It was the same oath he had used to convince her to go with him on that very first night in the warehouse tunnels. Back then she had sensed his honor and loyalty, had believed he would keep her safe. Now, when she looked at the older, tougher version standing opposite her with magic burning bright in the air around him, she saw an achingly familiar stranger. He had an earnest intensity that made her want to believe. But history repeated itself, and theirs wasn't good. She shouldn't-couldn't-trust him. Yet her instincts said that she should let him go, that it wasn't time yet for him to be found. More, they said he needed help.

"Time to choose." Dez looked past her, up toward the road. "The cavalry is here." Sure enough, sirens throbbed just at the level of her hearing, then grew louder. He glanced back at her. "You going to let me go this time?"

She blew out a breath and went with her gut. "Not exactly. I'm coming with you."

His face blanked for a second, then clouded. "No f.u.c.king way," he said flatly. "That is not an option."

"Newsflash number two: You're not calling the shots here." Which was new, she realized. "So it's time for you to choose: You want to stay out in the field chasing your winikin, we do it together. Otherwise, I'm bringing you in." When he stayed stubbornly silent, she tipped up her chin. "Unless your Spidey senses are seriously long-range, you're going to need help finding Keban."

The first responders had arrived: The aah-woo, aah-woo of a police car was followed closely by the bwip-bwip of an ambulance, and colored lights strobed Keban's crumpled car.

"d.a.m.n it . . ." Dez glanced up at the road, then back at her, and his voice dropped. "This is some serious s.h.i.t, Reese. I don't want you to get hurt."

Losing you hurt. Every. Single. Time. She didn't say that, though, because this wasn't about them. And if that meant she was thinking a little like a Nightkeeper, she was okay with that. So all she said was: "Pick a door, Mendez."

"s.h.i.t. Fine. We'll go after him together." He spun and stalked to the back of the Compa.s.s, where the rest of her weapons were stashed in a hidden lockbox. "Get your stuff," he ordered tersely, not looking at her. "We'll hike back to my truck. Overland, it shouldn't take all that long."

Reese ignored his tone and pulled her laptop and knapsack out of the wrecked vehicle. But although she had won the argument, she didn't feel any sense of victory. Instead, as she followed him into the darkness, her stomach was knotted into a hard ball of nerves and a panicked question was rocketing around inside her head: What the h.e.l.l are you doing?

She didn't have a clue. But history was sure as s.h.i.t repeating itself.

Skywatch When the landline started ringing in the main room, Sven ignored it to slouch deeper into the rec room sofa, his eyes glued to the screen. "Can someone get that?"

"Get it your d.a.m.n self," JT snapped as he pa.s.sed the door and glanced in, his arms loaded with storeroom boxes. "Playing Viking Warrior version whatever-the-f.u.c.k does not count as being too busy to get the phone. And I'm not your G.o.dsd.a.m.n servant."

Which would've been more cringe-inducing if the winikin didn't say it at least five times a day.

"I'm watching Dog Whisperer, not playing games," Sven muttered, but he headed out to the main room to grab the phone before JT came steamrolling back and made his point with his fists. A former army ranger who had spent the past seven years exterminating bat demons with a ceremonial knife and a bad att.i.tude, he could more than hold his own.

So Sven got the phone his d.a.m.n self.

"Skywatch," he said into the handset, keeping it simple because he'd gotten a month of kitchen duty a year or so ago when Carlos caught him answering with "Screamin' Demon Central. What is your emergency?"

"It's Mendez."

The low growl, coming with car noises in the background, brought relief. "Good to hear your voice." Sven checked the caller ID, saw that it was the cell that had been a.s.signed to Reese. "Guess the bounty hunter earned her rep. You guys headed back?"

"No, we're staying on the winikin's trail from out here. She said she promised to check in twice a day with Strike, so consider us checked in. And I want you to get some info to the brain trust."

"Wait." Sven looked around for something to write on other than his palm. "s.h.i.t. Give me a second." He scored a pen and scratch pad. "Go ahead."

He copied down Mendez's message. "Statue. White G.o.d's head. 'T' glyphs on its cheeks. Got it."

"They can call us when they have something. We'll be on this phone."

"Good hunting."

Sven decided to walk the message out to the brain trust-aka Lucius, Jade, and the Nightkeepers' ancestral library, which had magicked its way into a cave at the back of the box canyon. It was a nice day, and he should probably work out some of the kinks. He had taken a pretty good hit the other day during a short, ugly fight with a dozen of Iago's makol near a ceremonial cave system down in Belize. Even though Sasha had hooked him up with some healing juju the other day, he still didn't feel right. So he jogged a little, trying to loosen up as he headed down the short flight of stairs beyond the pool area and hit the worn path that led past the picnic area.

