Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls

by Kaela Rivera

  His gaze cut to me. “What?”

  “Well, it had to be a pretty big debt for you to agree to be my criatura.” I bit my lip. “What—what did your last bruja do to you?”

  His eyes flashed crimson. “What do you think a bruja is? A carefree magical girl that parades around with her criatura friends?”

  I hugged myself. “No. Brujas are people who have given up their humanity to become a kind of criatura.”

  “They’re worse. They’re the kind of monsters who get their power from enslaving real criaturas.” His soul flared with heat. “We’re not friends, bruja. Just because you don’t torture me doesn’t mean we’re going to swap life stories. I’ll find out what you’re plotting, you snake-daughter. Just you wait.”

  I stiffened. He thought my not torturing him was part of some scheme?

  “I’m not planning to hurt you,” I said, because I couldn’t say I wasn’t plotting something in general.

  He lifted his chin. “Yeah, right. And an anaconda just wants a hug.”

  I stuck out my bottom lip. “Just remember, Coyote gave me his soul, so I can’t be that terrible, can I?”

  “Coyote is a human-loving glob of dulce de leche,” Little Lion drawled. “He’s been fooled before.”

  So even other criaturas didn’t understand his penchant for humans. Did anyone? Just then, a scream rose from inside. I winced and covered my ears.

  “You’re particularly ill-equipped for this goal of yours,” Little Lion snarled.

  “Yeah? Well, that’s what you do for familia,” I spat. “You sacrifice yourself even when it’s hard. It’s called love.” I hunched over. “But I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? You’ve never loved anything in your whole life.”

  Heat filled my cheeks. I hadn’t meant to say all of that.

  Little Lion didn’t respond, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d struck a nerve or because he still didn’t care.

  “Criaturas can love,” Little Lion spoke up quietly.

  I glanced over at him, an apology already waiting in my mouth.

  “We’re not taught to, I’ll say that.” He stared off to the south, into the night sky. “We live in Devil’s Alley under the rule of El Cucuy and his Dark Saints. There’s no time for love when you’re trying to survive.” He whipped around. “But remember this, bruja. The criaturas who flood into your human desert during the criatura months are those escaping Devil’s Alley, while brujas like you fight in tournaments to get into a place we’re desperate to leave behind. So, it seems to me, we’re both criaturas.”

  I placed a hand over the two souls hanging from my neck. “I’m sorry. I—I didn’t know criaturas didn’t like Devil’s Alley. Isn’t it your home?”

  “More like a prison,” he corrected. “When Coyote Named Devil’s Alley thousands of years ago, it was supposed to be a safe haven from brujas. But once El Cucuy took charge, he set up the Bruja Fights and let the winners into our city. They’re loyal to him because he bribes them with what they want most—power. And then he gets all the servants he desires.”

  I tried not to let the shock show on my face. “Wait—Coyote created Devil’s Alley?”

  “Coyote Named all criaturas. Of course he made our home.” He looked at me as if I were stupid. “What, has Naked Man forgotten the legends?”

  “No—well. I don’t know. Maybe some of them.” I looked out into the desert. “Or—maybe we rewrote them.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.” He folded his arms.

  I stared at his profile. From the way Lion talked about him, it sounded like El Cucuy was just as feared among criaturas as he was among humans. So by enlisting Coyote and Little Lion in my plan, was I asking them to return to their prison?

  “. . . and up next we have Bruja Cece and her criatura, Little Lion, in the ring again!” A vicious cheer rose inside, and Little Lion and I went back into the building. El Silbón raised his pale, bony hands in our direction. “And here she is in her last battle of the second round, to face off with Brujo Gonzalo and his Criatura of the Bat. Whoever wins this one goes on to the semifinals tomorrow night!”

  The semifinals. We were so close. I steeled myself as Little Lion and I stepped up to the ring.

  16

  The Reluctant Allies

  Brujo Gonzales stood on the opposite side of the ring. He cocked his chin up, his wide nostrils flaring. “You’re dead, chiquita—”

  A giant slam echoed through the walls.

