Blood Spells

jade grenades to neutralize creatures of dark magic, so it makes sense that something like this could work.” He paused. “We’ll need to field-test it, of course. I can’t guarantee it’ll work against Iago, given that he’s got a demon riding shotgun in his skull.”

“We’ll set something up once Rabbit’s awake,” Strike confirmed. “How did you guys do on the Akbal oath?”

Brandt was aware that Patience’s fork hesitated halfway to her mouth, then slowly lowered to her plate. He almost said, Don’t get your hopes up. Now that the memory block was fully demolished, he remembered the hours he’d spent online and in the library, researching all the religious oaths he could find, looking for a way to break them.

Lucius shook his head. “Sorry.”

Patience let out a long, slow breath. “Did you find anything?”

“No. And that doesn’t make any sense.” Lucius patted the laptop fondly. “Think about it: Akbal is an incredibly common glyph—it’s a day name, and the ancestors were all about their calendars. So going into the library search, I was figuring on getting Google bombed like whoa and damn, because even specifically asking about the ‘Akbal oath’ should’ve pulled hits from most everything related to the concepts of fealty and the calendar.” He paused and spread his hands. “Instead, I didn’t get shit, not even a bunch of random hits. Nothing in the library appears to have the words ‘Akbal’ and ‘oath’ together.”

Strike narrowed his eyes. “Does that mean the oath magic postdates the hiding of the library?”

Because their ancestors had folded the library into the barrier to keep its contents safe from the conquistadors, its knowledge cut off in the mid-fifteen-hundreds.

Lucius tipped his hand in a yes-no gesture. “Maybe, but that wouldn’t explain the lack of random hits.”

“You think the ancestors actively avoided using the term ‘Akbal oath,’” Brandt guessed.

“Yeah. Sort of a ‘he who shall not be named’ thing.” Lucius paused. “Unfortunately, knowing that doesn’t help us figure out how to deal with the oath.” He paused. “I’ll keep looking.” But his voice warned, No guarantees.

Brandt grimaced. “Thanks for trying.”

Patience threaded her fingers through his and squeezed. “Don’t give up.”

“I’m not—” His voice broke, went ragged. “Damn it.”

“We have today and part of tomorrow,” Strike said. “Something’s got to break. It doesn’t make any sense that the gods came to Patience’s aid against Werigo only to turn their backs on her now.”

Brandt badly wanted to get up and pace, but he made himself stay put, next to Patience, the two of them forming a team within the team, as it should have been all along. Gripping both of her hands in his, he took a deep breath and looked at Strike. “Okay, we’ve got a day and a half. What’s the—” Plan, he was going to say, but an air-raid whoop split the air, drowning him out and kicking his adrenaline level to red alert in an instant.

The loudest, deepest sound came from the mansion intercom, but each of their pocket units emitted smaller, shriller versions of the alarm, which was keyed to the panic buttons carried by each of the residents at Skywatch.

All of who were in the room . . . except for two.

As the others flew to their feet, Jox lunged for the intercom cutoff, killed the alarms, and slapped the button to activate alarm device’s two-way feature. “What’s wrong?”

Myrinne’s voice came over the system, edged with hysteria. “You’ve got to hurry. Something’s wrong with Rabbit!”

Oc Ajal was burning.

The yellow-orange bloom of fire, usually so beautiful to Rabbit, was monstrous as it clawed at the pole buildings, eating away the thatch roofing and carved markings, then down through the skeletons of the structures, to the bones of the village itself.

The flames curled horribly around blackened human shapes. Other bodies were sprawled where they had fallen: A brightly dressed woman lay facedown, clutching a blood-spattered grindstone that suggested she’d died fighting. Several men lay unmoving in front of the central dwelling. A boy’s foot stuck out from behind it, and a half-grown pup lay dead nearby.

Six Aztec makol were spread around the village, carrying shields and long buzz swords across their backs as they hunted their prey.

Dark magic spat in the forest, followed by a scream that cut off abruptly. The makol didn’t react to that, just as they didn’t seem interested in the female sobs and harsh rutting noises coming from inside Saamal’s hut.

Rabbit writhed in his bed. It’s a dream, he told himself. Wake the fuck up! This wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. It had to be a dream. Iago couldn’t mind-link him through Skywatch’s wards.

Only he wasn’t seeing the carnage through Iago’s eyes.

“Let me go!” he shouted, railing against the nightmare’s grip as his vision went bouncy with forced motion. But the words came out in a stranger’s voice, in a stranger’s language, shocking Rabbit into the realization that he was seeing things through Saamal’s eyes, experiencing the attack through his perceptions.

Four makol dragged the village elder to the fire pit at the center of the village, pulled him spread-

eagled, and dumped him on the coals from the morning’s cooking fire.

He screamed as the hot embers burned through his tunic and into his skin, then again when the makol lifted the heavy mortar stones from the corn-grinding stations and dropped them onto his hands and feet, pinning him in place. But those physical agonies were far eclipsed by the agony of knowing that he’d failed his people, failed his gods. Failed his destiny.

Movement flashed in his peripheral vision as the soldiers’ leader, wearing the blue demon mask and a red-feathered cloak, moved into his line of sight and lifted a carved ceremonial knife—

“Rabbit!” The sound of his name in Myrinne’s voice was followed by a jolt of chu’ul magic, a lifeline that lassoed his consciousness and dragged him out of Saamal’s head, out of the nightmare.

He came awake screaming, “No!”

He lay spread-eagled, but his hands and feet were suddenly free of the crushing weight of the mortar stones, his back unburned.

Heart hammering, he lunged upright, saw a flash of blue and red, and hurled himself at the makol leader. He hit the bastard hard; they went down in a tangle, smashed into something wooden and sharp-cornered that didn’t jibe with the fire-pit image that was locked in his brain, and landed on a hard, flat surface that wasn’t highland dirt.

As Rabbit grappled with the disconnect, his enemy flipped him onto his back. And sat on him.

The familiarity of a move that had ended untold wrestling matches during Rabbit’s youth—and the sudden lack of oxygen as all the air left his lungs under pressure from two-hundred-plus pounds of Nightkeeper—cracked the barrier between nightmare and reality and brought him slamming back into himself. He lay still for a moment, gasping through sinuses that were full of the stink of smoke, charred flesh, and blood.

Strike’s face swam into view, looking concerned as hell.

Rabbit managed to get out a word: “Uncle.”

The king’s expression eased some, though it stayed worried as he shifted his weight off Rabbit’s torso and rose to crouch over him. “What the hell happened? That was no dream. We had to send Sasha in after you.”

Vision clearing as oxygen scrubbed away the last lingering shreds of confusion, Rabbit saw that most of the magi and several winikin were crowded into his and Myrinne’s bedroom.

Urgency beat through him with the cadence of running feet and the screams of the hunted as he blurted, “We have to get our asses to Oc Ajal, right fucking now.”

A strangled, startled noise came from Jox.

Strike turned on him. “You know what he’s talking about?”

“Not exactly.” But the winikin’s face flushed.

“We’re wasting time,” Rabbit interrupted. He held out his hand to Strike. “I’ll show you.” When Strike