Dawnkeepers

“Chocolate and Tylenol,” she said as her stomach growled in syncopation with her headache. “And a bubble bath.”

I could get behind the bath idea, he said, projecting an image that made her blush and heated her blood to boiling.

But her response was tempered with unease. “Nate, listen. I—” She broke off, not because she didn’t know what to say, but because she suddenly couldn’t breathe. Her lungs were locked, not shut, but bloating, like they were full of water. Heart hammering, she grabbed for her throat, mouth working, trying to scream but unable to get out a sound.

What’s wrong? Nate asked quickly.

The goddess, she sent along their mental link. Something bad is happening!

In the distance Kulkulkan’s glowing golden form faltered, and they heard a trumpet of distress. The creator managed another few faltering wing beats, then began to lose altitude. Soon he disappeared from sight.

Alexis felt the world constricting around her, inside her. The rainbow magic sparked within her head, arcing wildly, loving magic gone wrong. Help, she cried as she slumped sideways and started to slide. Help me!

Hang on! Nate folded his wings and dived for the earth, for the Nightkeepers, but it was already too late. Alexis’s vision went dim, then dark.

The last thing she heard was Rabbit’s voice screaming, Stop it; you’re killing them!

Iago shrugged off Rabbit’s attack and shoved him into a mental corner, leaving him weak and impotent as the Xibalban renewed his attack on the intersection.

The mage stood in the altar room beneath Chichen Itza. The torches belched purple-black smoke, and the air rattled with foul magic. Desiree’s body lay sprawled on the now-cracked chac-mool altar, leaking blood. The crimson wetness filled the lines carved into the stone, highlighting the sacred patterns and pooling in a horrible parody of the good, pure magic the Nightkeepers had performed in that same chamber. On the floor lay what was left of the ancient artifacts bearing the demon prophecies, which had been broken to dust beneath Iago’s boots as an added source of power.

Rabbit could feel the equinox, could feel a battle raging on the magic plane, light against dark, but he couldn’t follow it. All he knew was the part he was being forced to play, his magic joined with Iago’s as the Xibalban’s plan came to fruition.

When the Nightkeepers had appeared at the hellmouth and joined battle against the death bats and the Banol Kax, Rabbit had expected Iago to throw his powers on the dark side of the battle, to swing the fight in his favor. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d smiled and ’ported directly into the altar room, and begun a set of spells Rabbit had never heard before. Hell, he’d never heard of them before, didn’t know what they were intended to do. But though he wasn’t able to follow the intricate spell casting in the old language, he’d readily pulled the intent from Iago’s mind.

The bastard was dismantling the skyroad.

If he succeeded, Strike, Leah, and Alexis were all in jeopardy, as they were linked to their gods.

Even worse—if there was anything worse than losing, like, a quarter of the Nightkeepers’ fighting force, along with the royal couple—if the Xibalban succeeded in destroying the skyroad, there would be no more hope of the gods coming to earth. No more Godkeepers. Potentially no more visions, save for those sent by the ancestors, who were on a lower plane than the gods.

Rabbit knew he had to stop the Xibalban. Too bad he didn’t have a fucking clue how he was supposed to do that. Iago controlled both of their minds, and his magic was so much stronger.

Think, Rabbit told himself. Fucking think! It was hard to focus as Iago repeated the short spell for the eighth time and the chamber started shaking itself apart, locked in an earth tremor that felt like it was going to take out most of Mexico, never mind just the tunnels.

The Xibalban stepped up to the broken altar and withdrew a sharp stone tool from his belt—not a knife, but an awl of sorts. Bracing his chin against the edge of the broken chac-mool, he stuck out his tongue and drove the awl directly through it.

Agony flared in Rabbit’s mouth as though he’d made the sacrifice himself. He tasted blood and magic as Iago stood and felt in the pocket of his dark robe, then pulled out a long string that was knotted at regular intervals, with each knot holding a wickedly pointed thorn. The thorn rope was one of the oldest of the Maya’s sacrificial tools, one that had been used to allow the kings to talk to the gods.

Now the Xibalban used it to close the lines of communication. He threaded the string through the hole he’d punched in his tongue and started pulling it through as he recited the spell one last time, nine repetitions for the nine layers of hell that would hold sway once the earth was cut off from the thirteen layers of heaven. As he did so, the tremors became a quake, not just on the physical plane, but on the magical one as well. Rabbit could feel the barrier itself shudder with the force of the attack, could feel the skyroad starting to come apart.

Don’t be such a girl, he heard a familiar voice whisper at the back of his mind. Do something!

His old man wasn’t there; he was long gone. But he was right too, Rabbit knew. So he gathered his magic and scraped his tired self together, preparing for one final attack. Iago wasn’t paying attention to him except to drain his power and use his strange half-blood magic to fuel a spell that shouldn’t have existed, shouldn’t have worked. Rabbit knew he couldn’t cut off the connection; he’d tried and failed already. He couldn’t take over Iago’s mind, either, because the bastard was watching for that.

But what if he added to it? Could he use a power surge to kick the bastard offline, maybe fry his synapses?

Maybe, he thought. Possibly. It was worth a shot. And if he fried his own cortex in the process, that’d suck, but at least he would’ve been a hero once in his life. The thought of dying made him sad.

But the idea of taking Iago with him almost made it okay. Almost.

Knowing there was no hope for it, no other option, Rabbit closed his eyes and thought of fire.

Thought of telekinesis. Thought of mind-bending. Thought, quite simply, of magic in all its forms and glory. He felt the power grow within him, felt the madness and heat of it batter him, swirl around him, making him feel larger and smaller all at once. When it reached its apex, when he could call no more magic, contain no more power, he turned out of the small corner of Iago’s mind that he’d been occupying and flung himself at the mage’s consciousness.

He sensed Iago’s focus shift in the last second before impact, felt the Xibalban bring his own magic to bear. Then they collided, and the world blew apart.

Magic was a firestorm, a power surge that overloaded Iago’s mind and derailed his spell casting.

Rabbit grabbed on to the mage’s consciousness, hung on, refused to let go. The Xibalban tried to flee back along the connection to Rabbit’s body, but there was no way Rabbit was letting the bastard wake up in Skywatch, so he dug in, feeding power into the spell, pumping it up. He sensed Strike, Leah, and Alexis caught in the dying skyroad. Instinctively knowing that he couldn’t do anything to repair the road, that it was already too late, Rabbit turned his attention to his teammates, feeding them all the magic he could muster, trying to overload the connections and kick them free.

Iago roared and fought his hold, scoring at him with harsh, destructive magic that burned like cold fire, biting deep into Rabbit’s mental self. But Rabbit just screamed and held on, and kept pushing power to his friends, trying to save them if he couldn’t save himself.

As he reached the absolute end of his power, and his consciousness flickered and dimmed, he sensed the others starting to blink out of the skyroad: Strike first, then Leah, then Alexis. After that, Rabbit’s consciousness went blank.

Then there was nothing, only darkness.

Some time later he cut back in, just long enough to realize that he wasn’t inside Iago anymore. He was back in his own body, only not. It was more like he was floating over it, waiting. Then, finally, he started floating away, up toward the sky, where warriors went directly after they died in battle.