natural part of his hang-loose flow, now they felt forced.
“Here. Let’s get you up.”
Most of the other magi were in the sacred chamber, watching him as he sat up and let his legs dangle over the edge of the altar. Carlos wasn’t there, though, which brought a thump of disappointment. Making himself ignore the feeling of being a damned zoo exhibit, he rubbed his chest where he had bruised himself struggling against his bonds, then his wrists, where the ties had chafed. He glanced at the red marks. Then he stopped and took a second, longer look. The warrior?s mark and the translocator?s talent glyph that meant he could move small things from point A to point B with his mind looked the same as before. But his bloodline mark was different now: it was enclosed in a circle with two domino-type dots in the upper right, indicating the number “two.”
He was twice a coyote. Once for himself, once for the creature that was now inextricably linked to him.
He tuned in on the animal’s low-grade thought stream, something about jackrabbits, smelly feet, and the coyote’s contentment at having finally soldered the necessary connection with its Man. Beneath that was a solid, ineffable core of determination: the coyote would kill for its Man, die for him. It would be his weapon, his companion, his eyes and ears.
And this was going to take some serious getting used to.
Picking up on his sudden emotional surge, the coyote lifted its head and whined softly.
“Sorry, Mac,” he said. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I wish for both our sakes I had caught on quicker.”
“Mac.” Lucius nodded. “From chaamac. Coyote. Good name.”
“Actually, I was going for the CSI: New York character. It’s got Gary Sinese’s eyes.”
Michael snorted, but then did a double take. “You know what? You’re right. Weird.”
Sven pushed himself off the altar and stood, feeling far more balanced than he would have expected. “Mac isn’t the only one I owe an apology to. I owe all of you one, and to the winikin and whoever I’m missing. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t deal with it. I just . . . I don’t know. Did an ostrich.” He inhaled deeply, feeling the blood in his veins, the magic at his fingertips. “But that’s over, starting right now. I feel clearer and stronger than I have in . . . hell. Months. Years.”
Maybe ever. Had he been seeking his familiar all this time? He thought he might have been, because he felt suddenly centered and strong. He had a feeling he wouldn’t have any more problems targeting his translocations, no more wet-firecracker fireballs, no more questioning whether he was really a warrior or not. Now, there wasn’t a shred of doubt in his mind that he could—and would—kick some major ass. He could feel the latent power stirring in his blood, so much stronger than ever before.
Mac got up and heeled up against his side, Sinese eyes hard and businesslike. Sven dropped a hand to the top of his familiar’s head, felt the stiff, bristly fur, and the click of connection that said: finally. And he looked at Strike. “Send me south, to the latest village that was hit. Maybe we’ll be able to find something the rest of you missed.”
It was time for him to stop fucking around and get to work.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
December 18
Solstice minus three days
By day three of Reese’s magic-accelerated convalescence, she wanted to be free from the fuzzy bubble of lassitude that had lingered in the wake of the makol bite, out of her suite, and far away from Dez.
It shouldn’t have been easy to live with him. They had spent five years together, more than ten apart, and they had become completely new people during that decade. But somehow none of that had mattered the first morning, when she had woken up beside him and felt his heartbeat as her own. And it hadn’t mattered over the following three days, as he calmly but firmly refused to be fired as her nurse, remaining immovable as granite when she tried to get him to leave her alone to be her cranky bitch self—she didn’t do sick well—in peace. Instead, he had stayed with her, hung out with her, and brought her revoltingly balanced meals, each time holding her dessert hostage until she had eaten what he considered an acceptable amount of the salad, stir fry, or whatever.
The food wasn’t bad—quite the opposite, in fact—but the principle of it galled her. She was a grown-up. She would eat her damned dessert first if she wanted to. Yet even that pique had a hard time holding out against him as the first day turned into the second, then the third, and she was forced to admit, inwardly at least, that it wasn’t so much about the past anymore, not really. She liked the man he was today. More, she was coming to trust him, because her gut said he was what she saw in front of her. He was solid and real. More, he was powerful, yet he was willing to be part of the team rather than its leader. A new man, just as Strike had called him.
During the day, he mostly acted as her data-crunching assistant, making library runs, phone calls, and whatever else she needed. There was still a hard edge in the “fuck the world, I’ll do it my way” attitude he brought to every task, and the way his voice lowered an octave when her contacts gave him static. But then each night he lay beside her, holding her hand and channeling his warmth into her, healing her. Caring for her.
Something had changed between them since the makol attack, as if the blood-link he’d used to save her had connected them more permanently. She saw it in his eyes, felt it in the way the way the air sparked when they were near each other. Yet although they slept together each night, they hadn’t even kissed . . . which had her alternating between frustration and relief. Part of it was her injuries, she knew. But as the days passed and she caught a heated glance with no follow-up, or found herself reaching out to him but pulling back before she made contact, she realized it was more than that. It was . . . everything.
Before that long-ago night in the storm, when she had been nineteen and love blind, she had resented the way he kept telling her to wait until they had a better place, better jobs, assured safety. Back then she had believed utterly that if he had wanted her—really wanted her—he would’ve taken her, no matter what. Now, though, she was starting to see his side. Because how could she and Dez devote time and energy to each other when they needed to be focusing on finding the fifth artifact and the location where the weapon was to be detonated? The Nightkeepers’ mission was too important.
You’re rationalizing. He’d go for it if he really wanted to, and so would you. Which means you don’t really trust him yet . . . and something’s holding him back.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath, and made herself get back to work, hammering away at her laptop. Dez was down south for a few hours, seeing if he could pick up a faint trail that Sven’s coyote had found and then lost. “It might be something,” he had said, “might be nothing.” But Strike had figured it was worth checking out, because they were low on leads and running out of time. Meanwhile, she was working her ass off on locating the fifth artifact or, failing that, some clue to where Iago might have stashed Keban, the artifacts, and the makol army. “Come on,” she urged under her breath as she scanned down the e-mail responses she’d gotten to her various queries. “Give me something here. We need a damned break.”
Her heart gave a little shimmy when she saw a familiar e-mail address with the Denver PD?s tag. She hesitated for a long moment before clicking it open and reading the message. Then she reread it, heart sinking because it was a break, all right, but not a good one: Iago had the fifth artifact.
“Damn, damn, damn.” She hit up Dez’s cell with a text: Two-headed snake staff stolen from private collection three hours ago. All info is being suppressed in media, but the file is waiting for me in Denver.
That was the small bright spot in what was otherwise shitty news: She had an excuse to get out of her suite and back into the field, because her PD contact had insisted that she pick up the file in person. She thought that the familiar sights and sounds of uptown would be a welcome change, for a few hours, at least. And it would give her a break from Dez, a chance to clear her head.
Or so she thought, until ten minutes after she sent the text when he strode into her suite. They were arguing by the eleven-minute mark, when he announced that he was going with her.
“What part of ‘familiar face’ and ‘parole violation’ are you not getting?” She glared at him, mentally calling
