Dawnkeepers

come home empty-handed.

“Ma’am?” said a cultured, amplified voice. It was the auctioneer now, not the spotter, which meant the dabblers had dropped out and he had his two or three serious bidders on the hook. “It’s seventy-

five hundred dollars to you.”

She glanced up at the projection screen at the front of the room. It showed a magnification of the statuette, which rested near the auctioneer’s elbow, top-lit on a nest of black cloth. Described in the auction catalog as “a statuette of Ixchel, Mayan goddess of rainbows and fertility, carved from chert, circa A.D. 1100; love poem inscribed in hieroglyphs on base,” the statuette was lovely. The waxy, pale green stone had been carved with deceptive simplicity into the shape of a woman with a large nose and flattened forehead, her conical skull crowned with a rainbow of hair that fell forward as she tipped her head into her hands in repose, or perhaps tears. She sat upon a stone, or maybe an overturned bowl or basket, and that was where the glyphs were carved, curved and fluid and gorgeous like all Mayan writing, which was as much art as a form of communication.

Love poem, Alexis thought with an inner snort. Not. Or rather, it was eau-de-Hallmark read one way, but according to Jade, the Nightkeepers’ archivist, if they held the statuette at the proper angle under starlight, a second layer of glyphwork would spell out the first of the seven demon prophecies they needed to combat the Banol Kax. Starscript, which was less about magic and more about the refractive angles and wavelengths of starlight, was apparently one of the tricks the ancestral Nightkeepers had used to bury their spells and prophecies within the carved writings of the ancient Maya, again according to Jade. And since Jade was the one who’d gotten the message from her nahwal ancestor during the winter solstice ritual, warning that the demon prophecies must be found, Alexis was inclined to believe her. The nahwal had said that the first prophecy would be triggered during the upcoming spring equinox, just over six weeks away . . . which meant it was pretty godsdamned critical that Alexis didn’t let some collector type outbid her on the Ixchel statuette.

Aware that the auctioneer was waiting for her answer, she said, “Ten thousand dollars.” As she’d hoped, the advance jumped the bid past fair market value by enough to make her remaining opponent shake his head and drop out. The auctioneer pronounced it a done deal, and she felt a flare of success as she flashed her bidder number, knowing there would be no problem with the money.

The Nightkeeper Fund, which had—ironically—been seeded in the late eighteen hundreds with the proceeds from her five-times-great-grandparents’ generation unwisely selling off the very Mayan artifacts the modern Nightkeepers were scrambling to recover now, had been intended to fund an army of hundreds as the 2012 end date approached. That, however, was before the current king’s father had led his warrior-priests in an ill-fated battle against the demons. Only a few of the youngest Nightkeepers had survived, hidden and raised in secret by their winikin until seven months earlier, when the intersection connecting the earth, sky, and underworld had reactivated from its two-decade dormancy, and the old king’s son, Strike, had recalled his warriors.

Yeah, that had been a shocker. Alexis, dear, you’re a magic user, Izzy had pretty much said. I’m not your godmother; I’m your winikin , and we need to leave tonight for your bloodline ceremony and training. And, oh, by the way, you and the other Nightkeepers have a little over four years to save the world.

According to the thirteenth prophecy, Strike’s refusal to sacrifice Leah, the human who had become his mate and queen, meant that the countdown to the end—time had now begun in earnest. Jade’s research indicated that they’d passed into the four-year cycle ruled by the demon prophecies, which predicted that seven minions of the demon Camazotz would come through the intersection one at a time, each on a cardinal day, and attack. If they succeeded, the barrier would tear and the Banol Kax would be freed onto the earth . . . which had the Nightkeepers hustling to find the seven artifacts inscribed with starscript clues on how to avoid the fulfillment of the prophecies.

Make that six artifacts, Alexis thought, grinning. Because I just bagged Ixchel.

