Narcos Mx

Andrea checks her watch. Almost midnight. The road is quiet, cars passing by every fifteen minutes. The thinnest nail clipping of the moon is out and her informant is over a half an hour late. The lone street light flickering on the overpass above feels like a doomsday clock urging her to cut her losses and go home.

Really, loitering at this fork in the road under a highway bridge isn’t the most sensible idea, not when people were being gunned down in the streets in broad daylight and the cartels were using the bodies of their victims to send telegrams to each other. At least she had enough sense to insist the meeting take place on the US side of the border where her death would at least be investigated should things end badly. Just a few miles from Tecate, she’d found an unmonitored stretch of border the gringos hadn’t fenced off yet a few months ago and had been using it to touch base with informants.

It’s for this reason Salgado is always telling her she’s a clever girl with no sense. And also that if she’s senseless enough not to listen to him, as La Voz’s editor and her boss, he makes no bones about using it to his advantage. And he had - a series of groundbreaking stories about the hipódromo, Carlos Hank Gonzalez, and the AFO were enough to prove her senselessness enough of an asset, no matter how much of a danger it posed. Until the day you don’t come back, he’d note ominously.

But if not her, then who? The job was easier to do if you knew you were already dead. She did. She also didn’t think about it too much. Plus, this lead was too big to pass up. The call with the tip-off had come directly to her desk, an anonymous insider allegedly high enough in the AFO to know all about Gonzalez’s dealings not just with the Arellano family but with Amado Carrillo Fuentes in Juarez; news she wasn’t yet privy to but that made enough sense to catch her attention. And that’s how she ends up on these back-country, dirt roads in the middle of the night.

Of course, she knows it could be a trap too - she’s senseless, not stupid. She knows full well this little rendezvous could be no more than someone making good on a bounty for the head of any journalist from La Voz. She couldn’t even bring herself to revel in the I told you so, when the street edict came down from the AFO after Salgado enacted the policy of removing writers’ names from the bylines, even if she did tell him it was a short-term solution to a long term problem. It was even shorter than they bargained for because within a week of implementing the policy, the AFO had branded anyone who came in and out of that office fair game. Normally she wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to retroactively gloat, but this time it didn’t seem fair. Salgado did his best to protect them and it earned the whole staff a scarlet letter. But who’s fault was that really? So she left well enough alone, like she never had an opinion on the matter to begin with.

So yeah, the prospect of this being a trap had occurred to her. More than once. And the longer she sits here, leaning against the hood of her station wagon, checking her watch, the more the possibility keeps rearing its ugly head. Right on cue, the sound of footsteps crunching on gravel has her going for the handgun in her waistband and spinning around to greet the void of what she hoped would be empty space under the bridge.

“Hello? Who’s there?” She does her best to breathe, keep calm, as she anchors the gun in both hands, aiming for the shadows.“Dejate ver. Muestrate si no quieres tomarte una bala en el culo.”

A pair of raised hands are the first things to emerge followed by a modestly dressed man with a clean-cut crop of dark hair, dark eyes, and a sharply drawn mustache that gives him the look of a French nobleman caught in the wrong timeline. Her stomach drops several floors and liquifies into a puddle on the ground as it sinks in, just who he is. She’d give anything not to but there’s no eradicating the sense of recognition.

So this is it then. The end of the line.

She’d pictured it just like this. In fact the scene is so familiar, she feels the distinct impulse to laugh at just how much of a cliche she’s about to be. Because as much as she can acknowledge the possibility - meeting a grisly, undignified end, painted somewhere on the streets of a city she’s fought for and loved, just another macabre telegram - she’s also struck by the kind of shame that accompanies shattered hubris. That, somewhere along the way, she mistakenly bought into a brand of exceptionalism she always hoped to avoid, one might call it downright American. Rationally, she’s known the odds, even accepted them. And yet somehow it was still something that only happened to other people.

What a fool. She’d kick herself if she wasn’t about to die. Or maybe … How fast could this guy move? How quick could his hands be? Maybe she’d turn her gun on herself, get a shot off before he could get his out. Take things on her own terms. Not that she can even see a gun. But she doesn’t need to, to know it’s there, tucked in his waistband right at the base of his back.

After all, he is the AFO’s top sicario, David Barrón Corona. One of the most lethal men in Tijuana. Maybe all of Mexico. She’s only ever seen him at a distance, through a telephoto lens or in grainy photographs developed thereafter, but she could recite a list of his exploits from memory like a kid in some perverse spelling bee: the shootout at Christine’s, the airport massacre, the assassination of Ocampo, the shootout at the Belmont cafe. The man’s resume is a mile long and filled with nothing but death.

In her experience, meeting monsters like this tended to be unsettling for how boring and anticlimactic they always seemed to be. He appears no different. Just a man walking on two legs, with two eyes to see, and those eyes aren’t even crazed or rage-filled or brimming with hate. Whenever she came face to face with someone like him, it tended to incite within her a twinge of irritation that they couldn’t do everyone the courtesy of coming with some kind of warning label.

One of her hands drops and she walks toward him, gun drawn as she cocks the hammer and fires a warning shot into the ground next to him with an ease that surprises even her. He barely flinches. It’s obviously not his first rodeo. Which, yes, is to be expected but the stillness of him is still downright chilling.

His posture is relaxed, hands up in an effort to suspend hostilities. She’s decidedly unmoved in her hostility.

“Y’know,” he attempts to reassure her, “if I wanted to kill you, ya estarías en el piso, desangrándote en la tierra,” but it looms more like a threat.

It catches her off guard though, how much softer, gentler his voice is than she expected. It’s almost enough to disarm her entirely until she remembers all the coroner’s reports and crime scene photos she’d come across in her research. His handiwork. Well-executed executions, meted out with such quiet indifference he could’ve been telling them a bedtime story. This is who she’s dealing with.

“O sí? Pues soy yo ya quien tiene la pistola. So start talking, cabrón antes que te dé por el culo,” she flicks her wrist, pointing the gun barrel at the gravel disturbed by the first shot, “with another one of those.”

