She deliberately used ‘‘you’’ rather than ‘‘us’’ because she wanted them pulling together, and if uniting against her was what brought them into alignment, then so be it.
‘‘What do you suggest?’’ Strike asked, but she got the idea he was playing along so the others would think she had his support, not because she actually did.
‘‘Team Building 201,’’ Leah answered. ‘‘You need a name. Not you as a people, or your bloodlines,’’ she said quickly when the dirty looks started. ‘‘For this place.’’ Her gesture encompassed the mansion, the training compound, and the wide box canyon lost in the darkness. ‘‘For your home.’’
‘‘This isn’t—’’ Jox began, then broke off.
‘‘It wasn’t your home before,’’ she agreed. ‘‘It was a place where you gathered for feasts and training.’’ Personally, she thought it should’ve had a name back then, regardless. ‘‘But wake up. It’s a new day, and things are going to need to change. Starting now. So I’m giving this place a name.’’
Without further ceremony, she ripped the paper free, baring the intricately engraved plaque.
There was a collective indrawn breath, and in the moment of silence that followed, one of the twins laughed, the sound rising into the night high and sweet and pure.
Finally, unable to stand it one second longer, Leah turned to Strike, who’d frozen and gone pale. ‘‘What do you think?’’
I think you humble me, Strike thought, but he couldn’t get the words out. So he took her hand and held it while he stood and stared at the name she’d given the Night-keepers’ home.
SKYWATCH.
It was engraved in big letters above a line drawing of a ceiba tree, with three Mayan words inscribed below, the letters formed from the tree’s spreading root system.
Skywatch. It clicked. It was right. The sky was the realm of the gods they served, the gods who’d charged them with watching over the barrier. More, waatch was the Mayan word for ‘‘soldier,’’ though she might not have known that. Or maybe she did, he thought, looking at the words carved below the tree of life.
She’d not only given them a name; she’d given them a motto. A coat of arms. A battle cry in modern Quiche Mayan. Waquqik—to fight. Cajij—to protect. And—
He frowned. ‘‘What’s kuyubal-mak?’’
‘‘It means ‘to forgive,’ ’’ Jox said, his voice rough. ‘‘But there’s nothing to forgive.’’
‘‘I think there is,’’ Leah countered. ‘‘If there weren’t, you would’ve pressured him to take charge long before this. You would’ve dragged him out of the pool house and locked him in the royal suite, and you sure as hell wouldn’t have let him hide out in the library for the past two months. You would’ve forced him to take the crown— or whatever it is that your king wears. But neither you nor Red-Boar did any of those things. Thus, I have to assume there’s a reason.’’ Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘‘I’m thinking it’s because, deep down inside, you’re not sure you want him to be king.’’
Strike didn’t know which was worse—that she’d said it, or that there was dead silence in the aftermath.
Finally, Jox said, ‘‘You presume too much, Detective. You don’t know us, and you sure as hell don’t know Strike.’’
‘‘I think I do.’’ Her eyes met Strike’s. ‘‘And I don’t think he wants to be king. If he did, he’d be arguing with me right now.’’ She closed the distance between them, said softly. ‘‘I think you’re afraid you’ll make the same mistakes your father did. And I think you’re figuring that if you don’t become king you’ll nullify the thirteenth prophecy. No king, no greatest sacrifice.’’
Strike told himself the rage wasn’t him, the hatred wasn’t him. But that was all he could see or feel, all he could be just then. A scream built in his soul, and he felt the darkness closing in on him. Suffocating him. He tried to find words to tell her—to tell any of them—what was going on, but he was afraid that if he opened his mouth something terrible would come out, something vicious and violent.
So he didn’t say anything. He just closed his eyes and imagined being someplace else, someplace alone. He was so revved on anger, on power, that he zapped blind before he’d intended to, the world dissolving around him before he’d envisioned the travel thread or picked a destination.
Then the universe jolted sideways, the floor fell out from beneath him, and he dropped with a yell.
He fell too long, and hit bottom too hard, but the spongy surface yielded beneath him, cushioning the impact. He felt the feathery touch of mist on his face, and knew where he was even before he opened his eyes and saw a world of gray-green.
He’d zapped himself into the frigging barrier. And the anger—oh, the anger rose up, gripping him, tearing into him. He arched and screamed with the rage, with the bloodlust and mad hatred that came from outside him, from within him, until he wasn’t sure where he left off and the craziness began.
Gods. His mouth drew back in a rictus, his eyes rolled wildly, and his heart stuttered in his chest. Darkness blurred the edges of his vision, and he was pretty sure he was dying. Panic closed in.
He was barely conscious of the mist swirling nearby, thickening and taking on the shape of a stick-thin Nightkeeper with obsidian eyes and a ruby stud in one ear. The nahwal.
‘‘Father!’’ he shouted, though he wasn’t sure if he said the word aloud or only thought it in the small corner of his mind that was still his to control.
‘‘It is time,’’ the nahwal said in its voice-of-many-voices. It leaned down and gripped Strike’s wrist, and its touch burned like flame and acid, the worst pain he’d ever known.
He threw back his head and screamed.
The gray-green mist disappeared.
And he was home, reappearing exactly where he’d left from, standing in front of the main door, staring at the sign that said, SKYWATCH: TO FIGHT, TO PROTECT, TO FORGIVE.
The others were gone. The anger was gone, too, leaving him hollow and drained. He only had the strength left to whisper, ‘‘Forgive me, Father.’’
Then he collapsed on the welcome mat and passed the hell out.
After Strike pulled his disappearing act, leaving Leah standing there looking like a complete idiot, she held it together until she reached her rooms. His rooms. Whatever.
The moment she was through the carved double doors, though, she let go of the control she’d been holding on to by the last thread. She halfway expected tears, though she’d never been a weeper, halfway expected destructive, lamp-throwing anger, which was more typical for her. But either the two canceled each other out or she’d used up all her emotional space and had nothing left.
She sank to the couch in the sitting area, exhausted. Empty. There were no skitters of warmth or electricity. She doubted she could kill a gnat, never mind a coffeemaker. Her supposed powers were long gone, leaving her as nothing more than what she was—a cop with a big mouth and zero subtlety who didn’t really belong in Skywatch.
Skywatch. She hoped the name—and the motto— stuck. Her timing and delivery might’ve sucked, but she was right, damn it. They needed something to rally around, and Red-Boar and the winikin needed to accept that the past was gone and it wasn’t going to repeat itself, no matter what their writs said about the cyclical nature of time. The trainees weren’t going to fight because their winikin told them to. They needed to believe in the cause, in themselves, and in one another. And more important, they needed to believe in their leader. She didn’t care if he called himself king or Papa Smurf; he needed to step up.