Cece Rios and the King of Fears, page 7
Something had found us.
My blood raced. My skin prickled with hot and sharp sweat. But I wore the bones of a Dark Saint and weapons forged to protect my familia. I ripped out my throwing knife and slipped into the first pose of the Amenazante dance, ready to face off. The dance was not just a performance, after all. First and foremost, it was a martial art. One I was practiced in. I lifted my knife as the intruder’s approach grew louder and louder. Little Lion gestured for me to run. But I planted my feet.
“I’m not recovered enough to protect you!” he hissed.
“Then you better hide.” My dress whipped around my ankles.
A body landed, perfectly crouched, on the empty fireplace stones. I didn’t even pause to take in the creature—I flung my dagger, aimed right for the eyes. Lion cried out.
The criatura turned its head just enough to dodge the blade—and caught it in their teeth, by the golden hilt. I froze. Slowly, they turned their dark head to meet me. Everything stilled. Without a word, I knew the importance of the shadow staring at me across the dusk and distance.
“Jaguar,” Lion said, as he forced himself to stand.
In our legends, there were a few animals that my people revered. The coyote was a complicated symbol of wisdom and creation, but also mischief and trickery. The black lion, though the species was now extinct, was honored for its indominable strength and power. And then there was the last of the three great creatures Mother Desert had particularly blessed—the jaguar.
Legend said Jaguar was the first criatura Coyote ever made. And her animal wasn’t just a symbol of power, like the black lion was, but of the authority of kings and queens—the right to rule. Early tribal royalty in the south of Isla del Antiguo Amanecer even used to hunt the mighty jungle cat, just to prove they were worthy to ascend the throne.
Jaguar slunk forward into the room, still holding my knife in her teeth. Its orange glow outlined her deep ebony skin and strong, muscular shoulders. I yanked my hunter’s knife out next and went to charge, but Little Lion ran over and skidded into a protective stance in front of me. The small action confused the heat in my chest. I wanted to show him I could take Jaguar on myself. But I also knew I was at a disadvantage with one fewer knife, and in cramped quarters.
“You looking for a fight?” I demanded, glaring at Jaguar instead.
Jaguar spat my knife to the ground in front of us. Its orange light went out as her light brown eyes lifted to meet Lion’s. She nodded to him, so her long, black hair fell over her shoulder. It was combed back in a thousand tight braids, all strung together into a single thick one. Brightly colored ribbons—red, gold, magenta, and orange—weaved through it all the way down.
“You’re on a dangerous path, Little Lion,” she said. Her voice was softer and higher pitched than I’d expected—the way Cece sounded when she’d just woken up from a nap. “Returning here when you were free. And with a girl who has no heartbeat.”
Lion shifted to cover more of me with his arm. “Did a bruja send you?”
Jaguar scanned his face. Her gaze was a bit filmy, the way criaturas looked when they were being controlled by a bruja. But she pulled a necklace free from her shirt—a gray-black andesite soul stone, carved with the elegant lines of a predatory jaguar.
Lion’s shoulders relaxed.
I pointed my knife at her. “So what? She might report us herself.”
“And what would you do if I tried?” she asked, her voice soft and dangerous.
“Fight you,” Lion said, with no hesitation. He flexed his claws. “Even you.”
Jaguar’s head tilted. The response didn’t seem to bother her. “Something matters to you more, then.” In one smooth movement, she turned and prowled toward a nearby door. “Follow me. I know where you’re going, and I know the way. The patrol will circle back and find you if we don’t leave soon.”
Everything in my body screamed not to trust her. Something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it—was it the way she spoke, or her bleary expression?—but my gut told me to find another way.
I shook my head. “No way! I’m not going anywhere with a criatura—”
“Juana.” Little Lion turned to me. “She knows Devil’s Alley better than I do.” His voice softened, and more sweat trickled down his forehead. “If she’s managed to stay out of a bruja’s hands, she might even know a secret way in and out of El Cucuy’s castle. She’s our best bet.”