He chuckles, “Usually when people, civvies especially, say that,” making sure to keep his hands up, careful not to make any sudden movements, “no les creo. Pero a ti? A ti te creo.”

“Arre. So, if you’re really not here to kill me, fuiste tu con quien hablé por el telefono?”

He gives a stiff nod.

Andrea cocks her head to one side, examining him in the flickering street lamp light. He’d be handsome were it not for the vacuum in his eyes, no warmth, no life, yet here he was, breathing and blinking and talking all the same. There was no possible universe in which he was brought here by conscience. With what she knew, he was likely immune to that particular plague. So naturally, she was dying to know the real reason they were meeting now under this bridge, at this dirt crossroads, near the dirt town of Tecate.

“Do I, uh, have to keep these,” he looks right, then left, at each of his arms, “up the whole time?”

She considers the risk for a moment, ultimately deciding to let him but refuses to drop her gun. His hands come swinging down by his sides apparently unbothered by the fact that he remains caught in her crosshairs. Yeah, clearly not his first rodeo. Not even his second. Or third.

He meets her eyes but says nothing and the silence starts to feel like a third party in the conversation that just won’t shut up. Andrea taps her foot impatiently but he doesn’t seem to get the memo that this is the part where he’s supposed to do the talking.

“Alright.” She exhales crossly, rolling her eyes. “What did you want to talk about? On the phone you said something about Hank and Juarez?”

“That’s right.” Barrón takes a few steps closer, hands now clasped together at his waist, no more troubled by the gun than when he was further away. “He’s been working with Amado since he took over. Cleaning his money.”

“I don’t understand. Wasn’t he already doing that for the Arellanos?”

He nods.

“Wait, but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he align himself with warring plazas?”

Looking down, Barrón shrugs, “That’s above my pay grade,” kicking a rock across the dirt, dust trailing behind it like a tiny, terrestrial shooting star. “I’m not that high on the food chain.”

She regards him skeptically, brows crinkling.

His tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth, “I can only guess,” seeming to take the cue this time. “He’s probably too high-profile for either plaza to fuck with, so big homie can afford to do business with both. But I doubt Sr. Kingpin Accountant accounted for the heat it’d bring back on him with all the, uh– y’know, scrutiny.”

Grinding her teeth, Andrea snorts. Scrutiny was both a succinct and delightfully vanilla way of saying, ‘global attention thanks to all the bodies of the streets.’ But the implications of Hank laundering money for Juarez were big. He might be playing the plazas off each other, biding his time until a victor emerges, one he’ll be all too happy to chuck right under the bus the minute the political machine decides it needs to offer up its next sacrificial lamb to the gringos. Standing there, trying to put all these new pieces together, Andrea suddenly remembers the pack of cigarettes in the pocket of her flannel and wishes she’d thought to smoke one before they’d started talking. She can’t afford the distraction of lighting one up now, what with having to keep the gun in place.

“Alright, so he’s doing business with both plazas. How the hell do you know this? You said it yourself, you’re not that high up on the food chain.”

He seems to bristle at this, throwing her a sideways glance through half-lidded eyes, face overtaken by a dangerous, far-away look that spooks her even more than the gun at his back. “Why would you need to know that to write your little story.”

Interesting. Something personal, perhaps. She’d get it out of him one way or another. But later.

“Well,” she grips the gun even tighter, knuckles going white and she hopes that by keeping her voice level, he can’t sense how scared she is, “it’s not going in an article per se. But for reasons that I hope would be obvious? I can’t identify you as a source. You’ll have to remain anonymous.”

“You don’t gotta do that on my account.”

Practically gagging on disbelief, she manages to sputter out, “For you? What are you kidding?” before regaining her composure. “I mean– well frankly, you’re a criminal, a killer at that, putting a rival cartel in the headlines, so it’s more an issue of self-interest. Now, I know doing something like this does nothing but put you at risk but my readers won’t know that. So, telling me how exactly you found out about all this would lend you more credibility as a source. O sea significa que podemos confiar más en lo que me has dicho.”

This seems to wound him privately somehow like he’s taken it worse than the bullet she’d fired. But whatever it stirs in him is gone before she gets a chance to interrogate it further.

No less relentless, it is enough for her to ease up on her delivery. “So do you have proof? Something concrete that I can take back to my editor?”

His hand goes in his pocket and he begins digging around for something. Andrea’s whole body stiffens and she takes a step back, arm straightening to retrain the gun on him more decisively. If he notices, he doesn’t show it as he continues fishing around in his pocket until he finally brings out a few folded documents along with a bag of rolling papers. He takes a pre-rolled cigarette out of the bag, popping it between his lips while reaching out to pass her the documents. A few hesitant steps forward, she lowers the gun slowly snatching the papers from his hands quickly before scurrying back again. Her head bobs up and down between watching him and trying to read what’s on the page in front of her.

“What are these,” she flips through a few pages, “business licenses?”

“Among other things.”

She skims the first document and for the first time she feels like this whole thing might not be a trap. Fixing him with the coldest, most I-will-kill-you stare she can manage, “I’m taking a big risk, doing this. No me hagas arrepentirme o te arrepentiras, lo prometo,” she flicks the safety on and puts the gun in her waistband, in front so he knows she still has easy access.

Bowing his head, Barrón agrees, "Noted," cracking a small smile, something akin to respect or maybe admiration and it’s the first time his face displays any emotion. It puts her a little more at ease.

Both hands now free, Andrea combs through the documents, a few loose, the rest stapled together, some with carbon copy backings, and skims for the highlights - important phrases, dates, places, signatures - until she finds a signature at the bottom of a business license for an aeronautic manufacturing company.

“A shell company,” Barrón confirms her suspicions before they’re even fully formed. “Makes specialty parts for small planes. Like Cessnas.”