  Everyone froze. I checked over my shoulder. The crowd had turned to face the closed entrance. Sweat gathered on the back of my neck and on my forehead.

  Another bang reverberated through the steel doors. Everyone winced in unison like a wounded muscle. Then, a muffled call came from the other side of the door.

  “We will show you no mercy!”

  I stiffened. Those were the last words of the Amenazante dance. It’s what the people of my town were taught to say whenever they confronted either a criatura or bruja.

  “Little Lion,” I whispered. “I think—”

  Another slam caved in the door’s hinges. “Criaturas, we come for you!”

  Brujas, brujos, and spectators alike sent frantic looks toward El Silbón. He got up from his shadowed, lounging position on a pile of scrap metal and stood, watching to see if the door would hold.

  Another smash. Moonlight slanted in from one of the door’s busted corners.

  “Run!” he yelled.

  I whirled around to face the nearly forgotten fight. Criatura of the Bat reared away from Little Lion, stumbling back toward his frozen brujo. Lion and I locked eyes.

  Then the doors broke in.

  A mass of people flooded in like the wind of the cerros. Brujas who’d fought viciously just moments before suddenly scampered like rats trying to escape. Police uniforms flashed in the strands of moonlight pouring in through the door. Civilians—some I recognized, some I didn’t—followed the officers’ signals, their hands filled with glowing fire opal. They were a blur of roars and gritted teeth. Every one of the people of my town looked as ferocious as Little Lion or Bat or La Llorona.

  A hand clamped down on my wrist. I whirled around, already guarding the precious soul stones, to see Little Lion glaring at me.

  “What is this?” he demanded, like I was somehow behind it.

  “I-It’s the volunteer forces. My mamá said they were going to try to find the Bruja Fights . . .”

  I stopped. Lion’s anger was palpable, but for the moment my attention was elsewhere.

  With my mother.

  She was across the factory. Nowhere near me, probably hadn’t even seen me yet, but I caught sight of her in flashes, between running bodies. Her hair glowed with strings of fire opal. Her cheeks and hands were smeared with red as bright as a rosebud. It was nocheztli, the dancers’ war paint, tracing her high cheekbones and outlining her iron eyes.

  Her hands were weapons in the darkness. She captured a bruja in her arms. The bruja struggled, yelled out for her criatura. But before a dark streak could reach the squalling woman, my mamá ripped off the soul stone necklace.

  A shiver bent my spine. I turned away, but no matter where I looked, chaos mobbed the abandoned factory. The metal interior clanged and rang with the sounds of the brawl. I was the only quiet thing left in a war of criaturas and humans, laws and secrets. Dark fear swallowed me.

  Little Lion suddenly shook my arm. “Don’t you dare get cowardly on me,” he spat.

  The world revved back up inside me. Right. This wasn’t the time to be afraid. I grabbed his arms in return. He looked surprised.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” I yelled.

  He scowled and glanced behind him. Bat and his brujo were still there, on the other side of the ring, like they were too stunned to run. A frustrated orange squirm moved through Little Lion’s soul. He wanted to fight them, end the battle here. But we needed to get away. I held his arms and hoped that the emotions holding us hostage to one anot
her would convince him.

  He let out a hard breath. “Fine. I’ll get you home.”

  My heart swelled with hope seconds before someone wrenched me around by the shoulder.

  Criatura of the Bat stood there, clawed fingers digging into my shoulder. How had he gotten behind me? On his other side, his brujo stood shaking.

  “You can’t fight tomorrow if I beat you now!” Brujo Gonzales said.

  Was he serious? I had way more important things to worry about!

  Bat’s other hand slashed at my face. I threw my arms up over my head and braced my knees. Before the blow could land, Little Lion punched Bat straight in the gut and sent him skating through the dust. I gaped.

  I hadn’t even tried to reach out to Little Lion’s soul. But he’d protected me anyway.

  He turned to me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But Bat didn’t stay down long. The moment Little Lion had turned his back to speak to me, Bat leaped for him.

  “Little Lion, look out!” I pushed him out of the way. Bat’s claw sliced through my forearm before I could dodge. I screamed. Tears filled my eyes.

