Magic Unchained Read online

  “This isn’t a fight,” he said, and for a second, she saw the father she had once foolishly idolized in the old man who stood opposite her.

  “Isn’t it?” Pressure vised her brain, making her want to run and scream. She couldn’t do this. Not right now and not with him.

  “Think about it, Cara Liu. Your actions don’t affect only you anymore.”

  “Fine, I’ll think about it. Now if you’ll excuse me?” She didn’t wait for his response, just headed straight across the great room for the glass doors that took up most of the far wall. Five minutes earlier, all she’d wanted was to get back to her quarters. Now, though, she wanted the open sky and storm-cleaned air.

  She could feel his eyes on her as she pushed through to the deck, where the pool sparkled in the fading sunlight. Bypassing the shimmering water, she headed down the short flight of steps to the main pathway, not letting herself run. Not quite. She took the branch that led past the training hall and cottages and on toward the firing range. She didn’t have any real plan—maybe she would shoot; maybe it would be enough to walk off the frustration that churned inside her, making her head feel like a pressure cooker being run too hot. If steam started coming out of her ears, she wouldn’t have been surprised. In fact, it might’ve been a relief. As it was, it helped to be alone.

  Really alone. And farther from the mansion than she’d meant to go.

  “Damn it.” Realizing this might not be the best idea after all, she made herself slow down, breathe, and pay attention to her surroundings. She was near the picnic area, right where the ceiba tree rose a hundred feet and spread its enormous canopy to shade the cacao trees, which stirred in an almost imperceptible breeze. The rain-forest microcosm shouldn’t have been able to survive in the desert, but it had grown up from the ashes of the winikin and mage children who had died in the massacre. The air was moist and warm, the sound that of moving leaves, the vibe one of peace.

  For a second she paused and let the tranquillity remind her that running—or even walking—away wasn’t going to fix her problems. She wasn’t going to hook up with Zane for her father or the winikin, and Sven… well, there wasn’t a decision to be made there. Sparks alone just weren’t enough, and—

  Brush crackled, jolting her with brutal suddenness. She pulled her nine-mill and thumbed her wristband to arm the panic button, though she didn’t hit it yet. Heart drumming against her ribs, she moved off the path and angled toward where the noise had come from. “Hello?”

  There was a jangle of discord in the air, a prickling awareness that said someone—or something—was out there.

  It’s just a bird, she told herself. Or it could be Sasha or one of the others harvesting cacao for the upcoming equinox ritual. Maybe just someone going for a walk, like her, or continuing the search for the weak point in the barrier that had allowed the Banol Kax to send their creatures through.

  Or it could be one of those creatures. Or worse.

  Leveling the pistol, she swept the tree line. Not letting her voice shake, though it badly wanted to, she said, “You’ve got to the count of three before I call for backup and embarrass us both. One… two…”

  There was a soft whuff. Then leaves moved, parted, and a pair of pale green eyes gleamed from the shadows.

  “Oh. Christ, Mac.” She let her gun sag as adrenaline raced through her, threatening to turn her fight response into a full-on case of the shakes. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  The big coyote whuffed again, using the low bark that always made her feel like she could almost understand him. Now, though, she didn’t need a translation to know what was going on. “He told you to watch out for me, didn’t he?”

  Mac stepped out of the grove, looking at her with his ears and tail cocked hopefully, as if unsure of his welcome.

  She exhaled a long, shuddering breath. Then she patted her thigh in invitation. “Come on, big guy. Let’s go kill some targets.”

  He bounded over to her, barking with joy, and some of that good mood transmitted to her as she headed up the path with the big coyote at her side, anticipating going a few rounds with the simulator Michael had put together to teach the winikin how to shoot straight. Violence might not solve everything, but sometimes it was a damn good way to blow off steam. And gods knew she needed to clear her head enough so she could figure out how to deal with Zane, her father, the upcoming mock battle… and the part of her that was warning that sparks like the ones she and Sven made together didn’t come along every day, and she should grab them when and where she found them. Even if they weren’t planning on sticking around.

  Coatepec Mountain

  Mexico

  Anna sat lotus-style in the temple at the top of the mountain, facing the huge chac-mool altar with her eyes closed, her dark, copper-burnished hair tied back in a knot at her nape, and her face tipped up to the sun. The sky was a clear, perfect blue, the air a soft seventy-five, and the birds were singing their little hearts out from the trees farther down the peak, near the excavation where she and several of the others were trying to figure out how, exactly, Coatepec Mountain would figure into the end-time war.

  Around her at the points of a perfect equilateral triangle stood three ancient stone pillars carved to represent the balam, the jaguar that was her bloodline totem. Together, the pillars and altar outlined the place where a vital intersection—the Nightkeepers’ connection to the gods themselves—appeared during the solstices and equinoxes. But the equinox was still a week away, and today, save for her, the mountaintop was deserted. Strike and Sasha had ’ported north to Skywatch to huddle with Dez and the others over the latest attack, leaving Anna blessedly alone.

  Gods. Finally.

