Dawnkeepers (42 page)

“Where are we going?” she asked when he’d sort of stagger-stepped them outside and partway down the beaten track in the snow.

“Back to Iago. Trust me.” It hurt to talk, hurt to think. Hurt to put one foot in front of the other.

Myrinne’s breath hissed out when she saw the mage and the woman sprawled on the floor, but she didn’t ask, said only, “Tell me what to do.”

“Stand back.” Rabbit fell to his knees between Iago and the woman, and used Iago’s knife to reblood his palm, then the Xibalban’s. Taking the other man’s hand in his and assuming the role of dominant power, he searched for the gray mist, found it, and climbed back inside the bastard’s head.
Send us here,
he ordered, and pictured the gates outside Skywatch, outside the wards. Aloud, he said to Myrinne, “Take my other hand, and grab on to the woman.”

“We’re taking them with us?”

“Gonna try.”

But the magic was sluggish, the power slow to come. The preteleport rattle cycled too slowly, cutting in and out like a bad engine no matter how hard he leaned on his connection to the barrier and Iago’s faltering power.

They weren’t going to make it.
Shit.

“Let go of her,” he ordered tersely. “Listen carefully. If I’m unconscious when we get where we’re going, you’re going to have to deal with . . . with my family, I guess you could say. Here’s what I want you to do.” He sketched out the best plan he could think of with his brain halfway inside Iago’s. Then he fell silent, unable to spare the energy for more explanation. He dropped Iago’s hand but kept the mind-link intact.
Gods help me,
he said inside his swirling skull.
Myrinne is important; I know she’s important. Help me get her safe.

This time when he leaned on Iago and forced the mage to initiate the ’port magic, the rattle cycled up faster, still not quite enough, but as good as it was going to get.

Hoping to hell he didn’t send them into the side of a mountain or something, Rabbit closed his eyes and looked into Iago’s mind, where he could finally see the glowing yellow teleport thread connecting him and Myrinne to their destination.
Take it,
he told Iago.
Send us there.

The world lurched. Everything went gray-green.

And the Xibalban’s dark magic sent Rabbit and his human home.

“Doorbell. Gotta go.”

“But what about—”

“Don’t care. You deal with it.” Nate slapped his phone shut and tossed it on the little table near the door on his way out. Then he hauled ass up to the mansion, through the building, and out the front door, which was where the commotion seemed to be coming from.

Someone—Jox, probably—had killed the alarm, but the entire population of the compound had mobilized to the front gate, which was wide-open.

Not good,
Nate thought, but forced himself to slow down to a purposeful walk as he strode up to the crowd, aware that there were a couple of stragglers behind him still. “What’s going on?” he asked nobody in particular.

Before he got an answer, the king bellowed, “Out of the way!” The crowd parted and Strike appeared, carrying . . . Holy shit, was that Rabbit?

The king’s face was set and hard, with worry riding the edges, and it looked as if he were going to mow through anyone who got in his way, including Jox, who was tugging at his arm, trying to slow him down. Behind Strike strode Leah, looking as though she were in full-on cop mode as she half escorted, half dragged a young girl, a total stranger. Behind them was Alexis, looking borderline frantic as she talked fast, trying to convince Leah of something and not making headway.

When she saw Nate, Alexis locked onto him and mouthed,
Stop him!

They might have their differences when it came to matters of state, but there was no arguing the fear in her face, so Nate put himself between Strike and the front door of Skywatch and said,
“Nochem.”

The word was meant to remind Strike that he couldn’t think like a man when he was king. For a second Nate thought the other man was going to ignore him, blow right through him, but then it seemed to penetrate. Strike’s head came up and he locked onto Nate, fury and annoyance hardening his cobalt blue eyes. “Get the fuck out of my way, Blackhawk.”

“I will. In thirty seconds, once you’ve thought this through.” Nate glanced at Rabbit, wincing at how thin the teen had gotten, how ragged. “Where are you taking him?”

“To his cottage,” Strike said, his voice a low growl. “And if you don’t stand aside, I’m going through you.” The grief in his expression was that of a father or an older brother who’d almost lost family, or a
winikin
who had failed in his duty. Nate knew that Rabbit’s disappearance had dragged on the king, tormented him. And because of that, he knew he had to be careful or Strike
would
go through him, losing caution to emotion.

“Think it through,” Nate said, picking his words carefully. “Be rational.”

The king bared his teeth. “Fuck rationality. I want him back where he belongs, where he should’ve been all along.”

“Wait,” said a soft voice, one that didn’t belong to any of the compound’s residents. The girl, who was in her late teens, dark-haired and pretty, and equally as rough-looking as Rabbit, if not more so, pushed ahead and put herself in front of the king. “When he knew he was going to pass out before you guys got to us, he gave me a message for you.” She paused. “You’re Strike-out, right?”

