Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2)(77)

The prex I’m wearing—the one my mother made to protect me against bad intentions and curses—breaks apart and falls to the ground.

“Get your hand off my child, Gustavo,” Mom says. She’s standing so close to him that it takes me a moment to see the blade she’s pressing against his ribs. There’s a deadly stillness to her face, a resolution that frightens me. My mother is a healer. Her hands have saved countless lives and brought so many souls into this world. That same woman is willing to hurt someone for me. And I know I can’t let that happen.

“Ma, I got it,” I whisper, aware that dozens of eyes are on me.

“I made the wrong choices,” I tell Gustavo. “But your son has the opportunity to help me make things right.”

Gustavo takes his wife and son by their hands. “Adrian, we’re going.”

Adrian shakes his head, feet firmly planted on the floor. “I can’t. I have to do this. You’re the one who taught me that our power is greater than ourselves. Please, Pa.”

Gustavo takes a long look at his son, then turns to me with fury in his eyes as he holds a finger to my face. “You still have to pay a price, Lula Mortiz. You can’t get out of paying it. And by the Deos, I hope that day comes quickly.”

I stare right back into the hate in Gustavo’s eyes.

All I can say to him is, “I know, Gustavo. But that’s between me and Death herself.”





32


For eons, the Deos slumbered.

La Ola in her sea, El Terroz in his mountains,

El Viento in the skies, and El Fuego at the heart of the world.

—Tales of the Deos, Felipe Thomás San Justinio




The Coney Island boardwalk is deserted. The shops are closed up for the night. Neon graffiti on the metal grates is the only color against the gray darkness that takes hold tonight. Thick, black clouds carry the beginnings of a storm toward the shore.

I take a moment to let the drizzle kiss my face, feel the wind in my hair. The Deos are where they’ve always been and, more than that, are all around me. In this moment, I am ready.

Out on the water, tall waves swallow up the jetties and lifeguard towers, licking the edges of the boardwalk.

Dad, Adrian, Rose, and Alex gather around me and we go over the conjuring one last time.

“Alex, we need light,” I say, and she conjures a glowing orb over each of our heads. “Dad, can you bring the storm closer?”

He holds his hand with the other to stop it from trembling but nods wordlessly.

“Are you sure you can handle this?” I ask.

He takes my face in his hands. It’s been so long since I’ve really looked at him. I see myself in his weather-gray eyes and the fine curve of his nose, in the way my brow furrows when I’m quick to anger or worry, and in the curl of his hair.

“I know I can never get you girls back. Too much time has passed. But I’m going to be here now, and I’m going to give you everything that is in my power to give.”

My thanks is lost as the sky thunders, a sonic boom I can feel right at my core. The pain around my heart is getting stronger. I can feel the dark mass growing, a life-sucking leech.

“Let’s go,” I shout over the gale, and they follow me onto the beach.

I hold my dad’s hand the entire way, and he only let’s go when they form a wide circle with me at the top.

I am at the edge of the world, I think. Looking into the black horizon, it truly feels that way, as if there is nothing but the engulfing power of the sea at night.

“The waves are getting closer,” Alex says, reaching for Rose’s hand. “Rosie, you ready?”

“If by ready you mean terrified, then yes,” Rose says before letting go of Alex. She’s a natural at wielding this unknown power, moving her hands like she’s decoding the language of gods with her fingertips. As a dark wave threatens to crash over us, Rose faces the approaching wall of water and holds her palms up. Salt water sprays around us but she steadies the wave with the motion of her hands. Her force field twists water into a rope and lassos around the Circle.

Dad goes next. The salty air is charged with magic. His eyes are threaded with pinpricks of lightning. Every lamppost on the boardwalk shatters as he pulls that energy into his fist, twisting it into a ball of electricity high in the air.

He calls on La Tormenta, Lady of the Storms and Wife of El Cielo. Dad shuts his eyes, and despite the ring of water spinning around us and the black cloud that he’s pulled directly over our heads, he’s never looked so peaceful. When he raises his fist into the sky, a silver-white light fills the Circle from the inside out, so bright we all have to look away momentarily.

In his fist is a bolt of lightning.

“Adrian, go on!” I shout.

Adrian’s eyes flash white, and my heart skips at the thought of Maks’s eyes. But I have to focus, so I concentrate on the crash of the waves and the howl of the wind. Adrian spreads his arms open as air funnels around him and he rises six feet off the wet sand. As if he can’t believe his own strength, he hollers into the sky.

I look to Alex, who goes last. She rubs her hands together and bends down to press them against the sand. Her face is stoic, as if she’s turned to granite herself. It’s then that I feel the rumble beneath the ground racing toward us.

Alex is like a maestro conducting an orchestra. Her hands pull Rose’s rope of sea and shifts Adrian’s tornado up high, forming a twisting cylinder of water and wind with us at the center. The earth still trembles beneath us, closer still.