Final Prophecy 05 - Blood Spells (38 page)

“
Rabbit!
” Myrinne was suddenly in his face, shaking him. “Shut it down, now!”

It took him a second to focus on her, another to figure out what she was talking about. Then the gag response flared higher as the Nightkeeper half of him reasserted itself, beating back the lure of the dark power.

He shut down the connection, slamming the barriers down. His head echoed with sudden emptiness and he sagged against the wall, would’ve gone down without it. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he rasped, “Holy shit.”

He’d never sensed the dark magic like that before, never felt like he could ride the wave to someplace incredible.

“Somebody get a shield over the doorway,” Strike ordered. Then he gripped Rabbit’s shoulder. “Talk to me.”

“Let him breathe first,” Myrinne snapped.

But Rabbit shook his head. “I’m okay.”
Sort of.
“The hellroad is wide-open.”

Strike cursed. “That shouldn’t be possible this far ahead of the solstice.” He paused. “Maybe it’s something to do with the eclipse, or Moctezuma’s magic.”

“Or else Iago jump-started it with blood,” Patience said, her voice barely above a whisper. Brandt reached out and took her hand, but although she leaned into him, the air around them remained still.

“Does he know we’re here?” Brandt asked, eyes fixed on the staircase leading down.

Rabbit shook his head. “He’s pouring all his power into keeping the intersection open. He doesn’t know we took out the two
makol
up here.”

Strike glanced at him. “What do you think? Can you still do it?”

When the kidnapping had nixed the plan of baiting a trap by letting Iago see specific things within Rabbit’s mind, Jade had modified the spell in the other direction. Now Rabbit should be able to make his presence look like part of Iago’s background mental pattern and—in theory, anyway—influence his thoughts.

There hadn’t been any time to test it, though. “If he senses me, he’s going to link up and take over,” Rabbit warned, though they had been over the pros and cons a dozen times already. “You might not even know he’s got me until it’s too late.”

“I’ll know.” Myrinne moved up beside him so they were shoulder to shoulder facing the temple door.

Strike nodded. “Do it.”

Taking a deep breath and hoping to hell this shit worked, Rabbit slipped off the protective circlet. Although he’d had it for only a few days, his head felt seriously naked without it.
Deal with it,
he told himself, and got to work.

Disguising his thoughts beneath a layer of mental patterns that were as close as he could get to Iago’s, he dropped the blocks and cracked open the hell-link. Between proximity and the power of the solstice-eclipse, the connection formed instantly. One second he was looking at Myrinne, and in the next, he was in a ceremonial chamber, looking out through Iago’s eyes as the Xibalban raised Moctezuma’s knife. And advanced on his first sacrificial victim.

 

As Rabbit tuned out and swayed on his feet, Patience gave a low moan and whispered, “Please, gods.”

Brandt gripped her hand and got a return squeeze, but he didn’t feel anything more than the press of her fingers on his. They were standing in the middle of El Rey, yet he couldn’t sense the special buzz of magic that had been theirs alone.

She was blocking him. She had closed herself off, distancing herself when they most needed to be working together.

“Don’t shut me out,” he said under his breath.

She glanced at him. “I’m not.”

But there was a barrier between them, one he didn’t know how to breach. The Akbal spell wasn’t the answer. He was sure of that much.

“I’m in,” Rabbit said suddenly, his voice a low, effortful gasp. “I’ll stall him as long as I can, but we need to move fast. He’s already got his first sacrifice prepped.” He fixed on Brandt. “It’s Woody.”

The world froze as the words rocketed around inside Brandt’s head, in his heart, icing his universe.
It’s Woody. . . . It’s Woody. . . . Woody . . . Woody.

Sudden heat raced through him, boiling the ice with mad, murderous rage. He lunged for the dark-magic doorway, lashing out with his warrior’s talent and slamming aside Michael’s sturdy shield spell.

“Holy shit,” someone said; he didn’t know which one of them it was. Didn’t care. All he cared about was that he would have the strength of an eagle warrior when he went up against his enemy.

