Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2)(74)

I steady myself and say, “I’m ready to call on the High Circle.”

Dad pulls on the whiskers of his mustache. “They would never come to this place.”

“They have to,” I say. “Because right now we’re the only hope for this city.”

? ? ?

The surveillance room is full of faces both strange and familiar.

The High Circle showed up, along with some of the younger brujas and brujos of the community. Pleased is not the first word that comes to mind to describe their attitudes, but at least they’re here.

Mayi and Emma sit at the edge of the couch, unable to hold back their excitement. When you’re a bruja, it’s rare to be included in grown things, though I wish the circumstances were different. Two young brujos, Adrian and his older brother, stare at the members of the Thorne Hill Alliance and the scale-leather worn by the Knights of Lavant.

“Why don’t we have hologram screens?” Adrian asks.

“Do you have hologram-screen money?” Lady Lunes mutters.

Rhett introduces himself as Garhett Dulac of the Knights of Lavant. He names Frederik Stig Nielsen as the High Vampire of New York, and Marty McKay as the representative to all solitary fey and supernatural creatures without nations. Because it’s an official meeting, one of the THA takes minutes in the corner, her fingers moving at a dizzying speed.

“This is a live feed of the Brooklyn Bridge,” Frederik says, pointing at a projection map of the city. He’s turned the volume off, but I can imagine the screams of the stampede taking place. Three casimuertos are feasting on fresh kills. The Knights of Lavant descend on the scene, evacuating as many people as they can. The Knights fight fast, but the casimuertos are fast too. They bare their bloodied teeth and fight back. We watch, horrorstruck, as it takes three knights to bring down one casimuerto.

“Turn it off,” Valeria says. She holds her eyelids shut with her fingertips. “I can’t stand that and the pull of the Veil. Don’t you feel it, Rose?”

Rose looks down at her feet and gives a gentle nod. I realize we haven’t talked about her new ability, if it’s a new ability, at all. But there will be time for that later.

Rhett pulls up the hologram map that estimates the spread of the casimuertos and their victims. “This is what the city will look like this time tomorrow. We’ve dispatched a team to work with our branch of the NYPD, but it isn’t enough. We need to work together in this, or the city falls.”

A chatter starts among the magical beings and swarms into a loud buzzing.

“Those zombie things attacked my pack in the park two nights ago.”

“This city will have to burn again, won’t it?”

“They don’t seem so hard to kill.”

“I mean, decapitation has never not worked.”

“Please, listen!” I stand in the middle of the room. A mix of angry and curious faces stare back at me. Frederick’s serum is starting to fade, and a dull pain starts to pulse at the base of my heart, right around my ribs. “I’m Lula Mortiz. I’m the one responsible for raising this undead army, and I called you all here because you are my only hope to stop them.”

“You went against our word,” Gustavo says, staring at me like he might commit murder himself. His wife, Anna, clutches her amethyst prex, trying to get Adrian to sit back.

“I know—” I start, but he interrupts.

“You violated our most sacred laws. Now you seek our help again to clean up your mess, and you put us in the same room as the people who have hunted us for eons.”

“This concerns us all,” Frederik says coolly. “The Thorne Hill Alliance is a neutral place. The Knights of Lavant are bound by the same laws as the rest of us. No one will harm you here.”

Gustavo makes a distasteful noise in his throat, but Rhett ignores the outburst and gives me the floor again.

“What do you propose?” Lady asks me, her head wrap twice as tall as usual, and her neck adorned with polished gems and a tiny clove of garlic that rests in the dip of her clavicle.

“I don’t understand,” Elisabeth, a witch from the Thorne Hill Alliance, says. “How did you create these zombies?”

“They’re called casimuertos,” I explain. “It means almost dead. They’re literally straddling the line between living and dead.”

“What’s keeping them alive?” Elisabeth asks. “I mean, our magics are different, but all magic needs an anchor. Something must be tying them to this realm.”

There’s a flurry of discussion and suggestions. Beheadings and fire and a quest for a magical spring that cures everything.

I bring my fingers to my lips and whistle hard and loud.

“I am the anchor.” When I speak those words, it silences them. I wonder how many are thinking it would be best to kill me right here and now. “The casimuertos are feeding on my life force. Our magic can’t heal it and potions won’t help. There’s a weapon that can sever the tie and destroy all the casimuertos bound to me. But this is bigger than just the casimuertos. La Muerte is trapped. The balance between the living and dead is broken. Spirits can’t be collected or cross over. Our world can slip into that in-between space.”

“What do you need to do?” someone asks.

“I need to call upon the elements to retrieve the Spear of Death.”