“I want to help,” Abby said. “Help me.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Jeremiah said gruffly.
Ling looked her over, opening his third eye. The indigo miasma pulsed weakly. He could almost see it retreating within her body like a silk scarf being pulled through a keyhole. Abby stared hungrily at Jeremiah’s open wound, and suddenly it all snapped into place. “I think she’s asking for something else.”
The old man’s eyes widened in understanding. “Damnation.” Bassett harrumphed. He shook his head as if refusing, then fixed Abby with a glare. “Now you listen to me, girlie. This is a one-time thing. Hettie’s blood is a cup of weak tea compared to mine.” He addressed Ling. “Don’t let her drink me dry.” He pulled a bowie knife from his belt and slit his wrist.
Tentatively Abby licked the wound, as if tasting spirits for the first time. She latched on and drank.
Ling held back a retch as she slurped noisily. None of the reports about indigo children had mentioned vampirism.
Abby threw her head back, eyes entirely black. Uncle staggered and sat down in the dirt. She hiccupped.
“I can help now.” Abby marched toward the main gate, where men and chupacabra battled. She raised her hands and said a single word that echoed throughout the village. The creatures all stopped and turned toward her.
“Abby!” Ling started toward her, but Jeremiah stopped him.
“Let’s see what she does.”
The chupacabra hissed as Abby placed her palms together, fingers spread. Violet-colored power glowed between her hands. As she spread her arms, a web of power stretched between them like an enormous cat’s cradle, billowing out around her as if it were a sail filling with wind. It grew like a bubble, the lattice of magic thinning until it was like the most exquisite lace. Abby’s eyes lightened, and then she spoke another word.
The violet bubble burst outward, throwing the chupacabra away from the epicenter, smashing them against walls, blowing them off the gantry as if tossed by a gale-force wind. Most amazingly, the spell had left the people fighting the creatures untouched. And Baby Scarface was still happily eating.
Ling’s skin broke out in a cold sweat. A blanket spell was difficult for a master. A selective blanket spell was nearly unheard of.
What in the names of all the gods was Abigail Alabama?
“Tarnation.” Jeremiah wiped a hand across his mouth. “I guess that’ll do.”
Hettie knew right away it was Abby who’d blown the beasts back. Something about her power felt familiar, like a clammy hug. The reprieve gave the survivors time to collect the wounded and run toward the farm. The larger chupacabra were rallying, though. She supposed it would’ve been too much to ask Abby to kill all the beasts—powerful as she was, her sister wouldn’t want to hurt anyone or anything on purpose.
Walker met her in the great house. “Raúl can’t turn them back. But he won’t leave.” He glanced up the stairs in frustration. “He’s standing there, watching the place burn.”
Hettie set her jaw. “If we can’t control them, then we have to kill them somehow.”
“How? Raúl doesn’t have enough power. No one does.”
“I do.” She conjured the Devil’s Revolver. “The chupacabra are drawn by Diablo. If I can lure them close enough, maybe I can trap them in a pool of lava.”
“They’re too fast, and there are too many of them. It only takes one of them to kill you.”
She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! We need to open the hell gate.”
Walker’s face paled. “You can’t do that. You have to die for it to open.”
“Not me, just the person who has possession of the gun.” It was a grim thought, but if she could find someone who wasn’t going to make it … maybe a mortally wounded villager, or a patriotic soldier …
She closed her eyes, seeking confirmation from the Devil’s Revolver. The demon was strangely silent, though, not volunteering any opinion. She frowned. Can you do it? Can you open a doorway for the chupacabra to go home through if I hand you over to someone who’s dying?
Home. The sentiment was part question, part longing. And yet it resisted answering.
“There’s no need for anyone to die.” Raúl staggered down the stairs. He was pale and sweating, and his lips were pinched. “If we can draw the creatures into a central spot, I can banish them all at once.”
“I thought you were out of juice,” Walker said suspiciously.
