Shadowshaper Legacy

by Daniel José Older

  When she opened her eyes, Death was gone, and the sun had just peeked over the tops of the palm trees. La Contessa allowed herself the slightest of smiles before beginning her slow descent to her living quarters.

  Death came to María Cantara the next day at that yellow-blue hazy moment when late afternoon becomes evening, right as Old Salazar was making his rounds lighting the flickering lanterns throughout the palace.

  It was María Cantara’s favorite time of day; she loved to watch the forest grow dark and listen to the night birds begin their festivities. She would gaze out from one of the balconies and make up fantastic stories about the different creatures that lived in El Yunque. Most of them would become true eventually, even if they weren’t at the time.

  When Death appeared, María Cantara didn’t fright or even cry like most people did. She smiled.

  Death smiled back, but Death was always smiling, so that was neither here nor there.

  Have you come to take me away? the little girl asked.

  Death, ever smiling, nodded.

  What if I don’t want to go?

  That empty stare was, even María Cantara had to admit, a little chilling.

  What would it take for you to leave me?

  Death, being Death, didn’t talk, but he did raise one hand, palm up, as if to say, And what do you have to offer, child?

  My mother, María Cantara said, and Death very nearly burst out laughing. That would never do, though. Too easy. And powerful as this young one was, if things came so easily for her, she would never come to learn the deeper secrets of life and death. He would’ve enjoyed complying, but it wasn’t the way, it wasn’t the way.

  What, then? the girl said, a little stubborn pout on her face.

  Death, being Death, didn’t talk, but he did slide three words in an icy whisper through María Cantara’s mind: Your firstborn child.

  Done, she said, with such finality and firmness that even Death himself was taken aback. She was, after all, only a child, and had little to no concept of what a firstborn was. Still … the speed with which she said it — the clarity — it was almost like she had something up her own sleeve.

  Intriguing.

  Death nodded once more, but then found that he wasn’t quite ready to leave yet. The whole interaction had caught him off guard, and he wasn’t used to feeling that way. He wasn’t used to people looking him in the eye, or not crying and carrying on. And he hadn’t spent any quality time with a flesh-and-blood mortal in a very, very long time.

  So he stayed, and when María Cantara turned back to the darkening woods around them, she felt the icy presence of Death like a gentle breeze beside her, and together they stared out into the shadows and made up stories of all that may have been and would probably soon come to pass.

  The last streaks of a strange, greasy sunset slipped into darkness as night stretched across the cold New Jersey skies. Sierra Santiago grinned through chattering teeth and pulled her maroon hoodie up over her fro against a chilly breeze that swept across the field toward her, rustling the tall grass and sending tiny waves through a nearby puddle of murky water.

  “You ain’t nervous?” Bennie stepped up beside her.

  “Excited, honestly,” Sierra said.

  She didn’t have to look to know her best friend was rolling her eyes. “Okay, girl.”

  So much work had led up to this one moment, and Sierra was mostly relieved it was finally going to happen, regardless of how wrong it might go for them. Anyway, it had reached a point where it had to happen: It was simply, undeniably time, and if she’d tried to maneuver or predetermine the outcome any more than she already had, it would blow up in her face.

  “You don’t think they’ll be mad that we, you know, lied to them and shattered the fragile peace and all that?”

  Sierra smirked. “What peace? Ain’t no peace that I can see.” Since inadvertently destroying all but one of the Sorrows and becoming the House of Shadow and Light a month and a half earlier, Sierra’s crew of shadowshapers had been getting threatening messages from whisper wraiths, catching strangely shaped figures that stalked them through the streets of Brooklyn, and fending off halfhearted attacks from random spirits. Clearly, someone was trying to rattle them. Old Crane and his House of Iron was probably behind it somehow, but he’d pledged neutrality until things calmed down and had even sworn to protect Sierra’s brother Juan, her crush Anthony, and Izzy while they were in lockup. Still: No one could be trusted. That much Sierra had learned. Bloodhaüs was on the rise, clearly vying to knock the House of Shadow and Light out of the way so they could take over dominance. And allying with Old Crane on the low would be just the way of doing it.

