The 52nd (The 52nd Saga Book 1)

by Dela

  Moments felt like hours as I stared at my lifeless body in the mirror above the dresser. And then suddenly I realized it was too quiet.

  I could barely move my lips. “Max?”

  Tears clogged my eyes when that murky laugh pricked my ears. He can’t get in, he can’t get in, I repeated to myself.

  I doubted Tita’s spell when, out of the corner of my eye, I watched dark shadows creep onto the balcony. In their smoky form, they squeezed under the doors and into my room, passing in front of the mirror and surrounding my bed. I clenched my eyes tightly like a child, pretending the shadows weren’t there. But the smell of death was right under my nose, and it made me nauseous.

  And then a cold hand wrapped around my wrist. My eyes flung open as my heart ricocheted inside my chest cavity, and I saw the ring of dark, hovering executioners. Their bodies were more skeletons than smoke, some wearing ancient crowns on their heads and others with metal cuffs interlaced with their bones. The invisible, freezing grip increased its pressure on my small wrist. As it squeezed, immobility burned like a disease throughout my body.

  “Max!” I screamed, but my voice was a burst of fumes, inaudible, and then the room spun and went black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Pyramid of Niches

  My head ached in the back, feeling dented, like a bruise on an apple. My sight flickered as my eyes adjusted. I felt a cool smoothness around my forehead. It weighed me down as I heaved upward and then banged loudly as my held fell back in defeat. I wiggled sideways, but my arms and legs were caught fast and clanged loudly each time I moved. Straining my gaze downward, I saw that underneath bracelets of dull gold metal, leather straps cinched my wrists; I felt them on my ankles as well.

  Hairs suddenly rose along my skin at the faint touch of a musky coldness. I don’t remember Xibalba being this cold. I burrowed my chin into my chest and looked down the bare landscape of my body. A red brazier pressed an itchy tightness against my chest, while, frighteningly, my southern region was protected only by a small piece of red fabric draped loosely around my waist.

  I closed my eyes, feeling sick, pressuring myself to wake up with a pinch. As I did, a low rumble rolled outside, and I jerked, bringing the room into a clearer focus. This was not Xibalba. The temple room there was open to the outside, and new. The walls in this dingy space were deteriorated, speckled with hollowness in places where the wall had crumbled from age. I thrashed, trying to squirm off the raised altar to which I now knew I was bound for my own sacrifice.

  My eyes shifted to the dark door at an abrupt sound just as my wrist was nearly loose.

  “Help!” I screamed as his laugh began.

  My skin shredded as I twisted my wrist hurriedly, but the echo reached me, and Xavier’s lanky figure walked out of the dark. He stepped into the flicker, and as it shadowed the contours of his face, I saw for the briefest moment a resemblance to Dylan. Then he grinned cruelly, and I shuddered.

  He took two steps toward me. “Stupid girl. Or should I say, stupid boyfriend? He left you all alone with no protection. Maybe now he’ll learn not to trust a witch.”

  “How did I get here?” I asked dizzily as the pounding in my head persisted.

  Xavier stopped by my side and stared at me like some basket case before his eyes shifted down my body.

  “You are a pretty one,” he said, running a long fingernail up from my navel toward my breasts.

  I wormed away as his fingernail continued upward. The sharpness poked my chest as he leaned into my ear. “Lucas failed to figure out one slightly important detail: I’m not here for Mictlan. I’m here of my own accord.”

  His breath was the stench of rotten milk. I turned my head away and gagged. He straightened up with a snicker that sharpened the angle of his cheekbones. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

  I jerked my chest away from his finger when he poked it harder. He laughed.

  “I was surprised he left you in the hands of a witch,” Xavier continued, his accent heavier than Dylan’s. “I mean, if I was going to leave my girlfriend when a god was after me, I would at least have all my bases covered. Tita isn’t, what do humans say, the sharpest tool in the shed?”

  With a gloating grin, he drew the dagger cinched in his torn waistband and wiped the blade carefully.

