Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows Read online

  To my parents.

  Who always believed.

  To my abuelita.

  Who helped me believe.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Myths, my abuela used to say, are truths long forgotten by the world.

  Which is probably why she collected them the way some people collect stamps. Or mugs with pictures of kittens on them. She gathered tales of enormous, horned, snakelike sea creatures, of two-headed vampire dogs with glowing red eyes, of terrifying man-eating ghouls that stalk the night, searching for naughty children to kidnap.

  The myths came from all over the Spanish-speaking world. From Madrid to Quito. Mexico City to Buenos Aires. Most of them were hundreds of years old, almost as old as the cultures that had inspired them. Some had spread quickly around the globe, spread like wildfire. Others never even left the tiny rural towns where they’d first been told.

  All her life my grandma had been obsessed with Hispanic mythology, with all the legends and stories and folklore, and had spent years teaching them to me.

  When I was little we used to hang out in the kitchen on lazy Saturday afternoons, me in my Power Rangers pj’s and chancletas, my abuela telling her favorite tales from memory, making the epic battles and ghoulish monsters come to life with every gesture of her brown and wrinkled hands.

  Afterward, she would quiz me on what I’d heard; we played this little game, sort of like Pictionary, where she’d draw a quick sketch of one of the characters, and I would have to guess who—or, in most cases, what—it was. If I got four in a row, she’d let me eat leche condensada right out of the can, which might’ve been the only thing I enjoyed more than listening to her stories.

  At the time I thought it was all just for fun, a cool little game between the two of us. But I should’ve known better; my abuela hated party games.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I still remember the first night in the police station like it was yesterday. The tall sheriff’s deputy telling me that everything was going to be okay, that there was nothing for me to worry about, that they’d find my parents—promising me that.

  Then he handed me a chewed-up number two pencil, dropped a yellow notepad on the desk in front of me, and told me to write down everything I remembered. Told me not to leave anything out. Not even what I was feeling.

  I’m not sure which was more embarrassing—the fact that I could barely hold the pencil in my sweaty, trembling hands, or that I didn’t have anything to write. See, I wasn’t there the morning my parents went missing—I was at the local guitar shop. And I wasn’t there later that afternoon when our house burned down—I’d biked over to Zoo Miami for the day.

  So forty-five minutes later I’d gotten down only two words, but they were the truest words I’d ever written:

  I’m scared.

  So scared I could barely breathe. So scared I could actually feel the blood pulsing through my hands and feet. But I didn’t write any of that down.

  Instead, I sat frozen in the small interrogation room with tears running down my cheeks, waiting for the deputy to come back. Waiting to wake up from this horrible nightmare.

  And that was when the pain came. It felt like two little bee stings up near my temples. Hot and sharp, but lasting for only a moment.

  I remember running my hands through my hair and feeling something strange. I remember getting up and walking to the tiny half bathroom at the end of the hall for a closer look. I even remember the small, squeaky sounds my sneakers made on the scuffed and dirty tiles.

  But what I remember most was the pair of stubby horns I discovered growing out of the sides of my head.

  They were a dark golden color. Like honey mixed with dirt.

  CHAPTER THREE

  That day was the single worst day of my life. But the days that followed were almost as bad. Since I didn’t have any living relatives (my abuela died when I was nine) and child services was having a hard time finding a place for me, I spent the next two weeks sleeping on a scratchy cot in one of the empty cells at the front of the police station. Every night I planted myself on the folding chair outside the station’s 9-1-1 call center, listening in on the dispatchers, hoping to hear something—anything—about my parents. And every night I was disappointed.

  Obviously, with a pair of horns growing out of my head, I couldn’t help but think back to my abuela’s myths—especially the one about the Morphling. In those stories, the young hero would always defeat his nemesis—an evil, narcissistic, twice-cursed witch—by manifesting some kind of animal trait. It was usually something odd, like fins or hooves or an armadillo shell, and even though it seemed sort of similar to what was happening to me (minus the whole fighting-an-evil-witch part, of course), I honestly didn’t see how a fairy tale could have anything to do with my current situation. They were just made-up stories. You know, kid stuff.

  Then, about a week or so later, the horns suddenly vanished. I couldn’t explain it. I just woke up one morning, felt around underneath my hoodie, and they were gone.

  At that point I just assumed (like most people probably would) that I’d had some sort of nervous breakdown, my terrified mind frantically mixing reality with fiction, trying to bring me back to a time when I felt safe, back to a time when I was surrounded by people who loved me and cared for me and would never let anything bad happen to me.

  At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  That is, until the unthinkable happened.

  Again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  This time it happened in the worst place imaginable—middle school. Ponce de Leon Middle, to be exact. And just like the first time, I was caught completely off guard.

  See, by then my life had almost started to feel normal again. More than four weeks had passed since the horns, school was starting back up, and my two best friends had come home from summer camp. Not only that, but I wasn’t sleeping at the police station anymore; the state had found me a temporary guardian who lived in the same South Florida neighborhood, and I’d moved into her dusty upstairs attic. Not perfect, sure, but it definitely beat the heck out of a crummy six-by-eight cinder-block cell.