  Anyway, the Bloodhaüs was a bunch of raging skinheads, so regardless of whether they were behind the attacks, as far as Sierra was concerned, they had to go.

  “You right,” Bennie said. “I just mean … no one can prove it was Bloodhaüs that was coming at us.”

  “Ha.”

  “And they still gonna be mad.”

  “That only matters if they can do something about it.”

  Bennie shivered. “That mask you been painting on …”

  “What about it?” Robbie had drawn it for her the first time. Halloween night, when everything had changed and she’d finally embraced her role as Lucera, Mistress of Shadows. It had felt right, and not just because everyone else was dressed up too. That face paint had saved her life when she’d squared off with the Sorrows later that night. It had been there for her when she’d needed it most, a form of art to channel spirits through, and ever since then it had felt like donning armor every time she applied the grinning skull over half her face.

  “Gives me the chills,” Bennie said, raising her eyebrows. “But I guess that’s the point, huh? You only paint it on when some shit’s about to go down. What are you planning, Si?”

  Sierra just let her grim smile speak for her.

  It was a fair question, though, and usually she preferred having her people know the full score of what was gonna go down. But tonight was different. First of all, she wasn’t totally sure how things would play. If Mina’s intel was right, Bloodhaüs was every bit as ruthless as they’d projected themselves to be. And even if they were less powerful than the shadowshapers, they were more experienced and more desperate. They would play dirty, Mina had assured everyone at the planning meetup.

  That’s fine, Sierra thought as Big Jerome rose from his position in the tall grass and signaled that someone was coming. She nodded at Bennie and then crouched out of sight.

  She had no intention of playing clean.

  “Took y’all long enough,” Big Jerome said from somewhere up ahead.

  “You talk too much,” a sharp voice cut back. “Where’s your leader?”

  Good, Sierra thought, still crouching amidst the weeds. Goad them. Make them mad. She closed her eyes, let the spinning world open up around her. Her spirits spun a slow circle around the field. She let them lift her consciousness, carrying her mind’s eye into a gentle glide. The Bloodhaüs representatives stood uneasily in an open area facing the shadowshapers. There were six of them — five not counting Mina. Two men and three women against Big Jerome, Bennie, Caleb Jones, and Robbie. Easy enough to take, especially once Mina blew her cover and messed with ’em from the inside.

  But nothing was ever easy. Farther back in the field, three more Bloodhaüsers waited beside barrels of some kind. Probably full of blood, knowing these creepers. That was fine. She had another move or two up her sleeve as well.

  “On the way,” Big Jerome said.

  “A likely story,” a woman snarled.

  “Did you want to talk seriously or not?” someone else said. “Because we don’t need to be here.”

  “If you didn’t need to be here, you wouldn’t be here,” Caleb said. “You don’t trust Crane, and rightfully not, and even if you did, you know you’d have to put him down somewhere along the line if you want to get on top, yes? So why not get him out of the wa
y now while you have a common enemy in power?”

  “Yes,” sneered the first voice — a woman who sounded a little older than Sierra; the one Mina said was called Axella, probably. “We’ve all heard about how he strung you along and then nearly destroyed you, Caleb.” It sounded like there might’ve been the tiniest hint of sympathy in that rebuke, but that didn’t seem likely.

  Easy, Sierra thought. Crane’s betrayal had been a sore spot for Caleb, and it probably always would be. The old man had been a keeper of a lot of the lore behind shadowshaping and the Deck of Worlds, and even Sierra’s grandparents had trusted him with their deepest secrets. He’d been playing them all along, a House of Iron spy amongst the shadowshapers.

  Caleb wasn’t about to be baited, though. His voice was steady: “Did you bring what we asked?”

  “Slow down,” the second voice growled. That would be Krin, probably. Mina had said he acted like the leader but was probably just posturing, or a decoy. “How do we know you’re not hiding body paint, hm? All those layers.”

  “It’s cold, you pervert,” Bennie said.

