Dawnkeepers

Don’t be such a girl, a familiar voice whispered at the back of her mind. The sound had her shooting straight up in her chair and looking around for a ghost, though she knew that was beyond stupid. He wasn’t there, wasn’t ever there. He was nothing more than a memory, and not even a good one, at that.

“Damn it,” she muttered, hunkering down with her chin on the edge of her desk and glaring at the effigy.

Amazingly, the quartz seemed to shimmer for a second, then started to glow from within.

Excitement tightened her skin as carefully, very carefully, she sent a tendril of mental magic toward the crystal, and—

The phone rang, snapping her concentration. “Gods damn it!” she snapped, annoyed with the caller for calling, beyond annoyed with herself for forgetting yet again to forward the phone to voice mail.

Grabbing the handset, she snapped, “What?”

There was a pause; then Lucius said, “I think you should come back to Skywatch.” His voice grated, as though he were forcing each of the words.

Anna’s fingers tightened on the phone. “I’ll be there the day after tomorrow for the equinox ceremony. Is that soon enough?”

“I . . . don’t think so.” His words trailed off to hissing silence.

She understood then, and the bottom fell out of her world. Heart hammering against her ribs, she said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can. And Lucius?”

“Yes?” The word was barely a sigh.

“I’m sorry.” This time she was the one who cut the connection, then dialed the main number at Skywatch. After ordering Jox to update Strike, and for the two of them to clear Lucius’s rooms of any sharp objects and lock him the hell in, she called the airline and paid a fortune to move her tickets up two days. She snagged the last seat on a flight that left in ninety minutes, and called a taxi to pick her up.

She was in the air by seven. At nine she realized she’d stood Dick up for their date. At ten thirty, she called home to apologize, but there was no answer.

At midnight she stood with Strike and Leah, looking down at Lucius.

He lay curled on his side, clutching his bloody hand to his chest, his eyes flickering from hazel to luminous green and back, as the barrier thinned with the approaching equinox and evil struggled to gain a foothold in Skywatch.

With Lucius locked up tight and a second layer of wards cast around his rooms, both to keep him in and to keep the makol out, the royal council adjourned to the kitchen to argue about what they should do with him. By the time Jox kicked them out of the kitchen so he could work on breakfast, and they’d adjourned to the royal suite to continue the battle, Alexis had been thoroughly reminded that Nate might be damn good in bed, but he could be seriously annoying and incredibly wrong when it came to matters of state.

They sat together on a love seat in the sitting room of Strike and Leah’s suite, while the royal couple and Anna sat opposite them on a long couch. For the most part, though, the love seat wasn’t feeling much love.

As far as Alexis was concerned, there was no excuse for maintaining a makol within Skywatch; it was too great a risk. She hated to do it, but had to vote for sacrificing Lucius. Leah agreed with her, which was a little surprising, given that the detective was a non-Nightkeeper herself, and had been under a similar threat of death only months earlier. But Leah was practical, and a cop, and was pretty firm on the idea that the needs of the many outweighed those of a given individual. Strike and Nate, on the other hand, wanted to keep Lucius alive and locked up through the equinox, on the theory that if he was human three hundred and fifty or so days a year, they could stand to lock him up for the duration of each solstice and equinox. Like he was some sort of werewolf or something, and there were only four full moons a year.

Granted, Strike’s opinion was at least in part based on the fact that they didn’t know exactly what would happen to Anna if her bond-servant were sacrificed. Some of Jade’s info suggested she’d lose the slave-master’s mark on her arm in a flash of pain, similar to what the winikin experienced when a Nightkeeper member of their bound bloodline died. Other references, though, suggested that the outcome could be far worse, especially because she was an itza’at seer. One even went so far as to suggest that she would experience his death over and over and over again, regardless of whether she was awake or asleep. Since that was pretty much what Anna had been through after the massacre, Alexis saw the king’s point and sympathized with his concern for his sister. Unfortunately, since Nate agreed with the king, that left them deadlocked in a two-to-two vote, with Anna abstaining for obvious reasons and Jox maintaining that this was a matter for the magi, and a winikin shouldn’t cast the deciding vote.

“I don’t want to do anything that’ll hurt Anna,” Alexis said, feeling like they were going around in circles. “But it’s simply not safe for us to harbor a makol in our midst. Just look what happened when Iago got one of his people inside. Do you really want to give the actual Banol Kax a foothold?”

“Lucius is locked up and double-warded,” Nate countered. “We can keep him that way, and study him during the cardinal days, maybe come up with a way to cure him. The rest of the time he’ll be free to roam the compound and help Jade in the library, just like he is now.” He spoke to the group, but Alexis knew his words were aimed directly at her.

The air crackled between them, rife with energy. But it wasn’t the same anger and frustration as before; this was a good energy, a productive energy that had developed in the week since she had gone to him as a woman wanting a man, and nothing more.

During the day they trained together, and advised the king and queen, taking opposite sides partly because their views differed that sharply, and partly because having a devil’s advocate never hurt.

They spent their nights together, usually in the cottage, which she liked for its privacy, and for the touches of home. The shag rug would have to go, of course, but the other kitsch had grown on her just as quickly as the idea of Nate as her lover and partner. They worked well together, loved well together.

And if she’d fallen hard while he was still seeing the sex as a nice side benefit, then that was entirely her problem, her choice. Her responsibility to deal with.

She shook her head, both at her own weakness for the slick, aloof ones, and to counter his point.

“You’re making Lucius sound like a pet we can stick in a kennel and let out when it’s convenient.

That’s inhumane.”

“So it’s more humane to kill him now, without giving him a chance to come out of it?” Nate’s eyes narrowed on hers. “That’s logical.”

“From his perspective? Maybe not. But from the perspective of keeping the Nightkeepers safe, so we’ll have the greatest possible number of warriors to hold the barrier and fight the end-time, then yes. It’s the most rational answer.” Alexis glanced at a too-pale Anna, hating the necessity, and said softly, “I’m sorry.”

The king’s sister grimaced. “What we need is a mind-bender to exorcise the makol.”

Nate held up both hands in a don’t go there gesture. “The only one we know of is Iago, and not even I’m going to okay a plan that involves capturing him and somehow forcing him to fix Lucius. Besides, wouldn’t it be more or less impossible to make a mind-bender like him do something? He could just twist us back around and make us think it was our idea to release him in the middle of Skywatch.”

“Now, there’s a cheerful thought.” Alexis shuddered. “Too bad none of the others got—” She broke off as a new thought occurred. “Oh, shit!”

“Is that a good ‘oh, shit,’ or a bad one?” Leah asked.

“Potentially both,” Alexis answered as adrenaline kicked. “After what happened with the library, a bunch of us were sitting around and brainstorming, trying to figure out how Iago does what he can do.

Lucius was wondering whether Iago might not have far fewer talents than it seems. For example, during the parley he didn’t try to force us to open the front door; he jammed the wards and the woman

’ported inside. So what if that means he didn’t have access to his mind-bending abilities? What if he’s actually borrowing some of his powers from the magi around him?”

The others took a moment to digest the concept. Nate finally broke the silence, saying, “Not a bad point, but