“Ixchel,” Leah said, coming up to stand beside Strike. The gold of the creator god sparked in her eyes through the magic of the eclipse connection.
The imperfect human Godkeeper faced the true Godkeeper for a moment that hung suspended in time. Then the queen bent and spit at Alexis’s feet in obeisance. Moments later Strike did the same.
Then each of the others did the same, as the Nightkeepers welcomed the goddess into their midst.
Nate held himself apart, standing near Alexis because he couldn’t not be near her, but distancing himself at the same time. Nobody seemed to notice or care, though, because—for now, anyway—the goddess’s protector was ancillary.
“Thank you,” Alexis said. Her face shone with power and joy, and the colors from the fireball had extended to touch her, limning her in rainbows. She looked at Sven, the goddess power somehow prompting her to pick him out of the others. “Congratulations.”
Surprise flashed across his features, then pride. He held out his forearm, showing that the indecipherable talent mark he’d worn since the previous fall had changed, resolving itself into a glyph that was very like Strike’s, yet not. “I’m a translocator,” he said. “Which pretty much means I can teleport inanimate shit without touching it.” But though his words might be deprecating, his eyes shone and his shoulders were square beneath his combat duds.
Alexis next turned to where Patience stood, with Brandt beside her. “I’m sorry.” This time Nate was pretty sure it was Alexis the woman, not the goddess, who was speaking.
Patience shook her head. “It was as it was meant to be.” She was holding Brandt’s hand, her grip tight, as though she were fighting not to let go. She glanced at Nate, then back to Alexis. “Better for it to be the two of you right now.”
Better for whom? Nate wondered, then wished he hadn’t, wished he could just let events unfold. But unease dogged him as the Nightkeepers headed topside to collect Jade and the winikin, and they all linked up once again for the trip home. As the teleport magic kicked in, an echo in the king’s voice reached them all, a thought he’d no doubt meant to keep private, or just between him and Leah, but had been broadcast through the bloodline link: What good will rainbows do against Camazotz?
PART II
SATURN AT OPPOSITION
Saturn is strongly associated with time. In the Dresden Codex, one of only four surviving Mayan texts, the movement of Saturn is used to help set the interlocking Mayan calendars, including the Long Count. At opposition, Saturn is at its closest point to the Earth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
February 9 Lucius nearly killed himself trying to find the location the starscript had directed him to. Granted, he probably should’ve gotten a room in Albuquerque instead of pushing on into the darkness, but it was like something was driving him, keeping him going well past his natural reserves. He wasn’t tired, though he knew he damn well ought to be. He hadn’t been chugging caffeine, didn’t even remember the last time he’d eaten anything, yet he was fully alert, and his body felt strong, supple, and ready for action.
Excitement buzzed through him at the thought that he might be close to finally meeting Sasha, finally putting a face and body to the voice on the phone, maybe even getting answers to some of the questions that plagued him. Oddly, he wasn’t really thinking of Desiree’s challenge or the doctorate, though he’d phoned in the day before and told the Dragon Lady where he was headed. Those things—
and the university—seemed far away, and inconsequential.
What mattered was the strange light coming from the thin, iridescent corona surrounding the eclipsed moon, which had turned a bloody orange-red, and his headlights, which lit a faint track that optimistically called itself a road. He hung on to the steering wheel as his rented four-wheel-drive vehicle dropped into a pothole and bounced out again, and an ominous thumping noise started coming from the undercarriage. He didn’t care, though. All he cared about was getting to the end of his journey.
Then, finally, he topped a low ridge and saw a glitter of lights below. Hitting the gas, he sent the SUV slaloming down the backside of the ridge. Ten minutes later he was driving through the open gates of what turned out to be a fricking palace, a mansion of sandstone and marble and shit that looked totally out of place in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.
The gates swung shut behind him, sending a shiver down his spine. But that didn’t stop him from parking by the front door and climbing out of the SUV. Sasha might not be here, he cautioned himself.
You’re probably setting yourself up for some mondo disappointment. But he thought not.
He’d followed Ledbetter’s directions and found an oasis. He hoped that she’d done the same.
He saw a surveillance camera tracking him as he headed up a flagged walkway, under a pillared awning supported by columns that looked like their maker had gotten stuck halfway between Intro to Ancient Egypt and Mayan Architecture for Dummies. Nightkeeper influence, he was sure of it.
The air hummed with a strange, discordant sound—something his gut told him was ancient magic.
Nightkeeper magic. Logic said his gut was taking a hell of a flying leap on that one, but his gut told logic to fuck off, because deep down inside he knew he was right. He’d found the Nightkeepers. And not just proof that they’d existed in Mayan times, either. He’d frickin’ found the home base of their modern-day descendants.
Again with the logic leap. Again with the certainty.
His pulse was pounding as he lifted a hand to knock. Then, when the door swung inward, his heart quite simply stopped at the sight of the woman standing in the ornate entryway.
It wasn’t Sasha, though. It was Anna.
“Lucius,” she said on a long, sad sigh. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Holy shit, was all he could think. Shock and guilt swirled around, hammering at each other in a hell of a mental joust, as too many details that’d refused to gel in the past suddenly resolved themselves into an impossible, improbable certainty.
His boss was a goddamned Nightkeeper.
Anna could not freaking believe what she was seeing, even though the surveillance system had forewarned them of the visitor, and Strike had recognized Lucius. He’d ordered Jox to open the gates and told Anna to go meet her student and bring him inside, on the theory that it’d be better to contain the damage than try to avoid someone who’d shown up in the Nightkeepers’ sphere one too many times for coincidence.
Even forewarned, though, it was a shock for Anna to have him standing on the doorstep of Skywatch, his eyes wide and a little wild. She was also surprised, once again, to realize that he’d gained mass and muscle, and wasn’t her scrawny, geeky grad student anymore.
Which didn’t even begin to tell her what the hell she should do about him. She was exhausted from the drain of the eclipse ceremony. Her brain was spinning from the gods’ choice of a keeper, and the identity of the goddess who’d bound with Alexis. And now this.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, but she didn’t tell him to leave. It was too late for that. Stepping back, she waved him in. “Come on.”
He stood rooted, white-faced in shock, but she saw something else beneath the surprise.