With a twist of the lock, another room awaited Ryka, complete with swinging vines, luscious miniature trees, and rain. No doubt a temperal was behind the magic of that design, and though Graciela had never seen anything like it, and though everything looked so real, she couldn’t bask in its awe like the others in the stands.
“Uh-huh!” Caleb finally replied. He added a few other slurred syllables, but nothing Graciela could understand while he fed one of his baby birds a pile of chewed food from his mouth.
While Adelaide started chastising Caleb’s grotesqueness, Graciela looked at him with endearment and then returned to the nail-biting show.
After a brief appraisal of the room, Ryka stepped forward with volition, accidentally stumbling into a shallow puddle of mud the consistency of quicksand. She growled and used a low-hanging branch as an anchor to yank herself back to solidified ground. Everything was so detailed, even from all the way back where Graciela was sitting. She could practically smell the misting rain in the room herself.
On Graciela’s other side, opposite the children, Santiago sneered, “This is dumb.”
Graciela turned to find him in a slouch with his arms crossed. She thought of asking what he was talking about, but it was clear he didn’t want anyone prying. Ever since arriving, he’d been more irritable than usual.
At centerfield, Ryka crept to an impassable wall of tangled vines, she held a hand out to a nearby rock, not touching it, just hovering there. At first, Graciela couldn’t tell why. But then she noticed the small vibrations of her hand. The rock began morphing soon after, a jagged edge forming before her eyes. Ryka used the blade to cut through the vines to reveal the door to her final room.
Adelaide squealed with excitement. “Do you think she’s going to do it?”
“Mmm.” Graciela’s response was more like a wince of pain than a reply as she focused on the bright red and orange shadows of Meeka’s room.
She must’ve caught the attention of Adelaide because the young girl was patting her shoulder next and saying, “Don’t worry, she’ll be okay. Sean wouldn’t let them do anything that was really dangerous.”
Graciela believed it too, which allowed for some of the tightness in her chest to subside.
“Yeah,” Santiago scoffed. “Just look at what he made for us. Just a few thousand hours of slaving from temperals and roiders and whoever else, and we get a pointless show of people showing off how cool they think they are.”
Graciela shrunk back. In retrospect, this was exactly the kind of thing that her brother would hate, but in her own excitement, she hadn’t even thought to ask if he’d wanted to go.
“Don’t be such a grouch!” Adelaide barked.
“Why not!” he yelled back, fortunately at the same time the audience applauded so it drowned out the sound of him. “It’s all fake! We just wasted all of these resources on this tournament. And for what? What’s the point?”
“We—” Graciela said calmly but was cut off by her brother.
“No, there is no point. It’s wasteful. We didn’t come here for a festival. We came here for answers, and guess what? They don’t have them.” His eyes were watery when he added quietly, “What was the point of it all?”
Graciela tutted and whispered. “What about TULIP? You’ve only gone to a couple classes. Progress takes more time, Santi.”
The laugh he gave was empty, but somehow seemed to brighten his spirits a little. “I don’t think they’ve helped a single person become Unawakened. But it’s not that.” Then he said slowly, distantly, “It wasn’t hers.”
Graciela blinked at him in confusion.
“Nevermind. It’s nothing.”
“If I wasn’t wearing this earring, I’d know what he was talking about.” Adelaide’s grumblings were so quiet that Graciela was certain only she could hear them, and she was grateful for that.
Before Graciela could plead with him to elaborate, she noticed a lump in Santiago’s pocket, and almost as if on command, he began rotating a finger around it.
It was Caleb who beat her to the question, “What’s that?” One spindly, grime-covered finger cut across Adelaide’s lap to point toward Santiago’s hidden object.
Santiago stopped blinking, caught somewhere between reality and some dreamlike trance. As Adelaide waved a hand before him, he uttered, “It doesn’t matter. It’s not what I thought it was anyway.”
