The 52nd (The 52nd Saga Book 1)

by Dela

  “Zara,” Jett mumbled.

  I heard the fear in his voice’s rawness. He called my name over and over as I tried to keep moving toward him. But there were black stars each time my eyes stuttered open. I feared I was blacking out again.

  “Ow,” I moaned, limply rolling onto my side.

  Jett shrieked in pain. The pitch shook the molecules of my blood and made me cringe. I tried twisting my head in his direction, but when the yell stopped suddenly, I couldn’t look. My hair fell in my eyes as I wept. When I had enough courage to look again, I straightened my head, but as I did, a deep noise came from the opposite direction. I pretended it was the boys coming after us, but the louder it grew, the more I feared it was something large and animal, and very upset.

  I’d heard a lion roar on TV before; this was different. It sounded like a deep cough. The muffled whispers responded with a competing, synchronized tune. As both the roar and chant approached, fear drained my energy, leaving me a bag of bones glued to the bridge.

  But I knew that if I was going to have any chance of surviving, I needed to get out now.

  Just as I started to sit up, an invisible force slapped me down like a flapjack. My chin jerked upward, and my eyes rolled back at the explosion of pain. I saw the man still there across the bridge, unmoved, staring at me with fury. I tried to curl up into a ball, but my body wouldn’t give in to my command. My limbs were painfully stiff, arms by my sides, legs glued together at the knees. Something I couldn’t see held me down. Then, as his bare feet moved across the bridge with a cracking of splinters, my stomach hollowed.

  “Ahh,” I moaned again, trying to squirm out of the invisible bands.

  My back arched in agony, popping as I tried to slide sideways toward the barn. I couldn’t get free. I had collapsed back with exhaustion when a black ball of smoke appeared by my side. It floated in midair, two glowing eyes buried in its fogginess. It exuded a deep chill as it waited for the footsteps to get closer. This was the type of demon that had tried to take me earlier, I was sure of it. But why wasn’t he taking me now?

  I gasped. They want Jett.

  “Jett?” My throat was an old washboard, and my voice scratched down it as I called his name.

  He didn’t answer.

  Ten, nine, eight, I counted down the footsteps to my side. The low snarl came again. I endured every tortured pain to twist my head to see what he was, but the man somehow kept me pinned down, loosing an eerie laugh. Finally, when I saw his foot from the corner of my eye, panic took over.

  In that moment, a blurry black shape flew over my body and struck the cloud of smoke at my side. The shadow released a high-pitched shriek and retreated swiftly into the trees by the stream.

  The figure landed by my side, and my eyes widened. I was staring at a jaguar with a coat as black as night. It looked at me like it knew me, then disappeared into the trees after the shadow. The man’s feet remained by the crown of my head. He would see me dead soon enough.

  I lifted my chin skyward. I had to see the face of my killer. As I looked into the psycho’s eyes, a horrifying recognition imprisoned me. I had seen him in the burgundy book—the man who looked like Dylan, exactly like Dylan, only grimmer. His jagged teeth showed in a greedy grin, and his hollow black eyes were crazed with an obsession with prey. He smelled like death.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He crooked his ear to a bony shoulder, and that demented smile broadened. “The question is, my little darling, who are you?”

  Blood seeped into my mouth as I coughed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Observing me now with curiosity, he crouched by my side.

  “Don’t, please. You don’t have to do this,” I cried.

  His eyes promised violence. “Yes, I do. You have no idea how special you are.”

  His cold fingers ran through my hair; he lifted a lock to his nose and sniffed. He snickered under his breath. “You are going to make me very happy.”

  My eyes felt dry, but a single tear ran down my cheek as they skidded shut. I couldn’t bear to look at him directly. His face was gruesomely contorted.

  When his unnaturally cold hands grabbed my wrists, I jerked and screamed as much as I could, hoping that someone would hear me. As I fought with the little movement I had, his rough laugh stopped. There was a thud, his slithery fingers vanished, and then there was silence. A second later firm, warm hands enveloped my shoulders and shook.

