Skykeepers (2 page)

hunab ku
—A pseudoglyph associated with the 2012 end date worn by the Nightkeepers’ king.

intersection
—Located in the sacred tunnels beneath Chichén Itzá, this was the point where the earth, sky, and underworld came very near one another, where the barrier was weakest, and through which the gods could communicate with the Nightkeepers. With the intersection destroyed, the Nightkeepers are in trouble.

jun tan
—The “beloved” glyph that signifies a Nightkeeper’s mated status. It cannot be formed by a Nightkeeper who also shares a connection with dark magic.

muk
—The ancient, ancestral magic that was long ago split into Nightkeeper and Xibalban magic.

tzomplanti
—A ceremonial pile formed of stacked human skulls, used as a beacon or a warning sign. Although sometimes associated with the Maya, it is Aztec in origin.

writs
—Written by the First Father, these rules delineate the duties and codes of the Nightkeepers. Not all of them translate well into present day.

Descended from the only survivors of an incredibly advanced civilization wiped out in 24,000 B.C. during the last Great Conjunction, the Nightkeepers are mortal magic users sworn to pass their skills from generation to generation until the 2012 conjunction, when they will be the only ones capable of defeating the
Banol Kax
, a group of powerful demons who were bound in Xibalba by the Nightkeepers’ ancestors, and will be released on December 21, 2012. On that day, the demons will break through the barrier separating the earth and underworld. They will destroy mankind and rule the earth . . . unless the Nightkeepers stop them.

Ancient prophecy says that there should be hundreds of Nightkeepers at the end of the age. But in the final four years before the zero date, when the demons begin their assault on the barrier, the Nightkeepers number less than a dozen scattered and untrained magi. Their last king, Striking-Jaguar, reunites the surviving Nightkeepers in time to block the
Banol Kax
from attacking the earth. In the process, however, he claims a god-bound human woman as his mate rather than sacrificing her. His love for Detective Leah Ann Daniels defies an ancient prophecy and triggers the next stage in the countdown to the end-time.

This stage is ruled by the demon prophecies, which are supposed to guide the Nightkeepers in battle as the end-time approaches. The magi race to recover the Mayan antiquities that bear the seven demon prophecies, but they are not the only ones hunting for the missing artifacts. The Order of Xibalba, thought to have perished during the conquistadors’ bloodbath, has risen again, led by the redheaded mage Iago. During the spring solstice, Iago invokes all seven of the demon spells at once and uses the power to open a hellmouth connecting the earth and underworld, while sealing the skyroad and separating the Nightkeepers from their gods. Only the power of the love match between Godkeeper Alexis Gray and her destined mate, Nate Blackhawk, allows the Nightkeepers to defeat Iago and prevent the
Banol Kax
from coming to earth . . . for the moment.

LEONID METEOR SHOWER

Sasha Ledbetter paused, bracing her hands on her knees as she sucked in moist air, trying to catch the breath she’d lost somewhere around the time she’d ditched the dinged-up Jeep to hike the rest of the way to the ruin. “Shit.” She wheezed. “I forgot how much I hate rain forests.”

They were fine in theory, she supposed as she straightened and readjusted the heavy pack on her shoulders, then used her machete to nudge a thorny vine out of her way. On TV, from the safety of her apartment in Boston, she’d paused occasionally on Travel Channel specials about the low country, though she’d still take the Food Network any day. And she’d babied the half dozen tropical plants she’d grown in brightly colored pots, enjoying them for their sweet scents and lush flowers. But that didn’t mean she’d had any desire to return to her childhood haunts. Especially when those haunts came with bloodsucking bugs like the one that kept whining in her left ear no matter how many times she slapped at it. “Get the hint, will you?” She waved at the thing again; it buzzed reproachfully. “God. I forgot about the bugs, too.”

She didn’t get a response to her complaints, but then again, she was talking to herself.

Traveling alone in the rain forest might not be the smartest strategy for a brunette twentysomething with elfin features and a dented chin—i.e., someone who might be close to six feet tall and fairly muscular, but couldn’t look threatening no matter how hard she tried. But she’d spent a chunk of her childhood bushwhacking south of the border and knew how to take care of herself in the hostile, if verdant, environment.

Then again, so had her father, Ambrose Ledbetter, and he’d disappeared into this same rain forest more than five months ago.

Ambrose was missing, presumed dead, according to both the nearest consulate and the university where he’d held court as one of the world’s foremost Maya nists. Granted, it wasn’t unusual for Ambrose to lose track of a week or two when he was in the field, but five months was too much. He wouldn’t have stayed out in the field that long, even if he was hot on the trail of his own personal obsession, a mythical group of warrior-priests called the Nightkeepers, who were supposed to protect mankind from ancient demons in the last few years before the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012.

