Kneeland grabbed Jox’s arm, his fingers digging down to the bone. ‘‘We’ve got to do something! They’re dying! What do we do? What do we—’’
‘‘Focus!’’ Jox grabbed the other man and shook him hard. ‘‘The kids are the priority. We’re safe here. The hall is protected, and if we batten down—’’
Yellow light flared all around them as the protective wards fell. Jox’s heart froze in his chest. Impossible, he thought. The wards had been set by blood sacrifice from the strongest of the Nightkeepers. The only creature capable of breaching them was one of the Banol Kax, or their lava creatures, the—
‘‘Boluntiku!’’ shouted a winikin named Olivar as a dark shadow rose from the floor, radiating terrible magma-borne heat that set the parquet aflame. The creature coalesced out of a nightmare, rising up from the bowels of the earth, a swirling image of red-brown scales that remained translucent as it formed a six-fingered hand tipped with razor-sharp claws, and swung.
In the moment before it touched Olivar, the thing flared bright orange and turned solid. Blood geysered and Olivar’s body arched like a crossbow strung too tightly, suspended from the boluntiku’s six-clawed grip.
A chatter of gunfire rang out, sounding loud even through the screams. Olivar’s body jerked with the impact of bullets fired by a terrified-looking winikin, who’d unlocked the gun cabinet and grabbed an autopistol loaded with jade-tipped bullets.
Jade was to the Banol Kax as garlic was to the mythical vampires, or silver to the werewolves of legend. While the demons and their ilk were impervious to most other nonmagical weapons, jade could pierce their psi armor and do some damage.
The bullets had to hit to work, though, and these didn’t. The boluntiku puffed to vapor so the jade-tips passed harmlessly through, and Olivar’s limp body dropped to the floor. Then the lava creature turned on the shooter, going solid in the moment before it attacked.
Seconds later, the winikin was dead and the weapons cabinet was a mass of shattered wood and twisted metal. And the floor nearby was aflame.
Jox was moving before he’d even processed what was happening, running toward his charges, nine-year-old Striking-Jaguar and his fourteen-year-old sister, Anna-Paw.
Scarred-Jaguar’s attack must have failed. The Nightkeepers were all dead and the intersection was wide-open. The Banol Kax had sent their creatures to kill the children, to wipe out any chance of resistance when the Great Conjunction arrived. And it wouldn’t matter if the winikin got the kids out of the training center and hid—the boluntiku could smell magic.
They could also smell royalty.
Acting in concert, the boluntiku zeroed in on Anna, who was fighting her way toward Strike through the crush piled up near the exit, where children struggled to unlock the doors and winikin scrambled to get to their charges, everyone screaming as more boluntiku erupted from the floor.
‘‘No!’’ Jox shouted, his voice breaking as he fought his way toward the king’s children. Terrified cries rose up around him, and the floor was slick with blood, but he was entirely focused on the prince and princess he was blood-bound to protect.
Then a huge boluntiku rose up from the middle of the crush, rearing up and flaring its claws to swing at Anna, who was trying to shield her little brother.
Too late, Jox thought, desperation pounding in his veins as he struggled through a sea of panic and gore. He was going to be too late.
The creature went solid, killing everyone who’d been inside the confines of its vapor body. But in the second before the six-fingered claws raked the children, gunfire chattered and jade-tipped bullets struck home.
The boluntiku jerked back with a shriek that sounded like a thousand fingernails scratching across a giant blackboard, and spun toward its attacker. Jox turned, too, and saw Kneeland standing in front of the big-screen TV, holding a dented autopistol while tears rolled down his cheeks. When the winikin caught Jox’s eye, he flashed his forearm.
It was bare. His protectees—and their bloodline— were gone.
With nothing left to live for, Kneeland lifted the weapon in salute, then ran across the raised platform and leaped straight for the huge boluntiku. The thing stayed solid and caught him in midair with its claws, hoisting him to its gaping, hundred-toothed mouth.
The moment before it bit down, Kneeland let loose with the autopistol, emptying the clip. The back of the creature’s head blew out in a spray of blackish blood and rust-colored scales. But, still, its jaws closed with an audible crunch.
Kneeland’s body went limp, then fell to the ground in a bloody heap when the boluntiku vaporized in death, opening up a corpse-filled hole in the panicked mob. Retching, Jox hurdled the bodies and tried not to think of them as people who’d been alive only seconds earlier.
Around him the screams and fingernails-on-blackboard howls continued and the air smelled of blood and death. Then he was at the doors, and Anna grabbed him, and she was hanging on to Strike, and all Jox could think about was getting the hell out of there.
Someone must’ve hit the panic release—shit, he should’ve thought of that—because the doors weren’t locked anymore; they were wide-open and survivors were running out into the starlit crevasse where the training center was hidden, deep within Chaco Canyon. Winikin were dragging their children away from the carnage, running for their lives, but the boluntiku pursued with single-minded ferocity, their vapor bulks partially submerged beneath the ground as they gained strength from the magma flow at the earth’s mantle.
‘‘Jox, come on!’’ Anna pulled him toward the door. ‘‘Jox!’’
Three boluntiku were closing in on them, drawn by the smell of royalty.
‘‘Not that way.’’ Most of the escapees were headed toward the forty-car garage, or for the barns and the high
