Thanks to her plant obsession, Perla never missed a chance to tie local flora into our lessons, so she once shared a Guaraní legend about the red ceibo flower. There was a woman named Anahí who fought against the Spanish conquistadores and was burned at the stake. Legend says that by dawn, her body had turned into a ceibo tree, from which clusters of red blooms hung like flames.
Or blood.
Thinking on the history of that flower is like removing a rosy filter from my gaze. The Roman architecture of La Rosada feels less romantic now, considering that it’s reminiscent of the Europeans who colonized Argentina.
And still, the ceibo flower grows. Rising through the layers of civilizations that have tried to tame it and claim it, defying our hand-drawn lines. Reminding us that the land doesn’t recognize our borders.
Vehicles zoom down pink streets, and balloons dot the sky overhead. Everyone is headed to the same place, a gargantuan construction that makes me think of the Roman Colosseum. There are multiple entrances, and I read words etched over an archway:
CADA FLOR CAE. Every flower falls.
Another sign has been hung beneath it: SOLO LOBIZONES.
Werewolves only.
It must be a new rule because an outraged mass is already forming. Some of them have angrily removed their masks and are shouting at the Cazadores. As more and more Septimus join the protestors, it strikes me how many of them have come here as part of a bruja-lobizón couple. Romance must really be in the air at La Rosada.
Tiago nudges me, and I realize Cata and Saysa have crossed the street. We follow them across the pink gravel and slip between marble buildings, down a dark alley lined with wilted flowers. It’s musty and stinks of rotting roses.
“This is Yamila’s doing,” I say as soon as we’re huddled together.
“It’s definitely a trap for you,” agrees a faceless Cata.
“We need to hide your body.” Saysa grabs the hem of my shirt with both hands and tugs at the fabric, like she’s trying to rip it open. The material expands, stretching before our eyes. When she lets go, the shirt is a few sizes too large, hanging to my knees and concealing my shape.
“There,” she says. “No more curves.”
“I guess,” says Cata, cocking her head as she examines me. “What about her arms? They’re not as big and hairy as the others’.”
Saysa yanks on my short sleeves until they stretch all the way to my wrists, and Cata nods her approval.
“I look ridiculous.”
“Boys do stupid shit like this all the time,” Saysa points out.
Tiago doesn’t confirm or deny her report. Instead, he asks, “What will you do?”
“We’ll earn semillas offering transportation,” answers Cata.
“Be careful.”
“You too. After you find out what’s going on with Gael, we’ll meet here to work out a plan.” Cata turns to me. “Keep near the exit. Don’t draw attention. There’s power in numbers.”
I’m too nervous to speak, so I just nod. Then the four of us part ways, and Tiago and I join the queue of guys filing into the Colosseum.
Crammed amid so many tall bodies, I can’t see ahead until it’s our turn to go under the arch. The instant I walk through, I feel the twist in my gut—
And the transformation sets in.
I want to scream as my skeleton elongates, my skin ripping as my muscles expand. I feel my body hair thicken against the fabric of my clothes, and my gums and fingers tingle as fangs and claws slide out. I look up at Tiago in terror that our masks will tear, but even though his body has grown beastly, his head remains wrapped in the white petal.
Are you okay? he asks me telepathically.
Yeah, I say, looking down to make sure my shirt is still hanging loosely off my frame. My chest juts out more now, but it’s fine when I hunch my shoulders. If my arm muscles were bigger, I could at least look like a bodybuilder.
Why did we transform?
When these many wolves come together, if enough of us shift, it pulls on the rest of us, he says as I follow him into the arena, the ground cushioned with rose petals.
We orbit the space in search of a good place to stand, sticking to the outskirts so we have access to the exits. Yamila must have wanted it this way, I say into his mind. But how did she convince the Cazadores to keep the brujas out?
It wouldn’t take much. She probably played on the lobizones’ fears of the brujas using magic to interfere.
