The 52nd (The 52nd Saga Book 1)

by Dela

  “LUCAS!” I watched him, nails clawing against stone, until the glow of his tattoo was no longer visible.

  I felt my body leave the ground and sail through ebony air to land like a ragdoll on damp stone. I winced at an excruciating pop in my right shoulder. I tried to push myself upright, legs kicked off to the side, but I fell to my side. My right collarbone ached, and the throbbing in my head was uncontrollable as Mictlan tried to get back in. The gash on my wrist stung as I listened to my short breaths and decided that this was a different room than the first. Its suffocating stillness felt smaller.

  Then Xavier lit a wick and stepped over me, tiny flame in one hand and the dagger in the other. He set the candle in a wall niche above what I realized was another stone altar.

  “First, the virgin must drink the blood. Next, the heart of the virgin,” he chanted, and then he raised the dagger high and recited a phrase in another language.

  “No,” I cried, dizzy. “Don’t do this, please.”

  His chanting continued, and some invisible force lifted me again and slammed me down onto the stone altar. Something cracked in my back, followed by withering pain, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. My right collarbone was pulsing, screaming at me. I followed his dark figure around the room with fuzzy eyesight and black stars circling around.

  “No, Xavier,” I panted, choking on the blood curdling behind my throat.

  At a jerk of his chin, my arms swept agonizingly up over my head, and he held them with one hand as his other brought the rust-colored blade down. It pierced my chest like a thousand burning blades. I screamed as the blade ate through my flesh. But as the burning ate deeper into my chest, an explosion jerked his hands away. My hands suddenly freed, I saw Xavier thrown against the wall beside the altar and pinned there by some unseen mass. The blood-tipped dagger fell to the floor.

  “Tita!” he roared, flailing against the invisible force.

  As he struggled to reach me, I tried to stand but just collapsed at the foot of the altar. The rushing wind felt warm on my chest, and I knew I was colder than I should be. Then Lucas was at my side, one arm behind my neck while the other brushed blood-sticky hair away from my chest. I gasped raggedly and watched him as he inspected the wound, afraid I was already slipping away. Without a glance at the pinned god, Lucas cradled me gently and fled.

  He turned into a hall where gray light slanted in through tiny square windows. I looked through them. Dark clouds hovered low outside, creating a misty haze that foamed through the windows and dewed our skin. As he passed another niche, an arctic chill slithered around my wounded wrist and tugged. I screamed as the freezing tourniquet seemed to peel the flesh off my wrist and pulled my arm straight. Lucas raced into a hall too narrow for him to twist me away, and the hand dug harder into my torn skin.

  “Dylan!” he roared over my screams, windows blurring to wisps as he ran with inhuman speed.

  Rock exploded through the outer wall, firing shards like bullets around us. My ears rang with Xavier’s angry screams, and the cold hand released me.

  We were climbing now, Lucas’s knees bashing into my throbbing back, and then we emerged atop the pyramid. The saturated air was warm on my freezing skin, which helped take the edge off the cold invading my core, but it was impossible to see anything in the thick clouds around us.

  Lucas arrowed toward the edge of the roof, and I screamed, “Lucas, no!”

  But he leaped. My stomach dropped as we arced away from the pyramid’s point and then plummeted toward the inky waves of executioners surging below. Miraculously we hit grass, not grasping skeletal hands, and my heartbeat spiked as Lucas clenched me more tightly and we fled the infestation down a green-carpeted street.

  The storm swirled angrily around the grass-covered stone buildings. I burrowed my face into his chest, legs hanging limply to the side, as lightning stabbed through the pursuing executioners. Suddenly Malik was running at our side in the tempest. Still the executioners gained ground, and as a shield of light blinded me, I felt Lucas’s chest warm and wet with my blood. I dropped my head against him, feeling the last energy drain from me.

  “Lucas, I’m so cold,” I quavered.

  “We’re almost there, baby.”

  Just then heavy raindrops hit my skin, stinging in my open cuts like saltwater. I bit my lip and cringed, but ahead of us, in an open field roiling with gray smoke, I saw three blurry aqua lights glowing.

  “Lucas, you’ve got something that belongs to me,” came Xavier’s raging voice from behind us.

