Shapeshifted es-3

by Cassie Alexander

The sound of water grew—rain from a hundred city blocks was slowly channeling down. We turned to walk up the ditch as one.

  “Asher!” A man’s voice yelled behind us. Maldonado emerged from the middle tunnel, apparently no worse for the wear. Adriana, Luz, Grandmother? Had magic or water taken all three?

  Maldonado reached out his hand. “I knew you were out here. It’s not too late for you!”

  Asher stopped, Olympio still cradled in his arms. He turned toward Maldonado, his father, and I couldn’t see his face.

  “Asher—come to me,” Maldonado demanded, and I remembered how inside the bone chamber he’d kept me trapped. “The ceremony can go on. They’re all trapped in there. I can save you. Come with me, and see.”

  Asher started setting Olympio down. Was he choosing to do that? Of his own volition? Or was he under Maldonado’s control, as I had been?

  “No!” I struggled against Ti to find footing with my numb feet. He pulled me close for one moment, helping me stand straight, and his lips brushed my forehead.

  “Be careful, Edie,” he whispered. He made sure I had my footing, let go of me, and then ran in.

  Ti reached Maldonado before Asher, and hit him like a truck. The bruja was flung back into the cement wall and collapsed into the water at Ti’s feet. I wanted to cheer, but I had to get over to Olympio—maybe this would all be over soon and somehow we’d all survive. I tried not the calculate the odds as I reached Olympio’s side.

  Maldonado had recovered—I hadn’t seen it happen, but he was locked with Ti now, arm-to-arm, chest-to-chest. As a zombie, Ti was the only thing a shapeshifter like Maldonado couldn’t become. Asher was still walking toward his father, slowly. I hoped it was reluctance holding him back, but I honestly didn’t know.

  I scooped Olympio up out of the water. He was cold and pale. “Hey, hey.” I shook him awake. “You’d better still be with me.”

  His eyelids fluttered open. “You haven’t killed me yet.”

  “Where’d you want to go, Olympio?” I knelt down in the water to keep him out of it, raising his chest up across mine. I hugged him in an attempt to provide pressure. “In the car, when we get out of here. Where do you want to go?”

  He smiled at me. “Disneyland.”

  I snorted. “That’s pretty far away from here.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I squeezed him tighter.

  Out of the farthest tunnel, Grandmother arrived. She was like some mystic cockroach that nothing could kill. As I had that thought, she turned and pierced me with her eyes.

  Maldonado shoved Ti back, and Ti stumbled to one knee. Grandmother moved around their battle and walked toward me. As she did so, I noticed something strange about the fight. Asher was at its periphery, moving back and forth in one spot like a paused character in an old video game. Was he fighting his father, or had his father put him there, trapped, while he was wrestling with Ti? I crushed Olympio to my chest with worry.

  As Grandmother neared she seemed taller, as if her spine had unwound, and I realized she was producing light, the bright orange-yellow of light pollution tinged with smog.

  “Elegir,” she said when she stood nearby. “¡Elige!”

  “What the hell are you saying?” I asked aloud.

  “¡Elige! ¡Elige uno!”

  “She says for you to choose. She says you get to pick one,” Olympio translated for me. I could see the meat of his wound, where I’d mashed him to myself, turning white with no-blood. It wasn’t just the rain that made him cold—he was slipping away from me.

  “Ask her what she means!” I almost shook him in my frustration.

  “¡Elige!” she yelled again, spitting the word at me. “¡Elige!” she commanded, and I knew.

  If whatever Maldonado had been trying to do in the bone room had worked, with all the magic that’d been swirling around below—then she was the Santa Muerte. The Saint of Death.

  I’d been praying to God for my mom to live for a week and a half now. Why not just ask the deity of the damned, the one that was actually here?

  “¡Elige!” she yelled, and thunder cracked in time with her voice.

  Choose. My mom. Or—Olympio.

  God help me.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  What kind of horrible choice was that? What kind of uncompassionate fucking awful deity asked for you to choose between your friend and your own mom?

  “I hate you!” I shouted out into the storm.

