Cece rios and the king o.., p.10
Cece Rios and the King of Fears, page 10
“Nope! All clear!” the little girl chirped. “Now can we go back up to the castle? I’m hungry, and it’s creepy down here.”
“You know, axolotls are supposed to like caves.” The bruja sounded almost amused.
“But the ones in Devil’s Alley stink.” She made a dramatic gagging sound, really playing it up until the bruja chuckled. “The cenote’s the only nice water here. It smells sweet and clear—”
“I’ve told you, never get near the cenote. You know it’s dangerous.”
Axolotl sighed. This sounded like a tired argument. “I was just sayin’. I don’t have to be close to smell it.”
Their steps headed our way. “I’ll take you up soon,” the bruja promised. “I just have to check the south tunnels first.”
“Then let’s hurry, Mamá!” The little girl sprinted our way, far ahead of the bruja.
Little Lion and I pulled back out of sight.
“I’ll cover Axolotl’s mouth just long enough to talk to her.” Lion dropped his voice. “If we can get her on our side, she can persuade the bruja—”
The little girl came flying around the corner, her pink hair bouncing. Everything slowed. She turned toward us in the darkness. Lion opened his mouth. Before he could speak, I snagged her from the bruja’s line of sight, slapped a hand over her mouth, and flicked my knife up to her neck before she could struggle. The blade glowed a violent orange, and Axolotl froze, whimpering.
Lion gawked at me.
“What are you doing?” he hissed. “I said grab her so we can talk, not go full murder-kidnapper.”
“We have less than twenty-four hours before the door to Devil’s Alley closes,” I said. “I’m saving us time, Little Lion.”
Axolotl looked up at him. “Mffle mion?” My hand muffled her voice.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, it’s me. Don’t worry.” He glared up at me. “She’s not actually going to hurt you.”
Footsteps clacked our way. “Axolotl? Axolotl, where are you?”
I turned away from Lion, and his hope for a promise, just in time to cut off the bruja rounding the corner.
The woman halted in front of me. Her long jacket swung around her narrow, bony frame, so the roses and snakes embroidered down the lapels flashed in the light of her icy-blue torch. The moment her gaze met mine, I made a show of pressing my knife close to Axolotl’s face.
“I am Juana Rios, the bride back for her soul.” I scowled, hard and relentless, through the empty eyes of my skull mask.
The bruja let out a sharp gasp. I glared, and she went still at the warning.
“If you want me to leave Axolotl alive, you’ll lead us out of this dungeon and into the castle, and tell no one we’re here.” My blade sizzled, and Axolotl flinched. “Got it?”
In an instant, the bruja’s face crumbled, like the life might go right out of her as she watched Axolotl quake in my hold. The heat in my chest threatened to turn to smoke and suffocate me. But I locked my jaw so I wouldn’t waver.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” the bruja finally said, lifting both hands in surrender. “Just don’t hurt Axolotl. Please.”
The way she said the criatura’s name reminded me of how Mamá spoke of me and Cece. The smoke thickened inside me, until I was almost choking on it.
“Then move,” I said, and jerked my chin toward the way she’d come.
Bruja Damiana turned as directed, still holding her hands up like a prisoner. She checked on Axolotl once over her shoulder. I swallowed and followed her as she led us into the deep, rancid-smelling tunnel.
I dragged Axolotl with me. The little girl stumbled, and Little Lion dove to right her. He flashed me a narrowed, disgusted snarl. The look sunk through my ribs like a knife.
“What?” I hissed, and yanked Axolotl out of his hold, back up to my speed. “Don’t look at me like that. Jaguar’s the one who said to use her as a hostage.”
“Yeah, and I told you I had another plan.” Lion didn’t try to obscure his withering glare, but he kept his voice low, so Bruja Damiana wouldn’t overhear. “It was a better option—”
“This way’s faster, so it’s better.” I frowned. “I don’t get what you’re mad about.”
“Maybe you forgot, but I’m a criatura,” Lion spat. The bruja led us down a right turn. “So yeah, I have an issue with you terrorizing an innocent kid like she doesn’t matter just because she’s not human. Look at her face!”