“I don’t like the look in her eyes,” I hissed. “Why would she want to help us overturn the Dark Saints?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
We looked Jaguar’s way. She stood near a window, so just a slant of orange light fell over her distant eyes.
“El Sombrerón and El Cucuy are a plague,” she said, lifting her chin. “I want them gone. But El Cucuy is powerful. And because El Sombrerón is now mortal, he’s been locked away inside his room to keep him safe, behind a special door with a puzzle combination only you, besides El Cucuy himself, knows. You are the one bride who has gone inside his suite, seen him enter the combination—and left again.” She folded her arms. “I’m assuming you want to get your soul back. Which means you’ll have to kill him, no question. That is an opportunity I won’t let slide.”
So she was in it for the same reason Lion was, huh? Revenge against the Dark Saints. Guess we had that much in common.
But I still didn’t like it.
I grabbed Lion by the shirt and yanked him around, so we huddled away from her. “She could still be lying,” I whispered in a hurry. “She could betray us.”
A calm strength filled Little Lion’s expression. “If she does,” he said, “I’ll fight her with you. Por favor—let’s go.”
Something about the way he phrased that moved my insides. Like my organs were rearranging themselves to fit his sentence inside me. Fight her with me. Fight her with me. He was saying I wouldn’t have to fight by myself. And I wouldn’t have to be fought for.
Slowly, we turned back to face her. A distant, stony shriek filled the air. I scooped up my throwing knife and sheathed it. I worked my jaw. I didn’t want to work with any criaturas. I could barely stand Lion. But—I glanced at his tired red eyes, and Jaguar’s soul stone. I had to try to think clearly. Getting my soul back and punishing El Sombrerón were my top priorities. If that meant another deal with a criatura, so be it.
“Fine,” I said. “But I don’t like it.” I charged toward the door. “Vamos.”
9
Cece Rios and the Ocean Sanctuary
The ocean was so cold it almost burned as La Sirena dragged me into its depths. I tried to kick my way free, but her grip was too strong. My lungs begged for air. My inner ears rumbled, and I fought the urge to gasp.
Suddenly, the hand on my belt loop released me.
I drifted free in the water. My lungs burned as darkness surrounded me. I thought I’d known silence in the desert cerros back home, but the quiet of the ocean was like a blanket. It wrapped around me in a blissful, rich hush as I floated gently into a wall.
It was cool to the touch and smooth. I looked for La Sirena in the darkness, but beneath my hands, stones twinkled to life with a turquoise glow. They lit up the figure of Mother Ocean, just like the one in the mural at the Sun Sanctuary. My lungs squeezed tight. What? How was this here? The light traveled out, and from the darkness, the images of the other three gods lit up to complete the mural I’d memorized. They were a perfect match.
Suddenly, turquoise light shot out from the mural, and I started as it raced around me, lighting up a circular room with stained glass windows. La Sirena had dragged me into a building? Why was there a building underwater? Behind me, the front entrance had two open silver doors—and they slammed shut the moment the turquoise light reached them. I jumped. Wait, how was I going to breathe?
A thump echoed through the room, and the water level began to drop overhead. Air! I swam upward and gasped in a huge, bright breath.
“Ah!” I coughed and spat out salt water.
I waited for the sea to finally drain away, and the soles of my soaking shoes met the tiled floor. The whole room glowed with large turquoise stones embedded in the ceiling above, like little lamps. Wow. I turned in a circle, head craned up, and took the place in. My soul thrummed as I stared at the mural of the four gods. As Mother Ocean’s depiction filled with light. And I smiled. Laughter filled my mouth. This was it, wasn’t it?
This was the real Ocean Sanctuary.
“You are the one the Ocean has waited for,” came a silky, slinking voice.
I whirled around. La Sirena stared at me across the room from a gigantic bowl filled with leftover water. I blinked. It was too large to have any other use—had someone made it for her? She patted the painted pot fondly with webbed fingers and eyed me through streaks of her long black hair. Her skin was silky and smooth, but patterned with blue scales like a sea serpent’s. Her tail made waves in the water of her cistern, and she smiled over at me with razor-sharp teeth.
