Dawnkeepers

After a serious eye roll, she said, “They’re the blood-bound protectors of the Nightkeepers, descended from the loyal slaves who sneaked fifty or so Nightkeeper children out of Egypt when Akhenaton started killing poly- theists. The single surviving adult Nightkeeper, who came to be called the First Father, led the slaves and children to safety, eventually ending up in Olmec territory.

Knowing that history repeats, he put a spell on the winikin, binding them to the bloodlines they helped save and entrusting them with making sure the culture and the magic survived until 2012. In that way they became our partners rather than our slaves; they’re bound to protect us and guide us, though they have no magic of their own.”

Which totally dovetailed with the Nightkeeper myths Lucius had scraped together for the side project that’d slopped over into his thesis and then bitten him in the ass. It didn’t explain why the winikin were never once mentioned in the mythology he’d uncovered, but that so wasn’t the last question he needed to ask.

He took a deep breath. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Now, that’s the right question,” she said approvingly. “The simple answer is because you’re one of the best researchers I know, and our current archivist is actually a repurposed child psychologist. It’s another monumental understatement to say she’s floundering.”

“If that’s the simple answer, then there’s a more complicated one,” he said, careful not to make it be a question.

“That would be that I’m telling you a little about of our history and current situation so you’ll understand what’s at stake.”

He grimaced. “A dozen or so Nightkeepers against the fall of the barrier protecting the earth from the forces of Xibalba? I’d say the stakes are pretty high.” If, by pretty high, she meant insurmountable.

“Exactly,” she said, as if he’d uttered the last part aloud.

“Which doesn’t explain what you’re going to do with me. The term ‘busting out’ implies liberation, but I don’t see how freeing me helps, especially given what already happened with Desiree.” He paused, then said, “For what it’s worth, I’m really, really sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. It was like . . . I don’t know. Like I was somebody else for a while. Somebody I don’t like very much.”

“We go on from here,” she said, which wasn’t the same as accepting his apology. “That includes my asking you a favor.” She paused. “I want you to stay here and help us.”

The offer took a moment to register. “Me? Help the Nightkeepers?” Excitement was a quick kick, tempered by the complications she’d mentioned. “Would I have to stay locked up?”

“Not in this room.” Again with the nonanswer. “You’d have free run of the compound and access to the Nightkeepers, the winikin, and the archive, which contains a number of codices, artifacts, and original sources, along with commentaries from generations of Nightkeeper scholars, Spanish missionaries . . . pretty much everything ever written about the Nightkeepers and the end-time, along with some primary Mayan sources you won’t find anywhere else.”

His researcher’s soul sang. They have an archive! Excitement zipped through him, lighting his senses. “What’s the catch?” he asked, though there was no question that he was going to agree to whatever it was. He was being offered every Mayanist’s dream—access to a previously unknown stockpile of information. More, he was being offered a part—however small—in the end-time war.

“I’m going to need an oath of fealty,” she said.

“No problem. Where do I sign?”

“That’s not exactly how it works.” She drew the obsidian knife from her belt and balanced it on her palm. “It’s more along the lines of a spell that binds us together, making you my responsibility. You would become my k’alaj.”

His brain kicked out the translation, and he said slowly, “I’d be bound to you? Like a slave?”

“Technically, yes. My bond-slave.” Her eyes held his. “In practice, you’d be exactly who and what you are, except that you’d be restricted to the confines of this training compound, unless I’m with you or I give you a charmed eccentric granting passage through the wards surrounding the canyon.”

An eccentric was a small ritual item, usually carved from stone in the shape of a god or animal.

Stomach churning, Lucius tried to imagine himself wearing one around his neck, like a cosmic hall pass, or a collar with a rabies tag. “A slave,” he repeated, hating the idea, the word. But there was more; he could see it in her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She grimaced. “In binding myself to you, I’ll be granting you my protection, but also making myself responsible for your behavior. The bond will give me a limited sense of where you are and what you’re doing, and some degree of control over you. However, if you do anything to jeopardize or harm the Nightkeepers, it’s my duty to find and execute you, and upon my return I will also be punished as suits your crime. Which is why, as you might guess, this spell has been enacted only a handful of times throughout the Nightkeepers’ history, and then only with humans the bond-master or -mistress believe they can trust with their lives.” Her eyes showed worry fear.

Lucius couldn’t think of a response, couldn’t think of much except, “Holy shit.” He was going to be a slave. He’d be Anna’s slave, and in service to the Nightkeepers, but still. A slave. He shook his head.

“What do you mean, you’d have some control over me? Like a mind-meld or something?”

“Nothing that elaborate. I’d be able to send negative reinforcement through the bond.”

He thought about it for a second, not liking any of it, but unfortunately able to see the logic from the Nightkeeper side of life. “Would you promise not to use the bond on me?”

“I can’t do that; I’m sorry.” She paused, exhaling. “Look, this is the only way I could convince Strike to let you help.” And by that he knew she meant “let you live.” “He agrees that we need your research skills, but because of who and what you are, we can’t risk letting you go free.” She reached out and took his right hand and turned it palm up, then placed her own beside it to show that she had a scar to match his own. “You’ve already been marked by the Banol Kax. I’ll tell you the whole story later, after the bond is complete. Suffice it to say that if you leave Skywatch without Nightkeeper protection, you’ll be subject to influence by the Banol Kax. That can’t be allowed to happen.”

Lucius wanted to be able to laugh that off, but he couldn’t. It aligned too well with the feeling of a dark cloud lifting off him over the past few days. On some level he didn’t need to know anything more than that. “Shit.”

“Yeah. That about sums it up.”

He stared at his hands, not daring to look at her when he asked, “Why are you willing to risk yourself like this? If I’m connected to the demons somehow, what’s to say I won’t turn on you again, like I did by dealing with Desiree?”

“If you stay inside Skywatch, you’ll be the Lucius I know and love.”

The statement brought his head up as he thought, just for a second, that maybe the occasional flash of interest he’d seen in her eyes was for real.

But she shook her head. “Not that way. As a friend only. I owe you, though, in more ways than I can count. I traded my freedom from the Nightkeepers for your life last fall because it was my fault you crossed paths with the Banol Kax. I’m offering to bind myself to you now because I think you can help us, and because of our friendship. You let me lean on you when things got bad with Dick, let me wallow when I needed to, and kicked my butt out of the funk when it got to be too much.”

He looked away. “I didn’t tell you about Desiree.”

“No, you didn’t. But I can see how that’d be a tough judgment call . . . and I’m not sure much would’ve happened differently if I’d known she was Dick’s mistress. It’s a sucky situation, but it had nothing to do with you . . . and not much to do with Dick, either, if she is what we think she is.

Besides, I’m dealing with it as best I can. Part of that involves your staying here and helping Jade when I head back home.”

Lucius closed his eyes and tested out the idea of never going back to the university, and was surprised to find it didn’t hurt that much. He had lots of friends but few close ones, and he could call home from Skywatch just as easily as from Austin. It wasn’t as simple as that, of course, but the lure of the Nightkeepers overshadowed the other issues. He’d spent a big chunk of his life defending their existence. How could he not help them when asked?