Dawnkeepers

“No!” Alexis banged against the wall, drew her knife, and tried to hack through it. She grabbed for her holster but wasn’t wearing it; she had come to the ceremony unarmed, knowing their incorporeal selves would be brought into the barrier wearing all that they wore on earth, and thinking there was no reason to bring jade-tips into the barrier. At least, there normally wasn’t. Now, though, she was under attack, and defenseless. They had called the three-question nahwal and gotten chaos instead.

Nate! her heart cried as the funnel spun him closer to her for a second and she could see his face. He mouthed something, and she knew in her gut that he was telling her to get away, to save herself. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Flipping the knife so she held it by the blade, she sliced both her palms, cutting deep, letting the blood flow freely. Then she held her hands away from her in supplication, touched them to the invisible wall she instinctively knew had been put there by the goddess in order to keep her from being sucked into the funnel. But that meant the goddess was nearby, that she could act within the barrier. If that were the case, why wasn’t she coming into Alexis?

The answer danced just out of her reach. Cursing the goddess, praying to her, Alexis tipped her head back and, compelled by instinct, or maybe a whisper from beyond, she cried, “Takaj, Ixchel!” Come, goddess!

As though Ixchel had been waiting only for the call, the conduit came to life and a starburst exploded rainbows at the back of Alexis’s brain. Power flowed through her, passing out of her to the funnel cloud beyond. She was the goddess and the goddess was her. A contemptuous flick of her bloodstained fingers swept aside the rainbow-wrought shield that had both saved her and separated her from Nate. A word extinguished the funnel cloud. A gesture had an invisible hand plucking Nate’s limp form out of the edge of nothingness, and bringing him to where Alexis hung in midair.

The rainbow surrounded them, bound them together as she touched him, felt the solidness of him, the reality of him. Closing her eyes, she imagined the sacred chamber and whispered the words that would send them home.

There was no lurch or movement, no sense of transitioning from one plane to the next. There was only a flash of gold and colors, and they were there, facing each other over the altar, hanging on to each other for dear life.

Impressions bombarded her. Snapshots. She was aware of Izzy and Carlos sitting cross-legged where the other magi had been, saw their expressions of delighted relief, heard them shouting for the others. She was aware of the stars and the moon overhead, aware that hours had passed when it had seemed like only minutes. And she was aware of Nate’s fingers holding tightly to hers, and his eyes flickering open, showing confusion first, and then darkening with memory.

Moments later, the door flung open and Strike hustled into the chamber, followed closely by Leah and the others, who were all talking at once. But it was Nate’s voice Alexis heard. He said, “You did it, Lexie. You called the goddess.”

“Yeah.” She smiled, tentatively at first, then wider as she realized the connection was there now, and fully formed where it had been nothing but a wish before. Joy lit her up from within, radiating outward until the air sparkled with the hint of rainbows, like light blurred through a subtle prism. “I did, didn’t I?”

The other magi gathered around them while the winikin tried to push them back, saying something about food and rest first, questions later. But Alexis kept looking at Nate, and the rainbow joy dimmed slightly when she saw the knowledge in his eyes, and felt it in her own heart. The goddess had taught her to call the magic by herself, which meant she didn’t need Nate anymore.

The realization should’ve been a relief.

It wasn’t.

PART III VERNAL EQUINOX

A day of equal light and dark, and the first day of spring. A time of change and growth.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

March 13 When Rabbit awoke the morning after the opposition, he found himself lying on a camping cot in a square, empty room that was paneled in wide, rough-cut pine boards. There were barred windows on each wall, through which he could see a cloudy gray sky and a smattering of pine branches. As he watched, a bright red cardinal bounced onto one of the branches and away, placing him somewhere north of the snow line, far from either Skywatch or New Orleans. The air was so cold that his breath fogged on each exhale, though he was covered in a couple of blankets, and warm enough.

Which was so not the point. What the hell was he doing in a camping cabin?

His head spun with the worst postmagic hangover of his life, and his body throbbed from his fight with the nahwal. For reasons known only to the gods, the magic healed cuts but not bruises.

“Screw the bruises. You’re lucky to be alive after the stunt you pulled,” a voice said from behind him.

Jolting hard in panic, Rabbit turned and scrambled to his feet in a single motion, calling the fire to his fingertips in an instant. He took one look at the redheaded man sitting in a folding chair and let rip with the fire magic.

The flames stopped dead three feet or so from Iago’s face, spreading along an invisible liquidlike barrier, shield magic the likes of which Rabbit had never seen before. Groaning with the effort, he increased the power, but though the fire magic roared higher, it still wasn’t denting the shield.

“Cut the blowtorch, will you?” the other mage called over the crackle of fire. “I’m not going to hurt you. Hell, I’m the one who pulled your ass out of that funnel last night.”

Rabbit called back the fire but kept it close to his fingertips as his heart drummed against his ribs and he tried to remember what’d happened after the nahwal collapsed. He came up blank aside from a wash of terror and the sound of his own screams. Ignoring the chill that brought, he demanded, “Where the hell are we? What do you want? And how did you know I was thinking about the bruises?”

“We’ll get to all that.” Iago leaned his chair back against the wall and stacked his hands behind his head, all casual. He was wearing black canvas flannel-lined pants, and heavy work boots that had tracked wet spots across the floor, along with a black turtleneck and a heavy blue fisherman’s sweater.

The sleeves had pulled some when he stretched his hands over his head, baring the bloodred quatrefoil on his arm. The mage’s dark red hair was partially hidden by an earflap hat, which would’ve looked dumb if it weren’t for his eyes, which were hard-edged emerald.

“You look like a lumberjack.” Rabbit jammed his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and whistled a few bars of the transvestite lumberjack song from Monty Python, pushing back the fear some with

’tude.

“Stuff it, kid. I was a bigger snot at your age than you’ll ever hope to be.” He paused. “Besides, the digs are only temporary. We’ve got a sweet homestead down south. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

“How about I leave now and you go fuck yourself?”

Iago just rolled his eyes. “Hello? You’ve torched more real estate than a California wildfire, turned the museum job into a train wreck, and killed the three-question nahwal . If I were you, I’d be looking at my options right about now, because the Nightkeepers give fuck-all what happens to you.”

“Shut up,” Rabbit snapped, but his voice cracked on the words.

“It’s not like they came looking for you when you took off, right? And that was before you nearly got the new Godkeeper and her mate killed.” One reddish eyebrow climbed at Rabbit’s confused look.