The shimmering curtain of power and spell words disappeared as though it had never existed. There was no explosion, no power surge. One moment all she saw in front of her were more trees, more dying vines. In the next, she was staring at a mountainside with a terrible skull carved into it, jaw gaping wide so it screamed the dark, ominous entrance to a cave. Just inside its mouth, a skeleton hung skewered to the cave wall, still wearing the remains of what had been a purple velour tracksuit.
Overhead, heretofore silent monkeys screamed in fear, and parrots took wing in a thunder of brittle feathers. For a second, nobody moved. Then, without warning, an unearthly shriek split the air and terrible creatures with twisted, humanoid bodies and the heads of animals boiled out of the blackness of the tunnel. Snakes, jaguars, eagles, hawks, crocodiles, every sacred creature was mocked in twisted Egyptian parodies arising from dark magic. Their human parts were gnarled and gray skinned, with some parts grown too large, others shrunk to vestiges.
Jade screamed; she couldn’t help it. These were the creatures that had captured her and Lucius before, only now they were damaged even worse and pissed about it. She could feel their rage as a palpable force against her magic, and instinctively tamped down her power, her vulnerability.
Strike roared an order and the warriors let fly with a fireball salvo that detonated against the front line of animal-heads, sending body parts flying in a spray of blood, fire, and flame. Their screams were terrible; the smell was worse. Gagging, Jade reeled against Lucius. He grabbed her. “Back to the trees!” he yelled over a roar of fire as flames napalmed from Rabbit’s outstretched palms, turning the second rank of attackers to a pyre. “We need to take cover!”
Jade was turning to comply when sharp teeth seized her arm and dug in, pulling her the other way.
She screamed and swung out with her cudgel; it slammed into the shoulder of one of the big black dogs. For a second, she thought she was dead, that it was going to tear her throat out then and there.
But it simply glared at her and bore down on her hand, almost—but not quite—breaking the skin. Its legs were braced, its ruff standing straight up in a vicious line along its spine, making it look like some prehistoric, spiked creature.
Lucius cursed and rounded on the companion, but she waved him off as understanding dawned. “We have to fight through,” she said urgently. “Kinich Ahau needs our help!”
At her shout, the warriors knotted together in a defensive formation. “We can’t help shit if we’re dead,” Michael said, then spun to unleash a stream of deadly silver
The animal-heads kept coming, their ranks swelling to overrun the clearing. Some of the creatures climbed over their own dead, uncaring, while others stopped to feed on the bodies with a ferocity that made Jade’s gorge rise.
“The whole world is going to die if we don’t rescue Kinich Ahau,” Strike countered. “If Akhenaton’s ascension doesn’t spell the beginning of the end, our failure to rescue the last god remaining outside the sky plane might.” He looked from the companions to the cave mouth and back again, and Jade could see his anguish. His father had ordered the Nightkeepers to their deaths under far better odds. He didn’t hesitate long, though. Sweeping his cudgel in a high arc, he pointed to the tunnel mouth and shouted, “Go!”
The big dog released Jade’s hand, spun, and bolted away, with its twin right behind.
The other warriors picked up the cry and charged, clearing the way with fireballs and Rabbit’s humanflamethrower routine. Jade found herself screaming, “Kinich Ahau!” and running with them.
Ice magic raced through her veins but she held it in, not sure whether it would douse the flames.
Lucius was right with her, solid at her side, his fierce loyalty not up for question, even if their relationship remained hazy and uncertain.
The Nightkeepers’ charge carried them to the cave mouth before the animal-heads rallied. A huge creature with a crocodile’s head rose above the others, snarling something in that strange, guttural tongue she had heard before, in Xibalba. At their leader’s orders, the animal-heads reoriented and charged, surrounding the magi and killing the momentum of their charge.
“I’ve got it!” Michael shouted. He called a thick, sturdy shield spell and slapped it across the point where the cave mouth narrowed into a tunnel leading into the mountainside. A hundred animal-heads, maybe more, were trapped outside the shield, cutting the immediate threat in half. “Go!”
“Good man,” Strike said shortly as he and the others faced forward, to where a seemingly endless stream of animal-heads poured up through the tunnel. Under the next fireball onslaught, the narrow space filled quickly with burning bodies, their stench turning the air thick with an oily, choking smoke that made Jade gag. She reached for Lucius, who caught her against him, holding on tightly.
Sasha moved to her mate’s side to boost his magic and keep him leveled off. She glanced at Jade and the friends—a former chef and an ex-therapist—shared a quick
Jade and Lucius followed Strike and the others as the small fighting force slaughtered its way deeper into the tunnel, winning forward one bloody foot at a time. Jade focused on the companions; they always seemed to know where to twist and turn in order to find their way through the surging melee. Lucius cracked his cudgel to his left and right, his jaw tight, his eyes reflecting the same sharp horror that rattled through her. In the underworld, the animal-headed warriors had regenerated quickly. Up on the earth plane, they just flat-out died. And although they resembled the ancient Egyptian gods, each of the head- types was also a species that had—or used to have —a corresponding Nightkeeper bloodline. Had Akhenaton harnessed the Nightkeepers’ ancestors as an army? Was that who the magi were killing?
“Don’t think about it,” Lucius rasped against her temple. He was still holding her close, using his body to shield her as they forced their way through. “Not now. Just go.”
So she went, following in the companions’ wake. They outdistanced the fireball-wielding magi, so she lashed out with bursts of ice magic that froze some of the animal-heads, slowed others by dumping drifts of snow. Time lost meaning, becoming a cycle of spell casting and advancing, with Lucius staying strong at her back. Then the tunnel opened up around them and they were standing in a ceremonial chamber with ritually carved walls and a wide altar. Jade didn’t process the details, though. Her attention was immediately commanded by the liquid shimmer of the far wall, which bent and flexed, seeming alive.
The companions bolted toward it.
“The barrier!” She surged after them, but Lucius yanked her back. “What—” She spun on him and broke off on a gasp. The tunnel was blocked with animal-heads and the Nightkeepers were nowhere in sight.
“They’re cut off,” Lucius reported grimly. “And this is a dead end.”
“No, it’s not. It’s the beginning of the hellroad. It’s open because of the solstice, or maybe because of the hellhounds and the ball game. Who knows? All I know is that we need to get through there.”
“We can’t—” He began, but then broke off when a jaguar-head started barking orders. “Fuck. Come on.”
They ran together to the back wall, which looked like stone but wasn’t. The companions had waited for them, and the four rescuers dove through together. As she passed through the barrier, Jade felt power ripple across her skin. Then she was caught up, sucked down, spun around. Her hand was torn from Lucius’s grip and she screamed. She heard him shout her name; then even that was lost to the roar of acceleration as the world whipped past her. She felt the same wrenching, sliding sensation as before, when she and Lucius had traveled to Xibalba. Only this time it was ten times worse, because she was experiencing it fully. Her physical self wasn’t safely at Skywatch anymore. She was traveling, body and soul, into hell.
His mind snapshotted the scene. Akhenaton’s ghostly form was on one side with his guards and five animal-heads. The
