Leah Ann Daniels—The former detective is now Strike’s mate and the Nightkeepers’ queen.
Myrinne—Raised by a witch who told fortunes in the French Quarter and was sacrificed by Iago at the hellmouth, this young, ambitious beauty is Rabbit’s lover.
Earthly enemies Iago—The leader of the Order of Xibalba, Iago is a mage of extraordinary power, capable of
“borrowing” the talents of other magi. Iago hopes to gain additional power by allying himself with the might of the bloodthirsty Aztec through the soul of their god-king, Moctezuma.
Don’t miss the thrill ride of the next paranormal
romance in Jessica Andersen’s Final Prophecy
series. With the two-year threshold to the 2012
doomsday on the horizon and an earthquake
demon wreaking havoc worldwide, Patience
and Brandt must race to rescue their kidnapped
twin sons. But in order to do so, they must reveal
long-hidden, deadly secrets that threaten their
marriage . . . and their lives.
December 15 Two years and six days to the zero date Deep underground, as the robed Nightkeepers formed a circle around the First Father’s sarcophagus, Patience badly wanted to blurt, Call off the ceremony. The omens suck!
She didn’t, though, because the others didn’t give a crap about the omens or the Mayan astronomy that had become her thing in recent months. Besides, when the First Father’s recently rediscovered end-time prophecies said “on this day, you will jump,” the surviving magi freaking jumped. And when he said they had to enact the Triad spell on the Day of Ancestors in the third year before the end date, lest the dark lords release a brutally destructive demon from the Xibalban underworld . . . well, there didn’t seem to be much point in her suggesting that they should wait for a day that was governed by a more propitious sun or sacred number.
It was now-or-never, do-or-die time . . . or potentially “do- and- die” given that the Triad spell had a two-thirds attrition rate.
Patience suppressed a shiver at the thought. The air in the tomb was cool and faintly damp, and the flickering torchlight made the carved stone images surrounding her seem to move in the shadows, morphing from Egyptian to Mayan and back again, as though echoing an earlier chapter of the Nightkeepers’ evolution. Sweat prickled from her back beneath the lightweight black-on-black combat gear she wore to go with the warrior’s mark on her inner wrist. She was heavily armed—they all were —though it was questionable whether jade-tipped bullets and ceremonial knives would do a damn thing to improve their odds. They weren’t going up against a physical enemy; they were offering themselves to the sun god, which would choose three of them to receive the Triad powers. At least that was the theory. Problem was, the theory also said that the entire pantheon would choose the Triad, not just the sole god that currently had access to the earthly plane. Which meant . . . well, they didn’t know what it meant, and the uncertainty intensified the not good vibe that had first lodged in Patience’s stomach early that morning when she’d charted the day’s sun, sacred numbers, and light pulses, and got what amounted to a cosmic suggestion that she should stay the hell in bed with the covers pulled up over her head until tomorrow.
Not that anyone wanted to hear that particular opinion at the moment.
Across the circle from her, Strike began the ceremony by ritually inviting the gods and ancestors to listen up; he spoke in the old tongue, having memorized the spell phonetically. Beside him, Jade joined in to smooth over his occasional fumbled syllable, as she was the only one there who was even passingly fluent. Granted, Lucius and Anna were experts in ancient Mayan, but this was a Nightkeepers-only ceremony, which meant no Lucius, and Anna was incommunicado. With Leah also excluded for general humanness, the circle consisted of a whopping ten magi who were eligible for the Triad spell, when the legends said there should be hundreds, even thousands of them for the dozens of gods to choose from.
Yeah. Not so much.
But as Strike and Jade finished the first of three repetitions of the spell, a faint hum touched the air, beginning at the very edges of hearing, and gaining depth and voice as the magic began to gather.
More than just red-gold Nightkeeper power, it was laced through with a white-light crackle that smelled faintly of ozone. Would being chosen feel like electrocution? Patience wondered. One second, everything normal, then the next . . . zzzzap?
Don’t pick me or Brandt , she whispered inwardly. Please. Even that much of not-quite-a-prayer went against the writs, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d been guilty of the sin. How could she avoid it, when the rules set down by the First Father himself said she had to put the needs of the gods, her king, her teammates, and mankind ahead of those of her husband and children? Then again, Brandt hadn’t found it at all difficult. He’d just pushed her and the twins into a mental box called “family” . .
. and nail gunned the shit out of the lid.
Don’t go there, she thought fiercely. This is about the magic, not us.
Keeping her head down, focusing on the process rather than the flickering torchlight and the buzz of magic, she waited for the king’s signal. When it came, she—along with all the others—palmed the ceremonial stone knife from her belt and used it to slash her right palm along the lifeline. Pain bit, bringing magic to bubble a champagne fizz in her bloodstream. It beckoned with hints of power and pageantry, and made her wish for a moment that she were solely a warrior rather than a tripartite of warrior, wife, and mother. As a warrior, it would’ve been easy to answer the call to duty, maybe even hope she’d be tapped as one of the three super magi prophesied to tip the balance.
But then again, that would mean undoing the past six years. It would mean her not meeting Brandt on spring break, nor marrying him months later. She would’ve missed the good years with him, when they’d lived as humans, neither of them knowing that they were both under the shadow of the same secret heritage, that their crossing paths had been more destiny than chance. In the altered reality of her warrior self, they wouldn’t have met until two and a half years earlier when the magic reactivated and Strike summoned the surviving magi to Skywatch. They would have met as strangers, probably would’ve become lovers, but without the complications of all the secrets and lies, and the heavy weight of the love they shared for their twin sons, Harry and Braden.
Would it have been easier that way? Probably. But even on the worst of the bad days, she’d never, ever wished she could go back and not have the twins. Granted, she hadn’t seen them in almost two years; she had missed out on so many firsts, and longed to see them with an intensity that was a physical constant, an ache beneath her heart. But even without seeing them, she still knew they were out there, safe with Hannah and Woody. And the knowledge kept her going.
I’m doing this for you, she whispered to them, although she knew that, without their bloodline marks and the accompanying connection to the barrier, they couldn’t hear her. They were far safer off the grid than on it. But knowing that they couldn’t hear her didn’t stop her from talking to them in her head, even if that sometimes made her wonder whether, in marrying Brandt, she had taken on some of the madness rumored to linger in his eagle bloodline, along with the depression she’d battled for the past two years. That didn’t really matter, though. She’d beaten the depression, or at least learned to manage it. She could do the same with the other impulses too. Most of them, anyway.