Then she scrambled up, braced one of her pistols with her uninjured hand, and returned fire, aiming low near a crumbling wall where she saw a flash of motion, a swirl of brown cloth, and a familiar sharp-edged profile.
Not Zipacna, she realized. Red-Boar.
Betrayal roared up within her. The bastard had set her up, no doubt guessing what Strike meant to do and deciding it’d be better if she died sooner rather than later. Rage twisted through her—at Red-Boar for trying to kill her, at herself for not thinking clearly and guessing that the text message had been too conveniently timed. The rage bumped up against a building pressure at the back of her skull, and the contact sparked with golden light. With magic.
Her powers were definitely coming back online with the approach of the equinox, but they wouldn’t do her a damn bit of good under the circumstances. She couldn’t kill Red-Boar. Strike needed the older Nightkeeper, needed his power and his knowledge—probably more than he needed her, when she came down to it.
She had to get out of there, but she needed to leave the brown-robed bastard alive. Screaming a curse, she unloaded a full clip over Red-Boar’s head and started running back toward the Jeep. The text message had been a setup, which meant Zipacna wasn’t there, wasn’t looking for her. He was down south, preparing for the equinox. She needed to get to the airport, needed to—
Thunder boomed, and Zipacna appeared in front of her in a swirl of purple-black mist, flanked on either side by two other makol. They slammed to the ground between her and the Jeep. Heart lunging into her throat, Leah skidded to a stop and tried to backpedal. She turned the MACs on them but got only the click of empty chambers. Before she could grab a spare clip, before she could do anything but scream, Zipacna grabbed her. He grinned horribly, his mismatched eyes glowing green. ‘‘You shouldn’t have gone beyond the Nightkeepers’ wards if you didn’t want me to find you, baby.’’
"No!" she screamed, and turned one of the MACs on herself, knowing she couldn’t let herself be taken, couldn’t let them keep her alive through nightfall.
She pulled the trigger. Got a click. Still empty.
Red-Boar’s weapon chattered. Zipacna cursed and turned so the bullets plowed into his flesh rather than hers. He snapped, ‘‘Delay the Nightkeeper.’’ His men scattered, taking potshots toward Red-Boar as they ran.
Then Zipacna tightened his grip on Leah. Power surged around them.
And everything went purple-black.
‘‘No!’’ Strike landed running, heedless of the rattle of automatic weapons, his entire being focused on the sight of Leah covered in blood and struggling in the ajawmakol ’s grip as power whipped and the transport magic took hold. ‘‘NO!’’ he shouted, and flung himself toward their disappearing figures . . .
And landed on his face in the sand, his outstretched hands clutching nothing.
Bullets whined and automatic fire barked, the impact marks walking toward him as two lesser makol fired on him from the shelter of a small stone-walled room.
‘‘Stay down!’’ Red-Boar shouted, and lobbed a jade-packed grenade toward the makol’s shelter. It detonated seconds later, and the gunfire ceased.
Strike didn’t stop to process. He was on his feet and in the room with the two bleeding, shrapnel-stung makol in an instant. He got one by the throat and the other by the scruff and smashed their heads together so hard their glowing green eyes winked out simultaneously. Then he got his knife off his belt and sank the blade in the first one’s chest, carving deep until he could shove his hand in there and rip out the fucker’s heart.
Glory surged through him. Rage. Red-gold light. And for a second, as he held the makol’s heart aloft, he felt like a god.
He did the other one’s heart, then both heads, and roared victory when the bastards puffed to nothingness. Then he sagged and took two shuddering breaths as Red-Boar’s footsteps approached, moving fast.
Leah, he thought, his heart tearing in his chest. Gods, Leah.
Straightening, he grabbed Red-Boar by the throat, spun, and slammed the traitor into the nearest stone wall, hard enough that rocks tumbled and broke free. ‘‘Why?’’ he grated, fury twisting inside him. Despair. ‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Don’t play a bigger fool than you already are,’’ the older man spat, his voice rasping against the choke hold. ‘‘I’m trying to stop you from making the worst mistake of your life.’’
‘‘No.’’ Strike tightened his grip as betrayal and killing rage washing his vision red. ‘‘You’re punishing me for my father’s choices.’’
But Red-Boar’s breath rattled in his constricted throat. ‘‘At least he made his choices. You’re acting like a spoiled brat, sitting around and waiting for a godsdamned miracle.’’
‘‘I’m—’’ But Strike broke off when the accusation resonated too close to what Leah had said to him that morning, when she’d called him an arrogant prince who wanted everything his way. Was that really what was going on? No, he thought. That wasn’t him, wasn’t the man he wanted to be.
But maybe it was what the darkness inside him had made him become, he thought, loosening his fingers and letting Red-Boar slide down the wall.
Kulkulkan’s influence had shaded Leah’s brother toward easy living and self-justification. Was that so different from what his most trusted advisers were warning him against now? Or was that explanation in itself too easy? Was it more comfortable to blame the darkness on the god than himself?
In the end it didn’t matter where it came from, he realized. Because he knew what he had to do about it. He owed it to his people to give them a ruler, owed it to Leah to make choices not just for them in the moment, but for the hope of a future.
It’s time, his father’s voice whispered in his mind, though he couldn’t have said whether it was a message or a memory. But either way, the whisper was right. It was time. Avoiding the scepter hadn’t stopped the prophesied events from coming any more than avoiding Leah had stopped him from falling for her. And turning away from his people now would only cause more destruction.
He was his father’s son, which meant more than a fondness for dreams. It meant the blood of kings ran through his veins, and the duty, the responsibility wasn’t his to set aside.
It was only his to take.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Leah swam in and out of consciousness, sick and sore and feverish, her brain fuzzed with drugs. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction before her vision went red-gold and blurry, but she didn’t need to see that far to know where she was. The stone slab beneath her, the echoes, and the hum of power told her everything she needed to know.
She was back where it’d all started—strapped to the chac-mool altar in the ritual chamber that guarded the intersection of the earth, sky, and underworld.
Worse, she was alive, and so was Zipacna. And the clock was ticking.
Eventually her fever broke, or the drugs wore off, or both. Her brain cleared and the pain lessened, and she was able to take stock. She was still dressed in her combat clothes, but the weapons belt was gone. That wasn’t a surprise, but it was definitely a problem. Without the jade-tips and knives, she’d be powerless against the ajaw-makol, even if she did manage to escape. The spell was no good without a knife, and even at that it was going to be a long shot.
Which left her bound to a sacrificial altar with no hope of rescue until too late, because Strike and the other Nightkeepers weren’t due at the intersection until the equinox, and she doubted Red-Boar was going to fess up to what he’d done. For all she knew, the bastard had lied and told Strike she’d gone to Zipacna willingly.