Too late, Jox thought, desperation pounding in his veins as he struggled through a sea of panic and gore. He was going to be too late.
The creature went solid, killing everyone who’d been inside the confines of its vapor body. But in the second before the six-fingered claws raked the children, gunfire chattered and jade-tipped bullets struck home.
The boluntiku jerked back with a shriek that sounded like a thousand fingernails scratching across a giant blackboard, and spun toward its attacker. Jox turned, too, and saw Kneeland standing in front of the big-screen TV, holding a dented autopistol while tears rolled down his cheeks. When the winikin caught Jox’s eye, he flashed his forearm.
It was bare. His protectees—and their bloodline— were gone.
With nothing left to live for, Kneeland lifted the weapon in salute, then ran across the raised platform and leaped straight for the huge boluntiku. The thing stayed solid and caught him in midair with its claws, hoisting him to its gaping, hundred-toothed mouth.
The moment before it bit down, Kneeland let loose with the autopistol, emptying the clip. The back of the creature’s head blew out in a spray of blackish blood and rust-colored scales. But, still, its jaws closed with an audible crunch.
Kneeland’s body went limp, then fell to the ground in a bloody heap when the boluntiku vaporized in death, opening up a corpse-filled hole in the panicked mob. Retching, Jox hurdled the bodies and tried not to think of them as people who’d been alive only seconds earlier.
Around him the screams and fingernails-on-blackboard howls continued and the air smelled of blood and death. Then he was at the doors, and Anna grabbed him, and she was hanging on to Strike, and all Jox could think about was getting the hell out of there.
Someone must’ve hit the panic release—shit, he should’ve thought of that—because the doors weren’t locked anymore; they were wide-open and survivors were running out into the starlit crevasse where the training center was hidden, deep within Chaco Canyon. Winikin were dragging their children away from the carnage, running for their lives, but the boluntiku pursued with single-minded ferocity, their vapor bulks partially submerged beneath the ground as they gained strength from the magma flow at the earth’s mantle.
‘‘Jox, come on!’’ Anna pulled him toward the door. ‘‘Jox!’’
Three boluntiku were closing in on them, drawn by the smell of royalty.
‘‘Not that way.’’ Most of the escapees were headed toward the forty-car garage, or for the barns and the high canyon trails beyond. Jox’s heart hurt with the knowledge that they’d never make it to the vehicles or horses. More important, it wouldn’t matter if they did, because distance was nothing to the boluntiku. Only smell mattered.
He had to get the children to the secret blood-warded room beneath the archives, which only the royal winikin knew of.
‘‘This way,’’ he said, making the only call he possibly could, though it nearly killed him to turn away from everyone else he’d ever known.
Making sure Anna was right behind him, he grabbed a dazed-looking Strike by the waist and arm, half carrying, half dragging the boy across the great hall to the covered walkway leading to the mansion. It’d been locked all night, but now the doors stood open, one hanging halfway off its hinge. ‘‘Don’t look,’’ he ordered as their feet slid in the bloody wetness that seemed to be everywhere. He lifted Strike higher and the boy trembled and clung to him like a limpet, pressing his face into the winikin’s chest.
Jox heard fingernails on blackboard behind them, heard an infant’s wail and a familiar feminine voice screaming a battle cry. Something deep inside him wept— Hannah. But he didn’t turn back to help her.
He took the king’s children and ran for his life.
CHAPTER ONE
June 21
The present
The glowing green numbers of the Crown Vic’s in-dash clock ticked from eleven fifty-nine to midnight, signaling the start of a new day. Detective Leah Ann Daniels let out a slow breath, trying to settle her nerves. ‘‘First day of summer used to be a good thing.’’
‘‘That was before the locals started drinking the Kool-Aid, ’’ her partner, Nick Ramon, said, then winced. ‘‘Sorry.’’
‘‘Don’t be.’’ It’s not your fault my brother joined a cult and drew the short straw. Battling the churning in her gut, Leah scanned the dark, cluttered alley outside the car, looking for Itchy Pasquale, the scrawny gangbanger— and occasional snitch—who’d called her for a meeting, claiming to know where the Kool-Aid was being served this time around.
She and Nick were parked only a few streets over from Miami’s chichi Wynwood Art District, but the alley could’ve been in another world—one peopled with sallow-faced junkies rather than glitterati and run by gang rule rather than art critics. The Miami-Dade PD made regular sweeps of the buildings on either side of the alley, and the raids turned up pretty much every crime on the books, and occasionally some that weren’t.
Like human sacrifice.
The bodies had started turning up eighteen months ago and had followed every three months like clockwork: two at each equinox, two at each solstice. The victims were beheaded, their hearts cut from their chests. The news vultures had dubbed them the Calendar Killings and hauled out all the old favorites—Buono and Bianchi, Dahmer, Kemper, Gacy. Only one reporter had been savvy enough to draw the parallel between the Manson family and Miami’s newest cult, Survivor2012; between Helter Skelter and the doomsday espoused by their leader, Zipacna, who had named himself after the crocodile demon of the Mayan underworld.
Said clever reporter had turned up right after the vernal equinox, sans head and heart. Next to him had been Leah’s thirty-year-old brother, Matt. Unfortunately, the connections between the Calendar Killings and Survivor 2012 were strictly circumstantial; there wasn’t any evidence the locals or FBI were willing to run with.
‘‘Not yet, anyway,’’ she said softly. Anticipation burned in her veins, making her impatient. ‘‘Itchy’s late,’’ she said louder, so Nick knew she wasn’t talking to herself anymore. They’d been partners nearly six years. He’d gotten used to telling the difference.
‘‘We shouldn’t even be here. Not our case anymore.’’ But Nick didn’t look bothered by the thought. Long and lean and dark-skinned, he was dancer-graceful, yet sturdy as a hurricane shelter, and wore a plain gold wedding band she hadn’t gotten used to yet.
Leah had danced at his and Selina’s wedding a month earlier, and toasted them with a big old, ‘‘Better you guys than me,’’ though it’d stuck a little. She and Nick had been there and done that and managed to stay partners in the aftermath, so she had absolutely nothing against the nurse he’d married. Besides, her relationships seemed to have a three-month expiration date, which tended to defeat the whole ‘‘till death do us part’’ thing.
Didn’t mean she loved being alone, though. Heck, even her subconscious was telling her it was time to start dating again, sending her some seriously hot dreams that had her waking up wanting and lonely, and thinking of a dark-haired man with piercing blue eyes, some righteous ink, and what looked an awful lot like a MAC-10 autopistol on his belt.
Great. Just what she didn’t need—a crush on a gang-banger. Although she supposed—hypothetically—that a ’banger would be better than a doomsday nut who believed that when the Maya’s backward-counting calendar hit its zero date in a few years, the world was going to end.