“I am La Sirena,” she said. “I am the one who was snatched and turned. I am the Criatura of the Deep and the Drowned.”
“I saw you this morning. Were you trying to bring me here all along?” I drifted closer to her tub.
“Sí.” She watched me as I neared. “It is my duty. As one of the Court of Fears, I am an ally of the curanderas. And you are the only one who still hears, who listens. Who soon will know.”
Well, that would have been nice to know a couple of minutes ago. “Wait! You knew the curanderas?” I gasped and ran up to her, beaming. She pulled back a bit as if surprised. “But they lived hundreds of years ago. Before Tierra del Sol was nearly destroyed.” I scanned La Sirena’s face. She looked like a young adult. I was surprised she could remember that long ago.
“I am seven hundred years old in this, my third lifetime,” she said. “Dark criaturas do not age the way animal criaturas do, curanderita. Coyote did not Rename us to have lives. We were made to be monsters.” She placed her clammy, webbed hands on my cheeks. They were cold, and her breath in my face was even colder.
A chill scampered down my back. I smiled awkwardly as La Sirena withdrew and sank back into her pot of seawater, up to her chin.
“But the curanderas did not mind. I knew them well,” she said, smiling with her sharp teeth. “Consuelo made this for me.” She patted the pot again.
“Who’s Consuelo?”
“The last ocean curandera,” she said. “Before you. But Consuelo was not the last curandera to be in this sacred place, chiquita.” La Sirena flicked a single webbed finger toward the mural. “Another curandera has waited centuries for the one who can speak the language of souls.”
Language of souls? I followed Sirena’s finger back to the mural, where a small box sat inside the wall beneath it. It looked like a brick had been removed to make space for it. I approached it, my shoes sloshing, and carefully pulled the box from the wall. Before I even opened it, I could feel a distant sort of noise calling from inside it. It was almost like—a voice. But it was so quiet, it was hard to tell. Was I imagining things?
I glanced at La Sirena. “You said she’s been waiting?”
“She is waiting.” La Sirena pointed at the box again.
My soul filled with a restless pulse. The noise vibrated through the box, into my hands, up to my soul. And it was getting louder. Slowly, I pulled the box open. Inside sat a big chunk of raw, iridescent moonstone.
“She is speaking,” La Sirena said, as I touched my fingers to its smooth surface. The strange noise pulsated up my skin. “Can you hear her?”
The noise rushed up my bones, raced across my chest, and resonated in my soul with colors like cream and sky blue. My soul stone lit up. I’d felt something like this before, hadn’t I? It was so familiar. My mind flashed back to my fight with El Sombrerón, and the way Juana’s soul, in braid form, had burned in my hand.
This wasn’t just moonstone, was it? This was someone’s transformed soul.
My heart beat faster. “Curandera?” I called.
Ayúdame. The fully formed word poured out of the stone.
I gasped. She could hear me! In a rush, I pulled the soul free of the box and clutched it to my chest. A knot formed in my throat as its white light flickered weakly. This was a person. How long had she been here? All alone? Trapped, like Juana had been?
“You must bring her back,” La Sirena said.
I looked up. “How?”
“You brought back your sister,” she said. “Didn’t you?”
How did she know that? “But Juana—” My eyebrows pulled together. “I don’t really know how she came back.”
All I knew was that she’d been transformed into a braid by El Sombrerón, and after I’d spoken to her soul, it had caught fire and she’d become a person again. I didn’t know why it worked. I turned back to the curandera’s stone. It started to flash with quick, small bursts of white light. Like she knew someone was there. The voice came again: Ayúdame, ayúdame.
She needed me. Even if I wasn’t sure how to help, I had to try.
Slowly, I pulled my soul stone out of my shirt and pressed it to this stranger’s. In my chest, a rumble grew, like a brilliant storm—not the kind that sends hail to ruin crops, but the kind that brings life to the desert. I took a deep breath. When I’d brought Juana back, I’d reached out to her soul the same way I spoke to Coyote’s or Lion’s.
