Demonkeepers

tat he heard as they fled through where he thought the enemy lines had been laid. The grenades had done their work. In the low-lying solar lights planted on either side of the pathway, he saw a hand, a foot, a dark smear he thought was blood, and his gorge rose at the knowledge that he had done that. Not Cizin this time. Him.

But he’d do all that and more if that was what it took to keep Jade safe. Dull rage pounded through him, hatred for the bastards that had come after them, and— Not now, he told himself. He couldn’t think about that right now, just as he couldn’t think about the crazy intensity of their lovemaking, or the clutch of his heart when the first salvo of bullets had ripped through the French doors and he’d seen her go down.

Without warning, a machine gun chattered from nearby, sweeping a wide arc that glanced off the icy shield. The bullets passed through the sleet. Jade gasped and the magic winked out.

“Jade!” Lucius grabbed her and dragged her into the lee of the next cottage over. “Are you hurt?”

“I couldn’t hold it any longer.” Her face was bloodless; she was shaking. But she hadn’t been shot.

Yet.

They needed to buy more time. But how? Between the dim illumination from the solar walkway lights and the bright, welcoming porch lights up at the main house, he could see back to the shattered windows of what had been their cottage, and in the other direction to the cottage where the road-

tripping family was—had been?—staying. Everywhere he looked there were dark, slinking shadows and the flash of luminous green eyes. “Makol,” he hissed, the word coming out as a curse.

A few of the figures came clear; he saw a pudgy guy in a cheap suit, another in coveralls, a third in insignia-less fatigues. Their eyes were pure makol but their motions were jerky and uncoordinated.

Trying to look in every direction at once, Lucius nudged her in the direction of the parking area.

“We’ve got to keep moving. Head for the Jeep. Strike and the others should be—” A whistle split the air and their cottage exploded.

“Go!” Lucius put himself between her and the blast, feeling shrapnel ping off the body armor. He shoved her toward the Jeep, then jerked her back when the next missile—RPG? fireball?—hit the ground in front of them. Shitshitshit. He pushed her back into their scant shelter, trying to think of a way out, trying not to think about what would happen if they couldn’t escape.

Adrenaline and denial roared through him. He wouldn’t let them have her, wouldn’t let her become what he had been. His body flared hot and cold; his head spun; his vision narrowed to pinpoint focus as six makol stepped into the light. He took out the first with a blast from his shotgun, nailed the second before the first had finished falling, then ducked a spray of gunfire that chewed up the corner of their hiding spot. He locked onto the third, finger tightening on the trigger—

And the bastard burst into flame. As did the makol next to him, and the next, the fire leaping one to the next in a mad, destructive dance. In an instant, the night was lit day-bright with flames that gouted twenty feet into the air.

Lucius stared, transfixed with horror as the makol screamed in agony, reeling and pinwheeling, trying to douse the inexorable flames, which burned their clothes away, melted their skin and flesh.

They were still linked in a napalm chain; he followed it back into the shadows, just in time to see a man step into the light.

The newcomer was tall and built, his hair trimmed into a military brush cut. Sharp featured, looking to be somewhere in his twenties, he was wearing ass-hanging, ripped-up jeans and a tight wife-beater, and bore the hellmark on his inner forearm along with three Nightkeeper glyphs in black: the peccary, the warrior, and the pyrokine.

It was Rabbit, Lucius realized with a hard, hot jolt of relief. Their backup had arrived.

The young man’s face was set, his eyes hot and hard, and flames laced from his outstretched hands as he fed power to the fire magic, driving it higher and higher still while the makol folded, slumped to the ground, and broke apart into dark, hard lumps of char.

Then, abruptly, Rabbit dropped his hands and the magic winked out.

The afterimage burned into Lucius’s retinas left him momentarily blinded, blinking. By the time his vision cleared, it was all over. The makol were briquettes and he and Jade were surrounded by heavily armed Nightkeepers. With a few terse orders, Strike sent Nate and Alexis—apparently back from Ecuador, just as Rabbit seemed to have reappeared—to sweep the perimeter and set a watch.

The abrupt shift from threat to rescue left Lucius feeling badly off balance. Or was that the aftereffects of the strange sensation he’d felt just before Rabbit showed up and played human blowtorch? Had he been on the verge of breaking through to magic of his own? Had he sensed the incoming teleport? Or had it been some sort of entirely human altered consciousness associated with imminent death?

“What the fuck happened here?” Strike demanded.

The question seemed evenly divided between him and Jade, who had moved up to stand beside him.

When she didn’t answer right away, Lucius said, “Your guess is as good as mine right now. We heard the —” He broke off when it registered. “Willow. The innkeeper. We heard her scream.”

Michael nodded as he joined the group. “I count five human casualties in the other buildings, a family in one cottage, an older woman in the main house. The makol were—” He broke off. “Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life. This was pretty bad.”

Gods. Lucius didn’t let himself close his eyes, though he very badly wanted to. His stomach pitched with the knowledge that Willow and the road-tripping family of four would’ve been snoozing in safe oblivion if he hadn’t turned off the highway and followed the arrows.

“After the scream,” Jade said, picking up his report, “the makol breached our perimeter.” She sketched out the attack, her voice impassive, her mien gone counselor-cool.

Lucius told himself it was a good thing she could pull herself together so quickly and thoroughly, that he shouldn’t resent her recovery. But he was still reeling, and the blood ran hot in his veins. He wanted to shoot something, wanted to tear into someone and let off some steam. Crazy impulses pounded through him, strange and unfamiliar.

Forcing himself to focus, he grated, “The makol were new, and they were locals.”

The magi zeroed in on him. Strike ordered, “Keep going.”

“Their movements were slow and jerky, like the makol controlling the bodies weren’t used to all the synapses yet. Which was lucky for us, as it made them inaccurate, if well armed. There wasn’t any continuity of clothing, so they weren’t an assembled fighting unit. There was a mechanic, a guy in a suit, a soldier-wannabe type in military surplus. I bet we’ll find a bunch of cars parked down the road.” He looked at the charred lumps, wondering if the magi had known Rabbit’s magic didn’t require the head-and-heart spell to nuke makol. From the looks the kid was getting, he suspected that would be a “not.”

Michael nodded grimly. “I took down four of them in the main house. One was wearing a T-shirt from a gun shop with a local address. The other three were in military surplus. What do you want to bet there’s a private militia quartered somewhere in these hills?” He paused. “It’d be a good hunting ground for someone looking for bad guys.”

“Like an ajaw-makol,” Strike agreed. He looked back at Lucius. “That’s what you’re thinking, right?”

“It plays,” Jade said, her voice strong, even if her color wasn’t. “We’ve suspected there might be an ajaw-makol on the earth plane. Either the Banol Kax sensed that Lucius and I were outside the Skywatch wards and sent the demon after us, or the thing sensed us and came on its own.”

“I’d guess the latter,” Lucius said. When the others looked at him, he lifted a shoulder. “My impression—and that’s all it is—was that makol are similar to the magi in that they have different skill sets. I didn’t get the sense that Cizin was in constant contact with its masters, more that it phoned home now and then, probably during the cardinal days.”