Nightkeepers

Torchlight played over the long, lean lines of him as he stood and snagged his clothes. Naked, he was a statue. A fantasy. Even though they’d just had at each other and she didn’t even know his name, greedy need knotted Leah’s belly.

Then he pulled on his cutoffs and T-shirt and toed on his sandals, and he became a man again. One she was going to have to deal with, because, um, hello, they were in Mexico. And something very strange had just happened. Several somethings, in fact, starting with a botched human sacrifice and ending with an orgasm.

Brain churning, she turned away from him and got dressed while she tried to put her thoughts in order. Her pants were soaked but otherwise okay, while her shirt and bra were write-offs. Knotting the material as best she could at her midriff, she turned to face him and stuck out a hand. ‘‘Detective Leah Ann Daniels, Miami-Dade Narcotics.’’

Might as well start with the introductions. Then it’d be time for What the Christ is going on?

His wide, mobile lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. ‘‘Striking-Jaguar, last male of the Nightkeepers’ royal house. You can call me Strike.’’

And suddenly it made way too much sense. Anger and self-disgust fisted in her gut. ‘‘Oh, shit. You’re one of them.’’ She looked around. ‘‘Bastard. Where are the cameras?’’

He looked surprised. ‘‘Cameras?’’

She didn’t bother answering, instead making a wide circuit of the room, looking at the braziers, the carved skulls, trying to be a cop when the woman in her wanted to scream and start throwing things. ‘‘Of course. No sense in him staging something like this and not filming it for blackmail to get me off his back. Or, hell, he could just YouTube it and crash my career. I can see the title now: ‘MDPD detective gets down and dirty during Survivor 2012 ritual.’ What are you, one of his disciples? Nah,’’ she answered her own question. ‘‘None of them look as good as you. So, what . . . out-of-work actor?’’ Her voice climbed an octave. ‘‘Oh, bloody hell. Do not tell me I just had unprotected sex with a porn star.’’

Incipient hysteria heated her blood just as the sex had done minutes before, though with far less pleasure. Her brother’s friend Vince, the only one left who believed as she did that Zipacna was behind the serial killings, had warned her the 2012ers would go to any length to protect themselves. Of course they’d set her up. It made rational sense.

More, at least, than any of the other explanations she could come up with.

‘‘Jesus, that’s a leap.’’ He held up both hands in a stop the presses gesture. ‘‘Okay, let’s hang on here. Chill. Take a breath. I’m not anyone’s disciple, or an actor. I’m definitely not a porn star, and I’m not sure whether to be complimented or insulted by that one.’’

‘‘Then what are you? And make it good.’’ She looked around again, and panic fluttered, because if this wasn’t a setup and there weren’t any cameras, then there was a very real possibility she was losing her mind, because so much of what she remembered happening couldn’t possibly be real: the purple-black smoke touching her; the stranger—Strike? What kind of a name was that?— appearing in midair; the way he’d busted her cuffs with a word . . . and the voice in her head.

If that wasn’t crazy, she didn’t know what was.

‘‘I told you,’’ he repeated as though it were all very logical. ‘‘I’m a Nightkeeper.’’

‘‘Which means what, exactly?’’ And does it mean I’m not nuts?

He hesitated, then said, ‘‘I’m one of the guys in charge of stopping things like this from happening.’’ His gesture encompassed the chamber, the altar, all of it. ‘‘The man—the creature—who had you . . .’’

‘‘Zipacna.’’ Even saying the name filled her with hatred, more now than ever because of what he’d done to Nick, what he’d tried to do to her. ‘‘He’s mine.’’

‘‘No, he’s not.’’ There was no give in the words. ‘‘Leave him to us, Detective. He’s way out of your jurisdiction.’’

‘‘He’s a murderer.’’

‘‘He’s a makol.’’

Zipacna had used the word, too, during one of his chants. ‘‘What does that mean?’’

‘‘Roughly, a disciple of the underworld who’s offered himself for partial demonic possession in exchange for magic and a role in the coming war leading up to the 2012 end date,’’ he said. ‘‘Zipacna, in particular, is now the ajaw-makol, the top predator, the head dude. The ritual he just used you in, that means he takes his power directly from the rulers of the underworld, the Banol Kax. Over the next three months, he’ll make other makol from evil-minded humans—the more willing they are to undergo demonic possession, the more of their own human traits and intelligence they’ll retain. You can tell them by the glowing green eyes, and they’re a bitch to kill.’’ He paused, grimaced. ‘‘Or so the stories go. There hasn’t been a makol on earth in more than a thousand years.’’

Leah’s head spun. She should be so out of there. This was nuts. Insane. Completely unbelievable. But she was a cop, and cops followed the evidence. Right now, the evidence—if she could believe her own senses, anyway— was telling her there was something seriously whacked going on. She’d also done enough reading on the semireligious, semihistorical, semiscientific basis of the Survivor 2012 doctrine to know that it was, if not believable, then at least internally consistent.

That didn’t mean it was real, though. Hell, logic—and what she knew about how the world worked—said it wasn’t real. But if it wasn’t real, how did she explain what’d just happened to her?

Her options seemed to be limited to: A) magic existed, and she’d gotten caught up in something way outside her comfort zone; or B) magic didn’t exist, and she’d been kidnapped, nearly drowned, and then boffed a total stranger.

‘‘So the thing you did with the cuffs,’’ she said, trying to feel her way in a world that was shifting beneath her feet, ‘‘does that mean you’ve got demonic powers, too?’’

He shook his head. ‘‘The Nightkeepers are the good guys. We’ve got the gods on our side.’’ He paused. ‘‘Look, the short version is that I’m one of the last three surviving members of an ancient group of magi sworn to protect the earth from the 2012 apocalypse. Several hundred of us—including my parents—died in the early eighties enacting a spell designed to permanently seal the gateway to the underworld, Xibalba. Now it’s looking like