Worse, she thought she felt a faint vibration beneath her feet. She didn’t know if it came from fighting magic or a miniquake. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But as they headed up the tunnel, carrying a couple of the torches, moving away from the fight and toward the cave-in, she sent a whisper of thought toward the jun tan: We’re okay. But you guys need to hurry.
The solstice was coming, and with it, Cabrakan.
Rabbit battled through his growing exhaustion and kept the fireballs coming, because the fucking makol kept coming too.
Any other time, he would’ve been totally jacked by the way Myrinne stood right beside him, expression fierce as she ran through her clips and knocked the green-eyed bastards back. Now, though, he was more panicked than turned on, because he could barely protect himself, never mind her.
His head was splitting, partly because of the power he’d pulled to cloak their initial attack, and partly because he hadn’t been able to get out of Iago’s mind fast enough when he caught on. The bastard had tried to slam the door shut, and Rabbit had only gotten out because Myrinne had jammed the circlet back on him, cutting the connection before it was too late. The pain of severing the link had been excruciating, though. The agony lingered, sapping his strength.
“Get that one,” she said, pointing at a downed makol that was barely moving. “I’ll hold the others off.” She fired off two short bursts, one on each autopistol. Standing hipshot in her combat gear, with her hair in a long, dark ponytail pulled through the back of a black ball cap, she looked kick-ass sexy.
And she fit with the team, after all this time.
He snapped off a sluggish-feeling salute. “Yes, ma’am!”
Reversing his gore-spattered knife, he went for the incapacitated makol, steeling himself for the messy chore of finishing it off before it managed to regenerate. He crouched down by the bullet-
riddled body, set his knife to its neck, and—
“Rabbit,” Strike bellowed, “move!”
Obeying without stopping to look or think, Rabbit flung himself to the side, rolled, and came up with an autopistol in one hand, his knife in the other. He spun back at the sound of Myrinne firing and screaming, not in pain, but in anger.
She was unloading her clips at Iago, who was bearing down on him with gruesome fury. The Xibalban had regenerated to the point of having eyes, nose, and mouth, but his flesh was waxy and fire-ravaged, and his luminous green eyes were bright with rage.
Myrinne’s bullets stopped short of him and pinged to the ground, the jade tips deadened by the ajaw-makol ’s powerful shield magic. Strike launched a fireball and Michael followed with a thin stream of muk, but both bounced. The others were trying to get through to help, but the makol fought fiercely and with purpose: They were gradually bunching the Nightkeepers up against the altar, away from the doorways, trapping them together In the split second it took Rabbit to see and react, Iago slammed a layer of dark shield magic around the two of them, shutting them off from the others.
Howling with rage and desperation, Rabbit buried his old man’s knife in Iago’s armpit, where the body armor provided thin entry. The knife came out slick with blood and Iago hunched, snarling. But he didn’t back down, didn’t slow down. He grabbed Rabbit’s knife hand by the wrist and bore it back, twisting hard.
Wrenching agony flared, first in his arm and then in his head, as the touch link allowed Iago to override the protection of the jade circlet.
Little fucker, the Xibalban hissed inside Rabbit’s skull. Hope you enjoyed sneaking in here, because that’s the last trick you’ll ever play on me.
Agony flared from the place where Iago gripped his wrist, his blood-wet palm centered over the hellmark. Rabbit shrieked and bowed as something tore inside him, not muscle, flesh, or skin, but on the level of his consciousness, his magic, his very soul.
The Xibalban’s waxy, burn-ravaged lips pulled back from heat-cracked teeth and his eyes changed, going from featureless luminosity to a hint of irises and pupils, all in glowing green.
In them, Rabbit saw Iago. He saw the god-king Moctezuma. And he saw his own death.
Then, past Iago’s shoulder, through the greasy swirl of dark shield magic, he saw Myrinne. She had her hands pressed to the shield, though he knew it must be burning her with acid and electricity. Her face was etched with pain, and her lips shaped his name.
The sight brought a spurt of power from the deepest depths of him, one that flared hard and hot and whispered: Kaak. Fire.
It was his first talent, his best talent, the one that had come to him even before he’d earned his bloodline mark.
Wrenching his mind free, he shouted, “Kaak!”
Flames erupted from his wrist, searing Iago’s hand and climbing his arm. The Xibalban jerked in astonishment. He recovered almost immediately, but it was just enough for Rabbit to push himself upstream along the agony into the other man’s mind. Iago roared and grabbed onto his consciousness in the same hurtful grip he was using in the physical world. Gotcha, you little shit!
But on a far more basic level, Rabbit had him. Because while Iago was focused inward, Rabbit was busy disabling the Xibalban’s shield spell.
For a split second, he saw through both his own eyes and Iago’s, bringing a double-vision view of Myrinne’s fierce relief as the shield went down, then her mad battle fury as she brought up her autopistol and unloaded the clip into Iago’s face.
Rabbit screamed as pain slashed through him, coming from Iago’s new injuries and the severing of their mind-link as the makol was flung away from him, breaking the touch link. Then the circlet’s protection snapped back into place, cutting off the mental connection and slamming the air locks shut.
But a piece of him tore loose from his mind and went with Iago.
“No.” He crumpled to the ground. “No!” He didn’t know what Iago had taken, didn’t know how bad the damage was; he knew only that he was damaged.
“Rabbit!” Myrinne dropped down beside him. She touched his face; her hands came away slick and red. He tasted blood, felt it prickling in his sinuses, suspected it was mixed with his tears. His head pounded; magic spasmed wildly through him, formless and hurting. Gods, what had Iago done to him?
“I’m—” Okay, he started to say, but even that one word was too much for him, sending his system spinning. Panic licked at him; if he passed out, Myrinne would be unprotected. She would be—
“I’ve got you,” she whispered, leaning over him. Her expression was bare of the sardonic reserve that usually left him guessing at her true feelings; instead he saw her fear for him, her growing determination.
“I won’t let you down.”
His senses fluctuated strangely, expanding and narrowed. He heard the Nightkeepers’ shouts, the sounds of battle, and knew that the fight wasn’t over yet. Far from it.
“Help them,” he whispered. “We can’t let Iago win.”
Or he thought he said it aloud; he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that as the gray closed in, his senses narrowed to a point, so all he saw was his own forearm, blood-smeared and blistered.
Shock hammered through him, sending him the rest of the way into unconsciousness.
His hellmark had gone from red to black. Iago had broken their bond.