He called her name again and she answered again, and he tracked the response not to the rainbow or the tear in the sky, but to the darkness beyond.
Gods. She was on the wrong side of the barrier. And oh, holy hell. The split was getting bigger by the second. The starry night sky strained on either side of the gash, while red blackness oozed down, bleeding evil onto the earth.
He could sense the creatures on the other side more than he could see them, could sense the tentacled thing that held Alexis, draining her energy from her and using it to tear the barrier. Her strength was fading, her connection to the goddess almost lost, and all because of him, he knew. He’d been almost too late figuring out what she meant to him, almost too late accepting that sometimes the gods got it right, destiny or not.
But almost doesn’t matter worth a damn, he thought, trumpeting the attack. I’m here now, and watch out, because I’m coming for my woman!
He dived through the gap with his curved beak gaping wide and his razor-sharp talons extended in attack. In an instant, blackness enveloped him, slowing his wings and wrapping around him like a heavy, viscous oil, weighing him down and driving him away from Alexis. He could see her, a rainbow shimmer up above him, could hear her cry his name as he fell.
No! He tumbled, losing the rhythm of flight as the black goo flared to boluntiku orange, lava-hot and cloying. NO! He fought the creature’s hold as it went solid and slashed at him with a raking six-
clawed hand.
Nate howled and reached for his power, calling up a fireball, shaping and throwing the fire magic with his mind because his hands had turned to wings. As he did so, his medallion heated and flashed bright white, and it was as if he’d just thrown a fucking atomic bomb. There was a deep, thrumming thump, then a pause as the world went still.
Then all hell broke loose.
The fireball’s detonation roared, vaporizing the goo in an instant and slamming Nate to the gray-
black ground. The shock wave kept on going, radiating away from him, blowing the boluntiku and disembodied makol back, sending them tumbling end over end, their gods-awful screeching noises nearly lost beneath the thunder of the explosion. Then light flashed, pure, golden, and brilliant, and so bright Nate had to close his eyes and look away. When he looked again, the Banol Kax had been driven back to the horizon, and the creature that had been holding Alexis aloft was gone. She was safe from the explosion behind a rainbow barrier, but now she was falling, screaming, “Nate!”
And the gap in the barrier was even wider than before, hanging open, blown larger by the explosion.
Worse—the Banol Kax had regrouped and were headed for the opening freight-train fast.
Fuck me. Nate didn’t hesitate. He turned his back on the gap and the demons, kicked hard off the ground, and arrowed toward Alexis. The king’s writ might say that Strike had to prioritize other things above his family, but Nate was bound by no such scripture. And he was damn well prioritizing Alexis, the way he should’ve been doing all along. He powered to her, got above her, and then dived, matching her free-falling speed as the rocky, gray-black surface rose up to meet them.
At practically the last second he got ahead of her and swooped up, scooping her from the air. She shrieked and grabbed on, but then started struggling, trying to bail off. He didn’t get it for a second; then he realized she had no idea who—or what—he was. “It’s me!” he shouted, only it came out as a hawk’s cry.
But she stilled, lying flat on his back, hanging on to his feathers, pulling hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to keep her in place if things got tough. “Holy shit,” she said, voice rattling with fear, with shock. “Nate?”
Which pretty much proved she could hear him through the screeching, maybe because she loved him. Or at least she had; that might be open to some debate in about thirty seconds or so, he realized with a deep clutch of dismay. She’d been raised by the most traditional winikin of them all. What if she couldn’t deal with what he was?
“Wh-what’s going on?” Her voice shook; her whole body was trembling.
With fear of rejection lodged deep inside, knowing there was no time for fancy explanations, Nate put himself into a glide, his body somehow knowing just what to do even though his brain didn’t. “It’s a long story, obviously,” he said, “but the short version seems to be that I’m an asshole and a shape-
shifter, in whichever order you prefer. I’m the Volatile. And I love you.”
She went very still, letting him know she’d translated from “hawk” to English just fine. Then, moving slowly and keeping a death grip on whatever piece of him she could get hold of, she sat up and straddled his shoulders, hooking her legs into the thickened chain holding the medallion, and using the eccentric’s chain as a handhold. Then she leaned into him, getting out of the whip of the wind as she said, “Let’s do our job, Nightkeeper. We’ve got a barrier to seal and some demons to kick back to hell.
It’s like we agreed before: The other stuff doesn’t belong mixed-up with the gods.”
It wasn’t what Nate had hoped to hear, wasn’t what he’d said, and the hollow opening up inside his gut warned that he might not get what he wanted. Not being what he was. But she was right that they had a job to do and not much time to do it, so even though her response cut deep inside his soul, he screeched a battle cry of agreement. “Hang on!”
Then they were arrowing up toward the tear in the barrier, toward where the creatures of the underworld had gathered, waiting for the rip to reach the surface of their world, setting them free on the next.
Trumpeting the attack, Nate gathered his fireball magic, felt Alexis lean on her rainbow magic, and then together, as one, they dived into the battle they’d been born for.
Alexis was Ixchel and the goddess was she. They were one, woven together, the ancient entity working through her, guiding her magic as they neared the tear in the fabric of the universe and the enemy attacked.
The boluntiku lunged, snapping with razor-sharp teeth and claws, their lava-hot bodies vapor one moment, solid the next. But their form didn’t seem to matter to the magic; Alexis spread a loop of cool blue light and threw it at the one nearest the gap. The lasso whistled into the creature, impacted, and clung, burning cool against hot. The boluntiku arched and screamed in pain, clawing at the tether, alternating between vapor and solid as it thrashed. Steam rose, along with a hissing noise and a terrible smell as the light ate into the lava creature, cooling it to stone.
Within minutes there was a statue where the thing had been.
“Score!” Nate shouted. “Hang on; we’ll get those others out in front!”
Though the words were an avian screech, she heard them in her skull, her head translating what her heart wasn’t sure it could cope with. Even as she formed another loop, tightened her knees on her mount’s warm, solid neck, and they banked to meet the next attack, part of her struggled to deal with the fact that her mount and Nate were one and the same. He was a shifter. He was also the Volatile, who was her protector, not her enemy. And he’d said he loved her.
A day ago, even a few hours ago, she would’ve given anything to hear him say that. Even now, the words thrummed through her heart like a melody of color. But there was a discord within that song, a splash of warning, of fear and knowing that Nate’s being a shifter fit too well. It explained his fierce independence and dislike of following orders. It explained his need for freedom, for privacy, for his own space.