Blood Spells

He could’ve sent the thought straight into her mind through the touch link of their handclasp, but she didn’t like him inside her head. As she put it, there had to be some boundaries between them. So he whispered, and kept it general, trusting her to translate his real meaning.

“Can you ‘hear’ them?”

He shook his head. No. He hadn’t sensed any magic—light or dark—on the way up the path, and he didn’t sense any now. “Maybe Jox remembered wrong, or my old man lied to him about the name of the village.”

But that didn’t totally play either, given the rumors about dark magic in the village, and the way Cheech and the other guy down in the market had connected the trading language with Oc Ajal, even before Rabbit asked about the village by name.

What was more, he realized with a click of connection, the whole place was arranged around powerful numbers and symbols.

There were two rows of thirteen huts each, arranged in a three-quarters circle around a central fire pit, with the archway centered in the gap. Seven flattened millstones surrounded the fire pit. And he’d bet a minor body part that the spiral designs incised, row after row, into the poles that made up each building would, if he counted them, add up to plays on 13, 20, 52, 260, and various other numbers that had been central to the ancient calendars.

More, with the central fire pit surrounded by concentric circles of millstones, huts, and then trees, the village’s whole layout symbolized the entrance to Xibalba, which was located in the dark spot at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

The symbols didn’t prove anything, though, he reminded himself. Plenty of modern Maya were spiritual without being magic users. And the villagers they had seen so far looked indigenous. Given that the Order of Xibalba had been a splinter sect of the original Nightkeepers, the descendants of the order should have retained the size, coloring, and charisma of the magi. Iago sure had.

Which meant . . . hell, he didn’t know. And he didn’t know what he was hoping for, just that he was hoping for something.

As if in response to that thought—or, more likely, the woman’s call—a man emerged from the building directly opposite the archway, and started toward the visitors. He was wizened and white-

haired, though given the living conditions, Rabbit couldn’t guess his age any more accurately than

“somewhere over fifty.”

The elder wore battered jeans and a patterned serape; his eyes were bright, his mouth nearly toothless as he flashed a smile and said, “Oola.”

It was a standard greeting that had been adapted from the Spanish hola because many Mayan languages lacked the typical “Hello, how are you?” pleasantries of other cultures.

Rabbit sensed other people nearby, some in the pole buildings, others in the forest beyond. None seemed threatening; if anything, they seemed unusually mellow, without the spiky discord he usually felt from at least a few people in any given group.

Cheech stepped up and returned the greeting, followed by a spate of words that seemed to be a patois combining the most common modern Mayan dialect, Yucatec, along with equal parts Spanish and the ancient trading language.

Rabbit caught the semiderogatory Yucatec term for American tourists, which literally translated to

“white odors,” followed by the ancient honorific for

“mother” and the word for “rabbit,” which in Yucatec sounded like “tool.” He didn’t let on that he’d caught that much, though. He just stood there with his senses wide-open, waiting for a ripple in the barrier’s energy— something, anything, that would indicate they were in the right place.

He got fucking nothing.

“This is the leader of Oc Ajal,” Cheech said formally. “His name is Saamal.”

Tomorrow, Rabbit thought, translating the name, which itself was a powerful spell word. Still, that didn’t prove anything. Symbols and words weren’t the same as magic.

“Is he willing to talk to me about my—” Rabbit stumbled over the word “mother,” and wound up going with, “About what my father’s note said?”

“I told him what you told me. He will answer your questions.”

Rabbit wasn’t sure if it was Cheech’s English or Saamal’s answer that made that one feel off, but he kept going, speaking directly to the elder while Cheech translated. “The note my father left said he met my mother while staying here in Oc Ajal, twenty-two years ago. He would have been my age when he came here. He looked like me, but with darker eyes and a sad soul.” Which he figured was better than saying “off his fucking rocker over his dead wife and kids.”

When the translation ran down and Saamal didn’t say anything, Myrinne nudged him. “He said he’d answer your questions. I’m guessing he meant that literally.”

Oh, for fuck’s—“Fine. Do you remember my father?” Rabbit unbuttoned his right sleeve and flipped the cuff, baring his forearm. “He had marks like these, only all black. He wore the peccary, the warrior, and the jun tan.” He watched the elder, but the guy didn’t show any outer—or inner—sign of recognizing the marks.

He did, however, nod and answer in a few words. Cheech translated: “Yes, I remember your father.”

For a second, Rabbit thought he was going to have to pull the info twenty-questions-style, but then Saamal continued, and Cheech fell into rhythm, echoing a few words behind the elder. “He only stayed a few days, though, and he was alone. He was lost.” Cheech paused. “Not wandering lost, but lost in his head. You understand the difference?”

“Yeah. Trust me, I get it.” Rabbit exhaled through his nose. “Do you know where he went when he left here?”

Saamal shook his head. “Ma.” Cheech didn’t bother translating the obvious negative.

“Not even what direction? Uphill? Downhill? Anything?” Rabbit did his best to keep the frustration out of his voice; Jox had dinged him often enough for whining, and Saamal reminded him of the royal winikin . Impatience flared inside Rabbit, though, bumping up against power, anger, and all the other things he’d learned to control. More or less.

“He left in the night,” Cheech translated. “We didn’t see him go.”

“Do you remember him asking about any ruins, any other villages? Anything that would give me an idea where to look next?”

“Ma.”

Fuck it. Deciding it was worth the risk, Rabbit hit the air-lock doors, sent the outer blockade folding back in his mind, and touched the barrier with an inner whisper of Pasaj och. Nightkeeper power flowed into him, blooming red-gold and firing his senses and talents, heating his skin and bringing a whiff of smoke.

“Easy there, Sparky,” Myrinne said softly. She might not have Nightkeeper magic in the traditional sense, but she could perceive the ebb and flow of his power. According to Lucius, her experiences as Iago’s prisoner two years earlier had left her sensitized.

“Sorry.” He throttled it back, then leaned on the mind-bend and opened himself to Saamal, keeping the power in careful check, and making sure the inner blocks guarding the hell-link remained intact.

Addressing the elder once more, he asked, “Why did he come here?”

“He was looking for his sons. He said his wife had been murdered, but he’d never seen the boys’ bodies. He suspected they were still alive.”

“Oh.” Ouch.

That explained why Red-Boar had nearly killed Jox before disappearing into the highlands. He’d been trying to erase the only living person who had seen the bodies of the children killed back at Skywatch, in the second wave of the Solstice Massacre.

In years past, Rabbit would’ve been seriously pissed about learning that Red-Boar had fathered him while on a quest to find his full-blood sons. Now it just made him want to go home and get back to work, in the hopes that the Nightkeepers would eventually hit on the right alchemy, the right combination of sacrifice, magic, prophecy,