"Ever-evolving plotlines and deeply emotional characters are totally intriguing in this exciting series."
Reviewed by Mandy Burns
Posted October 18, 2010
Paranormal Romance
Patience Lazarus has known all her life that she is a
Nightkeeper, a wielder of magic destined to keep the world
safe from ending on December 21, 2012. Patience was under
the impression that she was the only living Nightkeeper
until she awoke in the arms of Brandt White-Eagle, also a
Nightkeeper, while on holiday in Mexico. Brandt and
Patience can't remember how they met, but they marry
secretly and attempt to have a normal life with their
twins. Patience realizes there are more Nightkeepers when
she and her family are summoned to the Nightkeeper
compound, Skywatch, to join the others in their quest.
Entering Skywatch changes everything for Patience; her
children go into hiding and her husband becomes distant,
putting a strain on their marriage and the bond that
connects them. As a Nightkeeper, Brandt White-Eagle has always understood
duty before all else, but that philosophy is destroying his
marriage to Patience Lazarus. That morning, six years ago,
when he woke up in bed next to his future wife, a
Nightkeeper, he thought they were meant for each other.
Unfortunately, Brandt and Patience are unable to remember
the night they met, which is one of the mysteries they must
solve to move the Nightkeepers forward in the war
threatening to end it all. In order to gain the power
needed to assist the Nightkeepers, Brandt must find a way
to not only remember his past with Patience but come to
terms with one fateful night when a vow was made, then
broken, putting those Brandt loves in the hands of the
Gods. BLOOD SPELLS is the 5th book in the Nightkeeper series;
books that I have come to absolutely love. The ever-
evolving fresh storyline and the deeply emotional
characters are beyond intriguing and exciting. I am so
ready for the next one!
SUMMARY
Trained from birth to fight with fists and magic,
Patience knows that she should focus on the coming war for
souls. But she isn’t just a warrior—she’s a wife and mother
too, which leaves her loyalties divided between the
Nightkeepers and her family.
Brandt broke the rules when he married Patience and
fathered their twin sons—and now he’s paying the price.
Torn between his magic and his marriage, and separated from
his ancestors’ wisdom by a curse he can’t remove, Brandt is
fighting to put his life back together.
When an ancient Aztec god-king arises, Patience and Brandt
must set aside their problems and team up as a mated
warrior pair. But as they race to prevent the Nightkeepers’
enemies from enacting a terrible ritual that could tear
apart humanity, the threat turns even more personal,
becoming a deadly test of their powers … and their love.
ExcerptFive days until the solstice-eclipse
Far south of the U.S. border
As the robed
Nightkeepers formed a circle around the ancient stone
sarcophagus, deep
underground, Patience wanted to yell, Cancel the
ceremony.
The omens suck!
She didn’t,
though, because the others didn’t give a crap about the
omens or the
Mayan astronomy she’d gotten into lately. Besides, when the
prophecies
said "On this day, you will jump," the magi freaking
jumped. And
when they said the Nightkeepers had to enact the Triad
spell at the
First Father’s tomb on the Day of Ancestors—aka today—well,
it
wasn’t like they could put it off, sucky omens or not.
This was now-or-never,
do-or-die time . . . or potentially "do and
die" given that the spell had a two-thirds attrition rate:
The Triad
had been formed only once before in the history of the
Nightkeepers,
and of the three magi chosen back then, only one had
survived unscathed.
Of the other two, one had gone nuts and the other had died
instantly.
Patience suppressed
a shiver. The air in the tomb was cool and faintly damp,
and the flickering
torchlight made the carvings on the walls seem to move in
the shadows,
morphing from Egyptian to Mayan and back again as though
echoing the
Nightkeepers’ evolution.
Sweat prickled
down her back beneath the lightweight black-on-black combat
gear that,
along with the black, tattoolike glyph on her inner wrist,
identified
her as a warrior-mage. She was heavily armed—the
Nightkeepers all
were—even though it was questionable whether jade-tipped
bullets and
ceremonial knives would be any use today. The magi weren’t
going up
against a physical enemy; they were asking the sun god,
Kinich Ahau,
to choose three of them to receive the Triad powers.
At least that
was the theory.