Yet another cryptic diffusion. Graciela remembered the days when all they had were each other and Santiago had little choice but to tell her everything. She wished she knew now what was on his mind, but it was clear that Santiago had no interest in sharing.
“It’s a necklace,” Adelaide blurted.
Santiago snapped out of his stupor and gaped at her, Graciela and Caleb turning to her expectantly as well.
“Hello? listener,” she said with added sass, twisting a finger back at herself. Graciela’s eyes flickered to her ear, and a look of realization dawned. “On our walk here, before I put my insert in, Santiago was thinking about it on our way to the stadium, before he ran off. He was thinking about how happy Mara would be when you gave it back to her.”
“You have a necklace of Mara’s?” Graciela directed the question at Santiago.
“Better question,” Adelaide interrupted. “Mara wears jewelry?”
Santiago made a noise, equal parts sigh and growl. “Apparently not.”
Graciela said, “I don’t understand. You have a necklace that belongs to her?”
“No,” he said, his tone more forceful this time.
Graciela began thinking of things to say to Santiago to get him to at least tell them something, but she wasn’t sure she would find the perfect solution. “May I see it?” she asked finally.
His brow twitched, and Santiago cast Graciela a side glance, but she didn’t say anything more. Sometimes the thing Santiago needed most was time.
After an initial sigh—not strained and angry, but more like an exhale that casted out his worries—he plunged a hand into his pocket and retrieved the long chain for his sister. At the end of it twirled a purple oval gem.
“Ay,” Graciela breathed, recognizing the piece of jewelry instantly. “Where did you find this?”
Santiago eyed her with concern. “You… you’ve seen this before?”
The corner of her mouth twitched, a soft, brief breath of laughter blew forth. “Of course. How could I forget?” Graciela said softly, looking her brother directly in the eyes. “This necklace, it belonged to our mother.”
She couldn’t see Santiago’s reaction, too mesmerized by the dazzling heirloom. Timidly, as if it would dissipate at her touch, she reached her fingers toward it with caution. When it didn’t disappear, when it instead stopped spinning from where it dangled and fit snuggly between her fingertips, Graciela’s breathe caught and she stared up at her brother.
“I thought we’d lost it when she went missing,” Graciela said. “Where did you find it?”
Santiago gave a casual shrug, even though the situation seemed anything but normal. “I don’t know. It just… showed up,” Santiago confessed.
This time, Graciela wasn’t letting him be vague. She held him in her gaze, jaw tight, brow cocked, until he continued.
“You won’t believe me…” he sighed. “I’m not even sure I believe me.”
“Santi, I always believe you.”
Santiago breathed a heavy breath. “I had a dream about it… I dreamed about this whole place. Mara was there, and the necklace, so I thought it belonged to her.”
The story seemed unreal, even given everything else that was normal now. They didn’t know much about the new world or why people were Awakened, but they did know that you could only be one kind of Awakened, and her brother was an empath, not some kind of telepath or fortuneteller.
“The next morning, we found that flier, and I just thought…” His words sounded like they were catching on jagged rocks.
Graciela hung the chain from her fingertips with delicac
y. When her face softened, she turned to Santiago. “This necklace is what made you change your mind about the Unions?”
“Yeah,” he answered dejectedly. “It doesn’t matter now though. We’re here. And now I know who the necklace belonged to. Mystery solved.”
Pain seemed to slap Graciela in the face.
“Do you want to keep it?” Santiago asked.
Graciela shrunk back. “You don’t?”
Laughter cracked Santiago’s expression, the forced kind that made Graciela feel a pang in her chest. “Why would I want a dead woman’s necklace?”
The coldness in his tone was staggering, but Graciela also understood that was just the way Santiago coped with their mother’s disappearance. When she didn’t say anything, Santiago grabbed the necklace back from Graciela and fastened it around her neck. She clutched it tightly against her chest and thanked him.
