The 52nd (The 52nd Saga Book 1) (25 page)

“Come on, Zara. Honestly, would I make you do this if it wasn’t safe?” he asked. He held his bloody hand away from his side as thick drops of blood fell to the loose pebbles by his sneakers.

I inched reluctantly outside until the smelly pile of flesh was at my feet. I stared at the pile, trying to find a piece that didn’t look so big, or so bloody. But it didn’t exist. I settled for a leg. As I pulled my sweater up on one arm and bent down to grab it, Malik growled. I
jumped.

Lucas didn’t intervene. He waited patiently, coaching me with steady eyes to move. I let another moment pass before going in for the leg again. Meaty muscle squished between my fingers, and the blood dripping down the back of my hand was cool. I chucked the leg as hard as I could, but I wasn’t surprised to see it fall far short of where I’d hoped. Which is to say, it plopped down on the gravel of the driveway a few feet away. Malik sprang for it anyway, picked up one end in his teeth, and dragged it off into the
woods.

“Where’s he going?” I asked. Lucas was chuckling softly. “What are you laughing
at?”

“Nothing. You did it. I didn’t think you would.” Lucas cleared his throat and pretended to have a serious expression. “I like a girl who isn’t afraid to get her hands
dirty.”

I looked at the pile and then my red hand. The stench of butchered meat rose, and I had to turn my head away to breathe. The gagging was nearly uncontrollable. I squeezed the bridge of my nose with my clean
hand.

Lucas stepped in. “Allow
me.”

He grabbed another leg and a part of the body and chucked both into the woods. Then he threw the smaller pieces after them. The jaguars were nowhere to be seen. The only evidence was the bloody bag at our
feet.

“Isn’t that going to attract bears?” I asked, my voice distorted through my pinched
nose.

“Nah. That meat will be gone in ten minutes. And Niya and Malik like to bury the bones. Sometimes their mutt behavior is really strange. Let’s go clean
up.”

I turned, but stopped in my tracks as I finally
looked
at the garage. I knew that every member of his family had their own car, but it was overwhelming to see them neatly parked together in pairs, black and red, gold and orange, and finally white, where the Lexus stood alone. I’d never seen so many cars with some type of turbo exhaust on the backend in one place. I thought of Max and Casey first, and then I thought of that one word:
horsepower
.

Lucas got to the door before he noticed I wasn’t behind him. “Ah, you got me. I was trying to not show you the garage.” He walked around and started pushing my back with his clean elbows. “Because I knew this is the reaction I’d
get.”

“Do you own all of those?” By now the blood on my hand was freezing—a unique, new kind of nasty discomfort.

“A perk of being ageless, I guess. The Aluxes picked them out for
us.”

“The
what?”

He pushed me along more quickly as the blood crusted in the toasty house. Lucas turned on the faucet in the kitchen sink and made me go first. I scrubbed at it harshly, aiming the spray under my fingernails as my gag reflex worsened. The water ran
red.

“How’d it go?” Dylan asked in the middle of a
heave.

I scrunched my nose and shook my head as I held my breath, hoping the bile would stay in my
body.

“Me neither,” Gabriella said. “It’s disgusting.”

When I finished, I moved over and let out my breath. Lucas’s tattoo glowed brightly underneath his shirt as he scrubbed.

“You ready?” Dylan asked, breaking my
stare.

“Sure.”

I wanted to wait for Lucas, but I knew he’d probably beat me down since I still had to
change.

“Where’re Andrés and Valentina?” I asked as we passed the large stone statue in the great
room.

“With your parents, setting up Mexico,” Dylan
said.

“Are they . . .”

Dylan chuckled. “No. Andrés still has humanity in him. He doesn’t like to brainwash people unless he has to. They’ll arrange it over
dinner.”

Dinner? I was scared to think of my parents’ reactions.
Hey, Mitch, hey, Lori, demons are chasing your daughter, and we need you to come to Mexico for a little while.
Dinner would be a disaster. They would never allow me to see Lucas
again.

I swallowed bile and went up to
change.

Lucas was the only one who watched me every time I trained over the following weeks. I got stronger as things got harder, but Lucas became unbearable. He was now the one pushing me physically, repeating
again
after each blackout. He was harder than Dylan, and I hated it. I didn’t know what I’d done to make him think I was this strong, but I wasn’t. I could never forget that
I
was the one who chose to walk toward the screams when I blacked out. I should have gone the other way, but I didn’t.

