Blood Spells

own footfalls, couldn’t hear anything but the lub-dub of joy, excitement, and terror. Joy that Brandt had finally trusted her to do something other than watch his back. Excitement at the prospect of seeing Harry, Braden, and Hannah. Terror at what she might find up ahead.

She turned a corner and saw torchlight coming from an irregularly shaped doorway. Killing the flashlight, she went invisible, then advanced soundlessly with an autopistol at the ready.

When she reached the doorway, she crouched low and eased her head into the opening. What she saw on the other side stopped her heart’s lub-dub in its tracks.

In the plain, unadorned room lit by a trio of torches, a single Aztec makol stood guard, facing the doorway but unaware of her invisible self. Behind him, Hannah sat with her back against the wall. The boys were plastered up against her, one on each side. Hannah had lost her bandanna, they were all dirty and bedraggled, and tear tracks marked all three faces.

But they were alive. Intact. Thank the gods.

Her heart started beating again, flaring relief through her veins. She must have gasped or made some small noise, because the makol snapped to attention, barking a string of unfamiliar words as it activated its buzz sword. But it looked around wildly, unable to pinpoint her as she skirted the room and got behind it.

Patience saw Hannah and the boys flinch away from the makol’s agitation, saw their confusion, their weary fear. Her chest hurt; her eyes stung. She wanted to hold them, touch them, tell them she was there and everything was going to be okay. Instead, she slapped a shield spell over them, and shouted, “Stay down!”

The second the shield spell took hold, the makol spun, locking onto her magic and launching its blades in a smooth, deadly move.

She dropped and rolled, still invisible, and called a fireball, launching it almost before it fully formed.

The glowing red-orange energy pulse slammed into the creature’s chest and detonated, instantly wreathing the thing’s body in flames.

It screamed in pain, a too-human sound that made her heart clutch, not because her enemy was suffering, but because her sons were seeing it.

Wanting it over with, she slammed a second fireball into the thing’s head, vaporizing half its skull with grim purpose. Head and heart. When it toppled, she followed it down and said the banishment spell.

The makol crumbled to greasy ash.

And she was alone with her sons and winikin.

Hannah’s eye was locked on the air above the ash pile, slightly to the left of where she actually was.

The boys were both staring straight at her, brows furrowed, as if they could sense her but weren’t sure of their perceptions.

“Patience?” Hannah asked, the single word carrying wary hope.

“Yes.” The word was almost a sob as she dropped the invisibility spell and rose to her feet. She had meant to cross the short distance between them, but once she was up, her legs refused to carry her.

She could only stare as Braden uncoiled himself, his eyes getting very big as his mouth shaped the most beautiful word in the world. “Mommy?” The first one didn’t have any sound, but when she hiccuped on a sob and nodded, he shouted it, “Mommy!”

He launched himself at her. Harry was a split second behind him.

She had just enough presence of mind to drop the shield spell that had protected them, and cast a new one across the doorway, sealing them in.

Then they hit her one-two, like automatic fire, driving her back under the impact, and she couldn’t think about anything but them. Finally. In her arms. Their whippet-lean bodies were an alien contrast to the toddler sturdiness she remembered, yet her heart knew them instantly.

Her legs gave out and she thumped inelegantly to her knees, then gathered them close and pressed their tear-streaked faces against hers, their bodies into hers. She was shaking—maybe all three of them were. Then Hannah dropped down opposite her, and they clung together.

Thank you, gods. Thank you, thank you, thank you. She wasn’t sure if she thought the words or said them, didn’t care, cared only that she was holding her sons again, and being held by her winikin.

For a long, shuddering moment, she let herself be at peace.

Then, knowing the fight wasn’t over yet, she broke the huddle and drew, back, keeping contact with Hannah and the boys as she did, trying to take in the reality of them, the small changes.

She had only seen Hannah bandanna-less a few times in her life, and up close the scarred flesh and partly covered socket were discomfiting, but the strangeness lasted only a few seconds before Patience’s brain readjusted and she saw only her winikin . The one constant in her life.

“Is Woody okay?” Harry asked. It was the first sound he had made since her arrival.

“Your daddy and I got him away from Iago,” she said. Which was the truth, but what was the situation now? Her pulse accelerated once more.

She tried her earpiece but got only static, which left her with precious few options, all of them bad.

Letting her warrior’s talent lead the way, she got to her feet. “Come on. We’re going to hide further up the tunnel.”

The pyramid’s collapse had blocked it as an escape route, but anything was better than staying where Iago expected them to be.

“Will Daddy be able to find us?” asked Braden, his blue eyes wide and worried.

“Always.” She squeezed their joined hands, healed deep inside by the feeling of the small fingers in hers. “He wanted me to tell you that he loves you very much.”

“Is he coming soon?”

“As soon as he and the others are finished with Iago and the rest of the makol,” she said aloud. But when her eyes met Hannah’s, she saw her own fear reflected back.

Worse, she thought she felt a faint vibration beneath her feet. She didn’t know if it came from fighting magic or a miniquake. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But as they headed up the tunnel, carrying a couple of the torches, moving away from the fight and toward the cave-in, she sent a whisper of thought toward the jun tan: We’re okay. But you guys need to hurry.

The solstice was coming, and with it, Cabrakan.

Rabbit battled through his growing exhaustion and kept the fireballs coming, because the fucking makol kept coming too.

Any other time, he would’ve been totally jacked by the way Myrinne stood right beside him, expression fierce as she ran through her clips and knocked the green-eyed bastards back. Now, though, he was more panicked than turned on, because he could barely protect himself, never mind her.

His head was splitting, partly because of the power he’d pulled to cloak their initial attack, and partly because he hadn’t been able to get out of Iago’s mind fast enough when he caught on. The bastard had tried to slam the door shut, and Rabbit had only gotten out because Myrinne had jammed the circlet back on him, cutting the connection before it was too late. The pain of severing the link had been excruciating, though. The agony lingered, sapping his strength.

“Get that one,” she said, pointing at a downed makol that was barely moving. “I’ll hold the others off.” She fired off two short bursts, one on each autopistol. Standing hipshot in her combat gear, with her hair in a long, dark ponytail pulled through the back of a black ball cap, she looked kick-ass sexy.

And she fit with the team, after all this time.

He snapped off a sluggish-feeling salute. “Yes, ma’am!”

Reversing his gore-spattered knife, he went for the incapacitated makol, steeling himself for the messy chore of finishing it off before it managed to regenerate. He crouched down by the bullet-

riddled body, set his knife to its neck, and—

“Rabbit,” Strike bellowed, “move!”