Shapeshifted

Page 42

  He grinned down at me, his face a rictus. Both hands on my shoulders, he shoved me back with more motion than force. It was his magic that followed through, sending me skidding like a strong wind into the wall, extra bones on the floor clattering away from me. I was pinned to the wall, a great weight pressing against my chest. “Stay here,” he commanded. “Someone should get to see. ”

  And then he returned his attention to the woman in the cage. “Adriana, mi niña esqueleto, mi mujer delgeda, la más pálida y rubia. ” He stroked his hands up and down the bars of the cage, bone and metal both. Bones on the wall behind me were jabbing into my back, but his power held me still. Maldonado leaned back and started waving his arms in the air in front of the cage in a pattern, like he was conducting a symphony. His voice rang out, as the curandero’s had on the previous night. I couldn’t get free.

  A dirty face appeared in the tunnel entrance. Maldonado seemed not to notice. It was the old woman returning. Go away! I tried to shout at her, but the bruja had stolen my voice.

  Grandmother walked in like a charmed snake, weaving back and forth. Maldonado’s hands included her in his gestures, and he crooned to her, encouraging her, pleading, begging, telling her where to go. And she listened. She came nearer—not to him, but to the cage.

  Inside it, Adriana had risen up. She was impossibly thin, cachectic, and the sleeveless white dress she wore hung off her. The outlines of her bones were clear to see, running just beneath their matching tattoos, and her face was tattooed into a grinning skull mask.

  Like a bird dancing for itself in front of a mirror, Grandmother and Adriana mimicked each other. Grandmother came closer to the bars of her cage, and Adriana followed, holding up her weakened body by leaning against the bars. Maldonado’s voice rose in a song-like prayer, and Grandmother stood up straight and leaned in. Adriana met her there, and their lips touched.

  Old and broken, and young and broken, different but paired, two halves of the same whole. I realized what I was seeing just as a strange light enveloped the place where they touched—if I squinted it looked like they were merging. Maldonado’s magic was uniting Santa Muerte: the old lost woman, the goddess held prisoner by the Shadows for so long that she was a hollow version of her own self, and putting her into Adriana’s starved, trapped form. Adriana’s hand went up, and Santa Muerte’s matched it, two hands pressing into each other until magic combined matter and only one hand remained.

  Maldonado’s voice went from whispers to shouting, and behind him Luz sat up. Night had finally arrived. She licked her lips, tasting my blood, and she looked at me with angry eyes. I’d betrayed her to her maker—but Anna was the only person who could save us all now. Then she saw Adriana and Grandmother, and the strange thing they were becoming, conjoined.

  “No!” She lunged at the end of the chains—I heard the bones I’d slid into her cuffs shatter.

  If Luz had just woken up—so had Anna. Would she get here in time? Where was she? Was she even still in town? I didn’t know. I started beating against the magic that held me, and it kept slamming me back into the bone wall, tighter each time.

  Another voice joined Maldonado’s. A flashlight beam illuminated the tunnel’s entrance, and then Olympio was there.

  No! Run! I tried to shout at him, but my voice was still gone.

  He came into the room like the boy I’d first seen outside the clinic, confident, and his prayers met Maldonado’s with a cocky tone. He didn’t wave his hands, just set his flashlight in his armpit, lining it up so it’d beam into Maldonado’s face, and kept repeating himself.

  Maldonado rebounded—I expected him to attack Olympio physically, but he redoubled his efforts toward controlling the women he held in thrall. The light where Grandmother and Adriana met got brighter—no matter what Olympio tried, Maldonado was too strong. Olympio realized it just as I did, while Luz was screaming obscenities in two languages, lunging like a rabid dog at the end of her chains.

  Olympio grabbed the flashlight from under his armpit and threw it at the cage.

  It flew end-over-end and only hit the corner of the cage. But it hit the bone there solidly, and knocked off one tiny flake.

  Maldonado began waving his hands madly, as if he was sending his orchestra toward destruction. He flung his hand out toward Olympio. His magic slammed into the boy, sending him reeling back into the wall beside me.

  I watched the tiny piece of bone drop as I heard Olympio grunt, wind knocked out of him by the force of his landing. The light holding the matched women together began to flicker and shake.

  “Edie—” Olympio whispered, gasping for air. There was a spear of tibia shooting out through his right shoulder—a bone from the wall behind us had pierced him through, back-to-front.

  Oh God, I yelled, still without a voice.

