Reese ran until she couldn’t anymore, then walked, pressing the heel of her hand into her cramped side. The winter sun shone down on her, making her light-headed. Or maybe the spins came from the endless expanse of sky above the canyon, which trapped her without walls or promises.
Sure, she could snag one of the Jeeps and start driving, but she would take way too much baggage with her—knowledge of Iago, Anna’s warning, the serpent staff, the end-time war, all of it. How could she leave that behind, knowing that she could help? More, how could she abandon this odd group of strangers who had become her friends?
From the day she turned down the Denver cops’ offer to relocate her and became an informant instead, refusing to let the Cobras win, she had been trying to make a difference. What was more, she had almost always been part of a team. She had drifted on the outskirts of those teams, it was true—as both a snitch and a bounty hunter—but there had been others around her, people who were also trying to make the world a better place. She had lost that when she went private, with her jobs becoming a one-man show and Fallon easing her out of cop work “for her own good.” Stumbling onto the Nightkeepers’ world had changed all that, though. She was part of a team here; she could make a difference.
She couldn’t walk out on them, on what they were doing. That was a no-brainer. But she could work from anywhere, which meant that the decision to stay wasn’t nearly so simple. Not when things had suddenly gotten far too complicated. Even if she stayed, even if she gave Dez the chance he had asked for, on some level she would always be watching him, waiting for him to make a move against Strike. How could she be with him like that? But she didn’t think she could stay at Skywatch and not want to be with him, because when he had kissed her just now it had felt like she was his entire focus, like nothing else existed in that moment except the two of them. Finally.
Damn it, Dez. How freaking typical of him that when he finally got it, when he finally wanted her so much that he didn’t give a crap about anything else, it was in a situation like this.
When the trail she’d been stomping along doubled back, she stopped, blinking up at the back wall of the box canyon. She hadn’t meant to hike this far, at least not consciously. Now though, something tugged at her, drawing her onward.
Off to one side, the library door stood open, inviting her in. She could go in and begin searching for the mountain temple Keban had mentioned, getting a head start on Jade and Lucius. That was something real and tangible she could do, something that would put off the decisions she needed to make.
It wasn’t the library she was being drawn to, though. The world spun gently around her as her feet—which suddenly seemed very far away from her head, as though the top and bottom of her had become disconnected somehow—carried her up the path to the pueblo. On one level, she was getting worried—was she dehydrated, feverish, suffering some new aftereffect of the makol bite? The larger part of her, though, was caught up in the sudden swirling conviction that she needed to do this, that it was important. Come on, the mud-daubed walls seemed to beckon. This way.
She found herself in one of the rooms where opposite walls were carved and painted with the squiggly petroglyph lines that might be water, might be wind, might be serpents. Dizzy and suddenly very tired, though she had really been up for only an hour or so, she put her back to the wall and slid down, so she was sitting with the serpent symbols right above her. The air was warm, the sun a honey-colored reflection from another room, making everything putty colored and soft, as her eyes . . . drifted . . . shut.
She awoke moments later, but she wasn’t really awake. She was dreaming. She had to be, because there was a see-through warrior sitting opposite her, beneath the second set of petroglyphs.
He was timeworn, careworn, his face weathered, his skin tough, but even in his translucent state she could see that his hair was dark, with only a few threads gone gray. Wearing a brown robe worked with intricate patterns of beads and feathers, along with flat jade prosthetics designed to exaggerate his nose and sloping forehead, he struck a halfway point between Mayan and Hopi. His eyes were wholly black, with no whites at all, and his forearm was marked with the glyphs of the serpent and the warrior.
A tremor ran through her at the realization that either this was a really vivid dream . . . or she had been shanghaied by one of Dez’s ancestors.
You seek the serpent temple atop Coatepec Mountain. His lips didn’t move; the words sounded in her head.
“Is that its name?” Her voice echoed strangely; her body felt very far away.
There, he must fulfill the prophecies, or the earth plane will suffer Vucub’s twilight.
Dread and excitement churned through her; an ancestor had come to her, was talking to her. But considering whose ancestor it was, she didn’t dare take any of it at face value. Swallowing, she whispered, “Are you Anntah?”
The spirit guide nodded. “I called you here to bring him a message. Tell him that he must do as he was born to do, or the sacrifices that have led to this point are meaningless.”
Hearing the familiar words from long ago, she narrowed her eyes as suspicions took root. “I’ve heard that rhetoric before. You got inside Keban’s head, too, didn’t you? You told him to sacrifice Joy and save Dez instead. It was you all along.”
“Fool!” The word cracked in her brain, bringing a slash of pain. “Do not question me, and do not think that you are protected by destiny. You were never meant for him.”
Her poker face failed her abruptly. “That’s a lie.”
The spirit’s lips curved cruelly. “He was meant for the twins of the star bloodline. With them gone, he has no destined mate and must fulfill the prophecies alone. You must give him the message and leave, or you will answer to Lord Vulture when he arrives.”
When his presence wavered, she reached for him. “Wait! What—”
His image fractured abruptly, turning into honey-colored shards that spun away from her and disappeared.
She blinked awake to find her body stiff, her heart racing, her stomach knotted with stress and heartache. The afternoon shadows said she’d lost half a day, and her pulse thudded in her ears as she tried to process the new information:
The mountain they were looking for was called Coatepec.
The threat from Lord Vulture was real.
Anntah was an arrogant, opinionated bastard.
And she and Dez weren’t destined mates.
That last part shouldn’t have bothered her the most, but it did, making her realize that on some level she had wanted to believe the gods were rooting for them to get together, maybe even helping. That would explain how she’d been brought back into his life, and why she sensed the magic, especially his, even though she was only human. But if she believed Anntah—and in this case she unfortunately did—then coincidences really did exist, and it was an accident that they were back in each other?s orbits. If they weren’t destined mates, then there was no grand plan for them, no cosmic interference, no hope of her ever wearing his jun tan. And, she realized with an embarrassed start, she had wanted that too. Somewhere deep down inside, she had let herself imagine them belonging to each other permanently, at long last.
How could she still want that, even knowing that he had hidden the truth from her, over and over again? How could—
“Enough,” she said, closing her eyes and digging her fingers into her aching scalp. “You’re not nineteen anymore, and the world doesn’t begin and end with Mendez.” Or, rather, their relationship wasn’t central to the end of the world. Mendez himself could very well be, and the Nightkeepers needed to hear what Anntah had told her. Shoving the personal stuff behind a mental tape line that said “do not cross,” she got herself up and headed down the trail to the library. Swinging open the door, she called, “I know what mountain we?re . . .” She trailed off when she found the cavernous space deserted.
That put a shimmy in her stomach. Not that Jade, Lucius, and Natalie were chained to the place, but under the circumstances they should’ve been there working . . . Which suggested that something else had happened that took priority.
Oh, God. Suddenly aware that she’d been out of the loop for hours, she reached for her armband, only to realize she wasn’t wearing it. How had she forgotten it? Stupid. For a second she thought they might be off looking