  So anyway, there I was, just sort of dozing off in third-period history, when my life took another crazy detour into Freaksville.

  Unlike the horns, this particular manifestation started with an itch. A hot, sort of painful itch way down on my back.

  Then the itch began to spread. Up my sides, along my shoulders, down the backs of my arms. It felt as if an army of creepy bugs were crawling all over me!

  I started to scratch and scratch, but it didn’t help. The itching only got worse, my skin growing hotter and redder and ridiculously flaky.

  And that’s when it happened. That’s when a fat gray feather burst through the skin on my forearm like a zombie hand busting out of a grave.

  For half a second I wondered if Mr. Henry’s snooze-inducing lesson about the French Revolution was somehow making me hallucinate. (Which, by the way, wouldn’t have been the first time.) But then another feather sprang up, this one through a tiny pore in the crook of my left arm, and I felt my blood turn to ice.

  ¡Dios mío! I screamed on the inside. Not again!

  Jumping to my feet, I raced for the door, snatching the big red hall pass from the pegboard on my way out. Behind me, I heard Mr. Henry shout, “Hey, Charlie, where’re you going?” But I didn’t stop. Didn’t even look back.

  Thankfully, the hallway was empty—no eighth graders making out by the stairs, no hall monitors lurking with their bright yellow T-shirts and walkie-talkies.

  I pounded past the wall of lockers and around the corner, through the heavy metal door next to shop class, m
y breaths coming fast and shallow, then up a short flight of stairs and into the boys’ bathroom, which—thankfully—was also empty.

  I ducked into the first stall, peeled off my shirt—and gasped.

  My chest, smooth and hairless as a baby’s bottom a minute ago, was now covered in a forest of ugly little feathers.

  I didn’t think, just started plucking. And the first thing I learned: ripping feathers out of your body isn’t any fun. It’s actually insanely painful. Sort of like tweezing your eyebrows, except these “eyebrows” were as long as my pinky finger and had hard keratin roots that sank down deep into my pores, deeper than any hair follicle.

  My skin stung. Tears ran down my cheeks, and I had to bite down on my tongue just to keep from screaming. But I didn’t stop. In fact, I started plucking even faster, squeezing my eyes shut against the tiny stings of pain and tossing the feathers into the toilet by the handful. Rip, wince, toss. Rip, wince, toss.

  I’d almost sort of started to get into a rhythm, too, when I opened my eyes again and saw something that made my heart stop. The toilet bowl was full of feathers—almost up to the rim of the seat—but my body was still covered with them.

  Which could mean only one thing: They were regrowing faster than I could pluck them!

  “No!” I screamed. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  My mind was reeling. I didn’t know what to do. I tried flushing the toilet, but nothing happened. I tried again, jiggling the handle this time, but instead of the feathers disappearing down the hole like they were supposed to, water filled the bowl and an unhealthy gurgling sound rose from the bottom.

  I froze for an instant. Froze with horror. Watching as the water rose up, up, up and began to spill over the sides of the bowl and onto the floor. The gurgling sounds turned into choking ones. The sharp stench of number one—and its even stinkier numerical compadre—stung my nostrils.

  Do something!

  In a panic, I peeked into the toilet, trying to see if there was anything I could do to help get the freakin’ thing to flush.

  Huge mistake.

  Because just at that moment, a fountain of whiz-scented nasty sprayed straight up from the center of the bowl, blasting me in the face and knocking me off balance.

  I crashed through the stall door and landed on the floor with a wet splash. My breath exploded from my lungs in a painful whoosh. The world teetered. My head spun.

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the choking, gurgling sound spread to the other toilets, and suddenly all five fudge funnels were overflowing—the urinals, too!

  For a crazy second I thought about trying to clean this mess up, maybe spreading some paper towels over the floor to soak up the water. But then I realized there weren’t enough paper towels in the dispenser—there probably weren’t even enough in the entire school!

  Scrambling to my feet, I ran to the bathroom door, cracked it open enough for one eye, and peered out. The hall was still empty, which was awesome. But how much longer would it stay that way? There couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes left of class when I’d Speedy Gonzales’d it out of there, and I had no idea how much time had passed.

  Doesn’t matter, I told myself. Either way, I had to get out of here. Either way, I had to find something to cover up the feathers.

  Unfortunately, I could think of only one place to look.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The school’s main office was on the first floor of the building near the entrance. My target, the lost-and-found box, was usually kept in the teachers’ lounge, which happened to be on the far side of the room, making it just about the hardest place in the entire office to get to without being seen. But I didn’t exactly have a lot of options.

  I made my way there as quickly—and sneakily—as humanly possible, arms hidden inside my shirt, my soaked-through sneakers squeaking on the chipped gray linoleum. The office had a large window, chest-high, through which I could see the receptionist, Mrs. Ambers, sitting at her desk. She seemed super busy, flipping randomly through a tall stack of yellow papers while yelling at someone over the phone.

  This was my chance.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly through my nose, then eased open the door (its rusty metal hinges practically screaming INTRUDER ALERT!) and slipped inside.

