Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls

by Kaela Rivera

  There was a change in the air. It went from vulnerable sharing to pins and needles in a moment. I didn’t like it.

  I stood a little straighter and scanned the area. No signs of Ocelot watching us from above. But Bruja Bullring’s glare had turned on me. “I went to the old silver mine and hunted,” I said. “I found him and took his soul.”

  “That easy?”

  “That easy.” I certainly wasn’t going to tell her how it had really happened.

  Her gaze dropped to my neck. I felt it flush. She pushed off the wall and walked toward me, slowly. I locked my legs so I wouldn’t back away.

  “Bet your tía’s tips helped a lot, huh?” I jumped as she grabbed my wrist. “Imagine being able to power two criaturas at the same time, at your age. You got Catrina’s talent too, I guess.” She smiled down at me. “Two souls must be a hard weight to bear. How about I take one off your hands?”

  “Don’t you dare,” I snapped.

  Her dark eyes were framed with long, luscious lashes like Juana’s, but there was iron in them. “It’ll be better if you just let me have my way.” She reached for my throat. “So just stay still while I—”

  I slammed my skull into her face.

  Immediately, pain shot through my forehead from the impact. The bruja wailed and thrust me back. I stumbled. Her mouth was bleeding, a front tooth missing.

  “You cucaracha!” she cried.

  I took that as a pretty solid cue to run.

  I flew down the street. The bruja wasn’t far behind. I pumped my legs and arms, Coyote’s and Little Lion’s souls thumping against my chest.

  The wind bit at my skin as I threw myself into the run, faster, faster. Dust sprayed up behind my heels as I skated around a turn. I didn’t dare look back. Her footsteps sounded too close as it was. I flung myself into the next street and took off. It was a backstreet, less populated, lined with trash cans and a few tubs of stored water. I weaved between them, chest heaving.

  “Get back here, cucaracha!”

  I threw myself behind someone’s water tank. She gripped the other side, and we dodged back and forth, trying to anticipate each other. Then she lunged over it. I covered my face and screamed.

  Only—a spray of water thrust her back. It bubbled over the top of the open tub and careened into her face, sending her toppling back into the dirt. Where—how? But I didn’t have time for questions. The last of the stored water dribbled out on Bruja Bullring as she climbed out of the mud, and I turned to dash away.

  I made it only a few steps before something metal struck my head.

  The disorientation was instantaneous. My head rang like a bell, vision blurring until my feet staggered sideways. The bruja stood above me, tossing aside the lid of the nearest trash can, and tackled me.

  We landed in the wet dirt. “I was going to let you live, chiquita.” She slammed my head into the ground. “But now I’ll take your life along with your criaturas.”

  I wrapped my hands around my friends’ souls. She was sitting on me, her weight compressing my chest. But as hard to breathe as it was, I still forced out, “No—you—won’t.”

  Her piercing glinted. She wrenched her fist back and aimed squarely for my nose. I gripped Coyote and Little Lion’s souls tighter.

  Two bare brown feet slammed into the ground in front of me. “Get away from my friend.”

  I looked up and saw Coyote glaring down at the bruja. She fell backward off me, landing a few feet away.

  I took a large breath and tried to sit up, hands shaking around his and Lion’s souls, when Little Lion landed beside me. I yelped, but he didn’t look annoyed. He just nodded up at Coyote, reached out his hand to me, and helped me stand. He steadied me as I swayed a little.

  Coyote stepped forward, his shadow crawling up the bruja’s kneeling body. He gritted his teeth as he closed in on her. Her dark eyes widened, but there was no fear in them. Yet.

  “If it isn’t the Great Namer himself,” she whispered. Her lips were bloody. “Up close, you look younger than I thought—no, I get it. You’ve died.” Her grin spread. “What did you in? Another bruja, or was it El Cucuy himself?”

  Coyote’s face was stone. “You hurt my friend. You deserve everything I’ll do to you.”

  The bruja’s face slowly lost its exuberance. Coyote’s upper lip pulled back to reveal his sharp canines. She scooted back, kicking up dust. He followed her, matching inch for inch, retreat for threat.