Patience was right on his heels, with the others behind her. When darkness closed around him, he called up light—not a weak and harmless foxfire, but a fighting fireball that pulsed red-gold and dripped sparks from his hand, searing stone and sand to glass where they fell. Talent magic hadn’t worked beneath Chichén Itzá, but it worked here. Michael spread a chameleon shield over them, cloaking the light and noise as the others called their fireballs. The burning lights cast the smooth, water-cut tunnel walls bloodred as they raced down the twisting staircase.

Rabbit haltingly briefed them as they went: Iago and Woody were alone in the sacred chamber, but there were twenty Aztec
makol
on the far side, in the short stretch of the light-magic tunnel that had survived the cave-in. They were guarding Hannah and the twins, who were in an offshoot room Iago had discovered.

“They’re all okay,” Rabbit said, but the unspoken caveat was,
For now.

Another twenty
makol
guarded the dark-magic entrance; the Nightkeepers would have to go through them to get to the chamber. And although Rabbit was working to prevent Iago from killing Woody while also keeping the Xibalban from sensing the incoming attack, the effort was costing him. He leaned heavily on Myrinne, and his words slurred as he said, “We’re almost on top of them.”

And then they
were
on top of them. Brandt whipped around a corner, caught sight of a double row of
makol
standing at some sort of parade rest, and slammed himself flat along the wall. The others did the same as Michael lunged to the front of the group, pulling Sasha with him. He slapped a chameleon shield across the entrance to the ceremonial chamber, which was just beyond the enemy squadron. In almost the same move, he unleashed a deadly stream of
muk
, hosing it from one side of the tunnel to the other.

The silver magic flared brightly, searing Brandt’s retinas with the afterimage of Michael’s face, etched with a terrible combination of exultation and grief as he wielded his death magic.

The
makol
died as they had stood. A couple in the back managed to get their buzz swords activated, but the magic died as quickly as they did.

When it was done, the silver
muk
drained away and the tunnel returned to fireball-lit darkness, with a glimmer of torchlight up ahead, past the ash-shadows that were all that was left of the Aztec
makol
.

Michael collapsed against the wall and waved them past. “Shield’s down.
Go!
”

Brandt lunged past him, skidded on the ash, and surged through the doorway. His brain snapshotted the first frozen image: Woody lay strapped atop the crude altar, his head hanging off one end, his legs off the other, his arms out to the sides and his Hawaiian shirt open, his torso bare. Iago stood over him, holding a forearm-long knife that was made of carved stone and edged with gold. Its tip was stained with blood, and red rivulets ran from Wood’s palms to drip on the floor.

But when Brandt burst in, Wood’s head whipped up and his eyes snapped wide.
“Brandt!”

Iago spun, his glowing green eyes going wide with shock. That moment of surprise, coupled with a jerky hesitation that had to be Rabbit’s work, was enough.

Roaring, Brandt unleashed a fireball straight into the Xibalban’s face, which was unprotected above black body armor. The bolt hit hard and exploded on impact, napalming to engulf the Xibalban’s head and upper body in flames.

Patience darted past Brandt, leaped in the air, and kicked the staggering Xibalban in the chest, driving him down and away from the altar. Iago roared and went down on the far side of the altar while she stood watching, her eyes bright with fury.

She looked every inch the capable warrior. The realization tightened something in Brandt’s chest.

Then she turned to him, locking eyes. He saw the fierce lust for action that he’d seen in her from the very beginning, tempered now with her loyalties: to him, their sons, their
winikin
, their teammates. And something clicked deep inside him.

“I’ll get Woody,” she said, heading for the altar with her knife drawn.
“Finish the bastard.”

Was it close enough to the solstice for the head-and-heart spell to work on the powerful
ajaw-makol
?

Baring his teeth, Brandt unsheathed his ceremonial dagger and headed for Iago. He lay still, curled up on one side. And he stank of charred flesh.

“Brandt!” Patience’s cry was scant warning as the second group of Aztec
makol
erupted from the light-magic doorway and raced for Iago. Their buzz swords were whizzing, and they launched a salvo of the deadly blades as they came.

