Skykeepers

doing? As a last-ditch effort, she tried to short-circuit the jack-in. “Way,” she whispered, which was the spell word that was supposed to take her back to her body. It didn’t work; she stayed where she was. But the flare of magic called something else.

A low, feral growl sounded from the undergrowth, sending her pulse into overdrive. A second growl answered the first. For a moment she couldn’t tell where the sounds had come from; they seemed to surround her. Then two dark shadows emerged from the undergrowth—big black canines that were rottweilerish in size and shape, but had long tails, and pure black coats that lacked the distinctive tan markings of the breed. They wore no collars, no means of restraint. And they stalked toward her, stiff legged and growling, with their heads low and the fur between their shoulder blades standing in menace.

Magic prickled across her skin, warning her that they weren’t just dogs. But what the hell were they?

Whatever they were, they were closing in on her, one from each side. Don’t turn your back on them, she told herself. Don’t panic; don’t run . But her heart hammered in her chest and adrenaline surged through her veins, making her want to flee and hide, to fight, to do anything other than stand her ground.

Then the branches and shadows moved again and a humanoid figure stepped out into the orange-

dappled sunlight. As Sasha focused on the newcomer, her heart shuddered in her chest and a low moan escaped from her throat as she saw the creature Red-Boar had called the mad nahwal . . . and recognized it. The desiccated skin was that of a nahwal, but the creature wore bush clothing and a long gray ponytail tied back with a worn leather thong. And on its forearm was a wide, gnarled scar.

“Ambrose?” she said, her voice cracking to a whisper.

His path led him elsewhere, the jaguar king had said, and now she understood. He’d stayed in the place of his death, waiting. But for what?

She didn’t know if he was a ghost or a man, or something in between, stuck in the process of merging with the nahwal of his own bloodline. His eyes weren’t the flat matte black of a true nahwal .

. . but as he advanced on her, she saw that they weren’t normal, either—they were glazed over with the look she’d seen only once or twice, when Ambrose had been in the throes of the worst and most violent of his psychotic episodes, when he’d grown violent and mean, and Pim and Sasha had gone to a hotel for a couple of days until he returned to himself.

Only Sasha didn’t see any hope of return in his eyes now. She saw only the madness, as though his death, and whatever had happened to freeze him in this halfway state, had stripped him of his better parts, leaving the insanity in control.

“Oh, Ambrose,” she breathed, fear and sorrow flaring to life within her even as she took a step back, away from the advancing demi- nahwal and his snarling black familiars.

There was no recognition in his face. He just kept coming in slow, measured treads as Sasha retreated, eventually backing into a tree. She pressed against it, pulse hammering with guilt as she thought that she’d brought him to this. Because she hadn’t believed. Gods.

“Ambrose,” she said, forcing the word from between dry lips. “It’s me, Sasha. Your princess.” That was what he had called her in his good moments. His princess. She’d never before thought it’d been anything but a nickname. “I need to talk to you about the library. I need you to tell me where you hid the scroll.”

He hesitated, and for a second she thought she saw the man she’d known in the eyes of the creature that faced her. Then that blink was gone and the demi- nahwal lunged at her, reached for her with fingers gone to claws, its mouth splitting in a multitonal scream of mad rage, baring pointed fangs.

“No!” Panic slashed through her and she broke. Spinning, she bolted, breath locking in her lungs as she ran for her life. Moments later, the snarling familiars lunged in pursuit.

Michael cursed and flailed against the wind and the darkness that gripped him, holding him suspended in the middle of nothingness. He twisted against the invisible force, howling with rage, with the need to get to Sasha, to protect her. As she’d been sucked into the mist he’d followed her and grabbed on tight, refusing to let go, but it hadn’t mattered. She’d been yanked away from his grip, and he’d wound up someplace black and empty, a space without light, without time.

“Sasha!” he shouted into the nothingness, and got no echoes in return.

Magic swirled around him, harder and hotter than it should have been. He grabbed onto it, threw himself into it, only then realizing that the power glinted silver in the blackness; the sluice gates had cracked and the Other was nearly loose within him, brought to the fore by the combined magic of the Nightkeepers and the lure of the blood-link with Sasha.

“No,” he grated. “Get back, damn it. She’s not yours!”

She’s not yours either, the Other said in the deadly inner tones he hadn’t heard in a long time. She’s ours.

In an instant, Michael was plunged into a vision, into a memory that wasn’t his own.

Three years in Bryson’s employ, two dozen confirmed kills, and twice that in completed missions, and the Other’s existence had come down to a single syringe. The creature within Michael had seen its own destruction in Dr. Horn’s eyes.

“It won’t hurt,” Bryson had said as they’d stripped the Other of its weapons, its passports. Its reason for existing. “You won’t remember a thing.” But by “you” he’d meant Michael, not the Other.

Because the Other would soon cease to exist, blanked forever by the same cocktail of drugs and hypnosis that had so cleanly separated it from the Michael personality, creating two halves: one a murderer, one a man.

“No,” the Other howled, straining against the binding restraints as Horn approached. “No!”

The syringe descended and the world went black.

“No!” Michael shouted, fighting the darkness, fighting the end of himself. Instinctively, not sure who he was, which part of himself, he tipped back his head and shouted, “Pasaj och! ”

He was already jacked in, but now another layer of magic slammed into him, around him. The world exploded around him, detonating with Nightkeeper magic, forcing the Other out of his consciousness, out of his head. He leaned on the red-gold magic, opened himself to it, choosing life over death. This time, at least.

“Gods help us,” he yelled into the darkness. “She needs me!”

The world exploded around him again, and he blinked out of the darkness and into the light. Back on earth, or a vision version of it. He materialized within the glare of the reddish orange sun, surrounded by thin white clouds. The earth was green below him. Very far below him. The canopy of a rain forest was broken here and there by the tops of pyramid ruins.

Oh, shit, he thought as panic spiked. He’d blinked in way too fucking high.

For a split second, he hovered. Then, howling, he fell. Air whipped past him as he tumbled, spinning, cursing up a storm, like that was going to help a godsdamned thing. Air screamed in his ears and the ground lunged up to meet him at an impossible speed. He was going to die, he realized with fatalistic certainty. That was what the Other’s vision had been trying to tell him. It hadn’t been a threat. It’d been a warning.

He couldn’t fly, couldn’t ’port, couldn’t do godsdamned anything but shield, and—

Shit, he realized. That’s it! A shield. Almost too late, fighting the wall of air that pushed against him at terminal velocity, he contorted and yanked his knife from his ankle sheath. Slashing both palms, he called up the red-gold Nightkeeper magic and threw the strongest, most yielding shield he could manage, casting it in a sphere around his body.

Leaves and branches slashed as he plummeted through the canopy. Monkeys screamed and dove for cover; parrots burst from their perches in a fury of red and blue feathers. As Michael caught sight of the shade-dappled ground, he cast a second shield, one that pressed into the ground, giving as he approached, slowing his velocity. He hit hard, caroming around the inner sphere as it slammed into the earth and dug a hell of a crater, meteorlike.

Pain thundered through him, and his head spun from the impact, but he didn’t have time to be hurt.

The moment he was down, he heard a woman’s scream. Sasha!