  “Coyote?” I asked. He didn’t even look at me as he cornered her against the nearest wall. “Coyote, please stop, she can’t hurt me anymore—” I stepped forward.

  Lion grabbed me. “Don’t get close to him right now.”

  I turned to scowl at him. “What do you mean? I’m just talking—”

  “And he’s not listening.” Little Lion looked at Coyote, and I noticed something new enter his soul. Something cold and white like fear. With a tinge of deep blue, like sorrow. “You don’t want to be close to him when he’s like this.”

  What did he mean? I turned back to face Coyote, ready to march forward, but stopped in my tracks.

  Coyote already had Bruja Bullring by the collar of her shirt, holding her a foot off the ground with only one hand. The bruja trembled in his grip, face pallid. He held her gaze, pulled her close, and growled right in her face. “You, I’ll Name La Luz Mala. You’ll live in a tormented mist, lost for eternity, as a prisoner of your own existence. Because you’re everything I hate about Naked Man.”

  Sharp purple and white tattoos sprang up on Bruja Bullring’s chest and neck, stemming from the spot Coyote held her aloft. I gasped, but Little Lion again held me back. The colors stretched like jagged Joshua tree branches up to her pained face. Tears trembled in her eyes as they neared her bottom lashes.

  “Coyote, stop!” I called.

  I shook off Little Lion’s hold and dashed for the two of them. Normally, Coyote’s soul battled between gray and pink. But in the last few minutes, the pink had vanished entirely. And the gray decayed into a roiling navy blue. It darkened into a burning, painful mess as more tattoos covered Bruja Bullring’s skin.

  Little Lion called after me, “Cece, don’t touch him while he’s Naming!”

  I skated to a stop behind Coyote, reached out both hands, and grabbed his shoulders. “Coyote, please stop!”

  The moment I touched him, a shock of heat rolled through me. His soul was at the center of it, nearly twice as hot as Little Lion’s. I trembled as it sent images through my mind. A wide chasm in the earth, filled with darkness. Dark criaturas, flashing from Tzitzimitl to La Llorona, flickered across my mind, until the images settled on the looming, terrible figure of El Sombrerón.

  The heat reached a burning peak. I fought against it, aching. I didn’t know what was going on, but I had to help somehow. Somehow.

  Suddenly, a wave of something cool bubbled up inside my chest and washed over Coyote’s pain. The heat in his soul went out.

  I opened my eyes. The air settled into a chilly peace. Coyote dropped Bruja Bullring, and the tattoos immediately vanished from her skin. She hit the ground with a loud thump but didn’t pause to recover. After finding her feet, she fled down the alley, only glancing over her shoulder once to check we weren’t chasing her.

  Once she disappeared around the next turn, Coyote turned and gaped down at me.

  “Cece!” he spluttered. “Why—why did you—?”

  “You don’t want to be like them,” I said. “Like the dark criaturas. Do you?”

  His chin trembled. Slowly, Coyote looked away and bowed his head. “No,” he whispered. He sniffed and wiped his nose. “No, I don’t. I’m . . . I’m sorry, Cece. I just . . . I didn’t want her to hurt you.”

  That was—confusing, but also really nice to hear. “Well, thank you,” I said. “I’m glad to have a friend like you. But what exactly were you trying to do to her?” From the feelings in his soul, it wasn’t good.

  Coyote didn’t look at me. “I was trying to . . . remembe
r how to . . .”

  “Rename her,” Little Lion finished as he stepped up beside us.

  Coyote flinched.

  I was stunned. “You can do that?”

  Coyote’s cheeks flushed. “Well, no. I tried but couldn’t really remember how to finish.”

  “But I didn’t know the Great Namer could Rename things,” I said. “What else would you turn a human into?”

  Coyote looked away again. I waited for him to say something. But as I searched his soul for some kind of clue as to what was going on, his feelings retreated again, faster this time, and he didn’t speak up.

  “What does it matter? You stopped him,” Little Lion snapped, and his face darkened as he looked at me. “You’re a pathetic excuse for a bruja.” He folded his arms. “You weren’t even willing to use Coyote to protect yourself. That’s the most basic principle of being a bruja!”

