XXXV

Alba

“This will be the final exorcism of Alba Díaz de Bolanos.”

Bartolomé’s pronouncement echoed through the chapel.

Rain drummed on the ceiling and slicked the earth outside, turning it to clay and carving deep rivulets through the valley.

The hem of Alba’s white gown was wet and dark with mud.

Her shoes and stockings were soaked from the walk to the chapel from Casa Calavera, but that did not matter—the priests had seen fit to have Mamá strip them off Alba’s feet before she was laid down on the floor.

She lay atop a rough-hewn wooden cross constructed especially for this occasion. Her arms were splayed and bound in a pale imitation of Christ’s. Splinters roughed her skin. No nails through feet; instead, more rope there. Of course. Always the rope. Always the chafing.

This was Hell: the brutal chafing, the disregard for her comfort or her safety.

And this, too, was Hell: Mamá allowing it to happen.

Mamá stood back, her mantilla shuddering as she shivered in the cold, the beads of her rosary clacking between her nails.

Mamá stood by—every moment she did not protest was full-throated consent to her freezing, wet, and weak daughter being bound on a cross on the floor before her.

A pang of grief split Alba’s ribs. From that moment on, she felt she had no mother.

No friends, no defenders. Not even Carlos—for was it not he who had insisted that this final exorcism take place at Mina San Gabriel?

Was it not he who was more preoccupied with rumors about her condition spreading in Zacatecas than by the sight of Alba bound to the cross?

She was alone.

With the priests now gathered in the chapel, Padre Bartolomé seized the reins and drew them tight.

Among their number, the Inquisitors had brought an expert in exorcisms—some pale Galician with a strong lisp—but Padre Bartolomé had ordered him to stand at the back of the chapel, near Mamá and Carlos.

Bartolomé, and only Bartolomé, would face down the devil in Alba’s breast.

Her guts shifted. As if someone were pushing the blankets off the bed on a hot summer’s night. Nausea stung the back of her throat; she caught it and swallowed it before it choked her. It was sour. It burned.

You’re his creature, after all . A beckoning behind her ear, clear and coy as if it were mortal speech. He discovered you. His pet. His prize.

It began.

At every other exorcism, she had felt present.

With Elías, especially, she felt involved.

She did not simply observe; she lay in wait for the right moment to comb through herself, to pick out stitches as if from a swatch of embroidery.

Knot by knot, stitch by stitch. She was devilishly good at embroidery.

Better still at finding her work lacking and ripping it out to begin again.

But this time, her body reacted according to what the demon willed, not her. She was a foreigner in her own breast, a beast in a cage, limbless, barely a voice.

And so she retreated into her mind. She allowed the threads of her consciousness to become tangled, thick and snarled like matted hair. Buckets of cold water were thrown at her and went up her nose, choking her, making her gasp and weep, and she did not feel any of it. She did not care.

Romero slipped greasy and slick through her mind, the memories of another person.

Hands sank into slurry, mercury and silver ore shining like the surface of the moon, like magic, as it poured into his ears and up his nose, into his gaping mouth, and his eyes, oh, how it slipped over his eyes like a funerary mask, how easy it was to hold him down even in liquid so thick, how satisfying the give of the body beneath the mud.

Pale hands— mine , she realized, how odd —on his shoulders, and a thrust, a push, a final condemnation. The lurch of a body. A trill of mad laughter—oh, it was hers too! She was mad! How freeing!

How foolish of her to dream of autonomy. Of control over her life. She had never had any. She had always been this: a mongrel of mortal and monster, her soul charred and crumbling, her life forfeit since the moment her wet body emerged from a stranger and met the icy mountain air.

She had never had anyone but the demon.

Do you know that Bartolomé sent for the Inquisition weeks ago?

That unearthly purr vibrated through her skull, soft and comforting, drowning out the droning, echoing Latin around her.

She was limp. She shut her eyes—or at least she thought she did. It did not seem to matter if they were open or closed, for she saw the same things: rage and spittle, billowing blackness.