  “Dake, Mina,” Krin barked. “Check them.”

  Sierra exhaled. The Bloodhaüsers had insisted on meeting way out here, miles away from any graffiti-covered walls or sculptures that Sierra’s crew could ’shape a spirit into and weaponize against them. The House of Shadow and Light had agreed on the condition that no weapons be brought at all. Even with Mina on the inside, no one was really sure how their blood magic worked, and the Almanac of the Deck of Worlds said that they were notorious for stockpiling arms for some forever-imminent apocalypse.

  “Assholes,” Sierra whispered, closing her eyes as Mina and Axella made their way across the open area between the two houses. At least they sent Mina to check the girls. Bennie, Caleb, Jerome, and Robbie all rolled back their sleeves and pulled their pant legs up, lifted their shirts to show paint-free tummies.

  “Easy, jackass,” Bennie growled, shoving Mina back.

  “Hey, hey!” a few of the Bloodhaüsers yelled.

  Mina just shook her head and stepped back, staring down Bennie. “She’s clean. No drawings.”

  “Alright, alright,” Krin said. “Dake?”

  The boy searching Caleb and Robbie had to be about seventeen. He’d slicked his sandy blond hair back against his head and wore a busted military jacket over jeans and combat boots. In Brooklyn, he could’ve been mistaken for a hipster. Sierra wondered if he was one of the high-ups — the Bloodmage or Sanguine Berserker.

  Robbie and Dake exchanged icy glares as the Bloodhaüser finished his search and moved on to Caleb.

  “If Lucera didn’t come, what was even the point of this parlay?” Axella demanded.

  Everyone wants to flush everyone else out, Sierra thought. Well …

  “Did yours?” Robbie asked.

  “Of course,” Axella said. “We keep our word. You don’t need to know who that is, but they are here.” They’d been cagey about who was running things, even once Mina had won their trust enough to get initiated. As the House of Shadow and Light’s resident spy, she’d been able to be initiated into the blood magic without them knowing about her other powers. But they still hadn’t taught her how to use it or shared their organizational secrets with her.

  “What good is having your leader here to negotiate with us if we don’t know who it is?” Bennie said. Something rustled behind Sierra. Her eyes sprang open and she whirled around, but the tall grass revealed nothing. Had it been the wind?

  “Seems we’re at an impasse, then,” Axella said. “I guess we’ll be leaving.”

  A bluff, Sierra thought, but she couldn’t concentrate on the talks and scan the area for danger at the same time. Sure, she had backup farther out in the weeds, but how would they know she was in trouble if she couldn’t make a noise without revealing her position? Without making a move, she called on the churning forces of shadow and light within her.

  “And risk us picking you off one by one or getting crushed outright by the House of Iron?” Caleb said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Or we could just wait around till you two decimate each other and then swoop in and clean up the mess.”

  There it was again, just off to Sierra’s right and a few feet away. Not the wind. And then another one to her left, rustling toward her. If she used her powers, if she even moved too much, she’d be revealed, and she wasn’t ready for that yet. Whatever they were, they seemed small — neither rustle was very loud, more like a gentle scurrying. Still, Sierra didn’t like it.

  Sierra. Vincent’s voice, an urgent whisper. Something’s happening.

  Vincent had become Sierra’s top lieutenant on the spirit side of things. He was Bennie’s older brother, and he’d been cut down in a hail of NYPD gunfire when he was sixteen and Sierra and Bennie were eleven. Then he’d gone on to form a cadre of like-minded spirits who’d been killed by the state — the Black Hoodies — and they’d joined forces with Sierra’s shadowshapers.

  And now he was one of the shadows circling this weed-strewn New Jersey field in the middle of nowhere, and while he was always pretty serious, he sounded downright upset.

  “What kinds of things?” Sierra whispered. “I got movement around me down here.”

  Yeah, we see that, but we can’t make out what they are. ’Bout a dozen of them moving toward the crew from different directions. They converging.

  The rustling had moved past Sierra now, and she was glad she hadn’t given up her cover. But still — a dozen?