Problem was,
theory also said that the entire pantheon was supposed to
choose the
Triad . . . but at the moment, all the other gods were
locked up in the
sky, barred from the earth by the Nightkeepers’ enemies.
Which meant . . .
well, nobody know what that meant for the Triad spell,
amping the "not
good" vibe that had taken root in Patience’s stomach early
that
morning when she’d charted the day’s sun, sacred numbers,
and light
pulses, and got what amounted to a cosmic suggestion that
she should
stay the hell in bed with the covers pulled over her head
until tomorrow.
Not that anybody
wanted to hear that right now. The ceremony was
starting.
Across the
circle, Strike—wearing royal red robes and a scowl of
fierce concentration
beneath his dark jawline beard—ritually invited the gods
and ancestors
to listen up. He was speaking ancient Mayan, having
memorized the spell
phonetically. Beside him, Jade joined in to smooth over his
occasional
fumbled syllable; she was the only one there who knew the
old tongue.
Her human mate, Lucius, was fluent, but this was a
Nightkeepers-only
ceremony . . . which was why the circle consisted of a
whopping ten magi
when the legends said there should be hundreds, even
thousands for the
gods to choose from when it came to the Triad spell.
Yeah. Not so
much.
Beside Jade
was blond, good-looking Sven, face pale and serious beneath
his winter-bleached
tan. On Strike’s other side were the king’s younger sister,
Sasha,
and her mate, Michael, who stood with a hunter’s sharp-eyed
stillness.
Alexis was next in the circle—blond and Amazonian, a
warrior to her
core. She was nearly as tall as her lean, dark-eyed shape-
shifter mate,
Nate, who stood beside her, their fingers brushing.
That was where
the alternating male-female thing broke down, though,
because next to
Nate stood interruption personified in the form of their
youngest member,
Rabbit. But although the = sharp-featured younge man’s
veins ran with
a dangerous mixture of Nightkeeper and Xibalban blood and
he pretty
much embodied Murphy’s Law, Rabbit had earned his place on
the team.
When he glanced
over at Patience, seeming to feel her eyes on him, she
mouthed, Good
luck. Their early close friendship might have faded
over the past
two years, but that didn’t mean she’d stopped caring. She
couldn’t
turn her emotions on and off at will . . . unlike the big
man who stood
next to her, completing the circle.
She was all
too aware of him standing beside her, perfectly balanced
and poised
to move, as if they were headed into a battle rather than a
spell. The
black-on-black combat gear and flickering torchlight
darkened his hair
to sable and robbed his brown eyes of the shimmers of gold
that brought
them to life. His attention was locked on Strike and Jade
as they recited
the first layer of spell casting; he didn’t react to
Patience and
Rabbit’s brief exchange, and his thumbs were hooked into
his weapons
belt, his fingers not anywhere near brushing hers.
Oh, Brandt,
she whispered inwardly. They wore the jun tan marks
of a mated
mage pair and the wedding bands from their six-year
marriage . . . but
just now he seemed a million miles away, locked behind the
detachment
that came with his warrior’s mark. Untouchable.
Unreachable.
Part of her
wished she could hide beneath the magic like that. But
although her
warrior’s talent had given her increased speed, reflexes,
and magic,
and blunted the terror of battle so she could fight through
her fear,
she still felt the fear and everything that came
with it. Brandt,
on the other hand, didn’t seem to feel anything when he was
in warrior
mode.
This isn’t
about us, it’s about the war,
she reminded herself. Focus.
It was a familiar
refrain.
As Strike and
Jade finished the first of three repetitions of the spell,
a faint hum
touched the air. Magic. It began at the very edges
of Patience’s
hearing and gained depth, swirling around the magi in waves
that resonated
as both noise and energy. It was more than just the usual
Nightkeeper
power, she realized with an uneasy shiver. The red-gold
sparkle of magic
was laced through with a white-light crackle that smelled
faintly of
ozone, warning that this wasn’t like any other spell the
team had
cast before.
Her pulse thudded
in her ears as the fear broke through, reminding her of
what they were
doing, the havoc it could cause. If the chosen magi
survived the Triad
spell, they would gain the powers of all their most
powerful forebears . . .
at the cost of sharing their skulls and souls with the
ghosts of those
ancestors.