  I walked quickly past Mrs. Ambers, who was still yapping away, and into the small room with its faculty-only vending machine and cappuccino maker.

  The moment I stepped inside and saw the lost-and-found box sitting on the big laminated desk in the middle of the room, I was so excited I almost burst into a full-on theatrical rendition of “La Cucaracha.” But there wasn’t any time for that, so instead I just gave a little fist pump and started for the box.

  I was just reaching for it when a deep, gruff voice spoke up from behind me:

  “What are you doing in here?”

  I whirled around in surprise. Mrs. Kirilenko was standing in the doorway, arms crossed. Mrs. Kirilenko was one of the new teachers at our school, and even though she taught only a small group of students—only eighth grade and only those in the gifted program—her reputation for being a ruthless disciplinarian had spread through the student body like a bad case of pinkeye. She was literally the last teacher on earth I wanted to run into.

  “Uh, I—I’m just looking for something I lost in homeroom,” I said. “My, uh, my jacket-sweater-hoodie thingy.” Translation: Anything in that box with sleeves, it’s mine.

  Her dark eyes narrowed in an I know something’s up kind of way. “Is that—feather sticking out of your sleeve . . . ?” she asked in that thick Russian accent of hers.

  “A feather? Ha! What?” I took a tiny, terrified step back, bumping up against the freezing-cold wall. “No feathers here! Just skin and bones! Like your average completely normal middle school s—”

  She cornered me with her bulky frame. “Take your arms out of your shirt.”

  “Excuse me?” I squeaked.

  “Now!” Her voice was so loud, so intimidating that I had no choice but to obey. Slowly, grudgingly, I pulled my trembling arms out of the sticky sleeves of my T-shirt—and watched as Mrs. Kirilenko’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

  “I can explain,” I started to say (although I actually couldn’t—not even a little), but she never gave me a chance.

  “No need,” she said, shooting up a hand to shush me. “I already know what is going on here. . . .”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You do?”

  “Da, da, of course, I do! You are part of Mrs. Tannenbaum’s upcoming play.”

  “I—am?” Then, realizing I should probably go with this: “I mean, yes. I am!”

  “Granted, it is not her best work. Maybe she is losing bit of her magic touch, as you Americans would say, but it is not bad. . . .” She plucked a feather from the already tender underside of my forearm, making me flinch. “Something wrong . . . ?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Didn’t hurt one bit.”

  “ ’Course not. They are glued to your arm with some sort of specialized adhesive.” She plucked another—this one from higher up on my arm, near my armpit—and I screamed on the inside. She could’ve stabbed me with the world’s sharpest thumbtack and it probably would’ve hurt less. “Bell-Horn roll-on, perhaps?”

  “That’s the one.” I could barely get the words out.

  “What most around here fail to realize is that I was member of Russian intelligence community before becoming teacher,” she said. “So one must wakey-wakey pretty early in the morning to pull the old bear carcass over this Muscovite’s eyes.”

  Then, with a hint of a smile (which I suspected was the most you ever got from Mrs. Kirilenko), the not-so-friendly giant strode briskly over to the big round desk and peered into the box. “I tell you, with how little money the state government is giving to schools nowadays, it is no wonder Mrs. Tannenbaum is raiding lost-and-found box for wardrobe. Fortunately, we have very resourceful teachers in this school.”
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br />   She tipped the box toward me, and I almost burst into tears right then and there. The only thing inside was a hideous purple jacket decorated with splotches of red paint and a dusting of sparkly yellow glitter. Some poor kid had probably gotten it as a Christmas gift from a kooky aunt and had conveniently “lost” it here at school.

  On the bright side, it did have long sleeves. . . .

  Cranking out another smile, I said, “Yep, that one’s perfect!”

  “Really?” she asked, frowning as she held it up. In her huge gorilla hands, the purple abomination looked like doll’s clothes. Still, it couldn’t have been much bigger than a youth small—if that.

  “Uh-huh, fits my part like a glove. We—we’re doing, uh . . . Shakespeare! And I’m playing a sort of colorful jacket-wearing human-bird hybrid of . . . of Hamlet!”

  Mrs. Kirilenko raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You are?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to explain. But it’s gonna be a lot of fun. You can trust me on that.”

  She didn’t look convinced but handed the jacket over anyway.

  I quickly shrugged into it, forcing myself not to think about how ridiculous I was going to look. Up to this point the most outlandish thing I’d ever worn to school was a guayabera, which is a style of Latino dress shirts that I’d become obsessed with after seeing a black-and-white photograph of my abuelo wearing one out in the campo as he chopped sugarcane. I’d worn one almost every other day during the first few months of second grade, and even as much as I’d stuck out dressing that way in an American public school, it was nothing compared to how bad I was about to stick out walking around in this sorry excuse for clothing.

  Mrs. Kirilenko studied me closely. “So Shakespeare and feathers, da?”

  “Yep. But I don’t want to go giving away any more spoilers, so that’s all I’m gonna say. I’ve been sworn to secrecy, you know!”