The Hacienda(87)

A ladder was set against the side of the house, but that was not what stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was another taste, heavy as metal on my tongue. Smoke.

A dark figure perched on the roof. A plume of black smoke billowed near it, barely visible against the dark sky. My eye fell to the window of the study above the drawing room: it was illuminated from within by flickering hellfire, its lurid glow an affront to the night.

Juana may kill her first.

I fell back a step, my mind utterly blank, my limbs turned to lead by shock.

Juana had set the house aflame. Within minutes, Beatriz could be dead, either by smoke or flame or any other violent means Juana had.

My heartbeat hammered in my ears. My hand trembled as it reached for the pamphlet, then froze. I did not have time to search for the right glyphs, to plan and draw and chant. Unless I acted, and acted now . . .

I had to get to Beatriz. Through the kitchen, up the stairs . . . and if the room were already alight, what then? Titi could pass through flame if she willed it; once she had taken a child from a burning house and emerged unscathed, though she was barefoot and bareheaded. I had no idea if I was capable of the same. Beatriz certainly was not. I had to fight on two fronts, strike two foes at once: extinguish the fire and get her out.

I had to be fast.

I dropped the pamphlet and backed up several steps, lifting my face and arms to the heavens, seeking, seeking, seeking as Titi did when the valley was parched.

The black clouds were slung low on the far side of the mountains, their bellies heavy with rain.

You, I called. Heed me.

The clouds did not turn their steely heads. The wind that ushered them, steady as a shepherd, swept me away like a fly from its hide.

I was not strong enough. I was a man divided, weak, uncertain. Not as strong as Titi. I did not have her conviction, nor her command over the skies. The wind had no master; it bore allegiance to no power. Any other night, I would have accepted this. I would have recognized how I was not strong enough. Any other night, I would have retreated. Sought other solutions. Taken the path that was safer.

But Beatriz was in that house.

Her words rang in my head. Is there anything that doesn’t require words? Something where you act on instinct, or you could improvise . . .

Even though she saw the darkest parts of me, she looked at me with kindness. I had failed, I was damned, and still she looked at me as if I were someone worth having faith in.

I could not let her die. I would not let a Solórzano harm another person I loved.

I reached inside myself to the box. Darkness seeped from its lid like smoke; it was already straining at its lock. Without bracing myself, without questioning, without another thought, I did what I swore I would never do.

I flung it open.

Darkness surged through me like a flash flood. It swept through me and over me, deafening power coalescing into a dark storm in my chest, one that crackled, one that was alive. It quaked with the rumble of a thousand galloping hooves, with the strength of a long-sleeping volcano brought to the brink with fire and thunder and the Devil’s brimstone.

I released it on the clouds.

“I am the witch of this valley!” I roared. “Heed me!”

Thunder rumbled. I was my fury, my anger, soaring through my chest and the crown of my head dizzyingly high, cracking as lightning across the low, leaden bellies of the clouds. Lightning struck once, twice, brilliant green.

I bound the clouds with all my strength and yanked them toward San Isidro. They resisted, but I dug in my heels and pulled harder.

Come, I commanded. Come.

The clouds released rumbles of thunder, but I kept pulling until, groaning, they shifted course. They breached the mountains, then spilled down into the valley toward San Isidro.

I sucked in a breath. Suddenly, I was no longer in the vast black of the skies, but in myself. My feet on the ground, outside the back of the kitchen. Sweat cut tracks down my hairline, down my spine. My very skin vibrated with dark power; I was stuck with a thousand needles over every inch of me, I was outside of my body and within it in the same breath. I was alive.

The clouds opened; sheets of steely rain struck San Isidro. Rain poured over my hair and face. My bones ached with it. My ally was here to fight the fire.

Now it was time to get Beatriz.

I seized the pamphlet from where I had dropped it on the earth and crossed the garden in three steps. I threw myself into the kitchen and flung the wet pamphlet on the table. I had no censer, no copal. No plan as I strode to the door, shaking and savage with power.

I was the storm. Witch’s lightning crackled over my knuckles; though it scorched my skin, I felt no pain as I placed my hand on the locked door.

Open.

It flew off its hinges, landing with a sharp crack on the flagstones.

The darkness beyond turned to me. It seethed with anger; its hackles raised when it realized who—or rather, what—stood in its belly.

“Yes, it’s me,” I said, a feral grin pulling my lips taut. I shifted my weight, and with a flush of will, seized the darkness itself and held it in a stranglehold. “Now stay out of my way.”





30





BEATRIZ



THE TORCH FELL. THE rug was soaked. The floors were slick. The door to the hall was on the far side of the room, and it was locked.

The bedchamber.

I didn’t care about Rodolfo’s blood anymore. I had to get away from the torch.