Raúl sighed and held up a vial of dark fluid. Hettie squinted at it and realized it was blood.
Walker ground his jaw. “Whose blood is that?”
“It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it will give me enough power to perform this spell and save what is left. This will be very dangerous—a banishment spell this powerful could injure you.”
“You worry about your part in this, I’ll worry about mine.”
Walker grabbed her arm. “No. I can’t let you do this.”
“What choice do we have?”
“Relinquish Diablo to me. I’ll draw the chupacabra, and Raúl can send them away.”
Hettie glared. “I’m not handing my gun to a juice fiend.”
His brow furrowed. “That’s not—”
“She’s right, brother. And Hettie clearly has more skill and control with Diablo than you would.”
Walker clenched his fists. “I’m not a juice fiend. I’m trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting. You want to help? Make sure everyone’s out of the village. Stay with Abby. Make sure she’s safe.”
Walker’s mouth crimped. She thought he might say something to her, but then he simply nodded and headed out.
Raúl led her outside. “The fountain will be the best gathering ground. It is the magic node’s focal point—I can channel what’s left straight from the source.”
A few stragglers and some injured, desperate soldiers were fleeing out the west gate. Walker directed them toward safety, throwing one last look over his shoulder before exiting. Stubbs was gone, but Hettie didn’t have time to worry about where he might have gotten to.
“Do not judge my brother so harshly,” Raúl said softly. “He means well. He has always meant well. I understand now. My father would not have entrusted him with his power had he not been … worthy.”
The humility and sadness in his tone had Hettie studying him more closely. He looked thoroughly deflated, his haphazardly thrown-on robe stained and frayed. He took in the carnage around him as a piece of stale bread might soak up blood.
“I need time to gather my strength and prepare the spell. When it is cast, you will need to close your eyes when I tell you.”
“And how do I get the chupacabra to come?”
Raúl smirked, and for the first time she saw what Walker and his brother shared in common. “Follow your instincts.”
He waded into the fountain. The gush from the spigots had dwindled significantly, but the pool retained more than half of its previous volume. Raúl’s robes spread out around him over the surface of the water. He clung to the finial, which she’d thought was a flower. But upon closer inspection, she realized it was three snake heads. A shudder went through her as his hands closed over the spigots, causing the water to hiss and spurt between his fingers.
Hettie focused on Diablo. Get their attention. Call them home. She pointed the mage gun at the sky and pulled the trigger. Green power balled at the tip of the muzzle and ballooned, engulfing her in green light that sizzled over her skin. The energy expanded, and a surge of heat welled up inside her.
She resisted, wanting to … to push, or let go, or maybe hold it back. She couldn’t say. It felt like nothing she’d ever experienced, neither pain nor pleasure nor want nor hunger, yet all those things.
Release me. The command came on a whisper, and Hettie let go.
Power erupted through her, filling her with fire and light. She felt as though she were holding on to a leashed dragon, a kite whipping wildly through the sky. Her arm stayed locked, pointed heavenward, her finger a vise around the trigger. Only the pain of the thorn driving into her flesh kept her grounded, reminding her of the fact that she wasn’t a being of pure energy despite the light that seemed to flow from her pores, despite the heat pulsing through her veins, despite the way her heart beat so fast she didn’t think there were spaces between the lubs and dubs.
The chupacabra noticed. She sensed it more than saw it, like the answering call of a pack to a lone wolf. Her vision filled with bright spots, and memories flashed across her brain.
Her father at the hearth. Her mother slaughtering a chicken for dinner. Her brother, Paul, whittling a piece of wood. He’d been making her a toy for her birthday before he’d been killed. He’d never finished it.
What had it been? She thought it was a horse. Or maybe a little girl. She watched him work with the knife, the blade flashing in the sun as the shape formed sliver by sliver, wood shavings curling to the ground like snow.
