Skykeepers

good there was sand underfoot, because it would soak up the majority of the blood. Hefting one of the jugs of pulque, he popped the top and took a swig. According to ancient Mayan law, anyone who’d had three shots of pulque should be considered a drunkard; four and he was criminally insane for an hour, at least. Ironic, really. The potent ceremonial beverage wouldn’t just anesthe tize him; it’d make him a little crazy, and help alter his consciousness so he could enter the in-between. Problem was, it would also lower his inhibitions, creating a window when the muk could take control. “If I try to hurt you, shut me down, okay?” he said, his words already slurring slightly under the effects of the pulque. “Think you can handle the spell?” he asked Rabbit as the world started to spin.

“Hell, yeah.”

“Promise me you won’t follow me. I’ll need you to go for help if this turns to shit.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Rabbit reached for the knife. “You ready?”

No, Michael thought, chugging again. But he said aloud, “Yeah.” He tipped the jug in a mocking salute. “Don’t fuck anything up, okay? If I make it back I’ll spot you for the spell, no matter what Strike says. Deal?”

“Deal. Here we go.” Rabbit began the chant they’d both memorized from Anna’s translation, the spell that would send Michael to the in-between.

Closing in on unconsciousness, Michael watched fuzz ily as the younger mage set the stone bloodline’s ceremonial knife against his wrist, below the stone and warrior glyphs, and swiped it in a clean arc that cut through tendons, arteries, and veins in a clean sweep. Pain flashed, like bright colors behind his eyelids. Michael took his final hit of pulque and started seeing double. He wanted to pass out, wanted to puke. Wanted to weep like a baby. Wanted to kill. He felt a pinch on his other wrist, one that was almost lost in the spin of alcohol. The Other came right through into the forefront of his consciousness, bringing the muk with it. Then the world shifted hard beneath him, shuddering, then going dim as the darkness sucked him under. The last thing he heard was Sasha’s voice whispering, We’re good.

Not yet he wasn’t. But maybe he would be soon.

The in-between Lucius walked alone down a dirt path he’d walked before. The road stretched ahead and behind him, and carried the footprints of a thousand travelers before him, most barefoot or wearing rope sandals.

There were no tire tracks, no hoofprints, shod or otherwise. Just footprints uncountable, silent ghosts of those who had gone before him. On either side of him, featureless gray-brown plains stretched to a limitless gray-brown horizon, a meeting between an unremarkable firmament and an unremarkable sky.

He didn’t know how long he’d been there; time had no meaning in a prison that might’ve been a construct of his own mind, might’ve been someplace else. He didn’t know. He’d lost contact with his body, lost contact with everything except the road that he trudged along, passing the occasional wizened, stunted tree and nothing else. Worse, his pockets were empty. Before, he’d been carrying the jade pebbles the Maya had buried with their dead, to pay their way across the dread river that wound its way throughout Xibalba. This time he hadn’t given himself the damned beads. Which meant . . . what? That Cizin planned to keep him trapped there forever?

If only he had magic—

“Yeah?” he challenged himself aloud. “What would you do, seriously? What the hell would—” A sonic boom interrupted him. The sky flashed blinding silver and the ground shuddered beneath his feet, sending his pulse jolting. Thunder? An explosion? He didn’t know. All he knew was that it was the first different thing that had happened since his arrival at . . . well, wherever the hell he was.

The detonation wasn’t repeated, but a smudge of darkness gathered on the horizon, resolving itself into a structure of some sort. A destination.

Excitement jolted through Lucius alongside the suspicion that this was it—he was done; it was time to cross the river and enter the underworld proper. But anything was better than limbo, so he started jogging along the path, headed for the horizon shadow.

He ran past the same trees and scrub and endless gray-brown plains he’d been walking through, but the shadow drew closer, gained resolution, becoming an arched doorway made of stone and bone, guarding a ferry port that stretched out over a dark, ominous ribbon of water. It was the river, he knew, the entrance to Xibalba proper. The Scorpion River. And there, near the shoreline, lay a man-shaped lump. Lucius braced himself as he approached the figure, not sure what to expect. Whatever the hell he might’ve anticipated, though, it wasn’t one of the Nightkeepers.

“Holy shit. Michael?”

The big mage lay as still and gray as death, but at the sound of his name he twitched and cracked open an eye. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“That’s what I was about to ask you. What—” Lucius broke off as the water beyond the stone-and-

bone dock started boiling fat white froth that turned molten orange as he watched. Moments later, an unearthly, fingernails-on-blackboard screech split the air, and a huge, sinuous creature reared out of the water, raked the air with a pair of six-clawed hands, and tipped back its spiked head to scream a challenge. For a second, it flared orange and hot, like the lava from which it drew its energy. Then it went insubstantial, puffing to vapor as it turned toward the riverbank, fixing its terrible attention on the two men. “Boluntiku! ” Lucius shouted over the boil of magma-heated water. He grabbed Michael by his shirt and started dragging him away from the river.

“No.” The mage yanked away from him and lurched to his feet, staggering a moment before he found his center. “Don’t touch me.” Michael’s eyes were wild, and held a hard darkness Lucius hadn’t seen there before, along with a flash of otherworldly silver. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Lucius’s energy suddenly, inexplicably flagged. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’ve got to get in that river. It breaks the bonds of magic and purifies the soul.” Michael spun, going for the autopistols he wore on his belt. Cross-drawing the weapons, he let out a roar of challenge and bolted for the ferry landing.

“You suicidal bastard,” Lucius whispered. And ran after him.

Skywatch Rabbit watched blood drip from Michael’s wrists, reddening his hands and soaking into the sandy surface of the pueblo floor. It’d been maybe five minutes since he’d passed out, but it seemed like it’d been an hour. A lifetime.

“Wait it out,” Rabbit told himself. “Don’t shit yourself now.” But it wasn’t easy sitting there, watching a guy die. Especially a guy like Michael, who’d always seemed larger-than-life, larger still because he’d been able to do what Rabbit wanted and needed to do—he’d managed to live with the darkness and make it work for him. Until now. Now he lay propped up against the rock wall with his eyes rolled back in his head, bleeding the fuck out as he risked his life to break the bond with the muk magic.

Michael’s pulse was shallow and he was barely breathing. Rabbit felt like his own systems were slowing down to match. He was cold and his energy was fading, and in the shadows inside the pueblo ruin, his skin looked gray. Hell, it felt gray. Then again, he’d been feeling gray overall lately.

Myrinne. He missed her, ached for her, and was trying really hard not to be pissed off at her. Their fight had been about something stupid—all their fights were pretty stupid—but this one had felt different when it ended, like it had really ended something. Afterward, she’d said everything was fine, but she’d stayed behind on campus, spending another week there, ostensibly to finish up an extra-

credit project for one of her lab classes.

He’d tried to talk her into coming back to Skywatch for the solstice, had even offered to call in a favor with Strike and get him to ’port her there and back, just an overnight. She hadn’t wanted to, though, which had bummed Rabbit out even more. She was drifting, and he didn’t know how to hold on to her without turning into a creepy stalker . . . or using magic on her, which he’d promised not to do.

He reached into the pocket of his jeans and touched the little box he’d been carrying for a couple of weeks now. He’d been waiting for the right moment to give it to her, and now tried not to think the right moment might’ve already passed.

Michael’s breathing hitched, reminding him to keep his mind on the damn job. But what exactly was he