With most of the others off on a.s.signment-despite his protests, Strike had kept him back for a couple of days on injured reserve-he wasn't expecting to see anyone on the way to the library. He sure as h.e.l.l wasn't expecting to find a standoff out behind the training hall. And certainly not one involving JT and Carlos.

Okay, JT wasn't much of a surprise, really. If there was a fight, he was probably in the middle of it. But Sven knew firsthand how much it took to get Carlos all the way p.i.s.sed off-been there, done that. His winikin was usually dead level no matter what crisis got thrown at him . . . except right now Carlos's face was flushed a dull red and his fists were clenched and even raised a little, like he wanted to haul off and slug the younger man.

"You know it's true," JT said. "Just give them some a.s.surances."

Carlos bared his teeth. "That's not going to happen."

"Do you seriously not see how wrong this is?" JTs wave encompa.s.sed the whole of Skywatch.

Sven hesitated, not sure if he should come out from behind the training hall and mediate, or go back around the other way and let them work it out. Although the winikin acted as the Nightkeepers' support staff, and were technically lower than the magi in the hierarchy of Skywatch, by tradition they mostly governed themselves. Problem was, tradition hadn't been hacking it in the nearly a year since their former leader, Jox, had taken off.

The royal winikin had left the compound to help raise Patience and Brandt's twins in hiding, with no connection to the magic, no part in the war. Which had left a power vacuum. The rest of the winikin had done their best to adapt, continuing on in their usual roles and informally voting on group decisions, but they had lost serious momentum. Then the two unbound winikin, JT and his girlfriend, Natalie, had shown up. Natalie didn't have much baggage; she had been an infant when her parents smuggled her out of Skywatch just prior to the Solstice Ma.s.sacre. JT, on the other hand, had been twelve or so. He had escaped ahead of the attack but his parents, key members of the resistance, had been caught and press-ganged into the fight. So it wasn't surprising that he hated the Nightkeepers' caste system with a virulence that bordered on pathological, and that he was calling for some major changes in winikin-land.

So far, Strike had been doing the "hands off, let them work it out for themselves" thing, but it wasn't getting better as far as Sven could tell. And frankly, he thought JT had a point.

Not that the older winikin-including Carlos-wanted to hear his opinion on that.

Making his move before he could talk himself out of it, Sven continued along the path, then hesitated, feigning surprise. "Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt."

Carlos frowned. "How much-" He broke off. "Did you need something?"

"I was just pa.s.sing through, but I heard a little." To JT, he said, "You were talking about other winikin, weren't you? Other unbounds who got out ahead of the attack. Members of the resistance." Ever since his arrival, JT had said that he didn't know of any other survivors, that he didn't have a clue how to contact them if they were out there. Now, it seemed like he'd been saying one thing to the magi, but something else to the other winikin. Sven pressed, "You know how to find them, don't you?"

Carlos got in his face. "Don't repeat that. Don't even breathe it. You owe me that much." His eyes were cold and hard, making him look like a stranger, and the sudden and unexpected shift sent Sven back a step.

For all that the two of them had had their problems, most of them stemming from Sven's relationship-friendship-with Carlos's half-human daughter, Cara Liu, Sven had always thought he knew where they stood. Back when he'd lived a treasure hunters vagabond life, he had known that Carlos was p.i.s.sed at him but would be there immediately if there was trouble. Even once they had come to Skywatch and Sven had made the decision to send Cara away, he and Carlos had managed to maintain a functional, if stiff, working relationship. Or so he'd thought. Now, though, he wondered if the two of them had drifted farther than he'd realized.

"I'm on your side," he said softly to the only father he had ever known.

"Maybe. But that doesn't make this any of your business."

"It is if it's starting to spill over onto the magi."

"Which it's not."

Sven could've listed off a half dozen recent incidents, but he wasn't sure if they were legit complaints or part of the natural equilibration that had been going on at Skywatch ever since Strike first brought his human mate, Leah, into the compound and she started in with "the winikin aren't your servants-do your own d.a.m.n dishes." Which somehow sounded far less insulting when she said it, compared to JT. Besides, listing grievances would just embarra.s.s Carlos and p.i.s.s off JT. So instead, he said, "What about Jox's letter?"

