BooksBarbecue
Back Maya and the Lord of Shadows Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Acknowledgments
  33. About the Author
  34. About the Publisher

More god symbols materialized—thousands of them. They exploded in the air and spun around the Lord of Shadows at a dizzying pace. I focused all my energy on the gateway. It was our last chance to stop him. With Papa’s magic added to our own, the god symbols built the links faster than the Lord of Shadows could destroy them.

Eleni got to her feet. “This is for Mama, Genu, and Kimala.”

“And for all the other people you hurt!” I added.

The Lord of Shadows yelled one last time before the god symbols completely engulfed him in a bubble of pure light and cut off his scream. The bubble shrank and disappeared inside the space where our three gateways intersected.

I swept away the sweat on my forehead. I couldn’t believe it—we’d done it. He was gone. Guardians of the veil: one. Lord of Shadows: a giant zero.

“He’s dead!” someone yelled. “The Lord of Shadows is dead.”

Eli and Frankie fist pumped and cheered while Zeran waved at me from his perch on top of a roof. The fighting around us slowed as people on both sides stopped to stare at Papa, Eleni, and me. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the Lord of Shadows wasn’t dead, but he wouldn’t be coming back either. Some of the magical creatures who’d chosen to fight for him retreated. I couldn’t believe that the celestials were just letting them go. There had to be more to it.

“What a clever idea to trap the Lord of Shadows using intersecting gateways,” Papa mused as he pulled us in for a hug.

“Maya thought of it,” Eleni volunteered.

“I couldn’t have done it without you and Papa,” I said, squeezing her hand.

It was over, really over. I leaned against Papa, my shoulders sagging with relief. The celestials—Principal Ollie, Ogun, Yemoja, Nana, Oya, and the others—fought against the last of the Lord of Shadows’ forces. They were winning, but my heart dropped when I didn’t see Shangó, aka Mr. Jenkins, our science teacher. I got the idea about the intersecting gateways from his dark energy theory. Was he one of the celestials who the Lord of Shadows had absorbed?

I glanced around our neighborhood. Everything was still ash gray, but the wayward shadows were retreating. Although I was relieved, I realized that nothing would ever be the same—not after today. I couldn’t just go back to the life I had before I found out about the celestials and the magical world. And maybe the Lord of Shadows was gone, but there were magical creatures who believed in what he stood for.

The veil between worlds was still on the verge of falling, but I would worry about that another day. “Let’s go get Mama.”

Twenty-Nine

image

THE VEIL