Bruja Born

by Zoraida Cordova

  “Can we commune with these Deos?” Frederik asks. “If you spoke to Lady de la Muerte, surely we can seek help from the others.”

  I shake my head, but my body sighs with a new realization. “Lady de la Muerte has a function in this world. She collects souls. The other Deos don’t exist in this realm, but they are where they’ve always been—”

  “They exist in our power,” Alex says, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a smile.

  The past months, I wondered where the Deos went, why they abandoned me. But they didn’t. I’ve always had my power, and in my power I finally have some hope.

  “The Deos act through us,” Rose says, quoting one of my favorite lines from our Book of Cantos.

  McKay raises his hand. “So, we’re going with the spear isn’t inside you.”

  The ember in my heart grows brighter. “No, but think about it. From their limits, Lady de la Muerte was born. She was created from the dregs of their powers! She is the end of everything! If we combine the same powers that were used to make her, perhaps we can use that to find the spear.”

  “Can you do that?” McKay asks. “I mean, flame, water, wind, earth—those are the Deos mentioned in the poem, right?”

  “It’s not a poem!” Nova shouts. “Do we even know brujas strong enough to conjure elements? I mean, other than Alex?”

  I turn to my sisters and propose the one thing I’ve been avoiding. “We need Mom and Dad. I’ll petition the High Circle again. They can’t turn me away this time. Not when the whole city is in danger.”

  I look at the screens projecting holograms of the city. I can’t tell if I’m simply exhausted or if the red dots are increasing at a faster rate. Alex stands closer to me as my body sways with exhaustion. I lean on her.

  “They’re going to be so mad,” I say, hands trembling.

  Alex tries to smile. “It’s still not as bad as what I did.”

  “Actually, yours had a lower mortality rate,” Nova says.

  Alex punches him in the shoulder, and in this moment, I wonder what it would’ve been like if we’d had a brother.

  “It’s nearly sunrise and you look like you’re going to fall over,” Frederik says.

  “Yeah, you can’t release a goddess and save the city on zero sleep,” McKay adds. “I’ll take you to our guest rooms.”

  Then Frederik is gone in a black blur and McKay is leading us through the winding hallways of THA headquarters.

  After we say our good nights, my sisters and I climb into a four-poster bed that’d be too big to fit into any room in our house. Alex and Rose manage to fall asleep instantly. Lying between them, I feel a comfort I haven’t had in a long time.

  And yet, the tug at my heart is ever present, keeping me all too aware that I am untethered to this earth but bound to the undead hordes I raised. I trace the scar on my belly, thick and jagged. It aches more than ever, but at least it isn’t splitting open like before, and I send a silent thanks to Angela Santiago.

  As exhausted as I am, I know I need to take care of one last thing. I resign myself to another sleepless night, because I have to see Maks. All of this started with us, and it has to finish with us. During every step I take, I play out scenes in my mind where he comes back to life for real. Where his life isn’t linked to mine, a parasite draining me down to the marrow. Where Maks is the boy I fell so in love with I couldn’t let him go. The boy I wanted for keeps.

  When we release Lady de la Muerte, I’ll have to end this. Destroy the heart, she said. I owe him the same comfort my sisters gave me. I owe him the truth.

  I find my way to the holding cells in the dark.

  “Maks.” I hate that my voice sounds so small. I press my hand on the glass.

  Maks paces around the room but stops when he sees me. Presses his hands against the glass. The blood on his hands and mouth is brown in the UV light. The heart on the tray gone.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I had to see you,” I say.

  “I don’t want to be like those things in the alley. I don’t want to be like the others. But I was so hungry.” His eyes are lighter now, the pupils like pinpricks against the bright sky blue of his irises. He’s there, holding on.

  “I’m coming in.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You won’t hurt me.” I push the lever to unlock the door.

  He reaches for me, and I can feel how tired he is too. He threads his fingers with mine, and I let a pulse of my magic flood through him. It isn’t the same magic I use to heal cuts or bruises. It’s more like a feeling, a part of me I’ve pulled back because I was afraid. Knowing what has to come next, I can’t imagine being afraid of anything before this. For a moment, his skin is warm again. He gasps as the magic traces his skin. I can even hear the hushed beat of his heart murmuring against my own.

  No, not his heart. I shut my eyes and tears spill at the corners. It’s my heart. My heartbeat. It’s been my heart the entire time because Maks is dead and I couldn’t bring him back.

  “I’m scared, Lula,” he says.

  I rest my head on his shoulder. But the magic leaves quickly, and the cold returns to his hands.

  For a long time, we stay like this. I drift in the terrifying place between sleep and consciousness. I remember the Knights of Lavant dressed in shimmering black, the point of a sword coming inches from my face as the hunter cut Kassandra in half.

  The image in my mind flickers, and then I see Derek. His eyes are as white and clear as quartz. Red veins spread across the white of his eyes. He moves like his joints are rusted, hands stretching out toward my face.

  “Lula,” he sings my name.

  Wake up, I tell myself. But I feel like my body is pinned down by an invisible force.

  “Lula,” someone else calls out my name.