In it, the royal winikin had named the person who should succeed him if the common-consensus experiment didn't work. It could only be opened if the winikin voted on it . . . or if Strike decided their lack of leadership was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the war efforts.

JT bared his teeth. "f.u.c.k that. The new system isn't perfect, but it's a d.a.m.n sight better than using blood or magic as a reason to put one person in charge of another."

Sven shook his head. "The old ways have been evolving for the past twenty-six f.u.c.king millennia, all aiming to put us in the best possible position to defend the barrier on the zero date. Maybe you could just, I don't know, go with it for another year?"

"Spoken like a member of the ruling elite," JT snapped, looking seriously p.i.s.sed now. He waved Sven off. "Why don't you go do . . . whatever you were going to do?" He paused, eyes narrowing. "And while you're at it, you might want to make sure that what you're doing is something your own ruling elite would like."

Sven bristled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

It was Carlos who said quietly, "You're not eating, you look like h.e.l.l, and you're sneaking out nearly every night."

"I . . . huh?"

JT sneered. "Nice. Playing dumb."

"Seriously. No clue what you're talking about."

Carlos just looked at him. "Sven-"

"Never mind." Suddenly, he didn't want to be there, didn't want to be having this conversation. He needed to walk, run, burn off some steam. "Like I said, I was just pa.s.sing through." He headed down the path that was the long way around to the library. And when Carlos called his name, he didn't look back.

Strike knocked on the door to Rabbit's cottage and waited for the " 'S open" before he pushed through into the kitchen. The two of them were way beyond knocking formalities, but with Myrinne living there, he'd rather knock than catch an eyeful.

"You alone?" he asked when he found Rabbit spread out at the kitchen table with his laptop and a s.h.i.tload of maps.

"Yep. Myr's out at the firing range with Jade. Michael's giving them some pointers."

"Good. That's good." Strike hadn't been entirely convinced Rabbit's human girlfriend-and quasi wiccan-belonged on the team, but she had worked her a.s.s off for the chance, and had continued busting hump to make herself an a.s.set rather than a liability. And there was no arguing that she had been good for Rabbit. h.e.l.l, he hadn't burned down anything unauthorized in nearly two years. "You find anything new?"

Rabbit sighed and pushed away from the table, rubbing his eyes. "Nothing concrete. Cheech says there are rumors of a third village being hit, but I'm having trouble getting a fix on the actual location from up here. He and his brothers are trying to get me some details."

Over the past few weeks, the populations of two villages in the Mayan highlands had vanished, seemingly overnight. The media hadn't really picked up on it; the only reason Rabbit knew was because he had made some contacts down there as part of trying to learn as much as he could about his mother, who had lived in the highlands-maybe-and been Xibalban-definitely. Even though the Xibalbans were an offshoot of the original Nightkeepers and had given rise to Iago's bloodthirsty sect, the secrecy surrounding the groups meant that the Nightkeepers' archives were pretty useless in that department, forcing him to search farther afield. He hadn't made much progress finding out about his mother, but his contacts were proving invaluable now, as the Nightkeepers tried to figure out what the h.e.l.l was going on in the highlands.

He flicked at a couple of printouts. "The probes Myrinne and I planted aren't picking up the sort of power flux that would indicate there's a Banol Kax in the area. I keep wondering if there's a human explanation for the disappearances, maybe a new guerrilla army or something."

"Fighting who or what?"

"Dunno. There were rumors of one of the big hotel chains trying to force a couple of villages higher into the mountains so they could clear cut. Or it could be a survivalist thing. According to Cheech, most of the highlanders are either ignoring the doomsday hype or treating the end date as nothing more than the start of a new calendrical cycle. But I'd bet you there are plenty of people up there who are stockpiling supplies, maybe getting together some extra weapons, just in case."

"Makes sense." Strike snagged two c.o.kes from the fridge, dumped one in front of Rabbit and popped the top on his own as he dragged out a chair and sat. "See any evidence of a guerilla compound where there didn't used to be one?"

"That's the thing. Granted, the forests make aerial detection tricky, but I'd expect to see something." Rabbit lifted a shoulder. "That was why I got to thinking about survivalist stuff."

"Underground bunkers? Maybe. But I don't think we can rule out Iago." Their opposite. Their nemesis. A Xibalban mage who had bound his soul to that of the Aztec G.o.d-king, Moctezuma, to become a nearly indestructible force bent on completing Moctezuma's planned conquest of the known world . . . which had gotten considerably bigger since the fifteen hundreds.

