Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything

by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

  “I’m not leaving,” my dad growls.

  Noah shakes his head. “We can’t. We can’t leave you here.”

  Rose crosses her arms. “Looks like you’re stuck with us.”

  Mom closes her eyes, as if in prayer. She opens them and spots River. “Don’t let her kill anyone.”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Martinez,” Omar says. “We won’t.”

  River nods over Omar’s head. “You know I can’t hold her back too long. She’s probably at her wit’s end right about now, and you know what that means.”

  Before he’s even finished speaking, Mom wraps her arms around Dad. “Te amo,” she says, as though it’s torn from her. She grabs my hand and pulls me into an office.

  The last thing I see before I shut the door is River staring at me with those moon eyes. Like he knows something.

  175

  WE’RE IN SOME OFFICE. SMALL, with a desk squeezed in. It’s dark except for the occasional spotlight leaking through the window. When I look back at Mom she’s got a pained expression on her face. “This is something I need to do, Sia.”

  She holds a knife.

  176

  “KATIA KEPT TELLING ME THAT you’re not my Mom,” I say, my voice shaking. “I didn’t believe her until now. My mother would never do this to me.”

  “Sia.” She’s crying. “I don’t want to. But I know what they’ll do with you once they get you. They’ll torture you so bad, you’ll want to die. Then they might actually do it. Kill you.”

  “This isn’t gonna help. Your plan is outrageous.” I back up until my shoulders hit the wall. “How do you know this is even gonna work?” I gesture to the glint of metal on the blade. It shakes.

  “The powers. They’re viral. They’re in la sangre.”

  I close my eyes, my chest heaving. There’s some absurdly loud yelling outside the door. “How do you know this is gonna work?”

  She grabs my hand and when I look up, her eyes are right in front of mine. “Because however much River loves me, I love you whole universes more.”

  I snap my hand away. “Whole universes, huh? If that were true, we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place, Mom. If you hadn’t walked the fucking desert by your fucking self—” I can hardly breathe, so I take a second and just choke in air. “If you really loved us—” Again, a choke.

  The paths of our lives are cut, no, stabbed with shouldn’t haves. And at every point, there’s someone to blame. Sheriff McGhee. Our entire racist fucking country and its immigration system. But right now, I am pointing a finger right at my mother’s face. And she’s crying.

  “It was reckless,” she says. “I was so desperate to be with you again, I didn’t think anything could stop me.” She scoffs. “Mami did it with me when I was a baby. I didn’t think it’d be that bad.” And she laughs and then cries again.

  “Abuela was a bruja.” I’m wiping my eyes, too. “Remember, she could make the sky break open with a swish of her knife.”

  “I remember.” And she looks in my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  I want to be mad at her for a hundred thousand years. But the fact is, I thought she was dead. And instead, she’s right in front of me, warm, beautiful, even with red-rimmed eyes and a snotty nose. A week ago I would’ve crossed the whole Sonoran alone just to be able to hug her again. So I get it. I can’t pretend I don’t.

  And that’s what I do now, I wrap my arms around her and hug her as hard as I can. She sobs into my hair. And then I step back, holding my arm toward the knife, like an offering.

  177

  SHE ROLLS UP MY SLEEVE and nicks me at the top of my forearm. “I’m sorry,” she whispers again. She cuts her fingers and drips her blood onto mine.

  We stare at my arm for a few seconds. “Do you feel anything?” she asks.

  I swallow. “It feels tingly.”

  “Good,” she says. She looks like she wants to bawl again, but instead, she holds my hand.

  178

  “YOU KNOW HOW I SPEED up real fast?” She says. I can barely hear her through all the banging and yelling outside the door. We jump when there’s a shot.

  My hands shake and she wraps her arms around me. “I want you to remember this. It’s not that I’m faster. It’s that everyone else is slower.”

  “I don’t understand,” I whisper.

  She holds me tighter. “We can control time, m’ija.”

  179

  THE DOOR BURSTS OPEN AND there is Katia, all elegance in a white suit with a long jacket. She smiles. “Aha.”

