for just a second before the shields slammed back down.
Unexpectedly, energy sparked in the air between them.
Help him remember. The nahwal’s order echoed through her soul, and her pulse jumped as a new thought occurred. It was far too tempting to think that he was supposed to remember how to be her husband, her lover. She wasn’t sure what that theory had to do with debts and ancestors, but it certainly jibed with how the magic worked. The closer their emotional ties, the stronger their magic.
What if he’d had it backward all along? What if they weren’t supposed to table their marriage for the duration of the war? What if they were supposed to fix it instead?
Don’t go there, she warned herself. They had tried too many times before to patch up their relationship. She was sick of trying, sick of failing. And there was no reason to think anything had changed, really.
Unless it had.
“Given what the nahwal said and the way the etznab spell seems to work, I want the two of you teaming up on every aspect of this. Find a way to make it work,” Strike said in his “end of discussion, the jaguar king has spoken” voice.
Brandt faced front. “Like I said. I got it.”
Patience sent him an edged look, but said to the king, “We’ll do what needs to be done.”
Strike didn’t look totally satisfied by that answer, but he let it go and turned to Lucius. “Moving on.
What have you got on the two gods the nahwal mentioned?”
Lucius had been frowning over something on his laptop. At the king’s question, he looked up, blinking around at the group as though he’d forgotten they were there. “Kali and Cabrakan.” He cleared his throat. “Right. The nahwal said that if—when—Brandt becomes the Triad mage, he’ll be able to prevent Cabrakan from avenging his brother and finishing what Kali began. Which gives us two gods to work with. Starting with Kali, there’s some debate on whether he—and this god is most definitely a ‘he,’ enormous schlong and all—is allied with the sky or Xibalba. Either way, he’s the god of leadership. Nightkeeper leadership, in particular.”
“That’s why it sounded familiar,” Strike said. “The Manikin scepter is carved in Kali’s image, enormous schlong and all.” The scepter, which resided in the barrier with the jaguar nahwal, was the symbol of his rulership. “Which I suppose makes us Kali’s children, and means that Cabrakan is going to come after us.” He paused. “So who or what is Cabrakan?”
“The lord of earthquakes.”
“Shit,” Brandt muttered. “Not good.”
“Uh-oh,” Patience whispered. Up until now, the Banol Kax had been able to send only relatively minor demons to test the barrier during the cardinal equinoxes and solstices. The earthquake lord, though, didn’t sound like any minor demon.
Strike held up a hand to quell the rising buzz in the room. To Lucius, he said, “Go on.”
“The ancients knew how to track the movement of the stars and predict basic weather patterns, which allowed them to make the proper sacrifices and feel like they were in relatively decent control of their environment. In contrast, earthquakes struck without warning, and could be absolutely devastating. Because of that, Cabrakan was one of the most feared of the Banol Kax. When an earthquake struck, the priests would hustle to throw together massive rituals of appeasement, in the hopes of mitigating the aftershocks.”
“In other words,” Brandt said, “this particular Banol Kax isn’t something we want to fuck with.”
Lucius nodded. “Problem is, we already have . . . and in doing so, we messed with the legends.” He paused. “Cabrakan’s brother is—or was—Zipacna.”
Strike growled, “Son of a bitch.”
Patience drew in a breath as the dots connected. Two years earlier, Strike and Leah had joined together with the creator god, Kulkulkan, to defeat the winged crocodile demon, Zipacna, in a fierce aerial battle. In the process, Zipacna’s essence had been destroyed rather than being returned to Xibalba as part of the Great Cycle.
“According to the legends,” Lucius continued, “Zipacna was destined to make it through to the end-
time war, when he and Cabrakan would fight the Hero Twins. The outcome of that particular battle was to be pivotal in determining whether the barrier falls completely, giving the Banol Kax total access to the earth plane. But now . . .” Lucius spread his hands. “We’re off the map here, people.”
Patience’s heart clutched. “If Cabrakan is supposed to fight the Hero Twins . . .” She trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
The half-human deities starred in many of the old legends. In the stories, the young boys—one brave, the other studious—got themselves into and out of numerous adventures, eventually winning their ways through Xibalba itself in order to rescue their father, who had been captured by the Banol Kax.
Harry and Braden had never been bound to the barrier, and therefore couldn’t be tracked by magical means, but the parallels had always unnerved Patience. Now they terrified her, especially given that the twins weren’t babies anymore, not really. At five years old, if they had been growing up inside the old system, they would have their bloodline marks and be practicing their first small spells. Gods.
“Hannah and Woody won’t let anything happen to them,” Jox said. “They know how to stay out of sight. And how to raise good kids.”
Patience smiled faintly at that. “Yeah. They do.” She sobered. “But . . . I don’t know. Every time the Hero Twins come up in conversation, my fight-or-flight response goes into overdrive.”
“Mine too,” Brandt said, surprising her. His expression was set and uncompromising, but for a change she found the steeliness comforting. “We won’t let anything happen to them. Whatever it takes is what we’ll do. Whatever they need from us is what they’ll get.” He met her eyes. “Even if it isn’t what we really want.”
It was the closest he’d come to talking about the boys being gone in a long time. It was also, she thought, an offer of a truce in Brandt-speak.
She slipped off her stool and held out a hand. “Come on. Let’s see if the etznab spell can get us any further into either of the visions.”
The most frustrating thing about the magic was its unpredictability. At first, the magi had ascribed the problem to lack of info and proper training, but the more they learned from the library, the more it seemed that the magic was a closer to an art form than a defined set of actions and reactions. Given the increasing volatility of the barrier, which was ramping up both light and dark powers in spurts, with lull periods between, the magic was rapidly becoming a crapshoot.
Rabbit’s mind-bending talent, which had faded to almost nonexistent for a while, had rebounded in the past few months, while Lucius had lost his onetime ability to form barrier conduits. Which meant there were no guarantees when it came to the mirror spell.
Still, when Brandt took her hand, the contact brought a kick of anticipation.
“If the mirror pot doesn’t work this time, don’t be afraid to try the cards again,” Lucius put in.
When Strike shot him a “what the hell?” look, the human held up his hands. “Don’t hate the messenger. She said she needed a spell that involved a mirror, and ‘abracadabra’ or ‘et voilà’ or whatever, I put paws on the spell she needed. That’s not a coincidence.”