Friday after Thanksgiving, while everyone I knew went shopping for the holidays, I hung from a steel pole fifteen feet in the air, blisters open and seeping, staring at Lucas in a silent plea for mercy. My body was weak, and I knew I only had seconds before I fell again. Dylan caught me for the first time when Lucas didn’t budge. When I came to, I glared at Lucas angrily.

“Again,” he said, a soulless
statue.

Later that night, as the snow fell, I cried, and the next night, and the next. I knew whoever had night watch heard me, but no one related it to Lucas. It was hard going to school each day, hearing what the others did on the weekends while I trained with gods. And it was hard that my mom didn’t believe me when I told her Lucas and I were only friends. But it was harder still that Lucas never admitted what I knew he’d felt under the starry
sky.

The Castillos and Tita watched me sadly as I returned to the house each day after school for training, their eyes apologizing for Lucas’s behavior. I realized that I respected them because they kept my crying jags a secret. It was the honorable thing to
do.

One afternoon, after I had just returned home from training and two hours before our parents were to meet for dinner, Lucas unexpectedly
called.

“Get ready. We’re going to dinner with them,” he said. Not an ounce of pleasure rippled in that sweet
voice.

I looked down at my sweat-sticky sternum. It would take me a while to get ready, but I didn’t dare disagree. I ran for the shower. Afterward, I sucked into a mint pencil skirt and a striped shirt and braided my natural waves for
speed.

“Mom, you
do
know that it’s an hour away, right?” I called when I went downstairs and they weren’t there. I figured they would be a few minutes, so I walked to the mirror and glanced at my new figure. My waist had shrunk with all the training, and I had curvier muscles. I turned to the side and glanced at my butt. It was firmer. I smiled, but then I frowned as I brushed the wrinkles out of my skirt. My stomach cramped with guilt.
I don’t deserve to be saved. I’m a traitor.
This shouldn’t be me. I shouldn’t be here—I should be
dead.

Moments later, as the lawns and streetlights were replaced by dark trees against the purple sky, images of the Underworld haunted me . . . burning piles of half-eaten limbs, heads on spikes dripping lines of fresh blood to the ground, trails of blood running down the temple’s steps . . . The blood—so much blood—had a scent that wouldn’t leave my mind, no matter how hard I tried. Over time, it had infused my brain and painted a picture of sweet desire—as if I wanted to go back!
It was disconcerting. I pushed my elbows deeper into my hollow stomach, hoping it would ease the edge of my treacherous thoughts.

We drove south in the black forest for forty minutes. I recognized the headlights of the orange car that trailed us all the way. It was Dylan’s Porsche Cayenne, which only passed us when we reached Carson Pass and turned into a small lake valley lit by the bright white lights at the base of Mount Kirkwood.

As we turned the bend of Kirkwood Meadow, a large wooden sign twinkled the word
Pearls
in globe bulbs. It was staked into the snow at the turnoff that led us up a hill dotted with smaller aspen trees. The restaurant overlooked the vast blackness of Caples Lake from atop the hill. Andrés, Valentina, and Lucas, dressed in evening clothes and fine jewelry, waited underneath the black awning near the prelit potted greenery.

Dad let out a prolonged sigh as he pulled into the carpeted valet drop. Lucas was opening my door and reaching for my hand before the engine
died.

“Buenas noches,”
he whispered, kissing my cheek
softly.

He wore a slim, tailored beige suit and a black skinny tie. His hair had been gelled down, and his smooth skin seemed impossibly fine. Surprisingly, the images of blood vanished, and I remembered to breathe as we joined the
others.

Andrés kissed Mom gently on the cheek. “I’m
Andrés.”

Valentina put her arms around Dad, kissing him lightly before embracing him. “And I’m Valentina.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mom and Dad said simultaneously, both stiff and unsure of this new
custom.

Andrés gestured toward the entrance. “Shall
we?”

We shuffled through double doors into a large room. The ceiling was high and draped with ivory fabric that fanned out from the center to the outermost edges of the room. Ivory wax candles topped candelabras and sat in votives on every flat surface, and some even flared in wall sconces so subtle they appeared to be floating.

