Dawnkeepers

As he did, he found himself wishing he’d kissed Myrinne when he’d had the chance.

Alexis woke slowly, fighting through the layers of sleep. Her head hurt and her stomach was an empty ache, but even more, her soul felt hollow and her skull felt too big, as though her brain had shrunk, or something else had been taken from the space.

“That’s it,” a voice said from somewhere above her. “Come on; you can do it.”

It was Nate’s voice, she realized, just as it was Nate’s hand holding hers; she knew the good, solid feel of him like she knew herself. Only did she really? As the mists cleared, she remembered the hawk, and Nate’s newly discovered talent, which left them . . . where? She didn’t know. And as she opened her eyes and found herself lying on the ground outside of the torchlit hellmouth, she knew Nate saw her fear, because his expression blanked as he squeezed her hand once and let go.

“Nate,” she said, just his name, then fell silent because everything was too much, too confusing. He was wearing someone’s shirt tied around his waist like a loincloth, and another thrown over his shoulders but not buttoned. Apparently clothes didn’t shift with the man.

That detail, that confirmation that what she remembered had really happened, was almost more than she could handle.

“I’m glad you’re okay.” He held out a hand. “You ready to sit up?”

The rest of the Nightkeepers were clustered behind him, including Strike and Leah, who looked as ragged as Alexis felt. “The gods are gone, aren’t they?” she said dully. “The skyroad is gone.”

“We’re still here,” Strike said. He lifted his satellite phone. “The winikin are okay. Jox thinks there was enough of Lucius left in the makol that he forced the creature to escape rather than killing anyone, though I guess it was a pretty close thing. And Rabbit . . . we’ll have to see about him when we get back.” He paused, exhaling. “At least the barrier is still intact, thanks to you.”

“Me and Nate,” she corrected.

“Yeah.” The king nodded. “Blackhawk too.” It didn’t escape her notice that he’d gone back to Nate’s bloodline name, though, or that the others were giving him a wide berth. The realization angered her, but shamed her too, because wasn’t she doing the very same thing? He was no different from the man he’d been before. He’d simply discovered his talent.

It was a small effort to put her hand in Nate’s, but well rewarded by the glint of thanks in his eyes as he pulled her to her feet. She kept hold of him when he would’ve let go, and together they linked up with Leah as they formed the sacred circle that would allow Strike to ’port them back to Skywatch.

The king initiated the ’port, and as the magic took hold, Alexis sent a prayer into the barrier, even though she suspected the gods couldn’t hear them anymore: Please let Rabbit be okay. He’d saved her, she knew, somehow pushing her out of the Godkeeper link just as the skyroad collapsed.

She hoped to hell it hadn’t been his final act on earth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Anna sat by Rabbit’s bedside long after the others had eaten and crashed to sleep off their postmagic hangovers. She dozed fitfully, ate whatever Jox brought her, and by the time the new day dawned, she was blatantly defying Rabbit’s whole I don’t like being touched thing by holding his hand. She didn’t leak him any power, partly because she didn’t have any to spare, and partly because she had a feeling it wasn’t power that he needed; it was a reason to come back. She thought she could sense him waiting between the worlds, trying to make up his mind. Or maybe she was projecting and he was in a coma, plain and simple.

In case she was right about the hovering thing, though, she talked to him, reminding him that the Nightkeepers needed him, that they loved him. The words caught a little in her throat, though, because they felt like lies, or at least the sort of thing Rabbit would’ve snorted at and said, “Yeah, whatever.”

In terms of numbers and absolute power, the Nightkeepers were stronger with him than without, but from a more realistic standpoint, the amount of chaos he dumped into their lives probably came close to outweighing the benefits. And while Strike and Jox loved the kid like he was an exasperating family member, and Anna herself felt strongly about him because he was his father’s son, the feelings of the other Nightkeepers and winikin could probably be described as ambivalent at best.

Which, again, more or less applied in her case as well. At least it ought to. She’d brought Lucius into their midst and refused to sacrifice him. Somehow the makol had hidden behind Lucius’s humanity long enough to get through the wards and lull Jox into believing the danger was past. Then, as Jox had described, the creature had gone full makol and attacked. Then at the last possible second, the creature had frozen and seemed to struggle within itself, then shrieked in rage and agony and bolted from the compound. Anna wanted to think that had been the spark of Lucius retained within the creature, wanted to believe that he would come back to himself once the equinox passed.

Unfortunately, Strike hadn’t been able to get a ’port lock on him, which meant he was dead or underground . . . or Iago had him.

Now, more than ever, they were going to have to find the Xibalbans’ encampment. They needed to recover Lucius before Iago got at the knowledge inside his skull. Ditto for Sasha Ledbetter. Both recoveries were going to present new problems, but it wasn’t as if they had a choice. Each cardinal day from there on out would bring another opportunity for the Banol Kax to assault the barrier, and now the Nightkeepers were going to be functioning without the help of the gods. It was unclear how much —if any—of their Godkeeper powers Leah and Alexis had retained, but they had to assume a massive power drop. Which brought her thoughts circling back to Rabbit.

They needed his power. Hell, in a way they needed his chaos too. He stirred things up, kept them thinking and guessing, which was going to be vital over the next few years as they got closer and closer to the drop-dead date.

“Which is why you need to come back to us, okay?” she said to the teen around lunchtime the day after the equinox, though time didn’t have much meaning down in the storeroom cell block.

Rabbit lay too still. His pallor was gray, his breathing slow and shallow. His profile was sharp and forbidding, his lips turned down in a sneer very like the one that formed his fallback expression when he was awake. The thought that she might never see that snotty ’tude again was a fist to Anna’s heart.

Leaning close to Rabbit, she kissed his cheek. “We love you. You hear? You need to come back.”

And, incredibly, his lips moved. A word emerged, breathy and faint, but still a word. A request.

“Myrinne.”

Anna was on her feet in seconds. She pulled down the wards with a thought and yanked open the door. Jox, who’d been keeping guard out in the hallway, shot to his feet.

“Get the girl out of her cell,” Anna snapped. “I want her in here five minutes ago.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” the winikin said carefully.

I didn’t ask for your opinion, she wanted to snarl, but knew it was just another sign of the larger trend, the one where Strike had been leaning more on Nate and Alexis than on her. The others viewed her as an outsider, a commuter who showed up for the ceremonies and then left again. But all that was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? She didn’t get to complain now that she’d gotten the distance she craved.

“Fine,” she said to Jox. “Do what you have to do. Ask Strike for permission. Whatever.”

Strike agreed, of course, and less than five minutes later he and Leah brought Myrinne to Rabbit’s room themselves, locking and warding the door behind them.

Anna tried not to twist her fingers together, tried not to think that this could be a huge mistake, that she was making yet another call that would prove to have disastrous consequences. They didn’t really know anything about Myrinne’s ancestry, or her connection to the witch’s magic. For all they knew, they were about to throw gasoline on a smoldering fire.

But this was something tangible Anna could give him, something she could do. “He asked for you,” she told the girl, who was pale but defiant, and wore a sneer not unlike Rabbit’s own.