Skykeepers

He dropped the shield magic and tumbled out of its embrace. The warm, moist rain forest air smelled of blood and rattled with dark magic. He could feel it in his skull, in his chest, and suddenly found himself fighting the mad lure of hellmagic, and the strength it threatened to offer the Other.

“Sasha!” He lunged into the forest, chasing the sounds of a struggle.

He broke into a clearing, saw her on the ground, pinned beneath two black, furry beasts that looked like dogs but had too-smart eyes and bared their teeth when they saw him.

Michael didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Me!” he yelled. “Fight me, damn it!”

He heard a roar from behind him, spun to meet the new attack, and gaped for a second at the sight of a nahwal on earth, nearly seven feet tall, with claws and fangs and bright, mad eyes. It went for him.

Roaring, he ducked under the attack, then straightened up, inside the nahwal’s guard. He reversed his knife and jabbed the hilt into the creature’s throat in a vicious blow that sent it reeling back, gagging, as a human would have done under the same attack.

Sasha screamed, “Michael!”

Michael spun as one of the black dogs leaped upon him, jaws snapping too close to his face.

Jamming a knee into the beast’s groin, he held it off long enough to get his knife up and into it. Blood gushed over his hand, hot and iron-scented. An unearthly howl split the air, and the dog disappeared.

Poof, gone. Magic.

Lunging to his feet, Michael grabbed the second creature away from Sasha, cutting its throat in an automatic swipe. It went down in a spurt of blood. Seconds later it vanished.

Breathing hard, with battle rage running hot under protective instincts more intense than any he’d ever felt, he rounded on the nahwal, which had recovered from its throat jab and now bared its teeth, hissing. “Are you going to die as easily as your mutts?” Michael demanded

“No!” Sasha grabbed Michael’s arm and tugged him back. “Don’t kill it.”

Thinking he recognized the scene, the creature, he tried to shake her off. “If I can kill it here, in spirit form, it’ll be gone from the outside world, and we’ll be able to get into the temple without it bothering us.”

“You can’t kill him,” she said. “It’s Ambrose.”

Ambrose? He stared at the creature. The flinch nearly cost him.

As if in response to its name, the nahwal screeched and charged Sasha with murder and madness in its eyes. Reacting instinctively, Michael yanked Sasha against him in a hard, possessive hug and threw up a thick protective shield around them both.

The nahwal bounced off. Screaming in frustration, it clawed at the shield, trying to gouge its way through.

Inside the protective bubble, Sasha threw her arms around Michael, shaking hard. He hugged her back with equal intensity as relief crashed through him. He’d gotten to her in time.

They clung together for a few seconds, while the nahwal howled and fought the shield. Then Sasha pulled away. “I tried the ‘ way’ spell. It didn’t work for me.”

“Shit.” That was not good news. Michael could feel the silver magic poised at the edges of his mind, but he shied away from its power. What if in using it to get Sasha and him home, she wound up tainted by the darkness too? He couldn’t risk it.

“We need more of a power draw to get out of here, right?” She met his eyes, her lips turning up at the corners, but her expression remained wary.

He got it. More, it was so obvious that he wondered why his thoughts had gone straight to the silver magic. Or rather, he knew why and didn’t want to accept it. “Power, it is,” he said, shifting her in his arms, blocking the Other as hard as he possibly could these days, as he leaned down. And kissed her.

Sex magic sparked around them, reassuringly red-gold, though not nearly as powerful as the silver muk. It would be enough, though. They would make it be enough.

Her arms came up and around his neck as she leaned up on her toes up to press her body into his. He slid his hands down her sides, catching her around the waist, holding her close as he’d imagined doing so many nights since they’d been together. Her mouth opened beneath his; their tongues touched.

Desire flared, hot and hard, but with an edge of tenderness that was theirs alone as they kissed and kissed again. But even as he kissed her and called the red-gold Nightkeeper magic, he was aware that the Other was there as well, called by Sasha, empowered by her.

She’s ours, his alter ego had said, and that had definitely been a threat.

I won’t let you have her , Michael thought fiercely. I won’t . He reached for the red-gold magic, hoped to hell it would be enough. Ending the kiss, he pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, “Way.”

Home.

And the world disappeared, leaving the howl of the mad nahwal to trail off into a silence broken, deep down inside Michael, by the Other’s raspy whisper. Don’t make promises you aren’t man enough to keep.

Sasha clung to Michael as the world went gray-green and swept them up into the barrier on a mad whirl. They were torn apart, but she barely had time to shout his name before her soul slammed back into her body and the world took shape around her, becoming the sacred chamber back at Skywatch.

Thank the gods. They’d made it back.

Moaning, she cracked her eyes open and tried to regain feeling in her stiff body, which was all but frozen cross-legged. Expecting to see everything the same as it had been when the ritual began, it took her a moment to realize that wasn’t the case. She was holding Michael’s hand on one side, but they were the only two magi still sitting in the ceremonial circle. Most of the others had left the chamber.

Strike remained, though; he stood just inside the door with Jox at his side.

They were staring at her.

Sasha didn’t know what to think about that, what to think about any of it. Her head was spinning and she was ravenous. She was also stirred up, heated by Michael’s kiss, and her head was full of the things that had happened inside the barrier. Ambrose was haunting the temple; it made sense, it fit.

But at the same time it didn’t. She now remembered hearing him whisper, “Have faith” to her as Iago had taken her away. But if he’d been there, why hadn’t he saved her? Had he wanted the Xibalbans to have her? Why—

“Sasha.” Michael tugged his hand from her too-tight grip and nudged her arm. “Earth to Sasha.”

Torn from her whirling thoughts, she stared blankly at him. “What? Oh.” She flushed at the heat in his eyes, and felt an answering kick of desire within her. But then he looked past her, his expression going strange and rueful as he nodded to the others. “I think those two want to talk to you.”

“What? Why?”

“Check your wrist.”

Adrenaline shot through her system when she realized she’d all but forgotten about the point of the bloodline ceremony in the chaos of what had followed. The nahwal, she remembered. That had been Scarred-Jaguar; hadn’t it? The royal nahwal was the only one to retain personal characteristics. But why had the royal nahwal come for her?

She became acutely aware of the slight tingle that spread across her inner forearm, seeming too large for a single mark. Oh, shit, she thought, afraid to look, afraid not to. Before she could make the move, Jox crossed to her, leaned down, and offered his hand. His sleeve slid back to reveal the marks on his forearm.

Where before there had been two jaguar glyphs above the aj-winikin, now there were three.

Something inside Sasha went still. Shaking, caught in her oldest and strongest fantasy, the one where she had an actual family, she pushed back the sleeve of her soiled, dragging robe. Shock slammed through her at the sight of not just one mark . . . but four. The jaguar. The royal ju. The warrior. And something she didn’t recognize—a talent she hadn’t yet tapped.

She hadn’t just gotten her bloodline mark; she’d also gotten her talent marks, along with an unexpected, terrifying glyph that couldn’t be true. The ju. The mark of the jaguar kings. “I’m not . .