Skykeepers Page 9

  The red-robe called shield magic, casting it thick and strong in a bubble around him and Sasha, but the thing within Michael wasn’t deterred. He felt a jolt of pain, as though a final synapse had soldered itself into place, and a conduit opened up within him, letting the silver magic flow through him. Into him. Shaking with the power of it, the rage of it, Michael leveled his arm toward the red-robe and sent the magic winging toward his enemy, funneling it into the other man while keeping Sasha safe. There was a noiseless detonation, a shock wave of power flinging from man to man.

  The Xibalban’s face contorted, then went slack and gray. Sasha slid from his shoulder and fell to the floor as he sagged, losing cohesion. His flesh slid on his bones, draping over a skeleton that still fought to stand. Then his inner structure lost its solidity and he collapsed, the bloodred robe tenting around him. When it settled, there was a pile of greasy gray dust with cinderlike chunks beneath. The only recognizable piece that remained was the pilli’s hand, looking charcoaled, reaching from the pile as if in supplication. Nearby, Sasha lay curled on her side, still mercifully asleep.

  Silence rang in the chamber as Michael stared down at the remains. The killer in him was utterly satisfied. The better man he’d been trying to become wanted to puke.

  “Oh, fuck. What did I just do?” More, what am I? What did Iago know about the silver magic, about him?

  Michael bent double, dry heaving, feeling totally out of control, shaky and sick with it, and afraid of what came next. Focus, he told himself. Get rid of the Other; get rid of the magic. You’ve done it before. You can do this.

  To his surprise, it wasn’t difficult to push the Other back; it seemed sated from the kill, and the magic. Gods, the magic. He could still feel the echo of mad silver power, the thundering might. It fascinated and repelled him, called to one side of him and scared the shit out of the other. When it was gone, he was left empty and all but powerless, with only the faint hum of red-gold Nightkeeper magic to lean on. And that was a problem. Where before he’d been able to manage the postmagic crash that followed big spell casting, now he felt it hammering down on him, threatening to black him out even though he and Sasha were far from safe.

  “Keep it together,” he gritted through clenched teeth, summoning the last of his reserves. With the rattle of foreign magic gone, he could hear the sounds of battle from out in the hallway, forcibly reminding him of what Iago had said about the place cratering, suggesting that he’d set a self-destruct mechanism.

  Save Sasha, he reminded himself, going back to basics when nothing else made sense. She’s the priority.

  Summoning the last of his reserves, he bent and got his arms around Sasha. She was warm and lax in his arms, solid and real. The feel of her centered him as nothing else had, which was ironic, considering that it was his rampaging desire for her that had breached his defenses in the first place. Iago had implied she was the key to his transformation, whatever that was, and Michael was afraid the change had already begun. He felt dark and angry, like he could kill the world even with the Other locked away.

  Holding her close, he breathed in her scent, felt it seep into him, lighting the darkness and pushing the impulse away. For now.

  Then, knowing the fight wasn’t over—not by a long shot—he shifted her to his shoulder. Then, cradling her with one arm and wielding a single autopistol with a half-full clip in his other hand, he stepped through the doorway, took in the situation at a glance, and opened fire.

  Killing the gray-robes was far too easy.

  The closest group went down without a sound, without even knowing they had an enemy behind them until it was too late. They had been ranged across the hallway, firing to keep the Nightkeepers pinned down in an alcove while their reinforcements came up from the other side. The moment Michael neutralized the cover fire, the Nightkeepers burst from their scant shelter and took out the second team with a combination of jade-tips and fireballs. Michael swayed. “Hurry,” he rasped. “Iago triggered some sort of self-destruct.” There was no sign of the enemy mage; he’d fled the scene, leaving the last of his troops behind.

  “She okay?” Strike asked with a dubious look at Sasha.

  “Overwhelmed. I thought asleep was better than hysterical.” Which was true, though not the way the king would assume.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here, then.” Strike clapped Michael on the shoulder, nearly flattening him. “Good job.”

