They had played this game before.
The pain sparked a searing rage that burned through the drugs. As his vision cleared, he saw that the other man was using the same stone blade he had used throughout the years—black obsidian with etched serpent glyphs that matched the one on the bastard’s forearm: The mark of the serpent bloodline. Son of a bitch, Dez thought, reeling from both shock and drugs. What if—
Then Keban pressed the black statuette into his hand, and the world went haywire.
The stone flashed from cool to hot in an instant, searing his palms, and a strange, crackling buzz sizzled through him, reaching deep and sparking anger and greed, the lust for power, approval, recognition, respect. He bared his teeth and strained against his bonds as energy stabbed through his chest and behind his eyeballs. The head and heart are the sources of a mage’s power, came Keban’s voice in his mind, drilling the lessons into him along with the strategies of a thousand battles, the workings of a hundred political systems . . . and the future as it existed inside the older man’s warped brain. Your sister died so you could live. You owe me, owe her, owe the gods. Try harder. Be better, be more, or it was all a waste.
The memories hammered through Dez as Keban got in his face and rasped, “Say the words, damn it. Jack in.”
Pasaj och. The phrase whispered in his mind, but the spell wouldn’t work, hadn’t ever worked. It had just been an excuse for Keban to whale on him once a quarter, when he failed to tap into his so-called magic on the night of every solstice and—
Oh, shit. Tonight was the equinox.
And this was really happening.
A cold fist wrapped itself around Dez’s heart and squeezed, cutting through the drugged fog and the power of the statuette. “Make your own fucking magic,” he grated. “I don’t follow orders.”
The cool press of a gun muzzle touched his temple as Keban got in close and grated, “Jack the fuck in.”
“Suck. My. Dick.”
Face flushing an ugly brick red slashed with the six parallel white scars, Keban hammered Dez across the jaw with his own .44, and then took a couple of steps back to aim it two-handed. “Say it.” When Dez just glared, the other man’s eyes went frenzied. “Say it!” he screamed with spittle-flecked violence. “Say the fucking spell!”
Dez saw his godfather’s trigger finger tighten, saw murder in his eyes, and felt a flash of pure grief. I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t mean for it to end this way. I wanted—
Two shots cracked, oddly syncopated. Dez felt something sting his shoulder, but it was Keban who jerked back and grabbed his upper arm.
Dez spun toward the second shooter, instinctively knowing who it was. Even so, his heart damn near stopped at the sight of her.
Reese was wearing the same snug black jeans and zip-down sweater she’d had on earlier. Now, though, she was dripping wet despite the raincoat that hung plastered to her body, and she was packing most of their weapons stash. Her short black hair was slicked to her skull, her strange whiskey-amber eyes were hot with anger, and she looked ready to kick some serious ass.
“You okay?” she asked without taking her eyes—or her .38—off Keban, who had collapsed near the wall, unmoving.
“I’m fine. But keep your guard up,” Dez warned. “He’s—”
“I know who he is. Jocko called to say that a guy with a scarred-up face was asking about you. I put it together.”
And she had come for him even after the way he’d walked out on her. Love surged through him, further pushing back the fog of drugs and compulsion. He loosened his grip on the small statuette, making the handcuffs rattle. “He’ll have the keys—”
Keban uncurled snake-quick and fired the .44 at her, point blank.
“NO!” Dez surged upright and then crashed back down when he hit the ends of his bonds. The cuffs cut into his wrists, the statue’s hard edges dug into his slashed palm, and the whole world just fucking stopped for a heartbeat as the woman he loved went down in a motionless heap. “Reese!”
The storm, which had lulled briefly, flung itself at the warehouse with renewed fury. Lightning flared, strobing the cavernous space as wind-driven rain lashed through the broken windows. Electricity crackled around Dez, inside him, somehow expanding his senses so he saw more, heard more, felt more than he ever had before. And with it came a deeper, darker layer of hatred that was directed entirely at Keban as he raised his weapon and sighted again on Reese, his eyes carrying the same feral glee they used to get while he was lashing Dez with his belt. “Sorry about your girlfr—”
Surging against the cuffs and ropes, Dez shouted, “Pasaj och!”
Thunder cracked and a fat bolt of lightning dead-eyed the warehouse, sparking the old wires and haloing the steel girders with foxfire. Then the sizzle was inside him, radiating from the carving to his head and heart and back again. He was dimly aware of the bonds melting off his ankles and the metal handcuffs arcing with blue-white flame. Then pain lashed, flesh burned, and the shackles sprang open. They hit the floor with a metallic clatter. And he was free!
He lunged to his feet, roaring Reese’s name.
Keban spun, eyes widening.
“Wait,” said the winikin—because that was what he was, a winikin. It was all true, Dez suddenly realized as the lightning—the fucking magic—raced in his blood. Every last godsdamned story was true. He was a Nightkeeper. The last in an ancient line of magic users.
Keban had finally made him into a mage . . . And he’d used Reese to do it. Blood sacrifice. Nearby, she lay far too still, her body a dark blur in the shadows.
“No!” Pain and rage lashed through Dez, calling to something inside him, something that fed on the greed and hatred and then suddenly ignited. Power soared inside him, pressed on him, begged to be set free.
Going on instinct, he pointed at the winikin, stiff fingered. The power surged, a vicious crackle split the air, and a bolt of blue-white lightning shot from his outstretched fingers. It nailed Keban in the chest, blasting him back.
The winikin screamed and landed writhing, wreathed in sparks of blue-white electricity. His body arched; his hands and feet beat at the warehouse floor, and came away bloody.
Magic flowed through Dez. He gloried in it, heart racing. He was a mage, like Keban had always said. He could do anything, be anything, become—
Then, like someone had thrown a switch, the energy cut out, the crackle went silent, and his body shifted from fever hot to deathly cold in an instant. He sagged as fatigue hit him hard and he became, once again, just himself.
What. The. Fuck?
Weeping raggedly, Keban dragged himself to his feet and staggered for the door without a backward look, cackling a high, lunatic laugh.
“Son of a bitch!” Yanking himself out of the last dregs of magic, Dez jammed the statuette into his pocket, lunged for the fallen .44, and came up to his knees firing. The shots pinged off steel, the noise disappearing beneath a crack of thunder as Keban vanished into the storm. On one level, Dez knew he should chase the bastard, finish him off. But on another, more visceral level, he had a different priority.
“Reese!” He scrambled to his feet, bolted across the warehouse and dropped to his knees beside her. Ignoring everything he’d ever learned about first aid, he dragged her up off the floor and into his arms, cursing when her guns dug into him, feeling somehow more substantial than she did. Her body was limp and heavy. Deadweight that smelled of blood. “Godsdamn it, Reese!”