  Little Lion roared. His soul stone burned blisteringly hot as he grabbed Bat and yanked him off of me. He swung him around and sent him flying into his brujo. The two bodies slammed into the wall. The police were on them in seconds.

  I cradled my arm. Through the tear in Papá’s jacket, I caught the shine of blood. Before the pain could fully register, Little Lion wrapped me up in his arms and raced out of the building.

  Lion was fast. I mean, Coyote was certainly fast too, but Little Lion outstripped him. The scenery around us blurred, and I gripped Little Lion’s back to keep from flying off him.

  He ran and ran until even the stars couldn’t keep up.

  Sooner than I’d expected, we reached the rooftops of Tierra del Sol. We streaked from roof to concrete roof, eventually landing in a cloud of dust in my backyard.

  The moment we landed, Little Lion shoved me off his shoulder. I stumbled until I caught my footing, ready to yell at him, when I spotted his expression. His red eyes shone with moisture, his hand covering his mouth, eyebrows low. He paced the ground in quick, hard steps. I raised my eyebrows. Someone was having a meltdown.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why did you do that?” he snapped, like he’d been waiting to ask. “You could have gotten yourself killed diving in front of Bat’s blow, and then how would you win the Bruja Fights? If it’s so important to you, why risk that?”

  I stammered for a second. “W-Well, I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” He closed in on me. “You have Coyote. You didn’t need to save me.”

  We stood practically nose-to-nose. Hot confusion radiated out of his soul, and it was clear he was mad at me. For saving him.

  “I’m sorry you hate me so much,” I whispered. A deep ache bubbled up inside me. “But it doesn’t work that way in my head! I may have Coyote, but you’re a person too, and you still matter—”

  “I’m a criatura,” he hissed. “Not a person.”

  I bristled. The bubbling inside me grew, and my voice rose with it. “Who said criaturas aren’t people? You have a soul. You live, and you die, and like you said, you even love. Who says you don’t matter? Because I’m never going to pretend you’re expendable because you’re a criatura.” I jabbed a finger in his chest. “So get used to it.”

  Our gazes met in a hard, silent clash. Slowly, Little Lion pulled back. I relaxed and all the tension that had built up in my shoulders finally eased away. His soul’s heat still radiated into my jacket, but it no longer felt like a threat.

  “If you really believe that . . . then why are you in these Bruja Fights?” His voice was a bit weaker, and his eyebrows upturned.

  “I told you, it’s for my familia,” I said. With his eyes drilling into me, I didn’t exactly feel up to sharing. So I kept it at that.

  The vulnerable look disappeared, replaced by a smirk. “You think your family will benefit from the riches of Devil’s Alley?” He stepped back, so the cold night air filled the space between us. “Then you are just as much of an idiota as I thought.”

  His figure blurred, and the next thing I knew, he was soaring over my head and landing on the roof. His dark figure disappeared beyond the adobe lip.

  Well, I guess I knew where he’d be sleeping.

  I shook my head. I hadn’t thought Little Lion was going to become my best friend anytime soon, but Moon above, I didn’t think he’d yell at me for trying to save him. Was it stupid? Probably. Did I regret it? Only a little. And only because my arm was throbbing with pain now that the adrenaline had worn off.

  I needed to patch up the wound soon. I turned to the back door. It was locked.

  Right. Mamá would have locked it and the front door before she left for the volunteer raids. I hadn’t thought about it because Lion and I left out my bedroom window earlier. My stomach tightened as I thought about her fierce expression from earlier. What would have happened if she’d seen me? How would I face her tomorrow, knowing we’d both been in the factory, but on opposite sides?

  Beneath my hand, the door handle jiggled. The air in my lungs turned to concrete. Papá. Of course, Papá would be home by now. Holy sunset, he would be so mad to find me outside the house, and in my bruja outfit no less. How could I explain myself so he wouldn’t punish me?

  The door opened, and I froze.

  17

  The Cerros of the Past

  I opened my mouth, stalled somewhere between horror and trying to fabricate an explanation, when I realized the figure in the doorway wasn’t my papá.