  You have no fucking idea, Michael thought with zero humor as he followed the others into the temple of the maize goddess.

  There, the magi stared down at what was left of the red-robe’s body.

  Strike shot Michael a look from beneath lowered brows. “Did Iago do this?”

  Now, as before, Michael ran into a mental barrier he hadn’t put there, one that tugged at his magic and his instincts and told him that no matter what, he couldn’t tell them what he was. It wasn’t just fear of their reactions, either. There was something bigger at stake here, something he didn’t yet understand. Worse, he didn’t know whether it was the light or dark half of himself making the call. He just knew that there was only one possible answer to Strike’s question. And it was a lie. “Yeah, it was Iago. His magic misfired.”

  “Shit.” Strike stared at the charred, grasping hand a moment longer, then gestured for the magi to join up for the ’port. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” When the magi were uplinked, Strike said, “Sorry, gang. I need everything you’ve got.” He leaned hard on the blood links, sucking every last bit of red-gold magic from each of the Nightkeepers, wringing them dry.

  Michael’s vision grayed. “Son of a—” he began, but got cut off midcurse. The ’port magic triggered and the world slid sideways. As they zapped out, a terrible explosion rocked the compound. Michael felt the scorch of the blast as the last few molecules of him were sucked into the barrier, traveling along the edge of the energy flow.

  Then Strike found his ’port lock, yanked the thread, and dumped them all out in the middle of the great room back at Skywatch.

  Michael landed flat-footed and nearly pancaked it then and there, but managed to keep himself upright somehow, gutting it out because he couldn’t collapse until he knew Sasha was safe.

  Easing her off his shoulder, he deposited her more or less gently on a nearby couch, and slurred the words that would rescind the sleep spell. She didn’t awaken.

  Panic spiked as he said the words again, louder and with actual diction. Still nothing. “Come on, come on!” he hissed under his breath, shaking her a little. Nausea spiked when her head lolled. “She’s not coming around. What’s wrong?” Had she caught the edge of the silver magic? He touched her throat, reassured himself that her pulse was steady and true, her skin warm. But still, she didn’t wake. He said the spell again, didn’t feel the slightest hint of red-gold power, even when he dug deep. He was toast.

  His vision tunneled to the sight of her face, soft yet strong in repose, her dark lashes forming twin smudges on her cheeks. She wasn’t coming around, godsdamn it.

  Someone caught his arm, tried to pull him away. He rounded with a feral snarl, grabbing his assailant. “Get the fuck—” He broke off when he recognized Tomas, and realized he’d nearly pitched his winikin across the room. He had to get himself under control, damn it. The world hazed muddy red as he looked down into the winikin’s narrow, pious face and gray, almost colorless eyes. “Don’t give up on her too,” he ordered, voice low and dangerous. “Don’t you fucking give up on her.”

  Something flickered in Tomas’s face—something that might have been hope. The winikin nodded. “I’ll see to her. You can trust me.”

  And the damned thing was, Michael knew that despite everything they’d said to each other—and there had been a shit-ton of it—he did trust Tomas, in this, at least. “Don’t let anyone question her until I get back,” he ordered as the muddy grayness closed in on him.

  Tomas frowned. “Where are you going?”

  “Away,” Michael answer
ed. And, with his soul aching from the burden of his lies, and the knowledge that the last thing Sasha needed was a man with a monster inside him, he finally gave himself permission to pass the hell out. As he slid into the darkness, he heard Sasha’s voice in his head, echoing from the moment they were first joined as lovers. It’s okay, she’d said.

  Only it wasn’t. Not anymore.

  ♥ Uploaded by Coral ♥

  PART II

  LUNAR APOGEE

  The moment when the moon is farthest from the earth.