  “¡Elige!” she shouted back.

  My mom already believed in a good afterlife. I couldn’t send Olympio, a punk-ass kid I’d dragged into this mess, to his, here.

  God. Help. Me.

  “Him! Save him! If you can!” I shook him in fear. “Do it if you can—do it now!”

  Grandmother squinted at me, then made a thoughtful face and looked down at the boy in my arms. Then she stepped away, taking her phosphoric aura with her.

  “Olympio?” I looked down at his face, wet with rain and my tears. “Come on. You have to get better.”

  “Déjame en paz, estoy bien.”

  “I can’t understand Spanish, remember?” I shook him again. “Olympio?”

  “Stop that. I’m fine.” He blew air through half-parted lips and struggled to sit up. I released the wound on his chest—and his skin under my palm was whole.

  A wave of water came our way. Maldonado had toppled Ti. The electric feeling I’d had in the altar house returned—Maldonado’s power regrouping around him. Asher stumbled when the wave hit him, falling to his knees.

  “Asher—hurry! Come help me! It doesn’t have to be like this. I can set you free!”

  Asher put his hands to his head and bent down, as if in prayer. I could hear his anguished voice yell, “No!”

  Ti recovered and yelled a mighty cry. He ran toward Maldonado again, only to be pushed back like I had been in the bone room. I could see him fighting against the magical force, leaning in as if he were wrestling a hurricane. Grandmother walked over to him.

  Luz crawled out of the nearest tunnel, silver-ruined hands holding Adriana to her chest. She pushed to standing, cradling the other woman, and walked toward us with laborious steps.

  “Is she okay?” Olympio asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Grandmother reached out toward Adriana and Luz just as Luz tripped. Adriana clung to her, and Luz fought not to get washed back.

  Maldonado shook his hand at Asher. Asher refused him, shaking his head, slowly. So painfully slow.

  Lightning flashed nearby, and thunder clapped. A tecato’s tarp washed by. I snagged it, for all the good it would do, and gave it to Olympio. I set him down in the torrent, and he held his own. Then I moved with the current toward the tunnels, the water speeding my feet.

  A rush of anger at being used fueled Ti now—he kept pressing forward against Maldonado’s magic front, making incremental gains. I passed Grandmother helping Luz back up. I wasn’t sure what I could do against Maldonado, but someone had to help Asher. He couldn’t go insane alone. I couldn’t just leave him there. As I walked toward him, he stood up and started moving away from me. Slow step after slow step, ever closer to his father’s outstretched hand.

  I took dangerous steps and let the current carry me, splashing down to my knees twice. “Asher, no!” I fought back up, coughing out foul mouthfuls of runoff.

  Asher turned, and a lightning bolt showed me his face. There was little of the man I knew left behind—he was like a golem, made of clay. “Wait for me!” I yelled. “Remember! You said you wouldn’t go without me!”

  “Shut up, woman, before he is lost to us both,” Maldonado commanded. I tried to yell back at him but he stole my voice.

  I rushed through the water before his magic could shove me away like Ti. I reached Asher and blocked him with my body.

  “Don’t go.” I could only mouth the words, but I took him in my arms and held him. “Just don’t go.”

  He struggled with me, and I wasn’t sure if I was making the righ
t decision or not—he would go insane here, and lose all memory of me, but I couldn’t let Maldonado win. The Asher I knew would not have wanted that.

  His form rippled beneath me, changing through all the people he could be. I felt my hands down his arms to find his hands, pressed against the ditch’s cement floor, and wove my frozen fingers through his. My chin was barely above water, and I pressed my cold cheek to his back. I called his name in a voiceless whisper, like I was summoning the dead.

  The electric feeling in the air faded, and Ti ran for Maldonado. The bruja brought his hands up as Ti aimed one fist at Maldonado’s chest.

  “¡Basta ya!” Grandmother yelled. Lightning strobed down and ignored all the higher places it ought to hit, striking on Maldonado’s chest just as Ti’s fist landed. Ti was blown back as thunder shook the world to the bone.

