Dawnkeepers

looked like: scenes of ballplayers wearing the traditional yokes and padding, each vying to send a heavy rubberized ball—sometimes containing a skull at the center—through rings set high on the walls while members of the opposite team tried to stop them using any methods possible, fair or foul. The carvings might also show the losers—or sometimes the winners—being sacrificed in tribute to the gods, blood spurting from the stumps of their beheaded necks, the gouts turning to sacred serpents as they landed.

He would’ve given just about anything to be able to get down there and check it out. He also wanted to get a look at the kapok tree nearby, which must’ve had a serious irrigation system keeping it alive, because they weren’t supposed to grow in the desert. There was the big steel building behind the tree, a firing range beyond that, and what looked like a set of Pueblo ruins at the back of the canyon. . . .

Frankly, he didn’t care what he got to explore first; he just wanted to get his ass out there. He’d tried the door and window already, along with the vents and anyplace else he thought he might be able to break through, but had stopped short of busting up the furniture and using the shards to hack through the drywall into the next room over. Another couple of days, though, and he might give it a try.

He was trying not to blame Anna for deserting him; he’d blamed her for too much already, all but destroying a friendship that had once been very important to him. Besides, it wasn’t just about the two of them, was it? His being there was undoubtedly a security breach of epic proportions for her people, never mind the way her brother had implied that he’d been involved with them once before and was already living on borrowed time.

Lucius really wanted to know what that was all about. But the strange thing was, he was curious but not mad, bored but not blaming anyone for it, which felt more like the him of a year ago rather than the guy he’d become over the past six months. Something had changed inside him since he’d come to the compound. He’d arrived all pissed off and ready to lash out, feeling like the victim, like the world was out to get him and he’d be better off striking first rather than sitting back and waiting it out. He’d been mad at Anna, mad at Desiree for sending him on his quest, mad at Sasha Ledbetter for not being where he’d hoped she would be.

Since then he’d had a serious reality check. Maybe it was seeing Anna and realizing what she’d been hiding from him, and partly understanding why. Or maybe it was just the time he’d had to do some navel-gazing and figure out what the hell was important. Anna was important, he’d decided.

What she and the others were trying to do was important, because the end date was less than four years away. And, more than anything, he wanted to help. He wanted to be a part, however small, of the war that was to come.

His mother had always said he’d been born into the wrong time, that he should’ve been one of Arthur’s knights, a hero in an age of heroes. He wasn’t sure about that, but he knew there were some battles a man had to step up and fight no matter what.

“I may not be a Nightkeeper,” he said aloud, “but with Ledbetter gone I’m the best-informed human they’re likely to find. I can help with the research, if nothing else.”

“I agree,” Anna’s voice said from behind him. “That’s why I’m busting you out of here.”

Lucius spun away from the window, shocked to hear another human voice after so many days of talking to himself. “Anna! How . . . Who . . . ?” Then her words penetrated, and he concluded with an oh-so-brilliant, “Huh?”

“Lucius, sit. Breathe.” She waved him to the generic sofa that took up most of the generically decorated sitting area. Once he was sitting, she took one of the chairs opposite him and leaned forward, folding her hands over her knees. “We need to talk.”

On the heels of shock came all the emotions he’d been sorting through over the past few days, crashing into one another until his brain was a total train wreck of half-completed thoughts. Taking a deep breath, he blew it out again and said, “I’d say that ranks pretty high on the understatement scale.”

Her eyes warmed a little. She looked good, he realized. Then again, he’d pretty much always thought she looked good. At least, he had until recently. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped noticing how her hair looked brown in one light, chestnut in another, and how her deep blue eyes seemed to look into a guy, seeing far more than was on the surface.

Had he changed or had she? Or had they both gone in different directions and wound up back in the same place once again?

She was wearing jeans and a soft blue shirt he didn’t recognize, with long sleeves pulled down over her forearm marks. The yellow quartz skull-shaped effigy she’d started wearing the previous fall hung from a chain around her neck. The thing that got and held his attention, though, was the knife tucked into her belt.

Carved from black stone—obsidian, probably—it didn’t look terribly old, but it sure looked sharp.

With his eyes locked on the knife, he said, “You mentioned something about busting me out of here? That wasn’t a euphemism for something I’m not going to like, is it? Like telling a little kid that his sick old dog went to live on a farm?”

He expected a grin. Didn’t get one.

“Here’s the deal,” Anna said, “and hold the questions until the end, at which point you’re only allowed three. I know you too well—if I let you quiz me, we’ll be here until the solstice.” She paused until he nodded, then continued, “As you’ve figured, Skywatch is the Nightkeepers’ training compound. What you probably haven’t figured, and the reason that I’ve argued against the 2012 doomsday for so long, is that up until last summer I believed that the apocalypse had been forestalled.

Twenty-five years ago my father led the Nightkeepers against the interplanar intersection, based on a vision from the god Kauil saying he could prevent the end-time. Instead, the demon Banol Kax came through the intersection and slaughtered the warriors, then sent their creatures here to Skywatch to kill the children. All but a few of the youngest Nightkeepers died.”

Her voice shook a little and her eyes had gone a very deep blue, as though she were seeing something he couldn’t. Lucius wanted to help, to comfort her, but he didn’t dare interrupt, so he waited.

After a second she continued, “The power backlash sealed the barrier. We checked the intersection every cardinal day for years after, but it remained closed, and the magic stayed inactive. We truly thought the end-time had been averted.”

“We?” he blurted, unable to help himself.

She fixed him with a look. “That’s your first question.” But she answered, “Me, Strike, our winikin Jox, and the sole adult survivor of the Solstice Massacre, a mage named Red- Boar.” Her eyes went sad. “You met him last fall, sort of, but won’t be able to remember it. He is—he was—a mind-

bender.”

Which brought up so many questions Lucius didn’t know where to start, so he gestured for her to continue. “Go on.”

“Well, the short of it is that there was one remaining prophecy dealing with the end-time, stating that certain things would happen in the final five years before 2012. Sure enough, last year a makol—a human disciple of the underworld—used some major blood sacrifices to reopen the barrier at the summer solstice. All of a sudden the magic was working again, and the end-time countdown was back on. Strike was forced to recall the surviving Nightkeepers, who had been raised in secret by their winikin. Since then, we’ve been going through crash courses in magic and fighting skills in an effort to whip together a fighting force capable of defending the intersection at each equinox and solstice, and capable of either somehow averting the end-time, or at the very least holding the Banol Kax in Xibalba when the calendar ends in December 2012, and the barrier falls.” She paused. “There are thirteen Nightkeepers left on earth, counting a pair of three-year-old toddlers and a powerful freak show of questionable allegiance named Snake Mendez, who still has another six months before he’s eligible for parole.”

She fell silent, but it was a long moment before Lucius said, “Okay. My brain’s officially in ‘tilt’ mode.”

She sent him a warm look that recalled better days. “Join the club. You want to ask your last two questions now?”

“Sure. What’s a winikin?”

“That’s the most important thing you can think to ask?” she said slowly.

He grinned. “No. But it’s been bugging me for almost a week.”