  A time of reversal.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Six and a half years ago Quantico, Virginia

  The e-mail had been carefully devoid of information, giving Michael nothing more than a time—midnight—and a meeting place in Hogan’s Alley. Which set off all his internal alarms. He might’ve thought it was from Esmee, the hottie trainee he’d been in heavy flirt mode with since his arrival in Quantico, except that the e-mail address belonged to his superior’s superior, who he highly doubted was looking for a quickie behind the post office. So he set out on schedule, and watched his back.

  Built by a slew of Hollywood set designers in the late eighties, Hogan’s Alley covered ten or so acres of the 385-acre training academy shared by the FBI and the DEA. The Anytown, USA, facade offered plenty of training opportunities, including a bank that was robbed an average of twice a week during heavy training rotations. With no exercises on the schedule for that night, the alley was deserted, but the power was on, the lit storefronts casting eerie shadows on the fake cars parked beside sealed-shut post office boxes. The fall air was unseasonably warm even this late at night, bringing the scents of cut grass, dust, and gunpowder.

  As Michael crossed the road, headed toward the theater where the meeting was supposed to take place, he was pretty sure he was under surveillance. Not just by the cameras that monitored everything that went down in the alley, but by watching eyes of the corporeal variety. He could feel them in the prickle at his nape and the stir of tension in his gut. His hands curled into loose fists, and energy flowed through him, warming for a fight.

  Down, boy, he warned himself, knowing he was already too close to hair-trigger. Ever since he’d started FBI training, his hotter, harder instincts had risen to the surface. Now, those instincts had him staying in the shadows as he approached the theater entrance, which was seriously dated, like much of the fake town.

  A man stepped from the darkness near the entrance. “Stone?”

  In his mid-forties, hawk nosed and bald, just shy of six feet but muscled and balanced like a fighter, the stranger wore black, insignialess fatigues beneath a nondescript gray jacket. Michael felt vaguely overdressed in blue dress pants and a patterned oxford. But he’d been expecting to meet with his superior’s superior—which this guy definitely wasn’t. He wasn’t a nobody, though. His eyes were hard and narrow, his bearing military, and he projected a definite air of command, one that had Michael tempted to stand at attention, even though his military service had been limited to a short stint of ROTC in college, which had ended when he’d gotten booted for fighting.

  He compromised by standing ready, a balanced position drummed into him by a long line of martial arts instructors who’d attempted to teach him to channel his aggression, with varying degrees of success. “I’m Stone. Who’s asking?”

  “I’m Maxwell Bryson. I want to talk to you about your psych tests.”

  Shit, Michael thought, disgusted. A shrink. But behind the disgust was fear that he’d blown it before he’d really gotten a chance to prove himself. He’d done his damnedest to skew his test answers toward the norm, responding based on the surface part of himself, not the fighter within, figuring the safer part of him was the one they’d want in the bureau. He’d tried to be so careful. Apparently, he hadn’t been careful enough. “What about them?”

  “Don’t bullshit me. It wastes both our time.”

  Inwardly, Michael cringed. He hated the idea of washing out of the program, not just because of the embarrassment factor, but because there were parts of it he really liked, aspects of the training and the job he thought would suit him better than anything else he’d tried so far. But beside the dismay rose a twisting curl of anger, and a parade of sensory flashes kaleidoscoped through him: the sensation of gripping the guy by his black fatigues, putting him up against a wall, getting in his face, taking it further. He’d have to deal with the backup he could sense in the shadows on the opposite side of the street, and the camera footage, but . . .

  Knowing it was exactly that sort of thought process that’d gotten him into this mess, Michael cut it off midstream, even though it was tempting. Damned tempting. But at the same time his less reactive, more rational self had caught a piece that didn’t fit, making him think there was something else going on. He met Bryson’s eyes. “You didn’t have the boss’s boss e-mail me to meet you out here so you could kick me out of the program for fudging psych results. So what’s the deal?”

  “Then you admit you answered dishonestly?”

  “My answers were honest to a point,” Michael hedged, figuring the guy already knew that much, if he was asking.