  “Coyote!” I whispered. “What are you doing down here? Your wound—”

  “Shh.” He placed a finger over his lips. “Your father is asleep.”

  I buttoned my mouth. He gestured me inside, and I moved as silently as I knew how. If I listened closely, I could hear Papá’s light snoring from beyond the curtain separating his and Mamá’s bed from the rest of the main floor. I sighed. He only snored when he’d been drinking.

  Coyote and I made our way silently up the ladder to my loft. The candles were already lit, so I was able to bask in the comfort of the light.

  “You smell like blood,” Coyote said once I’d shut the loft hatch. He stared at my wound through the tear in my jacket sleeve. “How bad is it?”

  “It hurts,” I admitted and settled on the floor. “But it’s not too deep. Hopefully it’ll heal fast.”

  Coyote sat down beside me and slipped both hands under my wounded forearm.

  Heat filled my ears. Wow, he was really close. “Coyote?” I asked.

  “I can heal it,” he said.

  I started. “What?”

  “I can heal it,” he murmured.

  “I don’t remember that power in the legends.”

  “I’m the Great Namer,” he said. “Before Mother Desert and the other three creation gods sacrificed themselves so the world could begin, she gave me her voice. With it comes the power to create and to destroy.” A crease appeared in his forehead. “That means I should be able to Name your arm healed.”

  I tried to meet his eyes, but he was focused solely on my wound. A trickle of gray filled his soul.

  “. . . You don’t remember how, do you?” I asked.

  His eyebrows fell lower. “No.”

  I smiled and slipped my aching arm out of his hold. “It’s okay. Most people don’t get to heal their wounds with magical powers. I’ll be fine once I bandage it.”

  Coyote watched me pull away. Inside his soul, colors tumbled around, trying to decide something. His throat jogged. “Cece, if I were—if I weren’t the Coyote from legend you grew up hearing about—if I weren’t the hero you’ve always admired . . .”

  He stopped there. The gray stretched out of his soul until my ribs went cold. I placed my good hand over the freezing stone.

  “I already know you’re not the same Coyote from legend,” I sa
id.

  His wide, gold eyes shot up to mine, catching the candlelight.

  “You’re only thirteen this lifetime. It’s okay if you don’t have everything figured out yet. I sure don’t, and I’m almost thirteen.”

  He smiled a little. “That means you’re still twelve.”

  “Ugh! So? You can’t know that much more just because you were born a couple of months earlier.”

  “Well, at least I know how to handle Little Lion better than you do. I heard you two in the backyard.” Coyote sat back, and his face lit up with a wide grin. “Sounds like you just missed getting on his good side out there.”

  I huffed. “Tell me about it. Why does he hate me?”

  Coyote lay back on the floor, so his head rested at the end of my bed. “Because you treat him like a person.”

  I threw up my good hand. “That makes no sense! Why would that make him mad?” I stalked over to my bed and flopped down face-first. “Coyote?”

  The bed creaked as he sat down beside me. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want to be a bruja,” I whispered.

  Something tugged on my arm. I looked up and found Coyote rolling up the jacket sleeve on my bad arm—carefully, so it didn’t touch my wound. Then, he wrapped the bandage roll I’d used on him around my cut. After winding it around a few times, he cut it and tied it off.

  He pulled on the knot to secure it. “That okay?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  He sat back down on the floor. I turned over, onto my back, and held the injured arm to my chest. The knot Coyote had made was just loose enough that it didn’t squeeze and just tight enough that it wouldn’t unravel.

  The stone ceiling above me glowed yellow in the candlelight. “Coyote?”

  “Hm?” he said.

  “I don’t want to hurt any criaturas,” I whispered. I wished I could make Little Lion understand that. But I also saw why he didn’t. Brujas misused criaturas. And my town protected itself by treating criaturas with the same animosity it held for brujas. And criaturas responded with similar cruelty to keep themselves safe.

  It was a painful cycle. I wished, somehow, that it would stop. If that bad blood didn’t exist in the first place, Juana would never have been taken.