  “Zara! Zara, it’s me,” an angelic voice said through the darkness.

  I unhinged my stiff eyelids slowly and peered through slits. Lucas’s face was centimeters away. My eyes flew open, and I frantically searched around us. The man was gone.

  I panted, looking back to Lucas in confusion as he sat me up and threw his arms around me.

  “I won’t give up,” he said, anguished.

  I closed my eyes, shaken and lost, and pressed him closer. His hand moved up and held the back of my head closely. I winced at the pressure, but he only squeezed me tighter so that I could rest my chin on his shoulder. His warm scent of coconut and ginger comforted me, and I broke down and sobbed.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lucas said into my shoulder.

  When he let out a long sigh of agonized relief, I noticed Gabriella standing behind him. A glimmer of blue burst like a star over the char-black lines of her tattoo. It was beautiful, with feathers and flowers. Her eyes were on us as she calmly stroked the coat of the jaguar at her side.

  The man and woman from Lucky Pin stood next to her—his parents. The woman looked alarmed.

  My head pounded. I held it as I tried to stand.

  “Where is Jett?”

  “Jett?” Lucas loosened his grip just enough to study my tormented face.

  “They got him. He was just right over there.” I pointed to the opposite side of the bridge.

  Alarm flashed on Lucas’s face, and he yelled in Spanish to his parents. At once they moved faster than I could even imagine, disappearing into the shadows of the trees in a blink.

  “Zara, how are you feeling? What hurts?” he asked, drawing my hair back to survey the damage.

  “My head,” I admitted. I tried to rub the soft spot in the back, but his hands beat mine there and gently moved them away.

  He picked through my hair softly, observed for a moment, then looked at me. “Don’t rub it; it’ll get worse.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked, confused.

  Before he could answer, Gabriella had bent down next to me.

  “I have to lie down,” I begged. My head did feel worse. His hands were already firm against my back, pressing me up as I tried to lie back again.

  “You need to sit up, Zara.” He pulled me against his chest, and I rested my head against his rib cage. It felt wet and sticky.

  “What’s wrong with my head?” I cried.

  “You just cut it . . . you will be fine.” There was a slight stutter in his response that made me feel he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  I ignored his orders and reached for it, but again he grabbed my hands, this time insistent when he pushed them down on my lap.

  Lucas turned to Gabriella. “Go get Malik. Leave Niya with us.”

  Gabriella disappeared where the first jaguar had run off, somewhere by the river. Moments later, Lucas’s parents appeared at the other end of the bridge. His father held Jett in his arms. The limp body was bent unnaturally.

  “We found him in the woods. He’s still breathing,” the mother said, her accent beautiful, as the man carefully laid Jett next to us. I leaned over Jett and cried. His face was pale and scratched.

  “Zara, this is my mother, Valentina, and my father, Andrés,” Lucas said.

  Before I could speak, Gabriella returned to the bridge with the jaguar. “Malik and I are here too.”

  I couldn’t help but stare at the la
rge black cat that heeled next to her. His spotted coat was clean enough to shine in the dark. He watched me closely, as if he was reading me. I squirmed, a little uneasy, and moved my eyes from him to the other jaguar, Niya, who paced back and forth with random hisses. Though she would not sit, somehow I didn’t feel threatened by her.

  “Where’s Dylan?” I asked.

  The calm jaguar, Malik, looked up behind me and released a violent roar. I jumped, but Lucas shot up so quickly it was as if I’d never sat next to him, my legs and arms perfectly supported on their own. Lucas followed Malik’s gaze to the tree line, to a dark figure moving toward us. I heard the voices again in the rustling of the trees, and I was anxious for Lucas to come back to me. The demons were returning.

  “Put Zara and Jett in the middle!” Lucas yelled, angling himself in front of me.

  Without argument the family formed a circle to shield Jett and me. Lucas faced the approaching demons, guarding me with his arms outstretched. His tattoo glowed a faint bluish-green through his sleeve. Valentina stood next to him. As she stretched out both of her arms in front of her, palms facing down, her tattoo blazed turquoise on the inside of her wrist.

