Dawnkeepers

grooved frown lines between its dead black eyes, and its fangs bared.

Shit, fangs? Rabbit thought on a jolt of fear and surprise. Why hadn’t anybody mentioned the fangs?

Holding his hands away from his sides in a gesture of I’m unarmed; please don’t fuck me up, he said, “Ah, um. Are you here to answer my three questions?”

The thing hissed and charged, reaching for him with hands that’d grown claws.

Rabbit let out a yell and dove to one side. He felt the breeze of the nahwal’s swipe, but no pain. He bounced up from the springy surface underfoot and spun to face his attacker. “What the hell?”

The thing apparently wasn’t in the mood for convo, questions or otherwise. It spun and lunged for him again, scratching and snapping, and howling with rage when Rabbit danced aside. Palming his father’s knife, which he still wore on his belt, Rabbit dropped and rolled, coming up inside the nahwal’s guard and leading point-first when he stood. The blade cut through the thing’s skin with little resistance, but deflected off bone and skidded aside. Which just pissed the creature off worse.

Roaring, its face contorted with rage and hatred, though neither was supposed to be in its repertoire, the nahwal spun and dove on Rabbit, grabbing his legs and driving him to the ground. They rolled together for a few frenzied seconds before Rabbit’s control broke under the onslaught of battle rage.

Tipping his head back, he called the fire on a long scream of pain and magic: “Kaak!”

The gray-green sky split, and flames poured down to spear straight through the nahwal. The burning energy lifted the thing up and off Rabbit and tossed it aside. The creature shrieked and writhed, wreathed in flames as its skin and ropy flesh burned away.

“No!” Rabbit shouted. “Stop!”

He tried to call the magic back, tried to cut it off, to do something, anything to stop the fire from consuming the nahwal. But nothing worked. He could only watch as the thing’s struggles slowed, then stopped, and the only visible motion became that of the greedy flames and the mists that swirled at the periphery of the blaze. Eventually—it’d probably been only a few minutes, but it felt like forever—

even the flames guttered out. The gray-green mist moved back in to cover where the nahwal had been, and it was as though nothing had happened. Only it had, Rabbit knew, horror and guilt vising his chest and making it hard to breathe.

He’d fucking killed the three-question nahwal.

“It’s not working,” Alexis said, looking around the gray-green fog and not seeing a nahwal, not seeing anything except mist and more mist. “The opposition magic must not be strong enough to power the spell.” Or else we aren’t.

“Let’s try it again and give it everything we’ve got.” Nate’s eyes were steady on hers, his grip firm.

Alexis nodded, not wanting to admit defeat. Please, goddess, she thought, help us. Help your warriors on earth figure out what the hell they’re supposed to do. It wasn’t the most eloquent of prayers, perhaps, but it was heartfelt, and she thought she sensed a little power bump at the back of her brain, a shimmer of color that might’ve been a response. “Okay,” she said, reaching down deep and drawing on the magic. “Once more, with feeling.”

They started reciting the spell again, and before they’d gotten past the second grouping of words in the old language, she knew something was different this time. She could feel the power gathering and expanding outward, could hear the hum of magic.

Then, without warning, the hum escalated to a scream and wind slapped at them, driving the mists to a frenzied funnel cloud in an instant and yanking them off their feet.

“Nate!” she screamed, grabbing for him as the gale knocked her back, ripping her hands from his.

“Alexis!” He dove for her, hooking her around the waist and flinging them both to the yielding surface beneath the wind-whipped mist. “Down,” he ordered. “Stay down!”

He flattened her body beneath his and hung on tight while he cast around, trying to find a handhold to anchor them. She did the same, but there was nothing to hold on to but the moist squishiness of the barrier surface, formless and alien.

“I’m slipping,” she cried, feeling the slick surface moving beneath her, feeling the wind grab hold and not let go. “What’s happening?”

“The spell misfired.” He shouted the words over the rising howl of the wind. “I can’t find the way home!”

Cursing herself for not thinking, Alexis closed her eyes and pictured the sacred chamber back at Skywatch, imagining her and Nate on either side of the altar, the others forming a ring in the center of the circular room. Tapping the power of the barrier, she thought, Na otot. The words, which meant

“house” or “home,” should’ve dropped her out of the barrier and back into her body.

They didn’t.

“It’s not working for me, either!” she cried.

They were moving in a circle now, being dragged along by the force of the funnel cloud as it reached down lower and lower still, coming for them. Worse, the funnel cloud didn’t stretch up to the sky, but rather folded double so the spitting mouth, which bellowed mist and wind, was pointed downward, toward the underworld. Where it touched the barrier surface, the gray-green had gone black, suggesting that they were about thirty seconds from a one-way trip to Xibalba.

“The goddess,” Nate shouted. “Call on the goddess!”

Fear rode Alexis, but the connection at the base of her brain had gone dim. Throwing power at the spot didn’t change the background glow; prayer didn’t make a dent. Knowing no other way to reach the goddess, Alexis turned beneath him and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, offering herself to the heat and the magic. Lust rose quickly, slapping a vicious whip through her body, a feverish demand that seemed sharper than before, greedier.

For a second she thought he might refuse her. Then he groaned, a harsh rattle at the back of his throat, and met her halfway in a kiss that was hard and hot and openmouthed. Something inside her said, Thank the gods, because this wasn’t the reserved man he’d been in recent weeks, or the one who’d given her that single, sweet kiss to celebrate her advisership and avoided her since. This was the man she’d mated with, the one who was never far from her thoughts or dreams.

Lust revved her senses, making her achingly aware of the solid strength of him, the hard bulge of muscles beneath her gripping hands, and the good weight of him atop her. They kissed again and again, touching and tugging, finding their way through the ceremonial robes to combat clothes and the bare skin beneath. She arched into his touch as he found her breast and drove her up, his hands and mouth working together, bringing heat.

Leaning into the magic that came with desire, Alexis called on the goddess, called on the powers of a Godkeeper.

Luminous green lightning split the sky, burning her retinas, interrupting the build of magic. The funnel cloud roared and twisted as if gaining strength from the lightning, which flared again and again as an ever-increasing growl of thunder pummeled them. The firmament shifted, jolting them. Wind pulled at their bodies, and Alexis howled Nate’s name as he was torn away from her and up into the funnel.

“Nate!” She reached for him, but missed as he was whipped away from her. “Nate!” She screamed for him, screamed for herself as the funnel plucked her up and tossed her in a wide arc. Her stomach lurched and fear grabbed her by the throat when there was no answer.

Then she saw him up ahead, at the place where the world went from gray-green to limitless black.

Not thinking, not caring, she pointed her body in that direction and pressed her arms flat against her sides, like a skydiver aiming for a target midair. She arrowed toward him, crossing the intervening distance quicker than thought.

Halfway there she slammed into an invisible wall, one that shimmered with rainbows when she touched it. The moment she hit, the air went still on her side of the wall, leaving her hanging motionless in gray-green nothingness amidst deafeningly sudden silence. On the other side of the invisible barrier the funnel spun unabated, drawing Nate farther and farther away.