Dawnkeepers

Hoping to hell he didn’t send them into the side of a mountain or something, Rabbit closed his eyes and looked into Iago’s mind, where he could finally see the glowing yellow teleport thread connecting him and Myrinne to their destination. Take it, he told Iago. Send us there.

The world lurched. Everything went gray-green.

And the Xibalban’s dark magic sent Rabbit and his human home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Nate was on the phone with Denjie, working out some of the kinks for the latest EmoPunk release and wondering what his second in command would do if he just said, “I don’t fucking care; you deal with it,” when the surveillance system monitoring the borders of Skywatch let rip with a two-toned alarm that warned they had drop-in company. The cottage wasn’t linked to the security system, but Nate heard the siren coming from the mansion, and was on his feet before the first set of whoops had died down.

Denjie broke off midsentence. “What in the hell was that?”

“Doorbell. Gotta go.”

“But what about—”

“Don’t care. You deal with it.” Nate slapped his phone shut and tossed it on the little table near the door on his way out. Then he hauled ass up to the mansion, through the building, and out the front door, which was where the commotion seemed to be coming from.

Someone—Jox, probably—had killed the alarm, but the entire population of the compound had mobilized to the front gate, which was wide-open.

Not good, Nate thought, but forced himself to slow down to a purposeful walk as he strode up to the crowd, aware that there were a couple of stragglers behind him still. “What’s going on?” he asked nobody in particular.

Before he got an answer, the king bellowed, “Out of the way!” The crowd parted and Strike appeared, carrying . . . Holy shit, was that Rabbit?

The king’s face was set and hard, with worry riding the edges, and it looked as if he were going to mow through anyone who got in his way, including Jox, who was tugging at his arm, trying to slow him down. Behind Strike strode Leah, looking as though she were in full-on cop mode as she half escorted, half dragged a young girl, a total stranger. Behind them was Alexis, looking borderline frantic as she talked fast, trying to convince Leah of something and not making headway.

When she saw Nate, Alexis locked onto him and mouthed, Stop him!

They might have their differences when it came to matters of state, but there was no arguing the fear in her face, so Nate put himself between Strike and the front door of Skywatch and said, “Nochem.”

The word was meant to remind Strike that he couldn’t think like a man when he was king. For a second Nate thought the other man was going to ignore him, blow right through him, but then it seemed to penetrate. Strike’s head came up and he locked onto Nate, fury and annoyance hardening his cobalt blue eyes. “Get the fuck out of my way, Blackhawk.”

“I will. In thirty seconds, once you’ve thought this through.” Nate glanced at Rabbit, wincing at how thin the teen had gotten, how ragged. “Where are you taking him?”

“To his cottage,” Strike said, his voice a low growl. “And if you don’t stand aside, I’m going through you.” The grief in his expression was that of a father or an older brother who’d almost lost family, or a winikin who had failed in his duty. Nate knew that Rabbit’s disappearance had dragged on the king, tormented him. And because of that, he knew he had to be careful or Strike would go through him, losing caution to emotion.

“Think it through,” Nate said, picking his words carefully. “Be rational.”

The king bared his teeth. “Fuck rationality. I want him back where he belongs, where he should’ve been all along.”

“Wait,” said a soft voice, one that didn’t belong to any of the compound’s residents. The girl, who was in her late teens, dark-haired and pretty, and equally as rough-looking as Rabbit, if not more so, pushed ahead and put herself in front of the king. “When he knew he was going to pass out before you guys got to us, he gave me a message for you.” She paused. “You’re Strike-out, right?”

Pain flashed on the king’s face, along with wary hope at her use of Rabbit’s old, jeering nickname for him. “Yeah.”

“He told me to give you this.” She pulled a knife, but before anybody could take her down and protect their king, she flipped it in a practiced move and held it out to Strike, haft-first.

There was a ripple of surprise from the gathered crowd, one that mimicked the clutch in Nate’s gut when he recognized the knife they’d lost to Iago back in Boston. Which meant Rabbit, at least, had been in contact with the Xibalban.

It also meant they had the Volatile’s prophecy back in their hands.

“Thank you.” Strike accepted the knife without comment or ceremony, and Nate had to force himself not to snatch it from him. As before, the knife called to him, made him want to touch it, to hold it.

The girl continued, “I’m also supposed to tell you to lock us both up and ward the shit out of the room, and that he’ll explain the rest when he wakes up.”

Which was so not good news, Nate knew, because it meant Rabbit believed the Nightkeepers had something to fear from him or the girl, or both. Shit.

Strike’s expression went bleak, and he had to clear his throat before he said, “Was there anything else?”

She nodded. “I’m supposed to tell Jox not to burn the eggs.”

Both the king and his winikin relaxed at that, letting Nate know that it was a safe word or something, a cue that the message was genuine and unforced. “Okay,” Strike finally said. “Okay. We do what Myrinne says.”

The girl looked startled. “How’d you know my name?”

“Lucky guess. Come on.” The king led the way, with Jox at his side and Leah shepherding the girl.

Myrinne. As he strode through the main door, the king called, “I want all magic users downstairs near the storerooms in five minutes to help me set the wards.” Which was something of a relief, because it meant he was taking Rabbit’s warning to heart and setting some serious magic.

Nate stayed back until Alexis joined him, and had a feeling his own expression mirrored the worry on her face. “What do you think?” he asked.

She glanced at the starscape overhead, which was dimmed some by the front lights of Skywatch. “I think it’s going to be a long night. What do you think?”

“That we’re going to run out of storerooms if this keeps up.” They’d wound up locking Lucius back down in the room he’d occupied his first couple of days at Skywatch, on the theory that the single room was easier to ward, and the sturdy walls and the lack of windows made physical locks more practical and efficient.

She nodded. “Won’t argue with you on that.”

“That’s a first.”

“Not my fault you’ve got warped ideas of logic.” But she held out a hand to him. “Come on, royal adviser. We’ve got some work to do.”

Surprisingly, though, once they had the wards up and the royal council had convened in the kitchen over chips and salsa, the king didn’t fight them on the idea of major security measures.

“Look,” he finally said, “I’m not stupid. We’ve already had a taste of what happened when Iago got someone inside, and for crap’s sake, I’m one of the few people here old enough to remember the massacre. It’s not like I’m looking to throw the doors open and invite what-the-fuck inside.”

But he was still reacting as much with emotion as logic, and history said that when the jaguar kings started thinking like men and fathers rather than kings, bad things happened. Nate might not buy into the whole cycle-of-