Patience hesitated, then spun for the doorway. But she was too late. The membrane tore with a wet ripping sound that amped the rattling magic to a maniacal chatter. Smoke poured through the opening, unrelieved black save for two pinpoint glints of luminous green. A makol !
The dispossessed demon soul arrowed straight for Patience, moving fast.
“Run!” Brandt dove for the billowing presence, trying to grab it and keep it away from her. He passed right through it, though, catching nothing but air. He landed hard, rolled, and lurched back to his feet just in time to see Patience dodge the smoke and make a dive for the altar.
She snagged the stone knife from the corpse’s belt, slashed both her palms and thrust her hands into the mess atop the altar, crying, “Gods help us!”
A soundless detonation rocked the chamber, thumping deep within Brandt and making his ears ring.
The dark-magic rattle modulated, becoming underlain by the buzzing hum from before. The undulating membrane went from muddy brown to pure silver, shot through with rainbow hues, like the surface of a bubble seen from an angle.
Patience’s expression turned radiant; she seemed to glow from within as she turned to him. But then her face blanked with horror, and she screamed, “Behind you!”
Brandt lifted the bloodstained torch and spun—straight into a roiling cloud of black smoke. He caught a flash of fluorescent green and smelled char, and then he was seeing the world in fluorescent green, and his brain was impossibly split in two.
He was himself, but he was someone else too; he caught kaleidoscope images of terrible blood rituals designed to prepare the living for resurrection. He saw two boys, flashing images of them growing, one into the guy he had just killed, the other into a younger, auburn-haired version. He saw them carve their father’s beating heart from his chest and make the sacrifices that would ensure his immortality as a demon soul. The dead brother had been stone-faced, the other in tears.
He was Werigo, ex-leader of the Order of Xibalba, a group even more deeply underground than the surviving Nightkeepers. He was also Brandt White-Eagle. And the part of him that remained Brandt would be fucked if he was going to let a dark mage turn him into a makol .
Forcing his body to move, he lurched for the altar. “Give me the knife!”
Patience tossed it and he caught it on the fly. The second his fingers closed around the hilt, the dark magic that had been used to baptize the blade rose up within him, giving Werigo the upper hand.
Seeing the light of the gods inside Patience and recognizing the power her sacrifice would generate, the makol wrested control of their shared body away from Brandt and reached for her.
Panic slashed through Brandt. Using that fear, he managed to regain enough control to shout, “Kill me. Do it now !”
Her eyes flashed. “No way. I just found you.”
She closed the distance between them, dodged Werigo’s knife slash, and grabbed Brandt’s wrist in a numbing, twisting grip. The knife clattered to the floor as she kissed him, grabbed his bloodstained hand in hers, and connected them, blood to blood.
Brandt howled in his soul when he felt part of Werigo leave him and enter Patience through the kiss, felt the makol gather his magic and inwardly begin a spell that would kill the two Nightkeepers and use the sacrifice to reanimate the dead man as another makol . Brandt struggled to pull Werigo back but couldn’t, fought to push Patience away, but she held on to him, not letting him end the kiss.
Against his mouth, she whispered, “Please, gods.”
Without warning, power jolted into him, through him, in a screaming rainbow that flayed his soul raw in an instant, leaving him bare.
He sensed the gods within Patience, and knew they were saving her because she deserved it, and were saving him solely because he and Patience were connected. Collateral salvation instead of collateral damage.
His inner right forearm burned at the spot where the magi had worn their bloodline marks.
Then the makol howled as the gods tore it out of Patience and aimed its essence toward a rainbow funnel cloud that spun midair above the blood-spattered altar.
Werigo’s old, angry soul dug claws into Brandt’s consciousness, tearing deep furrows in his psyche.
The gods might be saving Brandt, but they sure as shit weren’t protecting him from the fallout.
Patience was trying to, though; she held him tighter, kissed him harder, sharing her blood, her strength, and the grace of her gods.
Brandt howled and fought to free himself from Werigo. Triumph flared when he felt the makol ’s grip give and sensed the bastard’s realization that he was going to be trapped once again behind the barrier. But he also felt Werigo’s determination not to let them escape with the knowledge that the barrier was friable within this sacred spot, which had access points for both light and dark magic, or that the Order of Xibalba was real, not just a bedtime story used to frighten Nightkeeper children.
Before Brandt could block the move, if he had even known how, Werigo reached through the connection of blood and sex magic that bound him and Patience together. The demon soul locked on to both of their consciousnesses as dark magic rattled harshly.
Brandt shouted curses as oily brown power clouded his mind, blocking off memory after memory, and doing the same to Patience.
He saw the images parade past in reverse: him and Patience creeping through the tunnel; them intertwined in the aftermath of lovemaking; his elation at finding her on the beach; the first moment he saw her. Then Werigo went back further still, to another time, another encounter with the gods.
Brandt howled, tried to fight it, but he didn’t know what to do with the magic, didn’t know how to defend himself as his past was torn away from him.
Then Werigo was gone. But so were the memories.
“No!” Brandt croaked the word aloud, surprised to realize that he could speak, that he was back in control of his own body again. Deep in his bones, he felt it the moment that the equinox faded and the barrier solidified.
The air above the altar went still. Silence filled the chamber. And the magic snapped out of existence, leaving him utterly empty.
He sagged against the altar, retching against the awful, sickening spin of his head. Patience lay unmoving on the floor, but a fumbling vitals check reassured him that she was breathing, her heartbeat steady. Gray fog clouded his vision, his thoughts; it was all he could do to light her torch using one of the wall sconces. He wanted to pass the hell out, but he didn’t dare. His gut told him that their exit wouldn’t be open much longer.
He had to get them out of there.
Dizzy but determined, he picked her up, staggered out of the chamber, and started back up the tunnel.
With each step he took, the gray fog got thicker, obscuring his memories of the—what was it again?
“Doesn’t matter,” he rasped through a thick-feeling throat. Channeling Woody, he said, “Focus on your priorities.” Knowing he was losing it, that he wasn’t far from shutting down entirely, he fixed a single priority in his mind: I’ve got to get us both back to the hotel.