Skykeepers

with a ball of fiery light, but with one of bright, brilliant silver. The flames seethed and grew in his hand as the boluntiku reoriented on him and closed in, drawing back its terrible claws for a killing swipe.

It swung, turning solid again. Michael threw, hurling the gleaming muk straight into its gaping maw. Howling, the ’ tiku snapped its jaws shut on the ball of anti- ch’ul. It paused for a second, then let out a another unearthly howl, this one of pain rather than rage. Head whipping from side to side, it roared and cycled from vapor to solid and back. The unearthly glow of molten orange lava dimmed and died as the creature solidified a final time. Its motions slowed, grew sporadic, then stopped. The thing grayed. Then it went limp and drooped, losing form and substance as it coalesced into the river.

Water splashed, then stilled, leaving Michael alone on the stone-and-bone dock. Only he wasn’t really alone. He was Michael. He was the Mictlan. He was the Other. And it was time.

Three strides carried him to the edge of the dock. A fourth sent him plunging into the water, which slapped at him with a cold shock, then swept him up and bore him into the current.

At first he paddled to stay afloat, angling his body, and started swimming for the shore. But then he stopped himself, knowing that wasn’t how the spell worked. One near-death experience had been required to get to the in-between; another was necessary for absolution. Near death within near death.

Double the sacrifice. So be it, he thought, whispering the second set of spell words and then letting himself go limp as the river churned around him.

The Other howled a warning and the muk rose up within him, but Michael held on to his control and forced his lungs to unlock, forced himself to inhale water rather than air. The brackish flow gushed down his throat and windpipe and he gagged, choking and spasming, spinning in the rapid current. The water slammed him into a rocky outcropping and the world went dim. Starbursts detonated behind his eyelids, and for a second he thought he heard music. Then it went away. Everything went away. As he passed from consciousness, pain ripped through his chest. Life drained from him; hope fled.

Despair welled up. He needed help, needed the gods. Needed Sasha. Please save me, he thought, sending the prayer into the brackish water around him. Please help me be worthy.

There was no answer except the darkness.

The tomb of the First Father Sasha bent over where Rabbit and Michael lay on the floor, desperate and exhausted. She had a hand on each of their chests, her palms leaking her blood onto them, her touch giving them healing power, though not enough of it. They were still alive, but that was about all she could claim. She couldn’t find their songs, couldn’t follow their ch’ul flow to where they had gone. She was acting as little more than a magical life-support system, bleeding power into them, only to have it drain away just as quickly.

She needed the miracle. She needed help. The ch’ulel was supposed to be able to heal. Why couldn’t she find the way to that piece of her talent? What was she missing? What wasn’t she doing right?

She was dimly aware of activity surrounding her in the temple room, where the others bent over the sarcophagus and spoke words of magic and reverence. She felt something deep inside her, a growing connection that brought more magic with each passing minute, though still not enough. It was the solstice, she realized. The stars and planets, the sun and moon were coming into position and the barrier was weakening.

Strike moved up beside her and dropped a hand to her shoulder. “We’re down to thirty minutes.”

The Prophet had to be created during the moment of true solstice, when the barrier was at its thinnest and a connection opened up, very briefly, very tenuously, to the place where the library had been sequestered. In the moments leading up to that, the Nightkeepers had to make their soul sacrifice.

Iago hadn’t shown up, hadn’t taken the bait. The only magic users available were the ones in the tomb.

Sasha stared down at her bloodstained hands and nodded shortly, in acknowledgment rather than agreement.

Strike tightened his fingers on her shoulder—in warning, in support, she didn’t know. Then he moved to rejoin the others clustered around the sarcophagus, where they labored to trip the remainder of the thirteen magically timed latches securing the lid in place.

When he was gone, she bent over Michael and Rabbit once again. She tried to summon a prayer, tried to find some hope, but in the end all she could come up with was an inner snarl: For gods’ sake, get your asses back here.

But despite her refusal to give up on them, and her internal bravado, her eyes filmed as they locked on Michael, lying so still, his muscles lax beneath her touch. She hadn’t been able to live with every aspect of his too-multifaceted personality, but there were parts of him she loved deeply—like his strong sense of honor, his honest efforts to be a better man and a worthy Nightkeeper. She couldn’t even fault the need for justice that had drawn him into the FBI, and from there into the Bryson’s employ. He’d never said as much, but she suspected that she’d been destined for a less battered version, one that had been raised within the traditions and canons of the Nightkeepers. And she suspected that was the man she’d glimpsed within him, the one who combined warrior, killer, lover, and friend into one honorable core that some might find frightening and violent, but she found exactly right. That man was the one she wanted.

Leaning over him, aware that two more latches had come undone on the sarcophagus and she was running out of time, she leaned over him, touched her lips to his cool, unmoving cheek, and whispered in his ear, “Come back to me, Michael. Come back and bring me the man I could love.”

The in-between The man I could love . . . Michael awoke with the quiet, powerful words whispering around him, inside him. Humming agreement, he reached for Sasha, and touched only sand.

“What the . . . ?” Cracking his eyes he saw a flow of brown water moving sluggishly past, along a riverbank a couple of feet from where he lay facedown, feeling wrecked. I’m still in between, he thought, recognizing the Scorpion River. Shit. He’d assumed that once he’d done the near-drowning thing, he’d be zapped back to his body. Apparently not. But as he dragged himself up to a fighter’s crouch, he realized something else.

The death’s-head talent mark that had been on his wrist was gone. He was back down to the stone and the warrior. The Mictlan urge, as far as he could tell, was gone. The muk connection had disappeared, as well. The Other was still within him, though. It was contained, but it was there, waiting to emerge when his defenses were low. And perhaps it was only fitting for him to have to keep those urges and memories as punishment for the choices he’d made. But if the Other had lost its access to the muk, it should be his own private torture, no longer endangering his sin balance, and through that, the other Nightkeepers.

“Thank you, gods,” he said softly. Yes, there would be consequences to his refusing the Mictlan’s target— potentially devastating consequences—but he’d deal with whatever happened. He’d refused to sacrifice a teammate, so the Nightkeepers would deal with it as a team. And Sasha . . . He thought of the whisper, thought of her. And thought that she’d been right about some things. He’d fought for Rabbit just now, and committed the Nightkeepers to future strife on the younger mage’s behalf. Yet he hadn’t fought nearly so hard to work things out with her, assuming it was a lost battle before it had even begun.

But not again, he decided. He was going back to her. And he was going to fight his ass off and see where it got him.

Buoyed by the thought, by the image of her that he held in his head, in his heart, he summoned his magic, not needing blood sacrifice during the solstice. The power came easily, gloriously red-gold, with no sign of muk. He was about to say the word that would take him back to the real world, back to his life, when he heard a low, pained moan behind him. He jerked around, then cursed viciously at the sight of another body washed up on the riverbank just beyond him.

At first he thought it was Lucius. But Lucius hadn’t been wearing a hoodie. And he sure as shit didn’t have a small army of marks on his inner forearm, one of which glowed bloodred among the black glyphs.

“Rabbit.” Michael surged to his feet. “Godsdamn it, you were supposed to fucking wait for me to come