As the first chime rang, Julian’s voice died in his throat and his eyes rolled back into his skull.
TWENTY-TWO
“Julian!” Yadriel pushed his portaje back into its sheath and scrambled to reach him.
Flat on his back, Julian’s entire body convulsed. He flickered in and out of existence, one moment there and the next nothing more than a blurry outline. Yadriel could only see the whites of his eyes.
Julian’s back arched off the stone, his face contorted in pain. The muscles in his neck bulged and strained. His fingers scrabbled against the stone floor. Terrible groans gurgled in his throat as the bells continued to chime.
“JULES!” Yadriel shouted.
Crimson bloomed on Julian’s white tee, blood seeping from his chest.
He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what was happening. Frantically, he tried to press his palms to Julian’s chest, to stop the flow of blood, but his hands sank right through him. Yadriel called Julian’s name over and over, tried to get him to look at him, to bring him back, but nothing worked.
When the twelfth toll rang, everything stopped.
Julian’s body went limp. His expression went slack. He exhaled a wet, rattling breath, and then he disappeared.
This time, he didn’t come back.
“JULIAN!” Yadriel panicked, twisting left and right, searching. He half expected to find Julian’s maligno spirit hiding in a corner, but the church was empty.
What the hell just happened? Where did he go?
The church doors flew open. “Yadriel!” Maritza sprinted between the pews, her skirts flying out behind her, her colorful curls wild. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her cell phone clutched in her fist as she looked around. She was confused but poised to fight.
“He’s gone!” Yadriel managed.
Her expression softened. “I’m so sorry—”
“No! I—I couldn’t; it didn’t work!” Yadriel scooped up the necklace and his portaje from where he had dropped them. His dagger was back to normal. “He suddenly collapsed and—and he was dying—” The terrible scene played itself over in his head.
“Yads,” Maritza said gently, taking a tentative step closer. “He’s already dead.”
“I know that!” Frustration growled in his throat. “But he was dying and then he just vanished! And I didn’t release him!” he added when Maritza started shaking her head.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
“Clearly!” he snapped.
“No, not just Julian,” Maritza told him impatiently. She held up her phone. The screen lit up with text messages. “Paola texted me,” she said, the color draining from her face. “Miguel didn’t come back.”
“He didn’t?” Yadriel’s heart sank, confirming what he’d been so afraid of. It was officially Día de Muertos. All of the brujx spirits were in the cemetery now, returning to their families. “Then his spirit really is trapped somewhere! Why haven’t we been able to find him?” Yadriel demanded. “How is there still no trace?”
“I don’t know, but something else is going on here.” Maritza drew herself upright with a look of determination. “I—”
Maritza stumbled, clutching her chest just as a searing pain struck Yadriel in the heart, doubling him over. Yadriel instinctively clawed at his chest, trying to rip out whatever had pierced into him, but nothing was there.
“What is that?” Maritza asked through gritted teeth.
“Who is that?” Yadriel said.
Maritza’s voice hitched. “Did someone die?”
Yadriel shook his head, frenzied eyes searching the church. No, someone didn’t die. “Someone’s dying,” he said through ragged breaths. The pain was intense, but had started to dull. Something tugged urgently at his ribs. Whoever it was, they were close, and they were in great danger.
“Where are they?” Maritza asked, eyes searching the wooden beams and empty pews. “Can you tell where it’s coming from?”
He didn’t know, but the tugging feeling was too familiar. It was just like the feeling he had when they had been drawn to the church the first time and he’d found Julian.
But how could this be Julian? How could he be dying when he was already dead?
They needed to find him, but how?
Yadriel grabbed his dagger and smeared some of the pig blood along the blade. “¡Muéstrame el enlace!” he called, holding up Julian’s necklace.
The golden thread sparked to life. It shot through the air, past the altar of Lady Death, and through a door. “It’s not going to stay lit for long,” Yadriel said, already making for the door. “But we can follow it to him—”
“Wait!” Maritza caught his arm. “Should we get help?”
“He doesn’t have time, Maritza! You felt it!” he said.
