“How can you speak to me this way?” The accusation is drenched with melancholy.
I press my hand over my heart. There’s nothing there.
“Am I dead?”
“Do you want to be?”
“Why can’t you just give me a straight answer?”
“Why can’t you see that I have? You cry for our absence, but we are where we’ve always been.”
She points an accusatory finger at me as I pace around her. In this in-between, I am weightless. There is a rushing dark, like a swarm of bees, but after a moment, you stop noticing it.
“You have seen the outcome of this. The casimuertos are tied to you, and you are tied to me.”
“You could’ve told me there was only one way to end this.”
“It is not the only way. Find my spear—”
“But where is your spear? If you’re here, then where is it?”
“I was born at the edge of this world. It is where I always return; it is where I should be now.” Lady de la Muerte turns slowly, following my quick pace with her molasses-dark eyes. “Do you know why mortals pray?”
I stop in my tracks. Why do I light my candles and sing rezos and keep my altar to the Deos? Why do I scream at her now? “Because we want something.”
“If the Deos had all the answers,” she says, “we wouldn’t have created you.”
I laugh. My heart has stopped beating and back home my undead army is wreaking havoc all over the city. But here is the lady of death, asking the world of me and all I can do is laugh.
“You don’t know,” I say. “You don’t know how to fix this.”
“Lula, you wanted something I could not give you. You didn’t ask for life and here you have it. But you did ask for this burden, and you must free me.”
She extends her long, bony arm, and fissures of light erupt from the tip of her finger, stabbing the bare skin between my breasts.
• • •
I start awake on the boardwalk. Whatever Lady de la Muerte did, the silver light appears over my heart once more. This time, there are more threads than before extending in dozens of directions. Except for three of them. They wrap around my shoulders and tug me backward and across the boardwalk, toward an empty lot full of overgrown weeds that are lit by my silver light as I draw closer.
Three figures emerge from the shadows. They squint against the bright threads that pierce their hearts. One of them I recognize as Derek Ferreira, number five on the team. His pale skin is shiny with sweat, and his once-brown eyes are covered by a milky-white film. He takes a step forward, and I can see that his mouth is red with dried blood. He’s wearing a letterman jacket with nothing underneath, displaying a canvas of pink scars.
“Derek?” I say his name, because part of me still doesn’t believe that he’s here. When I blink, I can picture him getting thrown from one end of the bus to the other.
The other two boys are Dylan Monroe and Paul Gopal. Paul doesn’t look like he has a scratch on him. His dark skin is smooth and unblemished. He looks completely alive, and if it wasn’t for his colorless eyes, I wouldn’t be able to tell he’s a casimuerto. Dylan is another story. His pale-gray skin is badly bruised over the right shoulder, where a nasty scar was stitched up and never healed properly. Again, my mind flashes to an image of the bus tumbling and flipping over. A pane of broken glass wedging itself deep into his shoulder.
“I know you,” Paul tells me, blinking a few times.
“You’re Maks’s girl,” Derek says, stalking toward me. He’s my height and made of lean muscles that ripple with each step he takes. He extends his bloody fingers toward the silver thread that links us, but they touch only air. “You’re the one who’s been calling out to us this whole time.”
“Me?”
“Haven’t you felt it?” Derek quirks up a dark eyebrow. “That tug in your heart. That’s all of us.”
I look on either side of me, but the boardwalk is dark. Other than the waves, we’re alone.
“I have,” I say, trying to stop myself from running. If I run, they’ll follow and I don’t know how much longer the elixir can sustain me. “I’m here to help you.”
“Help us?” Paul says. Thick, black hair falling over his stark-white eyes. “I’ve never felt better.”
“It was weird at first,” Derek says, his mouth spreading into a wicked, wide smile tinged with blood as he gets closer. “I couldn’t think straight. It wasn’t until we ate that I felt like myself again. The more we eat, the better we feel. I can smell things I never could. The fear on someone’s skin. How sweet it turns the blood. Like you…”
“There’s a moment,” Dylan says, “right after we eat. All the pain, all the confusion goes away. But beneath that, you know what I feel? What all of us feel?”
I take a step back and hit the metal railing separating the boardwalk from the sand.
“Your heart.”
“Speaking of.” Derek breathes the air around me, dark eyes falling to my chest. “We don’t have to hunt tonight.”
I swing my fist, colliding with his nose. There’s the crunch of cartilage and a soft trickle of blood, but the other two grab my arms. I kick frantically until my knee hits flesh. One of them lets me go, and I pull the other to the ground. They growl like wolves and look up behind me as the sound of footsteps draws nearer.
Derek snarls, and when he lands on me, I grab him by his throat.
“I don’t need to breathe.” He laughs and threads his arms between mine to break my hold.
I scream as his nails rake across my chest. The metallic scent of blood sends him into a frenzy.
I realize he’s going to rip out my heart. I think of my family scattered around the city, my sisters fighting alongside me, La Muerte waiting for me to free her, Maks—and I know, I know I can’t let this happen. If they consume my heart, they’ll be unstoppable, and the city falls. If I have to die, I’m taking them all with me. A primal instinct within me ignites. I punch and thrash and I fight back.
