Demonkeepers (11 page)

He stood, forcing his legs to hold him, and crossed to her. Without a word, he folded her into his arms, hoping that this was one of those times when the right action meant more than finding the right words.

Jade stiffened, and for a moment he thought she was going to push away, but then she let out a long, shaky sigh and melted into him. After a brief hesitation, she slid her arms around his waist and hung on. They stood that way for a long time. Finally, when he felt her coiled muscles ease, he said into her hair, “You couldn’t have done anything; neither of us could, unarmed and with no real fighting magic to speak of. We owe our lives to the companions. And besides, it was your magic that warned Kinich Ahau that there was a Nightkeeper nearby, in trouble.”

Shifting in his arms, she looked up at him, eyes gone very serious. “Maybe it was my magic at first, but at the end it wasn’t my magic that got us out. It was yours.”

“Maybe.” He didn’t know what to think about that yet, or how to process it in light of what the journalist had written about needing to use his talent to get inside the library. He didn’t have a clue how he’d gotten there in the first place. “Regardless, we got each other out of there. No apologies, no regrets, okay? Let’s just be grateful we’re both back where we belong.” Those words took on new meaning when he realized he was stroking her from nape to hip, that her hands had migrated from his waist to locked behind his neck. His body awoke, hard and fast, and he saw in her eyes that she’d felt the change. Welcomed it.

He eased down, giving her plenty of time and room to step back if she needed to, as she’d done before. Instead, she rose up on her toes to meet him halfway.
We’re okay
, the kiss seemed to say.
We’re home now. We’re safe
. More, it suggested that their being together hadn’t been a one-shot deal designed only to test the effects of sex magic. It said she was into him, that she enjoyed touching him, kissing him. And when the kiss ended and they leaned a little apart to look into each other’s eyes, he saw a spark of heat that danced over his skin and made his body hard and ready in an instant.

“We could . . .” He trailed off with a suggestive head nod in the direction of the couch, or better yet, the wide-open floor below.

“We could . . . but we’re not going to. You’re going to eat, I’m going to collect the others, and we’re going to rendezvous up at the mansion for a powwow.” But she cocked an eyebrow. “As for the other . . . maybe later, if you’re still on your feet.”

“Count on it.”

She grinned and headed out. And as the door closed at her back, he realized he was smiling. The analytical side of him knew that the day—or rather, the past two days—had to go in the minus column of shit news and more shit news. But the man in him thought the crappy-ass intel was balanced, at least in the short term, by the fact that he and Jade were finally on the same page.

Now he just had to make sure they stayed there.

As a teen, Jade had offset Shandi’s regular “proper deportment and behavior” lectures by coming up with various sets of the three “D”s for her
winikin
. Most often, they were along the lines of “disconnected,” “disapproving,” and “duty-bound.” And while Jade had known she could’ve wound up in a worse situation growing up—there hadn’t been any violence, no neglect; if anything, Shandi had paid too much attention to her, stifling her with rules—she’d often wished for something . . . different. She had dreamed of what it would’ve been like if her parents hadn’t died, if she hadn’t been left in the care of her chilly, rigid
winikin
. Her mother would’ve been tall and serene, with Jade’s long, straight hair and sea foam eyes. She would’ve been unruffled by her daughter’s childish pranks and youthful bounciness, maybe even playing along sometimes. Her father’s image had been less clear, but his voice had resonated in her imagination; he’d been big and strong, and his arms around her had made her feel safe. They wouldn’t have lectured her on duty, decorum, and diligence, or at least not all the time, over and over again until she wanted to scream. But her parents were dead, and she’d known Shandi was a better parent than some, so she had done her best to live up to—or down to?—her guardian’s expectations of a quiet, well-behaved child.