Some people—mostly movie producers and nut jobs, as far as Sasha could tell—believed that the zero date signaled the end of time itself. But Ambrose hadn’t just believed in the end-time; he’d believed that the legends of the Nightkeepers were real. For the most part, he’d kept the psychosis under wraps in his outside life, playing the part of a sane man, and playing it well. At home, though, he’d let it rip. Which was why Sasha had eventually stopped going home. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her father in more than eight years, save for a single brief encounter over the summer. The day after that he’d disappeared into the rain forest.

Missing, presumed dead
. The words banged around inside her head as she wormed her way along the narrow trail she’d found partly from childhood memories, partly from a crude map Ambrose’s grad student had drawn for her. She paused at the circular clearing that she thought was where they used to make camp, but it seemed smaller than she remembered, and there was no sign of a tent. Granted, the forest claimed everything after a while, even stone pyramids ten stories high, but she still would’ve expected to find a few pieces of rip-stop or scattered equipment. Something, anyway.

Her pulse bumped, but not with hope. After so many months with no word, it was hard to believe that he could still be alive. No, the skim of nerves came from thinking that instead of a relatively peaceful end in the place he loved, maybe he’d been attacked by human predators, bandits who’d taken his equipment to use what they could, sell what they couldn’t.The possibility had haunted her ever since she’d learned he was missing—a notification that had been delayed months because he hadn’t listed her anywhere as next of kin.

“Don’t talk yourself into freaking out,” she said, swiping at another incoming bug.

And really, there was no reason to panic. Even though she’d gone to culinary school rather than following Ambrose’s charted path for her to become a doctor, she’d taken enough bio classes to know that lack of evidence in favor of one hypothesis didn’t prove the opposite. The absence of tent scraps didn’t necessarily mean he’d been murdered by bandits. Maybe he’d just camped somewhere else.

Still, she sheathed her machete and popped the snap on the midback holster she wore beneath her sweat-soaked tee, and withdrew the .22 chick gun she’d bought at a pawnshop a few miles from the airport. Just in case.

Walking as quietly as she could, though she’d lost some of her childhood forestcraft in the years since she’d cut ties with her old life, she eased along the narrow path, which was little more than a groove in the soft rain forest floor. Ignoring the screeches of parrots and monkeys far above in the canopy, she strained to hear other, closer sounds. Nerves fisted in her chest, and the skin at her nape prickled, but again, there was no evidence supporting her fear. There was only the fear itself.

The lush vegetation thinned out as she crested a low rise that might have once been a fortified wall. From that high spot, she caught a glimpse of hewn stone forming a stark grayish white contrast to the surrounding greenery—an entrance leading into the earth. Ambrose’s temple. His obsession.

Faint anger twisted at the sight—and the memories it brought—but she ignored it as she headed for the temple entrance, reminding herself she was through chasing love, or even affection. Those were things that had to be given freely, or not at all.

In Ambrose’s case, that would be the latter.

A slight downhill slope led to the temple entrance, which was a plain, unadorned rectangle of stone: vertical slabs on either side, twice the height of a tall man, topped with a wide, uncarved lintel. The dark, forbidding doorway led into a high mound of green-covered stone that had once been a huge ceremonial pyramid.

When she reached the entrance, she fished in her pack for the military-grade flashlight that had been another pawnshop find. She’d passed on the night-vision goggles in favor of a decent one-man tent, but thanks to the creepy-crawlies still working their way up and down her spine, she found herself wishing she’d splurged and bought both.

“Man up. You’re just imagining things,” she muttered, making herself take the first step from soil onto stone. When nothing happened except a ten-degree or so temperature drop, she exhaled a long, slow breath. “See? You can do this.” She might be a decade out of practice, and too ready to believe the prickly heebie-jeebies, but it wasn’t like she had a choice, really. She’d promised long ago never to reveal the temple’s location to anyone else, not even a hint. This had been Ambrose’s spot, the center of his life. And in the end, it had most likely been his death.

She needed to search the temple, needed to find his camp . . . and his body. The thought sucked, but she could cope, would have to cope. Besides, she’d had a few days to get used to the idea that he was truly gone this time, and eight years of silence before that to buffer the separation. There was grief, yes, and some stale, leftover pain, but overall, her foremost emotion was weary resignation as she squared her shoulders and started hiking inward, intent on finding her father’s remains and bringing them back to the States. Although the ruin and rain forest had been more his home than the apartment he and his non-wife, Pim, had shared near Harvard, he’d always insisted that when he died, he wanted to be cremated and tossed to the wind in New Mexico.

Sasha didn’t know why. As a child, she’d suspected that was where her mother had been from, or where she was buried. She’d even visited the spot once, but had found nothing but rocks and wind, making her think that the New Mexico thing was just another of Ambrose’s elaborately constructed delusions, one that meant nothing in real terms. Regardless, it had been his request, and Sasha had felt honor-bound to make it happen, even if it meant trekking through the rain forest, slapping at bugs, and fighting the feeling of being watched.