Skykeepers

fleeing captivity and crazy people who believed in impossible things.

The compound was quiet around her, with no shouts of discovery. Not yet anyway. Her breath burned in her lungs as she reached the dune buggy. She hadn’t been outside in more than a year; the sunlight blinded her, though it was dim and orange-cast, as though the sun were shining through a layer of smog that was invisible in the clear blue sky.

Throwing herself into the cockpit of the unfamiliar vehicle, she fumbled for the start button, and hissed, “Yes!” when the engine came to life. Yanking the safety harness into place, she hit the gas and sent the buggy churning in a tight one-eighty. Punching it, she powered around the side of the pool, away from the big steel building.

Still no alarm.

Her heart pounded in her ears and her blood ran hot with nerves and building elation as the vehicle slewed out from behind the huge stone-faced mansion and hit a dirt track that led to another, wider track, almost a road. It ran out the front, through a set of open gates.

Sasha hit the gas and flew through the gates. And she was free!

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Tomas’s voice came from somewhere far above Michael. “You were supposed to let her get the drop on you, not let her split your damn head open. Way to go on the defense.”

“Do you mind?” Michael grated. “I’m blinded and dying. The least you could do is pretend to sympathize.” But there was some truth in the winikin’s dig. Michael had let his guard down too far, as he’d divided his focus between watching her and thinking about the photograph she’d described, and what it might mean. And she’d gotten the drop on him way harder than he’d intended. Strike’s order had been for him to let her escape, not let her kick his ass.

“Jack in,” Tomas suggested with zero pity. “You’ll heal.”

“Son of a bitch.” Annoyed with his winikin for the lack of concern and with himself for the lapse of vigilance—and more than a little impressed with the one-two Sasha had used to drop him— Michael palmed his father’s knife from his ankle sheath, sliced his palm, and muttered the two-word spell that connected him to the barrier: “Pasaj och.”

To his relief, the jack-in went without a hitch, and he sensed nothing beyond the pure red-gold of Nightkeeper power. Earlier, when he and Sasha had been face-to-face in the storeroom doorway, he’d thought he caught a thread of silver magic, there and gone so quickly that he might have convinced himself he’d imagined it if it hadn’t been for the answering kick of rage that had dimmed his vision for a second, washing her lovely face to grayscale. That part definitely hadn’t been his imagination.

More, he could swear it’d been triggered by Sasha’s nearness, and his primal response to her. Which was consistent with what Iago had said, and so wasn’t a good sign. He had to find a way to keep her from lowering his defenses, given that, whether she was ready to accept it or not, she’d come to Skywatch for good.

First, though, he had to make sure she survived her “escape” attempt. Calling the red-gold magic, he leaned on the magic, opened himself up to it, and felt some of the pain ease. A Nightkeeper couldn’t heal as fast as a makol, but they healed quicker and with far fewer long-term effects than a human.

Within a few minutes, his head had stopped spinning and he could see dark and light patches through his watering eyes. “Good enough,” he said, aware that Tomas had stayed nearby, though he wasn’t sure whether that was because of a sense of duty or a desire to get another couple of digs in. “Did the others go after her?”

“We’re on plan,” the winikin confirmed. “If we’re lucky, nothing will go wrong.” But they both knew there was no guarantee of that. Sasha was outside the warded protection of Skywatch, and Iago had vowed to get her back before the solstice.

Michael had agreed with Strike and the others that in order to gain Sasha’s cooperation they were going to have to prove that their power was real. It had been Nate’s idea to let her escape and then chase her down using magic that was very clearly not special effects. The royal council had voted that the potential reward was worth the risk. He just hoped to hell they weren’t proven wrong.

Chaco Canyon Sasha braced herself against the wrenching jolt as the dune buggy hit another of the huge, hummocky bumps that pockmarked the dirt track that seemed to lead from nowhere to nowhere. She didn’t let up on the gas, though.

Heat flickered across her skin—the heat of the desert, the heat of panic. The road she was on had started at the mansion and training compound she’d glimpsed on the way out, and it had to lead somewhere. But she had no clue how long it would be before she hit pavement, or saw a sign or another human being. Worse, she had less than a quarter tank of gas, and knew she was burning through her fuel big-time by keeping the engine pegged as high as it would rev. But it wasn’t like she’d had an option on the getaway-vehicle front.

The road curved and she followed it automatically, gripping the steering wheel two-handed to counteract the bumps. On either side of the track, the land fell away to bare dirt dotted with gnarled rocks, windswept into fluidly beautiful shapes. In the near distance, larger rock formations rose seemingly from nowhere, reaching for the sky. Once or twice, she caught glimpses of more regular shapes, doors and windows of ancient Puebloan structures. There was no other traffic, no sign of anyone else in the area. She was free, but far from safe.

Elation battled fear and confusion, and the three emotions called it a draw. Behind them came a twinge of guilt. Or more than a twinge. More like an avalanche, because Michael might be one of them, but she’d not only been intimate with him, she had liked him, liked the way he’d made her feel she was something special, like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

“It was just good sex,” she said, making herself concentrate on the road. “Don’t make it into anything more than that.” Squinting against the whip of wind and sunlight, she scanned the horizon, looking for signs of pursuit, of rescue. She saw nothing but sand, rock, and scrub brush, stretching to a clear blue sky. Off to one side of her, paralleling her track, a hawk flew above her, its shadow flattening out on the sand nearby.

It flattened further. Got bigger. Then huge.

Unease gathered in Sasha’s gut, spiraling quickly to nerves and then beyond to outright fear.

Impossible, her rational self argued when the hawk shape continued to grow as it drifted toward the shadow cast by the speeding dune buggy. That’s not real.

She checked her mirrors, tried to see overhead, but was foiled by the vehicle’s hardtop. Then the shadow disappeared.

Terrified, Sasha pressed harder on the gas, only to have the engine cough and choke. “No,” she shouted. “No, damn it!”

A hawk’s cry came from directly above her—a screech of triumph far too loud to come from a normal bird. A whoosh sounded overhead, and something slammed into the buggy, sending it shuddering sideways. Terrible thumps and scratches surrounded Sasha as she fought the ignition, nearly sobbing in fear as she tried to get the engine to turn over. She got it going again just as smooth, sharp claws, each at least two inches in diameter at their widest, curved down to take a grip on either side of the hardtop and latched on. Sasha stared at them, breath going dead in her lungs. Moments later, the buggy lurched and went airborne.

Screaming, she twisted the wheel and stomped on the gas and brake in rapid succession, but the vehicle was out of her control. It went airborne, skimming along the surface of the road, then off it, over the softer sand on the verge. Sasha yanked at her safety straps, popping them free as the vehicle dipped and lifted, dipped and lifted, in synchrony with the boom of huge, feathered wings. Then the creature that had captured her slowed, back-winging to hover over a patch of soft sand.

Then the claws let go. The buggy fell a few feet and whump ed into the sand.

Not stopping to think or plan, knowing only that she had to get the hell out of there now, Sasha flung herself out of the vehicle. She landed in soft sand, stumbled, and went down on her hands and knees, then scrambled up and ran for her life. She didn’t look behind her, didn’t dare,