Chapter Twenty-Nine
S unlight glowed against gauzy curtains in an old, familiar bedroom. Aiden cracked his eyes open. Listened to wheels scrape the sidewalk, and a vendor holler, “Mango, mango, mango—chile mango!” Death hovered in his peripheral. Danced at the edge of his own, private infinity.
Where the fuck am I?
But he knew. Recognized wood floors and happy, yellow walls, the colorful throw rug and the framed portrait of the Weeping Mother hung above his abuela’s altar.
Lit wicks popped atop votive candles, and a hungry fly landed on a plate of cut fruit.
Distantly, car horns blared, and backyard birds chirped in the lemon tree.
Nearer, mole scented the air and chicken popped in a hot skillet.
Aiden imagined his limbs might not work, but he slid out from under a quilted blanket and stood, trailing his hand along the chipped doorframe.
He touched his flat, unmarked stomach, and knuckled at his tired eyes.
Flexed his bare feet on the floor and followed the hallway to a brightly decorated kitchen.
Blue cabinets crowned with houseplants lined the wall above a vintage sink with a long-necked faucet.
Cumin seeds, peanuts, and black pepper were scattered around a mortar and pestle on the countertop, and his abuelita stood at the stove, stirring thick, brown sauce.
Antonella Ramírez had always been a beautiful woman.
Her round, soft belly was blanketed with an apron, protecting her clothes from grease-spits.
Usually, her black hair spilled to her waist, streaked silver and white from temple to ends, but that day, she wore her long, fishtail braid pinned against her nape beneath a floral bandana.
She looked like their father—eyes like sugar browning in a pan, slender hands and knobby elbows, and a gorgeous, curved nose pierced with a gold hoop.
Aiden realized how long it’d been since he’d climbed that steep hillside in Tijuana and visited her little square house. Guilt panged in his chest.
“Hola, abuelita,” he said, and touched her arm.
She turned off the burners and pointed to a glass slider, leading to the fenced backyard and an outdoor table.
He walked into the dry, summer air. Hummingbirds searched for nectar and bees gathered pollen, and Aiden closed his eyes as he sat in a white, plastic chair, welcoming the sun on his face.
For a moment, he forgot where he’d come from.
Where he’d been, what he’d done. Citrus perfumed the air, his abuela stood close by, and Aiden had nothing to fear.
Still, something tightened in his chest, pulled hard on his heartstrings, and a voice from another life took the place of the vendor across the street. It echoed, so faintly— baby, wake up .
Two plates scraped the tabletop, followed by cups filled with guava juice.
“Am I dreaming?” he asked, listening for that voice again. “Are we awake?”
Antonella sat across from him, yet he hadn’t seen her sit.
She assessed his face. Pushed a plate toward him, and took his hand, tapping the bandage on his wrist. “No, I don’t think we are,” she said, and didn’t say.
Her lips moved incorrectly, like subtitles on a translated film, and her voice was not her own.
It was his mother’s voice in her mouth. “I think we’re doing something else, somewhere else. ”
Aiden furrowed his brow. “Where, though?”
“Here or there,” she said, and Camila’s voice came forth, rising from inside their grandmother. “You felt it, didn’t you? Hard not to believe in something when it believes in you, no?”
“I’m the only one of us who ever believed in me,” he snapped. He stared at the plate, fixed with chicken mole, arroz, pickled radish, and blackened corn. A meal he’d experienced before—several times—over spring break and every November.
A gold flower petal drifted onto his plate, swinging through the air like a velvet glove he couldn’t unsee.
When he turned toward Antonella, his abuela was gone, and a severe, inhuman form took her place, so close he gasped and froze.
Black paint hollowed her eyes, striped her lips, and darkened her nostrils.
Like a calavera, Santa Muerte appeared to him as a lovely, handmade skull.
Perfectly coiled ringlets sprouted from the marigolds growing on her hairline, shedding petals as she gazed at him, lips twisted into a sly smile.
“Faith is a selfless act, Aiden Moore Ramírez, and I am not a selfless woman,” Santa Muerte said. He heard his grandmother snuck between his mother’s voice, his sister’s voice, and a haunting whisper he had never heard before. She leaned away from him, just enough to let him breathe.
Aiden searched his memories. Hunted for remnants of whatever he’d left, wherever he’d exited, and came away with a feeling like grief but sharper. Worse. Longing turned inside-out—reluctant and stubborn.
“No estás terminado. I heard you then, I’ve heard you now. This time, you will hear me,” she said, and brought her skeletal hand to his cheek. “I am no devil, Aiden.”
Santa Muerte’s touch jostled him into another realm.
He gasped and clutched his chest. Plastered his palm over a wound unstitching on his torso, spreading through him in slow-motion, tearing his skin apart at the seams. Blood soaked his clothes.
Darkness flashed, and the sky looked down at him.
Someone— Shay —said his name like a prayer.
His abuela’s backyard shifted out of existence, into existence.
He blinked through the pain radiating in his stomach, in his gums, in his chest, and stared at the saint, goddess, deity, wonder before him.
“It was you?” he asked, winded.
“You were foolish to ever think otherwise, and the ones you love are foolish to think you’ve done this for anyone else.”
“Send me back,” he braved, and laid his hand over her smooth white bones, holding her palm to his cheek. “Soy tu sirviente.”
“Yes, you are.” She smelled like a cemetery, like fresh-cut flowers and cooked sugar, like turned soil and washed gravestones.
“There is work to be done, mijo,” she whispered, and her touch calloused.
She snatched his jaw with her phalanges and met his eyes again.
Santa Muerte held him like a child, like a prisoner, like an animal she’d rescued, still biting and clawing.
