Skykeepers

he choked the living shit out of the bastard who’d pretended to be his friend, then taken his woman. He—

Oh, shit. I’ve got to get the fuck out of here. Blinking hard in an effort to banish the horrible sensory image and the way it both repulsed and tempted him, Michael spun and headed for the sliders. He nearly plowed over Tomas, who stood in his path.

“Out of my way. I need air.”

The winikin stood fast. “You need food. How about we head over to the kitchen and I can—”

“Not the kitchen,” Michael said, his voice going ragged. “You want me to eat, snag me something and bring it out. You know where I’ll be.” He was pretty sure the winikin had followed him out to the ball court at least once over the past few weeks.

“Do you really care so little for the will of the gods?” the winikin said, eyes narrowing. “I know you too damn well to believe you haven’t picked up on it. She’s for you. Don’t you get that?”

Desire flared so hot that it felt like desperation. “I can’t—” Michael almost got it out that time before the inner shields slammed down, stopping the words in his throat.

Tomas made a disgusted noise, and Michael figured the next thing out of his mouth was going to be a variation on the old, Get your head out of your ass and take some damned responsibility, for gods’ sake! Instead, the winikin fixed him with a look and said, “I want you to promise me something.”

The seriousness of his tone had Michael focusing on the other man. “Maybe,” Michael answered, momentarily distracted by the sound of Sasha’s laugh when Sven—the bastard—said something else to her. He growled. “On one condition. You promise me that once we’re done here, you’ll grab Carlos, and the two of you will get Sven good and drunk. I want him legless until midday tomorrow.

Understand?”

“It’s a deal,” Tomas said immediately.

Reluctantly, Michael refocused on him. “What do you want from me?” The question might’ve started as a reference to the promise at hand, but once it was out there, it somehow expanded to cover so much more than that. Even if he’d been able to talk to Tomas about his work with Bryson, he suspected the winikin still would’ve found fault somehow. There had always been something, going back as far as he could remember. There was perfection. Then, beyond that, there was Tomas. “Let me guess,” he said when the winikin didn’t answer immediately. “You want me to shape up and be a better man. You want me to work harder, try harder. You want me to give what’s between me and Sasha a chance. Better yet, you want me to pair up with her, regardless of what my gut is telling me, just because the signs say we’re meant to be. News flash, winikin: The gods aren’t here anymore. We’re on our own.”

He expected Tomas to bark at him, and was disconcerted when the other man just shook his head, looking sad and strung out. “You’re so much like him. It scares the hell out of me sometimes.”

“Like who? My father? I don’t know why that would scare you. You’ve always made him sound like the model mage, the ideal.”

“He was. I was talking about his brother. Your uncle Jayce.”

Michael zeroed in on him. “I didn’t know I had an uncle Jayce. Let me guess—he was an underachieving disappointment, a general blot on the stone bloodline until he semiredeemed himself by dying for his king during the Solstice Massacre.”

“No, actually. He was a brilliant man, a wicked fighter, and a highly respected mage . . . until the day he killed himself.”

A beat of silence hung between the two men before Michael could bring himself to say, “You think I’m suicidal?”

Maybe not now. But there had been days.

“No. But then again, nobody thought Jayce would kill himself,” Tomas answered. “Least of all his winikin. My father.”

Michael winced. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

The winikin culture was one of protection and support. It was a winikin’s job to keep his charge alive and functional. Although suicide wasn’t necessarily a sin in the Nightkeeper world—far from it —he had to figure that an unexpected autosacrifice would be seen as the ultimate failure for the suicide’s winikin, whose job it was to keep the magi alive and kicking.

Uncle Jayce, Michael thought as a few more pieces fell into place. He supposed that explained even more of Tomas’s control-freak ways, though it didn’t make him any easier to live with. “I’m not going to off myself now,” he said, letting the last word acknowledge Tomas’s instincts.

When he’d come to Skywatch, Michael hadn’t had a clue he was anything but a salesman with an eye for women and a good, if slightly shallow, heart. When Bryson had terminated him as an operative, Horn had used him as a guinea pig, splitting his halves so thoroughly, he’d thought his cover was really him. That is, until he’d jacked in for his talent ceremony, his bloodline nahwal had laid the warrior talent on him, and he got a hell of a “This is your life, Michael Stone!”

In the aftermath, hell, yes, he’d thought about killing himself. All he’d been able to think about was murder, reliving the Other’s kills over and over again. He’d eventually regained control, and had decided he could do the Nightkeepers more good than harm by staying alive. But still, it had definitely been an option.

Unlike the Christian viewpoint of suicide as a sin, in the Nightkeeper culture it was the act of greatest sacrifice to the gods, thereby earning a trip straight to the sky. Michael figured that, in his case, it might at least balance out the bad shit. But at the same time he couldn’t help wanting to think the gods really did have a plan for him, that they wouldn’t have let him get so far toward damnation without some reason.

Unless, of course, his destiny wasn’t in their hands anymore. The barrier had been sealed when he took Bryson’s job offer. It was possible he’d damned himself beyond the gods’ redemption long before the Nightkeepers were reunited, that he was laboring under ma jorly false delusions now. If that was the case, then Sasha had been meant for a different version of him—the one that had told Bryson to stick his job offer, that he was no killer.

Except he was a killer. And he hadn’t turned Bryson down.

He glanced over to the kitchen once again, only to see that Sven was no longer hanging all over Sasha. Instead, he was sitting at the breakfast bar opposite Carlos, downing shots in rapid-fire succession, amidst catcalls from the others. Jade sat nearby, working on a bottle of wine, apparently having also decided in favor of self- medication.

Michael glanced at Tomas. “You and Carlos already had that cooked up, didn’t you? You’re taking out the competition on both sides.”

The winikin lifted a shoulder. “You’re not perfect by a long shot, but Sven has some major growing up to do before he’ll know what to do with a mate. You, at least, know how to keep a woman happy.”

“Not necessarily,” Michael said, thinking of the parade of women who’d passed through his life, starting with Esmee, the FBI trainee he’d dated soon after leaving the academy. He’d hung onto her too long, not realizing that she was the first in a long line of women who would be hot on him at the beginning, then fade when they realized he couldn’t give them the deep emotion they sought. “Is that what you want me to promise? That I’ll give it a go with Sasha?”

But the winikin shook his head. “That’s between you two and the gods. I want you to promise that if you ever do think seriously about sacrificing yourself for the good of the Nightkeepers, or to quiet whatever it is that’s going on inside your skull, you’ll come talk to me first. Or if you can’t talk to me, you’ll talk to someone.”

Michael’s throat went dry. “That . . . Yeah. That I can promise.” He didn’t like that the winikin saw as much as he did. But at the same time, it shifted something inside him, something that said, If only.

If only he’d turned down Bryson. If only he’d taken his FBI training more seriously, made less of an ass of