He offered the whittled object to her: it was a little snake, weaving in and out between his fingers. As she reached out to swat it away, it sank its teeth into her—
“Hettie.”
She turned. Javier Punta stood before her on the road in-between, vital and young. He wore simple trousers and a linen shirt, like those of any peasant farmhand. This, she somehow knew, was Javier before he made Diablo, before Abzavine had come and raised Villa del Punta. The deep shadows in his face were gone, and he looked serene.
“Javier—”
“Blood is the key. It has always been the key.” He opened his hand in invitation, and she took it. His grip was firm, solid, but he was already fading like mist in the sun. “What binds you to Diablo also binds me, and nothing is stronger.”
She reached out to him. “But how—” Her grip slipped.
Hettie’s head snapped back, and she gasped, reeling as she blinked away the afterimages. When her vision cleared, the chupacabra had formed a ring around her, ears pricked forward, demonic eyes pinned to her. Her grip tightened around …
Nothing. She stared blearily at her empty hand.
“Raúl…” The word came out slurred. She staggered toward him. He stood in the fountain, still clinging to the finial. The water barely trickled from it now.
He cast her a forlorn look. His eyes were completely black, and a spider web of darkened veins laced his pale face. The now-empty phial of blood dropped from his hand. “I’m sorry, Hettie. This is the only way.”
The Devil’s Revolver sizzled in his grip, flaying the skin and flesh from his blackened palm. She could smell it, cooking, rotting, ashes and meat. He stared at it and smiled, almost as if in understanding. “Tell my brother I am sorry … for everything.”
“No!” Hettie tried to conjure the mage gun, but it snagged on something. Her snakebit hand burned, and she looked down. Raúl had put iron manacles around her wrists.
She tried prying them off, but the heavy bracelets were locked tight. She banged them uselessly against the fountain. “Take these off me right now!”
He gazed out at the encroaching monsters. “You were right about the hell gate. It’s the only way to send these creatures back to where they came from. But I will not let you make that sacrifice. Diablo was made of my father’s blood. My blood. He could not unmake it, nor can I. But I can undo the wrong I have wrought.”
Panic seized Hettie. You get here right now, she projected toward Diablo. I order you to come to me! The mage gun had burned through manacles without issue before—but it didn’t obey her. It wasn’t caught or trapped. It was being stubborn!
Home. It telegraphed sadness mixed with warm reassurance.
“You don’t have to do this!” she screamed.
“Close your eyes.” Raúl raised his baton. Hettie cried out as light exploded from the tip, and she covered her eyes. Frost sucked at her skin, the same sensation she felt when she stepped through a Zoom tunnel. Blind and disoriented, Hettie pitched forward, and then she was in free fall.
She ploughed into dirt on her side a second later. She coughed, every muscle aching as she flipped onto her back and stared up at the night sky.
A low boom made her sit up. The portal had deposited her at the top of the hill above Villa del Punta, away from the carnage below. Smoke and flames billowed from the crater that was once a village. The whole place crawled with chupacabra, undulating like a tide of bloodied chaos rippling through the streets.
In the center of the town where the life-giving fountain once stood, an eerie green light flashed—something inside Hettie hiccupped—and was almost instantly replaced by a point of darkness, a black hole that spiraled open hungrily.
No. Raúl! She hadn’t relinquished the revolver to him … but Diablo had opened the hell gate anyhow.
Home.
A deep roar filled the night, sucking in light itself. The wind picked up, dragging dust and tumbleweeds and other detritus down toward the insatiable mouth of hell.
A ghastly howl went up as the chupacabra, along with anything that wasn’t nailed down, hurtled toward the gate. Tendrils of blackness snaked out, gathering the more stubborn chupacabra like a tentacled mother embracing its young. Some of the beasts tried to escape, but they didn’t get far. Hell was calling them home.
Hettie felt a tug, and then a dizzying sensation as a piece of her seemed to burst from her chest, taking the air out of her lungs.
