Nightkeepers

if I wanted to learn more.’’

‘‘No kidding?’’ She glanced at the card. ‘‘Then you’ve already seen more of the magic than I have, and I’ve already been here a few days.’’ She waved him in. ‘‘We’re in the middle of Magic 101.’’ As an afterthought, she stuck out a hand. ‘‘I’m Alexis Gray. Smoke bloodline. ’’

He took her hand. His grip was warm and firm, but he’d started to look a little thin around the edges, like he was going into overload. ‘‘Nate Blackhawk. What’s a bloodline?’’

She cocked her head. ‘‘Didn’t your winikin explain all this shit as you were growing up? The whole Nightkeepers-save -the-world-from-the-2012-apocalypse thing?’’

‘‘Winikin?’’ No doubt about it, he’d gone gray.

‘‘Oh, shit,’’ she said, making the connection to a convo she’d overheard between Izzy and one of the other winikin . ‘‘You’re Carlos’s orphan, aren’t you?’’ When his bags hit the deck and his knees started to buckle, she jammed her shoulder into his armpit and shouted, ‘‘Need a little help here!’’

But she was too late. They were both headed for the floor.

Once they got Blackhawk back on his feet and looking more or less steady, Strike herded the trainees back into the sunken great room at the center of the mansion.

‘‘Okay. Moving on.’’ He glanced at Blackhawk, who was looking seriously shell-shocked. ‘‘We went over the writs and the thirteen prophecies yesterday. Maybe Alexis can fill you in on that stuff later.’’ He chose her partly because Izzy had given her a strong foundation in Nightkeeper history and partly because Blackhawk was trying way too hard not to stare at her.

Strike wasn’t interested in making a match of his own, but Jox was right—they were going to need the Nightkeepers to pair up.

‘‘We were talking about the barrier,’’ he said to the group. ‘‘Think of it as an energy field that you can use in a bunch of different ways. Once you’ve been through both the binding and talent ceremonies you’ll be able to uplink, tapping the barrier for the power to perform spells. You can do that pretty much whenever, as long as you’ve got enough physical energy to sustain the uplink. During the astral conjunctions—the solstice and equinox and so forth—you’ll be able to jack in and send your incorporeal form into the barrier itself. In extreme cases, with the strongest of magic and sacrifice, you may be able to punch all the way through the barrier.’’

Alexis nodded. ‘‘Like for the transition spell.’’

Sven elbowed her. ‘‘Suckup.’’

‘‘Burnout,’’ she fired back.

‘‘Anyway,’’ Strike said, raising his voice to drown them out. ‘‘Alexis is correct—a Nightkeeper can sometimes punch through the barrier using a transition spell—in theory, anyway. Now that we’re in the final five years of the countdown to zero date, on rare occasions— like the solstice or equinox—it should be possible for a god to travel the skyroad connecting the heavens and earth, in order to enter a female Nightkeeper. When that happens, she’ll becomes what’s called a Godkeeper, and she’ll be able to wield some—or all—of the god’s power with the help of her jun tan mate.’’

‘‘In theory?’’ Sven pressed.

Strike shook his head. ‘‘To the best of our knowledge, the Godkeeper spell was lost in the fifteen hundreds when the conquistadors and their missionaries did their damnedest to wipe out anything that didn’t look like Christianity. Which amounted to almost the entirety of pre-Columbian civilization.’’

‘‘Gods coming to earth,’’ Blackhawk broke in, incredulous. ‘‘Magical spells. Are you people listening to yourselves? ’’

Strike glanced at him. ‘‘You forgetting the roof deal?’’

Blackhawk subsided, but Strike figured the guy was getting close to critical mass, so he took five and handed the new arrival off to his assigned winikin, Carlos.

When class resumed, Strike said, ‘‘All of you should be able to perform the traditional spells, the ones involving a small blood sacrifice and tapping the barrier. During the second ceremony, some—if not all—of you will get one or two additional marks, indicating that you have inherent abilities the others don’t. The talent marks don’t always show up at the time of the ceremony— some do; some come later. It’s more that the ceremony prepares you to accept them, and opens you to your full powers.’’

Sven broke in. ‘‘What sort of talent am I going to get?’’

Strike shrugged. ‘‘It’s not a sure thing. Most of you will hopefully get the warrior’s mark and the fighting powers that come with it, which include the ability to block with a shield spell and attack with fire. Some of the women may get prescience to one degree or another. ’’ He didn’t figure they needed to know the considerable downside of the rare full-blown foretelling powers until one of them actually got the itza’at seer’s mark. ‘‘About one in three Nightkeepers on average gets another talent.’’ Ticking them off on his fingers, he said, ‘‘Teleporting runs in the jaguar bloodline, as does mimicry. Invisibility and flight tend to pop up in the bird bloodlines. Mental talents like mind-bending and mesmerism are common in—’’

He broke off at the sound of the front door opening, then shutting again, followed by the quiet murmur of a woman’s voice, followed by Red-Boar’s deeper tones.

‘‘Sounds like the last of us is finally here.’’ Strike rose to his feet and called, ‘‘We’re in here.’’

Moments later, Red-Boar appeared in the arched doorway near the front entrance, and ushered through a Nightkeeper woman who was tall and gorgeous and blond, and looked younger than the others. She was wearing shorts and long sleeves, which jarred, but that wasn’t what had Strike freezing in place.

No, that would be the little boys holding her hands, one on each side.

They were identical.

‘‘Twins,’’ he said, breathing past a spike of adrenaline and a crushing pressure in his chest. ‘‘They’re twins.’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ Red-Boar nodded. ‘‘How do you like that? They’re only half-bloods, but still.’’