“Later.”
His eyes sharpened on hers. “You’re going after Dez?”
She blew out a breath, then nodded. “He needs to know what Anntah said . . . and that I’m not running away this time. I don’t know exactly what’s between us at this point, but whatever it is, I’m going to fight for it.”
But first, she stopped in her room for her armband and more firepower. As she headed back to the Jeep, her armband staticked and Jade’s voice said, “We’ve got the others and are headed to Xik now. Wish us luck.”
Luck, Reese thought. But so far, luck had been painfully short for the magi. And time was running out.
The village of Xik
Mayan highlands
As Strike triggered the ’port, Sven hung on tightly to Mac’s ruff with one hand, the joined hands of Jade and Patience with the other, awkwardly touch-linking himself and the coyote into the circle. Mac whined, quivering. He knew what was coming, and wasn’t a big fan:’port magic freaked him out.
Calm, Sven sent to the big canine using the simple glyphlike command images that Carlos had been teaching him, and got a surge of deep suspicion in return. He was still getting used to communicating with his familiar, a process that hadn’t exactly been easy, given that Mac was opinionated, quick-tempered, and a little on the flighty side. Their partnership was turning out to be less about Sven giving orders and more a constant state of negotiation, which was exhausting. Carlos had assured him that things would get better, but right now, it was all he could do not to lose track of his familiar. He’d learned his lesson, though—the last time Mac took off, it had taken Sven hours to track him down the rain forest based on oh-so-helpful thought-images like: Leaves, leaves, leaves. Jaguar poop. More leaves.
“Hang on,” Strike said, and then triggered the ’port. Sven braced himself against the familiar sideways lurch, the whip of gray-green barrier magic flying past, and then the universe reassembled itself around him.
Tightening his grip on Mac’s ruff as the big coyote quivered and strained, sending a sudden flow of Enemy! Run! Bite! Runbiterun! Sven checked out the scene. And saw that they were too damn late. Again.
The magi had materialized in an open courtyard surrounded by twenty or so thatched-roof huts, several damaged, most untouched. Cooking fires still hissed and popped, one burning a pan of corn to shit, mute testimony that the place had very recently been inhabited. A radio played somewhere, Madonna crooning about being a virgin. And that was it. There was no other sound, no signs of life. The village was empty.
Rabbit cursed, yanked away from the circle, and strode away, boots ringing on the travel-packed ground. Myrinne followed him, but he waved her off with a sharp motion, then disappeared into the nearest hut. She stood for a moment, undecided, then unholstered her autopistol with a smoothly practiced move and headed into the next dwelling down. But she sent a long look back at the hut Rabbit had gone into, and it didn’t take a mind-bender to sense her confusion.
Sven was staying out of it—being relationship-defective and all—but he had found himself way more aware of those nuances than he normally would be. Then again, he didn’t used to wake up in a cold sweat, hard and aching, with his heart racing in the face of an overwhelming conviction that he was supposed to be looking for something, doing something, only he didn’t know what. Carlos said that, too, would go away eventually. But he’d avoided Sven’s eyes when he said it.
“Split up and search,” Strike ordered, though there seemed little hope of survivors.
“I’ll take the perimeter,” Sven offered, and got a nod, which was a good thing. He needed to move, and he didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to hold the coyote back in the face of all the run-kill-bite-enemy stuff going through his furry head. “They’re gone,” he said in an undertone. “We’re too late.”
Mac growled deep in his chest.
“Yeah,” Sven agreed as he headed out of the village, keeping a tight mental leash. “I feel the same way.” The Nightkeepers couldn’t continue chasing Iago’s tail like this. Something needed to change . . . but it needed to be the right something. Strike had given him, Rabbit, and Myrinne a clipped report of what sounded—reading between the lines, anyway—like a major shitstorm of Mendez proportions going down at Skywatch. But as far as Sven was concerned, prophecy or no prophecy, he and the others could—and would—take Mendez if it went that far. Strike was their king. Period and no discussion.
He let Mac range a little farther once they got a distance from the village and started making a wide loop around it. Their passage flushed out countless bright, flashy birds and sent squadrons of butterflies into the air. Ignoring them, Sven kept his eyes on the ground, searching for tracks while staying attuned to the coyote’s thought stream, which had gone from warnings about the enemy to a growing sense of edgy frustration.
Or was that coming from him? Gods knew he’d been hair-trigger lately. Carlos said the new restlessness and aggression—like the dreams and the hormone surges—came from his magic getting used to the impulses of his familiar, that he would level off soon and go back to being the guy he was. But Sven had a feeling it was the other way around, that he was finally coming into his true self and would stay that way. It felt like he had been sleepwalking for so long, and was just now waking up, just now—
Mac yowled and exploded, diving into a cluster of bushes nearby. Enemy!
Adrenaline hammered through Sven. Yanking his knife and calling up a shield, he hollered and plunged after the big canine. Branches whipped at him, deflecting off the shield as he burst out of the middle growth and into a small, sun-dappled clearing.
There, Mac stood over a villager. For a second, Sven’s heart leaped at the thought that they had found a survivor, but then he got closer and saw otherwise. The man’s body was twisted unnaturally, unmoving, but his face was animated and his eyes shone luminous green as he hissed at Sven, face alight with bloodlust.
“Nice job, Mac,” Sven said, reaching for his knife and prepping himself for the head-and-heart spell. But he paused when something nagged at him. It took him a second, but then he got it: The makol wasn’t regenerating. Something was wrong with it.
He started to crouch down for a closer look, but Mac pivoted over the makol and stood with his legs braced, head lowered, and teeth bared. A bloodcurdling growl rumbled in the coyote’s throat.
Sven froze. “Mac? What the hell?”
The coyote sent a stream of glyph images that spelled out friend-enemy-friend, which didn’t make any more sense than him protecting the makol. But Carlos had impressed on Sven that he needed to trust his familiar, and experience had shown that Mac would get in a snit if ignored. And a hundred-pound coyote having a temper tantrum was not a pleasant experience. So think it through, Sven told himself. Analysis had never really been his thing before, but he’d been getting better at it lately. The coyote had saved Reese’s life by attacking a makol back at Skywatch, but he wouldn’t let Sven near this one, and was even acting protective of it. So what was different? Did it have something to do with how this one wasn’t regenerating?
Friend-enemy-friend came again, this time along with a sharp, mossy smell.
Moving slowly, Sven crouched down again, sending peaceful, nonlethal thoughts. Mac’s growls subsided and he gave way.
The makol’s human host had been a young man, maybe early twenties. He was wearing jeans and a grayed-out wife beater, and had a small, new-looking leather pouch hanging around his neck. The mossy smell Mac had noted was coming from the pouch. With a mental flick that would have been ten times more difficult before his familiar had come into his life, Sven translocated the pouch into his outstretched palm. But the second it vanished from around the makol ′s neck, the creature shuddered and arched, and a terrible, screaming keen ripped from the host’s throat.