Magic Unchained Read online

  Praise for the

  Nightkeepers Series

  “This series goes right to your heart! Jessica Andersen is a must read for me!”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author J. R. Ward

  Storm Kissed

  “A superb thriller… fast-paced and character-driven.… Fans will relish this exhilarating tale.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Thrilling.… With this tale of prophecy and curses, Andersen really shakes up her series. Love, loss, passion, and drama are all here. You won’t be able to put this one down.”

  —Romantic Times

  Blood Spells

  “For readers with a hankering for a fascinating and intricate foray into the Mayan world, the Nightkeeper series is just perfect.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Andersen has created a compelling cast of characters whose personal travails add richness to these highly entertaining novels. Another excellent job.”

  —Romantic Times

  Demonkeepers

  “Andersen ramps up the danger… mix[ing] action and elements of Mayan myth—from a voyage to the underworld to a fantastic high-stakes ball game—with soul-searching, lust, and romance. Jade’s inner journey is particularly engaging, and while the background makes more sense to returning fans, even new readers will find plenty to latch onto.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Intense… thrilling… a world that fans of any genre will enjoy.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Fabulous… will have the audience appreciating the skills of master magician Jessica Andersen.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Skykeepers

  “An exciting, romantic, and imaginative tale, Skykeepers is guaranteed to keep readers entertained and turning the pages.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “Will knock your off your feet, keep you on the edge of your seat and totally captivated from beginning to end.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “A gripping story that pulled this reader right into her Final Prophecy series.”

  —Romance Reader at Heart (top pick)

  “The Final Prophecy is a well-written series that is as intricate as it is entertaining.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “The world of Nightkeepers is wonderful, and I love visiting it. It is intricate, magical, and absolutely fascinating.… Step inside the Nightkeeper world and prepare to be swept away!”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  “If you’re looking for a book to read, one that has an intricate, inventive, and well-researched world with characters that are fully realized, might I suggest Skykeepers?”

  —Romance Novel TV

  Dawnkeepers

  “Prophecy, passion, and powerful emotions—Dawnkeepers will keep you on the edge of your seat begging for more!”

  —Wild on Books

  “This strong new series will appeal to fantasy and paranormal fans with its refreshing blend of Mayan and Egyptian mythologies plus a suitably complex story line and plenty of antagonists.”

  —Monsters and Critics

  “This exhilarating urban romantic fantasy saga is constructed around modernizing Mayan mythology.… The story line is fast-paced and filled with action as the overarching Andersen mythology is wonderfully embellished with this engaging entry.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews

  “Using the Mayan doomsday prophecy, Andersen continues to add complexity to her characters and her increasingly dense mythos. This intense brand of storytelling is a most welcome addition to the genre.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Action-packed with skillfully written and astounding fight scenes… will keep you on the edge of your seat begging for more.”

  —Romance Junkies

  Nightkeepers

  “Raw passion, dark romance, and seat-of-your-pants suspense all set in an astounding paranormal world—I swear ancient Mayan gods and demons walk the modern earth!”

  —New York Times bestselling author J. R. Ward

  “Andersen’s got game when it comes to style and voice. I loved the kick-ass series… a fun mix of humor, suspense, mythology, and fantasy… a series that’s sure to be an instant reader favorite, and will put Andersen’s books on keeper shelves around the world.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann

  “I deeply enjoyed the story. It really hooked me!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Angela Knight

  “Part romance, mystery, and fairy tale… a captivating book with wide appeal.”

  —Booklist

  “[A] nonstop, action-intensive plot.… Ms. Andersen delivers a story that is both solid romance and adventure novel. If you enjoy movies like Lara Croft… or just want something truly new, you will definitely want this.”

  —Huntress Book Reviews

  “Intense action, sensuality, and danger abound.”

  —Romantic Times

  “If Nightkeepers is any indication of her talent, then [Jessica Andersen] will become one of my favorites.… [The book] brought tears to my eyes and an ache in my heart. I read each word with bated breath.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “[A] terrific romantic fantasy… an excellent thriller. Jessica Andersen provides a strong story that… fans will cherish.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  The Novels of the Nightkeepers

  Nightkeepers

  Dawnkeepers

  Skykeepers

  Demonkeepers

  Blood Spells

  Storm Kissed

  MAGIC

  UNCHAINED

  A NOVEL OF THE NIGHTKEEPERS

  JESSICA

  ANDERSEN

  A SIGNET ECLIPSE BOOK

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, April 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Jessica Andersen, 2012

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57999-2

  SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner
and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is dedicated to Paula R. Happy birthday to a

  dear friend, fan, teacher, poet, and occasional lead foot.

  This one’s for you!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for a handsome daredevil, especially one with a soft spot for animals. Enter Sven, a former wreck-diving, hard-partying adrenaline junkie who has become the Nightkeepers’ best tracker, thanks to his coyote familiar, Mac. Sven is a loner, though, a wanderer who, sharklike, suffocates if he’s in one place for too long. And Cara Liu, who’s known him all her life and loved him just as long, knows he won’t always be there when she needs him… so she’s learned not to need him. Or anyone, really—she’s a powerful leader in her own right, and does just fine on her own. So when the two of them are thrown together in the final months before the doomsday war, and tasked with turning four dozen former rebels into a magic-wielding army, fur flies.

  Please join me now as Sven and Cara snarl and snap, and try not to fall for each other all over again while the doomsday clock counts down, friends turn against friends, and the promise of a powerful ally means cheating death itself.

