Chapter 15 Bones, So Many Bones
BONES, SO MANY BONES
Artur
“Let me out of here!” I screamed. My head throbbed, and I had a goose-egg-sized bump on the back. Thankfully, I wasn’t bleeding.
No one responded. I didn’t have a clue where I was, but I found myself locked behind bars in a dungeon. The walls were cold, damp stone, and the bars were rusted iron. The floor was worn, old cobblestone, and the smell of damp and piss hung heavy in the air.
I yelled out again in frustration.
“Now, now, Mr. Beaulieu, calm yourself.”
I heard the sharp click of high heels against the hard stone of the prison I found myself in.
From out of the dark, Luana Hurtado walked toward me.
I rolled my eyes. Of course.
“Bitch,” I whispered.
“I’m sure you can understand our position.
Your… friend… has been hired to carry out a rather delicate resurrection.
An important event for our family and our city.
Therefore, we can’t have people like you keeping Cesar Aguilar, a most notable witch within our community, from achieving his destiny.
Can we?” Luana crossed her arms. Her fingernails were impossibly long and far too pointed.
“Actually, I don’t think you understand. Cesar needs me for tomorrow’s ritual.”
Luana laughed. “You can’t be serious. What on earth could a disaster of a witch like you have to add to such a delicate ceremony?”
“I’m deadly serious.” Having been ostracized by people like her for as long as I could remember had done two things to me: it made me constantly doubt myself, and it gave me a surprisingly deep-seated animosity toward folks like Luana.
Inside, I seethed, trying desperately to think of any way to make my magic hurt her.
And I knew that was wrong. That wasn’t why I had the abilities I did, but people like Luana—the ones who thought they were better than others and treated anyone outside their circle with contempt—deserved everything that got hurled their way. Luana was one of those people.
Luana was stopping that from happening and, worse, putting Cesar at risk of progressing his disease.
But now I had someone in my corner—Cesar, a powerful witch with a reputation and standing within the community. Not only had we developed feelings for each other, but he wanted me to be part of this reanimation..
I banged on the cold bars with clenched fists. “Cesar needs me.”
“Oh dear, no. No, he does not.” Luana tsked.
“You are a distraction. An annoyance at best. Besides, what on earth could you, a chaos witch, possibly bring to the table at a resurrection? Ensure the day would be sunny? Or maybe that Mistress would have all her teeth? Such a waste of supernatural power. Honestly, what do you think your presence would add? Change the probability that Mistress Magdalena’s dress would be red instead of black?
No. I know your kind. Inept, incapable, and untrained. ”
“What do you know of it? You’ve never seen what I can do.”
“Ah, that is where you are wrong. I know you have immeasurable power. I know you’re the strongest chance-changer this generation has ever seen.
But you don’t know how to use it. We saw to that.
Couldn’t have someone with your lacklustre ability sullying our family name.
Your filthy whore of a mother couldn’t keep her legs crossed, and so we got stuck with you. I fixed that.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sweet child, you are an idiot. Untold magical abilities and about as daft as they come.”
“If you’re so intelligent, how about spelling it out.”
“I do that, and you’ll never leave here.
Can’t have family secrets getting out now, can we?
But you asked, so be it. My slut of a sister slept with the first mage who showed her any attention.
Gave herself to the bastard, and what happened?
She got pregnant, and of course, the bastard upped and left.
“And what did we end up with? A weakling infant with the ability to change outcomes.” Luana rolled her eyes. “For the love of Hecate, what the fuck was a hereditary line of Blood, Lunar, and Shadow witches going to do with you?
“Give you up. That’s what. So I found the first common stock family I could find that would raise you. Some job they did. The minute you cast your first spell, they tossed you into the foster system. And now look—forty-some odd years later, and I’m having to deal with you all over again.”
“Wait. Are you telling me I’m a Hurtado?”
“Not on your life. You’ll never be one of us. You don’t have a right to be part of this great lineage.”
“Apparently, though, I’m just as powerful.”
“Genetics are cruel. But no matter—I can simply keep you down here and leave you to rot.” Luana spun on her heels and exited the way she came.
“Don’t expect any more visits, or food, or water.
The sooner you’re dead, the better off we’ll all be.
Oh, and I want that black tourmaline crystal back. Efraim is pissed.”
I heard the slam of what sounded like a metal door.
Well, fuck.
Cesar
Holding my head in my hands, I rested my elbows on my workstation.
Mistress Magdalena lay motionless in her coffin behind me.
Elena wrapped her arms around me and squeezed.
“What am I going to do?”
“Nothing,” Elena whispered. “I need you, Cesar. You’re my oldest and dearest friend. I can’t let you do this ritual. You’ll damage your brain for good.”
“They have Artur, Elena!”
She pursed her lips and huffed.
