Skykeepers

supposed to do? The spell was cast—he’d felt the magic. Michael was still bleeding out, though, and now his breathing was getting bad. How far was he supposed to let it go before he pulled the plug? And how, exactly, was he supposed to do that? Reaching out, he touched Michael’s cool flesh, expecting to hear an echo of his consciousness, feel the thread that connected spirit to flesh. He got nothing. Michael wasn’t home anymore; there was no sense of him, no clues where he’d gone or how Rabbit could follow, or bring him back. Shit. Now what? He couldn’t leave Michael, hadn’t brought his cell. How the hell was it that neither of them had brought a damn phone?

Maybe he could go into Michael’s mind, find the connection forged by his sexual liaison with Sasha, and use that to mind-speak to Sasha. That might work. Maybe. But the longer he sat there and thought about it, the more he wondered whether he should blow the whistle. If he did, guaran-fucking-

teed they wouldn’t let him try the spell later. Was that selfish? Maybe. Probably. But like Myrinne said, there wasn’t anyone looking out for their interests at Skywatch except the two of them.

Temptation spiraled, and something inside Rabbit whispered, Do it. You know you want to . It sounded almost, but not quite, like Iago’s voice.

“Shut up,” he said savagely. “You’re not real!” Iago couldn’t get through the wards unless Rabbit initiated contact, and he sure as shit wasn’t doing that. Which meant the voice was his own mind playing tricks on him. It had to be.

Cut yourself, the voice said, feeling somehow oily and dark. The world grayed out, then cut back in, and he found Michael’s knife in his hand, though he was pretty sure he’d set it aside. Cut yourself and go after him. The voice didn’t sound so much like Iago’s now. In a weird-ass way, it sounded like Red-

Boar, except without the insults. He needs your help, it said. The suggestion put a new spin on things.

A rescue mission wasn’t the same thing as deserting his post. The exact opposite, in fact.

Urgency gripped Rabbit, the sudden certainty that Michael was in deep shit and sinking fast. Or was that what he wanted to think, because it called for the course of action he so desperately wanted to take?

Magic hung thick in the air; the spell was still active. All he’d have to do would be to open his wrists. Yeah. He snorted inwardly. That’s all. No biggie.

He’d do it, though. For Michael. For his future with Myrinne. But which thought was motivating him now? Was the voice in his head real, or a figment he was turning into an excuse?

He had to think, had to make the right call. He couldn’t fuck this up; it was too big, too important.

But he had to move fast, because even as he sat there, trying to figure out the right answer, Michael’s chest hitched and his breathing rhythm stuttered. Hitched again. Stuttered.

This was it. He was dying.

Don’t be a pussy. Do something right for once and fucking go after him! That was definitely Red-

Boar’s voice now. And though Rabbit could probably count on one hand the number of times he’d actually done what his father had told him in life, he was inclined to go along on this one. He took two swigs of pulque and got a serious buzz on. He could see and think, but the world was getting pleasantly fuzzed. Took another big swallow and quickly passed to hammered. Swaying, he lifted the knife, set the point against his wrist, and slashed. The pain was far away, but enough to make him want to puke. Instead, he gagged down another swallow of pulque. The world spun and yawed as he took a hack at his other wrist. Blood sprayed. Magic gathered and something went boom in his chest.

For a second he feared it was his heart. Then it didn’t matter because he was sliding, falling. Dying.

In the final instant of consciousness he heard a mocking chuckle, recognized it, and screamed inside because he knew in that moment it wasn’t his father, after all. Hadn’t ever been. It was Iago. Somehow he’d gotten through, grabbing onto Rabbit’s soul.

Bastard! he shouted inside his own head, the rage and fear giving him a precious few seconds more contact with the world outside his failing body. Heart jolting back to a quicker rhythm, he sat halfway up, summoned the magic, and let rip with a hell of a fireball.