At that exact moment, Meeka emerged from what could’ve been her blazing tomb and entered her second room. The audience cheered in unison, and Graciela sighed when she saw the young woman was unscathed.
“Told you she was fine,” Adelaide said proudly.
Flecks of blue shimmered along the walls as Meeka entered into her second room. Water. Likely a welcomed change from her previous feat. Meeka hastily unlatched the shoes from her feet, abandoning the nuisances before diving into the pool before her. Graciela couldn’t believe she’d even started with them on in the first place considering how impractical they appeared.
“I bet your next meal that Meeka wins,” Graciela said to Santiago in hopes of cheering him up.
“Meeka?” he said with disbelief.
Graciela cocked an eyebrow to her brother and shrugged.
Down below, Ryka was examining the second door. Although she’d located it, she couldn’t seem to figure out where the key was. Still, she had a long head start on the other shifter.
Santiago sighed, finally caving. “Fine, it’s a deal.”
“And whoever loses,” Graciela said, “owes the other person a back massage too.”
When he laughed this time, there was a little more roundness behind it, no longer feigning happiness but genuinely feeling it. “I can’t wait for that massage.”
For the first time in the competition, they were finally able to witness Meeka’s skills at work. Fingers stretched out from her palms, with the same ease as it took for Graciela to breathe, Meeka’s power flowed with a simple gyration of her fingertips.
From the stands, Graciela watched intently, the rest of the crowd awestruck by the invisible blocks forming in the water, compacting into solid shapes. The molecules shifted and hardened into perfectly sculpted steps, a wall of water lining either side. As her path cleared, Meeka descended into the depths, where her second key awaited her.
There was only one final room for her to conquer.
Graciela turned to her brother with her tongue stuck out.
He gave an irritated roll of the eyes. “It’s not over yet.”
They both looked down to see Ryka too opening her second door.
Both now in their final room, the twins were tied. The crowd was rampant, on its feet cheering for no one in particular, but rather excited by the rivalry.
Meeka stepped into what looked like a ransacked office. Objects cluttered every nook and cranny, seemingly as if a tornado had torn through the place. The paintings hung askew on the walls, and there was no apparent organization. Much of the room looked like it was in need of a dusting, except for the golden door that glowed at the far corner, a symbol of freedom and more importantly, both hers and Graciela’s victory.
Ryka’s final challenge looked much simpler than her sister’s. The room was barren except for a large sandbox looming in the center. A smug grin fell across her face at her presumed victory: find the key in this small box of sand.
But Graciela saw the real puzzle. Across Ryka’s room, a key sat patiently waiting in its lock. Ryka’s ego prevented her from seeing the true simplicity of it.
Driven by lust for the finish line, Ryka swirled her hands tirelessly in the air, commanding sand to fly around her like a sandstorm. The mess made it difficult to see inside, even with the big screen, but once the sand subsided, the room stilled.
“Game, set, and match,” Santiago said triumphantly.
Graciela tossed her eyes at him. “You haven’t won yet.” Then she feigned a more serious tone, narrowing her eyes with a sharpened look at his fauxhawk. “Is that a bald spot?”
He gave her a skeptical look but tentatively patted the top of his head.
In Ryka’s room, nothing remained in the sandbox, not even the key that she had seemed so certain to find there.
“Just like you, her pride clouds her judgment, hermanito.”
Meeka, on the other hand, had begun diligently gathering tiny puzzle pieces bit by bit, that, Graciela guessed, once arranged, would configure into a key. She had already found the first and was about to locate her second. Meeka faced a mound of stuffed animals, each one holding her in discomfort like something out of a nightmare. One doll missing both arms, another her head. Stuffed walruses, bunnies, and kitties alike that had all lost at least an eye, a tail, or an ear to some unknown terror. Among them all, one clandestine teddy bear winked up at the crowd. Meeka laced her fingers around the circular end of the tripartite key tucked snuggly inside his jacket.
Just one piece left.
