Skykeepers

learn on earth,” Anna clarified. “Some never learn, just loop eternally. That’s the punishment, the hell, if you will. Not Xibalba itself. That’s in the formal sense, though. From what’s been happening around us over the past eighteen months, I have a feeling the coming of the end-time has shifted the hierarchy in Xibalba, that the Banol Kax, who used to be the overseers of the challenges and the dead, have started marshaling them as armies instead.”

“Assuming the Banol Kax are still a factor,” Nate put in, referring to the complete lack of action from that front ever since the destruction of the intersection.

“They are,” Strike said flatly. “Just because they’ve gone quiet doesn’t mean they’re not a threat.

They’re doing something, or planning something. We just don’t know what.”

The current theory was that with the intersection gone and Iago folding the hellmouth into the barrier except as needed, the demons of Xibalba had lost their direct access to the earth, forcing them to work through the Xibalbans and makol. But although they might be cut off temporarily, Michael was inclined to agree with Strike’s assessment. Given the tenacity of the Banol Kax throughout history, it would be dangerous to assume they would be out of action for long.

“Anyway,” Anna said, picking up her thread, “four classes of dead go straight to the sky: suicides, sacrificial victims, women who die in childbirth, and warriors who die in battle. They skip the challenges, having earned their ‘get out of jail free’ cards by the manner of their death.”

“Where does Mictlan fit in?” Nate asked.

Anna hummed a flat note. “Depending on who you ask, it’s either a construct of the Spanish missionaries, a sort of culturally relevant hell that they used to threaten the natives—the old ‘repent and accept the one true God, or you’ll suffer eternally in Mictlan’ routine . . . or it’s the lowest level of Xibalba, where the true sinners go. Just like there’s a group of souls who go straight to the sky, do not pass go, do not collect, there’s a group of souls, albeit smaller, who bypass the challenges in the other direction: the traitors and the murderers. Some say these are the souls that become the makol.”

A chill skimmed down Michael’s spine. “What about the mountain?”

“Depends on whether we’re talking about the Mayan or Aztec perspective. The Maya believed the entrance of Xibalba was located at the top of a mountain, with tunnels leading to Scorpion River, which formed the boundary of the underworld.” She paused. “The Aztec preferred volcanoes.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Strike said dryly. “They sound like a bunch of bloodthirsty psychopaths. Perfect fodder for the Xibalbans.”

“Or they were no more warlike than their neighbors before the Xibalbans moved in on them,” Anna countered. “Chicken and egg, you know?”

“Were there any volcanoes the Aztec were particularly fond of?” Michael asked. “Maybe one that’s extinct now, that the Xibalbans might have taken over as a stronghold?”

“They worshiped Smoking Mountain and White Woman, near Tenochtitlan. East of there is Mount Tlaloc, where the thunder god was supposed to live.” She paused, frowning. “There are others, but I’ll have to hit the books to be sure.”

“It’s a start,” Strike said. “We’ll check it out, but I hate splitting our forces. It’s hard enough trying to track the hints handed down to us in the Mayan legends, never mind figuring out the Aztec stuff.

Add that to searching for both the library and a new intersection, and we’re spread very, very thin.”

After a brief hesitation, Anna said, “How about Myrinne?”

“No way.” The answer was an immediate knee-jerk from Strike, his expression darkening. Then, catching himself—due at least in part to Leah digging an elbow into his ribs—he toned it down to say, “She and Rabbit just got to school. Let them focus on that for now.” It was no secret Strike had sent them to UT partly in the hopes that the two would drift apart in the wider world. So far, though, that didn’t seem to be happening.

“She would want to help,” Anna pressed. She’d been the one to claim responsibility for Myrinne, based on a debt she owed to Red-Boar, and therefore posthumously to his heir, Rabbit.

But Strike shook his head. “We don’t know what she is.”

“She’s a girl,” Anna said stubbornly.

“Who might or might not be the daughter of a witch who might or might not have had actual powers,” Strike countered.

“She dreamed of Skywatch before she got here,” Anna reminded him. “She described it to Rabbit, right down to the ceiba tree out back.” Myrinne’s vision suggested that she had seer’s powers. It wasn’t clear, however, what form those skills might take, whether Nightkeeper, Xibalban, or something else. So far, Strike had forbidden all experimentation. That hadn’t stopped Anna from lobbying the point, though. With her own itza’at powers dubious at best, the Nightkeepers badly needed a visionary.

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Strike said grudgingly, and won a nod from Anna. He continued, “For now, Michael is going to focus on this new spell of Iago’s, while Anna and Jade do a first pass on the Aztec stuff. Basically, we need anything that’ll help us figure out what’s coming down the pipeline now that we’re bearing down on the three-year threshold.”

In the absence of the library, the prophecies actually dealing with the events leading up to the end-

time were few and far between. Despite the Nightkeepers’ best efforts to uncover additional artifacts with inscriptions that might help, all they had describing the events of upcoming winter solstice was a single carved inscription, badly degraded, that read, In the triad years, a daughter of the sky . . .

And that was it. Which wasn’t much help at all.

Worse, there was some debate about the actual time period it represented. Anna was convinced that the triad years corresponded to the final three years before the apocalypse. Lucius, on the other hand, had offered another interpretation, back when he’d been in his human guise, living with the Nightkeepers and helping Jade with the archives. According to him, the prophecy referred to the coming of the Triad, a legendary trio of uber-powerful magi who were supposed to arise at the end of the age to join forces with the Nightkeepers. Without the rest of the prophecy, there was no way of telling which interpretation was correct. Then again, without the rest of the prophecy, the question was academic. They needed another source for information—which brought them back around, yet again, to the subject of the library.

Draining the dregs of his coffee and figuring he could legitimately make a break for it, Michael shifted in his seat. “If that’s it for the debriefing . . . ?”

Strike nodded and waved him off. “Yeah, we’re just about finished here anyway. Let us know if she’s awake, will you?”

Michael narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up. I mean it.”

Strike turned his scarred palms up in a falsely innocent gesture. “Hey, can’t blame me for trying.”

But then he turned serious. “Look, I know things were awkward for you after you and Jade split, and again when Nate and Alexis got back together.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Michael conceded. With the skyroad gone and no new intersection found, the Nightkeepers needed all the power they could get. Because of that, there was serious pressure on the singles to pair up, whether or not the relationships made sense in real-world terms.

Strike glanced at Leah, a hint of a smile curving his mouth as he said to Michael, “Do me a favor and don’t let that turn you off something that could benefit all of us, yourself most of all.”

Or it could doom us all, Michael thought. He didn’t understand how Sasha, who seemed to embody positive energy, had reached inside him to stir up the Other, and he didn’t like things he didn’t understand, especially when they had to do with his alter ego. But once again, he was unable to break the silence that came from within him. So instead he said, “I’m just checking to see if she’s awake yet.”

Because despite the logic that said he should stay far away from her, he owed her an explanation, and an apology. More, he damn well wanted—needed—to see her. It was as simple as that. And as complicated. So he went.

The basement hallway was bland and austere compared to the lived-in feel of the level above. Back when hundreds of Nightkeepers had lived at Skywatch, the basement had been used for storage. These days, though, the storerooms were set up as more or less comfortable cells. Three of them were, anyway, having variously housed Leah, Rabbit, Myrinne, and Lucius when they’d been deemed potential security threats. And although Michael hated the thought of Sasha locked up, a prisoner, there was no arguing the fact that she was still a relatively unknown quantity.