Disgusted as I am by how she betrayed the other witches to feed her ambition, Yamila did us a favor, since now we can communicate. Tiago and I join a cluster of guys in masks, and a couple of them nod at us in solidarity. I hope we look like part of their group.
The place keeps filling up, everyone crowding the elevated dais where a legion of werewolves awaits. I scan their faces, and my gaze snags on hers.
The only bruja in the whole Colosseum.
Yamila’s scarlet scarf flaps in the breeze as her fiery eyes survey the crowd, no doubt searching for mine. But I keep sorting through the faces until I spot Gael’s golden head.
My father is standing in the far back, like he’s trying to avoid being seen. He doesn’t seem to be in shackles or anything, and I exhale in relief.
By now, I can sense my telepathic channel to Tiago easily, since we’re so close, but Gael and I have only spoken this way once. Concentrating on his face, I focus on transmitting my thoughts to him.
Gael?
His coral eyes go wide as they sweep the crowd, and he strides across the stage. Manu?
I’m near the back, with Tiago. We’re masked—
Leave! Right now! He’s practically shouting. Even from this far I can see the splotches of red on his face. Hurry!
But Yamila said—
She’s baiting you!
What about Ma? Where is she?
She’s safe. I’ve got her.
My whole system stalls. It feels like every muscle just relaxed at once, and it takes me a moment to make sure I’m still breathing. Ma is free at last.
Where is she?
I’ll explain everything, but not now. Trust me.
Why are you here?
There’s no time! You need to go—
WHERE?
The question is a shout even inside my head. My spine stiffens, and I feel Tiago’s gaze on me, like he senses my conversation.
W-we don’t know what we’re doing, I admit to Gael, my inner voice softening. We haven’t found any allies, we’re out of semillas, and it’s only a matter of time before—
The Coven, he says matter-of-factly. I thought Saysa would have made contact by now.
My eyes widen beneath the mask.
It’s real?
“Bienvenidos, lobos.” Welcome, wolves.
Yamila cuts into our conversation, her sultry voice amplified into every corner of the Colosseum.
She looks at Gael questioningly, and he retreats, blending into the row of Cazadores behind her.
“A single name has summoned you here,” she goes on in Spanish. “Even decades later, he haunts us.”
I look up at Tiago. I just talked to Gael. He says—
“Fierro.”
From the way Yamila scans the crowd, I know she’s still searching for me. “Like so many Septimus, you haven’t forgotten him. You want answers. You want closure. And right now, you can have it.”
We need to go, I say to Tiago.
“One of these wolves is not like the others.” Yamila’s tone is taunting.
Come on. Tiago turns toward the exits.
“Step forward and reveal yourself, or we will be forced to come find you.”
The two of us freeze. To move now would be to give ourselves away. We shouldn’t leave together, says Tiago. You go first—
“The exits have been barricaded.”
My breath hitches in my throat, and a rumble of reactions rolls through the gathering. She’s bluffing, says Tiago. She wants to provoke us. Don’t react.
Gael�
��s urgency wrings my chest, but Tiago is right—everyone is looking around, scrutinizing their neighbors. Those of us in masks are getting the most stares.
Cazadores are walking through the crowd looking for you! Gael’s voice breaks through my mind. He sounds desperate enough to do something stupid.
This was a mistake.
Gael says they’re in the crowd looking for us! I tell Tiago.
There’s jostling in the throng, ripples from the Cazadores searching for the only girl here. Let’s go, says Tiago, gripping my arm. I’ll fight anyone stationed at the exit, then we run—
But as soon as I take a step, I feel a tingling in my skull.
Tiago drops my arm and brushes his fingertips across his face like he feels it too. Then I exhale, and my mask curls off, joining the wilted petals on the ground.
All at once, my heavy hair tumbles loose, and my clothing cinches to frame my curves. I stare at Tiago’s hairy face in horror, and the words over the Colosseum’s entrance come flying back to me.
Every flower falls.