  I lifted my head to look over Lucas’s shoulder. Xavier descended the ancient temple stairs slowly, hands outstretched, as if he expected Lucas to turn around and deliver me to him. Lucas held to his course, his family almost within reach, but there was a new coldness in my body that felt like icicles prickling through my numb limbs.

  “Lucas, my connection isn’t with Xavier. It’s with Mictlan,” I said feebly.

  The calm pace of his heart, so close to my ear, picked up. “What?”

  “Spare Xavier. He doesn’t matter,” I forced out with one precious breath, wondering if I’d have another chance to tell him.

  The smoky field was an overgrown arena where moss-covered stairs ascended the perimeter like bleachers. The aqua glow resolved into Andrés, Valentina, and Gabriella, battling executioners in a whirl of gray dust. Are Dylan and Tita hurt? Where are they? It was hard to focus as dull cold invaded my brain.

  Valentina was rushing toward us. “Is she hurt?” I heard her gasp as her eyes darted to my chest.

  “Mom!” Gabriella shouted.

  I swiveled my head to where dark creatures swarmed the green grass of the court. Gabriella was yards away, drawing another lethal arrow. She nocked it, aimed, and shot. Black dust exploded, and she reloaded as even more executioners advanced. Valentina looked murderous as she slammed her hands down. I closed my eyes, feeling the burn of bolts striking through every shadowed knot of sinew and bone that surrounded us. When the light turned gray again, I opened my eyes.

  Andrés rose from the ground, shaking off the dust of the attackers that had pinned him down. “Gracias, mi amor.”

  “Where’s Tita?” Gabriella asked urgently as she joined us in the middle of the field.

  “Right here,” Tita called, running in from the direction Lucas and I had just come. Niya trailed her. “Xavier’s on our tail.”

  “Zara’s connection isn’t with Xavier,” Lucas cried.

  “What?” Andrés asked in shock.

  Valentina breathed deeply and touched Andrés’s arm lightly. “Amor, let us call on Xquic then, por favor. Let us try.”

  Andrés glanced at Tita, questioning. “Is it possible?”

  She nodded fervently. “It must be done quickly, though. Andrés, call on Xquic. Lucas, Dylan, and I will handle Xavier when she arrives. Valentina and Gabriella, you two keep us clear and wait for my word. As soon as I say so, you must seal the portal quickly or it won’t work.”

  Andrés nodded and dashed into the fog.

  Lucas lowered me to the ground. I tried to cling harder, my frail fingers digging into his skin, but a sudden riff of pressure made my hands jerk to my chest.

  “Lucas, no. Don’t leave me!” I whimpered, clasping my hands more tightly over my heart against the burning rain.

  Thunder rolled through the clouds as Valentina prepared her defenses with a blank face. Niya and Malik pulled lips back to bare sharp teeth and roared, then bounded into the approaching front of executioners. Tita ran behind them, while Dylan raced around to catch them from behind. He struck with unbelievable speed, engaging one monster even as he yanked the heart from another’s chest.

  Lucas knelt by my side and gently swiped the hair out of my face. Then he looked up, and my eyes shifted to Xavier’s pale figure walking down the broken street. Lucas stood with a vengeful snort.

  �
�I have to finish this. You’ll be fine with Mother,” he reassured me, angling himself to stand between Xavier and me.

  I reached up for him, but Lucas had already picked up a boulder. With impossible speed, he threw it at Xavier. The impact pushed Xavier back twenty feet. Lucas had another already in hand.

  “Good one, bro!” Dylan yelled from the court’s green steps, hoisting another boulder. He aimed it at Xavier and threw without hesitation. I winced at the crunching sound of Xavier’s body driven into the ground. Even if I wanted him to stay clear of us, the sound of shattering bone was too much.

  Tita appeared at Lucas’s side. “Push him back to the pyramid!”

  But Xavier had cracked a stone off a ruin near his feet and barreled it at Lucas. Lucas caught it, barely protecting me from the blow, and chucked it right back with fresh-stoked anger. Xavier dodged, and it only nicked his shoulder, but he staggered forward as Dylan landed a slab on his back. Lucas and Dylan showered stone after stone upon him. I watched, aching, as he struggled to his feet and retreated, the other two in pursuit. Tita followed them, keeping the platoon of executioners off their backs.

