barrier during the solstice because I’m ‘only human’ ’’— she emphasized the phrase with finger quotes—‘‘and two, because neither of us is sold on the predestined-mates thing.’’ Her grin went a little crooked and she didn’t meet his eyes. ‘‘I’m not looking for long-term, and we both know that a couple of dreams and some hot sex does not necessarily a lasting relationship make. And besides—’’
He touched a finger to her lips, cutting her off. ‘‘Don’t,’’ he said, as a whole bunch of messy emotions crowded around inside him. ‘‘Don’t talk yourself out of believing in what’s happened between us.’’
To his surprise, her eyes filled. ‘‘Why not? What good does it do me to keep thinking about something that’s going nowhere? You’re afraid that if we’re lovers then the gods—the prophecies, whatever—are going to demand me as a sacrifice. I get that. I even appreciate it, because I’m nobody’s sacrifice. But if that’s the case and we can’t even talk to each other, never mind sleeping together, what’s the point of me being here at all?’’ Her voice went thin. ‘‘It sucks going to bed alone every night, knowing you’re right across the pool deck, and knowing that you’ll buck tradition by having me here, but you don’t want me enough to take it all the way.’’
‘‘That,’’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘‘is bullshit.’’ The anger fought to come, and he fought equally hard to hold it back, though he wasn’t sure anymore how much of it was him and how much wasn’t.
‘‘Is it?’’ Color rode high in her cheeks. ‘‘Then why—’’
He cut her off again, this time with his lips, shifting his grip from her hands to her hips, and bracketing her knees with his, blocking her escape.
There was no finesse to the kiss, no soft question or coaxing. It was all about the anger that had ridden him for days now, and the raw need he’d been holding in check for far longer than that.
Don’t tell me I don’t want you enough,
the kiss said.
Don’t even think it
. It was because he wanted her so much, needed her so much, that he’d stayed away from her for so long. Only now she was right there in front of him, in the place where he slept, and he was near the breaking point.
But when he broke, she was right there with him.
She didn’t resist the kiss, didn’t shove him off and ask what the hell he thought he was doing, didn’t blast him for the mixed messages. No, she met him head-on, leaning in and grabbing on, one hand in his hair at the nape of his neck, the other wrapped around his upper bicep, fingers digging in. She opened her mouth beneath his, a demand rather than an invitation.
Their tongues touched and slid, and the taste of her raced in his veins. He crowded closer, or maybe she did—he wasn’t sure who moved first—but they twined together, her hands streaking across his bare shoulders and back, her T-shirt-covered breasts brushing against his naked chest.
He went hard against the fabric of his cutoffs, the material a rough contrast to the silk of her skin when he slid his hands beneath her T-shirt. She made a soft, urgent sound at the back of her throat, one that called to everything primitive and male within him. He wanted to drag her across his body and press her down on the bed, wanted to take her, to possess her, to brand himself across her skin so there would be no question that she belonged to him and he to her, and nothing else in the world mattered.
Which was the problem.
Shuddering with the rampant need that rode him, locking horns with the logic that told him he had to stop now, he forced himself to end the kiss. He couldn’t make himself pull away, though. Instead, he pressed his forehead to hers so they were leaning into each other, holding each other up. ‘‘It’s not that I don’t want you enough to risk the prophecy,’’ he said, his voice rasping. ‘‘It’s that I want you so much, when I’m with you the other stuff fades. You could become so much more important to me than the others.’’ He paused as a tremor within warned that maybe she already had, that their relationship was already clouding his judgment the way his father’s love for his family had altered the decisions he’d made as king. ‘‘I can’t let that happen,’’ he said. ‘‘Not if we’re going to win this war.’’
He expected her to argue, almost hoped she would. Instead, she said softly, ‘‘Then let me go. I can protect myself now . . . and you’d be a teleport away if I got in trouble. I think it’d be better, easier for both of us.’’
She wasn’t asking for permission, he knew. She was asking him to end it, to release her from their nonrelationship, or at least give her the distance to regain her footing in the rational world.
But he couldn’t. ‘‘Stay,’’ he said, a single word that held both command and longing, even to his own ears.
She drew away so they were no longer supporting each other. ‘‘You don’t need me here, and the others don’t want me here. Why should I stay?’’
Because you’re safer here than on the outside,
he wanted to say.
Because my gut tells me the gods aren’t finished with you and me, despite what Red-Boar says; and because you were right last night when you said we need an outside perspective, and that I need the occasional kick in the ass.
But while all of that was true, he knew it wasn’t what she was asking. So he said, ‘‘Because I want you to. Please stay, at least through the conjunction.’’
Her eyes went dark. ‘‘And then?’’
‘‘And then we’ll see.’’
He expected her to press. Instead she nodded. ‘‘Until the conjunction, then.’’ She touched his arm, tracing each of his marks with a fingertip in a light caress that let him think about nothing but the softness of her skin and the taste of her breath on his lips. ‘‘Where did you go?’’ she asked, tapping the last mark, the one he’d gotten the night before.
It took him a second to refocus, another to answer. ‘‘I zapped myself into the barrier.’’ He didn’t mention that he’d jumped blind, and that he might’ve ended up totally in limbo if the
nahwal
hadn’t reached through and given his subconscious mind a destination, as Leah herself had done the very first time he’d teleported. ‘‘When I got there I saw my father, or the
nahwal
I believe is my father and Red-Boar believes is a figment of my imagination.’’ He paused. ‘‘The
nahwal
told me that it’s time, but I think he’s wrong.’’ He paused, exhaling heavily with a look toward the mansion. ‘‘They’re not ready for a king.’’
‘‘Are you ready to be king?’’ she asked, still touching his arm, her fingers resting above the serpent’s wings.
‘‘No,’’ he said, shaking his head. Not with what felt an awful lot like a demon rocketing around in his skull. Not until he figured out how she fit into everything that was going on around him, inside him, and whether the thirteenth prophecy would require her death if he took up the Manikin scepter, which was the symbol of the Nightkeepers’ king. ‘‘But I’m ready to be their leader. I’m ready to find out what the flying serpent mark means, and I’m ready for the others to get their talents so we can start functioning as a team. In fact . . .’’ He glanced at the bedside clock radio and winced when he saw it was past ten a.m. already. ‘‘Can you ask Jox to get everyone together for a meeting? You were right last night. It’s time for me to get off my ass and do my damn job.’’
‘‘Not exactly what I said, but close enough for government work.’’ She rose, her expression guarded, as though she’d taken everything that’d just happened, everything they’d just said to each other, and shoved it deep down inside for later consideration. ‘‘I’ll tell them to meet you in the main room for an organizational sit-down, so you can come up with a plan for the days we’ve got left before the conjunction. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to grab a shower and mainline some coffee.’’