As Andrés passed a small desk, the young receptionist, dressed all in black, stood and motioned subtly to each of us to continue. But then, as Lucas passed, her lingering eyes became voracious. I looked back in time to see her whispering into the other receptionist’s ear, glancing at me with a conspiratorial
look.

“You look gorgeous,” Lucas noted from the side of his mouth, over a distance he had carefully measured between us. The compliment seemed odd when he didn’t even look at
me.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” I said, likewise distant.

Andrés stopped at a round table near the back, next to a wall featuring a shimmering indoor waterfall. Lucas drew my seat out.
Going through the motions
, I noted. I pretended not to care. It only hurt worse when I
did.

“Valentina, that is a nice necklace you’re wearing,” Mom said. It was fifty times wider than her own, full of jade and red
stone.

“Thank you. It was a
gift.”

“From
Andrés?”

Valentina smiled humbly, her hand brushing the stone. “No, from a dear old
friend.”

“Dinner is our gift tonight. Please, don’t be shy. Order anything you’d like, but may I add that the oysters here are my favorite?” Andrés said with a
grin.

I opened the heavy menu expecting multiple pages. There were only two. The cheapest thing on the menu was fifteen dollars, and that was for a house
salad.

After the waitress brought our drinks and we ordered, Andrés and Valentina made ordinary talk. It was nice, but I felt sick with worry about how my parents would handle the invitation. Dinner was one thing, but a trip to Mexico was completely different.

I barely registered what I ordered, and it might have been McDonald’s for all that I tasted. But as the plates emptied, I knew it was nearly
time.

“Lori, Mitch, you know, Andrés and I have been thinking a lot about something,” Valentina started, and then she looked to the king. He was a fox in the dim light, and I could see the thin tracing of black eyeliner that rimmed his lower lids. It reminded me of the people of the Underworld, only their shadowed eyes came not from a tube, but from
death.

He spoke with a rich, heavy accent. “We would like to extend an invitation for your family to join us for Christmas this season at our home in
Mexico.”

I couldn’t move my head fast enough—I caught only the tail end of Mom’s jaw dropping open. Dad was in a different reverie: his eyes wouldn’t lift from Andrés’s black nail
polish.

“Well, honey, what do you think?” Mom asked, nudging Dad in the
ribs.

“Well, of course, you two can go home and think about it,” Valentina added. “We would really love for your family to join us, and there’s plenty of room in our house, so the twins would be welcome to come
too.”

“That’s very nice of you to offer. Did you have a certain date in mind?” Mom
asked.

“We were thinking December twenty-second. Stay for a week and return right before the new year,” Valentina suggested.

Dad downed his water in a gulp and wiped his mouth. “That’s very generous. We’ll talk about it and get back to
you.”

“Please consider our offer,” Andrés
urged.

I sat back in my chair, amazed at Andrés and Valentina’s knack with people. They were smart and funny and very humanesque. Mom nearly giggled whenever Andrés said anything. Everything went more smoothly than I could have dreamed—until a cold, unwanted prickle crawled up the side of my
head.

It startled me, and I couldn’t stop a subtle jerk, like it was something I could throw off. Three pairs of Celestial eyes were on me before I could recover. I smiled nervously and looked down. My right hand was trembling now, and I dropped my fork. The sound of metal on the flagstone floor made Mom and Dad look too. I reached for the fork, annoyed, avoiding their eyes at all costs and mumbling under my
breath.

When the tickling expanded into a painful, frigid web over my brain, I chuckled awkwardly. “I’m just going to go outside for a little breather.”

Lucas was half out of his seat when I reached for my head. “I’ll go with
you.”

I knew it would be pointless to try to get him to stay. His parents would insist he go. I didn’t bother to make eye contact and just walked toward the exit. It was freezing outside on the patio. The icicles hanging from the roof were sparse but sharp. I stepped up to the railing and looked beyond to the black lake
below.

“Are you okay?” Lucas
asked.

I turned to him, upset. Cold pierced my head as I moved, pinning an image into my brain.
No, not
now!

“Why did I have to come here tonight?” I asked. I couldn’t stop the tears rising in my eyes or the flash of images seeping
in.