The group of wolves has been unmasked too, and one by one their eyes lock onto me in surprise.
I’m the only one without a bushy beard.
The only one whose body hair hasn’t darkened.
The only one—as far as I can see—with breasts.
Tiago’s voice tears through my numb mind: GO!
I want to run, but there’s a tug on my insides, and I gasp for air. My bones sear in agony as my skeleton caves in, my claws and fangs retracting, skin tightening, until even my veins feel squeezed. Once it’s over, the other wolves have also transformed back, and they’re all gawking at me.
“¿Qué es eso?”
“¡Es una niña!”
“No puede ser.”
“Tiene que ser brujería.”
“Una bruja no puede transformarse.”
“Ella no es bruja.”
Half the crowd thinks I’m a witch, the other half doesn’t know what to make of me. Their words funnel together into an unintelligible jumble of sounds, until at last, I hear it:
“Es lobizona.”
6
Yamila’s bloodred eyes lock onto mine from the dais, and I’m overcome with the real reason I’ve been terrified to see her again.
“What. Are. You?” she asked me in that Lunaris cave.
The question is a curse that’s followed me across borders and worlds. It’s my fear of the answer that’s kept me from confiding in my friends about how I evaded Yamila’s magic.
But she knows. Yamila knows all my secrets. Except one.
Fierro.
“STOP HER!”
At Yamila’s shout, Tiago breaks into a sprint, pulling me with him to the exit. Since we stayed near the back, we don’t have far to go—but Cazadores are already blocking our path.
There’s at least five of them crowding the nearest archway like goalies, waiting to catch us. Until a thunderous explosion rocks the dais, and the ground shudders as a curtain of black smoke spreads swiftly through the air, enshrouding everything.
“Gael!” I cry out, but Tiago clings to my hand, not letting me go back.
He pulls me forward with him slowly now, since we can’t see. His grip tightens, and I hear the cracking of bone as Tiago uses his free arm to punch a Cazador. Then he shoves me away as something huge collides with him.
I bend my knees and raise my arms, ready to defend myself if a Cazador breaks through the smoke, but someone squeezes my shoulder and leads me out of the Colosseum, onto the rose-laced streets of La Rosada.
I spin around, relieved to see it’s Tiago and not an officer who’s got me. But the feeling only lasts a beat.
The crowd outside is as big as the one inside, and they all rush forward as soon as they see me. Tiago and I are swarmed by Septimus shouting questions at us. Mirrors are held up to our faces, and my petrified reflection stares back at me everywhere I look. In Spanish, they ask:
“What’s your name?”
“Where are you from?”
“Who are your parents?”
“How did you keep this secret so long?”
“Can we see you transform?”
“Aren’t you el lobo invencible?”
They don’t sound like Cazadores. They sound like—
“Press,” growls Tiago.
The pink streets of La Rosada are infested with reporters. They jab at me with their mirrors as Tiago parts a path for us, but at least their presence creates a buffer between us and the Cazadores. Yet they’re also making it impossible for us to escape.
As more and more Septimus are drawn to the commotion, I hear different types of footsteps—the fast, hard, chasing kind. We start shoving our way through the mass, but even if we make it out, how will we find Cata and Saysa in this madness?
“¿Son novios?”
“¿Por qué te buscan los Cazadores?”
“¿Es verdad que tenés información sobre Fierro?”
Are Tiago and I dating, why are the Cazadores after me, is it true I have information about Fierro—?
An icy wisp of wind curls around my ear and curves under my skull. It feels more like a whisper than weather, and Tiago cuts in a new direction. The curious crowd follows us like a current, and we push our way toward the largest tree in sight, with flakey bark and feathery leaves. Its limbs are waving in the wind, even though there’s no breeze.
“¡Ahí están!” shouts Yamila.
I feel her approach like a heat wave, and when I spin around, I spot Gael first.