  Finally, Bryson’s expression changed from cool blankness to a flash of satisfaction. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Does this honesty-to-a-point have anything to do with all the fighting you did during your first year or so of college?”

  Something stirred in Michael’s gut; he wasn’t sure if it was warning or interest. Wary, he said, “Shouldn’t there be an office and a couch involved in this session?”

  The older man made a face. “I’m no shrink. I’m the guy who can give you what you want.”

  “What do you think I want?”

  “Tell me about the fights.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Michael broke first. Telling himself it was no big deal, he shrugged. “They were just fights. Too much alcohol, not enough supervision. You know the drill.” Without Tomas around to nag him to hit the dojo daily, the aggression had all but taken over. He’d tried to control it and failed, tried to drown it in cheap beer and found that only lowered his inhibitions.

  “I’m not talking about thrashing a couple of frat boys. I’m talking about the fight club you got into after that thrill wore off. You came close to killing a man, didn’t you? Scared yourself straight back to martial arts and mind control . . . but that’s wearing thin now, isn’t it?” Bryson’s eyes bore into his. “The further you get into the academy training, the more the monster wants to come out, right? You can tell me. Trust me, I understand. And I can help you.”

  Michael went very still as his overdeveloped fight-or-flight—emphasis on fight—response threatened to kick in, and his dominant self struggled to control the impulse. He counted his heartbeats. When they slowed slightly, and he could hang onto his grip on himself, he glanced at one of the cameras covering that portion of Hogan’s Alley. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Tape’s not rolling,” Bryson said succinctly. “It’s just you and me.”

  Oddly, Michael believed that. “What about the guy across the street?”

  “He’s one of mine.”

  “Who the hell are you?” This had to be a total put-on, a trap conceived by the psych types, maybe even a training exercise for the Behavioral Sciences Unit, or some such shit. But even as Michael told himself that, part of him was thinking, What if it’s not a put-on? What if it’s real?

  “I’m your best chance at using your natural talents to their fullest,” Bryson answered. “I run a small, select unit of men that at present operates under an arm of Homeland Security, although we work outside the scope of the more official paradigms, and have persisted through various administrations, often invisible to even the president. We’re . . . let’s just say we keep the peace in ways the other branches won’t touch.”

  “You’re talking about black ops.”

  “Among other things.” Bryson’s expression returned to relentless neutralit
y. “Ever since the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, we’ve been looking to expand our ranks, but we require a . . . certain type of individual, so to speak.”

  And there it is, Michael thought. “A man with the potential to become a killer.”

  Ever since childhood, he’d been aware of the urges. He’d never acted on the impulses, hadn’t done anything on the watch list for serial killers—but there had been times he’d wanted to. Badly.

  Bryson shook his head. “Anyone can become a killer, given the right circumstances. What I need is someone who can do the work this country needs him to do, then put it aside and function normally otherwise.” He paused, eyes locking with Michael’s. “I need a fighter with a borderline dissociative personality, if not full-blown schizophrenia.”

  Michael swallowed hard, knowing his FBI training was over, one way or the other. “What’s in it for . . . for this person? If you found him, I mean.”

  “I’ll teach him to control the impulses, how to use them to be a better man. I’ll program him so he can put that part of himself away, and take it out only when and where it will do some good.”

  “How?” The word escaped before Michael could curb it, or hide some of the desperation he knew had flashed in his eyes.

  “The same way I’ll blank your memories of this entire meeting if you turn me down.” Bryson motioned, and the second man detached himself from the shadows across the road and crossed the street to join them. “Dr. Horn will take care of it.”

  The doctor wore the same black fatigues but no jacket, and had wisps of white-blond hair crowning his otherwise shiny scalp. His features were pinched and rabbity, and he didn’t move at all like a fighter. When he dipped into one of his thigh pockets and came up with a pair of preloaded syringes, though, his movements carried the grace of long familiarity. “Your call, Mr. Stone,” he said, his voice surprisingly deep given his unprepossessing exterior. “You in or out?”