Pain flashed on the king’s face, along with wary hope at her use of Rabbit’s old, jeering nickname for him. “Yeah.”

“He told me to give you this.” She pulled a knife, but before anybody could take her down and protect their king, she flipped it in a practiced move and held it out to Strike, haft-first.

There was a ripple of surprise from the gathered crowd, one that mimicked the clutch in Nate’s gut when he recognized the knife they’d lost to Iago back in Boston. Which meant Rabbit, at least, had been in contact with the Xibalban.

It also meant they had the Volatile’s prophecy back in their hands.

“Thank you.” Strike accepted the knife without comment or ceremony, and Nate had to force himself not to snatch it from him. As before, the knife called to him, made him want to touch it, to hold it.

The girl continued, “I’m also supposed to tell you to lock us both up and ward the shit out of the room, and that he’ll explain the rest when he wakes up.”

Which was so not good news, Nate knew, because it meant Rabbit believed the Nightkeepers had something to fear from him or the girl, or both.
Shit.

Strike’s expression went bleak, and he had to clear his throat before he said, “Was there anything else?”

She nodded. “I’m supposed to tell Jox not to burn the eggs.”

Both the king and his
winikin
relaxed at that, letting Nate know that it was a safe word or something, a cue that the message was genuine and unforced. “Okay,” Strike finally said. “Okay. We do what Myrinne says.”

The girl looked startled. “How’d you know my name?”

“Lucky guess. Come on.” The king led the way, with Jox at his side and Leah shepherding the girl. Myrinne. As he strode through the main door, the king called, “I want all magic users downstairs near the storerooms in five minutes to help me set the wards.” Which was something of a relief, because it meant he was taking Rabbit’s warning to heart and setting some serious magic.

Nate stayed back until Alexis joined him, and had a feeling his own expression mirrored the worry on her face. “What do you think?” he asked.

She glanced at the starscape overhead, which was dimmed some by the front lights of Skywatch. “I think it’s going to be a long night. What do you think?”

“That we’re going to run out of storerooms if this keeps up.” They’d wound up locking Lucius back down in the room he’d occupied his first couple of days at Skywatch, on the theory that the single room was easier to ward, and the sturdy walls and the lack of windows made physical locks more practical and efficient.

She nodded. “Won’t argue with you on that.”

“That’s a first.”

“Not my fault you’ve got warped ideas of logic.” But she held out a hand to him. “Come on, royal adviser. We’ve got some work to do.”

Surprisingly, though, once they had the wards up and the royal council had convened in the kitchen over chips and salsa, the king didn’t fight them on the idea of major security measures.

“Look,” he finally said, “I’m not stupid. We’ve already had a taste of what happened when Iago got someone inside, and for crap’s sake, I’m one of the few people here old enough to remember the massacre. It’s not like I’m looking to throw the doors open and invite what-the-fuck inside.”

But he was still reacting as much with emotion as logic, and history said that when the jaguar kings started thinking like men and fathers rather than kings, bad things happened. Nate might not buy into the whole cycle-of-time thing, but he believed in basic psychology, which said that Strike needed their help. The fact that Nate and Alexis were pretty united in their recommendations was a huge swing in their favor, forcing Strike to finally agree—albeit reluctantly—to having Jox set up additional surveillance in each of the storerooms. Granted, the motion detectors and infrareds couldn’t detect ’port magic—and it wasn’t yet clear whether Rabbit had added
that
to his arsenal too, though how’d he get home otherwise?—but the gadgets couldn’t be influenced by a mind-bender, either.

After that, they waited to hear back from Leah, who had taken Myrinne to the kitchen for some food with a side of interrogation, or Anna, who’d taken the knife so she could translate the normal script as well as the starscript.

Leah arrived first. “Iago has had him for just over a week,” she announced without preamble, then went on to sketch out a summary of the teens’ imprisonment, and what little Myrinne knew about the Xibalban, which wasn’t anything they hadn’t already figured out.

While she was talking, Strike rose and started pacing the length of the royal suite’s sitting area. By the time she was finished, he looked like he wanted to put his fist—or a fireball—through the wall. He held himself back, but Nate almost wished he’d let fly and burn off some of the emotion before it made him do something stupid.

“Gods damn it,” the king finally said. “We should’ve fucking gone after Iago weeks ago.”

“We couldn’t find him,” Leah pointed out, “just like we couldn’t find Rabbit.”

That brought Alexis’s head up. “Can you lock onto Rabbit now?” she asked the king.

