Blood Spells

pyre that all the gods will see.

But the thought brought a twist of nausea and the image of the pole buildings burning with people inside. Smoke clogged his throat and sinuses, smelling of charred flesh. No, he thought. Not fire. Too much had burned there already. With his mind-bending blocked by the circlet, he was left with his smallest talent, that of low-level telekinesis, but what—

“Give it to me,” Jade said unexpectedly. When Lucius no-fucking-way’d her, she waved him off.

“Hear me out. There’s a strange sort of pattern here, some sort of concealment spell. I can’t get a handle on it, though. I need a boost to get a better look.”

Rabbit held out a hand. “Free magic,” he rasped. “Onetime offer, first come, first served.”

At Strike’s nod, Jade moved forward. The moment she took his hand, Rabbit felt a huge rush of relief as the light magic left him and headed for her, and the painful pressure inside him eased.

Then something strange happened: The air around them all took on a gleam of red-gold, then a hint of silver.

“Jade?” Strike said in soft warning.

“There’s a cloaking spell permeating the village,” she said, voice tight with effort. “It’s not the normal sort of magic, but I think that I can reverse it if I just—” The light magic surged through Rabbit and then drained away to almost nothing as she leaned on their link. “There it is. I think if I . .

.”

A psychic shock wave rolled through Rabbit, and both the dark and light connections winked out of existence. Boom, gone. Like they had never been.

“Jade, no!” he cried, but it was already too late. Whatever she had done, it had cut his connection to Saamal. He couldn’t sense the dark-magic spell anymore, couldn’t hear the lub-dub heartbeat that had been going strong only moments before.

But something was happening.

“What the hell?” Michael breathed, staring out into the forests, where a shimmer of magic moved in the distance, working its way around the village, spiraling inward.

Rabbit turned to follow the movement, aware that the others were doing the same as the incandescence became more visible, skipping from one place to another, getting closer.

“It’s coming from the bodies we found in the woods,” Sven said. He pointed ahead of the moving shimmer. “The next one is right about there.” Seconds later, magic flared near where he’d just indicated.

After that, the spell—or whatever the hell it was—entered the village, hazing the air around the burned-out pole buildings where human remains were mixed with char. The magic moved one to the next, ever inward, until it reached the men lying near the central pole building and the woman with the blood-spattered grindstone. When the shimmer cleared, the woman was taller and paler, with honey-

colored hair where it had been dark a second earlier. The men too were bigger and burlier, and had lighter hair.

Before Rabbit could even begin to comprehend what he’d just seen, the shimmer coalesced around Saamal’s body. The air around the corpse shimmered and shifted, and then the body grew, its limbs and torso elongating with strange, Gumby-ish plasticity, then thickening with ropy layers of muscle gone soft with old-man flab. The elder’s face broadened and paled slightly, while the skin of his unmarked forearm darkened in a familiar pattern.

When the air stabilized, the dead man was well over six feet tall, big and tough looking. And he wore a black quatrefoil on his inner right wrist.

“Fuck. Me,” Rabbit said.

He turned away from Saamal, trying to stem the tide of grief, guilt, and anger. He’d found the right village, after all, but he hadn’t realized it. How had the old man tricked him? How—shit. It didn’t matter now, did it?

“You were right,” Strike said, his tone indecipherable. “They were dark magi. They’ve been hiding up here all this time.”

“Until I led Iago straight to them,” Rabbit said bitterly. “They must’ve deserted from the Order of Xibalba and broken their links to the magic.”

“Then who cast the cloaking spell?” Strike asked.

“I don’t know. But why else would their marks be black if they weren’t deserters?”

“You’ve got it backwards,” said a rasping voice, coming from behind Rabbit.

The only one back there was Saamal.

Blood draining from his head, leaving him woozy, Rabbit turned and looked down at the body. Oh, holy hell. The spell had worked, after all.

The elder’s eyes were lit with a parody of life. His body remained pale and motionless, his chest open and full of congealed blood, but the pumping throb of oily brown magic had returned his soul to his body.

But any victory Rabbit might have felt deflated at the sight of the terrible pain and soul-deep loss that clouded the elder’s eyes. His soul might have returned to his body, but no amount of magic could undo the villagers’ murders and the destruction of Oc Ajal.

Rabbit’s chest suddenly felt as hollow as the empty splay of Saamal’s ribs. He was aware of the others gathering close, of Myrinne gripping his shoulder in support, but those inputs were peripheral.

He sank to his knees beside the dead man, started to roll the nearest mortar stone off him, only to stop when he realized that the stones were woven into the reanimation spell, that they were part of what was keeping him alive.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words emerging through lips that felt numb and strange, like they weren’t part of him anymore. “I didn’t mean to tell Iago where—” He broke off. “Wait. You speak English?”

Saamal’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what you want to know right now?”

“Christ, Rabbit.” Strike crouched down in the elder’s line of sight. “I’m Striking-Jaguar.” He paused a beat, testing.

The elder glanced at Strike’s forearm, then at the edge of the circular hunab ku visible beneath the sleeve of his dark tee, which marked him as the Nightkeepers’ king. “Names aren’t important right now, nor is rank. What matters now is that you listen to me, and believe what your ancestors would not. That is why I called the young crossover here.” His eyes went to Rabbit. “And used the last of my power to keep my soul tethered beyond its mortality.”

“Crossover? Oh, you mean half blood.” Actually, Rabbit decided he liked “crossover” better.

“Because I can use light and dark magic.” When the elder nodded shallowly, he pressed, “If you know who and what I am, then tell me about my mother. Who was she?” Oh, gods. His eyes tractor-beamed to the woman with the grindstone. “Was she here? Did the makol kill her? And why didn’t you tell me who you were?” His voice rose, edging toward his boyhood tenor. “We could’ve brought you in, could’ve protected—” Strike cut him off. “Let him talk. I’m guessing his clock is ticking.”

“That is true, jaguar king. My time on this plane is limited.” The elder closed his eyes, as if composing himself. When he opened them again, some of the grief and pain was blocked behind a warrior’s focus. To Rabbit, he said, “I did not reveal myself to you because my people are your enemies, and vice versa. Or rather, we were your enemies. This village housed the last members of the true Order of Xibalba, users of dark magic and guardians of the sky barrier on behalf of the dark gods.”

Rabbit didn’t care about sides right now—he wanted to know what happened when Red-Boar visited the village, damn it. But he held himself in check as the elder described how the members of the order were the Nightkeepers’ opposites, dedicated to preventing what they called the “sky demons” from tearing through the barrier and overrunning the earth plane during the end time.

Strike said bluntly, “No offense, but since there’s no fucking way you’re converting us, we don’t need a philosophy lesson except and unless it pertains to what we’re dealing with right now. Tell me about Iago. He’s one of yours, isn’t he? Or he was.” The king was strung tight, his expression flat and unreadable.

“His father, Werigo, was one of us, yes.” The elder’s voice was thinning, but when Michael started forward, the old man shook his head. “No, muk wielder, no power on this plane can keep me soul-

tethered after this spell runs out. Once I’m done, I’m done.”

“So talk fast,” Strike ordered.