CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Coatepec Mountain
The ’port went off without a hitch, with Strike and Rabbit collaborating to land the team safely in the small clearing downhill from the mountain’s crown, right on target. Once they were there, though, Strike doubled over and retched miserably.
“Jesus.” Dez stared at the king as the sharp sounds broke through his dark roil of emotion: regret, remorse, anger, grief. Reese would hate him for knocking her out and locking her up, but what other choice had she left him? He’d been telling the truth, damn it. Maybe not all of it, but the part that he’d left out hadn’t hurt anyone but her, and he hadn’t dared risk having her destabilize an already fragile team. Especially not when parts of it were getting shakier by the second.
“Sorry.” Strike straightened painfully, waving off Leah when she tried to help, though softening it with a quiet, “I’m good.” That was an overstatement, though; he was gray and peaked, and his combat gear hung on him even with extra holes punched.
Dez was painfully aware that a couple of the others were thinking the same thing he was: If it came to it, Strike could very well die today, by his hand. There had been no more messages, no miracle cure from Lucius. The prophecies stood, the danger clear and present : The king had to make the ultimate sacrifice and the last serpent needed to take out his adversary and become king.
As if sensing his thoughts, Strike limped over to him, Leah hovering at his elbow. The king’s eyes were still the same vivid cobalt blue, his hair black and thick, tied back at his nape. But beneath the jawline beard, his face was gaunt and drawn. When he reached Dez, he held out a hand. “Whatever happens today is on the gods, Mendez. Not you.”
Aware that the others were watching, Dez inclined his head in a shallow bow. “If we go down, we go down fighting . . . Sire.” He’d never called Strike that before, probably never would again. But in that moment, it felt right. Then he took the king’s hand, aligning palm to palm, and, going on instinct, opened himself wide, trying to pump energy into the other man, shoring him up as he had learned to do with Reese.
For a moment, he made the connection: The king’s eyes widened and color stained his throat. “Don’t drain yourself on my account.”
“I’m good.” In fact, he was better than good—the power flowed around him like blood, thick and warm. It coalesced, pulsed, surged. And then suddenly it was rushing away from him, flaring outward as if magnetized to a distant point, and “good” went to “oh, shit” in an instant. His magic was wild, crazed, jacked on the solstice rush. Damn it. He yanked away from Strike, trying desperately to rein in the power that poured through him, strange and sinuous.
The king pointed. “Look!”
A section of air near the mountain’s peak shimmered and dark magic hissed as, with a whoomp that sent Sven’s familiar scattering, the serpent temple appeared, its snake-carved pillars and open-roofed structure completely enclosed within a shield that had a strange, pearlescent sheen. The moment it was fully in place, the energy flow cut out and Dez sagged, suddenly drained. Shit. Shitshitshit. “What the fuck was that?”
“I’m guessing it was you summoning the serpent temple,” Leah said drily. But her eyes telegraphed a silent thanks for the color in Strike’s face, and the fact that he looked like he might be able to fire a weapon without the recoil flattening him.
“We’re still ten minutes from the three-hour window,” Michael reported. He tossed Dez a pair of binoculars. “And check it out. I don’t think they were ready for the big reveal.”
The scene jumped into focus: a robed shadow knelt within the shield while the green-eyed villagers scrambled to surround the temple, their weapons at rest position, deactivated. “Fuck the recon,” Dez said, making the call. “We hit them now.”
As the others sprang into action, digging into the crates for guns and ammo rather than computers and tactical equipment, Strike said in an undertone, “You know this is either a brilliant tactical move, or suicide.”
“Story of my life,” Dez said, telling himself that bad timing was his and Reese’s thing, not his alone. But as his team formed up around him, he heard something that chilled his blood and made him wonder whether his tactical move wasn’t entirely self-serving. It was a soft, feminine whisper at the back of his brain that said: I’m here.
Skywatch
Anna, for fuck’s sake, get up! The mental snarl cut through the fog, harsh and familiar, yet so out of place that it jolted her to a semblance of focus, bringing a flash of hard gray eyes and anger.
“You’re dead,” she whispered. She felt her face move, but didn’t hear any sound.
You’ll be dead, too, if you don’t get moving and open your godsdamned eyes.
“There’s nothing but the fog.”
Those aren’t the eyes I’m talking about and you damn well know it.
Her heart shuddered. “I can’t.”
You have to. He needs you to wake the hell up and open your fucking eyes.
She knew who “he” was. Brother. The one who sat beside her, sad and silent, looking like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Because he did. “I can’t.” This time the whisper came with a breathy sound. Her own voice. She heard the noise on the air, felt the vibrations in her throat. And part of her despaired, because the fog was safe and familiar. It didn’t take anything from her or force anything on her. It didn’t show her tunnels and flames, didn’t make her die over and over again in her dreams, didn’t—
They need you.
She didn’t want to be needed, not that way. She wanted her little house in the suburbs, her office at the university, her students, her husband, a baby . . .
Bullshit, he snapped, plucking the thoughts from her mind. You just don’t want to face the truth. A pause. Why am I even bothering? You always were such a girl.
“Screw you.”
There was no answer, the voice was gone, lost again in the beckoning fog. Her anger, though, didn’t go with it. The burn stayed inside her, refusing to let her slide back into the grayness of her own mind. And along with it came whispers, not in his voice, but in the thought-images and sensory memories of a thousand lifetimes, a hundred thousand visions. Get up, they said. You have power—use it! Help him, or you both will die.
She saw Brother ’s face, still and cold, caught a gleam of luminous green, and her heart shuddered. To her surprise, that progressed to a full-body shudder, then a prickling wash of sensation as long-unused neurons flared to life and she became cognizant of the space around her. She was in a room—bedroom, her brain supplied—with things arranged on shelves and hung on the walls. Artifacts. Fakes. Cheap knockoffs. Just like she was a cheap knockoff of a true itza’at seer, unable to control the talents she didn’t want. But one of the fakes caught her attention. The stone knife was unwieldy and poorly balanced, its hilt carved with gibberish glyphs from wildly different periods—she knew that because she knew the knife, had used it to open the occasional letter. But now she locked on it, and the building urgency inside her said: Yes.
She lurched to her feet, was up before she was aware of the effort it took, made it across the room in a stutter-step parody of walking on long-unused legs, and grabbed the knife from its little display stand. Without thinking or pausing, she drew the knife sharply across her right wrist. And power flared through her, bringing images of death.
In the next wing over, Reese awoke and blinked up at the ceiling, then around at her surroundings, aware of a deep pit in her stomach. Dez’s bed. Dez’s bedroom. No Dez. Memory returned like a knife through the heart. He had left her here, locked her in so she wouldn’t warn the others.
“Son of a—” She cut herself off and launched off the bed, adrenaline clearing the last of the sleep spell. She