She flips to the next page, documents showing ownership stakes in the casino at the hipódromo along with two of the Arellanos’ discotheques. Flipping through the rest, it’s more of the same, SEC and CNBV registrations for shell corporations, licenses for legitimate businesses, and share certificates, none of them bearing Carlos Hank’s name but nonetheless tying him to both Tijuana and Juarez by a signature almost as important: Carolina Vera. His lawyer. She was all over these documents.

Speechless, Andrea’s head rises slowly to look at Barrón. When she said proof, she wasn’t expecting it to be this monumental. The cynic in her kicks up, wondering if it isn’t just a more elaborate trap designed to lull her in a state of submission before the jaws snap shut for good.

“It gets better," he says, examining his zip-o lighter before flicking the top back and forth a few times with his thumb.

Which reminds her, in desperate need of a cigarette, Andrea folds the papers up and sticks them in the back pocket of her jeans and then feverishly digs around the pocket of her shirt for her pack. Once retrieved, she flicks her lighter several times, sparks flying at the end of the cigarette in her mouth, until finally a little bloom of flame appears out of the corner of her eye to light it for her. He's a smooth motherfucker, she'll give him that, although strangely, there was nothing smug about it. He brings it back, cradling the flame with his other hand to light his own. After a first drag, Andrea dips her head back, a cyclone of smoke pouring from her lips while she exhales in relief.

“How,” snapping forward again, she takes another drag before asking, voice thick, each word encased in smoke, “does this get any better?”

“I have another source.”

“What? Who?”

“Cristina Palacios Hodoyan.”

“No me digas." The shock has her nearly wheezing the words and her eyes are wide, almost feral with curiosity. “You know where she is?”

He smirks. “Who do you think hid her?”

“What? So– but wait, so you didn’t—y’know. Her sons?”

Suddenly he can’t meet her eyes and she can’t wipe the image of the bridge from her mind - the row of lifeless bodies strung up, punishment para los soplones, whose biggest crime was usually no more than bearing witness to things she never agreed to see in the first place. That Alex and Alfredo were more involved in the extracurricular activities didn’t change the fact that they were just boys.

Perhaps trying to get a read on Andrea or maybe just hoping to fill the silence, Barrón offers, “Everyone assumed- and for good reason. But that time wasn’t me. I was in San Diego, trying t–”

“Save it.” With one look, she skewers him, eyes narrowed, mouth tight, not here for his bullshit. “Vete alaverga con esa ‘that time.’ How many other times was it you, huh?”

Meeting her eyes again like he recognizes his mistake, he responds matter-of-factly, “Plenty,” head held high, no attempt at contrition, false or otherwise.

Still, she’s expecting him to plead his case, so she waits for the explanation, the mental gymnastics, the cognitive dissonance, the rationalization for every single horrific act of violence wrapped up in that plenty. After standing there, watching each other in silence for who knows how long, she realizes there won’t be any of that. And up sprouts the tiniest kernel of respect that she already hates for being there. But she can’t help it. David Barrón could be called a lot of things but a hypocrite wasn’t one of them. She rolls her eyes because christ, who needs heroes when the bar is this high.

She mumbles to herself, “There’s a fire sale and everything must go,” but before he can voice the look of pure confusion on his face, she’s onto the next question, something tugging at the back of her mind since he first stepped out of the shadows of the overpass. “So, what’s in this for you? Why are you telling me all of this?”

Gaze shifting off to the light polluted horizon, he goes quiet. Eventually he just says, “That’s a big question.”

If this was a television interview, the broadcast would’ve been cut for all the dead air between them but she just waits, hoping he might give her just a little more, something to put this whole bizarre night into perspective.

“It’s just—” he shakes his head, “the way I come up—” putting his smoke to his lips and taking a pull so long, she wonders if maybe the question hasn’t short-circuited him a bit.

“Gettin’ into all this,” he waves his hand around at nothing in particular, a party streamer of smoke left behind its path, “wasn’t really a choice for me. Not like how it is here. Now in this new– whatever. Era. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. We were supposed to legitimize. Climb outta this ditch, not dig it deeper.

“This? What do you mean?”

“The game,” he huffs in a moment of frustration, the only emotion he’s let escape so far. “Used to be no civvies, no bystanders, no regular folk. If you was in the game, you get popped on the street, well okay, you knew what you signed up for. But all this other– truth is, man, I’m just tired. Tired of the game, the life, tired of doing all this shit just to be someone’s second choice.”

It was the most he’d spoken the entire time and she didn’t want to interrupt for fear he’d clam up again and go back to nods and one-word answers, but she’d have to start asking some follow-up questions if he didn’t start putting some names to these pronouns.

“I tried to save him, y’know, for her.” He keeps going, face fixed with a thousand yard stare so vacant and icy, he might’ve had the surface of the moon in his eyes. “But I couldn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to. She knows I tried but maybe she knows that too.”

“Hm.” Crossing her arms, one hip cocked out to the side, Andrea examines the end of her cigarette before holding it off to the side and tapping it with her finger. “So the rumors were true. You and Enedina.”

“I thought it’d be different.” Barrón turns back to her, flashing a nihilistic smirk that reveals how broken he is. “But the things she’s asked me to do,” he shakes his head, “I don’t know. The game ain’t in me no more. And this last one, well—”

“This last one?”

“Your editor. He was greenlit.”

It takes a moment to register. When it finally does, Andrea feels like someone’s pressed pause on reality only to start playing it again in slow motion.

“Y— you mean, my—? uh, Salgado? Ramon?

“Pues, sí.”

“You’re certain?”

“Mhm. My next mark.”

“Hijoueputa,” she mutters. “No es posible.”

Stamping his cigarette out in the dirt with the heel of his wingtip, he nods. “Best believe it.”

“Well— so what? Are you still gonna go after him?” Andrea’s getting more panicked by the second, her fingers finding the grip of her gun.

Chuckling, Barrón puts a hand up in gentle protest, “Nah, chill.”

