Maya and the Rising Dark

by Rena Barron

  The magic had reached into my mind and read my desperate plea to keep the Lord of Shadows away. That was why the street kept stretching between us. It stretched because I needed it to keep me safe.

  “You’re a fast learner, Maya.” The Lord of Shadows’ smile finally faded. His face looked as pale and fragile as a porcelain doll. “The orishas avoid the crossroads, but you . . . you’re different. You’re like your father in ways yet to be discovered. Another fly for me to swat.”

  Mama always said that people had moral compasses. That deep down they knew the difference between right and wrong. I wasn’t sure how anyone’s moral compass worked. And I thought that maybe one person’s compass was different from the next person’s. From the evil gleam in the Lord of Shadows’ eyes, I didn’t think he had a moral compass at all.

  His threats made my heart race, but I had my father’s staff, and the magic in it grew brighter. Power radiated in my palms, climbed up my arms, and spread through my body. If the staff had magic and the crossroads had magic, then I could use both to my advantage. I whirled the staff in front of me, creating an arch of white light. It shot out toward the Lord of Shadows and stopped him in his tracks. The light turned into vertical bars made of glowing crystals that trapped him in a prison.

  I almost exhaled a sigh of relief, until the Lord of Shadows laughed. His voice echoed in the crossroads and the pavement shook beneath my feet. He reached one long, crooked finger to touch a crystal bar. It dissolved into a fine powder that sprinkled the ground.

  “You’re as arrogant as Elegguá too,” he said. “He has done you a disservice by hiding the truth. A good father would have prepared you for your death.”

  “And you would know what makes a good father?” I huffed. He had no right to say those things about Papa. He was wrong. Papa was a good dad. Better than good. My father was the best. He did what he could to protect me and Mama, even if it meant working tirelessly to keep the veil from failing. Now I understood why Papa said that no one else could do his job, and the incredible burden on his shoulders. I could feel a sliver of that burden too.

  “Where is my father?” I demanded again, my jaw set.

  The Lord of Shadows’ expression was unreadable when he said, “He’s at the epicenter of where it all began for you.”

  I didn’t understand, but maybe that was exactly what he wanted. This was some sort of sick game for him. He wouldn’t tell me outright.

  The houses along the street started to peel away like chips of old paint. The same thing happened to the trees, the cars, and the sidewalks, too. Like an artist had taken a scalpel to a canvas to scrape away the color. The pieces floated in the air until they disappeared, leaving nothing but a dusting of dark blue. It reminded me of the time between night and sunrise.

  “A glimpse into the Dark,” the Lord of Shadows said, spreading his arms wide. “Where you will die.”

  With one step forward, he was suddenly standing right in my face. It happened so fast that my heart dropped to my stomach. His ribbons snapped at me, and I batted them away with the staff. When the staff connected with the Lord of Shadows, magic jerked me back into the human world.

  I bolted up in bed, gasping for air. My chest heaved up and down, and it took a minute to work out what happened. The Lord of Shadows had tried to kill me. My wrist burned where one of his ribbons had touched my arm. It happened on the crossroads, but the pain was real.

  My eyes landed on Papa’s staff propped against my bed, then the Comic-Con tickets on the nightstand. Both were pulsing with a soft blue light. That couldn’t be a coincidence. The orishas said that the gateway into the Dark had to be opened with a key. What if it wasn’t a literal key? It could be some kind of object.

  The staff will serve you well, Papa had said, before he left for the Dark.

  It hit me all at once. The staff was the key to opening the gateway.

  Fourteen

  Comic-Con, here I come

  I marked the calendar, counting down the days to Comic-Con. When the time finally arrived, I snuck out of the house while Mama was still sleeping and met up with Eli and Frankie. It took two buses and two trains, but we got to the convention center in one piece. I stopped in my tracks in the parking lot, hardly able to believe my eyes. Hundreds of heroes and villains were filing into the arena. Characters from DC Comics, Marvel, and every popular cosplay under the sun. Dark knights. Rich billionaires with fancy gadgets. Homegrown country boys with secret superhuman powers. Tyrants and fairies and robots and monsters. This place was everything I ever dreamt and then some.