I didn’t. I refused. But I could feel the way her legs shook as she tried to keep up with me and the way she craned her head back to avoid the touch of my knife. A distant panic screamed through my mind. My stomach felt sick. But so what if she was scared? I was doing what I had to. I wasn’t going to let anything get between me and breaking El Sombrerón.
Strange sounds echoed behind us, and I glanced over my shoulder. The darkness was thick and claustrophobic. But I swore, just for a second, that I saw the edge of a black cloak. By the time I blinked, it was gone again.
Heat traveled like a rash up my chest. Was I seeing things? I couldn’t afford to get distracted. I might—get taken advantage of again.
“What?” Lion demanded, voice a bit louder. I swung back around. “What do you keep looking at? What are you searching for, Juana?”
“Nothing,” I quickened our pace.
The bruja was only about five feet ahead of us when she stopped at the bottom of a staircase. Water ran down its steps, flickering blue in the light of her torch. The air around the water was sweeter, now. Cleaner. Huh. So the source of the water wasn’t poisoned—something about running through the dungeon must make it go sour.
“Be careful as we ascend,” the bruja warned. I cut my attention back to her. She stood, lifeless and thin, eyes fixed on Axolotl. “At the top of these steps, you will find the cenote from which this water flows. It is an ancient underground lake—and it is dangerous. Beneath it is a one-way prison that holds the most frightening criaturas in Devil’s Alley. Anyone who goes in does not come out.” She swallowed, hand shaking on her torch. “We must follow the path around its edges to get to the dungeon exit. So please—don’t let Axolotl near the cenote.” Her thin, straight brows tugged together.
That gave her an incentive not to push me in, then. I nodded. “Fine.” I flicked my knife close to Axolotl’s cheek, to remind her who was in charge. Bruja Damiana winced. “Now keep moving.”
She hurried up the stairs, but I felt Lion’s glare burn through my head. I tried to ignore him as we started climbing.
“You like it, don’t you?” Lion demanded in a scathing whisper. “Threatening someone weaker than you. Makes you feel more powerful, huh?”
I rounded on him. Far above us, Bruja Damiana stumbled and dropped her torch. She groaned as the light went out, and we were plunged into darkness. The only light left was a distant speck of dim blue from the top of the stairs, and the burnished glow of my blade.
“I’m not a bully,” I spat at Lion. “Of course I don’t enjoy this!”
“Then what is this all really about?” Lion’s eyes caught the light from my knife as he gestured sharply at it, at little Axolotl, at my skull mask.
“You know what!” I stomped up the steps again. “It’s the same reason you’re here, gato estúpido: vengeance.”
Fury straightened Lion’s spine. “You think I want to burn down Devil’s Alley for revenge? I’m trying to save my enslaved familia!” The higher we climbed, the darker it got. “Vengeance isn’t interested in healing wounds. I already learned that lesson from your sister.” He cut in front of me on the staircase. “But you’re so busy trying to save your past self, you can’t see that there is no saving Juana from two months ago. There’s only Juana now. And if you’re not careful, there will be no saving her soul because it’ll already belong to a monster—and I’m not talking about El Sombrerón.”
With a shove, Lion broke my hold and yanked Axolotl out of my arms. Tears had pooled in her wide and frightened eyes. He pulled her to him protectively and turned away from me.
My empty chest scratched and squeezed. What right did he have to be so disappointed in me? I wasn’t stuck in the past. Or—or if I was, then I had every right to be. Didn’t I? What happened to me was wrong. I had the right to change it. I had the right.
Lion and Axolotl stepped up into the darkness, and the weak light at the top of the stairs winked out. What? Where’d it go? I listened for footsteps, but their splashing had vanished too. I stumbled forward through the water.
“Hey! Lion?” I called.
He didn’t answer. Sharp, needly heat scratched inside my chest. I sprinted up the stairs.
“Lion, don’t be a baby! I know you’re mad, but . . .” I stumbled on something sharp and caught myself on the wall, panting.
Beyond the sound of my own breath, I listened for Lion’s response. There was nothing but the running water—and the sound of a swishing cloak behind me.