  To explore the Nightkeepers’ online world and sign up for my newsletter, please visit www.JessicaAndersen.com. Also, please become a fan on Facebook to get a look at my oh so Freudian typos and other authorial misadventures!

  My heartfelt thanks go to Deidre Knight, Claire Zion, Kara Welsh, and Kerry Donovan, and others too numerous to name for helping me bring these books to life; to J. R. Ward for being my sounding board; and to my family, friends, and many e-friends for always being there for a laugh or (cyber)hug. And most of all to my husband, Greg, for showing me that soul mates, spontaneous combustion, and true love do exist, and that they’re so very worth waiting for.

  Finally, thank you, dear reader, for picking up Sven and Cara’s story. I hope you love it as much as I do—this one is very special to me.

  Jessica (aka Doc Jess)

  Bound by blood and magic, the Nightkeepers must defend mankind from the rise of terrible demons as the end date of 12-21-2012 approaches. Although most of the magi must find and bond with their gods-destined mates to reach their full powers, one among them draws his magic from another source and wanders free, unmated and alone, save for his coyote familiar.

  Testing the barrier between the earth and underworld, the demons have sent a dark-magic scourge—the xombi virus—to infect the Nightkeepers’ human allies and build an army of the damned. After months of battling the xombis, the coyote mage returns to the Nightkeepers’ home, little suspecting what he’s going to find when he gets there…

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Spellfire

  CHAPTER ONE

  September 10

  T-minus three months and

  eleven days to the foretold doomsday

  Skywatch

  Near Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

  Cara Liu figured it didn’t matter whether it was a Catholic mass or a bloodletting ritual; funerals just flat-out sucked. More, the grief of losing Aaron—who had been a good guy, always ready with a laugh, a beer, or an ass kicking, depending on the situation—came with an equal amount of fear, because the men and women gathered around the pyre knew damn well that it could’ve been any one of them.

  Aaron might’ve been the first winikin to lose his life fighting alongside the Nightkeepers, but it was a sure bet he wouldn’t be the last. With the earth’s magic-wielding guardians decimated and the end-time approaching fast, their new leader, Mendez, hadn’t had a choice. Within a month of Cara’s persuading fifty rebellious winikin to return to the training compound that they and their parents had fled nearly three decades earlier, Dez had “promoted” the traditional servants on to Nightkeeper-led fighting teams and put them through a crash course in killing demons and protecting their own asses, roughly in that order.

  Sure, the winikin had voted in favor of fighting… but given that the alternative was an apocalypse that would turn mankind into an undead army, what other choice was there?

  As the last of them passed by the pyre, thunder grumbled in the distance, warning that the darkening horizon meant business. It had been a dry desert summer, but it looked like the autumn rains were coming sooner rather than later.

  Like now.

  “That’s just freaking great,” Cara muttered to nobody in particular, using irritation to blunt the knowledge that Aaron wouldn’t be dead if it hadn’t been for her. She had tracked him to a small town in upstate New York, where he’d been teaching high school English and coaching basketball, and she’d persuaded him to come to New Mexico. The world needs you, she’d said. And now, nine months later, he was dead, killed down in central Mexico when it had turned out that the extermination team hadn’t taken care of all of the infected villagers after all. There had been one left, and it had gotten Aaron before any of the others had had a chance to react.

  When Cara’s eyes prickled, she scrubbed at them on the pretext of shoving her black, skunk-striped hair out of her face. She stood apart from the others, halfway up a flight of stone steps that led from the packed earth of the ball court. Wearing slim black pants and a matching blazer punked out with chains and zippers, with her weapons belt conspicuously absent in deference to the ritual, she thought—hoped—she looked calm, controlled, and capable. Nobody else needed to know that her insides were churning with anger and grief, along with the unease that had been dogging her for days now, weeks.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself. It’s nothing.

  Only it didn’t feel like nothing.

  If she had been a true Nightkeeper, she would’ve thought it was prescience, a foretelling of some dire threat. She was a winikin, though, which meant that the nerves were probably just nerves, brought on by the knowledge that the zero date was almost on top of them and her people weren’t the united force they needed to be. Far from it, in fact.

  Don’t think about it, she repeated inwardly, and forced herself to look at the intricately tied
funerary bundle that rested atop the pyre. But it was like trying not to think about a big white wolf, because the moment she thought it, boom, there the big furry bastard was, smack in the middle of her brain, along with all the other stuff she was trying to ignore. It wasn’t like she was playing ostrich, either. In fact, she was emulating the Nightkeeper warriors and their ability to prioritize their goals and put the needs of the many over those of the few, even if those few were teammates or even their families and loved ones.

  Love… Now, there was a concept. As was family.

  She glanced over at her father, Carlos, who was a stocky bull of an ex-rancher in his fifties. His hair was silver-shot and his face was showing its age now, where before he’d looked a good decade younger than his calendar years. As she gazed at him, his shoulders went suddenly very square beneath his dark suit jacket, letting her know he’d caught her look, though he didn’t respond, didn’t even meet her eyes. The fiercest of the traditionalists, he hadn’t forgiven her for leaving Skywatch in the first place, never mind everything that had happened since circumstances had forced her to return.

  Jamming her hands in her jacket pockets, she rocked back on the worn heels of her black cowboy boots. Holdovers from her old life in Montana, they were as much a comfort to her as chocolate might be to another woman. They reminded her of green meadows, endless gallops, and family dinners, all long gone.