Time seemed to slow for a second as he rasped through his bruised throat, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. So fucking sorry.” Sorry he hadn’t gotten it right the first time around for them, sorry this time had turned out to be too late. Sorry their timing always sucked.
Then he saw her mouth go round in a scream, time sped back up, and he knew it wasn’t a dream. She was there, reaching for him. Screaming his name even as another part of him whispered:
Use me. I am and will always be a part of you.
A last spurt of energy flared through him. He had lost his knife and his muscles were quivering, but as Iago swung down, he lunged up, jamming his fist into the Xibalban’s solar plexus, holding the star demon so the pointed statuette protruded between his fingers. The statuette drove up and in as the serpent staff cracked into his shoulder. He felt sickening pain. But Iago, too, was hurt.
The Xibalban reeled back with a high, keening scream that was neither human nor
makol
. A wave of darkness rolled over Dez as he pulled the star demon out and stabbed his enemy, over and over, sticking him in the gut until the final blow when he left the bitch
inside
his enemy’s abdominal cavity. Ichor ran over his arms, hot and acrid.
Iago went down hard, flat on his face. He began regenerating immediately, but not as fast as before; the star demon was slowing the process. The solstice thrummed in Dez’s bones, and he was suddenly conscious of the ominous rattle of dark magic, just at the threshold of his serpent’s hearing, coming from the stones that made up the temple itself. Which was a big “oh, shit” because it made him think he was going to be standing right on top of a hellmouth real soon. Or maybe a vulture’s nest.
Time was running out. He couldn’t stop now.
Dragging himself to his feet, he found his knife where it had skidded beneath the throne. He hefted it and looked at Reese, who still stood pressed up against the shield, watching him. He didn’t know how she had gotten there, or what her presence meant for the two of them, but Jesus, gods, he didn’t want to do this in front of her. Not again. Her lips moved; he couldn’t read them, but it didn’t really matter. He didn’t have a choice. Feeling suddenly empty, he turned to where Iago lay facedown, halfway regenerated. Movements automatic, heart heavy, he got a hand across the Xibalban’s forehead, pulled back his head, and carved a wicked slash across his throat.
Ichor fountained, mixed with blood. And he was back in the nightmare.
It was gruesome work. He clamped his teeth together and didn’t look at her—couldn’t bear it—as he sawed off the
ajaw-makol’
s head, then flipped him, cut away his body armor, and carved a deep furrow below his ribs, where the skin had started to knit around the earlier wound. Steeling himself, he punched through the diaphragm and jammed his hand up inside Iago’s chest. Broken ribs scraped his knuckles as he felt for the beating fist of his enemy’s heart, found it, and yanked it from its moorings.
He recited the banishment spell through gritted teeth.
Nothing happened.
“No!” he shouted as his heart plummeted. “Godsdamn it, no!” Darkness clouded his vision; rage suffused him. He lunged to his feet, ready to shout at the sky, to curse the gods to—
He saw Reese. She was just standing there with her palms pressed to the shield. And her eyes shone like they used to, with the look that said:
you’re my hero, my cowboy
. It had to be an illusion, a delusion. But it pushed back the darkness far enough that he could see the light again.
“Motherfucker.” He dove for Iago, jammed his hand back inside, fished around, and found the star demon.
You are the Triad mage
, she whispered the moment he made contact.
And he is a warrior of your bloodline. Take his powers and his knowledge as your own. His is yours. Everything is yours.
Green washed his vision for a second and he could feel the powers buzzing just beyond his reach as the offer came clear. He was the Triad mage; he could take the talents from a dead mage of his bloodline, and Iago was certainly that. What was more, he could do so many things with the Xibalban’s magic. He could open the intersection at El Rey; he could teleport; he could borrow the talent of any other mage he touched. And the Xibalban’s skull harbored the demon’s memories as well as his own; he knew spells the Nightkeepers didn’t. With him as part of the Triad, Dez would be . . .
The guy I don’t want to be
, he thought, looking up at Reese and feeling his heart turn over and then settle with the good, solid weight of decision.