  Thunder crashed above, and both jaguars roared. I forced my eyes to look beyond the luminous blue into the dark woods near the stream. In the shadows of the forest, multiple clouds of black smoke moved slowly toward us. Their whispering chant grew louder. Malik’s ears pointed up, but he and Niya remained in place, flanking Gabriella, ready to pounce, lips curled back to bare sharp teeth.

  We were all staring at the same spot on the bridge when Dylan unexpectedly stepped into the small clearing. Enough dim moonlight reached him to show that he was breathing hard, a blueness ablaze on his calf.

  “Where’s Xavier?” Valentina asked as he approached us.

  “I ran him out. He disappeared before I could get him,” Dylan replied. He stopped and pulled Gabriella into a tight hug. She kissed him fast and hard.

  I gasped as the roaming shadows suddenly attacked. I almost didn’t see Valentina move, but I caught a glimpse as she lowered her hands. A round of lightning struck every shadow, eliciting high-pitched shrieks.

  I grabbed my ears as they popped, turning to Jett. His chest was rising and falling slowly. I looked again and saw that we were outnumbered. Lucas’s solid muscles tensed as more thunder sounded overhead. Dark clouds swirled over us in dark shades of gray. I squinted through an unexpected wind.

  “Mom, you got this one?” Lucas asked, narrowing his glare to one demon.

  “I got it,” she yelled back as the storm growled.

  The hard wind whistled past us. It whipped and stung my skin like a wet towel.

  “Okay,” Lucas roared. “I got twelve o’clock. Dylan you got two, Gabriella five, Dad you get nine. Malik, Niya—you two take out the leftovers. Got it?”

  I blinked, bewildered that he was talking to jaguars, and fumbled at the hair flying into my eyes.

  “On three . . . make this quick, or the boy will see everything.” Lucas hunched slightly. “One, two, . . . three!”

  An explosion of air knocked me back. In less than a fraction of a second they were gone. Andrés and Gabriella ran toward the left side of the bridge, each chasing after a demon. Lucas didn’t run, but jumped far, colliding with the demon across the bridge and wrestling him to the ground. The demon’s black cloud shifted into a human shape as it wiggled and squirmed to get out of Lucas’s grasp. But Lucas was stronger. He kept him pinned as he rammed his arm into the black chest and withdrew it in the same millisecond. He held something in the palm of his hand, a blackish blob, then tossed it to the ground. The demon shrieked and evaporated into black, glittery ashes.

  Lucas burst through the ash cloud and headed for another form, going straight for the chest. He punched his hand in and out swiftly, yanking out another clump of matter. Another shriek, and the second demon vanished into dust. Lucas moved on with a dizzying speed, slaughtering the demons that moved along the bridge.

  Beyond him, there was a snap near the bend of the river. Dylan was holding a demon against the trunk of a large tree, which threatened to fall, its roots rising from the ground under the pressure. Before it could topple, Dylan punched through the demon’s chest just as Lucas had. There was another high, ringing hiss and more ashes.

  Niya’s deathly roar caught my attention on the other side of the river. I watched, sickened, as she bit off a part of a shadow—a head or a limb, I couldn’t tell. Its shriek and its black dust disappeared into the wind like magic.

  Suddenly, a demon darted across the bridge toward me. Without thinking I threw my hands up to cover my face, but before I could scream, Lucas pinned him from behind. They fell to the ground, and the black night glittered with more ashes.

  Lucas rose, wiping off the dirt on his pants, and looked up. His gaze froze on me, worry creasing his forehead. But then one cheek plumped upward into a tender smile, and his eyes softened, probably amused by my wild stare. He chuckled and winked. Then, too quickly for me to follow, he took off after another demon.

  After the last speck of dust blew away, the storm lifted and the wind died. My body shivered as the Castillos returned to the bridge. The jaguars were at their heels, still watchful, glancing toward the dark areas of the forest.

