Free Demonkeepers by Jessica Andersen Page A

homing spell that was supposed to return an out-of-body mage to his or her body was notoriously fickle. “And that we’ll be able to get back here afterward.” What was more, the same skitter of excitement she saw on his face was running through her veins, urging her onward. “Let’s check out the pyramid.” The suggestion came partly from duty, partly from her growing need to do something . . . and also from her growing suspicion that whoever had brought them there would have to be the one to send them back. The day of the new moon wasn’t one of barrier flux, which meant she and Lucius shouldn’t have been able to enter the barrier, never mind get all the way through the hellmouth.
    Beware .
    “We’re unarmed. Shit, we don’t even have a pocketknife to blood our palms.” But he wanted to do it. She saw the building excitement in his face, felt it race in her own system, as though they were daring each other without saying the words.
    “We’re just going to go look around.” But he had a point; stupidity didn’t favor survival of the fittest. So she took a deep breath. “I’ll shield us.” At his sharp look, she shook her head. “I know it’s a warrior’s spell, but there’s something—” In the air , she started to say, but broke off because that wasn’t it, precisely. The faint glitter of red-gold magic and the hum of Nightkeeper power were right there in front of her, misting the air between her and Lucius, close enough that she thought she could reach out and grab the power if she was brave enough. Do it , her instincts said. She didn’t know if it was the residual vulnerability from the sex magic, the barrier crossing, or something about the strange canyon, but the magic suddenly felt as if it were a part of her, in a way that was both foreign and compelling.
    Acting on instinct, her body moving without her conscious volition, she bit down sharply on her own tongue, drawing blood. Letting go of Lucius’s hands, she stepped back and spit onto the sparkling, red-tinged sand, offering a sacrifice of both blood and water to the gods. The red-gold coalesced around her, then around Lucius, as it had done before, when they had been lying together in the aftermath. Magic spurted through her like lust, hot and hard. It caught her up, spun through her, making her want to scream with the mad glory of it.
    Lucius said something, but she barely heard him over the hum of magic that gathered around her, inside her.
    “I can do this,” she said, or maybe she only thought it. Either way, the certainty coiled hard and hot inside her, and the shimmering magic that hovered in front of her coalesced into . . . what? She could almost see shapes in the sparkles as she reached out to the magic, touched it. A soundless detonation ripped through her, a rush of power that strained toward something that stayed just out of reach. If she could just—
    “Jade!” Lucius’s shout broke through, shattering her concentration. He had her by the arms and was shaking her, his eyes hard. “Pull it back, now !”
    The magic snapped out of existence in an instant, without her volition. The loss of that vital energy sapped her, had her sagging against him. Her head spun, but his urgency penetrated. “What? What’s wrong?”
    Then she heard it: a dog’s mournful howl coming from the other side of their concealing pillar. Lucius crowded her closer to the column, pressing her flat against it with his body. Against her temple, he whispered, “There’s something going on in the pyramid.”
    The carved stone was warm and rough where Jade’s fingers clutched at the grooved surface, grounding her even as her mind spun with the power of the magic she’d just touched on, and the sharp grief that she’d been unable to do a damned thing with it. Her heart banged against her ribs as she and Lucius eased around the edge to take a look.
    “Oh, shit.” She wasn’t sure which one of them said it. Maybe they both had.
    Whereas before