For some inexplicable reason, she listens to him.“Fine. So, what’re you gonna do then?”

”Something I’ve never done in my whole life.”

“What’s that?”

“Miss.”

Andrea appears to take some comfort in this as her shoulders drop, a breath escaping that she didn’t even know she was holding. Remembering her cigarette, she takes a last drag while noting dryly, “You know, you can never go back.”

A blank look from him is the only response she gets.

“If you do that— y’know, miss. The minute I talk to Cristina, the minute I write this, they’ll probably figure out it’s you. You can never go back.”

Barrón just shakes his head, resigned. “No, ma’am.”

“No? What, no? If they find out you’re my source, they’ll kill you.”

“Of course. I know how they’ll do it too.” He says it with a twinge of pride that reminds Andrea exactly who she’s talking to. “It’ll be someone I know. I’ll see it coming. They’ll want me to see it coming. Cause they know I know.”

Despite this reminder of who he is, what he’s done, she can’t quash that kernel of respect that’s been planted. Even if he wanted to atone, he had enough respect not to insult her by trying to. Nor did he feel sorry for himself that he probably didn’t deserve to. It was a display of accountability she rarely saw from someone as morally bankrupt as he’d had to be. Until now anyway. And this makes her feel, in spite of herself, almost sorry for him. “You’re not scared?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Well, of course,” she shrugs, twisting the filter of her cigarette until the cherry and remaining tobacco fall out before tossing it behind her. “But I w–“

“But you wouldn’t deserve it. And it’s true, I got it coming. Made my own bed as they say. But I can still be scared. Even if I know, at the end of the day, all we have are our choices.”

Andrea smirks, crossing her arms, looking down at the ground to push some dust around with the toe of her boot, unsure what to say next. When she looks back up, he’s already walking away, hands in his pockets, leisurely like he’s got nowhere to be, back to the shadowy spot under the bridge he came from. She wondered if his car was parked there or somewhere else. Or maybe he’s just some visiting ghost of Christmas past and she’ll wake up from this dream.

”Hey,” she calls out.

Just before he reaches the edge of the void, he spins around on his heels, hands still in his pockets, eyebrows raised, and waits.

“For what it’s worth– well, you do have it coming. But … I hope you find your way to some peace somehow.”

The unexpected happens then. He smiles. But this time it travels up his face all the way to his eyes, lighting them up. It might be as rare as a passing comet. So there are signs of life, after all.

═

That pinche pendejo Chapo assaulted them at the club. They barely made it out alive. Claudio was shot in the shoulder, and Benjamin wasn’t so lucky. As Barron led the way out, a shot came dangerously close to Ramón and Benjamin took the bullet instead.

He seemed fine, didn’t even act as hurt as he was. It wasn’t until Barron got everyone to safety that Ramón found his brother fading, a hand to his bandaged wound. It was then he learned Benjamin lost a lot more blood than he let on. Minutes later he passed out and didn’t wake up.

Ramón didn’t know what to do, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his big brother die. So, he did the only thing that came to mind, he turned him. It was around that time Dina came to check on them and found the scene.

She was the first to know Ramón's secret.

As they stood watch over Benjamin, he eventually regained consciousness, his wound healing itself within minutes.

It would be their little secret, for now, mostly to not freak out their mother.

Dina’s head was spinning, and she didn’t know what to make of all this.

Werewolves? What the fuck….

A03

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The night he got bit, he was antsy and moody. Sitting in the house was only making it worse, so he went out. Ramón was in one of those moods where he didn’t want company, or to party - so went out alone. He was only out there a half hour before he got attacked. And no matter how much he shot, that fucker got away.

Ramón even followed the blood drops but didn’t find a body. Just thinking about it again pissed him off and started to sour his mood.

He took a bigger hit, took his leather jacket off, then rolled up his left pant leg. Before it was a bloody vicious bite, now, it looked more like a scar, it was healing itself.

Ramón cursed under his breath, shook it off, then looked up at the moon.

For the last three days it’s had an unusually powerful hold on him, he almost crashed his car yesterday because he gazed at it for so long.

Then there’s his dreams. They’ve been weird as fuck. Animals running in the woods, paw prints, the moon, blood and flesh - and it always ends with a dark-haired woman in the distance. None of it made any sense….

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The two were reminiscing and sharing old stories. They were laughing about this one memory and if you didn't know both of them, you would believe the story was made up. It sounded too out of this world to be true, but you could imagine the both of them younger and up to lots of trouble. In the current story, Chepe was about 26 and Pacho also in his 20s but younger than Chepe.

As the story built, and they took turns filling in the details, that night from the past got crazier and crazier. Then, out of nowhere, you made a comment out loud that you meant to keep to yourself,

"Please tell me it ended with you making out."

As soon as you realized you said the words aloud, you clasped your hand over your mouth. "sorry." you muttered.

It's Pacho's daiquiris, you'll blame that. They're delicious and deadly.

Before your embarrassment could build any further, you noticed the look Pacho gave Chepe before taking a drink from the glass in his hand.

"Wait, no - " you lowered your hand and turned to Chepe, "wait...I saw that look!"

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Shocked awake, I sat forward sucking in deep, sweeping gusts of air that crackled through my chest, inflating my collapsed lungs. Like they were two dusty, burlap sacks, the air dragged in and out so sharply and painfully I began to cough. My shirt was caked with dust and dried blood that looked almost purple in the orange menace of the pre-dusk sun. I looked down and at the trail my body had made. Must’ve been when they dragged me into the cave.

But I was dead. Dead just then and I knew it. Now I wasn’t though. I came back somehow. Only, I came back wrong.

I remembered little before I died but the commotion at the cafe, panicked crowd, a few rounds ejected from my gun, as I grabbed Benjamín by the collar of his jacket, screaming, “we gotta go!” and ran toward safety.