I whirled around. The plucking of silver strings rose up in the darkness, haunting the air around me. It was too dense to see in the darkness, but I knew that melody. I’d heard it too many times.
El Sombrerón was near.
I ripped out my knife. The orange glow lit up the walls and waterfall steps but revealed no sign of him. Where was he? My entire body turned into a fire, wild and hot and broiling. No, I couldn’t let El Sombrerón get me again. And I couldn’t fight on a slippery staircase, where I was at a disadvantage.
A dark laugh rumbled up the steps behind me. I turned and sprinted up the last of the stairs, outrunning the music, and tore into a vast, cave-like space filled with low, azure light.
I skated to a stop at the edge of the cenote. My mind whirled, trying to catch up to the new surroundings. Lion, Bruja Damiana, and Axolotl were still nowhere in sight. But the underground lake was larger than I’d thought, so wide it could fit the entire town square inside, and the bright blue water so clear, I could see straight down through to a strange film at the bottom. I shook my head. Silver strings and honey-touched music haunted my back. I ripped myself around, my skirt snapping with the speed, and searched the tunnel I’d come from.
“Not there,” the velvet voice said from behind me.
My blood ran cold. I turned, inch by inch, to face the cenote again. The distant sound of voices—maybe Lion’s? where had he gone?—pulled at me, but I couldn’t pay attention to anything else, see anything else. Because rising from the cenote’s clear waters was the towering, terrible El Sombrerón.
My knees locked. My feet were so cold and numb, I could have been standing in ice. He lugged his long, inky cloak out the water, and all eight feet of him stretched up to grab at me.
All I wanted to do was run. To crawl away and scream.
So I charged him instead.
“I hate you!” I roared, palming a knife in each hand. I leaped off the edge of the cenote, flying toward him over the water, and aimed my knives at his heartless chest. “This time you’ll pay! I’ll rip you to shreds, you monster—”
The distant voices warped in the air as I careened toward El Sombrerón’s dreadful figure. His image shimmered. His hands faded away at the ends. Wait. Something was wrong.
“Juana! Wake up!” Lion’s voice shook through me.
Suddenly, everything shattered, like my vision had been made of sharp and fragile glass. My world reassembled into reality. I wasn’t charging El Sombrerón—I was falling backward, toward the water, dragging Axolotl with me. When had I grabbed her? Lion hovered above me, in mid-leap, falling with me in an attempt to save me from the cenote. Bruja Damiana had already grabbed Axolotl’s hand and tipped over the edge. There was no silver music—just Axolotl’s screams and my missing heartbeat. There was no attack—just shards of crystals breaking off from my feet, where my own cell of fears had started to form around me.
Keep moving, Jaguar’s warning rang through my mind. In the dungeon, fears make themselves realities for the vulnerable.
Lion gripped my wrist as we plunged, all four of us, into the cenote from which no one returned.
13
Cece Rios and the Unnamed King
We followed Metztli up a hill just outside Costa de los Sueños, each soul at my neck tense and quiet. No one had spoken since Metztli had given Coyote back his memories. He’d kept his head bowed most of the way, lingering behind us all. Metztli’s expression was sharp and focused as we hiked, but the lights in her eyes weren’t as bright as before.
“We will have to be quick,” Metztli said. “We’re running out of time before the entrance to Devil’s Alley closes.”
I hung my head. I’d wasted a lot of time back there, trying to get answers out of a papá who hated me. Not to mention causing a fight between my friends on the way. I chewed on my lip as Metztli paused in the grass, her gaze focused on a solitary house ahead of us.
An old adobe house perched on the top of the cliff we’d been climbing, overlooking the sea. It had a broken roof, and vines covered most of the front. Spring had brought bright morning glory blossoms to tangle in the wrought iron bars of the front-facing window. The home reminded me a lot of Metztli—beautiful, but abandoned by time.
“This was my familia’s home centuries ago,” she said. “If we are lucky, everything we need is still there.”
