shallow depression. His chant rose and fell with ancient intonations, the syllables seamless.
Yet the power pumping out of the room jarred dissonantly against the red-gold hum within Brandt.
His mind raced as he returned to Patience and briefly described the room and the stranger. Were they wrong about the rattling power being dark magic? The Nightkeepers were the only earth-borns capable of using the barrier’s power, and this guy sure as shit looked earth-born, not Banol Kax or boluntiku . Which left only two options.
So what was he, mage or makol ? Please, gods, let him be a mage, Brandt thought, mind plunging ahead to the hope of there being more survivors, older warriors who could teach him and Patience what they lacked . . . and who might know how he could fix his cosmic fuckup.
Behind him, the chant switched to English, startling him. Brandt turned as the stranger said, “By nine times nine chants and our shared blood, I call on Werigo, son of Okom, father of Ix and Iago.”
Magic rattled in the air, hard and abrasive, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He saw Patience’s eyes widen, saw the understanding dawn.
Because oh, holy shit, nine wasn’t a sacred number of the Nightkeepers. It belonged to the underworld.
“Lords,” the stranger continued, “release my father’s soul, so he can continue working on your behalf.”
Brandt’s gut twisted as his fantasy of more Nightkeeper survivors imploded beneath the realization that this was no mage. It had to be a makol , a possessed human whose demon rider was trying to bring another like it through the barrier.
Kill it! his gut screamed. Acting on instinct, not fully aware of what he was doing, he summoned the red-gold power from the thin barrier connection he and Patience had formed.
“Wait!” she said urgently.
But it was too late. Like a striking rattlesnake, the dark magic lashed out into the tunnel and struck sparks off the red-gold. The makol howled a curse as it sensed the intruders.
Brandt didn’t hesitate. He lunged through the doorway and swung his torch like a Louisville Slugger, aiming for the thing’s head.
He had a bare second to register that its eyes were a murky hazel, not luminous green. It was a man, not a makol . Was he a Nightkeeper after all?
Shit! He pulled the blow and deflected the swing. The other man ducked; the bone torch glanced off his shoulder, smashed into the limestone wall, and splintered at its end.
“Who the hell are you?” Brandt demanded.
Without any change in expression, the stranger yanked a nine-mill from his belt and fired at Patience.
She dove out of the way, but her torch and knife went flying as the other man tracked her with his weapon.
No! Rage poured through Brandt, possessed him. He teed off and swung again, and this time he didn’t pull a godsdamned thing.
The splintered end of the torch hit the guy in the temple. The impact sang up Brandt’s arms and left his hands vibrating.
The blond man staggered, gun hand sagging. He cursed when Patience kicked his wrist, sending the weapon flying. Brandt wasn’t thinking or planning, didn’t have any thought in his mind aside from stopping the bastard. He roundhoused the torch and slammed it into their enemy’s skull with a sickening crunch.
Blood and brain spattered into the shallow sacrificial bowl as the other man slid to a heap on the floor.
Brandt froze. His pulse throbbed sickly in his ears as he stared at the gore. At the body.
He had just killed a man without really knowing why, or who he was.
“He was going to kill us.” Patience was breathing hard, her eyes wide and white. “We had to—” A terrible rattling roar split the air, drowning her out as the wall behind the altar shimmered and went strange and flexible, turning a sickly muddy brown-green color. Brandt shouted and yanked her behind him when the surface bulged obscenely, as though something was fighting to be born through the membranelike surface of the dark magic.
Oh, holy fuck. The dark mage’s death had punched a hole in the barrier.
“Go!” He shoved her toward the doorway. “Get all the way out, call your winikin , and tell her to crack the drop box.”
She spun back. “I’m not leaving you!”
He knew she wouldn’t leave unless he made it good, so he gripped her wrists and met her eyes.
“Think about it. One of us needs to make sure nothing comes through this gap. I’m bigger. I’ve got more blood to sacrifice. I’ll meet you as soon as the equinox is over. Now go !”
It was only partway a lie; he would try to hold the barrier with bloodletting. If it came down to it, though, he could only hope that since a dark mage’s sacrifice had opened the connection, the sacrifice of a Nightkeeper, even one like him, would close it back up again.
Woody would understand, even approve.
Patience hesitated, then spun for the doorway. But she was too late. The membrane tore with a wet ripping sound that amped the rattling magic to a maniacal chatter. Smoke poured through the opening, unrelieved black save for two pinpoint glints of luminous green. A makol !
The dispossessed demon soul arrowed straight for Patience, moving fast.
“Run!” Brandt dove for the billowing presence, trying to grab it and keep it away from her. He passed right through it, though, catching nothing but air. He landed hard, rolled, and lurched back to his feet just in time to see Patience dodge the smoke and make a dive for the altar.
She snagged the stone knife from the corpse’s belt, slashed both her palms and thrust her hands into the mess atop the altar, crying, “Gods help us!”
A soundless detonation rocked the chamber, thumping deep within Brandt and making his ears ring.
The dark-magic rattle modulated, becoming underlain by the buzzing hum from before. The undulating membrane went from muddy brown to pure silver, shot through with rainbow hues, like the surface of a bubble seen from an angle.
Patience’s expression turned radiant; she seemed to glow from within as she turned to him. But then her face blanked with horror, and she screamed, “Behind you!”
Brandt lifted the bloodstained torch and spun—straight into a roiling cloud of black smoke. He caught a flash of fluorescent green and smelled char, and then he was seeing the world in fluorescent green, and his brain was impossibly split in two.
He was himself, but he was someone else too; he caught kaleidoscope images of terrible blood rituals designed to prepare the living for resurrection. He saw two boys, flashing images of them growing, one into the guy he had just killed, the other into a younger, auburn-haired version. He saw them carve their father’s beating heart from his chest and make the sacrifices that would ensure his immortality as a demon soul. The dead brother had been stone-faced, the other in tears.
He was Werigo, ex-leader of the Order of Xibalba, a group even more deeply underground than the surviving Nightkeepers. He was also Brandt White-Eagle. And the part of him that remained Brandt would be fucked if he was going to let a dark mage turn him into a makol .