Safety. A funny word to describe Ramón and Kitty, two flashily dressed gangsters, semi autos in hand, beckoning to us from the corner where the street met the back alley road, the curb of which the Escalade was parked on. We’d been so close. I’d shoved Mín in front of me and turned around to return fire at the crowd of fatigues surrounding the armored truck across the street, just before I felt the bullet enter my chest. Then another just under my ribs.

The thing no one ever tells you about getting shot? When a projectile, traveling at 1700 miles per hour, enters the human body, what you feel first is the shock wave. It juggernauts through you, traversing through muscles, tissue, your very cells, so fast and forcefully, the feeling’s more akin to electrocution. It was a miracle my heart was still beating as the ground came up at me, fast, before I sank into the black.

So much for my nine lives.

Shielding my eyes from the stray beams of sun that peeked through the cracks of the cave entrance, I took a lighter from my pocket and lit it turning to face the dark side of the cave and get a look at who or what might be inside.

Which one of them would’ve done it? Definitely not Ramón. Not enough self-control. I would’ve been an unintended afternoon snack. Hope would suggest Dina, but common sense would suggest otherwise. The only one among them at the cafe with the strength and self-restraint to do it without killing me more dead than I already was could only have been Mín. And yet, it was hard to imagine Benjamín valuing me enough to offer up eternity, even if he did owe me his life, what with all I did for them at Christine’s.

With a sly undertone of acknowledgment that echoed my disbelief, Mín’s voice rang out from the depths of the cave. “Tus ojos. Se brillan como se supone que deben hacerlo.”

The eyeshine of a cat. How unsettling it had been the first time I’d caught it in Dina’s eyes. Mistook them for headlights in the lamplight of the warehouse parking lot, when we were chatting shit after finishing the count. I’d read somewhere, probably in one of the hundreds of books I devoured, trying to stave off brain rot and existential dread in my cell at Donovan, that it was called tapetum lucidum. An extra shiny layer in the eyes of cats and other nocturnal animals that helped them see in the dark.

“What happened?”

“Your ability to maintain your composure under the strangest, most precarious of circumstances never ceases to amaze us.”

It wasn’t altogether clear if Mín was speaking for the family or if there was actually someone else there with us, the place was so dark. Before I could open my mouth to ask, I was doubled over, a jagged pain drilling into my gut, tunneling through my chest, all the way up my esophagus and into my throat. My face was so close to the ground, the breath I violently expelled kicked dust back up into my face. The flame from the lighter snuffed out when hit the ground next to him.

“Yeah, you’re going to need to remedy that.”

I let out a grim, stuttering chuckle that could’ve been mistaken for the growl of an animal who’d just felt the hinges give way, the bar of a trap finally slamming down on its neck.

This was the part in the all movies where the person in my position comes to the horrible realization at what he is and what he has to do. The part where they’re supposed to freak out, panic, clam up at the idea of killing as a way of life. But the sick thing? This wasn’t a movie and I felt not an ounce of guilt or fear at the prospect. I’d been taking human life to live for decades now. No sense in an apex predator apologizing for assuming the nature of its design. Shit, it’s not like I made the rules.

A faint skittering sound along the edge of the cave walls sledgehammered against my eardrums and before I could form a coherent thought, the soft, warmth of light and heaven itself burst into my mouth to sooth the ragged itch at the back of my throat. Blood from some poor, unfortunate little rodent that had made a home in the cool, shade of the cave leaked all over my hands, as I drew from it, hose from a hydrant.

Benjamín stepped off the wall, where he’d been standing for who knows how long and circled me, waiting for me to finish. When the rodent’s body finally hit the ground, Mín clapped a few times, observing, “Pues, eso fue fácil, verdad?”

Sighing wearily, “sí, fue tan fácil,” I wiped the blood from my chin with the back of my hand.

Closing the loop, Mín approached me where I still knelt on the ground and picked up the lighter, flicking it open. Materializing next to Mín’s face, the flame illuminated his eyes, activating that telltale glow of Other. That glow which I now apparently shared with him and the rest of the Arellano family.

Eyes boring directly into his, I addressed him, “Why exactly am I here, Benjamín,” landing on his first name pointedly. A name I rarely used out of fear, or maybe respect, or maybe just the desire to avoid whatever grief Mín might be prepared to dish out to me. What was the point now? As far as I was concerned, there was none. Not when we had forever to fight. But Mín didn’t look like he was fixin’ to fight right now.

“I brought you back.”

Annoying. Not really an answer and my face told him as much.

“I brought you back because we cannot afford to lose an asset such as yourself.” Mín continued, gazing into the fire like some kind of ancient sorcerer, divining his answer from it, “Por muchas razones y en muchas ocasiones,” then flicked the lighter closed, “ya has demostrado lo que vales demasiado que te perdamos ahorita. And with our enemies outnumbering us, we need more than just soldiers.”

I blinked back at him slowly, almost lazily but with evident curiosity because I had no idea what the fuck Mín meant and I was starting to get tired and that burning in my throat was kicking up again.

Mín stood up, dusted off his pants, and walked toward the entrance to the cave, voice echoing off the stony walls, getting smaller and smaller the further away he got.

“Y’know if I learned anything from my uncle’s hubris, it’s that when your back’s against the wall, the only loyalty guaranteed is that of family. And since I brought you back, the blood in your veins is blood we share.” Right when he reached the threshold, sky outside now dark red with the last of the sunset, Mín turned around, holding out the lighter as if to summon me. “So, that is what you are now, Barrón. Family.”

═

Your lungs were on fire. The muggy Texas air didn’t help matters. All you felt was hot, thick cotton stuffing its way down your trachea with each breath you took. Every ounce of energy was going into getting away from certain death. You were too tantalized with fear to turn around and see if you were still being chased. Instead, you looked in front of you. Working overtime to catch up to Javi.

One of your best friends ever since you got to college kept swiping glances back at you, not sprinting too far away from you. The two of you got separated from the rest of the group somewhere in all of the frenzy and now you were both alone as you ran for your lives.

