Demonkeepers

This time, the response was instantaneous. Red-gold magic slashed through her, out of her, twisting the barrier plane in on itself and folding her in with it. Gray-green mist flew past and she had the disorienting sensation of moving at an incredible rate of speed, while also being conscious that she wasn’t physically moving at all. The sense of motion stopped with a sickening jolt, and she was lying sprawled on her back, still and chill, bathed in the rusty light from the flat-screen TV that took up most of one wall.

She was back in Lucius’s cottage, back in her own body.

And thank the gods for that, she thought, blinking muzzily. She didn’t know how long she’d been out-of-body, or what time it was, though it was still full dark outside. The sense of emptiness in the room told her that Lucius wasn’t nearby. No doubt he’d made it back from the library and had gone to get Strike and the others, so they could wake her. Except that she’d awakened herself. She’d made it home.

She lay blinking for a moment, then let out a long, exultant breath and sat partway up. “I did it.”

She’d cast the “way” spell by herself, had rescued herself from the barrier. “I did it!”

More, the magic was still inside her. It hadn’t stayed behind in the barrier. And it was showing her things. Where before the glyphs on the TV screen had only hinted at another layer of meaning, she now saw that the text string wasn’t illiterate gibberish at all, but a fragment of a spell . . . or rather a blessing, she realized, though she didn’t know what would have been blessed, or why.

I’m a spell caster, she thought, using the alternate meaning of the scribe’s talent mark, the one that had never before felt accurate. Her throat tightened with the raw, ragged joy of it. Or if I’m not now, at least I’m heading in that direction. The nahwal had triggered her talent. It seemed that Lucius wasn’t the only one to get a jump start tonight.

Still staring at the screen, as happy laughter bubbled up in her chest and stalled in her throat, she put down her hands, intending to push herself to her feet. Instead of finding the floor, though, she touched cold flesh.

Letting out a shriek, she yanked her hand back and spun, her heart going leaden in her chest.

“Lucius!”

He lay where he’d been before. Even in the reddish brown light his skin was an unhealthy gray, his lips blue. For a long second, she didn’t think he was breathing at all. Then his chest lifted in a slow, sluggishly indrawn breath. After another agonizing wait, it dropped as he breathed out.

“Lucius?” She reached out trembling fingers to check the pulse at his throat, steeling herself against the chill of his flesh. She couldn’t detect his heartbeat, but stemmed the rising panic. If his heart weren’t beating, he wouldn’t still be breathing . Instead of settling her, though, the thought brought images of animated corpses with glowing green eyes.

No, she told herself harshly. The makol is gone. Lucius isn’t. I won’t let him be.

Heart pounding, she scrabbled around, found the earpiece, and keyed it to transmit. “Hey, guys.

Need some help in here.” Her voice was two octaves too high.

“Are you okay?” Jox asked immediately, his voice full of a winikin’s concern.

She tried to keep it factual, tried not to let her voice tremble. “Lucius is out and fading. I think we’re going to need Sasha, and maybe Rabbit.” Sasha could heal him. Rabbit, with his mind-bender’s talent, could follow where Lucius’s mind had gone. Maybe. Hopefully. Please, gods.

There was a murmur of off- mike conversation, and then the winikin said, “Sit tight. Strike and the others are on their way.”

“I’m on mike,” Strike broke in, the background sounds suggesting he was running. “Where is he stuck?” But they both knew he was really asking, Did he make it to the library?

“I don’t know.” She sketched out a quick report of her and Lucius’s out- of-body jaunt to Xibalba.

She’d tell the others about her solo trip to the barrier after she’d had a chance to think about it herself.

By the writs, it was her right to keep her nahwal’s messages private, and she didn’t think her visit with the nahwal was relevant to the library. Beyond that, it had confused her. Some of what the nahwal had said made complete sense, and it seemed that the creature had given her the missing piece of her magic. But at the same time, some of what it had said jarred against Jade’s own instincts . . . although admittedly those instincts had been ingrained by Shandi, whose loyalty first and foremost was to the harvester bloodline, Jade had long ago decided, not necessarily to the needs and desires of her own charge. Which left her . . . where?