Ryka yelled as she scooped her hands through the grains of sand now scattered throughout the room. Hysterically, she grasped at them.
Adelaide and Graciela shared a giggle at Ryka’s expense.
By this point, a large portion of the audience had figured it out as well and, unbeknownst to Ryka from inside her soundproof box, were shouting, “It’s in the keyhole already! Look! It’s right in front of you!”
But like Sean had announced at the beginning, once they were in the boxes, neither of the shifters could hear a thing.
Graciela realized then that Meeka had played her sister, knowing all too well that she couldn’t walk away from a seemingly easy win.
Meeka rummaged through a trashcan, finding nothing more than an apple core and tossed wads of paper. She flung open the drawers on the desk, dumping out yet more stacks of stationary and garbage. Each pencil and pen that rolled away, Graciela mistook for the final piece of the key, to her disillusionment.
Suddenly, Meeka jumped with joy as she unveiled the third and final piece of the key loosely glued to a multimedia piece of artwork hanging on the wall. Meeka twitched her fingers, her power exuding their tips. In an instant, the key merged into a whole. Her legs propelled her swiftly to the third and final door. The key fit inside with ease, and just like that, the walls of both boxes fell to the side, making Meeka the champion.
Graciela spun around to face her brother, tongue extended. “I tell you what. You can have half—”
“Oh shut up,” he grumbled, and Adelaide and Caleb laughed.
The act that followed was a little less involved, more like an intermission than anything, complete with comedy, trickery, and dumb humor. The night continued that way for some time. One group after another came to the center of the field and put on a show.
“A dragon, a blood guide, and a porcupine,” Santiago said, drawing Graciela’s attention to one group in particular. The three Awakened on the field lined themselves up with three adjacent targets. “It sounds like the start of a bad joke,” he quipped.
Unfortunately, for the young dragon in the mix, the blood guide won this particular competition. It almost didn’t seem like a fair fight in Graciela’s opinion. Here were three beings who had Awakened powers, yes, but only the blood guide had complete control of her projectile. The porcupine and dragon both aimed and used judgment to hit their targets, the final of which were a series of balloons released into the air. The blood guide, on the other hand, commanded her blood shards with more precision than either of the other two possessed with their projectiles: fire and needles.
The sun was setting, casting long, obscure shadows across the field. Soon, there’d be no light for viewing.
Sean reached the center of the arena and shook the hands of each contestant who then scampered off the field. “And now, for our final performance. Ladies and gentleman, please put your hands together for—”
Sean’s speech was cut short by a shriek from the stands. It brought true meaning to the words blood-curdling. Graciela snapped her attention to the culprit to find the poor woman kneeling, hands woven tightly over her abdomen.
Another cry of immense agony tore through the otherwise silence. Graciela spun right to investigate it as well, but she was stopped by yet another roar. And another. People all around the arena were screaming and collapsing, an invisible spear of pain cutting through them all. So many people, Graciela couldn’t keep track. She turned to Santiago first, who was looking to centerfield, and then she looked to Sean as Mara jogged to join him. He’d gone stone white, his gaze struck by something at the other end of the arena.
The hair on the back of Graciela’s neck became static when she saw who he was staring at.
“They’re here,” she whispered, so quietly she wasn’t sure anything had come out.
Santiago squeezed close beside her. “Who?”
With utter dread, Graciela blinked. “The Sanguinatores.” Graciela’s skin turned clammy. “Zane,” she breathed.
“The men from Mexico?”
She nodded for her brother but didn’t dare tear her gaze off the man at the lead of the mob at the gate. The only reason they could possibly have for being there was a reason Graciela couldn’t come to terms with. She didn’t want to lose everyone here. She didn’t want to die.
The cries were never-ending and all-surrounding. Graciela wanted them to stop, she wanted to end the people’s suffering, but there were too many Sanguinatores for her alone to do anything. Once again, their group had grown, perhaps over sixty by now.
Blood Awakens Page 27