  I frowned at him. “‘Thanks for saving my soul from that other bruja, Cece,’” I said sarcastically. “Oh, you’re welcome, Lion. You know I’d never let—”

  Little Lion grabbed me by the shoulder and propelled me backward. I nearly toppled over. “If this is who you really are, then give up on this stupid fantasy! You can’t be our friend and our bruja. You can’t be both.” He kept pushing me, a little harder each time, until he shoved me so powerfully I stumbled to a stop nearly four feet away, in front of the puddle by the water tank. “So pick one already. Either betray us now or just forget the Bruja Fights and scuttle back into your small, weak human life.” Little Lion’s face had flushed deep, cherry red, his mouth torn somewhere between a scowl and a sob. His arms trembled at his side. “Nothing good ever comes out of joining El Cucuy and his Dark Saints.”

  Not normally, no. Except when it came to saving Juana. Little Lion kept yelling at me, shouting at me, out of his own pain. But you know what?

  I puffed out my chest. “First of all, yes, I am a fool who is risking her life to protect the people she loves—but I’m not a bloodthirsty bruja who pretends to love her criaturas and then betrays them, like your old bruja. So stop acting like I am!” I slammed my hands against Little Lion’s chest and thrust him back. “Second of all, I’m only trying to win the Bruja Fights so I can get my big sister back from El Sombrerón!” Lion stumbled backward again, his eyes wide with shock. “And I will win, Little Lion! No one’s going to stop me from saving her!”

  I shoved him one last time. Little Lion stiffened, his face shocked and silent.

  I turned from him, rage swelling. That wasn’t the way I wanted to tell him I knew about his last bruja. And I hadn’t planned on telling him I was faking being a bruja, especially when I wasn’t sure I could trust him. But I was tired of people telling me I was a fool. Ever since my encounter with Tzitzimitl, I’d been made to think caring was a weakness. I was sick of feeling like who I was—a fool, sure, and a crybaby, yeah, and a girl with a soul like water instead of fire—was somehow not acceptable. Because if I was doing the right thing, if I was following all the goodness I believed in, that was good enough.

  I didn’t care how much Little Lion yelled at me or hated me, or how much I reminded him of his last bruja; I would treat him like a person. That’s what I believed in. That was who I was.

  I wouldn’t let anything—pretending to be a bruja, my town’s disdain, or Little Lion’s anger—rob me of myself.

  “Your . . . your sister is the Bride of El Sombrerón?” Little Lion’s voice came up behind me, low and soft.

  I turned to him. We stood about five feet apart now, with Coyote between us and off to the side. He glanced at us, watching carefully. I straightened up and nodded.

  “She is,” I said. “And I’m getting her back.”

  The last remnants of anger drained from his face. And with it gone, I realized his face was soft and round, and his eyebrows weren’t always heavy and scary. He stared at me, eyes large and waiting.

  “You look a lot like her,” Little Lion whispered. “My old bruja. Catrina Rios.”

  My heart jerked in my chest. Silence pulsed over us.

  “Little Lion . . . ,” I finally said, “You were my tía’s criatura?”

  He rubbed his shoulder. “I trusted her. And she betrayed me.”

  Something hot and aching bubbled up in Little Lion’s soul at the admission. Hesitantly, I wrapped my fingers around it. The instant I did, the last of the aching heat in his stone ever so slowly leeched out of the quartz and into my hand. It didn’t burn physically. It was a deeper fire—an old one. And for the first time, I tasted it.

  He’d loved Catrina so much. Tears slid down my cheeks. I hiccupped as images and feelings flashed up my arm, panging in my heart. She’d laughed with him, cried with him, and worked alongside him. She’d promised to take care of him. She’d been his friend, and more than that—she’d become his world.

  She was the one person he thought he was safe with.

  And then she’d betrayed him.

  My legs trembled in the shadows of the alley, holding Little Lion’s soul as the old, wounded heat drained away completely. All this time, I’d thought he was just angry. But he was also sad. And deeply hurt. He’d carefully wrapped his soul in burning anger to keep everyone away from the tears he needed to cry.

  Finger by finger, I dropped Little Lion’s soul back onto my chest.

