aren’t we?”
“We sure are.” And he would be going last, just in case all hell broke loose.
It was the godkeepers’ turn next—they had broken their allegiance to the kohan, but still needed to renounce their godkeeper bonds. He tightened the fire to a small, hot blaze in front of the temple as Strike, Leah, Alexis and Sasha took up their positions. Their ceremonial knives flashed and their faces twisted as they carved the godkeeper marks out of their arms. Leah whimpered and Strike went gray, more worried for his mate than himself. Myr made a muffled noise and looked away as blood dripped into the fire, turning the smoke to murk. Then the four intoned, “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni. Xeen te’ealo!” We no longer recognize you. Leave us!
Power surged, but this time the explosion wasn’t a shock wave—it was fire. Rabbit shouted as the blaze flared, engulfing the godkeepers and bathing them in brilliant red flames. Leah gave a shocked scream that cut off ominously.
“No!” Nate surged forward with Michael on his heels. “Douse it!”
Rabbit yanked back on the out-of-control fire magic, reeling it in, suddenly afraid that the near-death-by- drowning of the godkeeper spell needed to be counteracted by near-death-by-flames. “Godsdamn it, I—” He broke off as the blaze died back abruptly.
The four godkeepers stood there, unscathed.
Thank fuck.
“Holy shit,” Strike said, voice shaking, reaching for his mate as the two other men closed in on theirs. “Leah, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m good.” But her voice was sad, her eyes fixed on her wrist, where there was a bare, scarred patch in place of her mark. The bonds had been broken. She wasn’t a godkeeper anymore. None of them were.
Prophecy said that the godkeepers would be key to winning the war. They could only pray that had been another of the kohan’s lies.
“Still nothing,” Myr said, looking up at the sky. “Where are they?”
Rabbit doused the last of his fire. “Not even a fucking thundercloud. I don’t like it.” His wristband showed two and a half hours on the clock. They were missing something. But what?
Sasha leaned against Michael. “It’s like breaking up with someone you really loved, someone you’ve been agonizing about dumping, and then having them shrug and say, ‘Yeah, okay. Whatever. No biggie.’”
He hugged her to his side. “They’re leaving us alone because they know we’ve figured out their lies, so there’s no point in trying to keep us.”
“Or because they’re planning something else,” Myr said softly. She pulled her wand from her pocket and gestured with it, and green flames kindled where Rabbit’s blaze had burned moments earlier. She looked up at him. “You ready?”
Her magic brushed along his skin like a touch, bringing an echo of the shadows he saw in her eyes, and a tug that came from light magic rather than dark. Ah, baby. Like the king in his recurring dreams, he wished he could bubble wrap her and lock her someplace safe. But, also like Jag, he knew better than to try to leave a warrior behind, and that if they didn’t succeed here and now, there wouldn’t be anyplace safe.
So he leaned in, brushed his lips across hers, and nodded. “Ready.”
Then he pulled his combat knife, and dragged the tip across the bloodred hellmark, and then the black glyph of the boar bloodline. “Pasaj och,” he said. Magic surged around him, inside him, filling him with solstice power. When faint rattles leaked around the edges of the vault, he clamped down on it, determined to stay in control, get this right. “Ma’ tu kah—”
“No!” The blow came without warning—a hot, heavy body in sweat-laced brown robes flying at him from the side. “You can’t!”
Red-Boar! Rabbit didn’t know where the old bastard had come from, how he’d gotten so close without being seen. Shouting, “Dez, now!” he went down and rolled with the attack, kicking his father off him. The combat knife skittered out of his hand. When he reached out to grab it with his mind, though, nothing happened.
I’ve got your magic, you disloyal fuck, the hated voice said inside his head. I’m going to make you— “Aaah!” Red-Boar flew backward as if he’d been yanked by an invisible giant, sailing thirty feet and hitting hard. A shield spell slammed down around him, sparking with Dez’s lightning powers and threaded through with Michael’s silver death magic. “No!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet and slapping his hands against the impenetrable shield. “You can’t do this! You swore on your blood!”
Rabbit came to his feet and faced his old man as wrath and righteousness pounded through him. “You screwed up, old man. I swore not to follow the false gods. And as far as I’m concerned, your gods are full of shit, and so are you.”
Red-Boar flushed an angry, ugly purple. “No! You can’t do it. You can’t—” The rant cut off abruptly, though his mouth still moved, screaming spittle-flecked imprecations.
“Volume control,” Michael said with grim satisfaction. “Shield magic is my friend.”
“Thanks.” Rabbit looked past him to Dez, knowing that the two of them together were strong enough to hold his old man, no matter what. “Seriously. Thanks.” And he didn’t just mean for the shield spell or the silence. If they hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t backed him up, there was no telling what would’ve happened. Red-Boar brought out the darkness in him.
Even now it stirred inside him, seething and whispering, You’re stronger, better than he is. You can show him, show them all.
Yeah, he could. By fucking holding his shit together.
The king nodded. “Hey. You can’t pick your family.”
“Amen.” But to Rabbit’s surprise there was no satisfaction in seeing Red-Boar trapped and silenced, either. There was only the blink of his chrono: 2:50:36. And still nothing from the enemy.
“Here. You’re going to need this.” Myr levitated his combat knife and sent it winging toward him.
He caught it on the fly. “Sorry I didn’t tell you the whole plan.”
“Like you said earlier, he’s a mind-bender. He could’ve read me.” But she didn’t quite meet his eyes as she restarted the fire.
Damn. Rabbit’s heart thudded with dismay. He didn’t want to shut her out like this. He wanted to kiss her, hold her, make everything okay. Later, he promised himself, just like he’d promised her pancakes. Later, when the solstice magic wasn’t gnawing at him. Later, when he’d proven himself once and for all.
Later, when they’d won the war.
Facing the fire, he used his knife to freshen the half-healed cuts, leaned in so his blood fell into the fire, and said, “Ma’ tu kahool tikeni.”
The shock wave didn’t flare out this time; it flared in, turning his vision suddenly to gold. He hissed out a breath and fought to keep his balance, heard shouts but couldn’t understand the words. Then he fell and hit hard, launching himself into a vision, into the same dream he’d been having for weeks now. Except it wasn’t the same anymore.
Rabbit stood in front of the chac-mool, watching the barrier writhe in the air above the altar. Only this time he was alone . . . and he wasn’t underground. Instead, he stood at the edge of a huge sinkhole, which was sixty feet across and plunged a hundred feet down to a huge, circular pool of blackish water.
Oh, gods. He knew this place.
And, as he felt himself lift his bleeding palms, heard himself chant Scarred-Jaguar’s spell and sensed it burning its way into his mind, he knew what he was supposed to do, what the dreams—or, rather, the true gods —had been trying to tell him all along.
The Nightkeepers were going to shit a fucking brick when they found out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ninety minutes to the Great Conjunction
Coatepec Mountain