“Excuse me, please,” she murmured, and rose, snagging her folio and bag off the floor. She stepped out into the aisle while the auction house employees whisked her statuette off the podium and set up the next lot, and the auctioneer launched into his spiel. When she reached the temporary office that’d been set up in the hallway outside the big estate’s ballroom, she unzipped her folio and enjoyed how the staffer’s eyes got big at the sight of the neatly stacked and banded cash. She handed over her bidder’s number. “What’s the total damage?”

“One moment please,” he said, but his eyes were still glued to the cash.

The two items she’d bought with the Nightkeepers’ money—the statuette and a death mask that had been an earlier impulse buy—wouldn’t be the biggest deals of the day by far, but she’d bet they’d be among only a few handled in paper money. Granted, she could’ve done the remote transfer thing, too, but she quite simply loved the feel of the green stuff. And no, it wasn’t because she’d been deprived or picked on as a child, as someone back at Skywatch had unkindly suggested. Nor was it a reaction to the idea that the world was four years away from a serious crisis of being, as that same someone had offered, or a rejection of destiny or some such garbage.

She just loved money. She loved the feel and smell of it. She loved what it could buy—not just the things, but the respect. The power. It wasn’t actually until she’d been at Skywatch for a few weeks that she’d realized that the money thing was simple biology. The Nightkeepers were bigger, stronger, and more graceful than average humans, pumped with charisma and loaded with talent. At least, most of them were. Alexis had somehow gotten the bigger-and-stronger part without the other stuff, particularly the grace, which meant she tended more toward the clumsy side of life. She’d worked long and hard to camouflage the klutz factor, and most days managed to control her freakishly long limbs. That effort, however, left her seriously low on charisma, and so far she was average in the magical talent department, as well.

Ergo, the cash. She liked living as large as possible. So sue her.

“It’s going to take a minute,” the staffer said. “The computer’s being glitchy today.”

“No rush.” She flipped the folio shut and turned away, figuring she’d use the brief delay to check in —which consisted of powering up her PDA, shooting off a quick text message to Izzy reporting that she had the statue and was headed back to Skywatch, and then powering off the unit without checking her backlogged messages.

She wasn’t in the mood for the chatter—hadn’t been for a while, which was why she’d jumped at the chance to fly from New Mex out to the California coast for the auction. The quick trip had given her a chance to breathe air she wasn’t sharing with the same group of Nightkeepers and winikin she’d been cheek-by-jowl with for the past half year. She wasn’t the only one feeling it, either. Tensions were running high, thanks to the lack of both privacy and enemy activity.

Besides, she could guarantee the messages on her cell were nothing critical, because she wasn’t in line for the important stuff yet. Strike had his advisers—Leah and the royal winikin, Jox—and the three of them handled the heavy lifting, with the lower-impact jobs delegated to the newly inducted Nightkeepers.

For now, anyway. Alexis had her sights set higher. Her mother, Gray-Smoke, had been one of King Scarred-Jaguar’s most trusted advisers, holding political power equaled only by that of her adversarial coadviser, Two-Hawk. That pretty much figured, because Two-Hawk’s son was Alexis’s own personal nemesis, i.e., the someone who’d been seriously pissing her off over the past few months, ever since he’d dumped her on her ass right after the talent ceremony, with no explanation given beyond the old standard: It’s not you, it’s me.

Damn him.

“Ma’am? You’re all set.” The staffer held out her paperwork. “I have a couple of messages for you too. She said it was important.”

“Thanks.” Alexis took the slips, glanced at them, and tucked them into her pocket. Just Izzy mother-

henning her. The winikin would’ve gotten the text message by now, so they were square.

A grizzled, heavyset security guard set a metal case on the table and flipped it open so she could see the statuette nestled inside a shockproof foam bed, alongside the Mayan death mask she’d bought earlier. At her nod, the guard shut the case and slid it across the table to her, rumbling in a basso profundo voice, “Dial the numbers to what you want, and hit this button.” He pointed to an inset red dot. “That’ll set your combination. If you don’t