Adrenaline was a hell of a drug. No one was given much chance to come to terms with finding Hugo’s bloodied remains in a heap outside the lone Victorian-style farmhouse they had stopped at for help with their overheated travel van. Connie’s screams had permeated through the air as she realized that she had discovered the newly deceased body of their college friend and travel buddy. Steve immediately pulled her away, yelling, “Holy shit, that’s Hugo!”

Everyone’s yelps of confusion and horror gets drowned out by the sound of a chainsaw and the large man wielding it who’s charging straight at them. 

Horacio and Trujillo take off towards the house while Steve is pulling Connie back towards another vehicle on the land, hoping and praying that it’ll work. 

You immediately flee for the opposite direction in which the violent slaughterer is coming from. Javi falls in step with you and he points out the woodsy area that would hopefully provide shelter. It’s farther away from the roads in which you all drove in to get to the house, but you’re left with no choice. 

Your feet pound into the ground, carrying you further and further away except you don’t hear the sound of the chainsaw growing less quiet with time. You know he’s following you. You can’t bear to turn around and confirm, but you know it. 

Javi looks back once more now that he’s several steps in front of you, “Come on!” 

You clear the tall grass of the southern fields. It’s reedy and thick for the first several feet. The sound of the deadly weapon dissipates some, like he’s stopped. You’re catching up to Javi finally, but the two of you don’t stop. The fescue grass starts getting thinner in some areas, patchier, but there’s trees up ahead and you’ve got a good chance of completely losing your friend’s murderer if you can get across where there’s possible civilization. 

The sound of the chainsaw grows quieter and quieter and there comes a point when the two of you don’t hear it at all. Javi puts a finger to his mouth, willing quietness. He grabs onto your hand and pulls you both closer to the ground. The grass is getting shorter and there’s about thirty feet between it and the expansive space of trees. There’s no cover in that small feat. If the killer’s attention was no longer on them, it wouldn’t matter anyway, but it was still a risk.

You glance into each other’s eyes and realize the same thing at the same time. It’s do or die. Now or never. 

The both of you stop at the border that stops at the reeds and begins the wide open field before hitting the woods. A few seconds feels like a few hours. Thousands of words are exchanged between the desperate gaze the two of you share. The confessions you want to make. The feelings that you’ve both held for years. The promises you make to yourselves and to each other of what happens when this is all over. 

There’s no silent countdown. The two of you just nod and dart out into the open, making the rough, muddy terrain your track field.

Your lungs burn. 

Your feet hurt. 

The chainsaw drums up again. DALLAS MORNING NEWS- 7 University of Texas Students Reported Missing, Last Seen Traveling Together on Spring Break

That pinche pendejo Chapo assaulted them at the club. They barely made it out alive. Claudio was shot in the shoulder, and Benjamin wasn’t so lucky. As Barron led the way out, a shot came dangerously close to Ramón and Benjamin took the bullet instead.

He seemed fine, didn’t even act as hurt as he was. It wasn’t until Barron got everyone to safety that Ramón found his brother fading, a hand to his bandaged wound. It was then he learned Benjamin lost a lot more blood than he let on. Minutes later he passed out and didn’t wake up.

Ramón didn’t know what to do, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his big brother die. So, he did the only thing that came to mind, he turned him. It was around that time Dina came to check on them and found the scene.

She was the first to know Ramón's secret.

As they stood watch over Benjamin, he eventually regained consciousness, his wound healing itself within minutes.

It would be their little secret, for now, mostly to not freak out their mother.

Dina’s head was spinning, and she didn’t know what to make of all this.

Werewolves? What the fuck….

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It was an ideal way to spend one of her last days here, not that anyone knew she was leaving. For good reason, she couldn’t tell anyone her plans, not even her dear friend Dalila. The two met two years ago during a festival.

After the festival, Marta and the band members all hung out over some food, drink and post gig dancing. That’s how she met Dalila, whose brother was one of the percussionists. The two became fast friends, Dalila was like the sister Marta always wanted, but never had.

When Marta met Amado, she didn’t expect to fall as hard as she did, what started as a fun and sensual adventure, turned into something much larger than she could have anticipated. Now, her whole life was changed, and a new chapter would start, elsewhere, with him…

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She’d always heard a few decades in an American prison left people looking much older than they were. The confinement, the stress, the lack of sun, the terrible food, the boundless future of the same old day-to-day nothing, for some, with no end in sight. Nothing to look forward to and no one to look up to. It wasn’t a life, but a cheap imitation, and after all, wasn’t that justice?

Andrea used to have an easy answer to that question: of course, it was. For a lot of these pinshe pendejos, mercy even. Justice was something she’d believed she had an innate understanding of. Even her father said so. Since she was five, he’d said so. That’s why he encouraged her to be a reporter. But at some point, the concept of justice and the truth became intertwined and simplified in a way that seemed comically obtuse now. You seek the truth and justice will follow. Justice always the destination; truth, the means. The most erroneous misconception of all: that one could not exist without the other.

But the news about Rebollo changed the game, and now, as she watches Julian Barrón Corona – heretofore known to her only by his gang alias, Bugsy – socks stuffed in his dress shoes, dress shoes in hand, walking through the sand on the beach until he reaches the front door of the café, she’s taken aback because he looks younger than his 33 years, even though he hadn’t been in the free world in over a decade, and then she realizes all that racket about truth and justice is a fairy tale. More fit for the panels of a comic book, than the pages of a newspaper. More fiction than nonfiction.

He hasn’t seen her yet, at one of the patio tables outside, and she doesn’t flag him down immediately, preferring to study him from afar instead. He seemingly preoccupied investigating, reading something on the front door. Perhaps trying to figure out if it was absolutely necessary to put his shoes back on. Through the tinted glass of the windows, he finally spots her on the patio, and doesn’t bother going inside, so as not to trouble himself with the shoes. There’s something of herself in that. She hates dress shoes. Glancing at her boots, wiggling her toes inside against the well-worn leather that stretches to accommodate them, yeah, she wouldn’t have wanted to put those foot prisons back on either.