Before she could even begin to answer that, Strike booted the cottage door open and strode through the kitchen with the others in his wake. Instinctively—she couldn’t have said why, or where the urge came from—Jade punched the remote to kill the image on the big TV, and clicked on the light beside the sofa instead. The others didn’t notice her actions or question them; they were intent on Lucius as, in a flash, the cottage went from being too empty to being too full, jammed with overlarge bodies, gleaming good looks, and expansive personalities.

Michael and Sasha were on the king’s heels: He was dark and green-eyed, with jaw-length black hair, wide features, and a big fighter’s body that all but oozed pheromones; she was lean and lithe, with flyaway brunette curls and eyes the color of rich milk chocolate. They balanced each other perfectly. More, they were Jade’s closest friends at Skywatch. Under other circumstances, in another life, that might have been odd, given that Michael had been her lover for a time. But Jade was a pragmatist. Michael, though a death wielder and their resident mage- assassin, was a good man; and Sasha was a friend. They made it work. More, Sasha was a ch’ulel, a master of living energy, and Lucius badly needed an energy infusion. Jade was glad Strike had brought them both.

Behind them came the two other mated mage- pairs in residence, bringing the exponential power boosts of their jun tan mated marks. Alexis led the way, a blond Amazon of a warrior whose ambition had gained her the position of king’s adviser, as her mother had been for Strike’s father. Nate was right behind her, not because he was secondary in their mated power structure, but because he didn’t feel any need to jockey for position, with her or with the others. He was the Volatile, a shape-shifter who could turn into a man-size hawk that featured prominently in some of the more obscure end-time prophecies. He was also a loner, brought into the Nightkeepers’ tightly knit group—and the royal council—by his and Alexis’s rock-solid love match.

The couple following them, in contrast, was far from rock-solid, in Jade’s opinion, both professional and personal. Brown-haired, intense Brandt and blond karate instructor Patience had found each other, and the magic of love, more than three years before the barrier reactivated and they all learned they were the last of the Nightkeepers. But for all that they’d been married human-style for nearly five years now, and had twin sons together, they walked apart, not touching. Barely even looking at each other. The problems in their relationship had been going on for some time, but Jade was struck anew by the distance that gaped between two people who, on paper, at least, seemed as though they should be the perfect couple.

Ghosting in behind them came Sven, the lone remaining Nightkeeper bachelor within the training compound. Loose limbed and all-American handsome, with a stubby blond ponytail and a seemingly endless supply of ass-hanging shorts and surf-shop T-shirts, he wore his I-don’t-take-anything-

seriously attitude like a shield. Jade, though, saw beneath to a man who was deeply bothered that he’d failed the Nightkeepers several times when they’d needed him.

Although simple math and the value added by matings between Nightkeepers would suggest she and Sven should try the couple thing, the suggestion had never been broached in her hearing. While she suspected that was largely because she lacked the warrior’s mark, she was grateful it had never come down to that for either of them. Duty would’ve demanded she at least try to make it work, and that would have been . . . uncomfortable. She liked Sven, but wasn’t attracted to him. She liked a man who made her laugh, one who made her think. One who challenged her, teased her, made her a little crazy.

At the thought, she looked down at Lucius’s motionless form and heard a multitonal whisper in her mind: Don’t let yourself get distracted by the human . That wasn’t exactly what the nahwal had said; she wasn’t sure if it was her own reservations talking now, or something else. Still, though, she was acutely aware that Strike’s human mate, Leah, wasn’t there. For all that they loved each other fiercely, and he’d gone against the gods to claim her as his own, ever since the destruction of the skyroad had severed her Godkeeper connection, Leah had offered little in terms of magic.