Bruja Born (Brooklyn Brujas #2)(82)

The fight inside the house is getting closer, moving toward the kitchen. A body crashes through the window and rolls across the back porch. Maks looks at the body facing down on the ground and shrugs. His face contorts as he puts all his strength into stabbing the spear through my heart.

Run. Fight. Hit. Scratch. My mind is a flip book of scenarios, but all I know is I can’t let him touch me.

There’s a scream, but it isn’t mine.

A blur runs past Maks. I feel the wind it trails on my face. Maks and I both stare at his arm, raised toward the sky. There’s a red bracelet where there didn’t used to be. The bloody blade of a machete follows its downward motion, and then my mother rights herself, her face streaming with sweat and tears.

Maks screams. His severed hand falls with a faint thud onto the grass. I’m too stunned to move, but I watch my mother. My mother covered in blood and sweat. My mother shaking with adrenaline. My mother saving me. My mother.

She takes my chin in her hand, runs her fingers across the tears on my face. “The others might have physical powers. But you and I must have a different strength.”

I press my forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry.”

“Fuerza.” She presses her palm on my chest. “This is the heart you were born with and you have to decide how strong it will be.”

“I know, Mama. I know.”

Behind us, there’s another blast coming. She looks torn between staying and going, so I make the decision for her.

“Go. I’ve got this.”

She gives me her blessing, pressing her thumb to her lips, then to my forehead. And then she’s gone, running back into the fray inside our house.

I want to run after her, but I know I have to be here.

Maks holds his arm around the wrist and screams. His eyes go completely red and he charges at me. Knocks me on the ground and chokes me with his good hand. I kick my legs but hit air.

This is the heart I was born with, and I have to decide how strong it will be. And though it’s being consumed by the darkness I unleashed into this world, it has never been stronger.

I lash out, dig my fingers into Maks’s red eyes. I feel him blink around my fingertips, slick and wet. He growls, nearly rabid, and rolls off me.

I grab the spear from the ground and get up. Maks’s severed hand is still wrapped around the middle. I try to pry the fingers off but they won’t budge.

Maks shudders, and I realize he isn’t crying. He’s laughing. When he looks up to me, he softens his eyes and puts on a sweet smile. My heart twists and turns, remembering the boy he was. Eyes blue as wild flowers.

“You’d never hurt me, Lula. Deep in your heart you know that.”

“You’re right, Maks,” I say. He’s weak and desperate, swaying on his knees in front of me. “I did love you. I loved you so much I thought it was the only good thing that had ever happened to me. I did everything in my power to save you.

“But between you and me?” I plunge the spike into his chest. “I love myself more.”

I stare into his eyes and watch them change from red to crystal to dark blue. He gasps for air and hits the ground. The spear trembles in my grasp, and suddenly, there’s a golden glow coming from my chest. The threads that spooled from my heart are dimming. Maks’s severed hand falls off the spear and lands on the ground with a final twitch.

I hear the whispers, hundreds of them, all at once. They buzz around my head like a colony of wasps. I can feel the power of the spear coming alive, and I know what I have to do. It isn’t a portal that will free La Muerte. It’s me—it’s always been me. I flip the spear, line it up with my breast.

The back door swings open and my family runs out. Flames rise behind them in the kitchen and spread quickly. Destroy the heart and make the sacrifice. I take a deep breath.

“No!” Alex shouts, her hand reaching for me.

I thrust the spear into my heart.





35


Esa brujita con

ojitos luceros.

Con ella me entierro

sin ella me muero.

—Witchsong #33, Book of Cantos




The light burst is blinding. It spills in a beam of silver from my chest.

I can still see Alex, running down to catch me before I fall. She will always catch me. She pulls the spike out of my chest and throws it on the ground, repeating my name over and over and over again.

“Stay alive, do you hear me?” She shuts her eyes and fat tears slide along her lashes and then onto my face. “This is not how your story ends.”

Rose sits on the other side of me. She takes my hand in hers. “She’s free.”

For a moment, I think she’s talking about me.

I don’t feel free. I feel numb. Cold. Broken. I feel like my world came undone and fell back together in different places. I feel like every breath I take hurts more than the next. But I don’t feel free.

“Step aside,” says Lady de la Muerte in her deep, shadow voice.

Alex and Rose scramble away from Lady Death.

La Muerte takes her spear back and holds it with a firm hand, and I don’t know if I’m hallucinating, but I think she is smiling.

“This is not the sacrifice, Lula Mortiz.” Her skin is no longer translucent, but back to the bone white of the first time I saw her. Her crown of golden thorns is no longer bleeding. Her long, slender fingers twitch as she kneels beside me and shoves her hand into the bloody gash in my chest. The pain is so fierce my vision turns red. I shut my eyes, sure she’s ripping my heart out. I can hear Alex and Rose crying. My parents screaming. Sirens in the distance. Always sirens, the Brooklyn lullaby.