“She’s mine.” He gave a convulsive yank, pulled the statuette out of Iago’s corpse, and sent it skittering away. “You’re not.”
Something wrenched inside him—a tearing pain in his heart and head, like his magic was being ripped away as the demon dug in her claws and fought. But he didn’t give in to the pain; he wasn’t going to let her fuck up his life this time. Gritting his teeth and forcing the words through the agony, he repeated the banishment spell.
Luminous green flashed like sheet lightning, the
ajaw-makol
crumbled to greasy ash, and thunder cracked in the temple, detonating a green-tinged shock wave that smashed away and down, tearing through the serpent shield. Reese cried out as she was thrown backward and slammed into the ground. The shock wave flattened the Nightkeepers, rolled through their shield, and plowed into the
makol
lines, rippling through them as luminous green winked out and the villagers collapsed, unconscious.
The pain vanished, leaving Dez hollowed out. But he didn’t give a shit.
“Reese!” He grabbed his fallen knife, and bolted for her, all too aware that the dark-magic vibrations beneath his boots were getting steadily worse.
She lunged up off the ground as he reached down for her, and they slammed together, mouths fusing. He dragged his hands down her body to grip her hips, hold her to him, then back up to band his arms around her, lifting her up against his body. “You’re here,” he said between kisses. “Thank the gods you’re here.” He pulled away to look into her eyes. “You’re my compass, Reese. My sanity. I promise you that—”
She clapped a hand across his mouth. “No promises. I don’t need them, because I trust you. I believe in you. What’s more, I believe in
us
.”
The hollowness the star demon left behind began to fill back in with another kind of greed. He leaned into her. “Thank Christ. I thought I had lost you. I thought—”
A jolting shudder ran through the ground beneath his feet and the sound of grating stone suddenly surrounded them with a harsh rattle of magic, like the tail of a giant rattlesnake gearing up. Beneath that, he heard a terrible stone-on-stone screech that sounded like a giant bird. A vulture. Gods.
“Take the staff,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Become the serpent king.”
He spun to find Anna standing there. Only it wasn’t the Anna he had known for the past year—instead of the fog he’d gotten all too used to seeing in her eyes, he saw clarity. Wisdom. Prescience.
“Where did you come from?” But before she could answer, her words sank in and his gut clutched. “
Shit.
Is Strike—” He broke off when he saw him standing strong and tall, with his arm around Leah’s waist, looking better than he had in months.
“It’s a long story that we don’t have time for,” Strike said. “But you still need to do this. You’re the king we’re going to need for this war.”
Dez wasn’t sure how his heart was still beating, given the ice in his veins. “I won’t sacrifice you, damn it.”
“You don’t have to. You already killed your rival. I’m giving you this of my own free will, as demanded by the thirteenth prophecy.” Tears gleamed in Strike’s eyes. “There is no greater sacrifice for a king to make than to give up his throne on behalf of his bloodline. After today, the jaguars will no longer be the royal house.” The ground shifted, trembled. “The serpents will.”
Jesus gods. This wasn’t happening. Dez closed his eyes for a moment, growing even colder when Reese moved away from him. He turned toward her. “Reese—”
She was holding out the star demon. The idol wasn’t covered with ichor anymore; it had dematerialized along with the body. But it oozed with Iago’s psychic stink.
For the first time, instead of being swamped with possessiveness, he was vaguely repulsed. “I don’t want it.”
A smile broke across her face like the dawn, though her eyes stayed serious. “I saw. You beat her just now. You used the demon to kill Iago, but you didn’t let it use you. But . . .” She took his hand, flattened it out, and dropped the statuette in his palm. For the first time in a decade, it didn’t feel like anything other than an artifact—cool, smooth, with a buzz of power. There were no whispers, no words. “She’s part of the staff, just like shaking things up is part of being a good leader. She balances off the others. You can’t have light without dark, or else it’s all just one big twilight.”
Like the twilight Lord Vulture would bring if he didn’t take the serpent staff and fulfill both the thirteenth and serpent prophecies. The ground trembled with another birdlike shriek of stone-on-stone that had the others checking their weapons.