  In the shadows of my dream, they are only silhouettes. But as a white light shines over them, I can see their faces. Derek is joined by others. I recognize the dead from the accident and so many more. There’s a man with a bullet hole in his forehead advancing with the other. A woman with both eyes missing. A man with a kitchen knife stuck in his chest. With every step they take, more of them appear.

  Someone else calls out my name.

  Maks. His voice travels through the darkness like an echo. He is everywhere and nowhere.

  “Maks?”

  “Lula.” The way he says my name, like a curse, makes my skin crawl.

  My dream changes.

  I’m pulled up higher and higher into the ether. We’re on the beach. The wind blows sand into my eyes and the waves almost reach the boardwalk.

  Maks is facing away from me. He’s hugging himself, a terrible shake racking his body.

  “Maks?” I edge closer to him.

  “You did this to me,” he growls.

  “I was trying to save you. All I wanted was to save you.”

  He whips around, and when he does, the sight of his eyes is startling—the blue has faded to ice white. The jagged scars that cover his body are pronounced and red. When I look at him, I don’t see the boy I loved. I see his walking corpse. A casimuerto.

  That’s when I notice it. The thread that binds us together, a silver thread coming undone. Maks puts his hand around it.

  “No!”

  And he tugs.

  The pain makes me fall to the sand. He tugs again, and this time, white-hot pain floods every part of me.

  “Why won’t it work?” He grabs me by my shoulders and shakes me.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask him.

  “Because I remember now.” His hands trace the sides of my neck. “I remember everything.”

  My scream dies in my throat, but I can hear another in the distance. My face feels red and my thoughts darken with a lack of oxygen.

  “I remember it all, Lula!” Maks shouts, hi
s grip crushing my windpipe.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up.

  I open my eyes.

  But his hands are still around my throat. And I can’t breathe. And I can’t call for help. And I’m not dreaming.

  Maks is killing me.

  27

  The world burned and splintered and drowned.

  To save their creations, La Mama and El Papa

  let La Muerte rise.

  —Tales of the Deos, Felipe Thomás San Justinio

  The air sparks with electricity. Maks’s skin is covered with pinpricks of currents that bring him to his knees. Then rain falls from a dark cloud that blankets the ceiling. Maks’s body is flung to the side, but his nails still rake across the thin skin of my throat.

  My dad’s hands hold spheres of electricity. His eyes are black as night.

  My mom runs to my side and presses her hand against where I’m bleeding. When I try to talk, my throat burns worse than ever. Even the breath I take is jagged and small.

  “Rose,” Alex shouts. “Help me carry her out. Pull the door lever!”

  They shoulder my weight and carry me to a bed.

  “It’s okay,” Mom tells me. The sight of her face is calming. Her magic floods through me, finding the places that hurt the most. I wince as a bone snaps into place. “It’s okay, nena. We’re here.”

  I know this won’t last. They’re going to find out what I’ve done and be angry with me. But for now, I let my mother hold me and brush my hair away from my face. I let her mend the skin around my neck and press kisses on my forehead just as she did when I was a little kid. I let her thank La Mama that I’m alive and threaten to kill me in her name as well. I let her be my mother.

  “Lula,” she says, her voice pleading. “What did you do?”

  “Yell later,” Alex says. “First, we need to summon the High Circle.”

  “No,” I say, trying out my voice. “I should explain. About Maks and the others.”

  Dad rubs the soot off his hands on his sweatpants, his gray eyes like perfect storms. “Others?”

  I take a deep breath and sit up to face them. “I messed up.”

  • • •

  The important moments in life always seem to happen around kitchens, from holidays and parties to everything in between. So I’m not surprised that, somehow, we end up in the THA kitchen to talk about how I cast a spell that will destroy our city.

  Ma makes a strong black tea with Frederik’s herbs. She slams the kettle on the stove. She cranks up the flames. She sets the jar of loose leaf so hard on the counter I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. The entire time she mutters in the Old Tongue.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done.” Her voice is tired and angry.

  I stay quiet. Alex and Rose are busy examining the dirt under their nails because they know Mom’s anger is coming for them too.

  I’m prepared for her to scream, to tell me how much I’ve let her down. I even brace to have something flung at my head.

  Instead, my mother sighs deeply. It’s like a weight pushing down her thick, strong body. She shakes her head from side to side and pours the boiling water into the teapot. She sets the tray on the table between us and I breathe in the scent of bitter roots and jasmine.

  I fear I’ve broken more than just the balance of the world. I’ve destroyed the trust my mother had in me.

  She just sits there and stares at the door, waiting for my father to return. Dark circles ring her eyes, but her plum lipstick is still somehow unblemished.

  As the day breaks and the sunrise shines into this strange, metallic kitchen, a shadow spreads across her neck in the shape of handprints—the same ones she healed from me. And seeing my mother hurt is worse than anything else in the world.

  Dad and Nova walk in, a draft following at their heels. My father is still shaking from having used his power, and his face is scrunched up with ire and worry. There’s a brownish-red smudge on his cheek that at first looks like dirt, but when I look at Nova, he too has a bruise on his face. I wonder if we are ever going to be more than a pile of broken bones and bruises.