It exploded away from him, flew through the round-edged opening leading out of the pueblo ruin, and blasted the fuck-all out of a tree near the edge of the cliff. He felt the blaze and burn, felt the huge, awesome pleasure of destructive magic, and slipped into the darkness of Iago’s hold on him. As he let himself fall, he sent a thought flying along a river of red-gold magic gone somehow gray: Sasha, help us!

Sasha jolted upright from her doze amidst the cacao plants, her mind a confusing jumble of dream images and the sound of her name. “Michael?” she said aloud before she was fully awake. Then she remembered where she was, and why. With a quick, startled glance at her seedlings, which were furry, thriving plants now, she shot to her feet and hurried to the mansion. It was later than she would’ve thought, she realized from the angle of the orange sunlight. Nearly time for the final presolstice meeting, where they would decide whether she and Michael would stay at Skywatch or hang themselves out as bait for Iago. She hoped to hell the royal council would decide on the latter; she wanted another crack at the bastard, this time with her own mage powers, and Michael at her back.

They’d already proven the two of them didn’t need a love bond for them to amp each other’s magic.

Iago wouldn’t know what hit him.

Finding the great room and kitchen empty, she hurried through to the residential wing, her warrior’s talent stirring to life, warning her there was something wrong. It was that warning spurring her on as she pushed through the door to Michael’s suite without knocking, half-afraid of what she would find.

“Michael?” she called. “You in here?” She didn’t get an answer. Hadn’t really expected one. The sixth sense she’d developed when it came to him—a faint hum of magic and a sense of thereness that had come after they’d started sleeping together again—had gone dim inside her, but she didn’t know if that was because she’d given up trying to make their relationship work, or if it meant he was truly gone.

Then she saw the note on his kitchen counter, and had her answer. In square, blocky letters, he’d written: Rabbit is with me. Either all will be well . . . or it won’t. If not, please remember the good stuff, and tell Tomas that he couldn’t have changed this. In the end, what is meant to be will be.

Sasha’s blood chilled as she remembered the voice she’d heard in her dream, the cry for help that had awakened her. It hadn’t been Michael, she realized with a sudden, sinking burst of clarity. It’d been Rabbit. He’d been the one to call for help, because Michael was already unconscious, or worse.

Anger flared, but she checked it and got her ass moving.

Clutching the note, she burst out of the suite and bolted for the main room. Making a beeline for where Strike, Leah, and Jox were just emerging from the royal wing, she shoved the note in Strike’s hand and blurted, “We need to find Michael and Rabbit, now!”

But Strike couldn’t find Michael with ’port lock, and a search of the immediate mansion and cottages didn’t turn them up. The magi and winikin gathered under the ceiba tree, trying to figure a next move. Panic gripped Sasha at the thought that the missing man had left the warded canyon and been grabbed by the Xibalbans. Michael couldn’t give her the security and inner strength she needed, but she cared about him, damn it. She didn’t want to lose him. Not like this. Her mind flashing to the sight of a tattered skull atop a pyramid of rubble, she said raggedly, “I saw rock walls in my dream. A ruin . . .”

A coyote howled near the back of the canyon, an almost human-timbred wail that drew her attention. She saw a smudge of smoke rising into the afternoon sky. “There!” she said, pointing.

“They’re in the pueblo.”

After a mad scramble for first-aid kits and combat gear, Strike ’ported them all out to the pueblo, landing them on a ledge near the smoldering tree. The smell of blood hung heavy on the air, sharp and stagnant. Following the smell, or her instincts, or maybe both, she lunged for a nearby doorway—a round-cornered rectangle leading into darkness. She plunged through and skidded to a halt as her eyes took a second to adjust, another to process what she was seeing.

The small rectangular room was a charnel. Blood had saturated the sandy floor, then pooled and coagulated, bright with oxygen in places, dark with death in others. The liquid formed a single commingled pool beneath the two men who slumped shoulder-to-shoulder against the far wall, their legs stretched out before them,