  As the distance between us grew, the horde of executioners grew denser, now a black wall around us. I squirmed as Valentina and Gabriella dealt death through the downpour. Niya and Malik were visible only as flashes of black in the field of smoky warriors. As Lucas, Dylan, and Xavier battled closer to the pyramid, increasingly clouded by fog, I grew doubtful. I’m not losing Lucas over Xavier.

  “Gabriella,” I wheezed, my vision weaker still in the falling sheets of water. “The arrows . . . shoot . . . Xavier.”

  “They won’t work on him,” she shouted back as she nocked and drew in one graceful motion and shot another attacker. “He’s stronger now.”

  I glanced back at Lucas, afraid for his life. Then a gust of wind warmed me. I could see Andrés back in our circle, accompanying a woman with light caramel skin and black braided hair. When she turned to me, I held my breath. She was beautiful.

  “This is her,” Andrés said.

  Xavier’s mother came to me in a burst of wind, splattering raindrops against my face. She knelt by my side, indifferent to the rain, and looked into my face with piercing eyes.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  I forced a stiff nod of my head.

  Her hand touched the soaking wound in my chest softly. Deep red greased her fingertips. She held it to her nose and sniffed. “Xavier grows stronger.”

  She stood and looked toward the battle in the distance. “I go now with them. Take the sacrifice; get her safe.”

  I did not expect the drumbeat that burst into my ears as Xavier made a move for me, coming through the storm like an unstoppable train. As I shrieked, Lucas intercepted and tackled him to the wet sod. There was a sudden ringing in my ears as Xquic rushed to them.

  “Come with me, son,” Xquic said.

  A look of terror crossed Xavier’s face, and he broke away and fled back toward the pyramid.

  “The portal! Don’t let him go through,” Tita yelled in alarm, and Dylan, Tita, and Xquic vanished in pursuit.

  The warm raindrops suddenly didn’t sting, but instead made my eyelids heavy. My body relaxed into the numbness. It was a relief when my hand slid off my chest, to no longer have to hold it there, and I closed my eyes. Whiteness filled my head, and I wanted to float into it, away from the pain. Still, each time I inched closer to it, my body shook relentlessly and the agony returned.

  “She’s losing too much blood. Lucas, you have to take her now!” I heard Andrés demand, so far away, so faint. Fingers put pressure around my heart. I screamed in pain. “If you don’t, she won’t make it.”

  “Zara!” I felt Lucas’s warmth by my side instantly. “No, no, no, no, no! You’re going to be okay, I promise.” He paused, his voice strained. “What about Xavier?”

  “Dylan, Tita, and Xquic can take care of him,” Andrés reasoned.

  When Lucas paused again, I thought maybe I could slip back to the place of cloudy comfort, but his arms scooped down and pressed me firmly into him. I struggled to catch a breath as he took a step, squeezing my arms tightly against my throbbing ribs.

  “Okay, cover me. We will see you back at the house,” he said.

  Then, as the rain seeped into my lips, into my eyes slit open enough to see the blur of passing trees, Lucas escaped with me into the dense jungle.

  Lucas

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Anew

  Rubble clattered loudly in my ears as I carried Zara southwest along the coast. I found the freeway and ran alongside its edge, keeping to the cover of the overgrown forest. The leaves brushed me like feathers as I sprinted. At my speed, it was impossible to avoid being hit. But I hunched my back and wrapped my arms more secure around Zara so that her skin wouldn’t be clawed.

  Zara was whimpering when a loud explosion came from Tajin, different than the clunking of stone on flesh. I glanced over my shoulder and looked up. Black smoke furled upward above the tree lines. It’s done. The portal is gone. I spun around and ran harder.

  I reached Tabasco an hour later and headed straight through a biosphere reserve, landing somewhere in the middle by the Grijalva River. Zara was losing consciousness and needed medical assistance, but without Dylan I couldn’t chance anybody seeing us. I stayed away from the river, where locals and tourists would be boating, and moved deeper into the jungle. It was more swampland here. I slowed down when the mangroves grew dark and thick, and their tangled surface roots and dense thickets threatened to trip me.