He stopped pacing for a second, then frowned and shook his head. “No. I can’t. Which means we were right; Iago knows how to make people invisible to ’port magic. He must’ve blocked Rabbit’s ’port lock right there at the museum, then let him go—I don’t know . . . so he could watch him, maybe. Wait until he got into enough trouble that he needed rescuing, and might be desperate enough, lonely enough to join Iago’s team.” His voice went ragged when he said, “Did you see the kid’s arm? He’s wearing the goddamned hellmouth.” He stopped, facing a wall, but instead of putting his fist through it, he leaned his forehead against the painted plaster and said in a low, hollow voice, repeating what Leah had just told them, “Iago was going to sacrifice them, during the equinox. Another two days and he would’ve been dead.”

“He made it out,” Alexis started to say, but Nate waved her quiet, and she was surprised enough that she actually shut up.

Knowing he’d have to apologize for—or pay for—that one later, Nate rose and crossed to Strike. Pitching his voice so the others couldn’t hear, he said, “With all due respect,
Nochem,
get a fucking grip.”

Strike stiffened, pulled away from the wall, and turned to glare. “Ex
cuse
me?”

Ignoring a sudden memory of being hung off the side of a warehouse roof, Nate stared him down. “You want to be upset, do it on your own time. Right now we need you in the king zone.” He paused. “Don’t make me quote the writs at you.” The king’s writ, which set out the priorities of the ruling Nightkeeper, was unfortunately apt under the circumstances, a reminder that the king looked to the gods and his people first, followed by mankind and the end-time war. His own desires as a husband, father, and friend were way down on the list.

Strike’s lips twitched. “Bet that’d hurt you far more than it’d hurt me.” But he inhaled a long breath and visibly centered himself. By the time he’d exhaled, he nodded to Nate. “Okay. Sorry. And thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Seriously.”

They rejoined the others, and Nate tried not to see Leah’s quiet nod or Alexis’s covert thumbs-up. He didn’t want to be good at this advisory crap, godsdamn it.

“You guys ready for me?” a quiet voice asked from the doorway. Nate looked up to see Anna holding the Volatile’s knife balanced in her palm, crossing her sacrificial scar.

A hush took hold of the room.

“What have you got for us?” Strike asked, waving her in.

She set the knife on the coffee table and took one of the empty armchairs, leaning forward at the edge of the chair so she could point to a line of text inscribed at the base of the handle portion of the carved knife, which had been formed from a single piece of obsidian and polished to a deep black shine. “See this here? It’s a regular, nonstarscript inscription.” Tracing the fluid beauty of the Mayan glyphs, she translated, “‘The Volatile challenges the sky.’”

“Well, that’s not good news,” Alexis said, frowning. “If he’s going after the gods, then it’s a pretty good bet that he’s either one of the demons, or Xibalban. What confuses me is the apparent link with Ixchel and, by extension, with me.”

Nate shot her a look. “We’re not handing you over to Iago, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“I’m not going to argue with you on that one.” But she’d paled, nonetheless.

He leaned close and said under his breath, “The prophecies aren’t immutable. Strike and Leah proved that.” But he knew she was having trouble with the hypocrisy of believing they needed to follow the gods and prophecies, but choosing to disbelieve the one that specifically related to her.

He, on the other hand, had no such issue. If the Volatile—whoever or whatever it was—wanted Alexis, it would have to go through him to get to her.

“What about the starscript?” Strike asked.

Anna shook her head. “That’s the strange thing. There wasn’t any.”

Silence followed that pronouncement, formed of a combination of surprise and consternation. “That’s it?” Alexis said, looking shattered. “Nothing else? Nothing about Ixchel? The inscription on the statuette said Camazotz would succeed unless the Volatile is found. Does that mean we have to find and destroy the Volatile before the equinox? I hope not, because I don’t see it happening.”

Nate cursed inwardly. “Maybe Rabbit will know something.”

“He’s out cold,” Jox said, “and not likely to be coherent enough to answer questions until sometime tomorrow. Whatever happened to the poor kid, he’s used up.”

Strike nodded. “Then that’s a wrap. We’ll reconvene tomorrow morning, unless anyone gets any brilliant ideas between now and then.”

The members of the council disbanded and went their separate ways, Jox and Anna to their adjacent quarters in the royal wing, Nate and Alexis in the direction of the residences.

When they got to the door that was the most direct route to the cottages, she paused. Normally—at least every night over the past week—they would’ve headed out to his cottage by tacit consent. Tonight she hung back.

Because he’d been getting a slightly off vibe from her ever since the Volatile’s prophecy was read, Nate said, “No pressure, but you look like you could use the company.”
Keep it light,
he told himself.
Don’t make it weird if the answer is no.