  Luz shouted a triumphant battle cry from behind the cage. She held up mangled hands—she’d broken the bones of her hands to free them from the silver cuffs. She ran for Grandmother and began to pry her back from Adriana with her arms. Maldonado stopped praying now, and started shouting. I dropped the few inches between me and the ground, yelped, and found I could talk.

  “Olympio—” I scurried over to where he was pinned. We were the two least magical things in the room—we needed to get the hell out. I reached behind him, where the wall was slick with his blood, and tried to pull the bone free from the wall. It was attached—embedded into cement. I couldn’t break it without hurting Olympio. With piercing wounds you were supposed to try to leave the object in—it might be applying pressure on arteries on the inside, stopping the person from bleeding out. But the shouting and fighting behind us wouldn’t last forever, and in Luz’s damaged state I couldn’t guarantee who would win.

  “This is going to suck,” I told Olympio.

  He gritted his teeth and nodded. “Do it. ”

  I took him by his shoulders and yanked him off the wall. The bone slid into his wound again and out the other side. He collapsed into me. I balled his hand into a fist and put it up against his chest, and I pressed the back of him into me, picking him up.

  “Come on,” I told us both. “Come on. ” I started drag-carrying him to the tunnel’s maw. Behind us, the shouting and sounds of fighting didn’t stop.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I wasn’t sure where we were going. The water fought against us, trying to steal Olympio away from me. We were lower here, so the water was deeper—I didn’t know if that meant I was going the wrong direction, or if it’d begun to rain outside. He whimpered every time I yanked him, and my chest was warm with his hot blood.

  “You can’t die,” I explained to both of us. “You can’t. ” I felt along the tunnel’s side with my shoulder, hitting it with the top of my head, the sound of the water susurrating around us, making me dizzy. What if I got turned around? What if Maldonado’s magic twisted the tunnel somehow? What if there was no safe place?

  “Come on. ” I pulled us both along. The air got fresher, and I had to fight the water more. I was soaked up to my thighs; I couldn’t feel from my feet to my knees. The only thing that kept me going was that I was carrying Olympio.

  The water rose and I stumbled, wrenching on Olympio’s arm. He cried out then; I heard it echo. I pulled him up again and turned to start sidestepping against the rising water-wall, trying to give it less of me to push against.

  “Edie? Olympio!” Our names, shouted from a distance.

  “¡Estoy aquí! Here!” Olympio shouted weakly from my arms.

  I couldn’t spare a breath to yell. If I lost my footing now, there’d be no regaining it; we’d both be washed away, battered against the tunnel walls.

  “Edie! Olympio!” The voice was more panicked. Closer.

  I saw light just as hands snatched in. I fought them instinctively. Olympio yelped as he was pulled from my arms.

  “We’ve got you—Edie—” Ti was there, pulling me forward against the tid
e, and Asher was at his side holding Olympio.

  “She’s down there—so’s he,” I whispered as soon as I felt safe. They hauled us against the current, out of the tunnel, back to the ditch’s open space. Wider here, the water was shallower but not much slower. “He’s insane. ” I reached for Asher. “Whatever he tells you—he is insane. ”

  Asher held up a hand covered with Olympio’s blood. “I know. ”

  There was a crash of thunder and a lightning bolt nearby. In that frozen second of light, I could see that the man who held Olympio wasn’t fully Asher anymore … or Hector either. His face was pulled between forms, asymmetrical, pieced together with parts from a hundred different beings.

  “No—” I fought against Ti to stand on my own.

  “Shhh,” Asher whispered to Olympio, hidden again in the dark. Regardless of his form, he applied pressure to the wound like a doctor would. “Shhhhhhh. ”

  The sound of water grew—rain from a hundred city blocks was slowly channeling down. We turned to walk up the ditch as one.

  “Asher!” A man’s voice yelled behind us. Maldonado emerged from the middle tunnel, apparently no worse for the wear. Adriana, Luz, Grandmother? Had magic or water taken all three?

  Maldonado reached out his hand. “I knew you were out here. It’s not too late for you!”

  Asher stopped, Olympio still cradled in his arms. He turned toward Maldonado, his father, and I couldn’t see his face.

  “Asher—come to me,” Maldonado demanded, and I remembered how inside the bone chamber he’d kept me trapped. “The ceremony can go on. They’re all trapped in there. I can save you. Come with me, and see. ”

  Asher started setting Olympio down. Was he choosing to do that? Of his own volition? Or was he under Maldonado’s control, as I had been?

  “No!” I struggled against Ti to find footing with my numb feet. He pulled me close for one moment, helping me stand straight, and his lips brushed my forehead.