Yadriel shook his head, trying to rattle his thoughts into place, to come up with an explanation that made sense. How could Julian be alive and his spirit be lying next to him?
Julian’s spirit groaned and flickered.
“Keep your eyes open!” Yadriel snapped when Julian’s eyelids began to droop. He didn’t know what was going on, but if they were going to get out of here, Julian—both of them—needed to stay with him.
With effort, Julian forced them back open. His dark eyes swam before finding Yadriel’s face.
“Yads.” Julian’s voice was tight, his eyes wide and more alert. Frightened.
Next to Julian’s body, three more had the matching daggers pierced into their chests. Yadriel’s heart plummeted. He knew the face of the one to the left.
It was Miguel. But, unlike Julian, he wasn’t moving. His body was still, his eyes closed. His skin was ashen, lifeless. The jaguar dagger piercing his heart was dark and still. No wisps floated into the air. The stone under Miguel was streaked with dark, dried-up blood.
Meanwhile, rivulets of Julian’s blood ran down his own stone slab toward his feet, where it dripped into a pool of water sunk into the earthen floor. The water of the cenote was a cool, glowing blue. Dark, undulating shadows coiled in its depths. Julian’s blood dripped into it, slow and steady.
“Sobrino.”
Yadriel looked up.
A tall man stood facing him. A jaguar pelt, golden with black and brown spots, was draped over his bare chest. He wore the upper jaw and head of a jaguar as a crown. Its eyes had been replaced with jade orbs. The thick, yellowing fangs pressed against his eyebrows. Black and venomous green plumage spilled out behind him.
“Tío?” Yadriel said, squinting in the dark and unable to believe his own eyes.
Tío Catriz smiled. “Look at you!” his said, holding his arms out at his sides. His hands were covered in something dark and glistening. “¡Ven, ven!” He reached down for Yadriel and pulled him to his feet.
Yadriel stood there staring at him, in a daze.
His tío held the wrist of his hand that still clutched his dagger. “Your own portaje,” he said in amused disbelief, chuckling as he examined the blade, twisting Yadriel’s arm this way and that. “When I saw you with it yesterday, I knew what it was straightaway.”
An onyx amulet in the shape of a jaguar’s head hung around Tío Catriz’s neck. It stared at Yadriel with glowing golden eyes.
“Tío, what are you doing down here?” Yadriel asked, his voice wavering.
“Does it work?” he asked with keen interest.
Yadriel nodded.
Tío Catriz laughed again, shaking his head. “I knew you could do it,” he said with fierce pride. Still holding his arm in one hand, his tío cupped the side of Yadriel’s neck with the other, pulling him close.
Something deep in Yadriel—a primal instinct—made him start to tremble.
Tío Catriz leaned down to look him in the eyes. “I am so proud of you, sobrino,” he said, his smile genuine, his voice sincere. “They all doubted you.” He removed his hand from Yadriel’s neck and pressed it to his chest. “But I knew you had it in you.” When Tío Catriz dropped his hand back to his side, it left a smudged handprint down his chest.
A bloody handprint.
Yadriel sucked in a gasp and wrenched himself away. “Tío, what are you doing?” His eyes flickered around the cave. To the cenote and the bodies. Miguel and Julian. The daggers and the blood.
“The dawning of a new era, Yadriel,” Catriz told him, bloody palms held aloft at his sides.
Yadriel shook his head. It wasn’t possible. There was no way. “I don’t—”
“For too long, our bloodline has been losing its power. The brujx are a dying breed,” Catriz told him with a solemn expression. “This is the only way for me to regain the powers I was born without. To take back the birthright I was denied.”
“Your birthright?” he repeated.
“By using the ancient ways our ancestors long abandoned, I will become the most powerful brujo to walk the world of the living in a millennia,” his tío said, flexing his fingers.
At Yadriel’s side, Julian managed to get onto his knees—seemingly from sheer force of will alone.
“I don’t understand,” Yadriel said.
“The forbidden ritual. Human sacrifice, Yadriel,” he explained patiently. “With the help of the jaguar’s paw and Bahlam himself.”
Yadriel’s stomach plummeted. “You can’t do that!”