  Lucas knelt at my side and began searching for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, just my head.” It pounded, but I felt weaker now that he was next to me.

  His hand rustled in my blood-crusted hair, checking once more. When he was satisfied, he slid his palm down my cheek—just as Jett moved.

  “Owww,” he moaned, stirring in slow movements.

  “Lucas, ven aca,” Andrés called.

  Lucas obeyed his father and joined him a few feet away, where the rest of the family had congregated. Their tattoos weren’t glowing anymore. Andrés spoke urgently in Spanish as Niya folded her legs and settled on her belly next to me. She started licking my arm. I didn’t like it, but I was too afraid to move. Then Lucas knelt again next to us.

  “Thank you, Niya.” He petted her head and looked to Jett. “Gabriella and Dylan will take care of Jett.”

  I found myself smoothing Jett’s hair off his face as Gabriella and Dylan appeared behind Lucas.

  “Is he going to be okay? Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital?” I asked, straining as they pulled Jett away from me.

  “No.” Lucas looked beyond me as I watched Gabriella and Dylan surround Jett. “Dylan will fix him, and then they will take him back to the party.”

  “But those things, they’ll come again for him.”

  Lucas shook his head. “They won’t go after him again.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  His face clouded. “Because they want you.”

  My head spun, and a new form of nausea hit my stomach.

  “He won’t have any memory of what happened,” Lucas said.

  “But he’s hurt!”

  Lucas pointed to Jett, who was balanced under Gabriella’s arms. Dylan stepped in front of him, talking. Jett’s head rolled back, his eyes half-shut as he moaned, and Dylan backed away. What happened next I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t witnessed it with my own eyes. Jett’s injuries healed in seconds until there wasn’t a scrape left.

  Dylan snapped his fingers once, and Jett’s clothes changed from torn and bloody to clean and whole. Niya and Malik leaped over the bridge, and Lucas gently twisted my shoulders until I was looking at him.

  “I need your word that you won’t say anything, or Dylan will have to do the same thing to you,” Lucas whispered. He paused, then lifted a pleased half smile. “Though I suppose that won’t work on you.”

  “I won’t say anything. I promise,” I reassured him as Dylan came to kneel by me. “I promise, I won’t say anything!”

  Dylan chuckled and snapped. A pocket of air h
it me and left as fast and precisely as it came. The rips in my dress vanished. The dirt on my skin was gone, I had shoes on my feet again, and my headache had disappeared.

  “I thought you said it wouldn’t work on me,” I said, perplexed.

  “I did. I wasn’t talking about the appearance part.” He glanced at my head. “I was talking about the mind part. He can’t make you forget for some reason.”

  Behind him, Jett was talking to Gabriella, asking confused questions. Lucas cringed.

  “What’s wrong with my head?” I wondered worriedly.

  There was a tender touch near my elbow. Valentina was there. Her dark porcelain fingers felt like feathers as they lingered. I felt undeserving of her graceful touch.

  “Nothing is wrong with your head,” she said. Then she broke contact and joined hands with Andrés. She looked at Lucas. “Don’t be too late, son.”

  They turned together and headed down the dark trail to our cars.

  I turned to Lucas in a panic. “Who was that man on the bridge? Who’s Xavier? How come he didn’t look like the other demons?” It was a quiet outburst, but it made Lucas stiffen and look away.

  “He said something to me,” I continued.

  Lucas turned back to me, curious. “What did he say?”

  “That I was going to make him very happy.”

  Lucas stayed quiet as his eyes wavered from my left eye to the right. “That man is Dylan’s twin brother. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you right now.” His eyes flicked over to Jett. “It’s not safe to talk here. You must go home with Jett now.”

  Brother? A knob cranked, and I remembered where I’d seen him. That horrible old book said Dylan and his twin were gods. They called them the Hero Twins. My eyes burned as I stared at Lucas, wondering what he was. And then every fiber in my body went numb. I paused, unblinking, half frightened by him, half fascinated. My gaze held his eternal eyes differently when he grinned. He was called the Aztec prince, a royal god.