was a thread of excitement. Iago might have blocked him from using the dark magic, but the connection—and the fascination—remained.
It’s not where that matters, but when. This is your home at the dawn of the coming new year.
“My…” Sharp horror flooded him as the twisted black stumps around him stopped looking like random trees and started looking way too familiar. One huge, charred stump rose up above a cluster of smaller tree-skeletons. Beyond that, what he’d initially thought was a series of dunes started looking like the folded-in remains of a steel building buried beneath a layer of ash.
He didn’t need to look behind himself to know that the other dunes were more buildings set in an achingly familiar pattern. And even though he’d never fit in quite right at Skywatch, never been able to fall into lockstep with the others, his heart shuddered.
Gone. All of it… gone.
He could barely breathe as he flashed back to how it used to be, before things got serious and the fun stuff fell by the wayside. He saw bodies crowding and elbows bumping at the tables, the winikin-manned Weber grills set up off to one side, a bruising ball game working its way up and down the open area where the old Great Hall had been, and dappled shadows of sunlight coming down through the lush green leaves of the ceiba tree that marked the center of Skywatch, the heart of their tiny village.
He saw Patience and Brandt, who had taken him in after his old man died, making him feel as welcome as he ever had; he saw their twin sons, Harry and Braden, who had worshiped their Unc’ Rabbit and whom he still missed, even knowing they were safer in hiding. He saw Myrinne in the middle of the game, laughing as she fought Strike for possession of the tough rubber ball. He saw Leah, Anna, Sasha, Cara…
Gone.
“We lost the war,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Or we’re going to lose it. Is that what you’re telling me?”
No. This is one possible future. It is what will be unless you wish it otherwise. Her eyes kindled to a silver gleam that had his heart thudding once more in his chest. You are mankind’s best hope, Rabbie. The old shaman was right: You must become the crossover and persuade the Nightkeepers to turn away from the sky gods and support the Banol Kax in their fight.… Or else mankind’s champions will lose the war, and the world will become what you see around you.
The crossover. Gods. He sucked in a breath, pulse bumping as the part of him that had been sliding to despair did an about-face and beelined for wary hope. But that hope had a problem of its own. “They won’t listen to me,” he said, hating the shame of the truth. If he’d been a different person, lived a different life, maybe the Nightkeepers would’ve paid more attention. As it was, he’d blown up so much shit over the years they wouldn’t— couldn’t—take him seriously when it came to something that went against everything they’d been raised to believe.
You must make them.
“How?” He had tried. Gods knew he’d tried.
You’ll find a way. She smiled, eyes softening through the silver gleam. You’re my Rabbie. You found me… which means you can do anything.
His chest went so tight he couldn’t breathe as his heart whispered that same silly lullaby he’d heard earlier, the one he almost remembered. Rabbie and Tristan, sitting in a tree… The song lightened the gloom within and without, making it seem as if the sun might break through the thick, choking clouds.
Swallowing hard, he said, “I want to see Tristan.” He hadn’t acknowledged the need even to himself, hadn’t realized how important it was to him until his question was met with a telling silence and a dimming of her eyes, and his heart fucking fell to his toes. “Why not?”
It’s complicated, my sweet Rabbie.
“I need…”
You must be brave, baby. More important, you must work alone. Tristan can’t help you, and my powers are limited. And be warned: When you go up against the system, everyone you know will turn against you.
He shook his head. “Not Myrinne.” If anything, this would bring them closer together, because he would finally be doing what she’d been on him to try for months now. Longer.
Even her. Especially her. The answer was immediate. Absolute.
No. Impossible. Rabbit’s brain seized and then radiated pain, like he’d just chewed his way through a half gallon of Rocky Road that’d been hanging out in liquid nitrogen. “Bullshit. That’s just bullshit.”
She is an agent of the enemy, and she’s using you.
His stomach hollowed out instantly. “You’re lying.”
She reached out to him, but was unable to touch. I’m sorry, Rabbie. I’m so sorry to take this away from you.
“You’re not. You can’t.” Hands balling into fists, he started to take a step toward her, then spun and stalked away a few paces and stood, staring out over the wreckage that had been the main mansion of Skywatch.
His mind flashed on the plaque that hung—had hung?—beside the front door, the one that showed the ceiba tree as the ancients had seen it, with its roots sunk deep in the underworld, its branches touching the sky, and its trunk supporting the earth plane and forming the heart of the village. Beneath it was—had been?—engraved the motto of the modern Nightkeepers: To protect, fight, and forgive.
He had done all that, damn it. He had protected his teammates and by extension all of mankind; he had fought enemies on this plane, the in-between, and even in Xibalba itself. And he’d done his damnedest to forgive his old man for being a prick and a lousy father, and himself for making some pukingly bad decisions over the years. He’d protected, fought, forgiven. He’d done his best to be a good soldier, a good mage.
Yet still he got fucked?
Hot frustration raced through him. Why wasn’t it enough? Where was his balance, his good to even out the bad?
There is more bad to get through before you reach the good, Rabbie. Please believe me. Please trust me in this, if you trust me in nothing else. Your good times will come.
“When?” His voice broke on the word. He looked around at the familiar canyon, torn to shreds and filled with ash, and the grayness that stretched in all directions to meet the lifeless sky, and his righteous fury curdled at the knowledge that it would be like this in three months if he made the wrong decisions now.
Which meant he had to abso-fucking-lutely get it right. But Myrinne… Gods. “If it weren’t for her, I’d probably be dead already.” Before she came into his life, he’d been on the fast train to self-destructing. She’d made him grow up and be a man.
She saved you because she needed you. A parade of images raced suddenly through his mind in rapid succession: Myrinne as he’d first seen her, peering cannily through racks of pseudovoodoo garbage in her foster mother’s tea shop in the French Quarter; her talking—seducing—him into trying a Wiccan scrying ritual that had gone horribly wrong; and then the two of them together more recently, with her sharp, him frustrated.
“Fine, yeah, she pushes me. But only because she not only loves me, she believes in me. She thinks the same thing you do—that the old shaman was right about my being the key to the war. That’s why she nags.”
She pushes you where she wants you to go. She wants the power for herself, as did her mother before her.
Feeling like he was clawing to keep his head above the surface of the things he refused to believe, he grated, “That witch wasn’t her mother.” Mistress Truth hadn’t even really been a witch, either. Just a shyster who’d happened to luck into a ceremonial knife that’d carried some major power. She had gotten herself killed for it too, trying to cut a deal with Iago. She was no mother to Myrinne, and hadn’t had any power in her own right.
Are you so sure of that? his own mother asked softly. Then, before Rabbit could answer—if he’d even had an answer—she filled his mind with the thing he feared and dreaded more almost than the end-time itself… the dream.
He stood in a pool of blood, blank faced and holding a dripping knife, like something out of an episode of CSI. He imagined someone ordering, “Cut to a flashback of the murder in three… two… one… mark.” Then the camera pulled back, widening the frame to show a woman’s sprawled body, a flare of dark hair, a clever, witchy face with eyes fixed and staring. Then even farther back, to show a mansion in flames.
Myrinne was dead, Skywatch burning. And Rabbit was just fucking standing there holding his father’s