There’s the stampede of footsteps and my name on the wind. A blast of light hits the casimuerto in the face and he flies backward with a thud.
“Alex!” I shout, scrambling to my feet.
But it isn’t Alex. It’s Rose. And her entire body is bathed in light.
25
El Terroz rose, lifting the earth
above La Ola’s drowning waves,
forever scorned by his sister’s wrath.
—Tales of the Deos, Felipe Thomás San Justinio
“How did you do that?” I take her hands and she helps me up.
“I don’t know.” She trembles in my grasp. I brush her hair back to examine her face. She wraps her arms around me and holds me tight. “Are you okay?”
Behind her, Nova’s arms are shaking as he holds a phone to his ear. “Come west on the boardwalk.”
“Is that Alex?” I ask. “What about Frederik?”
“He wasn’t going after you. He could sense Maks’s change,” he says. “That’s what set him off. After we calmed Frederick down, we split up to find you. What happened?”
“I needed space,” I say, the adrenaline in my veins causing me to shake. “I spoke to Lady de la Muerte again. Then I found them.”
I keep a tight hold of Rose and think back to the night of the spell—the way her power shined brighter than Alex’s and mine. The strength of it was raw and pure. Could our canto have changed her power too?
“Since when can you conjure light?” Nova asks Rose.
She shakes her head and says nothing.
We turn around at the moaning sound of the casimuertos getting back up. A hard breeze blows my hair back. When I blink, Frederik is here with a silver tube in his hand. He injects the casimuertos in the chest with a needle.
“What is that?” I ask.
“A serum.” Frede
rik’s voice is the calm before a storm. “But it won’t last long. We need to go.”
• • •
When we get back to the Alliance building, Alex sees me and it’s like the tension in her whole body unwinds. She runs across the room and pulls Rose and me into a hug. I’ve never been happier to just be together.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Before I get to that, we have to talk,” I say.
Alex stands back and looks between Rose and me. “What?”
“Rose conjured light.”
Rose walks around us and sits on the sofa. She takes off her glasses and examines a long crack in one of the lenses before placing them on the table. Her round cheeks are pink from running back and forth, and there’s a layer of soot on her palms. She rubs a hand on the knee of her jeans, darkening the denim until her skin comes away clean.
“How?” Alex asks.
“I said I don’t know,” Rose shouts.
Nova walks in, sits on the edge of the sofa, and puts his hand on Rose’s shoulder. In a way, it feels like he belongs here. “It’ll be okay, kid. We’ll figure it out.”
“We need Mom and Dad,” Alex says. “I tried to call them but got voice mail.”
“Rose,” I say, “has this ever happened before?”
She stares at her hands. “I’m not sure. During the healing canto in the hospital I felt something strange. It was like, when I touched Alex, my power was as strong as hers.”
“Have you ever heard of something like that?” I ask Nova.
“No, but right before Rose conjured, I was trying to access my powers as well. The casimuerto was on top of you, and I was getting ready to blast it, but then Rose did it first.”
“I grabbed on to you,” Rose says, balling her hands into fists. “Just for a moment to steady myself because we ran so fast. I put my hand on your arm. It was this surge, like my whole body was—”
“Lit up like Christmas,” Nova finishes. “That’s what I feel like when I use my power.”
“Try it out,” Alex tells Nova. “Light it up.”
“I’m not a circus act.”
Alex shrugs. Nova looks like he’s about to protest some more, but then looks at Rose and his features soften. He holds out his hand and conjures three balls of light that flitter around the room.
“No, I’m a seer.” Rose shakes her head. “That’s what I’ve always been. This is just a one-time thing because I wanted to save Lula. Just leave it, okay?”
“But, Rosie—” Alex presses on.
“I said leave it!”
Nova extinguishes his conjured light.
“It’s fine,” I say, pulling Rose closer. “We don’t have to figure this out now.”
Alex holds her hands up in defeat, but I know she isn’t going to drop this completely. “You’re right. You saved Lula, and that’s what matters.”
But Alex gives me a look that says this isn’t over.
“Wait,” I say, looking around the room. “Where’s Maks?”
“He freaked out and went full casimuerto,” Nova says.
“I think it’s the hunger,” Alex says. “Frederik put him in their containment unit.”
“What?” I shout, but she places her hands on my arms and shakes me.
“He’s fine now. They got him something to eat.”
And I swallow the choking doubt in my throat when I say, “I need to see him.”
• • •
“Lula,” Maks calls out for me behind a glass wall. He sits precariously on the edge of narrow metal bench. Seeing him this way, seeing him at all sends a current through my body. How could I have run from him the moment I was too afraid?
He presses his hands on the glass, leaving red prints. His eyelids flutter closed, hiding the pale blue of his eyes. He slumps down to the floor and whatever they used to keep him sedated knocks him to sleep.
“What have I done?” I ask myself, but I realize I’ve said it out loud. McKay is the only one in the holding area with me.
“You wanted to save him.” McKay lifts one shoulder and drops it. “You might possess magic, but you’re still human.”
Everything from the last couple of days makes my chest tighten, and I can tell the elixir is wearing off because the pain in my abdomen returns. “I’m going to end this,” I say.
