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

Fox kept glancing sideways at me as we headed for the exit. He’d looked so small in the ring with Coyote, but he was actually an inch taller than me. We stumbled out of the door into the fresh, sharp air of the cerros. Coyote offered his back.

“Here,” he said. “I’ll carry you home.”

Wordlessly, I accepted the ride. Fear tailed us as Coyote carried me across the cerros. The dim lights of the mill faded behind us, and the tiny specks of Tierra del Sol’s lights grew brighter as we made our way home. Little Lion and Kit Fox ran on either side of us. But even surrounded by my new friends, I couldn’t help but think of the way Brujo Rodrigo had looked at me when he’d congratulated me. With barely contained anger. What would he have done if others hadn’t been watching?

“What if this isn’t really an invitation?” I asked, gripping the small card in my pocket, as Coyote jogged us toward Tierra del Sol. “What if it’s a trap or something?”

Kit Fox came up beside us. “The invitation is real. I watched him write them all.”

Well, that was a relief at least. I tried to smile at him through the darkness. “That’s good to know. How’s your nose, by the way?”

Kit barely had any eyebrows, but they climbed up his small forehead in surprise. “It’ll be better by morning,” he mumbled shyly.

That was comforting. I touched my hand to his soul. Now if only I could figure out why Brujo Rodrigo’s last look still hung on me like icicles.

Lion rushed up on our right. “Do you hear that?”

Coyote slowed. I glanced behind us, but the scenery still moved too quickly at this speed for me to spy anything. Suddenly, all three criaturas stopped running. I nearly lurched over Coyote’s shoulder.

“What is it?” I asked, coughing.

I couldn’t see his face, but Coyote raised his nose and sniffed. His shoulders tensed beneath my hands.

Kit Fox bristled. “The third one.”

Lion gestured wildly at us. “Get Cece out of here!”

Wait, what?

A lithe shadow sprung out of the darkness. I didn’t have time to gasp. No time to scream. The dark figure swooped in from the left, taking out Little Lion and Kit Fox in a single tackle, and sending them sprawling into the desert. Coyote swung around, and that too-late scream finally came out my mouth.

“Hold on, Cece!” he yelled and soared into the sky.

His jump had us nearly flying over the desert. The wind scraped the tops of my bare ears and chilled my cheeks. Coyote’s arms clenched my legs in place, and the edges of the Ruins came into view. I threw my head back to look behind us.

“Lion, Kit!” I called out.

There was no answer. But just as we started falling back toward the ground, a tall, dark figure appeared in the sky behind us.

I froze. The moonlight broke through the tattered clouds above and lit the criatura’s face. It was long and sharp, with a strong nose, and yellow eyes that were bright as the sun. Long braids of black and gold hung around her head as she closed in on me. My stomach clenched into a dozen, suffocating knots. I recognized that hair.

Ocelot.

She twisted in midair and thrust her arm between Coyote’s back and my stomach. I screamed. Coyote called out, but his words were distorted in the wind. In a simple, elegant move, she shoved us apart, gripped me tightly by the middle, and kicked Coyote down into the ground.

He plummeted hard, face-first, into the desert directly below us.

“Coyote!” I screamed as Ocelot flipped backward. The blood rushed to my head, and I had to squeeze my eyes closed to shut out the nauseating, tumbling scenery. Finally, we stopped. My head was swimming. When I opened my eyes, Ocelot held me by the front of my jacket, pinning my shoulders to the back wall of an abandoned house at the edge of the Ruins.

Ocelot looked down the bridge of her smooth, prominent nose at me. I trembled, searching for the ground with my toes, but there was nothing. She must have had me at least a foot off the ground. My mouth was too dry to speak. Ocelot was nothing like the criaturas we’d fought so far. She’d taken out Coyote, Little Lion, and Kit Fox in less than three moves, without getting a single scratch on her dark brown skin. She was older. She was wiser.

Coyote struggled to get up a distance away, gasping and breathless. Lion and Kit were still nowhere to be seen. It was obvious she knew exactly how to take us down.

Ocelot’s long brown fingers wrapped deeper in my jacket collar and hiked me farther up the wall, so I was level with her face.

“You may have beaten me at my own game tonight, but I know your name, your familia, and your sister, the Bride of El Sombrerón,” she said. I stared at her in confusion. Beaten her at her own game? But I hadn’t even fought her—no, wait. Her eyes caught the light, and they were unfocused, filmy. Like she wasn’t awake. Was Brujo Rodrigo talking through her?

“The Dark Saints would have destroyed you before the first round was over if your tía hadn’t persuaded us to wait and see what you would become,” she continued with her master’s message. “So here is your last warning, a gift Catrina’s words have bought you: do not attend the finals tomorrow if you intend to rescue Juana Rios. The finals are for those who swear loyalty to the Dark Saints. If you come, we expect devotion. We demand your life.”

She dropped me.

I bit my tongue when I landed. Hot, coppery blood spread through my mouth. She stepped back, gaze still glassy. I trembled as I took in all five feet, ten inches of her. Her plaits of gold and black hair swayed in the light rustle of wind.

When I finally dared to blink, she was suddenly, inexplicably, gone.

About ten feet