On the Hunt (Sentinel Wars #3.5)(60)
Author: Gena Showalter

The visionaries."

She exhaled softly. "The skull can tell the future?"

"When wielded by a fully trained itza’at mage. It’s no use in a fight."

"If that’s true, then why did you haul ass out there? And why did the camazotz take it?"

Knowing they had moved past the point of convenient lies, he said, "When a skull is separated from its wielder, it broadcasts powerful magic. Once you brought it up out of the temple, any creature with a link to the barrier would have been able to zero in on it." His gut tightened. "The zotz that attacked you was probably coming after the skull, but once it saw you, it decided to have a snack first, add some skin to its wings." He deliberately paused, letting the gory details sink in.

"As for why they took it, power is power. Destroying it in an equinox ritual could fuel some serious magic."

Her eyes flared. "Destroying it? No. No way. We can’t let that happen. We have to get it back."

"Natalie—"

"Don’t ‘Natalie’ me, JT. If I’m a winikin, then I’m a protector by nature, right? And if we’re free, then that means we get to pick what we want to protect. You chose your village. I’m choosing the skull that belongs to my bloodline."

"It doesn’t belong to your bloodline," he gritted between clenched teeth.

"It does if all of the magi are dead," she countered neatly. "Why else would I have been the one to pick up its signal?"

"I—" He broke off. "Damn it." She was right. And it was a plausible explanation for why she looked like a winikin but seemed to have some connection with the magic. In the absence of a better option, the power was reaching out to the D-list.

Only in this case, D stood for danger.

"The camazotz would have brought it to their hell mouth for any sort of ritual," he said finally, wishing she didn’t have a point. "That’s the hole in the barrier where they’re coming through, one that takes a hell of a sacrifice to get open. Theoretically, it should be inside a big-ass temple, but I’ll be damned if I can find it. And if I haven’t managed to track it down in seven years of searching, there’s no way you’re going to find it in less than a day."

She just looked at him, unblinking. "I told you. I can sense the skull. I can lead us to where it’s gone." In that instant, her certainty reminded him all too strongly of how the old king had looked as he stood at the front of the meeting hall, talking about his plans to attack the barrier.

JT’s blood chilled. "Natalie, for gods’ sake."

"Tell me about the hell mouth. Can we use it to get into Xibalba?"

"That’s not funny."

"It wasn’t a joke."

Frustration sparked through him. "Do you seriously think we can take out the underworld itself, just the two of us?" When the argument edged way too close to those old, blood-soaked memories, he veered off. Don’t dwell. Move forward. "No way. We’re not doing this. I’ll tell you what we are doing: You’re going to go inside and lock up where it’s safe, and I’m going after the zotz that busted up your Jeep. I’ll track them, find them, and killthem."

She closed the distance between them and wrapped a hand around his arm, gripping right over his ink. "My instincts are good, always have been. And right now they’re telling me that if we don’t get the skull back, everything you’ve seen up to now is going to look like a warm-up act."

Memories churned, souring the back of his throat. But he said only, "Go inside and stay there. Let me do my job."

"It’s— Behind you! "

Whatever else she might have said was drowned out by a whip crack of leathery wings and the high screech of a zotz in attack mode.

"Get inside!" JT bellowed, and was relieved to see her bolt for the house. He spun and ducked, then brought up the shotgun and fired at the incoming blur as it soared over the damned wall, its wings fully extended. And intact.

Not for long. Blasting away, JT shredded the bat-faced bastard’s wing membranes, rage flaring at the sight of the pale, smooth skin. Human skin. Shit, Rez. What the hell happened?

The thing flapped hard and then slammed to the ground short of him, keening in pain and fury.

Eyes gleaming coal red, it scrambled to its feet and lunged for him, mouth splitting in a tricornered screech.

He unloaded the second barrell into the creature’s face. Chunks and ichor sprayed, and he moved in fast, whipping out his blade and making the necessary cuts—throat and dick—before it could recover.

It puffed to greasy-ass mist, leaving him crouched there, breathing hard. "Son of a—" Another blur hurtled over the wall; another screech raised the hair on the back of his neck. "Shit!" He slapped for his ammo belt but wasn’t wearing it. The shotgun was empty, the—

"JT, down!" Natalie shouted from the house, punctuated by a door slam as she bolted back out with one of his shotguns.

He pancaked it into the dirt and she fired over him, nailing the zotz center-mass. The thing went down hard, and he got himself up and running. Knife. Dick. Gone. He stared at the place where it had been, trying not to see the pink skin of its wings.

"Come on." She was beside him, pulling on his arm, trying to drag him into the house. "There might be more."

"There will be," he said hollowly, not sure how he knew. "They’re coming through too fast. They must have used the skull to stabilize the hell mouth somehow. . . ."

"Exactly. And we’re going to need more than a couple of empty shotguns if we’re going to be any good out there."

That snapped him out of his daze. "Natalie . . ." He trailed off at the sight of her.

Barefoot and wearing his sweats, with her long dark hair swinging into her face, a stone-edged knife stuck in her waistband, and a double-barrell held one-handed, she looked nothing like the fiery, driven researcher whose boundless energy had lured him from the role of observer to that of lover. Her eyes were fierce and determined, her expression set, and she held her body with a hunter’s stillness.

Before, she had made him think of joy and laughter, reminding him that there was a larger world out there, one worth saving. Now she reminded him of the warrior women he had once lived among. The change terrified him. Yet at the same time, it gave him something strange and unfamiliar.

It gave him hope.

"Okay," he said with a short, soldier-to-soldier nod. "Let’s arm up. I’m sure Rez could use the extra help."

But as they headed inside, she said, "Just defending the village isn’t going to be enough. We need to get that skull back."