Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls by Kaela Rivera (online e book reading .txt) 📕

lit up with a wide grin. “Sounds like you just missed getting on his good side out there.”

I huffed. “Tell me about it. Why does he hate me?”

Coyote lay back on the floor, so his head rested at the end of my bed. “Because you treat him like a person.”

I threw up my good hand. “That makes no sense! Why would that make him mad?” I stalked over to my bed and flopped down face-first. “Coyote?”

The bed creaked as he sat down beside me. “Yeah?”

“I don’t want to be a bruja,” I whispered.

Something tugged on my arm. I looked up and found Coyote rolling up the jacket sleeve on my bad arm—carefully, so it didn’t touch my wound. Then, he wrapped the bandage roll I’d used on him around my cut. After winding it around a few times, he cut it and tied it off.

He pulled on the knot to secure it. “That okay?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

He sat back down on the floor. I turned over, onto my back, and held the injured arm to my chest. The knot Coyote had made was just loose enough that it didn’t squeeze and just tight enough that it wouldn’t unravel.

The stone ceiling above me glowed yellow in the candlelight. “Coyote?”

“Hm?” he said.

“I don’t want to hurt any criaturas,” I whispered. I wished I could make Little Lion understand that. But I also saw why he didn’t. Brujas misused criaturas. And my town protected itself by treating criaturas with the same animosity it held for brujas. And criaturas responded with similar cruelty to keep themselves safe.

It was a painful cycle. I wished, somehow, that it would stop. If that bad blood didn’t exist in the first place, Juana would never have been taken.

Coyote gave a single, quiet hum of laughter. “When you first said stuff like that, I didn’t think I could believe you. But you’re not pretending. You really mean it.”

I grabbed a pillow and squeezed it against my chest. “Well, I want to hurt El Sombrerón. I’m going to destroy him. Probably.” I squeezed the edges of my pillow.

Something shifted at my feet. I craned my neck to glance down at Coyote. His profile was set toward the window, candlelight flickering across the bridge of his nose. For a while, he just stared off.

“In his last life, Little Lion was in love with his bruja,” Coyote suddenly whispered.

The moment he said it, a gray twang moved through his soul. It reverberated from the stone and reflected in my chest. I nearly winced. But not in pain, exactly. More like—guilt.

“I didn’t know it was possible for a bruja and a criatura to fall in love,” I said. But then again, there was something in the way that Tía Catrina wrote about her good, loyal criatura that made me think she’d had feelings for hers.

Coyote laughed quietly. “That’s the worst part. She acted like she was in love with him, but in the end, she betrayed his trust.” His voice caught on the last word.

Silence bloomed in the room. Coyote’s soul carried a growing gray coldness that fought with a layer of warmth. I’d felt that grayness from him before, but not with the same intensity as I did now. If only I knew what it meant.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They won the Bruja Fights,” he said. “She was one of the chosen five that El Cucuy welcomes into Devil’s Alley each year. She was apparently excited to climb the ranks in El Cucuy’s royal court, but Little Lion didn’t want to go back there.”

Something dark entered his tone, the kind of darkness I’d seen only when he’d fought Scorpion.

I sat up, holding my pillow. “Little Lion mentioned that the criaturas who enter our world are trying to get away from El Cucuy and Devil’s Alley.”

Coyote’s gaze strayed away from me. “You can’t blame them for not wanting to go back there. It’s an awful place. No criatura . . . should have to live there.” He shook his head. “You have to understand that Little Lion had originally agreed to be her criatura because she promised to set him free after they won the Bruja Fights. He believed she cared about him. He thought she’d keep her word.” He smirked humorlessly, shaking his head. “Safe to say, he was wrong.”

I scooted a little closer. “How do you know all this?”

He scratched the back of his neck. “It was thirteen years ago. Little Lion was about seventeen in that lifetime, his bruja just a bit younger. They were fighting in the desert, on the way to meet the other four bruja winners and enter Devil’s Alley. They passed the cave where I was staying at the time.” He glanced back at me.

“He said that he’d miss her, but he couldn’t face Devil’s Alley again.” His face hardened. “Most criaturas haven’t been as lucky as me. I was created before the world became itself, so I’ve never had to endure Devil’s Alley the way Little Lion has.” He sighed. “When I saw him arguing with her, I was already thousands of years old, but it was the first time I’d seen a criatura talk back to his bruja.” He scratched at the edge of his mouth. “I knew what was coming. But I couldn’t stand it all the same.”

I held my breath.

“She tried to kill him.” Coyote dropped his hand. “I’d seen it happen to disobedient criaturas before. It was just so much worse, somehow, to see it happen to a criatura who didn’t expect it.” His throat jogged. “I couldn’t help it. I dove on her and wrestled his soul away.”

I pushed off the bed and sat down beside him. “You can do that?”

“It’s not easy, Cece. It’s probably the hardest thing for a criatura to do—to wrestle a soul away from a bruja. Because the moment you’re close enough,” he mimicked the grabbing motion I’d used to snatch Little Lion’s soul, “they’ve got you. I managed to snap Little Lion’s soul off and throw it