Last resort, she’d lock herself in the bathroom and put in a call for some mind-bending support—which she was far less reluctant to do on the guards than she had been on David. Either way, she could deal with this. Hopefully, Rabbit and Myrinne could handle things on their end for a little longer without getting in major trouble.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Oc Ajal, Mexico
Rabbit faced the fire pit and tried to block everything else out—the rain forest, the remains of the village where he’d been born, the latent hiss of magic surrounding him, the Nightkeeper powers that wanted to flare and combat the darkness—all of it. He was still aware of Myr standing behind him, though, with her shield running hot, ready to protect him . . . and to protect herself against him.
Hoping it would be enough—hoping he would be enough—he sent a quick prayer to the gods he’d forsaken. Then, pulse thudding in his ears, he opened his hands and cast his blood into the cold, bare fire pit. “Cha’ik ten ee’hochen!” Bring the darkness to me!
Blam! The floodgates slammed open, giving way beneath an onslaught of power. Dark magic hammered through him, terrible yet incredible, and as he staggered back a step, flames erupted from within the stone circle, writhing like serpents.
“Rabbit!” Myr cried, her voice sounding far away.
“Stay back!” he shouted as the darkness surrounded him, swamping him with an incalculable power that gushed up from the depths of his soul. More, emotions tore at him—frustration, impotence, resentment, murderous rage, loneliness, all of it mixing together into a blinding fury that made him want to howl.
No! He fought the impulses, but he wasn’t braced for fury, wasn’t buffered against one of the red rages that used to grab on to him, making him do stupid, impulsive things. For that was what raced into his mind.
Suddenly, he wasn’t himself anymore, at least not the guy he wanted to be. Instead, he was the whipped dog he had become beneath the ’zotz’s lash. He was the pissed-off teen who had torched Jox’s garden center, the frustrated punk who’d wanted to make his mark on Skywatch. He was the impulsive asshole who’d led Iago to Oc Ajal, the gullible prick who had listened to Phee’s lies, sucking them up like soft-serve. And he was the stone-cold bastard who’d held a knife to Myr’s throat and made her bleed.
He clenched his fists as his soul overflowed with every bad decision he’d ever made, every moment that he’d been unhappy, pissed off, pissed on.
Burn it, whispered a voice inside him. Burn it all down.
The fire climbed hotter and higher, sending out billows of dark, oily smoke that tore at his throat and filled his lungs. His heart hammered as his warrior’s instincts said to back up, back off and lock himself down. But another set of instincts said he couldn’t shut himself off now. Not if he wanted to become the crossover.
“Oh, shit,” he said, not sure if he said it aloud or only in his mind. “I get it. I fucking get it.”
This was why the Nightkeepers’ ancestors had deemed the dark half of the magic too dangerous and banished the dark magi . . . and it was why they had feared the wild powers of a half blood like him—because where the light magic tapped into the good stuff, like love, sex and the power of teamwork, the dark magic drew from all the bad stuff inside its wielder. It concentrated it, encouraged it, made it real.
He hadn’t felt these things when he’d used the dark magic before, when the rage had already been at the surface of his soul, ready for the darkness to tap into it. Now, though, he could feel the old frustrations hissing and seething inside him, heard them whispering, They never believed you, never believed in you. You can show them all just how powerful you really are.
Sudden images crammed his mind’s eye, and anger surged through him, pure and powerful. Screw them. They never liked him, never understood him, had always been afraid of him. They were small-minded, shortsighted, jealous, and—
Rabbit shuddered as he recognized all the things he’d told himself when he’d been under Phee’s spell. But those weren’t his words; they weren’t his thoughts. And that meant he could ignore them, block them off.
You can do this. You can handle it. He needed to prove it to himself, to the others, especially to Myrinne. He hadn’t wanted her to see him like this, and he sure as hell didn’t want her to see him fail. More, he didn’t have a fucking choice, not if he wanted—needed—to harness the crossover’s powers. So, imagining a fierce, cleansing wind blowing through his mind, he swept up the voices, the memories, the taunts and the righteous-feeling anger that wasn’t righteous at all, corralling them and stuffing them back into the vault. Then, with a mental heave, he slammed the lid on all of it, leaving the dark magic outside but shutting his own weaknesses away.
The hinges creaked; the door bulged. But it held. It fucking held.
For now, at least. And with the whispers and emotions gone, only the power of the dark magic remained, deep and surging, pulsing an urgent demand through him. Use me, it seemed to say. I’m yours.
Exhaling, but not daring to glance back at Myr to see how much of that inner battle she had comprehended, he reopened the slashes across his palms and cast a spray of blood into the flames. Then he steeled himself, and said, “Cha’ik ten nohoch taat.” Bring me the grandfather.
Fire burst skyward, turning the day red-orange, scorching his skin and sending the monkeys overhead screeching to higher branches as the noise of the dark magic cycled up to a chain-saw buzz, whipping around him and making his jaw ache.
He felt the spell hesitate, teetering between success and failure, felt the vault door shudder as the other part of the dark magic struggled to break free.
Strengthening his mental hold on his inner garbage, he repeated the incantation. “Cha’ik ten nohoch taat.”
Pain streaked along the scars that striped his back, turning them raw and new as the smoke swirled and churned, becoming something. A strangled sound tore from Rabbit’s throat, but he held in the rest as the smoke twined together, and then, bam, whipped into the shape of a gimlet-eyed old man who wore the long robe of a Xibalban priest and had the hellmark on his wrist.
And even though Rabbit had come for this, prepared for it, sick and ugly anger awoke at the sight of the old shaman. His fucking grandfather.
The smoke-ghost looked around, seeming unsurprised at the summons. His eyes lingered on Myrinne, but then moved on. “Greetings, young Rabbit.”
“Greetings . . . Grandfather.” You cocksucker.
The see-through bastard had the gall to smile. “Ah. So you know the truth now.”
“I know you bred me. I want to know the rest. I want to understand your purpose for me.” He heard Myr’s smothered gasp, felt her mistrust, and hoped to hell she would go with it. More, he hoped he wasn’t making a big fucking mistake. Because if anything happened to him, he wasn’t sure she’d be strong enough to take Anntah on her own. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could do it, and he’d summoned the bastard. If she got hurt because of him . . .
Over my dead body, he thought, and the mental promise had the force of a blood vow.
Anntah spread his ghostly arms. “Ask your questions.”
Rabbit was all too aware that the smoke-ghost had his own agenda, that he would lie . . . but he was also the only one left who knew the truth. “How do I become the crossover?”
“You already are. You are the son of a Xibalban princess and the last surviving Nightkeeper mage. You are the child of prophecy.”
A shiver tried to work its way down Rabbit’s spine, but he ignored it. “Okay, let’s try it this way. How can I access the powers of the crossover? Is there a spell, an artifact, what?”
“There is nothing. Only you.”
“Bullshit. Tell me the fucking truth.”
“This is the truth. There is no spell or artifact, no need for you to become anything other than what you already are. You are the crossover, Rabbie. The power is inside you.”
Rabbie. The name echoed in his head, in his heart, rattled at the vault. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? It’s what your mother and I called you, the name your father and the Nightkeepers took from you.