And it all worked out since she hadn’t bothered to dress up for the funeral. Only because she didn’t know she was going until her foot hit the too-green, carefully manicured lawn that blanketed the hills of the cemetery. Her legs did the rest in spite of her – left, right, left, right – bringing her to the edge of the monochromatic crowd of mourners, in varying shades of black and gray. She could barely see the opening of the grave over the flowers piled atop the casket. She hadn’t a clue why she was there. She knew no one, and no one knew her.

The deceased she only knew by reputation, and had seen only twice in person. Once, when she snuck behind the police barrier to sit outside the cathedral and wait for unsuspecting Arellano/Vasquez wedding attendees to exit, spill a little chisme, maybe put her onto a new lead. He’d been standing on the side of the building, probably there to ferry the family to the car from the private entrance of the rectory, once the ceremony ended. Since she was not where she was supposed to be, she hid behind a corner, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible and didn’t get a good look at him.

The second time was in her car, staking out the hipódromo with Isaac. She was so focused on Benjamín, she didn’t pay the guy at his side much mind, except to mentally note that he looked vaguely familiar. But after visiting Jesús at the hospital, when she went back to the office to write her story, she pulled out Isaac’s pictures again to get a better look. See what he was like not covered in blood, slumped over in the street, with a bullet in one eye. Popeye with one eye. However, tasteless it was, she found that detail darkly hilarious. Until she finally saw him in the pictures Isaac took. His face was expressionless to the point of unsettling, except for his eyes, inky black with an almost ascetic countenance and an unforeseen depth, heavy with the weight of his life and the whole world, bits and pieces that she could only speculate about and that would torture her curiosity forever.

Before that, she’d believed that she hated him. Even though Jesús walked away from that intersection with his life and this man didn’t, she was angry. Pissed. She hated him. Except she didn’t. No, in reality, all she hated was what he symbolized. And though, she condemned his actions, what he’d done, she was reckoning with the difference between deeds and intentions and how the two become misaligned when you’re part of a bigger system. There’s always the power of choice, insofar as you believe that you have one. The fucked part about it all was the system they were in was built to give most people the false impression that they didn’t have any. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was the universal explanation. 

Over time, she'd come to understand that the reasons people do the things they do can be conflicted and strange, at times baffling and inexplicable. Sometimes they hadn’t thought about the reasons at all, just spent their entire lives reacting. The way she saw it, yes, actions are worthy of condemnation and should be the basis by which a person’s character is divined but her own estimations now required further analysis. That’s where the reasons and intentions come in. Not important in the formation of a person’s character, but crucial in her conception of them. She used to think that last part didn't matter. But then, she’d been wrong about a lot of things.

She doesn’t hate him. Because you can’t really hate someone you don’t know. And when you do know it’s still hard. If she’d learned anything in her career, time and time again, it shakes out this way: people are hard to hate up close.

So, why go to the funeral, if not to curse the man's grave? Seated across from Julian now, while he loosens the collar of his shirt, rolls the sleeves up to his elbows, then places them on the table, flipping through the menu like a magazine, that’s what she’s hoping to find out.

“Has pedido ya?” All she sees are a pair of inquiring eyes over the brim of the menu and it’s a sight so strange she almost laughs. But the eyes give her pause. Dark and filled with the mysteries of a life lived too fast and hard to make sense of. Just like his brother’s, only less so. A little freer somehow.

“O, no. Estaba esperándote. No voy a comer probablemente.”

“Ah,” Julian nods. “Pues, yo sí, porque comida en la carcél sabe a puta mierda, perdóname por decirlo.”

Andrea looks down, a tight smile on her face. He's disarming immediately. Polite, but with the trademark frankness of a kid moonlighting as a career criminal. The authenticity of criminals as a rule never ceased to surprise her, so accustomed she was to the dance of obfuscation, a never-ending cycle of Two Truths and a Lie played by political officials, businessmen, spokespersons, strategists, law enforcement, feds, the PJF, the PGR, Cisen, Disen, DEA, CIA, and on and on. Or the dance of silence from the narcos at the top, black-hat politicos themselves who’d finally amassed enough of something to lose by talking.

When truth was unattainable, she’d take silence over lies any day. But criminals, particularly low level ones,  usually had little, if anything to lose. So honesty was usually attainable. To a point, anyway.

On the heels of that, it turns her gut with pity to realize Julian, who started off with little himself, now has nothing. Mother on hospice, both brothers dead, and set to go right back to Calipatria prison in the States. He only got out for the funeral. The last one he’ll attend maybe ever; a statement, in isolation, that sounds like a good thing, if you don't think about the fact that it’s only because no one’s around left to die.

The waiter comes around to take their order, and she opts for a latte to kill the caffeine heading brewing behind her eyes, her usual morning coffee but another casualty in her whiplash decision to go to the funeral. Julian orders black coffee and chocolate chip pancakes with a side of French fries instead of hash browns because though they’re both potato-based, he doesn’t like the texture of hash browns. Or at least, that’s the answer he gives when her brows furrow, questioning the distinction.

The menus are cleared, their coffees brought, and Andrea taps the rim of hers after taking a long sip, not sure how to begin.

Julian seems to pick up on this “Mira,” and opens the conversation with an air of lending a hand, an attempt to help that surprises her, “voy a contestar a toda tus preguntas, porque me diste una excusa para quedarme aquí en Tijauna un poquito más. Así qué tómate tú mejor tiro.”

“Hmmm,” Andrea turns this over. That’s the best thing a reporter can hear, “I’m an open book.” It rarely happens with any real transparency and but this time it is. And of course, this time she has no idea what the fuck to ask. So, she starts off easy, “Prefieres que te llamo Julian o el alias de pandilla, Bugsy?”

“A mí, tampoco no importa. Prefieres que hablamos en espańol o inglés?”

Andrea responds in English, “I don’t mind either, either.”