  Powerless to help the warriors with anything but teleportation, she had named herself the guardian of the intersection at Coatepec Mountain, and set out to uncover its secrets. So far, though, she hadn’t gotten very far. Maybe now, with her mind clear of background chatter, she would be able to sense something in the stones, some clue of how they were to be used, or when.

  She picked up the knife she’d brought with her, suppressing a shudder. A brush of her fingertips found the ridged scars on her wrists, old and closed, though they ached with the beat of her heart as she set the knife point to one palm. “Please, gods,” she whispered, “let me help.”

  There was no use asking them to help her—she hadn’t felt their presence in a long, long time. She didn’t know if they had given up on her because she had turned away from them too often, rejecting their gifts over and over again, or if she was the one blocking them, afraid that if she let one piece of the magic come, the rest of it would follow. It was probably a combination of the two, which might have been a relief if she’d had any ability to control it. But she didn’t; it was all in her head. Literally.

  It was going to be up to the gods, and maybe—hopefully—a ritual that could convince her subconscious to release whatever hold it was keeping on her magic. She didn’t want to be a seer, didn’t even want to be a Nightkeeper. But when she weighed those desires against the end-time war, they lost out, big-time.

  “Okay,” she murmured, not really sure if she was talking to herself or to the voice she sometimes heard inside her head—that of a ghost with unerring logic and a snarly attitude, both of which had transcended death. “Wish me luck.”

  She didn’t hear anything, didn’t feel anything, but imagined him making a derisive face and telling her not to be a girl, and go ahead and cut already. So she did. Blood welled up and pain slashed through her, but it was familiar and cleansing, and it was terrifyingly easy to switch hands and cut her other palm, gripping the blood-slicked handle tightly.

  There was no buzzing hum in the air, no sparkles of red-gold, no sign that the magic even cared that she was bleeding onto the packed earth as she dipped into the pocket of her bush pants and closed her fingers around the small, yellow quartz pendant she carried with her, partly as a talisman, partly as penance.

  Anna had been two years
away from the start of her training and decades away from receiving the skull from her mother when the king—her father—had declared war on the intersection beneath Chichén Itzá, believing that sealing it would prevent the end-time war. Her mother, foreseeing the massacre and knowing that that was the true vision, had stood by her husband in public, but did three things in private: She tutored Strike and Anna’s winikin, Jox, on the use of the magical safe room hidden beneath the mansion’s library; she faked a stillbirth and sent the newborn—Sasha—far away where she might be safe… and she gave thirteen-year-old Anna her crystal skull.

  Lifting it now, Anna let the silver chain run through her bloodstained fingers until the quartz carving dangled, then began to swing hypnotically. Its empty sockets stared at her, blinking from sunlight to shadow and back again as the carving twisted on its axis.

  The skull had power, and she had the innate ability to use that power. There was no other way she could have seen the things she had seen during the massacre otherwise. But the experience had scarred her, changed her, and when the magic came back online for all the others two decades later, it hadn’t done so for her. Oh, she had moments here and there, but nothing consistent or controlled, and even those visions had fallen off over time. But the potential was there. She just had to break through the barriers inside her.

  Hands shaking, she looped the chain around her neck. The skull settled between her breasts as she focused inward, hearing the beat of her heart and the rush of the blood in her veins, feeling the sting of sacrifice and the heavy weight of the pendant against her breastbone, and seeking the magic that had once come as naturally to her as flirting and laughing. All of which now seemed to belong to another lifetime. And, just as she couldn’t summon any interest in flirting or let free the easy laughter she had once loved, she couldn’t find the magic now.

  Panic flickered at the edges of her mind, but she shoved it aside, because although this felt like every other time she had tried to summon a vision recently, this time she had something new to try: Lucius had given her a piece of notepaper he’d found sandwiched between two leaves of an ancient codex: notes on the vision-quest ceremony of an itza’at seer. The paper was modern, the pen blue ballpoint, the writing young and looping, and their best guess was that it had belonged to a girl who, at fifteen or sixteen, had just gotten the talent mark identifying her as an itza’at, and was embarking on a seer’s rigorous training. Though the spells were supposed to be memorized, never written down, this girl had sneaked notes.

  Touching it, Anna pictured a dark-haired teen studying in the archive, sneaking furtive looks at her notes and, upon hearing the tread of adult footsteps, quickly hiding the paper. That was more imagination than vision, though. And with it, she sent a small inner plea: Please, gods, let it work for me.

  She needed this. They all did.

  Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, braced herself, and whispered, “Tas teen k’aas wayak.” It literally meant, “Bring me the nightmare.”

  And for the first time in her life, the magic came on command.

  A yellow glow flared around her—or maybe it was inside her, painting her corneas from within. It was the same color as the crystal skull, glittering and gleaming with patterns of light through a gemstone. She was somehow unsurprised to feel the hard bumps of the amulet clutched in one hand, though she didn’t remember reaching for it. Her heart hammered fast and furious, and she was suddenly drenched in a cold sweat that was equal parts flop and fear.

  When nothing more happened, leaving her vision clouded with yellow, she sent a plea into the sky. Show me, she urged. Show me what they need to know. This was about the magi and the war, not about her. Never about her. Please, gods. Through lips that felt like they belonged to someone else, she said again, “Tas teen k’aas wayak.”