She couldn’t
imagine it. Didn’t want to. Yet the thought of becoming a
Triad mage
had been giving her nightmares for weeks now.
Don’t
choose me or Brandt. Please. The inner whisper
broke through
the bonds of duty. Even that much of not-quite-a-prayer
went against
the writs, but it wasn’t the first time she’d been guilty
of the
sin. How could she avoid it, when the rules of the magi
said she had
to put the needs of the gods, her king, her teammates, and
mankind ahead
of those of her husband and children?
Then again,
Brandt didn’t have a problem doing that. He just pushed her
and the
twins into a mental box called "family" when it suited
him.
Focus.
"Okay, gang,"
Strike said after wrapping up the first repetition of the
spell. Red-gold
sparks of Nightkeeper power haloed him, glittering in the
torchlight.
"Let’s link up."
Along with
the others, Patience drew the ceremonial stone knife from
her belt and
used it to slash her right palm along the lifeline. Pain
bit, and then
magic fizzed in her bloodstream as the sacrifice connected
her more
securely to the barrier of psi energy that separated the
three planes
and supplied the magi with their powers.
With the pain
came a hollow ache, as the magic swirled through the hollow
void in
the center of her soul where she should have been inwardly
connected
to Harry and Braden. Blood of her blood.
I’m doing
this for you, she whispered to the bright, beautiful
boys she hadn’t
seen in two long years. They were safe, hidden with Woody
and Hannah,
cut off from the magic and the war. We’ll be together
again.
On the day after the 2012 end date, she would put her
family back together.
Gods willing
that they—and the earth—survived.
Switching hands,
her grip going slippery with blood, she cut her other palm,
then wiped
the blade on her robe and returned it to her belt. Finally,
unable to
delay any longer, she dropped down to sit cross-legged on
the cool stone
floor, and held out her hands to the men on either side of
her.
On her left,
Sven linked up immediately, gripping her hand so they were
aligned blood
to blood. The contact brought a flare of heat and magic,
increasing
the champagne fizz of magic in her blood to an Alka-Seltzer
bubble as
he squeezed her hand in a show of support, or maybe more
because he
was nervous. It was hard to tell what Sven was thinking
most of the
time.
To her right,
though . . .
When her hand
hovered midair, unclaimed, ice frosted the hard knot in her
stomach.
Don’t do it, she thought fiercely at Brandt. Not
here. Not
now.
It was her
darkest unvoiced fear, that one day he would decide that,
with the twins
gone and the two of them living mostly separate lives, he
didn’t want
to bother with a shared suite and matching rings, that he
was sick of
their strained politeness and the way both of them tried
too hard to
pretend things were getting better.
Once, their
mated bond had been so strong that he would have heard her
whispered
thoughts even without the bloody handclasp of an
uplink.
Not now, though.
She looked
over at him, and their eyes locked, her sky blue to his
gold-spangled
brown gone dark and forbidding in the torchlight. The skin
was tight
across his high cheekbones, aquiline nose, and wide brow,
and shadows
ringed his eyes, but his hair was neat, his shaved jaw
smooth, his eyebrows
the matching curves of a gliding eagle’s wings. She felt
sweaty and
desperate in comparison.
"Don’t
do it," she whispered into the silence that had fallen as
the others
waited for her and Brandt to complete the circle.
"What’s
wrong?" His voice rasped slightly, though she didn’t know
if the
roughness came from impatience or something else. She
couldn’t read
him when he was this deep in the magic.
The magic fizz
went flat inside her. Everything’s wrong, she wanted
to say,
but that was the answer of the woman she’d been for too
long, the
one who had turned inward and self-pitying, becoming
depressed after
he and Strike had sent the twins away. She wasn’t that
person now,
though, which meant the quick, knee-jerk answer didn’t fit
anymore.
The woman inside
her, the one that still loved the memory of the man she had
married
out in the human world . . . that part of her wanted to
tell him to be
careful, to stay strong, and even, gods forgive her, to
reject the Triad
power if he was chosen. She wanted to tell him to think of
the twins,
of her, of the future they had once imagined.
The warrior
inside her, though, refused to go there. The spell wasn’t
about being
careful; it was about fulfilling a three-thousand-year-old
prophecy
and maybe—hopefully—gaining the power they would need to
defend
the barrier during the upcoming winter solstice, when a
total lunar
eclipse would destabilize the hell out of the barrier.
