Page 100 of The Hacienda
My heart pounded as I looked down on her. I had called on the house to help defeat her but couldn’t let her die in here. I could not bear to leave another human being to burn alive. I couldn’t.
“Get up,” I said, hoarse from coughing. “Keys. Let’s go.”
I held out my hands to her.
She looked up at me, panting, transformed by wild fury. A flash; the movement was so quick I didn’t know what happened, not until white pain tore across my ribs.
The machete she had opened the roof with had fallen near her; she had snatched it and struck. Now it dripped with blood glinting orange in the firelight.
Myblood.
Another flash; this time I dodged it. I stumbled backward, tripping on the rags that I had bound around my feet. I caught myself just before falling into a burning chest of silks.
She lurched to her feet, swaying, the machete in hand.
“This is my house. It’s your fault”—she was cut off by a fit of coughing—“for trying to take it from me. You and Catalina.” The heat rippled between us as she took a staggering lurch toward me. “You think you can come here and take what is mine? Go tohell.”
The house shuddered around us. Unable to throw my arms out for balance, I fell. My shoulder ground into shattered glass; my head swam with smoke. I squinted up at the ceiling; it was alive with embers.
It was going to collapse on us.
This was the end. I had fought and I had failed. Would Papá be waiting for me, on the other side of agony?
Slam.
Damn those doors, I thought, coughing. My vision darkened. The shadows were moving. The shadows looked like someone’s legs cutting through the flames...
“Beatriz!”
Andrés. He was here. Hands—hishands—hauled me to my aching feet. My awareness spun with smoke and heat as he lifted me into his arms.
A sickening crunch carved through the heat overhead. Tiles cracked as they struck one another. Beams groaned and snapped.
The roof fell.
“Carajo.”
Andrés ducked his head and bolted forward. Rather than trying to stop us or smother us, the attention of the house—of María Catalina—pulled away from us. It blazed down on Juana, on the inferno, and let us pass unassailed.
An explosion of sparks and heat; but it was behind me, it was behind us now. Cold air washed over my face. Andrés was taking the stairs two at a time, leaning against the banister for balance as he used our weight to sprint for the door.
Whispers I had never heard before swept around us from the walls of the house. Cobweb soft, they drew us forward, supporting us down the stairs, across the flagstones. To the front door.
It flew open of its own accord.
Andrés stumbled down the steps into the courtyard. Curtains of dark rain poured over us as he fell to his knees, his arms tight around me, holding me to his chest like a child. I realized, distantly, that he was speaking to me, that his breath hitched as if he were weeping, but everything around me faded to darkness.
Tosilence.
31
DARKNESS GRAYED; THERE WEREvoices over me, light and deep. Andrés’s voice was among them, its soft rasp cutting through the thick haze hanging over my mind. “Paloma, will you write down what he said?”
“Shh, she’s waking,” Paloma’s voice said.
I opened my eyes.
Wooden beams hung low overhead. A wool blanket rested over my lower body and legs; cool air brushed over my stomach. A man with white whiskers who looked vaguely like Padre Guillermo examined my side. A touch of something warm that stung; I gasped, from surprise more than pain.
