to put us in the best possible position to defend the barrier on the zero date. Maybe you could just, I don’t know, go with it for another year?”
“Spoken like a member of the ruling elite,” JT snapped, looking seriously pissed now. He waved Sven off. “Why don’t you go do . . . whatever you were going to do?” He paused, eyes narrowing. “And while you’re at it, you might want to make sure that what you’re doing is something your own ruling elite would like.”
Sven bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
It was Carlos who said quietly, “You’re not eating, you look like hell, and you’re sneaking out nearly every night.”
“I . . . huh?”
JT sneered. “Nice. Playing dumb.”
“Seriously. No clue what you’re talking about.”
Carlos just looked at him. “Sven—”
“Never mind.” Suddenly, he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to be having this conversation. He needed to walk, run, burn off some steam. “Like I said, I was just passing through.” He headed down the path that was the long way around to the library. And when Carlos called his name, he didn’t look back.
Strike knocked on the door to Rabbit’s cottage and waited for the “ ‘S open” before he pushed through into the kitchen. The two of them were way beyond knocking formalities, but with Myrinne living there, he’d rather knock than catch an eyeful.
“You alone?” he asked when he found Rabbit spread out at the kitchen table with his laptop and a shitload of maps.
“Yep. Myr’s out at the firing range with Jade. Michael’s giving them some pointers.”
“Good. That’s good.” Strike hadn’t been entirely convinced Rabbit’s human girlfriend—and quasi wiccan— belonged on the team, but she had worked her ass off for the chance, and had continued busting hump to make herself an asset rather than a liability. And there was no arguing that she had been good for Rabbit. Hell, he hadn’t burned down anything unauthorized in nearly two years. “You find anything new?”
Rabbit sighed and pushed away from the table, rubbing his eyes. “Nothing concrete. Cheech says there are rumors of a third village being hit, but I’m having trouble getting a fix on the actual location from up here. He and his brothers are trying to get me some details.”
Over the past few weeks, the populations of two villages in the Mayan highlands had vanished, seemingly overnight. The media hadn’t really picked up on it; the only reason Rabbit knew was because he had made some contacts down there as part of trying to learn as much as he could about his mother, who had lived in the highlands—maybe—and been Xibalban—definitely. Even though the Xibalbans were an offshoot of the original Nightkeepers and had given rise to Iago’s bloodthirsty sect, the secrecy surrounding the groups meant that the Nightkeepers’ archives were pretty useless in that department, forcing him to search farther afield. He hadn’t made much progress finding out about his mother, but his contacts were proving invaluable now, as the Nightkeepers tried to figure out what the hell was going on in the highlands.
He flicked at a couple of printouts. “The probes Myrinne and I planted aren’t picking up the sort of power flux that would indicate there’s a Banol Kax in the area. I keep wondering if there’s a human explanation for the disappearances, maybe a new guerrilla army or something.”
“Fighting who or what?”
“Dunno. There were rumors of one of the big hotel chains trying to force a couple of villages higher into the mountains so they could clear cut. Or it could be a survivalist thing. According to Cheech, most of the highlanders are either ignoring the doomsday hype or treating the end date as nothing more than the start of a new calendrical cycle. But I’d bet you there are plenty of people up there who are stockpiling supplies, maybe getting together some extra weapons, just in case.”
“Makes sense.” Strike snagged two Cokes from the fridge, dumped one in front of Rabbit and popped the top on his own as he dragged out a chair and sat. “See any evidence of a guerilla compound where there didn’t used to be one?”
“That’s the thing. Granted, the forests make aerial detection tricky, but I’d expect to see something.” Rabbit lifted a shoulder. “That was why I got to thinking about survivalist stuff.”
“Underground bunkers? Maybe. But I don’t think we can rule out Iago.” Their opposite. Their nemesis. A Xibalban mage who had bound his soul to that of the Aztec god-king, Moctezuma, to become a nearly indestructible force bent on completing Moctezuma’s planned conquest of the known world . . . which had gotten considerably bigger since the fifteen hundreds.
Rabbit grimaced. “Trust me. I’m not. But the thing is, even using Moctezuma’s powers, Iago shouldn’t be able to make makol out of innocents—as far as we know the demons can only possess the evil minded. And I just can’t see him warehousing that many people who aren’t makol. So where are the rest of the villagers?”
Neither of them said the obvious: blood sacrifice. But it hung between them, an almost tangible reminder of how serious things were getting, how much worse they were likely to get over the next year.
After a moment, Strike said, “I need a favor.”
Rabbit raised an eyebrow.
“I need you to mind-bend me.”
Both eyebrows slammed down. “Why?”
“There’s something—” An alarm shrilled, interrupting.
The noise came from both of their armbands plus the intercom panel on the wall: three beats and a pause, three and a pause, which was the signal for a perimeter breach.
Normally, that would’ve sent them both running. Given the number of false alarms lately, though, they both stayed put. Sure enough, the alarms cut out after a few seconds. A moment later, Tomas’s voice came over the system, sounding disgusted. “False alarm. Sorry, gang. It’s nothing.”
Strike pressed a button to activate his ’band. “You sure about that?”
“There isn’t a damned thing on any of the monitors, visual, thermal, or magic. That’s the best I can tell you. And you know how twitchy the new setup is.”
“Yeah. Okay, thanks.” Strike cut the transmission, grimacing.
Although the magic sensors that Jade and Lucius had created using her spell caster?s talents were a huge help identifying magical fluxes, the gizmos were pretty hair-trigger. More, because of the increased traffic flowing into and out of Skywatch—deliveries mostly—Jade had tweaked a section of the blood-ward so the winikin could open and close the main gate without needing a magic-user. She was still in the process of fine-tuning the spells, though, and the alarms were crying wolf with annoying regularity.
Trying not to let it get to him, Strike drained his Coke. Maybe the sugar and caffeine would give him the needed kick in the ass. Nothing else had, lately. He was off-kilter, and couldn’t figure out how to get back on.
Aware that Rabbit was waiting for him to continue, he stared at the ceiling and said, “There’s something wrong with me.”
There. He had said it, and the world hadn’t ended.
Not yet, anyway, he thought with grim humor. Give it a year. Whether he liked it or not, he was the backbone of the fighting force; the fealty oath connected the magi and winikin to their king, making them susceptible to his will. So when the king went south, so did the Nightkeepers—case in point being the part where his father had gone a little crazy and a lot megalomaniacal, precipitating the Solstice Massacre. Which was a hell of a legacy.
Rabbit didn’t say anything for a moment, just sat there, staring at Strike with an “oh, shit” look on his face. Finally, he said, “Has Sasha checked you out?”
“I came to you first.” Strike tapped his temple. “I think it’s in here. I want you to see if you can fix it.”
He had wrestled with the decision, lying awake long into the night while Leah breathed softly beside him, and kneeling long hours in the royal shrine, praying for guidance from gods that couldn’t talk to their earthly warriors anymore.
“What does Leah think?”
“She knows.” Which was what Rabbit had really been asking. “She’s the only one besides you. If Jox . . .” Strike trailed off. No point in going there. Jox was where he needed to be, with his Hannah and the Nightkeeper twins they were sworn to protect. “We’re trusting your discretion on this.”
