Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows: Chapters 19–27

“Oh, no, no, no,” she said, scrunching her thick brows together as she shook her head vigorously from side to side.

All of a sudden, everything made sense. The random bouts of crying. The photos with the kids. Her overprotective, bordering-on-psychotic maternal instincts.

It was as if a storm cloud had settled over me. A churning, whirling funnel so thick and black I couldn't see any way out of it.

Its muzzle was broad and bony, covered with lumps, bumps, knobs, and pus-gushing bruises.

“Do you remember the wretched, two-faced bruja in it?”

“No, as a matter of fact, it didn’t! Becaussse inssstead of killing the king, the potion turned Yeisssun into a giant sssavage monssster, and he ruined everything! I wasss cursssed and cassst out of the empire—my empire! And it isss for thisss treachery, thisss purpossseful betrayal, that I will now exact my vengeanccce.”

A machete. Wouldn't mind having one of those right about now. My eyes desperately scanned the alley. Nope, no machete.

Her fingers closed around my arm like mini vises, and I winced.

In fact, I was starting to wonder exactly how much my abuela had known about these myths and why she'd told me all those stories in the first place. Had she known that these things actually existed? Was there any conceivable way she could have predicted that one day I would run into some of them? Had she been trying to protect me with her stories—maybe even prepare me?

Next thing I knew I was down the stairs and in the painfully bright kitchen, rummaging through the drawers and cabinets, searching frantically for something—anything!—to cover up this monstrosity. In less than twenty minutes, I'd have to be at school, and Halloween wasn't anywhere close enough for me to stroll into first period looking like a walking advertisement for Red Lobster.

Actually, I did forget. Because I was busy morphing into a scum-sucking crustacean!

“You look beautiful...”
And you can chalk that up as the understatement of the century.

RCC obviously had to cancel the line, and the few bikes that had been assembled with the first batch of parts were sold off to recoup some of the money they'd lost in R and D.

The wooden cork made a nice, satisfying POP! as she yanked it out of the bottle. I didn't smell any noxious fumes, which I figured was a pretty good start.

Something between a canine and a demented Thoroughbred (I couldn't really see it as a man anymore—not after it nearly tripled in size and its once-human face elongated into a thick, furry muzzle), it flew through the air with the grace of a ballerina, then hit the ground in full stride, sending tremors through the pavement and slinging ribbons of foam from between its rows of razor-sharp teeth.

The world lurched around me, and next thing I knew, I was being dragged rapidly down the sidewalk, my arms and legs flailing, fingers scrabbling madly at the cracks between the slabs of concrete.

"¡ALÉJATE! GET AWAY FROM THE CHILD!” she roared, and suddenly the ferocious beast (once ferocious, anyway) tucked its long fuzzy tail between its legs in terror and bounded off into the night, vanishing from sight.

Then I looked around—and gasped. Not because the room was so incredibly massive or because the walls were seamless slabs of white marble or even because the ceiling was made entirely of glass—a gigantic, translucent bubble through which I could see a blue-black canopy of stars twinkling almost close enough to touch.

An assortment of crude tools hung in its scraggly mane—a small rusty pick, the head of a hammer, a few smooth stones....

Over to our left, there was a massive fireplace where purple flames licked and popped. Sprawled out before it was a large and unbelievably beautiful dog.

Its glowing blue eyes smoldered like hot coals, and its fur, the color of freshly fallen snow, glistened as though it had been painted with sunlight.

She wore no clothes—only strips of fuzzy gray moss, which grew on her like lichen on a log.

A golden crown, studded with square-cut emeralds, sat atop layers of thick auburn hair, which coiled at the nape of her neck.

"However, their loyalty is without question,” she continued casually, “and thus they are indispensable. Do try to forgive him. And you have my word that it will never happen again."

I knew this place wasn't just a monastery; it was also what was known as a Provencia—an ancient, warded structure of which there were dozens spread throughout the Americas and the Iberian Peninsula.

I knew La Liga was a coalition of good sombras and that they had been engaged in a millennia-long struggle against La Mano Peluda—or the Hairy Hand—a cabal of evil sombras intent on expanding their dominion from the Land of the Dead into the Land of the Living.

I knew that the Land of the Living—or, our side of things—was teeming with all sorts of supernatural races and beings, everything from clans of tiny, spear-wielding pixies called zips to tribes of Basque giants known as jentilak.

The mukis of Cajamarca have stopped arming anyone but their own kin, which, need I remind you, violates the treaty of 1496, a treaty ratified in the halls of Castile by Joanna's own ancestors!

They had bloated purple eyes the size of plums and skin so pale you could almost see through it to the cords of wiry muscles flexing beneath.

“Duendes can be a little skittish around humans.”

I held up my big red lobster claw, feeling sort of embarrassed, and after a moment's study, she began to wrap it in a thin white cloth (to me, it looked like the stuff doctors use to make casts) that she seemed to have materialized out of thin air.

Just then, the huge hairy hominid to her left let out a deafening roar.

"Juan single-handedly fended off more than two hundred vampire dogs with only the jawbone of a dead mule. He then gave one of his more impassioned speeches at the foothills of the Pyrenees, rallying the soldiers to help him drive the rest of the marauding Dips out of the country.”

None more so than those of the tribes of Gibraltar from whence Juan hails.

On it, fat slimy maggots wriggled and writhed.