  I squealed (a little) when I saw four people walking together all dressed as Oya: Warrior Goddess. One wore the outfit from volume 182. A purple head wrap, black catsuit, and rainbow boots. Another wore the yellow and green dress from that time she went undercover at an art gala.

  “Maya.” Eli snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You’re drooling.”

  I couldn’t believe this, not after years of begging Papa to come. But my excitement deflated fast. He should’ve been here with me—not missing, not in danger from some power-hungry monster. My chest ached every time I saw anyone who looked like him in the crowd. The man in the Black Panther costume. Or the one with the long locs dressed as Clark Kent or the tall Ichigo with deep brown skin and orange hair.

  I clutched my backpack straps, determined to find the gateway. “Let’s go.”

  Once we were inside the arena, the air smelled of popcorn and cotton candy and butter and ketchup. It made my stomach growl, even though I’d eaten breakfast. There were so many colors and lights that my brain almost short-circuited. People milled around on a floor that was so big you couldn’t see from one end to the next. They stood in long lines to get autographs from their favorite characters. I took a deep breath. This was going to be much harder than I thought. I had no idea where the gateway to the Dark would be, and there was a lot of ground to cover.

  “This place is awesome,” Eli exclaimed. “Way more exciting than that paranormal con I went to last year.”

  “I’m getting a costume like that for Halloween,” said Frankie, eyeing a group of warriors in red and black leather.

  Eli cocked an eyebrow. “You, a Dora Milaje?”

  “I don’t need superpowers to kick your butt,” Frankie said.

  Eli was light-skinned, so you could see when he was embarrassed. His cheeks got pink like they were right now. He grinned as he scratched his head. “True.”

  While no one was looking, I whispered to the staff, “Can you show us the way into the Dark?” I had no reason to believe it would work, but if the staff were a key, then maybe it would have some connection to the gateway. I cringed when a kid in a marshmallow costume gave me the stink eye for talking to a stick.

  The staff tugged my arm to the right, and before I knew it, we were on our way, navigating through the crowd. Ahead of us, some stormtroopers shoved a group of superheroes taking selfies out of their way. It figured that people dressed up as the most mindless villains ever would be so rude.

  “It’s leading us to that hallway over there.” I pointed across the massive room at the corridor labeled B22–23.

  “Umm, Maya.” Eli tried to get my attention, but I was too focused on the staff to listen.

  With so much shouting and shoving, it was hard to find a way through the crowd to the hallway.

  “What the . . .” I started to say as I saw that the eight stormtroopers had lined up in front of me and my friends. They had blue barbed tails and horns poking from the top of their white helmets. “I didn’t see this coming.” When I said this, I meant the darkbringers dressed up in costumes or them at Comic-Con.

  I swallowed hard as Frankie, Eli, and I backed away.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Eli yelled over the noise.

  “Those aren’t stormtroopers, are they?” Frankie asked.

  I glanced behind us, and luckily we weren’t surrounded. “Most definitely darkbringers.”

  “Ru
n or fight?” Eli asked.

  “Run!” I yelled.

  We ran all right, and the darkbringers ran after us. People screamed, and some laughed because they thought it was a practical joke. Magic sparked off Papa’s staff in waves and struck innocent bystanders. It changed a girl’s hair from black to hot pink, then turned popcorn into worms. It electrified the fake crows hanging from the ceiling and made them come to life. They pecked at each other’s strings until they freed themselves. Finally realizing that this was no joke, the crowd broke into full chaos.

  We were about to escape when meaner, bigger darkbringers stepped into our path, cracking their knuckles. They wore the bright green jumpsuits of Dr. Z’s cronies. I mean, come on. Of all the villains to choose from, they had to pick the worst of the worst.

  Now that we were this close to the darkbringers, I noticed that some of them had pimples like teenagers. Take away the tails, the horns, and the blue hue of their skin and they were just big, mean bullies. It was less scary to think of them that way than as monsters from another dimension trying to kill us.