  The lightning didn’t leave Maldonado. The connection it made with his chest pinned him back against the ditch’s cement wall. It bore into him, lasting longer than a lightning bolt should. The first things to go were his clothes; they burned away as if maybe they’d never been there, been magic all the time anyhow. Then it burned through his skin—like some terrible acid, the lightning kept eating things away. Maldonado shed form after form, like a peeling snake, each one appearing for a second, and then being vaporized. I realized they were faces of everyone he’d ever been—the lightning was forcing him to ripple through them all, and all of them were screaming.

  “Don’t look!” I told Asher, though I didn’t know who he was now anymore. No matter how you felt about your parents, no one should see that. Rising up to a whine, the screams finally stopped. Ti hadn’t moved from where he’d landed, and Grandmother—now incontrovertibly Santa Muerte—was turning from orange to white.

  Beneath the water, Asher’s hands gripped mine back. He’d stopped twitching, going through his forms. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I took comfort in his fingers wound with mine. He rose up, pushing me back.

  He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen him be. But he was one person now—hopefully whole.

  “Edie—” I heard my name, but Asher’s lips didn’t move. I turned as I realized it was coming from behind me, from Ti.

  “Hang on, okay?” I told Asher as his hands rose to feel his unfamiliar face. He nodded silently.

  I waded through the freezing water to Ti, who was holding himself up. Santa Muerte’s light was barely enough to see by—and what I could see wasn’t good. Ti had been hit by the same blast that’d tortured Maldonado.

  “Let me see.” I turned him toward the light and pulled his hand away from his side. A chunk had been torn out of him, which shouldn’t matter, because Ti was a zombie. And yet—he held his hand up, mystified. He was dripping red. “Ti—”

  The sternness that had always haunted his face disappeared. “Can it be?”

  “Oh God—oh God—” There was visible bone, rib cage, I could see it, and more pink underneath. He didn’t smell like he’d smelled all the other times he’d been shot. There was no stink of ancient death here, just the rain, running through his wound, washing his blood away. “Oh God.”

  Ti reached out and seized me. “This is not your fault, Edie.”

  “Oh, no, Ti—” I whispered in a squeak.

  He held me tight, forced me to look at him. “This is what I’ve wanted for so long. I’m okay.”

  “Ti—” I was racked with guilt. I should have never shut him out. My whole body was numb from the freezing water—every part of it except for my heart, which was cracking in two.

  “This was what I wanted. She did it. She just knew.” His expression was beatific. Soft. “You remember. I explained this to you. I meant it.”

  “If you don’t go to heaven now, I’m going to go up there myself and kick someone.”

  Ti laughed aloud, until it ended in a cough. I reached forward and held him, and he held me back until he couldn’t anymore. When I let go of him, he would be gone. I would never get to see him again. It was one thing knowing he was just gone, away from me, and another to know this was final, that he was dead. We sank into the water together, and I let his greater weight pin me down until it covered me entirely, baptized by my sorrow, anchored by what I’d lost.

  Hands reached down from above and pulled me up. “Let me go—” I fought them as I resurfaced. “I belong with him.”

  “No you don’t.” It was the man I’d never seen before again. I knew it was Asher, but I didn’t know how many more changes I could take tonight.

  “Are you … still you?” I asked him.

  He nodded and pulled me to him. “And I need you to stay here with me.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  I wrapped my arms around Asher and sobbed as he held me close. I heard his voice rumble in his chest as he addressed Santa Muerte. “Explain yourself.”

  I pulled back, still crying, to see.

  Grandmother pointed at Olympio and began speaking. He translated instantly.

  “You shall be my voice, young one. And I owe no one explanations, nor apologies.” Olympio translated her words, but there was no mistaking her tone. The hospital gowns were gone now, covered instead by a translucent flowing light, but her hands and skull were visible, all bones. “I was trapped by the creatures below the ground, and the bruja sought to conquer me.”

  There was nothing left of Maldonado but a charred mark against the cement. Everything that had been him had been burned away and floated off, into the drains. She continued, looking at each of us.

  “I have answered the prayers of those who have called to me—one prayer for each of you. I have been kinder to you than you could ever hope for me to be.”

