Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2)(8)

Two dozen broken bodies lie in heaps inside the overturned bus. Some are still alive and crying out. Others lie still. I recognize Kassandra, eyes shut but her fingers twitch with life. I move to hold her, heal her, but I’m an apparition and I pass right through her. I spin around at the sound of Maks’s voice.

Maks tries to lift his hand to touch mine but he’s broken. He tells my body to look at him. Begs me to open my eyes. He’s still holding me, even after everything that happened.

I move on, walking through the bus and onto the scene outside. A dozen cars are rammed into each other. The second bus is turned on its side, and a lucky few are being removed from the wreck by civilians and paramedics. Red, blue, and white lights swirl all across the highway as more emergency vehicles try to make their way through. Cars try to move out of their way as best as they can, driving into ditches off the sides of the road. People leave their stalled cars and rush out to help, taking off clothes to staunch open wounds and wrap around bone jutting through skin.

That’s when I notice her.

She was always there, I suppose, lingering in the edges of the dark. An omen at the crossroads.

She stands at the center of the highway, dressed all in black. Her face is pale as the moon and her eyes are black as the longest night. She’s completely bald, wearing a crown of twisted, gold thorns that dig into her skull but don’t draw blood. Her dress blows in the breeze and she walks with a spear, the sharp end of it a metallic spike that sparks when she slams it on the ground.

She walks right through the bus and I follow after her.

“You,” I say as she approaches Maks and me.

Her inhuman black eyes lock on me. “You know my face.”

The woman at the crossroads. She looks different now, but I know her the way I know the comfort of a sunrise and the power in my blood that allows me to heal. Lady de la Muerte. Goddess of Death and the Mortal Earth’s Dawn.

She moves in slow, careful steps, like she’s on delay. She motions outward with her arm. The sleeves of her dress fall back to her elbows, exposing translucent, white skin. Names appear up and down her arms. His name makes my breath catch in my throat. Maksim Horbachevsky. The names keep scrolling, and there are many I recognize: Ramirez James. Samori Jones. Kassandra Toussaint. Noveno—they scroll too fast for my eyes to keep track of them all.

“Why did you do this?” I demand.

“I do nothing,” she says. “I collect.”

“You can’t take him!”

“That is not for you to decide. That is for the Deos to decide.”

“You ask too much. You have always asked for too much!”

“Watch yourself, Lula Mortiz. The Deos have also blessed you. Do not betray us.”

Lady de la Muerte takes her eyes off me and turns to a boy face down on top of two other bodies. The number twelve is on his letterman jacket.

“Do not betray us,” she repeats as she lifts her spear straight in the air and slams it into the boy’s back. A great light crackles and winds around the spear, absorbing into the metal.

She’s collected his soul.

? ? ?

“She’s awake,” Rose says.

Her eyes are puffy and her round cheeks are flushed. She’s sitting at my bedside, carefully avoiding all the wires I’m hooked up to. Behind her, my dad and Alex snap awake from their sleep.

“Don’t try to sit up,” Alex tells me. There’s a limp in her step and violet bruises dot her neck. They’ve been healing me.

“I heard you,” I say.

“I felt you. When it happened, I mean.” Alex presses her hand on mine and looks over her shoulder nervously.

“Maks,” I say. “Is he okay?”

“Baby,” my mom says, rushing through the open hospital room door. Her skin is covered in angry cuts and fresh bruises. Dad too. I try to think of the healing cantos they’d have had to go through to fix everything wrong with me. “How are you feeling?”

“Alive, thanks to you,” I manage. My tongue is thick and my head throbs at the back of my skull.

“We’ve been healing you slowly since you got out of surgery,” Ma says, gently brushing my arm. “We still have the smaller cuts, but the police want a statement.”

“Let her rest awhile longer,” Dad says softly.

I shut my eyes, tears flooding at the corners.

“What hurts?” Rose asks, looking over my body to see how she can make me comfortable. “I can push the morphine button.”

I shake my head. I don’t want to keep replaying the accident. I don’t want to see Lady de la Muerte’s ghoulish face.

“What about Maks?” I ask again. I didn’t see Lady de la Muerte take him, but I saw his name on her arm and I remember the voices around me when I was being brought in. He won’t live for much longer.

“He’s in a coma,” Dad tells me. He looks older than ever. His gray eyes are heavy with sorrow and the wrinkles on his forehead are like cracks in the sidewalk.

“But he’s alive,” I say, my voice breaking. “Can we heal him?”

There’s a knock at the door followed by a man in brown leather jacket. His cigarette-stained teeth and suspicious eyes mark him as a detective.

“My sister just woke up,” Alex says. With the spine-crushing black boots she’s wearing, she’s almost as tall as the detective. “She needs more time to rest.”