No. She reached out, conjuring Diablo. The manacles held firm to her wrists. Maybe Diablo was too weak to come, too weak to break them. She bashed the lock against a large rock, again and again until her wrists and hands were bruised and bloodied.
The hell gate continued to grow, the darkness consuming the village square, spreading and devouring the great house. Why wasn’t it closing? Diablo had been with Raúl at the heart of that portal. It was supposed to close once it retrieved its demon servants.
If she didn’t do something soon, the hell gate would consume the farm and everyone in it.
She pulled at the manacle. No matter how hard she tried, though, she couldn’t get the cuff off her wrist. The snakebite throbbed. Her stupid hands …
She pursed her lips, sobbing when she realized what she had to do.
She braced her thumb against the rock. She should have been surprised that the dull throb of the snakebite guided her to the exact spot where she’d need leverage, but she wasn’t.
Divine and infernal forces …
She closed her eyes, then leaned all her weight on the joint, snapping her thumb.
She screamed, but the momentary agony disappeared as she yanked the manacle off and summoned Diablo. The mage gun popped into her hand, overjoyed and relieved at their reunion.
She plunged into her time bubble and flew down the zigzag hill path and into the village. The hell gate loomed huge, wavering and almost gauzy in the slow time, like widow’s weeds in a storm. Its unfathomable depths called to her, to the Devil’s Revolver, coaxing them both toward …
Home.
“Not a chance,” she grumbled. The chupacabra had all been retrieved—it was time to close the damn thing. But how?
Blood is the key.
Javier’s words came to her. She stared at her ruined hand. Could it be that easy? Blood to lock and unlock the hell gate?
How much would it need to close something that big?
She thought of Abby, of her unnatural hunger, of her own willingness to feed her.
As much as it takes.
Hettie sliced open her palm. The crimson drops were sucked horizontally through the air and into the wide, black mouth. A slow pulse began deep within the gate, as if someone were knocking faintly, but it wasn’t enough.
She dragged the knife
farther up, gritting her teeth as the blade crossed the tributary of veins across her wrist, undamming a river of blood that streamed into the darkness. The portal shrank, but the smaller it grew, the more it demanded. And so Hettie let it drink.
The blade went higher, deeper. She grew giddy watching her life drain from her, a steady trickle of red spiraling into the abyss. An inky tentacle reached out from the mouth and slithered up her arm, as gently as a baby reaching toward its mother. It twined up like ivy, latching on with tiny hooks and drinking deep. Hettie’s heart slowed, and her breathing shallowed. She sank to her knees, watching the tendril grow and pulse and thicken, feeling strangely at peace. She could lie down here and rest—the ground was soft and warm, the air scented pleasantly. She could lie down here and dream she was home …
The soft hiss of a serpent whispered something in her ear. She swore she felt the brush of feathers across her brow. Then, a pinhole of light appeared in the center of the dark gate. She thought it was light, anyhow. Her eyes fixed on the glowing aperture widening within. She thought with a secret laugh how angry the devil would be to find that little blot of light and hope in his domain. It grew and grew, until suddenly it was all she could see—
Hettie.
She shut her eyes. Paul reached out to her, offering his hand. He smiled. Everything’ll be okay.
She took his hand with relief. It was finally over.
The warmth wrapping around her withdrew rapidly, leaving her cold. Her grip flexed around Diablo, and she felt the world return to her, hard, sharp, and cold. The trigger thorn bit into her finger, flooding her mouth with the tang of pain. Green energy engulfed her arm, burning away the last traces of the tentacle, sizzling along her flesh and knitting the knife wound together with infernal fire. Hettie cried out, breathing flames as Diablo flooded her with power.
Hettie. Home.
She looked up in time to see Diablo’s energy spiral around the remainder of the hell gate, tugging the edges of darkness in like a pie crust dough, pinching it closed until nothing was left.
The Devil's Standoff Page 33