He had decided to frame someone for witchcraft before you even left Zacatecas. He wants to be the exorcist of the Indies. Smash idols and shrines, spill blood, drink glory. So much ambition in the priestflesh, so much, so delicioussssssss.

Once upon a time, in a ballroom in Zacatecas, she had come face-to-face with Padre Bartolomé for the first time. She should have listened to how her gut had soured in the confessional. She should not have trusted Carlos nor Mamá.

For where were they now? They watched . They prayed along with the Inquisitors who burned with hatred at her so fiercely she felt she knew the scorch of hellfire.

Perhaps they loved her. Perhaps they cared. But not enough. They were cowards before the Church and slaves to Bartolomé’s whims.

And for that, they would watch her be flayed alive. Perhaps even to death.

You provided him with an obvious target , the demon said. The sorcerer did. It’s your fault.

The words throbbed. Her head was tender, too tender. Her arms ached. They might fall off. She might fall away, forever, forever—

“You mean you did.” She meant for the words to have venom. They tasted weak and flat.

Behind her ear: a sound that brought to mind a delicate scoff.

I did not give the sorcerer his book. Nor his desire. The stupid man brought this upon himself.

“It’s your fault he’s dead!” Alba cried.

She did not know to whom she was speaking. The priests? The demon? Herself? The demon and her, her and the demon—were they one and the same? If she had spent her whole life with its menace stitched in her bones, was she even herself? What was herself?

Or is it your fault? the demon crooned.

“Damn you!” Alba shouted.

You were left to die, and I saved you, the demon said. I raised you. We eat together, we drink together, we are together, together, together. Your body is mine and it will not die.

But what if she did?

Then I will pass to someone else here. Perhaps dear Carlosssss…

She knew she should feel something in response to this—temptation, perhaps, to inflict this upon someone else. Or anger that the demon was threatening her. Or even a desire to defend Carlos.

But she had no strength. She had not eaten in days. She had no muscle, no will.

“If I die then I am free of you, at least.” The words came out thick, as if through blood. How had it gotten there? She did not know. Perhaps she had been struck again.

And then be released to a hundred thousand demons below , the demon snapped.

But did Alba believe that? Elías’s use of the Lord’s Prayer had caused the demon to shriek and writhe.

Holy water stung and bit. But the priests’ chanting, their droning—none of it was fixing her.

None of it would ever fix her. The only person capable of that was Elías, who had looked at her and said we fight dirty .

Elías, who sang her out of the dark. With whom she had shared one enchanted dance that sealed their fates, molten metal pouring gleaming into their ribs and setting around their hearts.

He was the one thing she had ever chosen for herself.

Her cheeks were wet. With blood, with tears, or with holy water—she could not tell. They all burned the same now.

You should believe me. Hell is real , the demon said.

“Have you seen it?” she murmured. Her lips were swollen and heavy. “Did you come from there?”

Silence.

And it was an odd sort of silence—the demon was not waiting for dramatic effect, nor had it shifted its attention elsewhere. It did not have a reply.

Or rather, it did—and it did not want to say no.

Images flashed before her eyes. Burning embers.

A man’s face, lined and thin, framed by monkish, threadbare hair; a hand passing before its furrowed brow and pursed lips, midway through the sign of the cross.

The inside of a ship. A brilliantly sunny coastline; swaying palms. The now-familiar stark line of the mountains that ringed Mina San Gabriel, timeless and ancient.

A frisson of delight—that was not her own—coursed through her at the sight of men on their knees with dark heads bowed, men punished with whips and the booming chanting of a voice not unlike Bartolomé’s reciting the Litany of the Saints.

Priestflessssh , the hum in her ear repeated. Its juices are the most foul. So soaked in ambition.

So that was how the demon came to these mountains: with the clergy.

But it had not come from Hell, at least not how Alba was taught to recognize such a place. The vision of embers could have been a cooking fire for all the suffering and dread it inspired.

Insolent human , the demon snapped. Believe me, if you do not do as I say and live, the punishment you will receive —

It tasted of bluster. Of bluffing. The truth was this: heaven, hell, gods, devils…the demon did not know .

