It had been the first time anyone had really rescued her. And it had been the beginning of her first crush. Her first love.
Don’t go there, she told herself as her heart thudded too fast. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” she asked, needing to break the silence. “Were you looking for me?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” He paused. “I was just walking, trying to clear my head.”
His sudden grimness had the warmth inside her shifting to concern. Which was safer in some respects, but not in others—because if it had Rabbit worried, it couldn’t be good. “What happened?”
“My old man ambushed me this morning and told me about my mother finally. The whole fucking story, damn him.”
“Oh. Wow.” Shock sizzled through her, chased quickly by a flash of anger at Red-Boar, who hadn’t been any more of a father to Rabbit than the Witch had been a mother to her. “You want to tell me about it?”
He hesitated, but then exhaled and said, “My mother was Anntah’s daughter.”
A shiver of instinct worked its way through her, the kind that said, This is important. “The old shaman at Oc Ajal?”
Rabbit nodded. “Which explains how he managed to contact me when Iago’s red-robes destroyed the village. We had a blood-link, even though he denied it when I asked.” His voice was flat, his eyes hollow as he stared into the guttering green flames. He leaned in and took another deep breath. Then, like he was reading off a lame-ass playlist, he repeated Red-Boar’s story, describing how the Xibalbans had purpose-bred him, and how his father had kidnapped him so he couldn’t be used as an enemy asset. “That was why he didn’t want me to get my bloodline mark or learn to use my magic.” His lips thinned. “The old bastard never could control me, though. The harder he tried to make me fall in line, the more I busted out.”
Oh, Rabbit, she thought, but didn’t say, because it wouldn’t change anything. She wanted to reach out to him, wanted to touch him, but couldn’t do either with the fire between them. Where before it had seemed like a necessary bulwark, though, now it was in the way. So she got up and moved around to sit beside him, letting their shoulders bump.
They sat like that for a minute, watching the flames gutter and send up plumes of vanilla-scented smoke. Finally, she asked, “What else did he say about the crossover?”
“Nothing that we didn’t already know, which is why he didn’t tell me sooner. At least that’s his excuse. There’s got to be something more to it, though. Some clue we’re missing.” He hesitated. “I want to go back to the village.”
“You . . . oh.” She swallowed. “Right.” It made sense, she supposed. They needed more information on the crossover—where better to look than the place where he’d been conceived? Still, though, she inched away as her mind filled with memories of Oc Ajal—bodies, burning huts, the stink of charred flesh. It had been gruesome, loathsome, heartbreaking . . . more, she dreaded the thought of the village itself, the dark magic that still lurked there.
The problems between her and Rabbit might have made him vulnerable to Phee’s seduction, but it was the stone eccentric he’d found beneath the center pole in Anntah’s hut that had summoned her.
“It’s the only thing I can think to do now that I know the truth,” Rabbit continued. “I’ll get Anna to ’port me down there today, a quick in-and-out, low risk and no bullshit.”
She wasn’t sure which one of them he was trying to convince. “What are you going to do when you get there?”
“Look around. Maybe pray for a miracle.”
Don’t go, she wanted to say. She couldn’t, though, because he was right. And, besides, she knew he wouldn’t listen to her if she tried to talk him out of it. His jaw was set and his eyes gleamed with an anticipation that had her instincts humming. So instead of arguing, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m going with you.”
The words hung in the air between them for a moment before he shifted to look at her fully, his eyes dark and unreadable. “You don’t have to.”
The hum got louder. Was he trying to spare her from the bad memories, or was there something else going on here? Damn it, she didn’t know. “I’ll go,” she said firmly. “I used to be good at watching your back.”
He hesitated for a split second, but then he nodded. “Thanks. There’s nobody I trust more to have my six.”
Damn her throat for closing on a lump of emotion. This wasn’t about emotion, though; it was about making sure nothing went wrong. And she still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t playing her—or himself. “Okay, then. You run it by Dez and get the go-ahead.”
“Will do. Meet me in the great room in an hour.”
It wasn’t until he’d melted back into the grove, though, becoming nothing more than a shadow that shifted and then disappeared, that she found herself wondering what the hell she had just gotten herself into, and why. You shouldn’t have said you’d go, her better sense whispered. He’s not your problem anymore. But both she and her better sense knew that was a lie. He’d been her problem—her weakness—since the first moment she saw him, and that hadn’t changed. Like the xombi virus, it seemed like repeated exposure didn’t lead to immunity.
More, she knew him better than anybody . . . which meant it was up to her to make sure he wasn’t drifting again toward the darkness and telling himself it was the light.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Oc Ajal, Mexico
The village of Oc Ajal didn’t look anything like it had the last time Rabbit was there.
The pathway to the parking area was gone—hell, the parking area was probably gone, along with the road leading in. The rain forest had grown in from the edges of where the double row of huts and the villagers’ slash-and-burn landscaping had held back the undergrowth. The green carpet and higher secondary growth had even covered over the charred remains of the huts, which were visible now mostly as lumps of greenery. That, and the chunks of rocks poking up here and there, made it look like any of the thousands of small, unexcavated Mayan sites strewn throughout the territories, ancient rather than just a year or so old.
Overhead, birds called and flitted, splashes of color against the background of breeze-stirred leaves.
“It’s like they were never here,” Myr said quietly from behind and a little off to one side of him. “Like we were never here.”
“There’s magic, though,” Anna said from the other side of him. She’d stayed instead of dropping them off and ’porting back to Skywatch, though he didn’t know if she was curious or under orders to keep an eye on him.
“They built on a hotspot and then camouflaged it,” he commented, mostly because he needed to say something, needed to pretend that this was just another op.
It wasn’t, though, not for him. Because as he stepped through the stone archway and into the hub of the village, he saw what was left of Anntah’s hut, where a village woman had been tied, raped and killed. He saw the places where bodies had lain, and the bushes where he had puked up a lung, knowing that Iago wouldn’t have found Oc Ajal if it hadn’t been for him. And, right in the middle of it all lay the remains of the fire pit where Anntah had died, his soul lingering just long enough to give Rabbit the information—the lies—that had put him on the path to nearly destroying himself, and Myrinne.
Unlike the rest of the overgrown village, the fire pit was bare.
He found himself standing there without really being aware of having moved, his toes nearly bumping one of the millstones the red-robes had used to pin the dying shaman in place. Anna and Myrinne were right behind him; he could feel their wariness, their worry. He didn’t know what they were expecting him to do, though. Shit, he didn’t know what he was expecting himself to do—there was magic here, yeah, but there wasn’t anything really jumping out at him, waving its arms and saying “Here I am. Here’s your answer!”