Nightkeepers

The first day of summer has the longest day and shortest night of the year, and the sun seems to stand still in the sky.

PROLOGUE

June 21

Twenty-four years ago

Two big clocks hung high at one end of the great hall, counting time. One ran in reverse, measuring out how long was left until the end-time: almost exactly twenty-eight years and six months. The other was a normal clock, and it was creepy-crawling to nine fifty-three p.m., the moment of the summer solstice. The moment King Scarred- Jaguar and two hundred other Nightkeeper warrior-priests would take their places in the sacred tunnels beneath Chichen Itza and cast the king’s spell, sealing the intersection of the earth, sky, and underworld.

Three minutes and change to go.

Scarred-Jaguar’s loyal servant, Jox, stood guard, along with fifty other winikin, all spaced around the edge of the huge hall, watching the seconds tick down. The Nightkeeper children who were too young to fight were gathered in the center of the room. Some of them were watching a Michael Jackson video on the big screen.

The rest were watching the clock.

‘‘Nothing yet,’’ Hannah said from beside Jox. The pretty brunette glanced down at the marks on her right inner forearm, rows of tiny lizard glyphs, each representing a member of the bloodline she was sworn to protect.

The winikin weren’t magic users, but the marks themselves were magic. Every time a member of the bloodline died, one of the glyphs disappeared.

So far, so good. Two minutes to go, and nobody had lost a glyph.

‘‘You should be with the baby,’’ Jox murmured. ‘‘Just in case.’’

‘‘I know.’’ Hannah glanced down at the infants’ area, where she’d gotten her best friend, Izzy, to watch her tiny charge for a few minutes. Instead of hurrying away as the countdown continued, though, she took Jox’s hand and pressed his palm to her cheek. ‘‘Be safe.’’

His heart tightened in his chest, heavy with the knowledge that he couldn’t put her first, not when he was blood-bound to the king’s son and daughter. But when she released his hand, instead of letting it fall away from her soft, warm skin like he knew he should, he slid his grip to the back of her neck and drew her closer.

‘‘Maybe after,’’ he whispered, and touched his lips to hers.

She hesitated for a fraction of a second, as if wondering whether he actually meant it after all this time. Then she returned the kiss with a sharp edge of fear. Of hope.

Maybe after. It was what they were all saying— Nightkeeper and winikin alike—if not aloud, then in their hearts. Maybe after the intersection was sealed, they’d be able to break away from lives ruled by ancient roles and prophecies. If the end-time could be prevented from ever beginning, then the Nightkeepers wouldn’t need to protect mankind anymore. The winikin wouldn’t need to serve anymore. They could all disband, disperse, go off to live as they chose. Jox figured he’d start his own business, maybe a garden center. He could run the front with Hannah while their rug rats played tag in the shrubbery.

And he was so getting ahead of himself.

As the final minute began to tick down, he broke the kiss and gave her a little push. ‘‘Go on. Get back to work.’’

He didn’t watch her go. He watched the clock. Forty-five seconds. Twenty-five. Fifteen. Five. Three. Two. One. There was a collective indrawn breath when half the wristwatches in the room went off in a chaos of digital bleats as the solstice came. . . .

And absolutely nothing happened.

The second hand on the big clock swept past the critical moment and kept going. Thirty seconds. One minute. Two. Three.

After five minutes there was a collective exhale and a few cheers, and the kids in the middle of the room started talking, only a few at first, then more and more, the volume building as the tension released and excitement took hold.

The winiken to Jox’s immediate left, a sturdy guy named Kneeland who was bound to the ax bloodline, said, ‘‘Hannah, huh?’’ He elbowed Jox in the ribs. ‘‘Rock on. We didn’t think you had it in you. Ever since the prince was born, you’ve been so caught up in— Shit!’’ Kneeland went dead pale and clawed at his arm, pushing up his sleeve. ‘‘Oh, no. No! Please, gods, no!’’

Screams ripped through the winikin, echoing at the perimeter of the hall, then in the middle as the kids reacted to their protectors’ alarm.

A second later, pain seared along Jox’s arm. Cursing, praying, he shoved up his sleeve and stared at the black tattoolike marks on his right forearm.

There was a ripple of motion as the jaguar glyphs disappeared one by one.

Blood red washed across his vision and his pulse stuttered. Agony vised his body. Fear. Disbelief. Crushing, awful grief.

No! He wanted to scream for his people, for himself, but instead clamped his teeth on the cry as tears ran down his cheeks. Then, like a switch had been thrown, the pain was gone. So were almost all of the glyphs, including two of the four royal marks.

The absence of the pain echoed like silence. Like sorrow.

The king is dead, he thought. Long live the king.

The hall was in chaos. The girls—most of whom had the sight to one degree or another—screamed at the things they saw in their minds, or wept for their parents, or both. Most of the boys were shouting, running around, banging on the gun cabinet and hammering at the locked and warded exterior doors, ready to fight the enemy, the demons called Banol Kax.