Anna had taken the suite that she and Strike had shared as kids, though it had been redecorated in an eclectic mix of bright colors and choice pieces from her rogues’ gallery of fakes. Strike was in the living room, sitting on a plush love seat with his feet on a circular wooden coffee table that was carved with the calendar round. Anna lay on a sofa nearby, curled on her side, eyes closed, breathing slowly. Her skin was very pale, her dark reddish hair a stark contrast. She could simply have been sleeping, but Dez knew it was much more than that. He had come out of his Triad coma within a couple of weeks. She had awakened the same day, but never came all the way back. And now she was drifting again, losing ground.
“You want to tell me why this is a priority all of a sudden?” Strike asked, setting aside the magazine he had been holding, and rising to his feet. “Or should I take a wild guess that it has something to do with our resident bounty hunter, who looks way more at home in guns and leather than she did in business casual?” A Nightkeeper couldn’t take a mate without having sworn to his king.
“That’d be a decent guess.” Reese wasn’t the whole reason he wanted to take the oath, not even the primary one, but Strike would know the rest of it soon enough. He wanted to tell Reese first, then the others. Tomorrow. He would do it tomorrow.
“Want to take it outside?” Strike asked.
“Probably a good idea.” Less messy than sacrificing onto the carpet.
They headed through a pair of sliders to a small patio that was enclosed by a sturdy metal railing. Two chairs and a small table sat off to one side near an unfolded awning. The night air was cool and dry, the stars washed out by the mansion lights, and as Dez faced Strike squarely, he caught a glimmer surrounding the other man—a halo of energy, maybe, or a hint of magic that didn’t hit his other senses. He did a double take, but when he looked more closely, it was gone. Maybe hadn’t ever been. Pulling his ceremonial blade, he nodded. “I’m ready when you are.”
There was no fancy ceremony, no invocation. Strike simply looked him in the eye and said, “Who am I?”
Dez drew his knife blade sharply across his tongue. Pain slapped; blood bloomed salty in his mouth and ran down his chin to drip on the patio stones. Bending, he spat a mouthful of blood at Strike’s feet, and said, “You are my king.”
He felt the fealty oath take hold, felt the magic of the Manikin scepter—the barrier-bound symbol of the jaguar?s rulership—forge a link with his soul, and knew the deed was done. He was bound to Strike, to his king. Gods help them both.
Anna was nowhere. She was everywhere. She was nothing and everything. She hung in the fog of her own mind, lost.
Sometimes she remembered being a teacher, a wife, a normal woman living a normal life. Sometimes she was a visionary, a priestess, a warrior, a child, a mother. Sometimes she was a thousand women at once, living a thousand lifetimes strung together by a thin chain hung with a glowing yellow crystal carved into the shape of a skull. And other times, like now, she was almost herself. Those times, she could open her eyes and see the room around her, could comprehend it as “hers,” knew she had been told that someone had repainted it for her, wanting her to feel at home.
But “home,” like “hers,” was nothing more than a vague concept in the fog, no more real to her than the memory fragments that shot past her mind’s eye, glimpses of a thousand lives gone past—here, a baby; there, a lover. Never hers.
She felt a presence nearby, the one that she connected to the concept of “brother.” Their shared blood formed a connection that echoed grief and worry into her. She had tried to reach through that connection, tried to latch on to something there that glittered in the fog, but it had slipped away from her time and again. So lately she had stopped trying and simply . . . drifted.
Now, though, she knew she couldn’t drift. There was something she needed to do, something she had to say. She fought through the clinging fog, managed to find a body that felt dim and distant—her body. She made it turn to him and say: “He hides in the darkness, but must come into the light to act. Stop him and fulfill the prophecies, or Vucub will reign.”
He said her name, reached for her, but she was already gone, slipping back into the fog with only that thin connection remaining. In her mind, though, she whispered: Brother.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
December 19
Solstice minus two days
When Reese awoke she lay still for a moment and tracked the lightness in her chest, the sense of anticipation. When was the last time she had felt this way? Had she ever, or was it all sharper and more immediate because each minute, each hour, was more precious than it had been before?
She didn’t know, but she knew who and what she wanted. He had said she was it for him, and the reverse applied. As long as they had that going for them, they could figure out the rest of it together, because he was right that there was no such thing as perfect timing, especially for them. She couldn’t wait to see him, to talk to him, but her half-formed plan of sharing a quiet breakfast—and maybe more—went off the rails the moment she got out of the shower and found a “meeting in the great room” message waiting for her.
Dez had saved her a seat, but when she shot him a raised eyebrow, he shook his head. “I’m not sure what’s going on.” He paused and, after a quick glance showed that nobody was paying particular attention to them, lowered his voice. “How’d you sleep?”
“Just fine, thanks,” she purred, and had the pleasure of watching his eyes go hot at her tone, and all that it implied.
She didn’t get a chance to say more, because Strike came into the room then, looking strung out, and said without preamble: “Last night, Anna came around long enough to say: ‘He hides in the darkness, but must come into the light to act. Stop him and fulfill the prophecies, or Vucub will reign.’ Then she lapsed fully unconscious.”
The warm fizz in Reese’s blood flattened out as a murmur of surprise and dismay went around the room. “Oh,” she said softly, heart aching.
“Hell,” Dez bit out, voice sharp. When she glanced at him, he shook his head. “Poor Anna.” But her instincts tugged, because that hadn’t sounded like sympathy. Or was she overanalyzing again, looking for reasons not to commit?
She shook her head, trying to dismiss the Fallonesque logic.
Lucius was talking now, referring to notes written in his crabbed scrawl, which was practically hieroglyphics in its own right. “Breaking down Anna’s message, which we have to assume is legit, given her powers, I would say that ‘he’ refers to Iago. Then the mention of darkness could mean that he’s hiding in the dark aspect of the barrier. That would explain why we can’t find him on this plane—he’s hiding between the planes, at the border of the underworld. He’ll have to come out, though, to detonate the compass weapon during the solstice.” He paused. “As for Vucub, who is also called Lord Vulture, he’s supposed to preside over the twilight that follows the apocalypse, when day and night are no longer separated.”
“Like a nuclear winter,” Nate said. He glanced sharply at Dez. “The aftermath of the serpents? weapon, maybe?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned back to Lucius. “She mentioned prophecies, plural. Which ones are in play at the moment?”
“I’m working on it, but I—”
Sirens blared, cutting him off. Reese jolted to her feet along with the others, though Michael said, “It’s probably just another false alarm.”
Then the intercom crackled and Tomas’s voice reported: “Long-range cameras show an old pickup truck headed our way. Single occupant, nothing on the magic sensors.”
Up until a few days ago, the very rare random stranger who had showed up at the front gate had gotten
