Chapter 53 Esmeralda
Esmeralda
The barrel of the pistol dug into her back.
She glared at the infamous goat mask. “Not so hard,” she hissed through her teeth.
When she turned to face ángel, she gasped.
If he hadn’t still been dressed in his signature purple coat, she might have mistaken the ringmaster for Comandante Olivera.
Like Camila, the ringmaster had aged. He had grown a bit thicker around the waist. His hair had gone completely white.
And his eyes. Those crystal-blue eyes, wrinkled at the edges, were an identical match to the comandante’s.
The youth he’d stolen from the previous lead acts, it was clearly drying up. Tezcán’s magic would be gone if he didn’t feed someone to Tezcán soon. Someone like her.
The ropes around her wrists felt suddenly too tight, and her mouth ran dry.
“Thank you for bringing my lovely dove back to me,” he said to Jorge.
Only, the real Jorge had been left tied up inside the weather-changing tent.
Hidden beneath the goat mask and shawl was Camila.
The timepiece Gabriel always wore clicked away frantically from her hip.
They had only moments to get Ignacio out and run for their lives.
Camila moved the pistol, pointing it at the ringmaster. “Untie Ignacio,” she said, her voice steely.
The ringmaster’s smile dropped. “What is this?”
“This is your opportunity to let him go before we make you,” Esmeralda yelled.
The ringmaster laughed heartily. “You are threatening me?”
He twirled his fingers, and a glittering jar appeared in his palm.
Many things happened at once. So fast that they felt slow.
The first thing that happened was Ignacio yelling: “Duck!”
Esmeralda dove out of the way, but Camila was not so lucky.
The jar broke open when it crashed into her chest. Sparkling dust danced in the air around her.
Her brown eyes went wide. Then she crumpled into a small heap on the ground.
Camila’s finger must have closed around the trigger of the pistol because a shot went off.
Esmeralda balked. She thought they had emptied the bullets, but there must have already been one in the chamber.
The next thing that happened was the comandante breaking free from his bindings and pummeling into the ringmaster.
The ropes Esmeralda had hastily tightened around her wrists to look more convincing fell to the floor.
She ran for Ignacio just as the first of the sparklers Gabriel had rigged up on the bale ring high above caught the fuse.
There was a loud hiss, followed by a crackle, then a BOOM! The entire Big Top swayed.
“What was that?” Ignacio asked as she tried to undo his bindings.
“Gabriel fitted the tent with explosives. We’ve got to get out of here before the whole place crashes down on us.”
Her fingers tunneled through the knots holding Ignacio at bay. Her nails dug into the rough twine, but it wouldn’t give. Another fuse hissed to life. BOOM! The catwalk swayed as if it were drunk.
She growled in frustration. “I can’t get you untied!”
The ringmaster and Comandante Olivera crashed into the spinning board used for the knife-throwing act. They punched and cursed and tore into each other with more vengeance and vitriol than she’d ever known was possible.
The ringmaster threw a wide punch but missed. Comandante Olivera took his chance. He barreled his fist right into ángel’s face. ángel’s head snapped to the left, and he fell nose-first into the sawdust.
BOOM! BOOM!
The explosives were detonating in full. The bale ring would fall in seconds, taking with it all the hanging mirrors.
Then the entire tent would cave in, taking with it the mirrored entrance.
As well as the last of the ringmaster’s links to Tezcán.
And their lives too if they didn’t get out right now.
Esmeralda cursed. She wrapped her arms around Ignacio and tried to drag him outside.
“Why are you so heavy?” she grunted.
“Why didn’t you bring a knife!”
“If I’d known you were tied up, maybe I would have.”
“You came into a hostage situation unprepared!”
“No, we didn’t! A pistol is a weapon…We just didn’t know it was loaded.”
“Do I need to remind you how absolutely reckless that sounds?!”
“So is getting tied up! Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten yourself into this—”
Comandante Olivera stomped toward them like a charging bull.
He gripped one of the knife-thrower’s sharp daggers.
But Esmeralda was not afraid of this man.
She no longer cared what he thought or said or did.
She’d kept herself alive and fed after she ran away from him, after he tried to send her to the front lines of a pointless war. She would survive him again.
BOOM!
She covered Ignacio with her arms as dust and debris fell upon them.
“Out of the way, Esmeralda!” the comandante barked.
She looked up at the man she’d once idolized. “All of this is your fault. You selfish, no-good coward of a man. If anything happens to Ignacio, so help me, I will tear you apart with my bare hands.”
As the comandante’s eyes bore into her, she thought she saw them soften the tiniest of bits, but he didn’t respond. He knelt beside his son and silently sliced into his bindings as more fuses screamed to life.