What was more,
both the warrior and the woman inside her knew that she
couldn’t turn
her back on the war. Between now and the end of 2012 the
Nightkeepers
needed to hold the rapidly weakening barrier against the
Banol Kax.
If they didn’t, her future plans wouldn’t matter worth a
damn because
there wouldn’t be a future, not for her, and not for
mankind.
The lucky ones would die outright in the first wave, when
the dark lords
broke out of the underworld. The rest would be horribly
trapped as the
Banol Kax first fed on their souls, and then used their
half-animate
bodies to create new armies aimed at conquering the sky
itself.
She hadn’t
let herself imagine marching as part of that army, had
forced herself
not to think about the fact that twins were sacred to the
old legends,
and therefore a threat to the dark lords. But the knowledge
haunted
her nightmares with shifting shadows and luminous green
eyes.
And because
of all that, there was only one answer she could give
Brandt.
Calling on
her warrior self, letting the magic blunt her emotions and
bring determination,
she stretched out her hand to him, palm up, so the bloody
sacrificial
cut glistened dark in the torchlight. "The only thing that
matters
today is calling the Triad. The rest can wait."
It was the
proper answer, the dutiful one. And the warrior within her
meant every
word of it, even as the woman yearned to turn back the
clock.
"We need
to—"
"Uplink,"
she interrupted.
He exhaled.
"Patience . . . ," he began, but then trailed off and
reached out to
her in return, pausing just before their fingers touched.
Magic curled
between them, hazing the air red-gold. The hum changed
pitch, inching
upward as their eyes locked.
Desire flared,
coming from the inextricable link between magic and sex,
and the power
of the jun tan marks that still joined their souls
even though
the connection of their minds and hearts had waned. She
didn’t feel
the added power that had once come when the jun tan
link opened fully, joining them heart and soul. But there
was heat and
need, and an ache of longing.
"Don’t
shut me out." She hadn’t meant to say it, not in front of
the others,
and certainly not in the middle of the Triad spell.
Always before
when she had talked to him about how he put up walls
between them, she
had gotten blankness edged with frustration, and his
reminder that they
had a job to do. This time, though, she caught a gleam of
gold and a
flash of pain.
The sight surprised
her, leaving her slow to react when he leaned into her,
whispered her
name, and kissed her.
And oh, holy
crap what a kiss. The soft warmth of his lips was a
shocking contrast
to the hard control of the man who’d been facing her only
moments
earlier. They touched just at that single point of contact,
with nothing
holding her in place; she could pull away, should
pull away.
Instead, she
leaned in and kissed him back.
Their tongues
touched and slid, and his flavor caromed through her,
lighting neurons
that had been dim for months now. Years. She felt the
vibration of his
groan, though the sound was lost beneath the escalating hum
of power
that surrounded them as heat raced through her veins.
Excitement heated
her blood, coming both from sex magic and the thought that
something
had changed, that he was finally seeing her, finally
connecting with
her the way the other mated pairs joined up within the
magic. Psi energy
flared as he shifted against her, lifting an arm as if to
pull her closer.
Instead he
took her hand, pressed their bleeding palms together, and
completed
the circle of ten.
Power zinged
through the uplinked magi, and the red-gold buzz of magic
went to a
bloodred shriek that drowned out Patience’s cry of
surprise. Frustration
slashed through her, coming less from the interrupted kiss
than from
the fact that he’d used it—used her—to provide the
final
power surge they had needed to trigger the spell. The kiss
hadn’t
been about them at all. It had been about necessity.
Damn him.
The world lurched,
and suddenly she was moving without going anywhere, her
spirit-self
peeling out of her corporeal body and caroming sideways
into the barrier.
Then there was a final wrench of magic as the Triad spell
took hold,
gripping her with an inexorable force that warned her there
was no going
back. Not now. Maybe not ever again. Gods.
She tried to
take the anger with her, knowing that it was better to be
pissed than
depressed. But as gray green mist raced past her, laced
with lightning
and the smell of ozone, all she could do was close her eyes
and launch
a forbidden plea. Please gods, don’t pick us.
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