“I’m not lying. I—” She screamed as the scented oil she’d been using to purify his eccentrics blazed suddenly red, and the stones erupted in twin sprays and winged to him, landing in his outstretched palm. Flaming oil burned her face, her arms, but the pain was nothing compared to the terror of suddenly hearing the rattlesnake rasp of the dark magic he’d sworn not to use anymore. Her throat closed, strangling her whisper of, “What’s happening to you?”
Stuffing the stones into the pocket of his jeans, he advanced on her. “Were you going to destroy them right away, or were you going to summon her first? What were you going to do to her? Damn it, tell me!”
Tears tracked down her face. “I wasn’t going to hurt anybody. I was just trying to help. After what you said about the stones, I got this idea—”
His lips pulled back in a feral snarl. “This was what you wanted, right? You wanted me to use the dark magic again. But why? Who are you working for?” He leaned in to yell, “Damn it, what are you trying to do to me?”
Mercifully, the flashback cut out, leaving her bent over and gasping for breath, dizzied by the memory and the knowledge that it had gotten worse from there. And, more from the reminder that at one point, she had pushed him to rekindle his link with the darkness.
She hadn’t understood what it meant, not really. All she had known was that the old Xibalban shaman had named him the crossover and said he would be the key to winning the war. She had been scared—of the end of the world, of the way things had been cooling off between them—and she had pushed him to experiment with the other half of the magic.
Gods. She didn’t want to remember that.
She could barely see him now; he was lost in the greasy brown mist. But then a blue-white light kindled within the cloud, and her heart leaped. It was a Nightkeeper’s foxfire, made of pure light magic. He was fighting the darkness!
“Rabbit!” She surged forward, calling up her magic, not as a shield now, but as a fireball that crackled and seethed green. But could she launch it without frying him?
“No,” he shouted hoarsely through the fog. “Don’t, Myr! I can do this.”
Do what? She let the fireball fade, but kept her magic revved up. She couldn’t see him. But the darkness was threaded through now with sparks of red-gold.
“What are you . . .” She trailed off, throat locking as she got it. She freaking got it. He wasn’t trying to fight the magic. He was trying to gain control of it. He wanted to reforge his hell-link and then shut the magic away, back behind the barriers that used to hold it. The ones that had failed before. “Dear gods.” Her voice was a whisper, her emotions a hard, hot ball lodged in her throat.
The words from the children’s book shimmered in her mind: The Crossing Guard stands at the bridge between day and night. This was what the gods had intended; it was part of him becoming the crossover. Again, her head might’ve known that this needed to happen, but the rest of her hadn’t wanted to believe it. Her heart, stupid organ that it was, was clinging to two versions of him—one was the dark, dangerous mage she wasn’t supposed to trust, while the other was the man she’d spent the past ten days fighting alongside, the one who had kissed her just now.
Who was he, really?
“I can handle it.” Even as he grated the words, the red-gold sparks brightened and the dark fog began to thin. It wreathed around him, sliding along his body and then fading, until she could see his outline again, then the terrifying details—his eyes were rolled back, his face taut and haggard, like he was little more than skin stretched over a skull and animated by the dark magic that shifted and seethed within him. She could feel its poison, hear its serpent rattle.
She took a step back without meaning to.
He blinked, and suddenly he looked like himself again. “Myr, wait.” He reached out a hand, though they were too far apart for him to touch her. It wasn’t too far, though, for her to see the flash of red on his inner forearm.
The trefoil hellmark had gone from black to scarlet. The hell-link was fully active.
“No.” It was a whisper, a moan. A denial of everything they’d been through, everything that had gone wrong. Only she couldn’t deny the past, or the sight of the red hellmark.
“Please, wait.” But the despair in his voice said he knew it was already too late.
“I can’t.” Her voice broke on the words, which suddenly meant far more than she had realized. I can’t do this anymore, can’t trust you like this, can’t be around you. And, knowing there was no way they could go back, not now, not ever, she did what she should’ve done the first moment she saw the dark fog surrounding him.
She turned and ran.
Rabbit didn’t let himself go after her—not to tell her that he’d blocked off the dark magic behind its old mental barriers; not to reassure her that he had it under control; and not to tell her that she didn’t need to be afraid of him. What was the point? She had every reason to fear the magic, and to fear him when he was under its influence.
“Let her go,” he told himself, the words echoing hollowly in the cave.
He didn’t need to borrow his magic from her anymore—the spell had severed their connection, setting her free and making her a mage in her own right, having apparently decided that both of them were the rightful owners of the magic. More, he had brought the dark magic under control, shoving it into the mental vault it used to inhabit, and locking the fucker down tight. But what if the vault cracked? Hell, what if it ripped wide open? Just now, it’d felt like the magic wanted to behave, as if it had gone meekly into confinement.
He didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust himself with it. But he couldn’t refuse it, either. Not if he was going to become the crossover. Which meant that whatever had happened between him and Myr over the past ten days, including their kiss—especially their kiss—was gone now, nullified.
“Fuck me.” Feeling like his soul was hollowed out and his damn bones were creaking, he headed to his Jeep, fired the engine, and aimed the vehicle back along the dirt track to Skywatch.
He braced himself to find a not-so-welcoming committee waiting for him at the gate, looking to protect Skywatch from the dark magic. But the front parking area was deserted and nobody flagged him down as he rolled past the mansion toward his cottage. He’d intended to suck it up and go make his report, would have if there’d been any sign that it was a command performance. But the lack of an armed guard tempted him to keep on driving . . . and made him wonder what Myrinne had told the others.
“Doesn’t matter.” She might’ve played things down in her report, but he’d seen the way she’d looked at him.
The memory tightened his chest, making him feel restless and hemmed in. Suddenly he couldn’t handle the thought of being inside the mansion, or even his cottage. Instead, he floored it, headed for the back of the canyon.
The others could come after him if they wanted to.
Gravel spurted beneath the Jeep’s tires as he bounced along the dirt track, and again when he skidded to a stop at the base of the narrow trail that led up to the ancient pueblo. The footpath was overgrown, as was the wide ledge in front of the pueblo’s lower level, showing just how long it’d been since he’d last been up there.
Before, when he’d first come to Skywatch, he had hung out at the ruins for hours, sometimes even days, listening to his iPod and getting high on weed, hard liquor, pulque, and anything else he could find that came under the heading of “shit that alters consciousness.” Now, as he tugged aside the dusty serape that covered his stash, he saw there wasn’t much left. It should be enough to fog things out for a few hours, though. And right now, he’d take what he could get.
CHAPTER NINE
December 12
Nine days until the zero date