He got up a shield just in time, protecting Patience and Woody as well as himself, but it cost him: The
makol
got between him and Iago, covering their master and driving the Nightkeepers back with swords and flying blades.

With Michael’s death magic depleted and Rabbit sagging on Myrinne’s shoulder, too exhausted to command fire, the Nightkeepers let rip with a salvo of fireballs—or in Jade’s case iceballs—and conventional jade-tipped bullets. The weapons barely made a dent on the solstice-toughened
makol
.

Brandt fell back to the altar, reaching it just as Patience finished hacking through the leather straps that had held Woody bound. The
winikin
lurched up and off the altar, and fell when his legs gave out. Brandt caught him on the way down, and for half a second just hung on to the slight, wiry man. “Damn good to see you.”

Wood hugged him back, but said, “Hannah and the boys are up in the other tunnel.”

In other words,
Fight now. We’ll talk later.
It was typical Woody, and sent a burst of relief through Brandt as he released the
winikin
. Some things, it seemed, didn’t change no matter what.

He caught Patience’s eye and jerked his chin toward the tunnel. She led the way, followed by Woody, with Brandt forming the rear guard.

The other magi were fighting a battle of attrition against the
makol
. “Go,” the king shouted. “We’ll keep the exit open.”

But then, without warning, a new group of war cries split the air and eight more
makol
soldiers, entirely unexpected based on Rabbit’s psi-scouting report, poured through the dark-magic entrance.

“The sentries!” Brandt cursed, making the connection—the Nightkeepers might have made it past the outer perimeter of guards undetected, but now that stealth became a liability, as it meant the
makol
had reinforcements and the magi were surrounded.

He slapped a shield just inside the door, slowing the rush, but the
makol
attacked the shield with their buzz swords and he felt the spell give. It wouldn’t hold for long. These bastards were
strong
.

And when they broke through, they were going to go after Hannah and the boys. Brandt saw it in their green-hued eyes, in the way they were wholly focused on the far doorway.
Gods.

“I’m going up that tunnel.” Patience’s expression was fierce. “You stay here and keep the exit open. The others can’t hold it without you.”

The tightness in Brandt’s chest increased a thousandfold. He grabbed her arm, felt her strength, but also her softness.
No,
he started to say, but the word died in his throat when he saw the look in her eyes—not weakness or a plea, but a challenge. A warning.

Love me for who I am,
she had said.
Make me your partner. Trust me.

Brandt froze. They hadn’t been fighting about the Akbal oath, after all. It’d been about him trusting her to make her own decisions. Maybe she had said that, but it hadn’t registered. Now it did.

Woody shot a look from Brandt to Patience and back again, and shook his head. “Don’t try to do everything yourself,” he said, as he’d said a hundred times during Brandt’s teenage years. “You’re not a fucking island.”

“Shit.” He wanted to kiss her, hold her, put her behind him, protect her with every last breath in his body. Instead, he tossed her his extra ammo clips and spare flashlight. “Tell them I’m on my way. Tell them . . . tell them that I love them.”

Her eyes flashed and a fierce smile lit her face, a brief oasis in the midst of battle. “I will.”

“Go!” he barked as the shield spell gave and the
makol
reinforcements rushed the chamber. And, as she bolted across the room and into the tunnel, he said under his breath, “Gods, please keep them safe.”

But as Wood yanked the autopistols off his belt and fired into the onrushing
makol
, and Brandt spun up his magic, he was all too aware that his prayer had stayed on earth. He was still cursed.

He just hoped he hadn’t cursed all of them in the process.

 

Patience raced up the dark tunnel with her heart hammering so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t hear her own footfalls, couldn’t hear anything but the
lub-dub
of joy, excitement, and terror. Joy that Brandt had finally trusted her to do something other than watch his back. Excitement at the prospect of seeing Harry, Braden, and Hannah. Terror at what she might find up ahead.

She turned a corner and saw torchlight coming from an irregularly shaped doorway. Killing the flashlight, she went invisible, then advanced soundlessly with an autopistol at the ready.

When she reached the doorway, she crouched low and eased her head into the opening. What she saw on the other side stopped her heart’s
lub-dub
in its tracks.