XXXVII

Elías

Months ago, mercury had filled his veins, slow and thick and sap-like, hardening as it cooled. As his body cooled.

There was a knife in his chest. Then it was gone. A hollow in its wake.

There was keening, far away, echoing through the cold night. Harsh chastisement, feet scrambling against gravel.

Retreating hoofbeats. Retreating weeping.

Silence.

He slept. Or perhaps that’s what he thought it was—soft darkness, softer than the gravel and hard rocky earth at his back, cocooned him.

Time ceased. He was aware of rhythm—breathing?

A heartbeat? He was not sure. Simply that it was there, that it moved in time, keeping step with a slow-moving dance.

Mercury swam before him. Rich, silken waterfalls of it, as if it were gushing from a fountain. It swallowed him, lifting him from the earth, bearing him weightless, tilting him down—

You’re not finished yet.

He was not frowning—he had no body, no face to move, no expressions to command—but it was a similar flicker of confusion. A darting shadow across an otherwise spotless sky.

Then: a slap across the face.

“Joder.” His voice. Wet, thick, through lips that felt like they were lined with wool.

His cheek stung. It burned .

He felt .

Once that thought trickled through him, it was followed by an avalanche of sensations. Bedding beneath him. Aching back. Aching arms. Aching legs. And, in his chest, a pain so acute he hissed.

“?Tonto!” María Victoriana snapped. “I said don’t move.”

She slapped him again.

His eyes flew open.

Thatched roof. Adobe walls. Dark room, layered with gray shadows. The smell of pork and tomatoes roasting. A hint of comino. The crackle of a wood fireplace, but distantly, through a closed door.

“What,” he said, “the—”

“What part of don’t move do you not understand, you fat-headed idiot?” María Victoriana grumbled.

She then reached for his chest and resumed tightening bandages over a wet compress.

She was not a merciful nurse.

Elías hissed in pain. “Do you mind?” he snapped.

“It needs compression to heal,” she replied, rocking back on her heels with a self-satisfied look on her face. “Senora Flores will be very pleased with me. That’s the curandera,” she added, somewhat pointedly, “to whom you owe your life.”

Life.

Bartolomé’s face flashed in his memory, splattered with blood.

His own blood.

“Where’s Alba?”

“Don’t move,” María Victoriana repeated, holding her hands out for emphasis. “I swear, I will tie you down if you don’t listen.”

“Where—”

“Gone,” María Victoriana replied.

Dead? No, she couldn’t be—

“Zacatecas,” María Victoriana clarified, as if reading the panic that flooded his body with tingling pain.

“They left yesterday morning after her exorcism. And no, before you ask, of course it didn’t work.

” A shudder passed through her so viscerally it was as if someone had dropped a piece of ice down the back of her neck.

“You could feel it when she walked past. I think it made it worse, somehow. She was…she seemed feral .”

“I need to go to her.” There was no question. His work was not done. “I’m not finished yet.”

The words tasted like an echo.

“You are going to stay put until Senora Flores says you’re well enough to leave,” María Victoriana said sharply. “And then you’re going to pay her handsomely for her silence.” Perhaps confusion passed over his face, for she clarified, in a softer tone: “Everyone thinks you’re dead, after all.”

And so they did: After María Victoriana and Carolina carried his body back from where it had fallen on the road, no one looked to ensure it was buried. They took the women at their word. Prayers were said over a shallow filled-in hole in the ground, tidily arranged next to his father’s.

Elías’s death, it seemed, was too convenient to be challenged.

Weeks passed. The valley was broad enough that Elías went unnoticed on long crepuscular walks with María Victoriana, wheezing as his patched lungs fought to regain their strength.

As he flexed his hands and recited passages from El Libro de San Cipriano to keep them fresh in his mind.

He visited the shrine in the grotto, but only at night, with María Victoriana as his guide, so that no one saw or recognized him.

Thus hidden in plain sight, he knelt in the shrine.

Use quicksilver . This remained the only unholy revelation he received. It had helped him subdue the demon as they attempted to flee to Acapulco, had it not?

He planned. He prepared.

And when word came from the city that the former inhabitants of Casa Calavera were preparing for the wedding of the year in the grand cathedral of Zacatecas, he packed a bag, took a jar of mercury from the Inquisition-sacked ruins of his old workshop, and found himself mirrored, a doppelg?nger on the opposite end of a nightmare.

Here he was again, alone, nothing but mercury and a goal in his hands as he traveled toward the gleaming, opulent jewel of Nueva Galicia to meet his fate.

This time, however, he had a plan. He raced toward a defined end. Toward someone. And this time, he rode without El Libro de San Cipriano in his bag. He had left it in the rubble of the workshop. He had no need for it, after all—he bore it burned into his hands.

And he was ready to make use of it.

—

Elías stood before Alba Díaz de Bolanos on the altar of the cathedral.

Bloodied priests lay scattered around them like fallen leaves, some groaning, some still.