As Jade had grown to adulthood, she and Shandi had maintained more of a relationship than she might have expected, in part because Jade had discovered over time that Shandi had been right about a number of things, from the value of a calm facade to the advisability of thinking before acting, which had been a hard lesson for Jade to learn when parts of her had wanted to be rash. In the years before the Nightkeepers’ reunion, and even in the first months of life at Skywatch, Jade and Shandi had coexisted peacefully under the terms of their unstated agreement that if Jade didn’t act impulsively, the
winikin
wouldn’t lecture. Lucius’s arrival at Skywatch hadn’t immediately changed that, but looking back, Jade could see that it had been the beginning of the renewed strain between her and Shandi. And the split had only worsened as time passed.

Now the
winikin
was subtly ignoring Jade without seeming to. And when Lucius appeared at the sliders leading from the pool deck to the great room, Shandi’s face soured with a look of,
Ew, it’s the human
.

“Come on in.” Strike waved when Lucius stalled at the threshold. “I know you just ate, but Carlos’ll hook you up with seconds to keep you going for the meeting. You’ll still need some downtime—assuming that your physiology works like ours does—but you won’t crash as hard or as long as you would have without the IV.”

“Thanks,” Lucius said, though it wasn’t entirely clear which part the word referred to. Easing away from the sliders as though reluctant to commit too far into the building, he dragged a carved wood chair out from underneath a half-round table near the door, and turned it to face the others, so he sat near but apart from them. Although he was positioned above the magi on the higher level of the two-level great room, it didn’t seem as though he sat in judgment, but rather that he was offering himself up to be judged.

As he sat and leaned back in the chair, hooking his hands across his flat stomach, Jade was struck anew by how much he looked like a stranger, yet not. And more, how much he now looked like one of them. He’d showered and changed; his normally tousled brown hair was slicked back, his jaw freshly shaven. Wearing jeans, an unadorned black T- shirt, and a pair of heavy black boots she didn’t recognize from before, he would’ve easily fit into a lineup with Strike, Nate, Michael, and Brandt. All five men were dark haired, big, and built, with strong features and auras of tough capability. They looked like a bunch of honorable badasses who would make strong allies, fearsome enemies, and dangerous lovers.

The realization that she could easily lump him in with the mated warrior- males wasn’t a comfortable one, nor was the inner tug at the thought of classifyng him as her lover, with its implication of a future . . . or rather the question of how she was supposed to balance that desire—and the banked hum still coursing through her from his kisses—with the things the strange
nahwal
had told her, and its whispered warning:
Beware
. . . But what was she supposed to be wary of? Him? Her response to him?

She didn’t know, and didn’t have time to figure it out just then, because Strike started the meeting and then gestured in her direction. “Jade, how about you run us through anything new you’ve managed to pull together about the sun god, and give Lucius a chance to get a few more calories on board?”

On cue, Jox dished up another piled plate of food and handed it over to Nate’s
winikin
, Carlos, who walked it over to Lucius. Balancing the plate on his knee, Lucius said, “Before you get started, I need to get something out there.” He paused, looking grim. “The moment I saw that firebird, I remembered something from when I was the
makol
, something I’d been blocking, or that got lost in the fucked-up parts of my head.” He paused, took a breath. “I don’t know whether he meant to or not, but Cizin gave me a glimpse inside him, showing me the plans of the
Banol Kax
. In short, they haven’t just captured the true sun god. They’re planning to sacrifice it during the solstice, and put Akhenaton in its place.”

Seeing half a day’s work headed swiftly down the drain, Jade shot him a sour look. “It would’ve been nice if you’d woken up and shared that little nugget
before
I put six hours into convincing myself that we really saw Kinich Ahau and Akhenaton down there, and that it wasn’t a barrier vision like the one Sasha had—you know, the one with the same black dogs in it?”

“That wasn’t a vision; that was Xibalba,” Lucius said. “And those weren’t just any dogs; they were the companions, the sun god’s protectors. They meet—or used to meet—Kinich Ahau at the night horizon each dusk, and escort the sun safely through the trials of the underworld to emerge from the dawn horizon each morning, and”—he made a circular, continuing motion—“rinse, repeat.”