She knew what kind of power worked against it. Prayers and holy water, yes, but most of all: Elías. Elías and sorcery.

“I don’t think it’s real.” A whisper. An opening in her chest; a weight lifted, as if a thousand demons had been clustered at the base of her throat and had alighted, all at once, on loathsome black wings.

“I think you’re lying. I think the priests are lying.

I think…” All she could see before her were Elías’s sightless eyes, empty, glassy.

“I think none of us know what happens after. You’re manipulating me. You sound just like them .”

The priests came into focus around her. She was aware that she lay on the rough wood of the cross, that her hands had gone bloodless and numb, that the water soaking her could have turned to ice in the air before striking her exposed arms and soaked dress.

There was no God in heaven, no fallen angel below.

The only fallen angel was Elías, aglow with infernal might not of this world, but not of Bartolomé’s world nor the demon’s either. He was the radiance of silver in the sun. He was freedom.

And he was gone.

Her one chance at freedom from both these chafing bonds and the darkness that slithered under her skin and hung thick in her mind— gone .

So what now?

Bartolomé stood over her, a cross in one hand, the burn of ambition filling him with an infernal light.

Her breast rose and fell, sharp, staccato. Her lungs burned. She could not feel her fingers. She could not feel her feet. She could not feel anything except, deep in her chest, a burning, powerful hatred for the priest at the front of this pack of salivating wolves.

We fight dirty.

She met his eyes. Perhaps he stumbled as he spoke; perhaps there was a shade of uncertainty behind those pale, uncanny irises.

Perhaps it was because she could see him for what he was—and loathed him for it.

Could he feel the burn of her hate? Could he recognize that it was not the demon’s hate, but hers and hers alone?

Forgive her, Padre, for she had sinned, and would sin again.

“I will not be cured,” she said. Liquid dripped thick out of the corner of her mouth and streaked down her cheek. “But neither will I be caged.”

She had lived her whole life in cages built by the demon, built by her parents, built by all of Nueva Espana.

She was expected to be nothing but a silent object moved from place to place.

A puppet. A ghost among the living with no will.

If she died, she might become free of the demon, free of its torment, free of weight and pain…

but she would become a pawn in Bartolomé’s story.

Bound for eternity by the power of his narrative: the exorcist of the Indies, the beloved priest, the savior.

There had to be another way. If she could wrestle with the demon and bend it to her will…No, she was too weak. Forcing it down and following her will had not worked. It only had led to disaster. To losing Elías.

But what if she bargained with it?

“I…will…thwart you,” she forced out, holding Bartolomé’s gaze. “And you,” she said to the demon, “will help me.”

She was a curse on this land. An evil. People crossed themselves, spat on her, avoided her presence. She was the worst thing to ever happen to her birth mother. The worst thing to ever happen to Elías.

If it be with her dying breath, then may she be the worst thing to ever happen to Padre Bartolomé Verástegui Robles.

She felt the demon’s assent rush through her like a flash flood, cold and bright and good. Her hands twitched and clenched, spasming and flexing, her bones lengthened and punched through her nails and—

She knew the perfect time to unleash her claws, and it was not now. The plan bloomed in her mind, measured stitches running together to form a thick, glorious tapestry. Perhaps this revenge might lead to her own death. So be it.

But not today. Not yet.

The first stitch in her plan: Let the demon do what it did best. She drank in one last vision of Bartolomé and the faceless mass of priests, then closed her eyes.

Priestflesh , the demon gurgled, rushing beneath her skin with renewed vigor.

Distantly, she heard ropes whine with strain and snap. She heard gasps. She heard a scream, thin and white and pointed enough to shatter glass. She drank it all in like cold water. She felt the demon lift her limbs, lift her chest, lift her wholly into the air.

“Yes,” Alba said, and smiled down at the white faces of those assembled below, at those fleeing, at those crying out in fear. That was the price for the demon’s collaboration, for its role in the brutal theater that the possession of Alba Díaz de Bolanos was about to become: “ Priestflesh .”