Dawnkeepers by Jessica Andersen Read Free Book Online Page B

simulated battle, courtesy of the top-of-the line gaming console Jox had installed a few months earlier. “Hey, you two,” Nate said. “Meeting in the main room, two minutes.”

    “Give us ten,” Coyote-Seven said without turning around, his attention glued to the TV, his fingers flying over a gaming console as he navigated his way through the third level of EmoPunk II .

    Lanky and athletic, with his bloodline and so-far unidentified talent marks bared by a sleeveless black tee, and his long blond hair caught back in a stubby ponytail, Sven was their resident burnout, taking nothing and nobody seriously. As Nate watched, Sven’s computer-generated character took out a pair of overinked street thugs with a series of ninja chops and a kick in the ’nads that had all three of the flesh-and-blooders in the room wincing.

    The computerized image shifted as Sven sent his character inside a nearby warehouse. It was dark inside, but a busted-out window in the back let in a ray of light to shine on a guy wearing a medallion that wouldn’t figure in until level five, when it’d be vital. Nate wasn’t sure if the other two knew that, but he did, because he’d helped write the game.

    “Gotta get me some of that.” Sven sent his character in a headlong charge for the medallion, missed seeing the bad guy in the shadows, and was dead two seconds later. “Shit!”

    “Sucker.” Sitting beside Sven, Michael Stone worked his gaming console with the finesse of a pro. His strategizing wasn’t bad, either, Nate thought. Michael had let Sven charge in blindly and distract the bad guys while he sneaked around and lifted the medallion, then boogied out the back like a good little thief.

    Dark and intense and a shade too slick in Nate’s opinion, Michael spoke infrequently, but when he did, his words were exactly right, as though he calculated each sentence, polished each syllable to perfection. His dark eyes held secrets, and when his phone chirped—which it did frequently—he took the calls in private, often well into the night.

    The two Nightkeepers in the rec room were diametric opposites: Michael had hidden depths; Sven had no depth whatsoever. Yet somehow they’d become best buds over the past few months, seeming content to shut themselves up in Skywatch while the others tried to find a workable balance between the magi they were supposed to become and the people they’d been before the Nightkeepers’ magical barrier reactivated.

    “Let’s go,” Nate said, his voice going sharp when neither of the other guys looked away from the TV screen. “We’ve got a problem. You can rot your brains later.” Just because Hawk Enterprises produced the EmoPunk games didn’t mean he thought they were any good.

    Nate had kept the connection to the video games on the down-low—not because he minded them knowing about the EP s, but because he didn’t want any of them stumbling onto his connection to the Viking Warrior games.

    Or, more accurately, Alexis’s connection to them and, through them, to him.

    It was bad enough that she’d admitted to having envisioned his medallion a few times in the weeks before they’d met. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to know he’d created her spitting image more than four years ago, and that his buddies had joked that he was saving himself for Hera.

    Yeah. So not going there.

    “We can’t stop now. He’s on a roll,” Sven protested. Michael didn’t say anything, just kept playing.

    Annoyed, Nate reached down and killed the power strip just inside the door, flatlining everything. When Sven yelped, Nate growled, “Cut the shit. What’re you trying to do, oust Rabbit as the local juvenile delinquent?”

    Sven sneered. “Takes one to know one. At least I haven’t done time.”

    But Michael elbowed him hard. “Shut it.” He tossed the console aside and rose, squaring off opposite Nate, his dark eyes assessing. “Thought you were going after one of the