Read Online Spellfire by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online Page B

to see Myr, no matter how much it had hurt to watch her walk away. And he wanted to think that if the gods were asking him to swear himself to any of the others—or, shit, all of them—he would’ve sucked it up and done it. Red-Boar, though, would be all over him, telling him when to eat, when to sleep, when to shit . . . and what to do with the powers of crossover magic.
    Fuck me,
Rabbit thought when that one put a quiver of “so there you have it” in his gut. Because when he came down to it, he didn’t trust his father any more than he trusted himself. Less, in fact. Which under the circumstances left him up shit’s creek and paddling with his damn hands. The thought had him scowling down at the baked ground near his feet.
    He jolted as a winged shadow glided past.
    Pulse bumping, he looked up, reached for the machine gun, found it gone and went for the knife instead. But it wasn’t a
camazotz
; it was an eagle—or maybe a falcon?—circling in for a lazy landing. The bird was a rich brown color, with golden eyes that fixed on him as it backwinged to perch on a jagged wall nearby. Up close it was a big bastard—way bigger than he wanted to tangle with—but it seemed to be content to sit up there and stare down at him like he was a rabbit of the ears-and-tail variety, and a good option for a snack.
    He didn’t know his raptors all that well, couldn’t tell if this one was a local resident or something more—eagles had been sacred to the ancient Maya, after all, symbolizing the freedom of the sky, the rising and setting of the sun, and even the start of a war. Which was all pretty damn relevant to the here and now, thankyouverymuch.
    “Got any advice?” he asked. Because if he couldn’t trust the gods, then who the hell
could
he trust?
    The bird just cocked its head to look at him out of one eye, then the other. Nate Blackhawk—the Nightkeepers’ hawk-shifter—had once told him that it was like seeing a different plane with each eye, then a third with both together. Rabbit didn’t know what the eagle was seeing now, though.
    “Anything?” he prodded.
    It looked away, fluffing its wings a little in a move he took to mean,
Screw you, bub. I’m just an eagle. And besides, this is your call. Either you can handle your old man or you can’t. What’s it going to be?
    “It’s not about handling him. It’s a question of whether it’s a good idea to give him that kind of power. What if he goes off his fucking rocker and starts following his own agenda, using me as his weapon?” It wasn’t unthinkable—Dez’s
winikin
had tried to use him that way, convinced he was doing the gods’ work. And Red-Boar himself had tried to kill Strike’s human mate, Leah, thinking he knew the gods’ plan better than the rest of them.
    And your other option would be . . . ?
    “I could disappear, hole up underground somewhere that the blood-link can’t find me, and then . . . shit, I don’t know. Figure out a way to help the Nightkeepers from there, I guess. I’m supposed to be the crossover, right? If the gods want me to help, they’ll find a way to tell me how.”
    You’re reaching
.
    He shot the bird a baleful look. “Oh, shut up.” But the eagle—or, rather, whatever inner voice he’d given to it—had a point. If he was going to do things differently this time, he didn’t get to pick the easy changes, even when the hard ones had the potential to suck donkey dick.
    Then the eagle gave an unearthly screech and launched itself into the air. It didn’t buzz him or look back or anything as it powered into the sky with steady sweeps of its wings. Still, though, it felt like the bird’s visit had been a sign. Even more so when it banked and headed for Skywatch.
    “Shit,” Rabbit muttered, knowing what the answer had to be.
    Sign or no sign, it hadn’t ever been a debate, really, because all the logic in the world couldn’t trump the one thing he’d left out of his inner argument: Myrinne was at