The Hacienda(44)

Before me, Andrés stood serene amid the roar. Eyes closed, hands outstretched, lips moving around the verses of prayer. Copal swirled like hurricane clouds, menacing and thick around the circle as Andrés rose.

He rose into the air.

It was not a trick of the shadows, a trick of the smoke; his eyes still shut, his arms stretched out like a benevolent saint, crucifix gleaming around his neck, he rose into the air and remained there, his shoes two feet off the ground.

With a violent motion, he snatched his hands into fists.

The roar cut off. As if strangled.

Silence washed over the circle like a flash flood, profound, heavy silence broken only by my whimpering. My hands were still over my ears; a trickle of salty warmth dripped from my nose onto my lips.

My hands trembled as I let them fall away from my ears. Andrés’s brow creased with concentration; now, with a sharp jerk, he drew his fists into his chest. As if tugging something. Yanking it toward him.

A furious shriek split the room. I fell to my knees, hands clamped over my ears again.

The air vibrated. It rippled and lashed out, alive with anger.

I tilted my head up to Andrés. Stop, please, I begged silently, but the shrieking grew louder, the air shook violently, until—

It stopped.

For a moment, Andrés hung suspended in silence, energy rippling around him like waves.

Then an unseen force snatched him bodily from the air and flung him against the wall of the parlor. He struck the wall with the crack of skull to stone; with a yelp of pain, he fell.

He collapsed on the floor in a heap, boneless as a rag doll.

“Andrés!” I cried, lurching to my feet. He didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound. “Andrés!”

Do not leave the circle, he said.

I didn’t care. The crack of his head striking the wall broke me, shattered whatever sense was left in me.

I raced toward him, throat stinging as I broke through the wall of copal smoke. “Andrés!”

A cold wind swept through the room, buffeting the candles, buffeting the smoke. It seized my chest like a vise, catching my breath, forcing me to my knees. A low wail lifted, then rose to a roar, winding around me, squeezing my chest so hard I thought my ribs were going to snap.

I could not breathe.

Blood dripped from my nose, then my mouth, pouring hot over my chin, choking me; I gasped and sputtered. It dripped onto my skirts, a relentless stream of red; though I coughed and spat it would not stop. I reached a hand to cover my mouth, to staunch the blood; it came away red, with two teeth, pink, fleshy gums still attached to them. The shrieking did not cease. It was a dagger in my skull. I wanted it to stop, I needed it to stop, it had to stop, but when I drew breath to cry out, to beg Andrés, I heaved and vomited more blood onto the floor before me.

Andrés. I had to get to Andrés.

I forced myself forward. Crawled to Andrés’s side.

I put a hand on his face, over his mouth, feeling for breathing. My blood smeared on his lips. “Andrés. Andrés.”

His groan brushed against my fingers.

He was alive.

The shadows carved his face sharp, making it otherworldly, dark and pointed like depictions of the Devil.

A sudden bloom of smoke, smoke that did not smell like copal, caught my attention. I glanced over my shoulder.

A candle had been extinguished. Then a second. A third. Slowly, deliberately. It was as if someone were going and closing a hand over the flames to kill them, one by one.

No one was there.

“Andrés. Andrés, please wake up,” I whispered.

The last candle went out.

The house, it, she—she was no longer within the walls. Was no longer the cold, the cries of Juana’s name, nor even the winking red eyes.

She was the darkness.

Andrés’s unfinished ritual had drawn her out and—

I had broken the circle.

Triumph hummed on the air, hard and metallic.

I was flushed with prey instinct, my breathing growing ragged as the two paths that now lay before me came into focus. Either I stayed in this room and was killed, or I fled and survived.

Andrés had not moved. I looked at the heap of his body and saw a little boy, curled under a church pew. I could not leave him behind. Not alone. Not with the dark.

I grabbed his arm and hauled it over my shoulder. I braced one hand against the rough stucco wall as I lifted him; my legs trembled, I wasn’t strong enough, I was too small to carry a man of his height out of the room, I—

Darkness coiled around his neck and tugged him down, his weight dragging on my arms.

No. Though clammy sweat slicked my palms, the sides of my throat, the small of my back, I tightened my arms around him.

“Get back! He’s mine.” My voice came out as a rough snarl; I barely recognized it. I shouted at the dark, a feral, wordless bark. With that, I hauled Andrés up as fast as I could, pushing with all the strength I had in my legs.

His feet caught his weight underneath. He was up. He wasn’t perfectly conscious—his head lolled to the side, onto his shoulder—but he could bear weight.

“Run,” I whispered to him. His head lifted slightly. “We have to run.”

So, so quiet.

We would be safe in the capilla.

Half carrying Andrés, I lurched for the door. The violence of the ritual had blasted it off its hinges; it had struck the far side of the hall and shattered a blown-glass vase. We stumbled over it, shoes crunching broken glass.