Cool darkness closed around her as she moved down the stairs, and she switched to night vision, which made the outside world seem suddenly very far away. She tried not to imagine the firefight outside, yet at the same time wouldn’t let herself blunt the sharp edges by brushing it off as just a game. This could be real, she thought as she led the way across a slick landing to a second set of stairs. It could all be real.
Zzzt-pop! A miniexplosion flashed, momentarily blinding her. She fell back into Sebastian and caromed off the wall as foxfire booby traps flared to life all around them, further overloading the night vision. She ripped down her goggles, brought up her weapon, and signaled for her teammates to follow her, taking high and low positions.
She went low, came around the corner to find Alexis crouched and waiting, and opened fire just as a spell detonated around her. She lived; Alexis “died,” and looked surprised as hell doing it.
Cara didn’t stop to gloat, just waved her teammates past. “Move!” she barked. And they moved.
The next few minutes were a blur of gunfire and magical explosions, and a dizzy high-speed weave through labyrinthine tunnels to the inner chamber. “Grenade!” she snapped, and stepped back as Sebastian lobbed his own personal contribution to their armaments—a paint-filled grenade that atomized the spray so finely that it could penetrate a mage’s shield spell. There was a sharp crack followed by a vicious curse in Michael’s voice.
Another blur of activity followed, fragmented with image memories that burned their way into her retinas: Michael coated from head to toe in blue paint; the surprise—and perhaps reluctant admiration—on his face when she darted in and grabbed the paint-slicked pottery figure that was their goal. Then they were running through the tunnel leading out. She saw blue-splashed bodies, though she didn’t know who had cleared the way, didn’t hear any more pop-popping of paintball fire. But as she burst out into the sunlight and the coast was clear ahead, all she could think was that she had the statue—she freaking had it!—and they were going to win. She was going to win, and everyone would know it.
Triumph flashed through her, bright, shiny, and unfamiliar. The Nightkeepers would see that she could make decisions under fire, that the winikin would obey her and they could fight on their own. She would be a hero. More important, the winikin would have a reason to follow her now. Maybe this was what Zane had been talking about that night: the moment when the balance would tip and the last of the holdouts would accept her. And Sven would see that she could handle— Shit, it didn’t matter what he saw or didn’t see. He was just another mage.
And she wasn’t the winner until they reached the rendezvous point.
Yanking her flare gun free, she blasted a trailing track of blue across the sky to signal the retreat, hoping to hell there were other survivors. She and her five remaining teammates raced to the drop point they had started from, darting into the black-painted circle that said they were in place for a teleporter to pick them up from their so-called op. “Come on, come on, come on,” she chanted as the seconds ticked by and nobody else showed up.
“Try another flare,” Sebastian said.
She fired again, though it was a dangerous move that pinpointed them too closely. Already the enemy would be headed their way, following the flare trail. “We’ll give them sixty seconds,” she said through gritted teeth as the exhilaration of victory started to wobble.
At T-minus thirty seconds, she headed for the control button that would change the indicator light to amber, indicating that the op was over, that anyone not in the pickup zone had been left behind. Her stomach heaved. Six survivors—herself and five others. Was that all she would come home with? At the fifteen-second mark, she strained to hear footsteps—something, anything that said more were coming.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Sebastian grabbed her arm. “Look!” There was a flicker of motion and Dez stepped out from a gap opposite them, weapon raised.
Cara clamped her lips on a scream and hit the button. A siren whooped and the light turned amber. And the game was over.
“We did it!” The cry came from Natalie, who burst from a nearby doorway, eyes shining from a red-streaked face. She flung herself on Cara, spinning them both around in a circle. “We won. We won!” Suddenly they were surrounded by winikin, all clamoring and high-fiving, and seeming not to care that they were covered with red paint.
“You’re dead,” Cara said numbly, pulling away from Natalie and staring from one face to the next. “Don’t you get it? You’re all dead. I killed you. I—”
“She was just playing the game.” Zane appeared beside her and dropped a heavy arm over her shoulders. “Right, Cara?”
“I… What?” Her stomach felt like it was gnawing on itself, yet nobody else seemed to be upset by what she’d done. Even Sebastian was nodding, grinning, and accepting a couple of back slaps from his buddies. They weren’t pissed off that she had sacrificed them in exchange for a fake artifact that now weighed heavily in her arms.
“He’s right,” a new voice said. “You played a good game.” She turned to see the king making his way toward her. On the surface, his expression was one of reluctant admiration, as if he’d been surprised by the winikin victory, but was willing to roll with it. His eyes, though, were locked on hers, and seemed to be warning her of something. But what? Zane’s grip on her shoulders increased as Dez came opposite her and the others fell back, leaving her and Zane facing the king together as the Nightkeepers’ leader continued smoothly. “If that was the way you played the patolli, I’m not surprised you bilked Sven out of his allowance nine times out of ten.”
“He told you that?” It was all she could get past the sudden churn of confusion. She glanced around, but for the first time in days didn’t immediately see man or coyote.
“War games are good practice for leadership,” Dez said, which wasn’t really an answer. It drew her attention back to him, though, and she saw the warning again when he said, “Just like training exercises are good practice for battle, without being the real thing.” He held out his hand. “Congratulations.”
There were a couple of hoots from the crowd, a few low cheers, and Zane tugged her into a one-armed hug and murmured in her ear, “Go with it. Give them a reason to believe in you, and they’ll be yours.”
She stiffened as it sank in.
Was this what it was going to take? Was she going to have to pretend she’d been treating the exercise like a game? Her inner self rebelled, saying, Hell, no. They need to know that was a real decision, and that they shouldn’t trust me to lead if I’m going to pull shit like that. Except that Zane and Dez thought otherwise, as if having a leader who would sacrifice eighty percent of her army to win a single battle was better than letting the winikin continue their infighting. And who knew, maybe they were right. She didn’t know, but it didn’t feel right. She didn’t feel right.
She looked around again for Sven, then told herself to knock it off. It didn’t matter what he thought; it was her decision. Besides, for all she knew, he had disappeared again.
Breathing through the pang brought by that thought, she handed Dez the paint-smeared statuette. Then, meeting the king’s eyes, she said, “Thank you, sire. I’m just grateful the gamble paid off.” And with that, she bought into the fiction, and hoped to the gods she was doing the right thing.
CHAPTER NINE
Later that afternoon, Sven found Dez in the last place he would’ve expected: the game room.
When the survivors had first reunited, the big room on the first floor of the mansion had been the go-to spot for their downtime. The magi had sacked out in the comfort of the home theater at one end of the long, narrow space; played endless hours of Viking Warrior and Grand Theft Auto on the two dedicated gaming consoles at the other; huddled over the pinball machine, billiard table, and foosball set up in the middle; and stocked the built-in shelves with every grown-up toy known to mankind, along with a few that were pure magic. With its wood paneling, neon bar signs, and random collection of laughably bad art, the game room was where they had gotten to know one another, testing strengths and weaknesses and forming the bonds of a team that would—gods willing—see them through the end-time war.