Dawnkeepers

mind, and he suddenly saw his own dreams. He’d dreamed of his mother and father as his infant self remembered them. He’d dreamed of being with Alexis in the temple cave, of losing himself in her as she’d pressed back against a twin column of stalagmites and cried his name at the back of her throat.

And all along he’d dreamed of flying. Of being free, not of love or duty, but free of gravity. Free of the earth.

A warm, magical glow kindled in his heart. Only it wasn’t his heart. It was the hawk medallion.

Son of a bitch, he thought. The fucking thing really is magic.

Acting on instinct, on impulse, he palmed his knife from his belt. Only it wasn’t his usual knife; it was the ceremonial blade Strike had given him. The weapon felt like an extension of his own arm, cool on his flesh as he nicked first his tongue, then each of his palms in sacrifice.

Cupping both bloodstained hands around the medallion, he lifted it and pressed a kiss to the etching, where the hawk became the man, and the man became the hawk. “I love her,” he said simply. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” And, in accepting that deep down inside, he let himself go fully to the magic, relinquished control, and gave himself to destiny. He tipped his head back as the storm began anew, now rotating around him in a funnel cloud of gray- black and lightning, and he roared, “Gods take me!”

And, keeping Alexis in his mind, his love for her at the forefront, he dived headfirst into the funnel.

The winds whipped at him, ripping at his clothing, at his flesh. His skin stretched tight and tore; his whole body split apart. Pain slashed through him, beat at him, and he screamed with the pain, with the power. His clothes shredded and fell away. The wind screamed with him, and then he heard another voice, an inhuman screech that reached deep inside him and brought recognition, longing, and a sense of the freedom he’d always sought, the freedom he’d thought love was trying to take away.

He flailed his arms and legs against the whirling vortex, screaming again and again, the creature’s cries drowning out his own. His skin burned, his bones ached, his flesh and tendons sang with unfamiliar tension.

Gradually, though, his flailing gained purpose and rhythm. He waved his arms and felt them bite into the storm winds, arched his spine and felt the motion alter his course. An unfamiliar slapping noise surrounded him, filled him up, and he waved his arms harder, and started to make progress.

Then he saw a flash of color and light up ahead; a place where the storm had cleared, leaving a rainbow behind. “Alexis,” he shouted, and heard only the creature’s scream, but didn’t care about that, cared only about getting to her. He started swimming through the air, flapping arms that had become fifteen-foot wings, spreading something that felt like fingers but seemed to have sprouted out of his ass, wide and flat and feathered—a tail? what the fuck?—and letting his legs flatten out behind him, curling his talons, each the size of the forearm of his human self.

Understanding was both a shock and a relief, and a sense of rightness like he’d never before experienced.

He was the sacred black hawk-eagle, and the hawk-eagle was him.

The medallion banged against his breastbone as he flew. It was still hanging around his neck alongside the king’s eccentric, both of the chains having somehow grown to accommodate his new size and shape. He carried the sacred knife with him too; it had changed when he did, becoming an obsidian band that hung around his ankle, marking him not just as a shifter, but as the Volatile.

He wasn’t supposed to challenge the sky by fighting the gods.

He was supposed to fly.

Before, he’d rejected his destiny. Now he just freaking rolled with it, because he’d chosen the path, and the woman, and she was what mattered right now. She was everything.

He screamed again, this time not even trying for a human word, but going only for volume. He was a predator, a raptor calling his challenge against the enemy, a male trumpeting possession of his mate as he broke free of the funnel cloud and found himself on the earth plane, high in the sky. The air was thin, the world very small below him. With night-bright vision he saw the mountains and cloud line, the bumps of ancient pyramids, and realized with a shock that was more acceptance than surprise that he was seeing things now from the angle in his father’s paintings.

This, then, was what had kept Two-Hawk apart, what had tainted the others’ perceptions of the bloodline —the fear of shifters, and the secret he had carried for his son.

Well, shift this, Nate thought, then pressed his wings close to his body and dived. The wind whipped past and sang freedom in his ears as he plummeted from the heights where the funnel cloud had left him. He flew toward the bright spot near the cloud city, fear gathering in his chest as he saw the tear in the sky and the darkness beyond.

“Lexie!” he called. “Lexie!” The words came out as a raptor’s scream, but, incredibly, he heard an answer.

Nate. It was a whisper in his mind, a faint connection through the love bond they’d shared, the one he’d tried to sever because he’d been too set in his old patterns to see that things had changed around him, that he’d changed.

He called her name again and she answered again, and he tracked the response not to the rainbow or the tear in the sky, but to the darkness beyond.

Gods. She was on the wrong side of the barrier. And oh, holy hell. The split was getting bigger by the second. The starry night sky strained on either side of the gash, while red blackness oozed down, bleeding evil onto the earth.

He could sense the creatures on the other side more than he could see them, could sense the tentacled thing that held Alexis, draining her energy from her and using it to tear the barrier. Her strength was fading, her connection to the goddess almost lost, and all because of him, he knew. He’d been almost too late figuring out what she meant to him, almost too late accepting that sometimes the gods got it right, destiny or not.

But almost doesn’t matter worth a damn, he thought, trumpeting the attack. I’m here now, and watch out, because I’m coming for my woman!

He dived through the gap with his curved beak gaping wide and his razor-sharp talons extended in attack. In an instant, blackness enveloped him, slowing his wings and wrapping around him like a heavy, viscous oil, weighing him down and driving him away from Alexis. He could see her, a rainbow shimmer up above him, could hear her cry his name as he fell.

No! He tumbled, losing the rhythm of flight as the black goo flared to boluntiku orange, lava-hot and cloying. NO! He fought the creature’s hold as it went solid and slashed at him with a raking six-

clawed hand.

Nate howled and reached for his power, calling up a fireball, shaping and throwing the fire magic with his mind because his hands had turned to wings. As he did so, his medallion heated and flashed bright white, and it was as if he’d just thrown a fucking atomic bomb. There was a deep, thrumming thump, then a pause as the world went still.

Then all hell broke loose.

The fireball’s detonation roared, vaporizing the goo in an instant and slamming Nate to the gray-

black ground. The shock wave kept on going, radiating away from him, blowing the boluntiku and disembodied makol back, sending them tumbling end over end, their gods-awful screeching noises nearly lost beneath the thunder of the explosion. Then light flashed, pure, golden, and brilliant, and so bright Nate had to close his eyes and look away. When he looked again, the Banol Kax had been driven back to the horizon, and the creature that had been holding Alexis aloft was gone. She was safe from the explosion behind a rainbow barrier, but now she was falling, screaming, “Nate!”

And the gap in the barrier was even wider than before, hanging open, blown larger by the explosion.

Worse—the Banol Kax had regrouped and were headed for the opening freight- train fast.

Fuck me. Nate didn’t hesitate. He turned his back on the gap and the demons, kicked hard off the ground, and arrowed toward Alexis. The king’s writ might say that Strike had to prioritize other things above his family, but Nate was bound by no such scripture. And he was damn well prioritizing Alexis, the