  The cronies stepped aside, and I gasped when I saw Dr. Z himself strolling through their ranks. He was a lanky darkbringer with deep purple skin and a shaved head and dressed in a white suit. Even his lapels and cuffs shimmered with gold like the real Dr. Z’s.

  He smiled, revealing a mouth of sharp pointed teeth. “Godlings.” His voice was at once squeaky and deep like how boys a bit older than us sounded sometimes. “I can smell you a mile away.”

  Eli sniffed his armpit and shrugged. “I forgot to put on deodorant again.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Frankie shoved her glasses up. “I’m guessing he smells our hormones, which must be different from normal humans. Maybe if we were orishas, full orishas, we could sniff them out too. Sort of like a calling card.”

  “They aren’t exactly trying to hide,” I said, staring at the fake Dr. Z.

  “Hey, dude, who made your costume?” some guy in a hockey mask asked. He had a bemused face like he’d missed the memo that the rest of the con was in utter chaos.

  The fake Dr. Z snarled as his tail lashed out. I blocked it with Papa’s staff before he could strike the man in the hockey mask. That got the man’s attention. Wide-eyed and scared, he ran away. The stormtroopers crept closer behind us. It was pretty clear that they were after us and no one else, which figured.

  Dr. Z drew his tail back and wrinkled his nose at the people filing out of the exits. “Look at these fools. It will be easy to destroy this world once our armies come.”

  “Can we enjoy our time at Comic-Con until then?” I said, squinting at Frankie, then the closest exit. She nodded, catching on to my plan, and nudged Eli.

  My answer only made Dr. Z angrier, and he waved for his cronies to attack. When they charged, I slammed the staff against the floor, and sparks of magic rippled out from it like waves. The magic knocked the darkbringers off balance but not off their feet. The light bulbs in the ceiling exploded and plunged the room into darkness. At which point, the emergency exit lights over the doors flared to life. Everyone who hadn’t had the sense to flee before caught a clue and ran for their lives.

  “Go!” I yelled, and the three of us shot toward the closest exit too.

  We ducked around scared and confused people and ran into an empty hallway. This one still had working lights, and we stopped to catch our breath.

  “Those guys are really starting to get annoying,” Eli said, winded.

  Frankie wiped her forehead. “Not to be the bearer of bad news, but . . .”

  Dr. Z and his cronies stepped into the hallway in front of us. And the stormtroopers blocked the double doors that we’d just come through.

  “Time to finally die, godlings.” Dr. Z laughed, and his laugh was diabolic, sure, but didn’t have the true throaty timbre of a supervillain’s. He had a ways to go.

  “We’re not afraid of you,” I said as the staff tingled against my palm again.

  Eli squeezed his fists tight. “If only I could call my ghost army.”

  “Huh?” I asked in the middle of trying to figure out what to do.

  “When my powers do show, they’ll be to call forth a ghost army,” he said, completely sure of himself. “It’s obvious with my love of the paranormal.”

  “So obvious,” I said as the darkbringers charged.

  Frankie pushed out blasts of power that knocked several of them on their butts. Staff in hand, I raced toward the remaining darkbringers before I lost my nerve.

  Dr. Z whipped his tail around, the barbed end aimed straight for my heart, like a killer wielding a knife. I cracked my staff against it with all my strength. He screamed and jumped out of reach. “Don’t just stand there!” he growled at his cronies. “Get them!”

  I dodged darkbringers left and right, sweeping the staff along my body in a wide arc. I knocked down two who tried to double-team me. Then I pivoted right to distract another one, while swinging the staff left. I crushed hands and cracked ribs and jabbed the staff into bellies. The darkbringers may have looked invincible, but they fell like anyone else.

  The sound of bones breaking made my stomach flip-flop, but I kept pushing. Hurting people for real wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I had to protect us. I got my friends into this awful mess.

