Demonkeepers

Akhenaton hesitated at the sound, and Lucius thought he caught a thread of satisfaction coming from the damned soul. Some message must have passed, because the four pharaoh’s guards broke from their positions and closed on Jade.

“Lucius!” She craned her head, looking back at him as the guards started dragging her into the fortress. The dogs went nuts, barking and howling, sounding almost human in their cries.

“Jade!” Anguish hammered through Lucius, catching him up and taking him someplace within himself, someplace he hadn’t been before. Pain ripped through him, his vision washed red-gold, and pressure detonated inside his head. Liquid flame poured through his veins, bringing a burning agony that he latched onto, instinctively sending it toward the places where the shield magic held him immobile.

A terrible roar of rage split the air; for a second he thought it had come from him. Then the air went instantaneously from cool to blistering hot, huge feathered wings boomed in the air, and a red-orange specter rose into sight, lifting from behind the step-sided wall, flapping hard to stay aloft on ragged, bleeding wings. The sky lit supernova bright in an instant, driving back those standing below on the sand.

Squinting into the flare, Lucius couldn’t pinpoint the thing’s image: One second it seemed a terrible winged and feathered demon with curling horns and fangs, its outline wreathed in fire; then in the next it shifted, seeming to flash the image of a huge figure, that of a masked man, his face obscured behind the symbols of a god. More important, Lucius knew the symbols . Was he really seeing what he thought he was seeing, or was this another of Akhenaton’s creations?

He didn’t know, but he had to chance it. Throwing back his head, he shouted, “Kinich Ahau!”

The horned Mayan firebird, one aspect of the great sun god itself, roared in answer, beating its wings against the stone bars that held it contained. Flames poured from its beak and eyes, licking along the bars and turning them gradually molten. And, as Lucius squinted against the blazing light, he remembered having seen this before.

Or rather, he hadn’t seen it . . . but Cizin had. His demon possessor had been a double agent, planted within the Order of Xibalba to keep Iago in check when the dark lords began to worry that their earthly namesakes were getting above themselves. The Banol Kax didn’t want Iago to ally with Moctezuma’s demon soul, not just because the bloodthirsty Aztec king had once led powerful armies and plotted his own version of the end-time, but also because he’d elevated himself to the status of a god, one affiliated with the sun itself . . . and the Banol Kax didn’t want that to happen because they already had plans to put in place a sun god of their own choosing: the sun king Akhenaton.

They had captured the true sun god, Kinich Ahau, along with his canine companions. When the barrier’s activity peaked during the summer solstice of the first triad year—aka in nine fucking days —the dark lords were going to sacrifice the true sun god and elevate Akhenaton in his place.

And oh, holy fuck, that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

Snarling, Akhenaton turned on the firebird, lifted shadowy arms, and chanted a spell. In an instant, a chill wind blew, the air cooled, and the molten stone bars turned solid; they were slightly deformed, but not by enough to free the god. But that hadn’t been the firebird’s aim, Lucius realized seconds later, when two dark blurs hurtled through the widened openings between two pairs of archways: pony-size black dogs with sharp white teeth and red eyes.

The companions!

One of the dogs went for Jade’s captors, the other for Lucius’s. Dark blood sprayed as the ravening canine ripped out Snake-head’s throat; the man-beast went down and stayed down. When it did, the shield magic surrounding Lucius disappeared.

The old Lucius wanted to stand and gape at legends come to life. The better man he was becoming landed running. He lunged for Jade; three of the pharaoh’s guards were using their elongated pikes to keep the big black dogs at bay while the fourth force-marched her toward the fortress, following the demon shadow as it disappeared into the darkness within. Inside the pyramid, the sun god shrieked in rage and pain.

“No!” Lucius bolted after them, catching up with the rearmost guard just outside the temple. The guard spun and leveled his pike, his eyes lighting with battle glee as dark magic rattled. Seconds later, though, they flattened to terror, and a dark blur flashed past Lucius and hit the guard in the chest, sending the bastard down and away from Jade. Blood sprayed and vertebrae crunched. Lucius charged forward and grabbed Jade, who stood where the guard had left her, blank eyed and shocky-looking.

The magic that had been holding her fast was gone.

“Lucius!” She sagged into him, grabbed onto him. She might’ve said something else, but he couldn’t hear her over the tidal roar that was rising within him. His body heated to flash point and beyond; he was burning without flames, writhing in agony without screams. The world closed in on him from all sides until he could feel only hot agony and the press of Jade’s body. A howling scream slammed through him, out of him.

He felt that same slipping, sliding sensation from before, only this time it was sucking him up, not down. There was a jolt of movement; he heard the makol’s screech of anger, Kinich Ahau’s roar of satisfaction, the companions’ howls . . . and then it was all gone. The world whipped past him; he caught a glimpse of the hellmouth, the cloud forest, and what he thought might be the barrier, followed by the outlines of his cottage at Skywatch. Then there was a dizzying jolt and he was back in his body, sprawled inelegantly on the living room floor.

Home.

He lay still for a moment, blinking as his body came back online. When a few of his larger muscle groups checked in, he used them to roll over and stretch out a hand to where Jade lay, an arm’s length away. Her eyes were open, though blurred with disorientation. She was there, though. She was okay.

Thank you, gods, he thought, but then jolted as the rest of it returned. “The firebird! We have to”— go back and rescue the sun god, he started to say, but couldn’t get the words past a sudden rushing noise in his head. His vision blurred. He heard her call his name, felt her grab his hand, but those inputs seemed very far away, and so much less important than the powerful surge that caught him up, feeling very different from the magic that had yanked the two of them to Xibalba. He saw her worried eyes through the whirling tunnel of power as he was yanked back into the magic . . . this time alone.

“Lucius!” Jade screamed his name, even though deep down inside, she knew he was already gone. His eyes were rolled back in his head; his body had gone limp. She told herself not to freak, that it was normal for that to happen when a mage entered the barrier. Except that he wasn’t a mage . . . and the magic had already gone very wrong once tonight. Which meant . . . what? What should she do now?

Her hands were shaking; her whole body was trembling. But strangely, the memories of what she’d just been through seemed oddly blunted, allowing her to think and react rather than just freaking the hell out. She’d heard the others talk about the preternatural focus conferred by the warrior’s talent, and how it helped them function under terrifying conditions. She thought she might be experiencing something like that now, only coming from shock rather than innate talent.

Pushing to her feet, she reached for her pocket, intending to call Strike, both to report in and to get help with Lucius. She didn’t know where he’d gone, hadn’t even felt the magic that had taken him, and that worried her. If their shared magic had dumped them in Xibalba, where would he wind up now that he was flying solo? If they were lucky, he’d make it to the library . . . but it wasn’t as if luck had been with them so far.

She had the earpiece partway to her ear when a whispery word echoed through the room: “Jade.”

It was a woman’s voice. The same one she’d heard just before being yanked into Xibalba.

Freezing, she looked around. “Who is that? Where are you?”

“I’m here. Come to me.” The world wavered. Red-gold magic flared, surrounding Jade unbidden.

This time, the power jolted her in the familiar sidelong direction of the barrier, but she hadn’t performed any transition spell, hadn’t called the magic. Lifting the earpiece, she screamed, “Help me! ”

But as Lucius’s cottage shimmered and disappeared, she realized she’d forgotten to turn the damned earpiece on. The others wouldn’t know there was a problem for hours, maybe longer. And by then it might be too late.