“Faith is a selfless act, Aiden Moore Ramírez, and you are not a selfless man. Tell me, did you truly believe I’d come for you if I hadn’t known your intention? Do you think so little of me, brujo?”
“You wanted a sacrifice. Here I am,” he said, and stared into her black eyes.
“Oh,” she purred, clucking her tongue. “Will you ever learn?”
“I did this for my sister. ”
“No, you didn’t,” Santa Muerta whispered, angling her lips toward his ear. “La verdad.”
“I did this for me.” Aiden gritted his teeth. “Quiero poder.”
The truth was a brittle, misshapen thing, wielded like a weapon, braced before him like a shield. Power , he thought, power and life and love and glory.
“I have been waiting for you. Since the night you should’ve died, since the inception of the prophecy you stitched into your soul, all the way to here, now, this very moment.” Santa Muerte grinned. Her icy breath coasted his face. “This is your becoming, do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said, gasping. Suddenly, night chased the day, and his harrowed heart lurched, and his body lightened and plummeted, recoiled and reached.
“Deliver the dead to me,” Santa Muerte said, and pressed her painted lips to his mouth.
The ache in his chest worsened. He reached for breath, but his lungs refused to cooperate.
Told his arms to lift, his eyes to open, his body to lurch into life.
Pushed toward humidity, toward the stinging, aching fire throbbing above his bellybutton, toward the sound of moving water, and nighttime insects, and Shay, and Shay, and Shay, and?—
Aiden lived again.
He gasped, sucking in deep, agonizing breaths.
His blood reacquainted itself with movement, kicking in his veins as his heart sputtered through starts and stops.
Everything hurt. Blinking, breathing, curling his toes, pushing his fingers into the grass.
Pain spread outward from his marrow. Warm, again.
Necessary, again. He turned on his side and coughed leftover blood onto the ground, extracting his death-state to make room for the second chance Santa Muerte had permitted him.
Fuck , he thought, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts .
“Aiden,” Shay gasped out. “Aiden, hey, I’m right here. It’s okay, hey?—”
“Stop,” Maeve said, and her voice cut like a sword. “Let him be, Shay. You know what it’s like to return.”
Hunger yawned within him, cavernous and new.
His vision tunneled, expanding until the bayou manifested, and the white house came into view, and Shay materialized, real and tangible, kept at bay by Maeve’s hand curled over his shoulder.
Aiden looked at Shay and wanted like never before.
Wanted to sink his teeth into something.
Wanted to break life apart in his mouth and chew, swallow, drink.
The instinct surfaced like stepping back from a ledge, like seeking water in a drought, like inhaling, exhaling, like sleeping and waking.
And for once, Aiden felt entirely awake.
He crawled away. Put distance between himself and Shay’s supple flesh.
Desire clattered inside him, eager to be held, to place himself in Shay’s lap and cling to him, but he didn’t trust the hunger brewing in his depths.
If he went to Shay, he might put his teeth to the tender bend at his elbow or rip out his fucking jugular.
“Don’t,” Aiden said, gritted through sore teeth, and filled his lungs with another hot, shaky breath. “Please, don’t.”
A weak scream crackled from the wasted body a few feet away.
Laura Noble scratched at the ground, voice weathered and death-worn.
He whipped toward her, watching her struggle to rise and return.
Snapped bones folded inward, too heavy for her to carry, but she still snarled and wailed, baring her pointed teeth, blinking her bleeding eyes—leaking red onto her cheeks, clotting in her eyelashes.
Aiden tripped over his numb feet and fell atop Laura, widening his mouth for her throat, digging his blunt fingernails under her ribs, already loose and cracked from the fall she’d taken in New Mexico.
She came away hot and slick, flavored like pennies and salt and necessity.
He excavated his blood—his essence and power.
Took what he’d given back into himself. She squealed, howling Catherine Emerson’s voice at the waking sun.
Aiden snatched her chin and pried at the roof of her mouth, wrenching her wider, until her jaw popped, and her cheeks tore, and he could dig into her throat, claw the eyes from their mistaken places and bring them to his mouth.
Crunch them under his molars. Chew through the last of those pitiful, white-trash-witches, put an end to what they’d started in the desert, and satisfy the murderous hunger he’d returned with.
He pulled her bones through her skin. Sank his fangs into her heart and ate until Laura became nothing. Until Cit and her coven were gone.
Yeah , he thought, and plopped on the grass beside her butchered carcass, I win, bitch.
Aiden caught his breath, eyes turned toward the dawn-ripened sky.
Blood slicked his mouth and chin, caked his fingernails and painted his hands.
Crimson, like murder. Red, like picked berries.
He glanced at Maeve and Shay. Leaned over until he spotted Kelly standing on the porch, holding her dog, waving shyly.
When Maeve lit a hand-rolled cigarette, Aiden held out two fingers.
“Welcome back,” Maeve said. She took a hit then gave him the cigarette.
Aiden sucked smoke into his lungs. His bloody fingers darkened the white rolling paper, but he didn’t mind.
Just inhaled the familiar, earthy burn, exhaled gray plumes, and followed Shay Bennett’s tentative footsteps as he closed the space between them.
Carefully, Shay knelt, mirroring Aiden’s wide knees and hunched shoulders.
Aiden licked his newly sprouted fangs—four up top, replacing his canines and premolars—and sighed.
Shay pinched his chin and steered his face, and Aiden thought, always touch me like that .
“Hey, dipshit,” Shay whispered.
Laughter bloomed in his throat. “Hi, asshole.”
Shay kissed his monstrous mouth, and when Aiden opened his eyes, he was still awake. Fucking alive . Holding onto the man he’d loved and lost, killed and kept, and came back to claim.
Aiden Moore Ramírez.
Selfish, powerful, self-made.
Transformed, again.