She marched forward. But I found myself glancing at Coyote for the thousandth time that day. He walked at the very back of our group, tailing Ocelot, his eyes downcast. Kit was the only one who seemed to notice me.
“It’ll be okay, Cece,” he mouthed.
I smiled back at him, because I hoped he was right, even though I was afraid he wasn’t.
“My old curandera tools should still be here.” Metztli stopped in front of the broken-down door. With a bump of her hip, it gave way and fell inside the house. She strode past it easily.
I went to follow but stole one last glance back at my friends. Coyote, Ocelot, and Kit had all gone to stand by the cliffside. Ocelot rested a hand on Coyote’s shoulder. Sad, sluggish colors meandered through their souls. Should I say something to him? But then—what did I say? I didn’t know how to fix this for him. I didn’t know how to take away his pain, when it was now wrapped up in my own.
“Pain often tells us that we have left something important undone,” Ocelot said to Coyote, and the wind carried her voice my way. She rubbed his shoulder as he bowed his head. “That’s why it’s important we let ourselves feel it. And why it’s important we don’t let it overtake us. So we can finish what must be finished, fix what can be fixed, and heal what’s left behind.”
Ocelot’s words lingered on me like the tendrils of a stray cloud. Kit glanced my way again. A small spot of sunny hope filled his stone and warmed my throat. He smiled again, to give me encouragement. Sometimes, I wondered how he did that after everything he’d been through.
I laid my hand over his stone gratefully, turned, and followed Metztli inside. One day, I hoped I could be as brave as Kit Fox.
From the outside, Metztli’s house had appeared old and traditional. But inside, it was lined with strange shelves covered in empty glass vials, seashells strung together with cords, lots of tiny rocks, and bowls now filled with only dirt or dust. I approached Metztli on the other side of the main room, where she was rummaging in a large box carved with swirls. A cloud of particles plumed in the air from her movements, and she coughed and batted it away.
“It’s still here!” She stood and lifted a dusty glass bottle filled with water. “Behold, Cece!”
“That’s weird,” I said as I approached. “I thought water got gross when it’s bottled up for too long.” I’d learned that the hard way. But this looked fresh and new, even though the ancient glass told a different story.
Metztli shook it lightly, so the water swept around the inside. “That is because it is no ordinary water. It is difficult for curanderas to channel the element of their god without extensive training. Items like this—glass, water, stones, basil—we use them to learn to speak the language of our element.” She smiled at me. “Sometimes, we can use them to channel new, extraordinary abilities and produce spells. But you have already done this, have you not, Cece?”
Oh, the Moon must have told her about my spell to hide the house. My heart fluttered. Now that I had Metztli, she could tell me more about how all this curandera stuff worked. Maybe with her help, I’d finally be a good enough curandera to fix things. I squeezed my hands together. And then—maybe I’d be enough to fight off the misery of the people I loved.
“Curanderas can reach even greater power when we combine ours together.” Metztli’s eyes grew less distant as she held the glass bottle to her chest. “Consuelo taught me that. This was a gift from her. At the beginning of my journey, she made it for me with her very own hands. She said it would help me see the place where truth and love meet.” Her brows upturned.
“Wait.” I came up to her. “Wasn’t Consuelo the ocean curandera? She mentored you?”
“Sí.” She ruffled my short hair. “Perhaps it is right, then, that I turn Consuelo’s gifts into teachings for you, Curanderita Cece.”
I clung on to that promise and tried to fill my chest with something besides the heavy, painful weight that had been bearing down on it since this morning. If I could just focus on this, I wouldn’t have to think about everything Papá had said.
A nauseating, gray throb moved in my chest. I winced and glanced out the window, at distant Coyote. He was feeling about as terrible as I was.
“Um, Metztli?” I asked. “C-can you tell me . . . what you made Coyote remember?”
She sighed out her nose—not the way Papá used to, like I was exhausting. But like sorrow had slept in her lungs. She raised her head and tapped the top of the bottle.
“Do you know how the gods Named us, Cece?” she asked.
I blinked. “Um. With their—god powers?”
Backlit by the risen sun in the window, Metztli looked faraway and distant, like the moon hanging in a starless sky.
