Cemetery Boys(97)

The stairs coiled down into the earth. Yadriel pressed his hand against the slick stone walls as they descended to keep himself steady. He used his portaje and the golden thread to light the way, but too quickly, they began to fade.

Yadriel cursed under his breath. The bottle of pig blood was back at Lady Death’s altar.

But as the warm glow faded, faint blue-and-green lights danced along the walls. They were like the lights that danced in Maritza’s pool when they swam late at night during the summer. They undulated and flickered, growing brighter the deeper they went. Yadriel followed them.

The air grew damp and heavy with the smell of copal incense.

When the steps finally bottomed out, they opened up into a room.

Or, not a room, but a cave. Yadriel only got a quick glimpse—clear water, burning candles, wet stone—before he saw Julian’s ghostly form slumped against a huge block of stone.

“Wait!” Maritza hissed behind him. He felt her fingers graze his back as he ran to Julian’s side.

“Julian!” Yadriel dropped to the floor and reached for him, but his hands slipped right through Julian’s shoulder. His edges blurred and washed out, barely there. Yadriel was frightened that, any second, he’d disappear altogether.

Julian’s breaths were shallow and rapid, his face contorted in a grimace. “What happened? Where are we?” he asked, words slurred as his fingers knotted into the blood-soaked shirt that clung to his chest.

“I don’t know,” Yadriel confessed, tearing his eyes from Julian’s face long enough to take in their surroundings. It took effort to understand what he was seeing.

It was an ancient crypt, one that’d probably been hiding under the old church for years. A steady dripping sound echoed off the cave walls. There were candles along the sides, their flames tall and crackling. Tombs were cut into the walls, housing stone sarcophagi. In the middle of the cave, four large slabs of stone were laid out in a semicircle. Light and shadows caught in the small pictorial carvings on their sides. There were shapes and faces, and several jaguar heads—the glyph of Bahlam. A body lay on each slab. Their heads were slightly elevated, and Yadriel could just make out their faces in the firelight.

A breath caught in his throat.

Julian.

Two Julians.

Julian’s spirit remained at his side, barely conscious. But laid out on top of the slab he was slumped against was Julian’s flesh-and-bone body. He was sickly pale, but Yadriel could see the labored rise and fall of his chest. Bright red seeped all over his white shirt.

It was Julian, and he was alive, but barely.

Sticking out of his chest, right above his heart, was a dagger. Yadriel recognized it straightaway. La garra del jaguar. One of the forbidden ritual daggers Lita had been looking for. It was made of oily flint that glistened in the flames. The handle was a carved jaguar head, its mouth gaping, thick fangs biting the hilt. Its eyes were round and bulging. Wisps curled from the handle of the dagger and into the air like golden smoke.

Yadriel shook his head, trying to rattle his thoughts into place, to come up with an explanation that made sense. How could Julian be alive and his spirit be lying next to him?

Julian’s spirit groaned and flickered.

“Keep your eyes open!” Yadriel snapped when Julian’s eyelids began to droop. He didn’t know what was going on, but if they were going to get out of here, Julian—both of them—needed to stay with him.

With effort, Julian forced them back open. His dark eyes swam before finding Yadriel’s face.

“Yads.” Julian’s voice was tight, his eyes wide and more alert. Frightened.

Next to Julian’s body, three more had the matching daggers pierced into their chests. Yadriel’s heart plummeted. He knew the face of the one to the left.

It was Miguel. But, unlike Julian, he wasn’t moving. His body was still, his eyes closed. His skin was ashen, lifeless. The jaguar dagger piercing his heart was dark and still. No wisps floated into the air. The stone under Miguel was streaked with dark, dried-up blood.

Meanwhile, rivulets of Julian’s blood ran down his own stone slab toward his feet, where it dripped into a pool of water sunk into the earthen floor. The water of the cenote was a cool, glowing blue. Dark, undulating shadows coiled in its depths. Julian’s blood dripped into it, slow and steady.

“Sobrino.”

Yadriel looked up.

A tall man stood facing him. A jaguar pelt, golden with black and brown spots, was draped over his bare chest. He wore the upper jaw and head of a jaguar as a crown. Its eyes had been replaced with jade orbs. The thick, yellowing fangs pressed against his eyebrows. Black and venomous green plumage spilled out behind him.

“Tío?” Yadriel said, squinting in the dark and unable to believe his own eyes.

Tío Catriz smiled. “Look at you!” his said, holding his arms out at his sides. His hands were covered in something dark and glistening. “?Ven, ven!” He reached down for Yadriel and pulled him to his feet.

Yadriel stood there staring at him, in a daze.

His tío held the wrist of his hand that still clutched his dagger. “Your own portaje,” he said in amused disbelief, chuckling as he examined the blade, twisting Yadriel’s arm this way and that. “When I saw you with it yesterday, I knew what it was straightaway.”

An onyx amulet in the shape of a jaguar’s head hung around Tío Catriz’s neck. It stared at Yadriel with glowing golden eyes.