Reese closed his fingers around the idol. “I’ve overreacted to so many things over the past couple of weeks because I was scared of what I was feeling, scared of how much more you could hurt me than you did before. And I was so busy being scared, I forgot to trust myself, especially when, deep down inside, I knew you weren’t the guy who became the
de rey
anymore. You’ve beaten that part of yourself, just like you beat the star demon. I should’ve seen it, should’ve believed that sooner, but I didn’t. Stupid of me.”
“Not stupid.” He covered her hand with his own, trapping the small statuette between them. “Brave and independent.” He tugged her closer. “And the woman I love. My mate. My queen.” He lifted his free hand to her cheek. “I love you. You have my heart, my soul, and my power. Please say you’ll stay with me forever. Promise me.” He held his breath when her eyes darkened and her lips turned down, and he could almost see her draw inward as she realized what he was asking—a bond, a promise, a commitment with no exit strategy. Maybe even, in her perceptions, a box to trap her.
Then her eyes filled, and she launched herself at him.
He caught her against him, his heart hammering when she said against his throat, “Forever. Because I love you. I love who you are right now, at this moment. And I’ll love you tomorrow, and next year, and, gods willing, the year after that. You’re it for me, you always have been. And I believe in you, in us. Whatever comes next, we’ll make it through together. I promise.”
She kissed him. Magic flared and his wrist warmed, and she gasped against his mouth. Shock hammered through him as he pulled away and they looked at their wrists, where they wore matching
jun tans
.
Holy crap,
he thought.
Holy, holy crap.
Suddenly, everything he had never dared want before was right at his fingertips. Doubt shivered through him for a second at the realization that the only other time he’d felt that way was when he was under the demon’s influence. But there were no whispers, no compulsion. There was only love and magic.
Reese grabbed him by the collar and dragged him down for a kiss. “We might not have been destined mates, but I’d say we more than earned these marks over the years.”
Not years, he thought, because for him it had been love at first sight. Someday, he would tell her that. But not now. “I was lost,” he said against her lips, holding her, hanging on to her. “Thanks for finding me.” They kissed again, long and deep, sealing their promise and tapping into the core of the Triad’s light magic within him. Power spun, coursing through him, charging the air as the ground shuddered beneath them.
“Go ahead,” she said, stepping away. “Do it.”
He faced the strange limestone throne as light magic raged within him and lightning lit the air above. Strike brought him the serpent staff, which seemed heavier than its weight when he took it. Aware that the others were gathered in a semicircle behind him, the sun god’s firebird was perched atop the temple, and a thousand villagers lay beyond, waiting for a miracle, he started fitting the compass artifacts into the clever twists of the serpent staff, which was a puzzle without looking like one.
He started with north, the white wind god, bringing the light of truth and integrity to the reign of the serpents. South, the yellow two-faced mask, would bring balance and completion. East, the red skybearer, would help him inspire, lead, and spark new ideas. And then finally west, the black star demon, who carried the power of the shadows and transformation. He expected to feel a kick of new power when he fitted the last one into place. All he felt was the weight of new responsibility twining through him, interlocking with the fealty oaths. And maybe that was the way it was supposed to be, he thought.
Pausing, he turned toward Reese and mouthed, “I love you.” Then, holding her eyes, he said the spell that Keban had beaten into him so long ago.
The four artifacts melted and swirled, running up against gravity to spread along the twisting staff, bleeding colors across a center of green. A sudden thunderclap came from the cloudless sky, and a roar of denial rose up from the ground. The air shimmered around the temple, and then turned dark. A tremor ran through him at the deep, ominous color, but then it shifted, becoming a pure glowing white, and then cycled through yellow, red, and dark again, before returning to white.
The rattle of dark magic disappeared. The ground stopped trembling, and deep in his gut, Dez knew that the prophecies had been fulfilled, the dark lord restrained. There would be no twilight for Lord Vulture this time.
For a second he thought it was all over. Then the white glow shimmered again, unfolding outward to reveal gray-green fog, and a figure within it: a
nahwal
, an ancestral being—this one with shining cobalt eyes and a ruby stud in one ear. Anna gasped.