Storm Kissed by Jessica Andersen Page A

his hands into the hollow he had carved alongside the wall. He came up with a bundle, started unwrapping a layer of rotting fabric, then paused and turned away to paw through his knapsack for something.
    Digging his fingernails into his palms hard enough to draw blood, both as a crude sacrifice and to keep himself from doing something stupid, Dez called the magic for a shield spell, intending to turn it into a damned cage. Power raced in his veins as he spread his fingers and imagined the shield falling into place, but he didn’t trigger the spell. Wait for it , he told himself. Wait . . . for . . . it.
    Keban straightened, holding a flashlight.
    Now! Dez unleashed his shield spell at the same instant that Keban turned on the flashlight. There was a spark of electricity, a flare of magic.
    And the world went nuts.
    A fat spark shot from Keban to Dez and back. The winikin cried out and dropped the flashlight, but a flare of blue-white power suddenly engulfed Dez, lighting his surroundings and totally fucking the element of surprise. Keban spun, took one look at him, and bolted.
    Damn it! Dez slammed his crackling shield around the other man. Not invisible like most of the warrior′s defensive spells, or concealing like the chameleon shields Michael or Alexis could call, Dez’s shield was like most of his magic: loud, unsubtle, and supercharged. It arced with blue-white electricity, forming a weblike cage that stopped bullets and buzz-swords, and could make like a Taser if he wanted it to. And hell, yeah, he wanted it to right now. He wanted the bastard to burn.
    Keban skidded to a stop in the center of the magic, and turned back as Dez approached the cage. The blue-white light showed a face that sagged like wax around the scars, eyes that were sly and calculating, but didn’t track normally.
    Nate’s illegal hack into the winikin’ s psych ward records had revealed that Keban had suffered an acute psychotic break a few days after that night in the storm. He’d stayed put for a decade, then vanished the day of the Triad spell, which couldn’t have been a coincidence. He’d been rational enough to work out an escape, rational enough to send that letter and track down the artifacts he wanted. Now, though, he stared past Dez’s shoulder, twisting his fingers in the filthy cloth wrappings, and mumbling to himself, looking more pitiful than rational.
    Dez’s rage didn’t quite die, but it sure as hell faltered.
    Up close, the man inside the glowing cage was a deflated, deranged version of the beast he had seen in his nightmares, year after year, until new demons took his place. He didn’t look like the ruthless bastard who had dragged Dez to dozens of crumbling ruins as a kid and turned him loose with a knife and orders to find the temple’s sacred chamber, make his sacrifice, and “for fuck’s sake, get it right.” And he didn’t look like the man who had whipped him bloody each time he failed.
    Instead, he looked old, sad, and defeated. And nothing like the man Dez had primed himself to kill.
    “Shit.” He scowled through the bars at his captive. “Now what?” His prior self would have stuck stubbornly to the original plan. The better man he was trying to be thought it might be safe to bring him back to Skywatch, after all. If he was this far gone, not even Rabbit would be able to get at the truth that needed to stay hidden.
    Still looking off to the side, as if unable to meet his eyes, Keban held out the wrapped bundle and mumbled unintelligibly.
    Dez hesitated. Then, dampening the shield spell so it wouldn’t fry either of them, he moved in closer. “You want me to take it?”
    The winikin jerked his chin in what might have been a nod, and went to work on the rotting cloth. Within moments, he had unwrapped a fist-sized chunk of white crystal carved into a head. The face was Mayan, the accoutrements those of a god with matching “T” shapes inscribed on both cheeks.
    Dez didn’t recognize the god or the