Who was he, really?
“I can handle it.” Even as he grated the words, the red-gold sparks brightened and the dark fog began to thin. It wreathed around him, sliding along his body and then fading, until she could see his outline again, then the terrifying details—his eyes were rolled back, his face taut and haggard, like he was little more than skin stretched over a skull and animated by the dark magic that shifted and seethed within him. She could feel its poison, hear its serpent rattle.
She took a step back without meaning to.
He blinked, and suddenly he looked like himself again. “Myr, wait.” He reached out a hand, though they were too far apart for him to touch her. It wasn’t too far, though, for her to see the flash of red on his inner forearm.
The trefoil hellmark had gone from black to scarlet. The hell-link was fully active.
“No.” It was a whisper, a moan. A denial of everything they’d been through, everything that had gone wrong. Only she couldn’t deny the past, or the sight of the red hellmark.
“Please, wait.” But the despair in his voice said he knew it was already too late.
“I can’t.” Her voice broke on the words, which suddenly meant far more than she had realized. I can’t do this anymore, can’t trust you like this, can’t be around you. And, knowing there was no way they could go back, not now, not ever, she did what she should’ve done the first moment she saw the dark fog surrounding him.
She turned and ran.
Rabbit didn’t let himself go after her—not to tell her that he’d blocked off the dark magic behind its old mental barriers; not to reassure her that he had it under control; and not to tell her that she didn’t need to be afraid of him. What was the point? She had every reason to fear the magic, and to fear him when he was under its influence.
“Let her go,” he told himself, the words echoing hollowly in the cave.
He didn’t need to borrow his magic from her anymore—the spell had severed their connection, setting her free and making her a mage in her own right, having apparently decided that both of them were the rightful owners of the magic. More, he had brought the dark magic under control, shoving it into the mental vault it used to inhabit, and locking the fucker down tight. But what if the vault cracked? Hell, what if it ripped wide open? Just now, it’d felt like the magic wanted to behave, as if it had gone meekly into confinement.
He didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust himself with it. But he couldn’t refuse it, either. Not if he was going to become the crossover. Which meant that whatever had happened between him and Myr over the past ten days, including their kiss—especially their kiss—was gone now, nullified.
“Fuck me.” Feeling like his soul was hollowed out and his damn bones were creaking, he headed to his Jeep, fired the engine, and aimed the vehicle back along the dirt track to Skywatch.
He braced himself to find a not-so-welcoming committee waiting for him at the gate, looking to protect Skywatch from the dark magic. But the front parking area was deserted and nobody flagged him down as he rolled past the mansion toward his cottage. He’d intended to suck it up and go make his report, would have if there’d been any sign that it was a command performance. But the lack of an armed guard tempted him to keep on driving . . . and made him wonder what Myrinne had told the others.
“Doesn’t matter.” She might’ve played things down in her report, but he’d seen the way she’d looked at him.
The memory tightened his chest, making him feel restless and hemmed in. Suddenly he couldn’t handle the thought of being inside the mansion, or even his cottage. Instead, he floored it, headed for the back of the canyon.
The others could come after him if they wanted to.
Gravel spurted beneath the Jeep’s tires as he bounced along the dirt track, and again when he skidded to a stop at the base of the narrow trail that led up to the ancient pueblo. The footpath was overgrown, as was the wide ledge in front of the pueblo’s lower level, showing just how long it’d been since he’d last been up there.
Before, when he’d first come to Skywatch, he had hung out at the ruins for hours, sometimes even days, listening to his iPod and getting high on weed, hard liquor, pulque, and anything else he could find that came under the heading of “shit that alters consciousness.” Now, as he tugged aside the dusty serape that covered his stash, he saw there wasn’t much left. It should be enough to fog things out for a few hours, though. And right now, he’d take what he could get.
CHAPTER NINE
December 12
Nine days until the zero date
Skywatch
Rabbit grogged his way to consciousness near daybreak and stared at the mud-daubed ceiling of his hideout, which had two round openings that let in the light and smelled of the animals that used it for shelter when he wasn’t around.
It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in the pueblo, wrapped in the musty-smelling serape, with his head pounding with the “hey, hello” of a hangover. It also wasn’t the first time he’d lain there studying the mud daub, with its ancient handprints and carved zigzag lines, and wishing like hell he didn’t have to go back down to the compound. But it was the first time he dreaded going back because it would mean facing Myrinne.
“Damn it.” He dragged himself vertical anyway. He needed to report in and see how the others were taking the whole dark-magic thing.
At the moment, it was buttoned up safely in the vault, behaving itself. But as he picked his way down the trail, he wasn’t so sure he was in the clear, or even that he should be. If the things that’d happened with Phee were any indication, the dark magic wasn’t good for him. Or maybe it was that he wasn’t good with it, that he wasn’t strong enough to control it, his grip on Nightkeeper magic too weak, his moral compass too fucking imprecise. And if some of that started sounding like his old man—you’re not smart enough, not tough enough, not worth my time—maybe that wasn’t an accident.
“Fuck him. You can handle it this time.” He’d learned his lessons the hard way, and he was determined not to screw up again.
Still, the whispers dogged him as he drove the Jeep back to his cottage, grateful that he hadn’t seen anyone coming or going. Right now, he didn’t want to have any conversations that started with “Hey, how are you” or even “What the fuck happened to you yesterday?”
“Damn it.” With irritation riding him hard, putting his gut into a knot of what-ifs, he shouldered through the kitchen door . . . and stopped dead at the sight of Red-Boar sitting at the kitchen table, scowling at a couple of Cokes.
Well, that explained the feeling of impending doom.
“Don’t even start,” Rabbit said, heading across the kitchen for the main room without giving his father a second look. “I need to shower and get some food in me before I can even think of dealing with you.”
“Or you could sit the fuck down and listen.”
“Blow me.” But Rabbit couldn’t make himself walk away. Not knowing that the king could’ve sent his old man to lay the last order of the Boar Oath on him, in the hopes of taming the dark magic. And that maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing. He stopped in the far doorway, and turned back. “Fuck it. What? Did Dez give you an order?”
“Yeah. But not for you.” Red-Boar scowled and took a hit of his soda. “When he heard about the dark magic, he leaned on me to tell him where you really came from.”
That cut right through what was left of Rabbit’s hangover—thud, instant clarity, or close to it.