  Zara hadn’t moved for the last twenty minutes. I knew her body was cooling fast by the deepening of her purple lips, but then a startling coolness zinged my skin. Why am I feeling temperature? When I heard wheezing coming from the gash in her chest, I stopped below a tree—my feet sinking in the sucking mud—and laid Zara across its knotty roots.

  My stomach was still cool from her touch. My body tingled, wanting to test the tickle that urged me to have her. I shook my body, trying to free myself from this vulnerability. I wanted to reach for my citla, but my hand was covered with her blood . . . blood that never bothered me, until now. It was Zara’s blood, and it ticked me off that my vulnerability had caused this. The vulnerability she wanted, that I’d finally wanted, and now I was losing her.

  I checked the slashed flesh that poured her blood in a steady flow out of her chest and down her painted stomach. It was all over, swirls of red and white over her bare skin, worse now that my body had pressed against hers, smearing it in places it shouldn’t be. My failing, and now my blue shirt was drenched black, stiff with both dried fluids, and the hairs on my arms had crusted crimson with her blood. But worse, the blood was bubbling. Dammit, air is escaping. A sign that either her lung was punctured or air was filling her pleural space. And I knew, if I didn’t address the cut now, either her lung would collapse, or she would drown in her own blood.

  Just as I stood to see what I could use, knowing the swamp was full of medicinal plants used when I was a boy, Zara coughed, and a spew of blood forced its way out and spattered my face. Then her throat gurgled as she struggled for air. I fell by her side and propped her head up. She exhaled, and more blood bubbled. She was right. She’s going to be so angry that I didn’t listen.

  Her breathing was shallower. I’m not going to lose you. I needed to cover the gaping hole in her chest to close the air off, and my shirt wouldn’t do. It would only cling to the blood and seal the incision, not leave any space for blood to escape. I needed a solid, waxy leaf, firm enough to hold its own against the raging blood flow. I gave the plants around me a hurried review. I was looking for a green plant with a ridged leaf. The shamans used it as a poultice to treat infections when wounded warriors returned from battle—if I remembered correctly. And I hoped that I did, because there were a lot of poisonous plants in these parts.

  I sp
otted a plant some good paces away. I brought Zara with me, balancing her on one arm and plucking a few leaves, enough to cover the entire cut. As her inconsistent breaths graced my chest, I realized that I wanted to be wrong about a lot of things and have Zara point them all out. She’d stab her tiny finger at me and scorn me until her face turned blue, and I would smile back, squeeze her waist, and pull her close to me. I’d kiss her hard and not let her slip away, because I never wanted anyone but her to call my name.

  I’d like very much to be vulnerable to her forever, but that day isn’t today.

  My keen ears listened for lurking predators in the swamp, particularly the crocodiles that infested these waters, as I set Zara down. When her back was flat against the ground, I noticed a bump over her right clavicle. At first I thought her collarbone was dislocated, but when her body jerked upward as she flinched from pain, it stayed behind and sagged, and a large bump had started to swell over the break. I raised her right arm slowly, cautiously, and a sharp point rose underneath the bump. I grunted, frustrated. Her collarbone is broken.

  I examined the damage quickly. Blood vessels good, swelling minimal. This injury could wait.

  Already running out of time, I needed to find a sappy tree. A quick scramble up the tree next to Zara revealed a grove of copal trees a half a mile away. I hopped down just as Zara choked for air. I propped her up into my arms—still and pale as if she were dead already—and sprinted through the trees.

  On my way there, I spotted a small plant that bloomed pink flowers. Antiseptic! Perfect to mix with the sap. I snatched a few leaves and mulled them as best I could with one hand as I continued for the trees. The copal grove was packed tightly, so dense that not a sliver of sun broke through its umbrella of leaves and branches. I set Zara down and put my handful of pulverized leaves in my pocket, ready to dig underneath their trunks for fossilized sap, but the bark was blistered in bubbles of white resin. I scraped my fingers deep into the grain and scooped one off, then three more, until my hand was full and sticking together, and then rushed to Zara.