  “Where you going?” Caleb demanded, and Sierra realized maybe the Bloodhaüsers hadn’t been bluffing at all. Or maybe the whole meetup had been a bluff.

  She stood, opening her mouth to give the command to bum-rush them, when she realized everyone was looking at someone barreling toward them from the other side of the field: Tee.

  Tee strode through the tall grass, trying to calm the tiny earthquakes that wouldn’t stop rattling through her. She felt immeasurably badass and immeasurably terrified at the same time. Plus, she was freezing. She wasn’t built for this cold-ass weather, dammit. She was supposed to be on some island, speaking French and sipping colorful drinks out of coconut shells with Izzy.

  But Izzy was still locked up — her untamable temper had caused them to revoke bail — and Tee was here: storming through a nasty, windy field outside Jersey City toward a bunch of nazi blood wizards as creepy little unidentified creepmongers rustled creepily through the field around her.

  Dammit.

  Somehow this was all Sierra’s fault. Except it wasn’t. Sierra was maybe the only one keeping things together. She wasn’t sure whose fault it really was, except the blistering December night wind, the slowly creaking gears of the universe, or maybe — probably — that unspeakably vast and irritating little stack of cards called the Deck of Worlds, which seemed to have thrown everything out of whack.

  And even though it also wasn’t properly the Bloodhaüs’s fault either, that’s where she was about to direct all her rambling anger.

  “Hey!” one of the Bloodhaüsers yelled. “What’s going on! Who’s that?”

  “I knew they were pulling something!” a woman said, backing away.

  Good, Tee thought. Run from me. Fear me.

  She raised her arms to either side and caught the flicker of shadows swarming to her, felt that gentle susurration of their touch as they embraced her like a breeze and slid along her skin.

  That would be little Tolula Brown, one of the Black Hoodies. She’d zipped suddenly to where Tee had been posted up, teeth chattering, as the prickly tête-à-tête prattled along. Tolula didn’t speak, but Tee could tell she was shook.

  And before she’d been able to make sense of what was going on, that rustling had erupted from the grass on either side of her — a rustling and a kind of horrible, rattly breathing sound, and Tee had had enough.

  Whatever was happening, Sierra couldn’t be the one to reveal herself — they’d immediately throw everything they had at
her, and then who knew what would happen? Which meant it had to be Tee. And so here she was, storming like a terrific jackass across a dingy field at dusk, both ferocious and terrified, toward these leather-clad magical fascists.

  One of them held her ground as the others backed away, and that was the one Tee would take out first. It was like any street fight — you find the tallest, meanest-looking, most vicious one and kick him as hard you can in the nuts and then bust the rest up while they’re still in shock. Or, run for your life if they’re armed.

  Tee wasn’t sure if they were armed — they definitely weren’t supposed to be, not that that meant anything, really — but she knew who the toughest one was. She set her sights on the tall white woman as her step became firmer and Tolula’s shadow tendrils locked with the sharply edged abstractions Robbie had painted along Tee’s arms earlier that night.

  Tee was coming in from the side, so she could see the full spread of shadowshapers and Bloodhaüsers squaring off across from each other. In range now, she felt the swirling body paint activate, a cool thrum against her skin, and was about to fling both hands to hurl it forward on the shrill momentum of Little Tolula’s ferocity when the woman in front of her raised one hand and squeezed it into a fist.

  A dilapidated smudge blitzed through the air in front of Tee’s face. “What the —” she said, slowing her stride. Another one hurtled past from somewhere nearby. They were gray-brown and covered in tattered, matted hair. The grass rustled, and Tee spun, hands outstretched, just in time to see a gaping maw and two claws lurching up toward her.

  “Gah!” She unleashed all her paintings at once, sending Tolula’s full force bristling off her arms in a dash of yellow and red and smashing into the creature, which flew backward into the grass and disappeared. Up ahead, the shadowshapers were glancing around warily as snarling, crusty beasties flung in shambling arcs through the air past them.

  The Bloodhaüsers had stopped their retreat and were now venturing closer and closer.