  There was another, brighter flash, one that blanked her outer vision entirely, leaving her lost in a world of amber refractions. The world seemed to shift around her for a second, as if the entire space-time continuum had hiccuped. And then, incredibly, a voice emerged from the glowing yellow kaleidoscope—no, many voices, all speaking as one, saying in her mind, Return the Father to earth. His job there is not yet done.

  Shock raced through her. “What?” This was no vision. It was a message from beyond the barrier!

  But as quickly as it had come, the yellow light faded and then disappeared, leaving her sitting there with both hands—fully healed now, thanks to the magic—wrapped around the crystal skull.

  Her mind raced. Whose father? Probably not her own, as that had been an unfamiliar voice, not that of her own ancestral nahwal. But what other father… Oh, gods. Her throat tightened as a possibility occurred, one so huge that it was terrifying.

  There was one man who had been known by many as “Father”: the sole Nightkeeper mage to survive the first massacre. He had led the dozen or so surviving children out of Egypt along with the loyal servants that had saved the children’s lives—captured Sumerian slaves whom he later enspelled to create the winikin. When they arrived in their new home—Mesoamerica—he had codified the Nightkeepers’ way of life into the writs, and he had written down everything he knew about their history and, more important, the prophecies governing the end-time.

  The Nightkeepers had existed for many millennia before his birth… but he had made them what they were today.

  Anna stared up at the sky, heart lifting with joy. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  It wasn’t a vision or a foretelling, but she had gotten exactly what she asked for: information that would help the magi. Because unless she was way off base, the Nightkeepers had just been charged with the First Father’s resurrection.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  September 15

  Six days to the equinox; three months and

  six days to doomsday

  Skywatch

  “Team one is in position,” Cara said, just loud enough that her throat mike could transmit the info to the other three team leaders—Natalie, JT, and Lora—who would sound off when they reached their positions at strategic spots around the Nightkeepers’ training ground. The faux ruin was made of cement blocks, rebar, and concrete, but otherwise mimicked a Mayan ruin, complete with a huge central pyramid with interior chambers and booby traps, and smaller pyramids, temples, and dwellings set on causeways that radiated out from the pyramid. Splashes of paint bore witness to earlier training runs, while chunks of blasted cement and char marked the few times the magi had gone at it for real. Today was a mix of the two, part paintball, part real magic. And, gods willing, the winikin would pull it off.

  Her four teams had scattered from the designated drop point the moment the indicator light went green, indicating the start of the training run. Now, crouched in along the base of a dusty, irregular wall and wearing the urban desert camo of the modern human military, Cara and the seven other members of her team blended—she hoped—with the midafternoon shadows.

  “Team three is in position,” JT reported. His voice was all business: clipped, efficient, precise, and with none of his off-duty ’tude. Cara didn’t know how much of his good behavior came from his days in the military and how much was Natalie’s doing, but so far, so good, and she was hoping against hope the other rebels would take his lead. Because there was more than just bragging rights riding on this particular training run.

  Way more.

  In the four days since Aaron’s funeral, there hadn’t been any more attacks. The mood inside the compound might’ve been better if there had been, though, because at least then there would’ve been an enemy to fight. Instead, the investigation had stalled and a few of the Nightkeepers—including the king himself—had been looking sideways at the winikin, as if thinking they knew more than they were telling. Not to mention that several of the winikin who had received their bloodline marks had become withdrawn, while others had gotten surly. Then there was Anna’s message indicating that the Nightkeepers were supposed to resurrect the First Father, who had been res
ponsible for creating the winikin in the first place. Although Lucius and the brain trust hadn’t yet figured out how that was supposed to happen, the magi were acting like the Father’s return would be the answer to their prayers. And morale among the winikin had started seriously circling the bowl.

  Fortunately, Dez—to give credit where due—had not only seen the problem, he’d come up with a damn good solution in the form of a Nightkeepers-versus-winikin training challenge: If the winikin—working in their own teams rather than the usual Nightkeeper-led groups—could infiltrate the Nightkeeper-guarded main pyramid, retrieve a hidden artifact, and get it to a designated rendezvous point for pickup, the king would think about making the winikin-only teams permanent.

  It wasn’t a promise, but it had sure as heck fired up most of the winikin. As for the holdouts—Sebastian and several of his cronies—well, Cara and Zane were keeping a sharp eye on them.

  Unfortunately, she also felt the need to keep a sharp eye on Zane too. She’d been getting a weird vibe off him over the past few days, and although she hadn’t expected things to be normal between them after what happened, this felt like something else. Or else she was projecting, trying to distract herself from the knowledge that Sven was still in the compound and didn’t show any signs of taking off. And when he wasn’t in her peripheral vision, Mac was.

  “Team four is in position,” Lora reported. Her appointment as a team leader had gotten some grumbles after the way she froze up under fire the other day, but Zane was convinced that the responsibility would be the kick in the ass she needed to make her step up, and Cara had let him have that one.

  “Team two is in the backup position,” Natalie’s voice said suddenly in her ear. “There are three heat signatures near the primary position, nothing on visual.”