Rabbit grimaced. "Trust me. I'm not. But the thing is, even using Moctezuma's powers, Iago shouldn't be able to make makol out of innocents-as far as we know the demons can only possess the evil minded. And I just can't see him warehousing that many people who aren't makol. So where are the rest of the villagers?"

Neither of them said the obvious: blood sacrifice. But it hung between them, an almost tangible reminder of how serious things were getting, how much worse they were likely to get over the next year.

After a moment, Strike said, "I need a favor."

Rabbit raised an eyebrow.

"I need you to mind-bend me."

Both eyebrows slammed down. "Why?"

"There's something-" An alarm shrilled, interrupting.

The noise came from both of their armbands plus the intercom panel on the wall: three beats and a pause, three and a pause, which was the signal for a perimeter breach.

Normally, that would've sent them both running. Given the number of false alarms lately, though, they both stayed put. Sure enough, the alarms cut out after a few seconds. A moment later, Tomas's voice came over the system, sounding disgusted. "False alarm. Sorry, gang. It's nothing."

Strike pressed a b.u.t.ton to activate his 'band. "You sure about that?"

"There isn't a d.a.m.ned thing on any of the monitors, visual, thermal, or magic. That's the best I can tell you. And you know how twitchy the new setup is."

"Yeah. Okay, thanks." Strike cut the transmission, grimacing.

Although the magic sensors that Jade and Lucius had created using her spell casters talents were a huge help identifying magical fluxes, the gizmos were pretty hair-trigger. More, because of the increased traffic flowing into and out of Skywatch-deliveries mostly-Jade had tweaked a section of the blood-ward so the winikin could open and close the main gate without needing a magic-user. She was still in the process of fine-tuning the spells, though, and the alarms were crying wolf with annoying regularity.

Trying not to let it get to him, Strike drained his c.o.ke. Maybe the sugar and caffeine would give him the needed kick in the a.s.s. Nothing else had, lately. He was off-kilter, and couldn't figure out how to get back on.

Aware that Rabbit was waiting for him to continue, he stared at the ceiling and said, "There's something wrong with me."

There. He had said it, and the world hadn't ended.

Not yet, anyway, he thought with grim humor. Give it a year. Whether he liked it or not, he was the backbone of the fighting force; the fealty oath connected the magi and winikin to their king, making them susceptible to his will. So when the king went south, so did the Nightkeepers-case in point being the part where his father had gone a little crazy and a lot megalomaniacal, precipitating the Solstice Ma.s.sacre. Which was a h.e.l.l of a legacy.

Rabbit didn't say anything for a moment, just sat there, staring at Strike with an "oh, s.h.i.t" look on his face. Finally, he said, "Has Sasha checked you out?"

"I came to you first." Strike tapped his temple. "I think it's in here. I want you to see if you can fix it."

He had wrestled with the decision, lying awake long into the night while Leah breathed softly beside him, and kneeling long hours in the royal shrine, praying for guidance from G.o.ds that couldn't talk to their earthly warriors anymore.

"What does Leah think?"

"She knows." Which was what Rabbit had really been asking. "She's the only one besides you. If Jox . . ." Strike trailed off. No point in going there. Jox was where he needed to be, with his Hannah and the Nightkeeper twins they were sworn to protect. "We're trusting your discretion on this."

Rabbit slowly closed the laptop, pushed it away, his silver-gray eyes troubled. "What am I looking for?"

"Something that would f.u.c.k some with my concentration and really screw with my 'port magic. I . . ." He flexed his fingers, denting the empty can. "I'm having trouble targeting. When I try to fix on a person or place, my mind starts racing and the travel thread gets . . . slippery, I guess you could call it." He looked back at Rabbit, found the blank shock he was expecting. "One of the few things we've got going for us right now is that I can put a team on the ground anywhere in the world within the time it takes to get geared up. If we lose that ability, we're screwed."

"But if you're not targeting properly-" Rabbit broke off.

"It's not that bad yet. I swear I wouldn't be jumping if it were. And sure as s.h.i.t not with anyone else linked up." If he lost the thread midjump, he-and anybody else he was transporting-wouldn't just be screwed. They would be dead. "So . . . will you help?"

"I'll do my best. But . . ."

"I know. No guarantees." But as Strike cut his palm and held out his hand for the blood-link, he was hoping for a d.a.m.ned miracle.

CHAPTER SIX.

Happy Daze Econo Lodge