  “Has it been that long that they forgot the cardinal rule? Here’s something you couldn’t know, little human. Witches have no power over a god’s body if his spirit and body are not one. That wench may have cursed my soul to Xibalba, but fortunately for me, she doesn’t have control of my body right now. And”—he let out a psychotic bellow and smiled crookedly—“it looks like the Cosmos favors me this year after all.”

  He circled the altar, studying me. “You’ve made quite a big mess with the gods now, haven’t you? Mictlan is borderline loony. You see, he has it in his mind that you belong to him.” A deep cackle swayed him off balance. “As if you belong to him,” he crooned again, softly. I shied away from the blade each time he carelessly jerked it toward me. “And the Celestials . . . if only they could know the real reason for Lucas’s disobedience to their stupid little arrangement. Too bad you won’t be here to see what happens to your precious little prince. With your death, I will be made whole again. He will try to avenge you, but I will be long gone. But the Celestials will find out that your lover boy’s family skipped out on their sacred deal, not because they killed a god or tried to save a sacrifice, but because Mictlan will go to them in anger once this is all over. Do you think the Celestials will tolerate such behavior? They will smite the royal family in an attempt to salvage peace, but it won’t work. Mictlan has a temper.”

  He drew himself close to me, but tilted his head slightly to look behind me. Then he froze, his dead eyes distant. “And he will declare war against the Celestials. A war that neither your world nor the Celestials would have a hope of surviving.”

  I have to get out of here now!

  I thrashed again against my bindings until my muscles were weak and shaking and I tasted blood. I sucked my lip and got a new taste of metal. I’d bitten into my lip. I whimpered as I desperately summoned all my anger.

  “And what of you?” I shouted. “Will you remain a coward forever and run? Because last I checked, you were a Celestial too. Mictlan will come after you.”

  His laugh was short. He seemed preoccupied, the way he wiped his blade again.

  “My pretty girl, so foolish. It’s such a shame your connection was always with Mictlan. I could have made you great.”

  When he finished, he lowered his dagger to his side, but I cringed as he rubbed a strand of my hair between the fingers of his other hand.

  “How do you know about my connection?” I asked.

  “Don’t you know who I am? I’ve been living with Mictlan for almost five hundred years in that cursed world of his. Why else do you think he sent me to the Middleworld? I came here to retrieve you for him, since the executioners weren’t getting the job done. But I fooled him. I’m not going to give you up—I never was. I need you to break my curse.” He paused, and sarcasm tinged his flat smile. “He’s really upset right now. I wouldn’t want to mess with him.”

  His crazed laugh echoed again. The bones underneath his thinned skin made weird angles in his torso as he paced around the altar. “I’m the legendary Hero Twin, a master of trickery. Nobody can fool me, not even Mictlan. My stupid, outwitted father was a Celestial, and my mother a Xibalban goddess, which makes me the only worthy heir to both worlds. I will take back what’s mine.”

  “Your mother lives with the humans now. You will destroy her if you do this. Go with her and leave us be. You don’t have to do this,” I urged. “I can get Lucas to break the curse if you promise to just leave us alone.”

  Xavier’s face was stone. “My mother means as much to me as I mean to her—nothing. And Lucas, that pathetic crossbreed, damning me
to Mictlan’s world. He’s as good as dead when I’m through with you.”

  “You’re wrong about your mother. She came to me begging for your life.”

  He stopped pacing. He leaned forward so quickly hair fell over his eyes. “You fool! She doesn’t care for me. And who are the Celestials to judge? I think it’s time for a change around here.”

  At once, familiar yells sounded on the other side of the wall. I froze, listening, but a boom of thunder deafened me and shook the walls. Stone shards pattered down around us. Xavier looked up into it, but I squinted hard to block the debris from my eyes as a chilly finger poked one side of my brain. No! This can’t be happening right now!

  The shouts grew closer, and another tremor vibrated my bones. This time Xavier looked toward the door. He turned and headed for it. Good, leave. Abruptly he stopped, looked at me over his shoulder, then sprinted toward the noise.

  “Come on,” I muttered, trying to wiggle my hands free. I couldn’t see him anymore. I had to hurry. The skin on my wrist split, and I froze with the agony of it. My heart paced, waiting for Xavier to return as I stared at the orange flicker of the light. This is it. I’m going to die.