  180

  KATIA LUNGES FOR ME, HAND arching toward my throat again, but Mom jumps between us. “Sweet Magdalena,” Katia hisses. “Always in my way.” She grabs a large picture frame off the wall and knocks my mother in the head—all so fast, it’s a blur. I’m not sure if I even saw what I saw.

  And then Mom flings the frame right back at Katia, broken glass scattering like beetles.

  “Sia, run!” Mom screams.

  Katia lifts a desk and hurls it at Mom, who kicks it right back.

  I look around. There. A terra-cotta pot holds a cotton candy–pink amaryllis. I lift the whole thing and fling it right at Katia, who’s in the middle of a freakin’ roundhouse kick.

  A six-inch clay pot. What’s that gonna do to a woman who can lift an office desk with the tips of her fingers? I’m not expecting much.

  But when it hits her, she flies back. I mean, Katia slams to the floor and slides as though I’d just tossed a fifty-pound kettlebell into her belly.

  Katia rolls her legs and kicks up to standing with nothing but ease. But the way she looks at me. Like I’m the biggest platter of arroz con pollo. Like she’s starving.

  “Well, done, Lena,” she says, her eyes still on me. “A blood transfer by a, what, a pocket knife? A little brute. But I’m not going to complain. You’ve just made my job very easy.”

  “You will not touch her,” Mom yells, and her body melts until there’s just the shadow of her, stretched across the floor, curling around Katia. When Mom returns, there’s a humming noise. Apparently coming back to the land of the living makes you part of a bee swarm for just a moment.

  She grabs Katia by the waist and hurls her against the wall. When Katia lands, she doesn’t move. We wait a few moments. There’s nothing but the sounds of our breaths. My eyes are still on Katia, but she doesn’t look like she’s even breathing. I resist the urge to run over and kick her.

  Mom doubles over, coughing.

  “Mami,” I say.

  She holds her hand up. “Sia, leave. Please. Go now.”

  She can’t even look at me. Her skin is pale. “Mom, I’m not—”

  But we’re interrupted with a chuckle. Katia performs another flawless kip-up and lets her laugh end with a sigh. “Shadow work, Lena? You know you’re way too weak for that.”

  Too fast for me to make anything out, Mom and Katia run toward each other. Their bodies are just pieces of smoke, their edges all faded and fast.

  And then they stop.

  “Oh my God.” I stumble backward.

  181

  THIS. THIS IS CLEAR AS the full moon on a dry desert night: Katia, shoving the gun at my mother’s head. Mom, half-conscious, glancing at me. “I love—” she begins.

  Katia pulls the trigger.

  My mouth is wide open, my eyes are wide open, I’m clawing the carpet to get to her, my mami, my moon, my mamá, my everything.

  But she is empty. Nothing moves but her blood into the carpet.

  “Take her,” Katia says. Black-clothed men grab me and I scream. They drag me out of the room.

  “They killed her,” I choke. My voice sounds so far away and I don’t even know who I’m talking to. “They killed her.”

  I hear my father yelling, telling them to let me go. I see Noah, under a table, cell phone out. “They killed her. They killed her.”

  I can only whisper it now. And it’s like I can’t stop.

  They killed her, they killed her, they killed
her.

  182

  DAD’S FACE IS BONE-WHITE. A sound comes out of him I’ve never heard before, like he’s being strangled from the inside. And then he narrows his eyes and tightens his jaw and I know in that moment, his rage has been pulled over the grief like a cloak.

  He tosses his head back and I swear I can hear the crunch of the SWAT guy’s nose behind him. “Fuck!” the man yells, but before he can move, blink, breathe, Dad’s tossed him over his shoulder, pulling the man’s gun into his own arms.

  “Which one of you killed my wife?!” The gun waves wildly in Dad’s hands.

  “Sir,” another man says, his gun aimed at my father. “Put the weapon down.”

  “What for? So you can kill me? Kill my daughter, these children? I don’t think so, fucker.”

  “Aw,” a cool voice rings behind me. I clench my hands.

  “It was her,” I say, flinging my head in Katia’s direction. “She shot Mami.”

