A hawk’s cry came from directly above her—a screech of triumph far too loud to come from a normal bird. A whoosh sounded overhead, and something slammed into the buggy, sending it shuddering sideways. Terrible thumps and scratches surrounded Sasha as she fought the ignition, nearly sobbing in fear as she tried to get the engine to turn over. She got it going again just as smooth, sharp claws, each at least two inches in diameter at their widest, curved down to take a grip on either side of the hardtop and latched on. Sasha stared at them, breath going dead in her lungs. Moments later, the buggy lurched and went airborne.
Screaming, she twisted the wheel and stomped on the gas and brake in rapid succession, but the vehicle was out of her control. It went airborne, skimming along the surface of the road, then off it, over the softer sand on the verge. Sasha yanked at her safety straps, popping them free as the vehicle dipped and lifted, dipped and lifted, in synchrony with the boom of huge, feathered wings. Then the creature that had captured her slowed, back-winging to hover over a patch of soft sand.
Then the claws let go. The buggy fell a few feet and whump ed into the sand.
Not stopping to think or plan, knowing only that she had to get the hell out of there now, Sasha flung herself out of the vehicle. She landed in soft sand, stumbled, and went down on her hands and knees, then scrambled up and ran for her life. She didn’t look behind her, didn’t dare, didn’t want to see—
Air rushed and motion hissed overhead, a dark brown blur of feathers and scaly talons with wickedly curved claws. And then the thing landed facing her, beak agape, metal glinting off a gold chain around its neck. It was taller than a man, with a twenty-foot wingspan that it showed her now, flaring its wings wide as it screamed.
Sasha screamed too, and spun to bolt the other way.
A woman stood behind her, MAC-10 aimed with deadly intent.
Sasha froze.
The woman nodded. “Good call.” Blond and blue-eyed, tall and stacked, she was wearing jeans, a teal shirt, and slip-on sneakers, and had a small knapsack slung over one shoulder. Black glyphs marked her inner right forearm, but even without them, Sasha recognized her as one of the strangers who’d looked in on her as she’d feigned sleep. Now, the woman lowered the autopistol, shrugged out of the knapsack, and tossed the bag past Sasha, humor glinting in her eyes. “Put your clothes on, Nate.
She looks freaked out enough without adding a naked man to the mix.”
A hawk’s cry answered, somehow sounding like a chuckle. Then heat rippled across the back of Sasha’s neck and arms, and there was a strange noise, almost like a sigh. Then the sound of someone getting dressed.
Impossible, her rational self said, but it didn’t sound quite so certain anymore. “Special effects,” she whispered, more to herself than to the woman.
The blonde heard her, though, and something like sympathy flashed briefly in her killer blue eyes.
“Feel free to keep telling yourself that if it helps. Doesn’t make it true, though.”
“The Nightkeepers are a myth,” Sasha said numbly, repeating the words she’d said over and over to Ambrose, trying to get him to see his delusion for what it was. “It’s a bunch of good stories, nothing more.”
“Like Alexis said,” a man’s deep voice intoned, “just because you tell yourself something, that doesn’t make it true.” There was a thread of amusement in his tone, suggesting an inside joke.
Sasha spun, her hands coming up in automatic defense. But she didn’t throw a punch; instead, she froze at the sight of a dark-haired man standing right where the hawk had been. He was tall, dark, and built, and in a way reminded her of Michael. Or maybe a cleaned-up version of Michael, more businessman than pirate. The man’s black hair was short and slicked, his jaw clean-shaven, his eyes amber rather than forest green. He was wearing dark cargo pants, sneakers, and a black tee, but on him they somehow came across as dress-down Friday rather than at-home casual. He wore a medallion around his neck, a black cuff of polished stone on his right wrist, and had the knapsack slung over his shoulder. The hawk had disappeared. Or had it merely changed into something else?
Sasha shook her head, so freaking confused she wanted to scream with it. Or rather, she wanted to be confused, but was afraid she understood. And that was what had the screams locking in the back of her throat, trapping the fear inside her chest with the growing sense of doom, of guilt. Oh, Ambrose.
“Special effects,” she said, whispering it to herself as though the words were a spell.
The blonde looked at the man; Sasha had to believe they were a couple from the way her eyes warmed as they touched on his, caught, and held. But then the blonde’s expression cooled as she glanced at Sasha. “I guess she needs another demonstration,” she said, as though a giant bird that had morphed into a man wasn’t enough proof that either she’d been fully sucked into the collective delusion . . . or it wasn’t a delusion at all.
“No,” Sasha said, panic sparking. “Wait—” But the blonde ignored her and dug in the back pocket of her jeans, coming up with a cell phone.
She flipped it open, hit a couple of buttons, and said, “Taxi for three, please.”
For a second, Sasha was relieved to think it would be something as normal as an SUV coming for them. Then a strange rattle split the air, and a man appeared. Hovering. In midair, maybe a foot off the ground. He had shoulder-length hair that was pulled back into a stubby ponytail at the base of his neck, a close-clipped jawline beard, and piercing blue eyes. He was wearing ragged jeans, a concert tee, and leather sandals, and the whole effect made him look like he should’ve been hanging out over a backyard barbecue with a beer in one hand, grill tongs in the other. Instead, he was hanging in midair.
A moment later, gravity took over and he dropped, landing easily, as though he’d done it a thousand times before. Sasha stared, transfixed by the trick, and the glyph he wore high on his right biceps—the hunab ku. The mark of a Nightkeeper king.
“Impossible,” she whispered. Except that this time it was the disbelief that rang false, because she could get only so far denying the evidence in front of her.
“Come on,” the king said. “Let’s go home.”
“That place isn’t my home,” she whispered, pushing the words through a closed-tight throat. The training compound was either an elaborate insane asylum . . . or it was the embodiment of everything she’d spent her adult life trying to escape. The impossibility of it all, the incongruity of it, slapped at her, swamping her and holding her still as the blonde and the man-hawk took her hands and linked their fingers with the king’s, connecting the four of them in an alternating male-female circle.
“It should have been,” the king said in a voice that brooked no argument. “And if you’ll let us, we’ll do our best to make it feel like your home now.”
Before she could react to that—if she could’ve even come up with an intelligent response—the air thickened with a hush of anticipation, a skirr of electricity. Then something rattled, the noise feeling as though it came from right behind her ears, her stomach lurched, and the world disappeared, blurring gray-green.
Sasha involuntarily clutched the strong hands on either side of her and drew breath to scream.
Before the cry broke free, though, the gray-green disappeared and the world came back into existence around her. They were back at Skywatch, in the middle of the great room. They blinked in slightly above the ground. The others landed easily, flexing their knees to absorb the impact. Sasha, on the other hand, hit and staggered, fighting to lock her knees when they wanted to go rubbery.