Skykeepers

The red-robes opened fire, aiming low, trying to wound, not kill.

“Down!” Michael grabbed her and dragged her off the throne. He caught her against his strong, solid body and turned her toward the stone slab, shielding her, then fired off a quick burst with his captured autopistol, forcing the six remaining red-robes to take cover. Two were down already, not moving.

Sasha tried to feel grief, tried to find horror, and found only rage and emptiness. A need to stop the Xibalbans from doing to another what they had done to her, a drive to survive long enough to make a difference. In the end, this was the war.

Looking up at Michael, who was fierce and bloodied, she touched his cheek and said, “Can you call the muk now that we’re not on the dais?”

His eyes flared, but he bowed his head, pressed his brow to hers. “I don’t want to be the Other. Not ever again. It’s a monster.”

“Not a monster. A weapon. And it’s your talent; it’s not you.” She cupped his jaw in her bloodied hands and stared into his eyes, willing him to hear her, believe her. “I was wrong about that—dead wrong. Whether or not all your kills were in battle, they were part of a larger war, on the orders of your king. That is the Nightkeeper way. It doesn’t make you anything more than a mage who found his calling sooner than most of us. The magic is a tool; it’s not you. Just like my magic isn’t all me. I wield life but I think I’ve proven that doesn’t make me an angel, right?”

Air escaped from him in a hiss, but she saw a spark in the depths of him—rage going to power.

“Depends on your definition of ‘angel,’ babe.” But there was such desperate need in him.

“I’m no angel,” she said firmly. “And you’re not a devil or a monster. Your talent is a tool from the gods, a weapon in the war. You’re not any of those things. You’re a man.” She paused, searching inside herself for hesitation, for reservation, and finding none when she said, “You’re my man.”

He held very still for a long, breathless moment. Then he touched his lips to hers, a brief, fleeting press that promised more than a thousand words.

In a single move of deadly elegance, he flowed to his feet and moved away from their shallow concealment, stepping out into the cross fire of his enemies. His hair was slicked back close to his skull, his black combat clothes torn and tattered as they clung to his fighter’s muscles. He spread his arms away from his body, indicating he was unarmed, or offering himself up as the sacrifice Iago had intended him to be. As he did, he called the muk. It gathered to him, clung to him, greasy and gray in her mind’s eye.

The red-robes let loose, firing low, still trying to preserve their sacrificial victim. The bullets sped inward in a deadly hail, only to reverse outward when Michael let loose the Mictlan’s power. It exploded from him in a thunderclap of gray death, taking the red-robes where they crouched, puffing them to dust in an instant.

It was over so quickly, there and gone in an instant, that Sasha blinked, tempted to think they had just left, or been ’ported away. But she saw the gray cast of death on Michael’s skin, saw the dark grief and guilt of the man, the cold satisfaction of the killer within.

He turned back to her and offered his hand. She took it without hesitation and rose to stand next to him, leaning into him in mute reassurance. He stared down at her, eyes dark, but finally calm, as though he’d gone beyond himself, or maybe found himself. “This is who and what I am.” His voice was a low rumble in his chest.

“This,” she said firmly, “is war. It’s justice.” She took his hand, lifted his wrist, and pressed her lips to his marks. “Neither of us is perfect. Together, though, we balance each other out. And even if we didn’t, I’d still want to be with you.”

“Despite what I am.”

“Because of who you are,” she countered. “Now. Let’s finish this.”

His eyes went past her. Flattened. “Shit.”

Sasha turned, her warrior’s instincts firing a second too late. Not because of an attack, but because of what the lack of attack meant. Iago, badly battered by the makol, sagged against the larger throne, losing blood fast. But he was still alive, having survived the edges of the close-range muk blast by virtue of his healing powers . . . and the makol bond. His color was wrong, his eyes disoriented . . . but they flicked to luminous green and back again. When they went green, his face became more angular and power seemed to glow in a halo around him, as the emperor Moctezuma fought to come through to the earth.

As his eyes settled green, ’port magic rattled in the air.

“Stop him!” Sasha cried.

Roaring, Michael lunged for Iago. The Xibalban disappeared with a pop of displaced air, leaving Michael to slam into the throne, then pound it with a fist. “Gods damn it!”

Sasha reeled as near-prescience gripped her. Moctezuma had come to earth. And he’d possessed the strongest of the Xibalban magi, leaving the Nightkeepers with . . . what? They had nothing, and the solstice threatened to pass without their gaining the one thing they needed most: the Prophet.

At the thought, she moved around the throne, in search of their former ally . . . who might just manage to become an ally once again. “Lucius?” she called, cursing softly when she saw his feet stretched out behind one of the planters, blood splashed on the stones. Then she rounded the planter.

And cursed aloud. “Michael! Come quick.”

He came around the corner, his only reaction a hitch in his stride when he saw what Iago had done to the makol. Lucius’s head had been all but severed from his body, and his heart hung out of his chest cavity by a thread. His eyes were closed, but his chest still moved in a gruesome, bubbling parody of life, held by the makol’s healing magic.

Sasha dropped down beside him, heedless of the blood that soaked through her pants. “He’s alive.

Sort of.” She felt the makol’s dark magic fluctuate, heard Lucius’s song cut in and out. “Iago must have said the spell. He didn’t get the head and heart all the way, though.” But the makol wasn’t healing; he was merely existing, his eyes flicking from hazel to green and back again.

Sasha met Michael’s eyes over the laboring near-corpse. Feeling the hard practicality of the warrior she had become, she said, “Get the library scroll. Let’s not waste the sacrifice.”

“Are you sure? He’s not a magic user.”

She grinned fiercely up at him. “Maybe not. But the makol is.”

Michael’s expression went blank, then fired with excitement as he went for the scroll, snagging it off the floor, where it had fallen during the melee. “Fuck. I can’t read it. You?”

She glanced at the glyphs, but she shook her head. “That’s beyond what Ambrose taught me. And we can’t risk my screwing it up.” She looked toward the rubble-filled tunnel. “We have to get the others in here.”

Michael’s eyes flashed acknowledgment, but he turned up a hand in question. “Can you get the ’port image to Strike through the bloodline link?”

“Not clearly enough.” She shook her head. “Maybe Rabbit . . .” He’d sent her his cry for help from the pueblo, using the connection they’d forged when he’d been inside her mind. But when she searched inwardly for a hint of that connection she found nothing. “I think it only goes one way. How about shield magic? Could you use it to clear the tunnel somehow?”

Eyes dark with frustration, he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Damn it.”

“Break the mountain,” said a faint whisper.

For a second, she thought the words were inside her head. Then she realized they’d come from behind her. She looked down to find Lucius conscious, squinting up at her. The flesh at his throat had knitted somewhat. His abdominal cavity gaped open, but as she watched, his heart drew back into place slowly, looking sad and misshapen. Yet his eyes were fixed on her, gone hazel, though he shuddered with the effort of keeping them that way. The entire effect was macabre in the extreme.

“This is Paxil Mountain,” he whispered. “Break it.” His eyes stopped flickering, started to dull.

Michael’s and Sasha’s eyes went to the planters set on either side of the thrones. Maize and cacao.

Was it possible?

“The gods split Paxil Mountain to release the seeds to mankind,” she said. “But we’re not gods.”

“Maybe not.” Michael took her hand, twining their fingers together. “But we’re what’s left.” He lifted her hand. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “And I’m not through fighting. Not for you, and not for justice.”