“Let me guess, we throw you in the volcano in which you were forged?” His lips don’t smile, but his coffee-brown eyes are bright, like there’s a well of hope inside of him. “It’s a fight against magic, witchling. The biggest sacrifice is always the answer.”
At that I have to laugh because I’ve always been so confident in my knowledge of magic. Turns out I don’t know anything.
“In The Accursed Book,” I tell him, “it says the only way to stop the hordes of casimuertos is to destroy the heart of the source with a divine weapon. They’re tethered to me. La Muerte says there’s another way, but I’m no closer to finding her spear than I am to finding a cure for this.”
I both hate and appreciate the sympathy in his eyes as he sighs deeply.
“I’ve seen people come back from worse,” he says. “Frederik was turned into a vampire by his own sister six hundred years ago. Took him three centuries and he nearly lost his soul, but he killed her before she could set the world on fire. Your own sister gave up her magic for her girlfriend and still saved you all plus all of Los Lagos. I went vegan and I’d thought I’d never come back from a steak taco bender. I’m telling you, witchling. You’ll get through this. The THA helps people, just like you and your family do. If there’s another way to save you, we’ll find it.”
“Will he be okay here?” I ask, looking back to where Maks is asleep.
“We have two stars on Yelp. Most of our prisoners don’t really like the cells.” McKay rings his arm around my neck and leads me back to my family. “Come on, Lula. The night is young, and there’s a whole mess of magic to unravel.”
26
La Ola swam across the seas a thousand times,
the oceans too wide and not wide enough.
—Tales of the Deos, Felipe Thomás San Justinio
McKay and Frederik bring out a spread of cold pizza and chips, but I can’t stomach much of it. I guzzle soda because it’s the only thing that doesn’t make me want to retch.
We’re back in the surveillance room with the eye on the door, and the monitors are being closely watched for new movement. For every red casimuerto dot that vanishes, another one pops up somewhere.
Members of the Thorne Hill Alliance walk in and out, seeking orders from McKay and Frederik before heading out to help hunt casimuertos. They steer clear of us. Though I suppose if there were strangers in my house, I’d be wary too.
“Mom and Dad just texted,” Alex says, tucking her phone in her back pocket. “They’ll be home in the morning.”
I’m dreading seeing my parents, especially my mother. But at the same time, I long to see her just to hear her voice, even if she’ll be yelling.
One of the hologram displays has a live feed of the holding cells. Maks is still knocked out. But Derek and the other two casimuertos are banging on the walls, leaving their bloody handprints everywhere. There’s a tray flipped over on the floor in a clear rejection of the cow hearts Frederik procured.
“How can you eat at a time like this?” Alex asks Nova, watching in amazement as he pounds on his chest and belches.
“With my mouth?” he responds.
“I guess the cow hearts aren’t working,” Rose says.
“Neither did the synthetic hearts,” McKay says, pulling up another hologram.
“The hunters gave you a heart before,” Nova says with his mouth full. “Why can’t they do that again?”
The hair on my arms stands up. “I don’t know who it was from.”
“More of a reaso
n to act fast,” McKay says. “We have only one lead on your lady of death.”
He uploads Alex’s files of The Accursed Book onto the screen so we can study it. He keeps rubbing his temples as if the answer will manifest from the friction, but all it does is upset the vampire even more.
“Go over everything again,” McKay tells me.
There’s a collective groan of frustration, but I do it, retracing my steps from the very beginning with Alex’s glamour on my scars and ending with my last visit from La Muerte. I can’t help but trace the length of my scars across the side of my face as I realize this is the first time I’ve thought about them in days.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” Frederik says once I’m done, “it’s that gods never say what they mean. They don’t see things the way humans do. Every divine text is a human interpretation of forces they can’t even begin to understand.”
“But ‘find my spear’ is pretty literal,” Rose says dryly.
I think back to the way Lady de la Muerte kept pointing at me. The Deos are where they’ve always been.
“What? What are you thinking?” Alex asks me. “You only make that face when I tutor you in math.”
I rub the spot on my chest. “Every time La Muerte has appeared to me, she points. She tells me that the gods are where they’ve always been.”
Nova cocks his head and looks me up and down. “I don’t think you’re tall enough for the spear to be literally in you.”
I ball my fists and step to him, but Alex holds me back. “Stop. Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Do you remember when I was in Los Lagos and you helped me heal for the first time?”
“Of course I remember,” I say. “The root of healing is love. Our gifts are natural, but magic has always been about belief.” My thoughts spin around that. “The Deos are where they’ve always been,” I say, and I realize that Lady de la Muerte was never accusing me. I turn to my sisters. “Do you guys remember the rezo we found in Tales of the Deos?” I snap my fingers, unable to recall the passage line by line.
“The Deos too learned their limits,” Nova says. When he speaks of the gods, his body becomes haloed by a faint light and his eyes shut in reverence. “El Fuego extinguished into ash. La Ola crumbled into salt. El Terroz clove the earth in pieces. El Viento fell and kept on falling. But from their limits, Lady de la Muerte was born.”
Bruja Born Page 19