They started reciting the spell again, and before they’d gotten past the second grouping of words in the old language, she knew something was different this time. She could feel the power gathering and expanding outward, could hear the hum of magic.
Then, without warning, the hum escalated to a scream and wind slapped at them, driving the mists to a frenzied funnel cloud in an instant and yanking them off their feet.
“Nate!” she screamed, grabbing for him as the gale knocked her back, ripping her hands from his.
“Alexis!” He dove for her, hooking her around the waist and flinging them both to the yielding surface beneath the wind-whipped mist. “Down,” he ordered. “Stay down!”
He flattened her body beneath his and hung on tight while he cast around, trying to find a handhold to anchor them. She did the same, but there was nothing to hold on to but the moist squishiness of the barrier surface, formless and alien.
“I’m slipping,” she cried, feeling the slick surface moving beneath her, feeling the wind grab hold and not let go. “What’s happening?”
“The spell misfired.” He shouted the words over the rising howl of the wind. “I can’t find the way home!”
Cursing herself for not thinking, Alexis closed her eyes and pictured the sacred chamber back at Skywatch, imagining her and Nate on either side of the altar, the others forming a ring in the center of the circular room. Tapping the power of the barrier, she thought, Na otot. The words, which meant
“house” or “home,” should’ve dropped her out of the barrier and back into her body.
They didn’t.
“It’s not working for me, either!” she cried.
They were moving in a circle now, being dragged along by the force of the funnel cloud as it reached down lower and lower still, coming for them. Worse, the funnel cloud didn’t stretch up to the sky, but rather folded double so the spitting mouth, which bellowed mist and wind, was pointed downward, toward the underworld. Where it touched the barrier surface, the gray-green had gone black, suggesting that they were about thirty seconds from a one-way trip to Xibalba.
“The goddess,” Nate shouted. “Call on the goddess!”
Fear rode Alexis, but the connection at the base of her brain had gone dim. Throwing power at the spot didn’t change the background glow; prayer didn’t make a dent. Knowing no other way to reach the goddess, Alexis turned beneath him and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, offering herself to the heat and the magic. Lust rose quickly, slapping a vicious whip through her body, a feverish demand that seemed sharper than before, greedier.
For a second she thought he might refuse her. Then he groaned, a harsh rattle at the back of his throat, and met her halfway in a kiss that was hard and hot and openmouthed. Something inside her said, Thank the gods, because this wasn’t the reserved man he’d been in recent weeks, or the one who’d given her that single, sweet kiss to celebrate her advisership and avoided her since. This was the man she’d mated with, the one who was never far from her thoughts or dreams.
Lust revved her senses, making her achingly aware of the solid strength of him, the hard bulge of muscles beneath her gripping hands, and the good weight of him atop her. They kissed again and again, touching and tugging, finding their way through the ceremonial robes to combat clothes and the bare skin beneath. She arched into his touch as he found her breast and drove her up, his hands and mouth working together, bringing heat.
Leaning into the magic that came with desire, Alexis called on the goddess, called on the powers of a Godkeeper.
Luminous green lightning split the sky, burning her retinas, interrupting the build of magic. The funnel cloud roared and twisted as if gaining strength from the lightning, which flared again and again as an ever-increasing growl of thunder pummeled them. The firmament shifted, jolting them. Wind pulled at their bodies, and Alexis howled Nate’s name as he was torn away from her and up into the funnel.
“Nate!” She reached for him, but missed as he was whipped away from her. “Nate!” She screamed for him, screamed for herself as the funnel plucked her up and tossed her in a wide arc. Her stomach lurched and fear grabbed her by the throat when there was no answer.
Then she saw him up ahead, at the place where the world went from gray-green to limitless black.
Not thinking, not caring, she pointed her body in that direction and pressed her arms flat against her sides, like a skydiver aiming for a target midair. She arrowed toward him, crossing the intervening distance quicker than thought.
Halfway there she slammed into an invisible wall, one that shimmered with rainbows when she touched it. The moment she hit, the air went still on her side of the wall, leaving her hanging motionless in gray-green nothingness amidst deafeningly sudden silence. On the other side of the invisible barrier the funnel spun unabated, drawing Nate farther and farther away.
“No!” Alexis banged against the wall, drew her knife, and tried to hack through it. She grabbed for her holster but wasn’t wearing it; she had come to the ceremony unarmed, knowing their incorporeal selves would be brought into the barrier wearing all that they wore on earth, and thinking there was no reason to bring jade-tips into the barrier. At least, there normally wasn’t. Now, though, she was under attack, and defenseless. They had called the three-question nahwal and gotten chaos instead.
Nate! her heart cried as the funnel spun him closer to her for a second and she could see his face. He mouthed something, and she knew in her gut that he was telling her to get away, to save herself. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
Flipping the knife so she held it by the blade, she sliced both her palms, cutting deep, letting the blood flow freely. Then she held her hands away from her in supplication, touched them to the invisible wall she instinctively knew had been put there by the goddess in order to keep her from being sucked into the funnel. But that meant the goddess was nearby, that she could act within the barrier. If that were the case, why wasn’t she coming into Alexis?
The answer danced just out of her reach. Cursing the goddess, praying to her, Alexis tipped her head back and, compelled by instinct, or maybe a whisper from beyond, she cried, “Takaj, Ixchel!” Come, goddess!
As though Ixchel had been waiting only for the call, the conduit came to life and a starburst exploded rainbows at the back of Alexis’s brain. Power flowed through her, passing out of her to the funnel cloud beyond. She was the goddess and the goddess was her. A contemptuous flick of her bloodstained fingers swept aside the rainbow-wrought shield that had both saved her and separated her from Nate. A word extinguished the funnel cloud. A gesture had an invisible hand plucking Nate’s limp form out of the edge of nothingness, and bringing him to where Alexis hung in midair.
The rainbow surrounded them, bound them together as she touched him, felt the solidness of him, the reality of him. Closing her eyes, she imagined the sacred chamber and whispered the words that would send them home.
There was no lurch or movement, no sense of transitioning from one plane to the next. There was only a flash of gold and colors, and they were there, facing each other over the altar, hanging on to each other for dear life.
Impressions bombarded her. Snapshots. She was aware of Izzy and Carlos sitting cross-legged where the other magi had been, saw their expressions of delighted relief, heard them shouting for the others. She was aware of the stars and the moon overhead, aware that hours had passed when it had seemed like only minutes. And she was aware of Nate’s fingers holding tightly to hers, and his eyes flickering open, showing confusion first, and then darkening with memory.