  Dad points the gun at Katia.

  “Don’t, Mr. Martinez!” Rose shifts her shoulders under the arms of the SWAT jerk behind her. “That’s your soul. What she did, that’s between her and God, what you’re doing—”

  “Ah, a believer.” Katia smiles. “I’ve always liked those the best.”

  I blink and Katia is on Dad, the gun now in her hands. She smacks his face with it and blood flies. She steps back with a smile on her face.

  “No!” I scream.

  Omar’s struggling in some other bastard’s grip, right next to Rose. “What do you mean by that? You like believers? What does that mean?” His face is pale and sweat dots his temples.

  “Omar,” Rose hisses. “Now is not the time.”

  “Oh,” he says, “now is the perfect time! That Nordic alien just killed Sia’s mom, right? Well, she has to explain herself! Nordics are pledged to honor and protect humans! Ever since Roosevelt sold us out to the Greys back in the late thirties!”

  “Oh, one of those believers!” Katia approaches Omar, who shrinks back. “I changed my mind. Actually, you’re my favorite sort.” She shakes her head, narrowing her eyes. “So much more absurd than the rest.”

  “Absurd?” Omar huffs, but then he widens his eyes. “You just killed someone! A really nice lady, okay? For no reason! And you’re calling me—”

  He’s cut off as Katia bops him on the head. Omar now hangs limp in the officer’s hands.

  “Omar!” Rose screams. “Omar!”

  A blur of redwood and taupe whirls in front of her. My eyes adjust when it stops, and River’s hands are on Katia’s gun, swiping it away. “Not again, Katia,” he says.

  Her eyes widen for a moment, but then she pulls her mouth into a hard line. She lifts her head and straightens her jacket. “I thought I threw you out the window, River.”

  Before she’s finished her sentence, River becomes a blur again, and it’s so hard to keep track of what the hell is happening. A whine and a buzz later, all the guns are piled behind River, unreachable, and each SWAT team member is knocked out on the ground.

  “Go,” he tells us. “Now!”

  “Come on!” Dad tosses Omar on his shoulder and we all follow.

  River flings Katia against the wall, and as we run out, I glance back at them, fighting so fast they’re clouds, men in black around them like the ravens that dot the sky.

  183

  “WHERE ARE WE GOING?” I yell.

  “Down.” I turn and see Imani running alongside us. She speeds ahead of Dad, which is like its own freakin’ superpower to me in those high heels. “This way.” We follow down a labyrinth of hallways, until we reach a massive cargo elevator. She slams her fist on the button.

  “Go to the basement,” she says as she ushers us in. “When you get there, run along the red stripe, following the exit signs. The door for Edman’s will take you to the grocer’s next door. From there, you can make it to the street.”

  A pounding noise begins and gets louder. She glances back. “You take care of Omar, you hear? I’m going to stall them.”

  “With what?” Noah says, his breath hard.

  She gives us a strained smile. “Live-ass footage.”

  The doors close on the image of Imani Clarke running toward the chaos in her gorgeous red stilettos.

  184

  WHEN THE ELEVATOR DOORS OPEN, we’re hit with warm, musky air. We run out, Rose grabbing me as we go.

  “Are you okay?”

  I shake my head.

  She nods, squeezing my forearm before letting go.

  The exit signs are so dim I wonder when this place was last inspected. Not for long, though. Mostly I just run.

  The door to the grocer’s is right there, or I hope it is. I mean, there’s a sign on it with a cornucopia filled with pumpkins.

  “What’s going on?” Omar grumbles. “Are you an alien? Damn, an alien that lifts. Hey, do me a favor, though. Put me down.”

  Dad and Noah help Omar until he’s standing upright. “We gotta move,” Dad barks. Before we reach the door, though, a dark blur darts in front of it.

  “What the—” Rose begins, but before she finishes, River is here, crouched, hands on his knees, looking like he might hurl.

  “Not that way,” he chokes out. “They’re waiting for you.”

  “Then where are we supposed to go?” My voice echoes, the anger heightened.