Maritza’s eyes swept to the front doors, then back to Yadriel.
He was prepared to wrench free of her grip and make a run for it if she tried to hold him back.
Instead, she released him and stomped her foot. “Shit!” With a huff, she tossed back her curls and puffed out her chest. “Let’s go!”
Yadriel didn’t need to be told twice.
He had to throw his shoulder into the worn wood door before it groaned open, wood scraping against stone. The old sacristy was dark and dusty. Bookshelves filled with old texts lined the walls, along with an array of brujx sculptures of Aztec warriors and a slab of Maya glyphs. A golden mask of the Incan sun god was tucked safely into a glass display case. At the back of the room was a heavy desk. A toppled-over chair lay next to it.
Yadriel crossed the room, following the golden thread to where it disappeared into the floor behind the desk. In the near pitch dark, Yadriel smoothed his hand over the worn stone. As his eyes adjusted, he could just make out a square outline of green light coming from under the floor. His fingers found a hold and he yanked hard.
With effort, he lifted the trapdoor and slid it to the side. A set of earthen steps sank into the ground. The thread plunged down them.
He only hesitated for a moment. Following a mystery flight of stairs down into the bowels of an old church sounded both stupid and dangerous, but if Julian was down there, Yadriel was going after him.
“Be careful,” Maritza warned as she followed him down.
The stairs coiled down into the earth. Yadriel pressed his hand against the slick stone walls as they descended to keep himself steady. He used his portaje and the golden thread to light the way, but too quickly, they began to fade.
Yadriel cursed under his breath. The bottle of pig blood was back at Lady Death’s altar.
But as the warm glow faded, faint blue-and-green lights danced along the walls. They were like the lights that danced in Maritza’s pool when they swam late at night during the summer. They undulated and flickered, growing brighter the deeper they went. Yadriel followed them.
The air grew damp and heavy with the smell of copal incense.
When the steps finally bottomed out, they opened up into a room.
Or, not a room, but a cave. Yadriel only got a quick glimpse—clear water, burning candles, wet stone—before he saw Julian’s ghostly form slumped against a huge block of stone.
“Wait!” Maritza hissed behind him. He felt her fingers graze his back as he ran to Julian’s side.
“Julian!” Yadriel dropped to the floor and reached for him, but his hands slipped right through Julian’s shoulder. His edges blurred and washed out, barely there. Yadriel was frightened that, any second, he’d disappear altogether.
Julian’s breaths were shallow and rapid, his face contorted in a grimace. “What happened? Where are we?” he asked, words slurred as his fingers knotted into the blood-soaked shirt that clung to his chest.
“I don’t know,” Yadriel confessed, tearing his eyes from Julian’s face long enough to take in their surroundings. It took effort to understand what he was seeing.
It was an ancient crypt, one that’d probably been hiding under the old church for years. A steady dripping sound echoed off the cave walls. There were candles along the sides, their flames tall and crackling. Tombs were cut into the walls, housing stone sarcophagi. In the middle of the cave, four large slabs of stone were laid out in a semicircle. Light and shadows caught in the small pictorial carvings on their sides. There were shapes and faces, and several jaguar heads—the glyph of Bahlam. A body lay on each slab. Their heads were slightly elevated, and Yadriel could just make out their faces in the firelight.
A breath caught in his throat.
Julian.
Two Julians.
Julian’s spirit remained at his side, barely conscious. But laid out on top of the slab he was slumped against was Julian’s flesh-and-bone body. He was sickly pale, but Yadriel could see the labored rise and fall of his chest. Bright red seeped all over his white shirt.
It was Julian, and he was alive, but barely.
Sticking out of his chest, right above his heart, was a dagger. Yadriel recognized it straightaway. La garra del jaguar. One of the forbidden ritual daggers Lita had been looking for. It was made of oily flint that glistened in the flames. The handle was a carved jaguar head, its mouth gaping, thick fangs biting the hilt. Its eyes were round and bulging. Wisps curled from the handle of the dagger and into the air like golden smoke.