“Tranquilo,” Tío Catriz said gently. “It’s okay, I have to do this for me, for both of us,” he stressed. “The brujx cast us out. They ignored us and denied us our rights without ever giving us a chance.”
Tío Catriz drew himself up. “I was the firstborn son of the brujx leader, but I was denied my right to follow in my father’s footsteps.” The look he gave Yadriel was one of pity. “None of them believed in you, Yadriel. Your father and the brujx have never understood you. They never even tried to. You are different than they are, so they shunned you, just like they did to me. But I have always believed in you,” he said firmly.
“Tío, you can’t do this,” Yadriel tried to argue, frantic and desperate to talk sense into him.
“It is the only way,” Tío Catriz said, gesturing to the four sacrificial stone slabs. “With these sacrifices, the jaguar claws have drained their spirits one by one, trapping them in the amulet,” he said, touching the jaguar head around his neck. “It’s a slow process, having to drain their spirits and their blood, one by one, but soon it’ll be complete. Once the last drop of blood falls into the cenote, it will summon Bahlam. As my reward, the four drained spirits trapped in the amulet will give me powers our people haven’t possessed for millennia.”
Tío Catriz moved to the cenote where Julian’s blood dripped into the roiling pool. “I had to find the sacrificial bodies, of course, but it was surprisingly easy to just pick people off the street. People with no homes or families.” He sighed and shook his head. “People no one would miss.”
Anger swelled in Yadriel’s chest, nearly robbing him of his ability to see. “You—”
“It did pain me to use Miguel,” Catriz said, stepping aside and looking back at the altar. “He stumbled upon what I was doing, saw me dragging your friend here through the back gate. He left me with no other choice.”
Yadriel thought of the night they all felt Miguel die. How everyone had gone looking for him. The painful stab Yadriel had felt in his chest. How it’d brought him to his knees. He remembered how he’d felt the stir of energy coming from the old church. How Miguel had been under his feet the whole time, dying. How Julian had been right next to him.
That was why he had been drawn to the old church. He’d sensed something was wrong, he just didn’t know how much.
For the first time, Tío Catriz spared Julian a glance. “I’m sorry your friend has to be the one to complete the ceremony.”
Julian bared his teeth, his face contorting in anger and pain. He was more awake—more himself—and seething.
“Has he been with you all this time?” Catriz asked Yadriel with a curious lift of an eyebrow. “You did a good job hiding him.”
“You can’t summon Bahlam!” Yadriel all but yelled, his hands clenched into fists at his side. “If he crosses over from Xibalba, he’ll—”
“I know,” Catriz interrupted with a solemn nod. “When Bahlam rises, the cemetery will be filled with the spirits of the passed brujx. He will be unleashed to do what he did in ancient times. He will drag their spirits down to Xibalba and trap them there for all eternity.” A cruel smile twisted his tío’s mouth. It made Yadriel’s blood run cold. “They will suffer, and the living brujx will be made to face the consequences of their actions. I will show them what a grave mistake they’ve made, and I will show them no mercy.”
Yadriel wanted to vomit. He thought of his grandparents, his aunts and uncles, his mom. They were all in the cemetery, celebrating and probably worried sick about him. They had no idea what was coming. What would happen to them if Yadriel didn’t do something? He would lose them. He would never see them again.
“Finally, they will see us as equals,” his tío said, turning his full attention back to Yadriel. “They will never value us, or give us the chance to show them what we’re capable of. We can show them how wrong they are, together.” When he smiled, Yadriel barely recognized him anymore.
How was he the same man who had comforted Yadriel when he felt so alone? How was he the man who took Yadriel under his wing when even his own dad avoided him? Yadriel didn’t want to believe it.
“They will never accept us, Yadriel,” he said softly, reaching for him. “This is the only way to show them.”
Yadriel stepped out of his reach. “No, it’s not!”
His tío sighed, not angry, but tired. “Yadriel—”
“I told my dad!” He couldn’t bring back Miguel, or the other two people who had lost their lives, but if he could make his tío understand, he could save everyone else from a similar fate. “He knows about my portaje, that Lady Death blessed me as a brujo, that I am a brujo!”