  “My car is right next to a grate.” He points behind us. “We could get—”

  “No.” My father’s voice shakes. “I don’t trust you. You got my wife killed. Now you’re trying to get my daughter—”

  “Not me,” River says, shaking his head, straightening his spine. “Katia—she’s—she’s lost it.”

  “Imani told us this is the only way out,” Noah says.

  “I know another.”

  “Yeah?” Dad says, stomping around Rose. “And I know you. You wanted my wife and now you want my daughter. I’m not letting another person I love—” His voice breaks.

  “You have to listen to me! They’re just on the other side of that door. We need to go—” River grabs my arm, pulling me backward, but he stops, releasing me. “You’re bleeding.” He stares at the stain on my sleeve.

  “Yeah, what of it?” Rose asks. “We’re all bleeding.”

  “She did it, didn’t she?” River’s eyes won’t leave mine now. “Lena. She turned you.”

  “Whoa!” Omar says. He seems wide awake now. “What’s ‘turned’ mean?” His eyes get huge as realization falls over him. “No way, Sia. No fucking way. She, like, marked you? Did she give you the green scales? What about crop circle tattoos?” He examines my arm with his fingers.

  “Shut up, Omar,” I say, snapping my hand back.

  “What’s—what are they talking about, Sia?” Noah asks.

  “Mom, she. Before she. Before they.” I take a breath, closing my eyes. “She put some of her blood in me.”

  River mutters words I don’t understand under his breath. He grabs my hand again. “Now we’ve really got to get you out of here.”

  “Let her go, hombre.” There’s the sound of a metal clink. I turn and Dad’s hands are out, his gun pointed right at River’s temple.

  “Mr. Martinez,” Rose hisses.

  “Dad, for the love of—” I huff. “Put that thing away.”

  “Open the door, Artemisia.”

  “That’s where they are.” River’s hands are up. “They’re waiting for you, Sia.”

  “Open the door, Artemisia.”

  “Dad, what if he’s right?”

  River moves impossibly fast to grab my father’s gun, but it’s like he’s weakened or something. My father kicks him and River hits the ground. “OPEN THE DOOR—”

  “Christ! Fine!” I push on the metal bar of the door.

  There, Katia smiles.

  “Sia,” she says. “Good to see you.”

  185

  MY GRANDMOTHER ALWAYS SAID WHEN we experience trauma, our soul fills with espanto, or terror. And that espanto makes
your soul split into pieces and run away to hide.

  I think that’s what’s happening to me right now. My whole soul shatters into a hundred parts, handfuls that scatter into the roads and bushes and desert like kangaroo mice.

  I’m not even there when they wrestle my father and Rose, Noah, and Omar away, slamming them against the ground with dull thuds. It’s like I’m in a bubble when Katia snarls at Noah and says, “You were warned via email to stay away from reporters, weren’t you? But you couldn’t listen. And now you’ll have to pay.”

  Noah’s grunts of pain snap me back. As though I breathe in all the pieces of my soul for just a minute, just for him. “Stop it!” I scream and she kicks at Noah’s belly.

  She turns and does the same to Omar. “How were we supposed to know that email was from you?” he squawks. “What kind of alien sends a threat by email, huh? Do you know how much spam—” He coughs as she kicks him so hard he rolls back.

  “Jesus Christ, stop it.” I can’t make my voice any louder without it breaking. “Stop!” Katia just smiles and turns back to Noah.

  186

  WHEN NOAH PASSES OUT, HIS head going limp on the asphalt, I feel it again—espanto. The thick exhale of my soul, breaking into parts, running away. Perhaps for good. Who knows. Who cares.

  I barely feel the black-clothed arms yank me up the stairs and into the night air. After a long while of nothing, I glance up and am not quite surprised to see I’m actually inside one of the black cars.

  I’m not sure if anything will ever really surprise me again.

  187

  KATIA CLIMBS IN, LEANS BACK, and lets out a long sigh. “Well, I’m getting in trouble for that unfortunate incident with Magdalena.” She frowns, and her eyes, they look like agony. After a split second, though, she smiles. “Thank goodness for daughters, eh?”