Blood Spells

teamwork, and sheer fucking luck that would allow them to seal the barrier tightly shut when the zero day came.

If they didn’t, the Solstice Massacre was going to look like a warm-up act.

Saamal said something more, and Cheech translated: “You were one of those sons?”

“No.” Hell, no. “I came later.”

“Did he find what he was looking for?”

Rabbit shook his head. “He knew they were dead. He just didn’t want to believe it.”

The elder spread his hands and looked to the sky, and for the first time since their arrival, Rabbit felt a shimmer in the barrier. It wasn’t magic, though, or at least not the kind he was looking for. It was the gentle warmth that came from Saamal’s prayer.

When the elder finished and returned his attention to Rabbit, his eyes were sad. He said something, and Cheech translated: “He said they were twins.”

And therefore so much more valuable than their younger half brother, Rabbit knew. Anger kindled, bringing a whiff of smoke that he tamped down even before Myrinne touched his arm in warning.

Coiled way too tight, he paced away a few steps, fisting his hands so tightly that his fingernails dug in and drew blood.

Dial it down, he told himself. It wasn’t Saamal’s fault that Red-Boar hadn’t left a forwarding addy, or that Rabbit had gotten his hopes up.

“Down the mountain, in the village, they say the people of Oc Ajal worship Xibalba,” Myrinne said.

“Is this true?”

Cheech shot her a look, but translated her question and Saamal’s response: “This is true, but not the way I think you mean it. We worship the gods of Xibalba, the Banol Kax, but we do not revere darkness or evil deeds.”

Rabbit’s head came up. “How is that possible? Xibalba is the underworld.”

“But not as the Christians perceive it, as a place of hellfire and damnation. To my ancestors and my people, the sky and underworld are simply the residences of the gods. Some of them oversee positive things, such as science, medicine, and justice; others negative things like cruelty, greed, and addiction.

Most, though, are a mix of dark and light, just as we are.” Saamal paused. “Xibalba is where the dead are challenged, yes, but it is not perdition. It is simply another plane, one that balances the sky.”

“But the—” Rabbit broke off, not wanting to reveal how much he knew about Xibalba—as in “been there, got the tee.” Instead, he opened his mind to the elder’s and skimmed off what he could about the religion of Oc Ajal, which proved to be almost identical to that of the Nightkeepers, except turned upside down.

In other words, the trip was a bust. The villagers might worship the gods of Xibalba, but they weren’t members of the Order of Xibalba. He hadn’t found his mother’s village, and he hadn’t found new allies for the magi. Please hang up and try your call again.

Shaken and more let down than he wanted to admit, Rabbit said woodenly, “Thank you for answering my questions.”

Cheech translated the elder’s response as “Good luck,” but Rabbit was pretty sure the literal word-

for-word was more along the lines of “May the future go well for you.”

We can only hope. He sketched a wave to the old man and turned away, tugging Myrinne with him.

Cheech followed a moment later.

They were at the archway when Saamal called, “An. Tool!”

“That is so not my name,” Rabbit grumbled, but he turned back. “What?”

He didn’t follow the elder’s quick words, so cocked his head back for Cheech, who said, “He says the peccary is a fine animal—clever, fierce, protective, and ambitious. But it was a rabbit that helped the Hero Twins save their father from the underworld.”

Rabbit’s throat closed, but he managed to get out, “I know the story.”

It had been one of Harry’s and Braden’s favorites. He had a sudden memory of sitting in the pool house with them, telling them that very part of the story— the savior-rabbit part—while Patience leaned in the doorway and watched her sons with a small, soft smile. The expression on her face, a mixture of love and contentment somehow coexisting with fierce possessiveness, had reached inside Rabbit and imprinted itself within him.

Nobody had ever looked at him that way, not before or since. And maybe he’d been fooling himself coming out to Oc Ajal, trying to pretend he was looking for allies when what he’d really wanted was to see if there was someone up here who could look at him like that.

Shit. Like father, like son, he was searching for something that was long dead.

Swallowing heavily, he jammed his hands in his pockets and headed for the archway, closing off his mental air locks as he walked.

Behind him, Cheech started in on Myrinne about the ride home, and she squeaked an indignant protest and geared up to haggle.

Without looking back, Rabbit said, “We’ll pay. Just get us down as fast as you can without killing anyone.”

He didn’t care what it cost. He just wanted to go home.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Cancun, Mexico The sky was bloodred with the sunset as Patience and Brandt left El Rey and headed back into town.

They didn’t speak as they walked. He held her hand, their fingers twined together like a promise. And although he knew he couldn’t keep that promise, he couldn’t make himself let go.

Because this was their spot.

Over the past couple of years, he had put his boots on the ground at hundreds of sites south of the U.S. border. He’d fought the Xibalbans in the Yucatan and Honduras. He’d let blood in Guatemala.

He’d climbed sacred temples in Belize. And throughout the former Mayan territories, he’d patrolled the ruins, both continuing the search for a new skyroad and shoring up weak spots in the barrier as 2012 approached.

He’d breathed the air of rain forests, cloud forests, ancient mountain strongholds, modern cities and towns. Zap him into an empty warehouse with no contact with the outside world, and he could tell if he was in a former Mayan city-state, because all those places felt a little bit the same to him . . . except for this small section of Cancun.

Here, the air danced across his skin as it did nowhere else. And here, he and Patience worked.

They had been back only once since becoming full-fledged magi, on a fact-finding trip that had turned into an unexpected second honeymoon, a seventy-two-hour sexual marathon that had wrung him out, lit him up, and left him hoping that they had made a breakthrough.

Unfortunately, once they were back at Skywatch, reality had returned and they had continued growing into their roles and away from their marriage. And no matter how hard they had tried to keep it together, the connection they had shared in El Rey had slipped away and disappeared.

Until now.

Technically, the day had been a bust. As Rabbit had reported, there was no sign of the doorway.

There was also no hint of a concealment spell at the base of the main pyramid, at least not that he or Patience could detect. Jade would have the final say on that; her spell caster’s talent included the ability to sense and manipulate magic-hidden pathways. She and Lucius were off chasing down a lead on Cabrakan, but would be there the next morning to check for evidence of a concealment spell, when Strike did a ’port bounce through the Yucatan, gathering the scattered magi.

Which left Brandt and Patience alone for the night, in the place where they had begun, surrounded by air that danced across his skin and left him aching. The sizzle wasn’t one-sided either; he saw it reflected in the sidelong glances she shot him as they left the park, felt it when their bodies brushed as they walked side by