“Look, I get it—you don’t like him—but I think that’s more about you giving in to societal perceptions than actually getting to know the man. I’m telling you, he’s kind, gentle, incredibly talented, and smart—”
Elena lifted her hand as if to interrupt me, but I cut her off before she could. “Don’t even. You don’t know him.”
“Cesar, you might be a touch biased.” She pointed toward my shoulder. “How could you be so careless?”
“How can you be so heartless?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Yes, it is. A man is in trouble, and all you can think about is how it might affect your relationship with me. So I’m bound to him now. Big deal. I deserve to have someone in my life who loves me.”
“Does he?”
“Does he what?”
“Love you? And do you love him? For fuck’s sake, Cesar, you’ve known him for all of two minutes.” Elena glanced away, then took a second to get prudent. “Look, I’m not saying that you couldn’t develop a lovely relationship in time, but this all happened so fast.”
“Sometimes life is like that. And I don’t exactly have the luxury of time.”
“Not if you’re going to go through with this!” She pointed toward the casket.
“Again, not a lot of choice here. If I don’t have the Hurtados contribution to the festivities, squirming and undead, strapped to her pole near Our Lady of Guadalupe church, they will hurt Artur, or worse. And you know it. You know their reputation.”
Elena’s glare could have killed.
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“I don’t want to lose you either. Every time I bring up how much you mean to me and how I don’t want to lose you, you throw Artur in my face.” She crossed her arms around herself as if hugging her own body. Tears rolled down her cheeks again.
The rug had been pulled out from under me.
Elena didn’t want to be left behind. In so many ways, I knew it was selfish of her.
I wanted her to be happy that I’d found someone, but we’d been through everything together for so many years.
She hadn’t found someone to come home to each night.
Neither had I. And so, together, we conquered our little corner of the world.
Even if we didn’t see each other daily, it didn’t matter—we’d been a team for so long.
“Elena…” I moved toward her, but she pulled away. “Baby girl, I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t move, which allowed me to encircle her in my arms.
We were both hurting.
She was afraid of losing me; I was afraid of losing Artur; and we should both be afraid of inciting the wrath of the Hurtado clan.
“What are we going to do with ourselves?” I asked.
She clung to me and sobbed.
“I’m sorry,” she said between hitched breaths and cascading waterworks. “I’m being a selfish shit, and I know it. But I’m scared. I wish I could show you what I saw last night in the bar, after I touched your mark. It was horrible.
“There were dead things everywhere. And the living were being torn apart. I saw Artur dead on the cement, mauled, beaten, and… and…” She broke down into another fit of tears.
“Just breathe. It’s okay. We both know your visions aren’t set in stone.”
“No, just the most likely outcome to the path we’re following.” She hid her face in the crook of my neck. “We have to save him. We have to save you.”
“I don’t know if that’s going to be possible.” Ice crawled across my skin, then heat overwhelmed me in a giant wave of unwelcome reality. “I want to live forever. But we all know that can’t really happen.”
“Well…” Elena began.
“No bloody way. You reanimate me after my death, and I’ll do worse than haunt you.”
She chuckled.
“My time may be over, Elena. I don’t see a way around this.
I don’t want to lose my memory or my ability to recognize the people I love.
I want to be here—with you and Artur. I deserve to find out what could happen between the two of us.
And we would never, ever have excluded you from our lives. You know that.”
“I know,” she said sheepishly.
She banged her fists against my shoulders as we continued to embrace.
“There’s got to be a way around this.”
“Perhaps. Maybe not. But I will still say this—I need help with the Mistress. She’s a mess, as you’d expect from a decades-old body. But truth be told, I’ve never resurrected anything this old.”
“What do you mean? Corpse? Shouldn’t she be nothing but bones? Didn’t the Leóns have a skeletal catrina a few years ago in Mexico City?”
“They did, but it also took three bone witches to do the trick. Come, look.”
We walked over to the casket together. With every step, the room seemed to darken.
The taint, the evil, flowed off her remains.
What was it about anything bad that made your skin instantly feel cold and clammy?
As I lifted the door, the smell of mould, dust, rot, and death filled the room.
The corpse was well preserved. Evidently, the Hurtados had spent considerable resources, time, and magic ensuring Magdalena didn’t succumb to the tropical heat, but the remains were a mess.
“I mean, she’s better off than I would have expected,” Elena remarked, stating the obvious.
“She is. But it’s going to take a small miracle, an armful of Sanjivani, and a bucket-full of hyssop to get this done. Those were the two things I asked Artur to go get. I don’t have enough.”
“Okay. I know exactly where to go. I’ll get it for you.”
“Are you willing to help channel some of the energy? If you do, it might prove to help extend this damaged brain of mine.”
“I got you. Let’s do this. Together. And then we’ll get your man back.”
Something in Elena’s eyes should have warned me that she had a plan. She could be as devious as any Obscurus clan member, but ultimately her Illuminatus instincts would kick in.
She would save the day if that’s what she set her mind to, but how she got there always made me question whether she’d been born with the right witch mark.