  Dad and Nova exchange glances and something passes between them, something untold that the four of us aren’t privy to. I envy Nova for this.

  “The casimuertos are down,” Nova says. “For now.”

  My mom gets up and hands them both a cup of tea. Dad shuts his eyes before drinking it, and I don’t know if he’s cursing the Deos or praying to them.

  “What happened while we were gone?” Dad asks quietly.

  “I wasn’t completely honest about the canto we used on Maks.” I take a sip of tea to wet my dry tongue. Then I confess. “When the bodies went missing, I thought that was the end of it. But they just reappeared in different parts of the city. The day I left the house for a walk, I really went to the boardwalk. That’s where I found Maks.”

  “How did you find him?” Mom asks.

  “I’m connected to them. Tethered. That’s why I haven’t been healing properly.” I explain about the threads.

  “Lula—” Mom starts to say.

  “Let me finish,” I say. “Please. Otherwise I might not be able to say it again. La Muerte told me I had to free her, but when I found Maks, I felt like finally something had gone right.”

  My lips are so dry I feel like, if I start to cry, they might bleed. So I hold it in. “Alex and I went to see Nova’s grandmother. She let us read a book she had on casimuertos.”

  Dad is pacing in a circle around the table. He touches his bottom lip with his fingers, face sunken in with so much burden it makes him look like he’s aged a decade.

  “The book,” he says. “El Libro Maldecido?”

  “Yes,” Alex says. “How do you know that?”

  “Patricio?” Mom asks.

  Dad frowns the way he does when he struggles through his memory. “Remember Fausto Toledo back in our circle?”

  “That was twenty years ago,” Ma says. “The circumstances were different.”

  “Raising the dead is raising the dead. He wanted to create an army to fight against the Knights of Lavant.”

  At their name, Nova, Alex, Rose, and I exchange a not-so-secret glance. But we’re not about to interrupt my dad, so we let him keep talking.

  “But he failed,” Ma says. “The bodies were taken out to the island and dumped in the sound.”

  “That wasn’t in Angela’s book,” I say.

  “It wouldn’t be,” Dad says severely. “Fausto wrote it. After his army failed, he started to die. Not even sinmago doctors could treat him. He simply withered down until there was skin and bones. It was his punishment for what he’d done. He tried to figure out a cure for death. Spent years gathering up stories about the undead. You see, casimuertos aren’t created by a virus. They’re bound by magical blood. And the only way to kill them all is—”

  He freezes, stormy-gray eyes glassy when he looks at me, like he’s only just remembering the cost. “No. I’m not losing you again. Lula—”

  I can’t stand the hurt there, the way my mother presses her hands against the table for support as she stands to wrap her arms around me. They squeeze me, gently but firmly.

  “The Alliance is helping,” I say in an attempt to assuage their fear. “La Muerte told me there was another way. I think we’ve figured out a way to break her free, but we have to find her spear first.”

  I explain to my parents about the elements.

  “We need the High Circle and we need them here now,” Alex says. “The casimuertos are multiplying faster than the THA and Knights of Lavant can kill them.”

  Glass shatters. Mom’s dropped her cup on the floor.

  “What did you say?” Dad asks.

  Alex looks stunned, blinking too fast. “Knights of Lavant?”

  “You spoke to them?”

  “Th
ey showed up,” I say. “We were being attacked by casimuertos in an alley and they were just there. Why?”

  “I want you to stay away from them.”

  “But why? We want the same thing—to destroy the casimuertos.”

  “Patricio,” Mom whispers, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Be calm.”

  Dad looks down at the ground, then fixes his gray eyes on me. “One day I will have the answers you want, something that makes me worthy of you, all of you. But for now, please listen to me and stay away from them. They hunted our kind for centuries. They—”

  Down the hall, there’s a knock coming from the front door, and since it’s not our house, we’re unsure if we should answer it.

  “Anyone expecting company?” Nova asks.

  But after the third knock, I see McKay dash past the kitchen in his boxers. I need an out, so I get up and follow him.

  A tall, young guy walks right in, past McKay, whose grimace has nothing to do with the two hours of sleep he got last night.

  “Good, McKay,” the stranger says. “Should’ve known. You’re all here. Saves me a trip.”

  His face looks familiar, but I can’t place it. He wears a white shirt, jeans, and motorcycle boots. He keeps walking in until he stands in front of me, all up in my space.

  “Lula Mortiz.”

  Where do I know him from? His serious face brightens with a smile. Memories rush at me. Dark eyes framed by darker lashes. A square jaw tallied with thin scars that could be from shaving or from a fight.

  “Who wants to know?” I ask.

  He smooths the top of his hair, tied back in a knot. He stands tall, over a foot taller than me. His dark eyes take in every one of us, and he smirks.

  “Lula Antonietta Mortiz, you are guilty of endangering the life of the humans of the tristate area slash the world, and are in violation of the Thorne Hill Alliance, Treaty of New York, section six: the reanimation of corpses.”