He had torn Alba off a man he believed was Bartolomé—he did not wish to verify this, for that would mean scrutinizing the exposed bone of the man’s face.

Skin had been peeled off cheeks as if by a paring knife.

He had arrived at the cathedral late, drenched in sweat and aching from the long ride from Mina San Gabriel, and dismounted just as wedding guests began pouring through the high, arched doors of the church. Screaming sent his horse’s ears flat against her head.

He fought his way through the waves of people. Toward the altar. Perhaps he caught a glimpse of Carlos, right behind Alba’s parents. Perhaps they met eyes; perhaps he had imagined it. It was over faster than he could blink as the sea of people swept them away.

He focused his attention forward, to the bride at the front of the church.

His strides lengthened; he broke into a run.

He raced down the center aisle of the cathedral, the soles of his boots echoing amid the agonized shrieks of priests, his bag thumping heavy against his thigh.

He slipped on blood; he skid; he swore. Caught his balance.

Took the steps up to the altar two at a time, skirting fallen priests with their arms akimbo.

Now here he was: face-to-face with Alba and her demon.

He stared down the dark pits. The lolling red tongue. The wash of hot brimstone breath. Was he too late? Was she anywhere to be found behind that blood-splattered skull?

Darkness can only be undone by its like.

There was only one thing to do: try.

“I made you a promise,” he declared, the empty cathedral lifting the words high and filling them with light. “I’m here to keep it.”

There, at the altar, beneath the crucifix, he began the final exorcism of Alba Díaz de Bolanos.

“Alba,” he began, and the name was a prayer, an incantation all its own. “I need you to hold still. To hold the demon still. Can you do that?”

The demon hissed at him; spittle struck his cheekbone and stung like acid. He did not flinch. He did not falter.

He reached for that same lullaby he used when he led her out of the mine, out of the dark, and began to sing.

It had distracted the demon while they were fleeing Mina San Gabriel; it would work again.

His voice trembled, mangling the memory of how his mother had sung it, but it still tasted like quiet nights. Like peace.

Alba shuddered; the movement raced down her body like a wave, threatening to send her sprawling, collapsing under the weight of white fabric and silver.

She dropped her chin. Her head jerked violently to the side, but each time, she brought it back to center. Her chest rose and fell with sharp, heaving breaths, straining against a heavily embroidered brocade bodice. Perspiration shone on her neck and the curve of her bosom.

She was fighting.

He fumbled for his bag, still singing softly, and withdrew its prized contents: a jar of mercury. Quicksilver swirled and shone as he opened the jar—placing its cork lid within reach on the altar—and, without hesitating, dipped his fingers into the cool luster.

“Keep fighting,” he said, “fight to be still.”

He could not see her face beyond the skull, but her body shuddered a second time. She twitched once, twice—then was still.

He acted quickly.

He anointed Alba as if the mercury were holy oil.

One long, deliberate swipe began between the hollow pits of blackness where her eyes ought to be and moved up the forehead.

Another dip of fingers, a new location: this time on the insides of each wrist, following tracks of blue and green veins up the pallid inside of her forearms.

And finally, he dipped his fingers a third time and reached for her neck.

He pressed the quicksilver gently against the well of her throat and brought the stroke down to where her clavicles met, slow and tender against her soft skin—for there was skin there.

She was fighting the demon and she was winning .

Hope lit his skin aflame. Covered in blood and silver and mercury, she gleamed like an idol in the light of the empty cathedral.

This was what he had spent the last months planning, in the dark of the grotto shrine. This was what he had regained his strength for.

The mercury would enter her veins. It was not enough to poison her forever, but it was enough to pave paths, to be a conduit, to allow the terrifying, thrumming power of the goddess in the mountains to pass from him—through the mercury in his veins and in his lungs—to her.

To rush from one to the other like a river.

He put the jar next to the cork lid on the altar, took her hands in his, and began to chant. Each time he had faced the demon, he had swung and fought for his life. This was different. This was poetry. This was a lullaby, sung in the dark of the mountain.

The mercury gleamed as if with its own light as Alba cried out. Black smoke poured forth from her chest. It was only then that Elías dropped her hands and snatched the jar from the altar.

As quickly as he could, he trapped the smoke within the jar’s confines and slammed the lid shut. The jar shook violently from side to side; he set it down forcefully on the altar.

It was still.

When he turned back to Alba, he met her eyes. Her eyes.

Tears ran the blood on her cheeks pink; he stepped close to her and brushed the wetness away with his thumbs.

“How do you feel?”

She threw her arms around his neck and held him tightly. Silver and brocade pressed heavy against his humble clothes.

“You promised.” Her voice shook. Her whole body shook, so he held her closer still, sliding one hand down her spine and pressing it against the low of her back. “You promised and you’re here .”

“I promise I will always be here,” he said, his own voice rough. “Forever.”

Thus was their oath, given at the altar, dripping in blood and wreathed in the black smoke of sorcery. Bound with a kiss.