  But the icy throbbing expanded.

  I pictured Lucas in my mind, fighting the mental assault that grew as the pain in my wrists worsened. It hurt so bad. It dulled my concentration until I could focus only on the stone altar, cool against my cheek. Fight, Zara, fight. Dark hair, dimples, blue eyes, blue sneakers, perfect lips . . . a zing of frost nailed my right side, bringing in swirling images of the place to which I never wanted to return. Lucas’s musky voice, the prickles of his chin, the—OW!

  I blinked hard once and saw a circle of people staring at me when they opened. I blinked again, hoping it wasn’t real, but when my eyes reopened, the people were still there. I was on my feet in the center of Xibalba by the pyramid. The town encircled me, packed tight next to the pile of burning flesh. The charred bones nearly touched my naked feet, and I was still wearing the red sacrificial loincloth. Oh no.

  Abruptly the silent crowd split, and the man with long black hair, the one who carried out the sacrifices in the pyramid, came forward.

  Mictlan.

  He wore a heavy robe that dragged as he walked and a large headdress with sprays of feathers. War paint streaked down from his eyes like black tears. When he grinned, my heart pulsed. It was creepy, the way I was frightened and fascinated all at once. He stretched out his arms as he approached.

  “Stay away,” I warned, crouching lower, ready to pick up a bone and use it as a weapon if need be.

  He stopped to study me as I shoved back the hair that fell into my face.

  The earth suddenly shook and screams carried on the wind, jarring us both from our shared stare. I looked back to Mictlan frantically, but he hadn’t moved an inch. I glanced up the pyramid. The temple up top was empty, and the blood on the steps was dark burgundy. It had been dry for days. Then Lucas’s scream surrounded us. Mictlan’s hair blew back slightly as it passed through us.

  “You . . . me . . .,” he said. His accent was so thick I could barely understand him.

  “LUCAS,” I screamed. “HELP ME!”

  Mictlan cocked his head. “Zara?”

  “Do not say my name.” My legs had quivered as I stepped back onto a lump. I heard a crunch and looked down. Gray fragments spread beneath my feet. I winced. Was that a hand?

  Zara! Wake up, this isn’t real.

  I breathed deeply, though I didn’t want to. It stunk like sewer and burnt hair. And then I remembered my utopia with eyes wide open. I watched Mictlan without a blink as my mind raced home: a soft pillow against my cheek, the rose on the windowsill, the smell of coconut and ginger when Lucas’s hair got wet.

  Out of nowhere my vision flickered. It’s working.

  I let my thoughts wander faster than I could control: the snowfall, the flirting, the soft tickle when our skin touched—

  Mictlan jabbed a finger at me and yelled. At his word, four undead men charged me, their bones visible beneath their skin. I turned and fled.

  Sharp bones sliced my feet as I cut across the charnel pile and ran toward the edge of the city. Lucas’s lips, their smoothness, the dimple in his smile, I thought, crying as it produced another flicker in my vision. His arrogant laugh that I hated for so long, his wild hair, and his hands running through it in frustration.

  I saw a clay room too tiny for a living space and ran toward it. As I got closer I saw wooden bars instead of a door. It was a prison. I stopped to catch my breath and looked inside. It was empty, but across the room on the dirt floor was a plastic pink necklace. It had belonged to a sacrifice. I cried out, throwing my hands to my mouth, and an abrupt coolness touched my back. I turned.

  Mictlan and his men had me cornered. I pushed my back into the wooden bars. The raw bark scratched me.

  “Zara, come,” Mictlan said. He held his hand out for me.

  When I stared back into his eyes, the tightness in my heart unwound and I fell into his grace. Go with him.

  Slowly, my hands eased off the wood. I lifted one hand, but something told me to stop. I retracted my hand and looked at him, confused, as blue eyes came back to me.

  “I am not yours,” I whispered.

  Mictlan gave one more nod, pleading for me to go with him.

  “I am not yours,” I said louder.

  Mictlan retracted his waiting hand and watched me for a moment. When he didn’t move, I screamed with all my strength. “I am not yours! I am not yours!”