  I wiped my cheeks. The tears kept coming, but I wasn’t ashamed of them, because they were Lion’s. Footsteps came closer. When I looked up, Little Lion stood there, watching me.

  “I thought you were trying to trick me too. But you’re not like her,” he said, and offered his hand. “You . . . take care of the people you love.”

  His eyes were red, muted, and soft. He stared at me like I’d appeared from nowhere and might disappear the same way at any moment. Slowly, I took his peace offering.

  We shook hands and looked at each other with a new understanding. I knew his pain. He knew my truth. Coyote crossed the distance and stopped beside us. We looked up at him.

  “You,” he said, narrowing his eyes on me, “are no bruja.”

  I straightened my shoulders, ready to stand up to him too, because I wasn’t going to feel bad about not being cruel any more—

  “And that,” he continued, his face softening, “is why you’re stronger than them all.”

  20

  Kit Fox

  About an hour later, Coyote, Little Lion, and I arrived at the old corn mill to the north of Tierra del Sol, well past the Ruins—the backup location for the Bruja Fights’ semifinals.

  It wasn’t quite as large as the abandoned processing plant, but the mill was surrounded by thick boulders and stones that eventually climbed into the edge of the cerros, giving it that same discomforting feel.

  Coyote and I pushed our way into the building. Little Lion had decided to stay outside, and I figured he could do with the time to think. Inside, decaying wooden crates had been cleared away and stacked against the walls, so there was space for the fighting and jeering. A fight was already underway. I didn’t bother to check out the fighters, just weaved through the crowd to a more out-of-the-way spot by the wall.

  Coyote fell in beside me. “We should be up next.”

  Fantastic. Except “fantastic” was probably the exact opposite of the feeling I got every time we had to defeat another criatura. Coyote gave me a quick, comforting smile. I smiled back.

  Then Coyote’s face fell.

  “What?” I asked.

  “There are brujas and brujos here,” he whispered.

  I snorted. “That’s not exactly news—”

  “Not apprentices, Cece.” His eyebrows lowered as he stared into the crowd. “This time, there are real brujas and brujos. From Devil’s Alley.”

  The words hardened in my gut. I followed Coyote’s gaze and found the true brujas among the horde of people. There were a couple against a wall, one near the fighting ring, a few sitting on old bricks, overlooking the fights. But one brujo—the last one our eyes rested on—stood t
all in the opposite corner of the building, his glowing purple eyes locked directly on me.

  My heart nearly stopped.

  It was the brujo I’d spoken with at the previous two fights, the one who had complimented me—and then questioned me. But there was no residue of his friendly smile today, not even an attempt at it. Now, he smirked across the room at me, and his glowing gaze was filled with shadows and hunger.

  “I know him,” I whispered. “He asked me why I wanted to be a bruja.”

  Coyote reached behind my back and took my hand. “He’s definitely a real brujo, Cece. One from Devil’s Alley.” He glanced down at me. “Just look at his eyes. They’re bright violet.”

  So I hadn’t been imagining that. The color had really been there—and focused on me.

  “But why would a real brujo be here at the Bruja Fights?” I asked. “He doesn’t need to prove himself.”

  Across the distance, the brujo twitched two fingers. At first, I thought he was beckoning me, but then a boy came out from the shadows behind him and stood in full view.

  The boy was obviously a criatura. He looked younger than me, maybe by a year or two, and had dusty white hair and tanned skin. Much lighter skin than mine, but obviously marked by the sun. I raised an eyebrow as I realized what I was seeing on his head. Ears—kit fox ears, oversized and adorable—perched on his crown. The brujo stroked the hair between them.

  Coyote’s jaw clenched.

  “What now?” I whispered. “Do you know that criatura?”

  “Not exactly.” Coyote’s hand tightened on mine. “I haven’t met him in this life. But look at his ears—every time a criatura regrows, they get a bit weaker, right? Well, he looks around our age, but he still hasn’t gotten the hang of transforming his ears away. That’s not normal.”

  I caught on to what he was saying: the criatura’s soul must be in pretty bad shape. Maybe even on its last lifetime. I met his warm, caramel eyes across the room.

  “Why has his brujo brought him here?” I whispered. “He doesn’t look like a fighter.”