Hola, curandera. I pushed the words toward the stone in my hand. It felt awkward at first, like talking to myself. But the flickering light became a steady glow in response. I don’t know you, but no one should live trapped like this.
The light grew brighter. I squeezed my eyes shut. You can do it! Come back. I reached out toward her with my soul, and my stone glowed too. I felt the strong, bubbling water of my soul pour over into the moonstone. You don’t have to stay here anymore. I’ll help you.
Suddenly, the stone burst open like a firework.
I dropped it and fell back against the floor. But the stone didn’t. It floated in the air and morphed into pure, brilliant light. I shielded my face and peeked between my fingers. The blinding silhouette of a woman pressed outward from all directions, white flashes reflecting across the mural behind her, along with a sweet, desperate gasp.
The brightness finally faded, and a woman stood before me in the aftermath.
She appeared about Mamá’s age, with black hair down to her waist, the roots and ends of them stained white. She pressed her hands to her temples, and I realized the gasp had been hers and that she was panting, catching her breath. Slowly, her eyes opened. They were black, but somehow, they caught the light no matter which way she turned. Like stars waited in her irises.
She lowered her hands to her sides. Her dress came to her ankles, covered in painstaking embroidery but torn in several places. Her face was streaked with mud and her sleeves with dried blood, like she’d just come from a battlefield. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. If she was a curandera, she must have been part of the battle of Tierra del Sol. But it was so surreal that I could only sit there, gaping up at her.
The curandera scanned the interior of the sanctuary, over my head, and stopped on La Sirena’s little seawater bath. Her shock morphed into something softer: hope.
“La Sirena?” The woman touched her hair. “I’m back—¿qué pasó? How—”
“You are back, Metztli.” La Sirena nodded toward me. “And it is because you are no longer alone.”
The woman lowered her starry eyes to me. I felt silly all of a sudden, sprawled awkwardly on the floor, in my hand-me-down shirt from Juana and ripped, hole-riddled jacket from Papá. I grinned to try to make up for it.
“¡Hola!” I waved. “Um, my name is Cece. I’m glad you’re not—er, a stone anymore.”
She crouched in front of me, tapping her chin. “So you are the voice who called,” she said. “You are the one who listened and gave.”
She spoke a lot like La Sirena. Maybe it was because they were both so old.
“It has been two hundred years,” La Sirena said, answering the woman’s unasked question. Her tail made waves in the water. “She is the only curandera since the battle of Tierra del Sol.”
The curandera’s brows jumped up. “And yet”—she reached her hand out to help me up—“she has done what we have never known to be possible.”
I took her offering, and she pulled me up to stand.
“I am Metztli Valente,” she said. “Quickly, curanderita. We must leave. Necesito moonlight.”
“Why do you need moonlight?” I followed her to the sanctuary entrance. Then gasped and ran after her. “Wait, you’re a moon curandera, aren’t you?”
She flattened a hand against the silver doors. “Sí, and you are touched of Mother Ocean. So you must be the one to open the doors and let us free.” She tapped the entrance. “Speak, and the sanctuary will listen. It was made for such things.”
Oh, that made sense. But I still felt awkward as I reached out and tried knocking on the door. Maybe this would work?
“Perdón,” I called out to the building. “Um, gracias for keeping us safe, but we’d like to go now.”
“Excelente.” Metztli’s took my hand as the doors started to glow blue. “Now, be ready.”
The doors sprang open, and the ocean flooded in. I forced myself not to yelp as the water swept Metztli and me outside. We tumbled in the rush of waves, held together only by Metztli’s grip. Then La Sirena cut through the water like a knife after us, grabbed Metztli’s free hand, and dragged us both to the surface.
We landed on the beach. I coughed and spluttered, shaking water from my hair. When I looked up, Metztli was standing in the light of the moon.
She had her arms spread and her head craned back as the night poured over her. Staring up at the sky, her eyes filled with so much light that, for a moment, they appeared completely white. The shadows under them disappeared, and she took a long, steady breath in.
And let it out as she gazed down at me.