  I didn’t see what Mictlan did because my vision flickered steadily, more blackness than light. When I focused again, executioners were coming for me.

  “I CHOOSE LUCAS! I CHOOSE LUCAS!!” It was my last chance, my desperate plea, but it meant more to me than any sensation I felt. My body burned, and my chest swelled with knowledge. I could hear them coming for me, but I continued to scream blindly. “I CHOOSE LUCAS. I CHOOSE LUCAS. I CHOOSE LUCAS!”

  “How did you get out of the bands?”

  My eyes jolted open. I was back in the musky room, and Xavier was too. I clung to the altar for support, shaking away the rising burn in my body.

  “I . . . uh . . .”

  I was on the verge of puking, but I glowered at him with a new energy.

  “The witch who sent your soul to the Underworld will kill you today if you don’t take my offer,” I snarled.

  “Enough!” he screamed. “I am tired of waiting.”

  He blew out the torch nearest him and slowly walked to the next one. As he circled the room, I sprinted to the dark door that promised nothing, but he was there in a flash, cackling as he blocked my way. I ran to the opposite wall and groped in the darkness, hoping the room had other doors, like the other temples I’d seen. But the wall was solid stone, and I turned to my laughing killer with horror as he strolled back to the altar.

  “I promise this will only hurt for a minute. Now, come to me, child.” He flicked a finger, and my feet carried me toward him, unresisting.

  I glanced up at the decayed teeth that colored the puppeteer’s savage grin and gasped. “No.”

  “Good girl.”

  I could see the dark space of the door behind him. Xavier held a small twisted dagger in one hand and a clay bowl in the other as my feet stopped me well within his grasp. Suddenly a spark of neon aqua blazed in the blackness behind him. It was on the move, growing bigger, coming toward us.

  I dragged my eyes back to Xavier, who snatched my wrist with icy fingers and made a small, slow incision with the knife. I screamed as pain far greater than the cut itself racked my body and he squeezed my wrist, forcing the gushing blood into the bowl. When it covered the bottom of the bowl, he stopped, satisfied. I clamped my hand around my wound, but warm thickness still oozed between my fingers as he slit and squeezed his own wrist. Blackish blood drizzled ou
t of his wrist and into the bowl, slowing to a trickle on its own. He held up the bowl.

  “Drink this,” he ordered.

  “No. Don’t, please. I can’t,” I begged weakly.

  “DRINK IT!”

  My traitor body moved on its own again. I brought the rim to my lips, and hot blood touched my tongue. I pulled it away, gagging. Xavier yanked my head back and forced my mouth open, pouring the thick blood into my half-closed mouth. I choked as the sour, metallic contents flowed like lava down my throat. Xavier released me after the last drop and I fell to the floor, coughing. I struggled against his compulsion, my stomach trying to retch the horrible mixture up, and my throat closed against it.

  I looked up at a loud thud, my stomach muscles still pulsing to get the foreign contents out, and caught sight of Xavier’s body slamming into the wall across the room with another dull crunch. Lucas was suddenly at my side, swooping me up and out of the room before I could convince my arms to hold on to him.

  Lucas’s tattoo tinted our faces blue in the swallowing blackness of the hallway. I felt wet blood soaking the collar of his shirt and tried to press the wound more tightly against his back. Lucas had turned a corner when I heard the executioners’ whispers.

  “Lucas!” I warned as their voices got louder.

  “Shh.” He held me more closely to him as he sped into the darkness.

  I was wondering how he could see in the dark when a barely visible executioner tackled Lucas from behind. I slipped from Lucas’s hands and crashed against the wall with a crunch. The unknown band on my head clattered to the floor, and warm fluid dripped down my temple. I tried to get up, but my battered body refused.

  I looked toward the blue glow that was Lucas, head throbbing. He was already standing, struggling to break free from the fleshy dead that clung to him like leeches. He looked up for me, but when he found me, a look of absolute fear changed his face. It frightened me.

  “No!” he screamed, reaching for me, but a cold, thin grip cinched my ankle and pulled. I skidded back, stomach scraping the rock, hands scrambling for purchase as the cold grip dragged me into darkness.