Shapeshifted

tunnel.

Maldonado spotted me half a second too late, as the light disappeared. He laughed. “Dama—there’s no key for those cuffs.” There was a snapping sound, and then bright flames appeared, without anything to burn, in the high corners of the room, illuminating all the bones. There was a pattern on the walls: They swirled from large to small, all sweeping in toward the cage. Maldonado walked over and yanked me back, making Luz’s teeth lacerate my wrist.

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 nina esqueleto, mi mujer delgeda, la mas palida 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.