I exhale in relief that he wasn’t hurt in the explosion, then the Cazadores elbow in, and Tiago and I are pressed against a wall of Septimus. There’s too many bodies between us and the arboledo, and we have no room to maneuver. We’re never going to make it.
“I can’t breathe,” I say, getting an idea. Then I pretend to faint into Tiago’s arms.
“Manu?” he asks in a panic. “Stand back!” he roars at the crowd, and my heart stalls at the feeling in his voice.
The crowd backs away just the tiniest amount, but it’s enough. “Get them!” shouts Yamila in Spanish.
With a burst of speed, Tiago knocks over a few bodies as we dive into an opening in the arboledo’s trunk. As soon as he sets me down, a small hand closes around mine, tugging me into a tunnel.
Once we’re sealed inside our own passage, I bend over to catch my breath, nearly collapsing from my nerves.
“What happened?” Saysa and Cata ask almost in unison.
“I was exposed.”
“Yamila had a backup plan,” says Tiago, hugging his arms across his chest. “She tipped off the press. She left us nowhere to hide.”
He looks a little peaked, and I wonder if that crowd just triggered memories from five years ago, when he became el lobo invencible.
“What about Gael?” asks Saysa.
Shaking his head, Tiago says, “They don’t know who he is.”
“Then why is he here?” demands Cata. “What happened with your mom? And where are your masks—”
“Gael didn’t explain,” I say. “He just said my mom is safe, then he warned us to run, and before we could go, our masks fell—everyone’s did—”
Saysa smacks herself on the forehead and looks at Cata. “La Rosada! The rules for roses are different there! How did we miss that?”
Cata frowns. “But the mascarete flower isn’t a rose—”
“Not now, but originally it evolved from the rose family. I should have known!”
Cata looks paler than usual, but she doesn’t say anything. Being wrong isn’t something she excels at.
“How’d you escape?” Saysa asks us.
“Some sort of explosion,” says Tiago. “I still can’t believe we got away.”
“I can,” says Saysa. “If the Cazadores had brought their bruja agents, you’d be in custody by now.”
None of us disagrees.
Tiago blows out a hard breath. “We’re going to have a much harder time keeping a l
ow profile now that everyone knows Manu and I are together.”
Cata’s shoulders cave in, and she looks like she’s seconds from dropping to the ground. I’m not used to seeing her so defeated. Saysa stares at the patterns of smaller roots and the patches of cottony cobwebs, and even Tiago leans against the wall, seemingly out of ideas.
“Gael said to find the Coven.”
All three faces snap to mine.
“What?” asks Tiago.
“He said that?” asks Cata.
“Did he say how?” asks Saysa.
I shake my head at the last question. “He seemed to think you’d find a way.”
Saysa’s eyes glow bright green, and without another word, she marches down the tunnel, leaving us no choice but to follow.
* * *
By the time light fills the horizon, my legs are aching and I’m breathing in salty air.
I hug my arms around my torso as we pop out on a small wintry island in the midst of a vast ocean, where Septimus are walking on water. I blink a few times.
Staring at their feet in amazement, I squint until I spot the glint of frozen walkways along the sea’s surface. The paths connect a smattering of tiny islands.
“Marina,” says Tiago as he scans the view. “We used to love it here as kids.”
“It’s a manada made up of one hundred and twenty-seven islands, including the most dangerous place on Earth, La Isla Malvada.” Cata is quick to spout her knowledge of each place we visit, but she never shares anything personal, like a memory. She always sounds like she’s reciting from a textbook.
“Do you and your mom visit your dad in Kerana often?” I ask her.
“No.”
There’s an awkward silence, which Saysa fills. “This is where Zaybet’s family lives.”
“Is she why we’re here?” asks Cata. “I thought you reached out to her a bunch of times already.”
“It’s different now.”
We follow Saysa around the arboledo’s upraised roots, to the other side of the tiny island, where a new vista is revealed: a large landmass with colorful buildings and icy streets. “We could be recognized,” warns Tiago.
Cazadora Page 5