“Again, thanks for an off-the-cuff summary of info I spent the morning digging up.” Jade wasn’t annoyed, exactly. Just tired of being redundant. “Question is: Why were the companions in Sasha’s vision? Were the gods or ancestors trying to warn us that the sun god was in trouble even back then?”

“
Oh!
” Sasha’s dark brown eyes went stark as the color drained from her face.

“What is it?” Michael asked immediately, tensing. As he often did, he was standing behind her in a relaxed but fight-ready position, always on guard, protecting his own. The sight sent a harmless pang of envy through Jade, because he’d never done that for her.

Sasha twined her fingers together in her lap as she answered, “There’s that last part of the triad prophecy, the part I never fulfilled about finding the lost son. . . . What if instead of telling me to ‘find the lost son,’ spelled ‘s-o-n,’ what if it was really supposed to be ‘s-u-n’? That could be why I saw the companions in my vision last year. The gods were trying to tell me to look for the lost sun!” She looked stricken. “If I’d figured it out then, we could’ve been planning a rescue all this time.”

The
winikin
and magi were silent for a long moment. Jade started to speak, but caught Shandi’s
don’t draw attention
look and subsided.

“Jade?” Strike said, glancing at Shandi. “Did you have something to add?”

“I was going to point out that . . . well, if we can free Kinich Ahau from Xibalba, we’ll have access to a god again.” Jade glanced at Sasha. “And if we’re thinking that the triad prophecy foretold a link between the sun and Sasha, we could even gain a Godkeeper.”

Sasha went wide-eyed, but didn’t knee-jerk a denial. After a moment she said softly, “We don’t know that I’d be the god’s chosen. The prophecy said I was supposed to find the lost sun, but I didn’t.”

“You were the first of us to see the companions,” Jade countered.

“True. Except that one, they were in a vision; two, they attacked me; and three, Michael killed them, or at least their vision-selves. You and Lucius are the ones they defended. And you’re the ones who found the lost sun.”

Jade snorted. “Right. I’m a daughter of the gods,” she said, referring to the first part of the prophecy. She glanced at Lucius, expecting to see an answering gleam of mirth . . . but he wasn’t laughing. None of them were. They were all looking at her speculatively, with an intensity that sent two opposing thoughts shooting through her brain:
Oh, hell no
, coupled with,
What if?

“What if . . .” Lucius began as though echoing her thoughts, then paused a moment before continuing. “What if the prophecy was, let’s say, interrupted? What if the original child of prophecy became unsuitable for the full foretelling?”

Michael shifted and sent him a narrow look. “Don’t be a pussy. Say it.”

In the past, Lucius might have—probably would have—backed down or turned things aside with a joke. Now he met the other man’s glare. “Fine. What if becoming your fiancée—and functionally your mate—has made Sasha unsuitable to be a Godkeeper? You and she balance each other out as the
ch’ulel
and Mictlan, life versus death. Giving her more power as a Godkeeper could tip that balance . . . or it could increase your magic to an equal degree. It’s possible that some power source—if not the sky gods, then maybe even the doctrine of balance itself—doesn’t want to put so much power into a single couple.”

Jade’s throat went tight and strange as her mind jumped from Lucius’s hypothesis to its corollary—namely that she might have become the focus of the prophecy when Sasha became unsuitable as a Godkeeper. She didn’t look at Shandi, didn’t need to. She knew what the
winikin
would say:
Don’t overreach yourself, Jade. You’re just a harvester
.

Swallowing hard, she pointed out, “The doctrine of balance isn’t an entity; it doesn’t have opinions.” As far as they knew, the doctrine, which was routinely mentioned in the archive but never really defined, was more a pattern of thought, the belief among their ancestors that the universe was not only cyclical, but sought balance within those cycles.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Lucius replied elliptically, his gaze catching and holding hers, making her, for a moment, feel like they were the only two people in the room. “But it sure seems as though you and I may have inherited the last part of the triad prophecy.”