  I realized that’s what had happened to us. Ti—he’d always wanted to be human again, to get the chance to really die. I’d chosen to save Olympio, and Asher had chosen to save himself. I looked back to Luz and Adriana—Adriana was standing on her own now, without any of the bone tattoos. And Luz didn’t seem as frightening as she once had. I wondered what Olympio had wished for.

  There was a commotion from above us, in Tecato Town. A squad of people jumped over the side to land in the ditch upriver from us. The way they leapt and landed—vampires, for sure.

  A cloaked woman was at the head of their number, hood high. But I saw her white skin, and one blond curl pressed out. Anna had arrived.

  “Why are you no longer mine?” She pointed at Luz.

  Luz pushed Adriana behind her—if there were to be punishments, they would be hers. “I wished to make her whole. And she wished to make me human again.”

  Anna took in our ragtag group, looking like drowned rats except for Santa Muerte, and her face softened. “I understand.” She pushed down her hood. “I came as soon as I could, when I knew you’d broken your promise and tasted blood. House Grey attacked us as soon as we left.” She stared at Santa Muerte. “I can only presume they wanted to control you.”

  And suddenly the reasons why people wanted to control Santa Muerte became clear. If she could turn a vampire human again—and a zombie—she could bring the dead back to life, as befit her name.

  “What will you do now?” Anna pressed.

  Santa Muerte spoke. “I do not owe you answers either,” Olympio said for her as soon as she was done.

  “Your people need you here—” Anna said.

  Santa Muerte turned toward her, and her skull-mouth opened up and laughed, jawbone flapping up and down. “Do not presume to know me, undead one. I could control you too. Those creatures of the dark held me for too long, centuries, sucking away my power.”

  “Who will protect the Reinas from the rest of the Three Crosses then?” I interrupted while I was still brave enough to ask. Whatever had just transpired here, it hadn’t magically ruined everyone else’s guns. People like Maldonado had plenty of followers eager to take their place. Without Luz to be the Reina and instill fear, her people wouldn’t stand a chance. I looked over to Luz and I could see the same thoughts cross her face.
/>   Anna looked at me as though she was just registering my presence. “I should have known it would be you—”

  I wasn’t about to get shunned off now. “You can’t abandon all those people, Anna. You don’t know what it’s like down here.”

  Santa Muerte clapped her bony hands, and another lightning bolt struck nearby. “Don’t tell me what it is like to be abandoned. And don’t dare tell me what here is like.” Again, Olympio translated. Santa Muerte pointed at Anna. “My people no longer need your kind.”

  Anna took two steps forward. “You owe us.”

  Only Anna would try to call in debts from a saint.

  “I’ve already paid them,” Santa Muerte said, indicating us. “What do you think I should pay you?”

  “We were attacked on the way here. I lost three servants to House Grey tonight.” Anna looked unsure. She never looked unsure. “If—if they are not in a better place—I demand their return.”

  “You admit vampires fear the afterlife?” Olympio translated, his tone as arch as hers.

  Anna spread her hands to include the area that surrounded us. “I admit that here may already be hell.”

  Santa Muerte cackled at this. “Oh, I have seen hells, mi amor, mi querida. I have seen hells.” Then she cocked her head and focused eyes that were just empty sockets on Anna. “Pero ha hecho lo mismo usted,” Olympio said. “But so have you.”

  Anna had been tortured for a century not long before. Maybe not as long as Santa Muerte, but—the older spirit nodded, as if to herself, making her robes flow. “Perhaps we may come to an arrangement.”

  Anna nodded. “I would like that very much.”

  The two women moved aside. I had no doubt that the flock of vampires that had followed Anna here could hear them speak in whispers, but I was too tired to try. I sagged, and Asher gathered me up. If I didn’t look at his face, then I knew that it was him—I felt it in the way his arms held me, strong and close.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered in my ear. He sounded like Asher. Some.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back, a lie. I looked around for Ti’s body and couldn’t find it. He’d already been swallowed by the drain. “I want to get away from here.”