She looked at the burn marks on his neck and arm and knew that he was no stranger to bad people himself. That feeling of anger she’d felt in the car with Rafael threatened to overcome her again.
“What do you forget?” Cristo asked.
“All kinds of things. Names, places. Like this place. I think I’ve been here before, but I’m not sure.”
“Si,” he said. “You come here many times. But how do you forget about me?”
Beth’s heart was breaking.
“I’m sorry, Cristo.” She touched her chest. “I can feel you here…” Then her head. “But I can’t find you in here.”
He looked confused. “Is this why you don’t come back for so long? Because you cannot find us?”
“Yes,” she said. “So help me remember. Tell me how I know you and why I came here.”
The boy said nothing, staring down at their hands now, his smile gone.
“Please, Cristo. Please help me remember.”
When he looked up at her again, there were tears in his eyes. “How do you forget me, Elizabeth? I bring you food when you are hungry. Like the old woman brings food for us.”
“The woman on the bicycle?”
“Si,” he said. “She is a friend of Father Gerard. She take care of us when they kill him.”
Beth glanced at Vargas and Ortiz.
“Who killed him? La Santa Muerte?”
Cristo nodded. “I watch from up there,” he said, pointing to the balcony. “They cut his throat, and let him bleed in front of Jesus. They tell him he is a traitor to El Santo because of what he did.”
“Because he helped you?”
“ Si. Just like you help us, when you were strong again. They keep you in the cage, give you poisons, try to make you one of them. But I bring you food. I make you strong. I take care of you.”
Beth squeezed his hands. “Tell me everything, Cristo. Be my memory for me.”
He let go of her then and stood up.
“Better I show you,” he said, then squeezed past her and started down the aisle toward the altar.
Beth got to her feet, gesturing to Vargas and Ortiz. “Can my friends come, too?”
Cristo stopped and turned. “Si,” he said. “I show you all.”
T HEY FOLLOWED HIM as he moved the past the choir stall and opened a door, gesturing them inside. He led them down a narrow hallway to a tiny, cluttered office, then moved to a wall that was dominated by a large woven reredos depicting the birth of Christ. Grabbing it by the corner, he pulled it back to reveal a hole in the wall where a door used to be.
Cristo took a small flashlight from his pocket, flicked it on, then led them down a set of wooden steps to a storeroom crowded with the shadowy remnants of the church’s past: old lecterns, several floor candlesticks, a broken font, and at least two wooden kneelers.
He crossed to another door, produced a key from the same pocket, then unlocked it and threw it open.
Behind it was a small cramped closet, with several cardboard boxes piled up inside.
Cristo shoved the boxes aside to reveal another hole, this one low to the ground. Stepping through it, he waved for them to follow.
Beth, Vargas, and Ortiz exchanged looks, then stooped down and climbed through the hole, finding themselves in a long, narrow tunnel, its mud walls braced by thick pieces of lumber.
“Come,” Cristo said, and using the flashlight to guide them, he moved toward the far end of the tunnel where it abruptly turned left.
As she walked, Beth began to get that feeling of deja vu again, knowing that she’d been down here before.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“Father Gerard say the church use the tunnels to smuggle guns and hide freedom fighters during the Revolution.”
They reached a junction, the tunnel splitting off in several directions, and took another left. Beth was surprised to hear the faint echo of waves crashing.
And just beneath that, something else…
“Do you hear that?” she asked Vargas.
“Sounds like kids,” he said. “Playing.”
Beth’s heartbeat began to accelerate as they followed Cristo along a curve in the tunnel, the sounds growing louder with every step.
A moment later they were standing in a large cave, carved out of the cliff. And beyond it, the Sea of Cortez stretched out endlessly toward the horizon.
There were about a dozen children here, some playing, others eating fruit and sweet breads, while still others lay asleep on straw mats. It looked as if every single one of them had burn marks on their bodies: face, hands, legs-some worse than others.
A young girl, whose forehead was mottled with scars, saw them and shouted, “Elizabeth!” and one by one they turned to look at Beth.
And the next thing she knew they were all crowding around her, hugging her, touching her, saying her name.
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Five boys and seven girls.
Refugees. Victims of the La Santa Muerte cleansing rituals, and brought here one by one by Cristo.
Cristo had been the first to flee, shortly after his third cleansing, when his burns were still raw and festering, the pain nearly unbearable.
He had escaped late at night, through a labyrinth of underground tunnels and caves beneath the La Santa Muerte compound. This, he told them, was where the cleansings and fire ceremonies took place.
When Beth asked about these fire ceremonies, Cristo explained that many women who were brought into the compound were forced to work in private brothels throughout the country. Those who did not succumb to the will of El Santo were offered in sacrifice to La Santisima, strapped to the Holy Chair and burned alive.
Beth thought of Jen and Andy, and what Rafael had told her, and again a nearly uncontrollable anger rose in her chest. But she fought it off. She had to keep a rational mind.
Children were also brought to the compound, Cristo said. Some from as far away as Monterrey and Piedras Negras. They were snatched from the slums-sometimes in broad daylight-then brought to the compound to be indoctrinated and trained to go out into the streets of the cities to deliver drugs for the local dealers. Some of the children were sold into sexual slavery and auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Most of the children came from poverty and neglect and were happy to have food and shelter. But those who revolted or misbehaved were cleansed during the nightly prayer. And sometimes they, too, were sacrificed on Holy Friday.
When Vargas asked why no one went to the police about this, Cristo told him that the police and the politicians could not be trusted. Many of them were believers, followers of El Santo, and La Santa Muerte’s network extended far and wide. Even nonbelievers protected and worked with them, lining their pockets with El Santo’s gold.
And those, like Cristo, who had managed to escape and had the opportunity to expose the cult, were hunted down and killed. Cristo and his brothers and sisters here in the cave were the lucky ones, thanks to Father Gerard.
And Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth and her sister were brought to the compound, they were separated and the sister, Jennifer- who was with child-was kept in the High House with Marta and Rafael.
Elizabeth, however, was taken to the cages, where, at Rafael’s command, she was chained to the floor like a