  “Watch your back,” Eli yelled as he ducked under my staff and rammed his shoulder into a darkbringer. He headbutted another one, and punched a third. Even if he didn’t have magic, he was fast, and the darkbringers ran themselves in circles trying to catch him.

  Frankie flung balls of light that knocked the darkbringers back one by one. They weren’t like the werehyenas, who had tucked tail and run away. The darkbringers were smart, and some dodged her attack. Most of them didn’t seem to have magic. I hadn’t considered that some wouldn’t, and I thought it must be like how most godlings didn’t have magic either.

  Dr. Z spread his fingertips, and two metal prods slipped out from underneath his sleeves. They looked like the batons that police wore at their hips but slimmer. Light shimmered off the bluish metal as he squeezed his hands around the handles. He swung both prods at once, and I swept the staff up to catch the blows. The metallic blue prods sent an electric shock up my arms. I stumbled back. Every muscle from my hands to my shoulders felt like jelly.

  “Thanks to you, we know there’s a gateway here,” Dr. Z said, closing in on me again. “It’s only a matter of time before we figure out how to open it.” He squeezed the prods. “Instead of waiting for the veil to fail, we’ll walk right through the front door and crush humankind.”

  I set my jaw, but I was shaking all over. I wanted to smack my palm against my forehead or bang my head against a wall. This was my fault. I mentioned Comic-Con in front of the Lord of Shadows. How could I be so dense? I had handed him the location of one of the gateways on a silver platter. Now people—no, not just people—everyone was in danger because of my careless statement. Like the veil failing wasn’t already enough to worry about.

  “Elegguá’s spawn.” The darkbringer smiled, then spat on the floor. “The Lord of Shadows will be pleased when I bring you back.”

  “Bring me back?” I glared at him. “Good luck with trying.”

  He gritted his teeth and struck again and again until the shock from the prods almost made my arms go numb. I tightened my grasp on the staff and willed it to absorb the shock instead of spreading it. The next time he attacked, the staff didn’t vibrate. I laughed but regretted it when I caught a blow on my shoulder. Sharp pain shot down my spine, and I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. My knees shook.

  But I couldn’t let him win. I started to pay closer attention to his attacks. He always shifted his entire weight forward on his toes when he struck. Plus, he looked tired too.

  Papa had given me plenty of lessons in staff fighting. One thing I always remembered was to stay nimble on my feet. The darkbringer must’ve missed that memo.

  I danced around Dr. Z and cracked the
staff against the upper part of his tail, breaking the bone. He yelped as he tried to elbow me, but I kept moving. His steps grew slower, and sweat streaked down his forehead. When he swung one of his prods, I hit his left hand and his weapon crashed to the floor. Then I rammed my staff into his stomach. When he bent over, that was the end of it. I knocked him out cold.

  Eli scooped up the prods by the handles. “I’ll take these off your hands.”

  Frankie and I knocked out the last of the darkbringers while Eli messed around with the prods. He pressed a button on the handles, and they stopped buzzing with electricity. We’d done it. We kicked darkbringer butts. But, well, they kicked our butts too.

  I bit my lip and confessed to Eli and Frankie that I’d accidentally ratted out the location of the gateway. Then I told them about the cryptic clue from the Lord of Shadows. “He said that he took my father to the epicenter of where it all began for me.”

  “What does that mean?” Eli frowned. “Epicenter—like the center of an earthquake?”

  “Maybe not so literal?” Frankie frowned too.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll find out soon enough,” I said, uneasy, then I whispered for the staff to take us to the gateway. It lit up, and a gentle force tugged me forward. We ran down empty corridors for what felt like forever. How could a building be so big? It didn’t seem possible, but we finally made it to Hall B22–23.

  We ended up in front of a door that said STAFF ONLY. Not waiting for my nerves to kick in, I snatched the door open and found mops, brooms, and a yellow bucket. Cleaning supplies. I had two overwhelming feelings. Excitement that we’d found the gateway into the Dark and disappointment because it was . . .

  “The entry to the Dark is a broom closet?” Eli stuttered.