Fragments of the church walls pierced through the tumbled wreckage. The rubble had burned. It still smoldered. That smoldering, of course, was the source of the red glow she had seen from the edge of Lewis. Smoke and powdery ash and glinting sparks still drifted in the air. Even from within the car, the bitter smoke coated the back of her throat.
The huge stones and cracked bells and broken cross from the church’s highest steeple, thrown down before her, blocked the road completely. But maybe it was just as well the way ahead was blocked, because beyond that obstruction the road itself was cracked. Not just cracked: that was too simple and small a word for the gaping fissure that ran right across the road and away out of sight to either side. It looked wide enough to drive even Sheriff Pearson’s car right into it. It looked deep enough to lead straight down to Hell. The bloody light from the smoldering ruins of the church seemed to run across the ground and down into that fissure, pooling in it like light, or like blood. Maybe it really did go down to Hell.
Natividad released her fierce grip on the wheel for the first time since she had begun this drive, and turned the key in the ignition. The sudden hush as the engine fell silent made her twitch with nervous startlement, and she reached out at last to lay her hand on the aparato para parar las sombras she had brought with her.
It was a new kind of aparato, not one Mamá had ever exactly taught her. She had thought and thought about all the magic Mamá had taught her. The Dimilioc wolves had taken her in and she had drawn all this danger right to them, and they had protected her anyway and wanted to go on protecting her even now. And she had known it was time to stop hiding and being protected and go out to face Vonhausel herself.
So, then she had thought of this, and she believed it would work. But now that she was here, where was Vonhausel?
He wanted her, Miguel said – her especially. Mamá had told Miguel she had a gift for making darkness cooperate with light, which Natividad didn’t understand at all, but what Mamá had told Natividad herself was that she had a gift for making things. If that gift was enough, if she had made this aparato right, if it did what she had made it to do, then the thing she had made would destroy Vonhausel and then everything would be alright after all.
She had made her new aparato from Alejandro’s silver knife and from moonlight and from her maraña, the tangle of light and magic that was meant to confuse the eye and mind. She had made that over into a teleraña, an orderly web, because confusion was no longer her goal. Now she wanted to catch and bind.
She had made this new kind of aparato with music from Mamá’s little flute and with the clarity of her intention. That clarity was hard to remember, now that she was here in the dark. But the aparato was strong. It was cold to the touch, a biting clean cold that seemed to push back against the slow-beating heat from the burned church.
The base of the aparato was Alejandro’s knife. To her the heart of it still looked like a knife. Sort of. If you glanced at it only carelessly, or if you were thinking about sharp-edged weapons. To her, it seemed to be surrounded by a kind of shimmering haze, like mist gathered together into something long and narrow and not exactly solid. That was one thing she’d used the teleraña to do: catch the eye. To a black dog who longed to tear down his enemies, to spill their blood across the dead earth and burn their bodies to ash and their shadows to a memory of darkness… to that black dog, the aparato should look exactly like the sort of weapon that would give you everything you wanted. She hoped it would look like that to Malvern Vonhausel. She couldn’t see it that way herself and had no way of knowing for sure if she’d made it right. Except, of course, by trying it out.
She picked it up, cradling it against her stomach. But the aparato was too cold to hold like that for long, and she put it back on the car seat next to her, though she left the tips of her fingers resting on its hilt. Or the part that had been its hilt. It numbed her hand, but kind of in a good way.
The black dogs that had escorted her all turned their heads, looking toward the north, toward the ruined church, their hackles rising, the unholy light of their eyes dimming. They no longer looked like they were laughing at Natividad – they seemed to have forgotten her. They all lowered their heads and crouched down like nervous dogs, slinking back and away, clearing a path from her car to the burning rubble.
Natividad knew exactly what that meant. Of course it meant that Vonhausel was coming. She took a deep breath and moved her hand to open the car door. Or she tried to. She couldn’t actually make herself move. This must be what people meant when they said they were paralyzed with terror. How strange, and not very nice. She felt as though she was an observer outside her own body, outside the car, outside all the action; like she was watching some other girl stare, frozen with fear, out through the car’s windshield into the dark. It was as if she herself was distant and not really even very interested.