Skykeepers

Sasha’s power kicked at his words, at the quiet certainty in them. She felt the muk resonating from him, reaching into her. For the first time, she didn’t push the sensation away, but rather welcomed it, welcomed him. Aware of the solstice magic raging around them, within them, she turned to face him.

“I can’t do this alone. Iago said we could create incredible power together.”

“We do,” Michael said softly. “We can.” He paused, and his voice roughened. “You’ve been everything I need and want, even when I was too caught up in myself to realize it.”

Her heart shuddered and went still in her chest. She saw the truth in his eyes, felt it in his touch and his energy. And for the first time, she wasn’t looking at Michael, or the Other, or the Mictlan. She saw all of them in him, saw them as a single man, the united whole she’d fallen for. The real Michael didn’t come from an absence of darkness, she realized with sudden paralytic comprehension. He came from balance. He was a chameleon himself, shifting among aspects of himself and his magic, but the core remained. The man remained.

“I kept telling myself you weren’t real, that you were a fantasy straight out of one of Ambrose’s stories. Which you are. But you’re also real.”

He leaned down and she reached up, in that stilled moment of time, and she heard her own music, heard his, then heard the two twine together, backbeat and chords blending to form a fully realized song. And, as the solstice slid to its peak, their magics combined, muk to ch’ul.

And the world around them started to shake.

Magic poured through Michael, piercing every aspect of him: light and dark, love and revenge, murder and justice. The coming of the three-year countdown fired through him, smashing his hard-

won barriers to dust and opening him to all of his dissociated pieces at once. But where before that had been one of his greatest fears—the loss of control, the loss of himself—now he gave himself up to it.

He was the Other, with all the monster’s trained strategy, killer instinct, and love of the hunt. He was Michael, brave enough to take any hand-to-hand challenge, yet coward enough to turn away from emotional pain. He was the Nightkeeper, with a mage’s fighting drive and determination to make things right; he was the human he’d been raised as, not sure it was possible to make things right. He was the mate who’d wanted Sasha too much to heed the warnings, the lover who hadn’t known what to do with her when he got her. And over it all, as the muk flowed through him, became him, he was the Mictlan, the wielder of an ancient magic that blended both dark and light, making a whole that was so much stronger than its parts.

Instead of fragmenting him further, the magic made him complete. His muk powers and Sasha’s ch’ul magic combined in a flare of light and dark, not canceling each other out or combusting at all, but rather complementing each other, creating a balance out of the imbalance that had plagued him for so long. His human and mage aspects blended with each other, with the killer, and he became the Mictlan. The man he was supposed to have been all along, anchored by the love of the woman he’d fought for, almost too late.

Power flowed from him to her and back again, forming a feedback loop that turned the muk from greasy gray to pure silver, like liquid mercury running in his veins.

Aware of the trembling roar that had built around them—not volcanic, but akin to it—he changed the angle of the kiss, deepening it and sending both of them into the sex magic that had bound them from the first. He was the Mictlan and the lover. She was the ch’ulel and the hot warrior princess who, incredibly, loved him.

He was aware of movement curling around them as the plants grew taller and broader, seeking the walls of the chamber. The air moistened and warmed, and, incredibly, a bright light kindled above them, warming them as though the sun shone inside. He smelled green, leafy things, and felt the ground soften beneath him.

The kiss spun on, bringing heat and magic, the energies coiling together as he and Sasha embraced.

Hotter and hotter it whirled, coiling into a knot of energy that gained its own momentum, started moving faster and faster, spinning up to a peak. They broke the kiss and looked at each other; he saw love in her eyes, and the forgiveness he’d sought without knowing he was seeking it.

“I love you,” he said simply.

“And I you.”

Triggered by the affirmation, the energy crested and broke, climaxing away from them in a tidal wave of pleasure and pressure, of life and growth and mad, pure power. The maize and cacao, grown to epic proportions, strained at the cavern, thrusting outward, seeking the sky.

A horrendous rending crack split the air, and the mountain shuddered and began to tear. Rocks rained down from above, but were caught by twining leaves and vines, a cushioning bower that protected Sasha and Michael and the dying man who would soon be their sacrificial victim. The plants shuddered with power, the volcano with protest.

The magic crested and ebbed as Michael and Sasha clung to each other, hearts pounding in unison.

When the power cleared and settled, when everything settled, there was a huge, gaping crack in the side of Paxil Mountain, lined with a carpet of leafy greenery he suspected would prove to be maize and cacao, growing from the split out into the world.

The night beyond was dark, the air moist with highland vapor. Within moments, though, the night gave way to the warm glow of a rainbow fireball held by a blond Valkyrie, who sat astride a giant hawk.

Within minutes, Anna stood over her onetime friend, onetime student, onetime slave. Tears ran down her cheeks as she read from the Prophet’s scroll.

Sasha sat at his head, keeping Lucius alive as best she could. Jade sat on one side of him, holding his hand, deadly pale, her eyes intent on the rise and fall of his chest, which had closed over, but just barely. She gripped Michael’s hand, not just for the power, but for support, and because part of her wasn’t yet ready to believe that they’d finally found their way to each other. But even she couldn’t have imagined something like what had just happened—they’d broken a mountain together.

More, he loved her. And she loved him. That wasn’t a story or a dream; it was real. And even though his status as the Mictlan meant he could never form the jun tan with her, she knew they had their own form of commitment, one to the other. They were bound, even without the words or the symbols. And surprisingly, she didn’t need more than that. She simply needed him.

Anna broke off reading the spell, looking down at Lucius with deep concern. “We’re losing both of them.”

Sasha couldn’t argue that; she could feel it in the ch’ul connection, the faintness of his song. “I’m giving him all I can pull through the blood-link.” But then she remembered what Jox had said once when they’d been discussing her talent over seedlings and cow manure: that the ch’ulel power might not work best through blood. That sometimes talents were sparked by love. “I think,” she began, not sure how to say it, “I think we need to go deeper than the blood-magic in order to conquer death.” It wasn’t until she’d said the words that she realized she was smack in the middle of her own prophecy.

She faltered, felt Michael’s grip tighten, and steadied herself. “I need you all to open yourself to love, or at least respect, for Lucius. Forgiveness. He needs . . . we need to not just heal him, but give him a reason to stay.”

Strike’s expression clouded, but at pleading looks from Anna and Jade, he nodded reluctantly.

“Whatever he needs, we’ll do. He’s part of this war now. One of us.”

The words held the power of a vow, rippling away from the small group in a wash of magic.

The magi linked palm-to-palm, not in blood but in support. With each member added to the circle, Sasha felt an added kick of power, a notch of life pouring through her. Or not life, she realized now.

Love. Acceptance.

As they linked themselves, not with blood but with the bonds of friends, lovers, and teammates, the solstice peak began to fade, the window of opportunity to close.

“Work fast,” Michael added under his breath.

Anna once again began to read from the librarian’s scroll.

Sasha fed the life energy toward Lucius’s song, opening herself to the stranger who’d saved her before she’d even known his name, marking her palm and helping her defeat Iago’s drugs so she’d be ready to run when the time came. I owe you one.