Mid-sip, Julian chuckles into the edge of his mug, splashing a bit of coffee back onto his nose and cheeks. Mopping it up with a napkin on the table, he takes the opportunity to set things straight. “Bugsy’s not my gang name, by the way.”

“Qué?”

“No me lo dieron la pandilla. Fue un apodo de mi hermano, Matteo.”

Andrea’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. An seemingly mundane detail, its significance betrayed only by the fact that he wanted to set the misconception straight in the first place. That, and the mention of the other Corona brother, Matteo. Who she knew a little bit about. Shot and killed by police more than fifteen years ago for allegedly breaking out of a mental health facility. Along with his obituary, she’d read the only two or three existing, very short news articles about the incident, nothing more than a paragraph in the dailies.

“Okay, Julian,” she goes with his given name. Because now she knows Bugsy’s a family name, it feels improper to use it, being a total stranger. Like she hasn’t earned it. “I don’t–“ Unable to continue, she looks off to the side at the ocean lapping at the shore, trying to gather concoctions of words and images into some semblance of form and thought.

“It’s okay,” Julian shrugs. “I know who you are.”

Her head snaps back at attention. “Sorry?”

“I know you work at La Voz and that your boss is Jesús Blancornelas.”

Andrea leans back in her chair, massaging her temples, and looking up at the red and mint green stripes of the umbrella shading their table.

“Lo siento,” Julian offers, like he’s speaking to a stray cat he’s got cornered but is trying not to spook. “I didn’t mean that in any typa way. S’ not a threat or nothing.”

The front two legs of her chair come down hard, shaking their table. He’s so earnest and she can’t figure out if she wants to punch him for it or cry. She can’t figure out fucking anything anymore. The only thing she can begin to ask to make some sense of any of the bullshit she’s been through in the last six months is, “Why. I just wanna know why.” 

And like that, there they are. The words, out of her mouth, spilling onto the table now for both of them to deal with.

“Why David did it?”

David. So foreign. It was always his full name, David Barrón Corona, or just Barrón Corona. One of the Corona brothers. Sicario for the AFO. Not David. But instead of saying any of that, she just nods for him to continue.

“Well, I don’t know much. Everything we get– y’know on the inside, is piecemeal. But last I talked to him, I know things were going in a direction he didn’t like, y’know. Bystanders, priests,” he motioned with an open hand at her across the table, “journalists, people not in the game. Just wasn’t down for all that, chu’know. That ain't how we came up.”

His English is accented with that Chicano lilt she’s heard in movies and she wonders if his brothers sounded the same. Again with the mundane details, but she needs them. She’s using them. He scratches the corner of his mouth, waiting patiently for her to take her turn in the conversational volley, but she’s too busy deconstructing monsters in her head with mundane details. Harder to hate up close.

So, after another sip of his coffee, he continues, “Y’know where we come up,” he shrugs, looking behind him as if where he came up is right behind him, and in a way it is, “where we come up, options are hard to see your way to when all you’re trying to do is catch your breath. Our dad–“ Pausing to look at the ocean, Julian crosses his arms and clears his throat. Dad is clearly a sticky subject. “Our dad tried to prepare us for the world, in his way. My brothers got it worse than me but I saw enough. And as we got older, everyone around us was turning to the clickas, pandillas como las llamas aquí. Y’know most’d tell you it was to make a buck but it was prolly more to belong.”

Andrea seizes that. “Is that why you guys did?”

Caught in a memory, Julian smiles wryly, “Well, Matteo? Matteo didn’t really belong anywhere, even where he did. But I guess in his own way, yeah. To belong but also as a means to an end. 'Cause we wouldn’t have got the old man out the house without the Red Steps.” He takes a sip of his coffee, like that’s that.

She has the urge to poke holes in that declaration, but something stops her. What he said about options. Choices. How they’re hard to see when you’re just trying to catch your breath. So, instead of arguing, she follows his lead, getting caught up in a memory that’s not hers and doesn't need to be. “So … Matteo was the first domino to fall?”

“Correcto. Y despues de eso, David se une a Matteo, eso fue todo. But the thing is … and,” he shrugs, “this might disappoint you,” looking at her with a sorrow that might look like pity if he had an ounce of condescension in his body, before he  breaks the news gently. “It wasn’t a tragedy. For them, for any of us. 'Cause guess what never happened after that? No one surprised us in the middle of the night with military drills, no one got drunk and pushed us into crowded streets with traffic, claiming it was ‘a test’ to see if we’d flinch, ‘cause 'only pussies flinch and get fucked over by life.' No one yelled at me to finish my peas ‘til I puked at the dinner table. Shoplifting travel bottles of Yukon Jack when the punishment was six months in YA if we got caught. White-knuckling it in the passenger’s seat, drunk driving ninety miles an hour on the 101 freeway at three in the morning. All that? Over.”

Now Andrea's looking down at the table, itemizing that harrowing list in her head that’s left Julian nearly breathless. Hearing it out loud, one after another, she can’t help but feel for him. For them, their family. But  just as she’s about to give way to too much compassion, the fire in her chest erupts, back to a roar, thinking of all the kids on the streets of Tijuana with no fathers. Fathers taken from them too soon. Like Jesús almost was. Like her own was. More fathers than she could keep track of. There were estimates, people tried keeping track, but those were just numbers. Too far away from what mattered.

It’s like he can see the fury building in her right there but if he can't, he addresses it. “I’m not saying it was the right thing– fuck, I’m not even saying it was the only thing to do. There were a lotta options. But no one told us. So, we were never keeping track. Now? In prison? I got nothing but time to keep track. I know exactly what me, Matty, David could’ve done different. But I can’t change what we did. Just try to remember that choice is the only control I have.” He laughs but it doesn’t reach his eyes, “And you best believe that’s a near impossible task where I’m at,” the first sign of bitterness he’s exhibited this whole time but it’s gone as fast as it comes. “But in a lotta ways, prison took away the noise real early for me. The distractions. The expectations of others, of life. What a man’s s’posed to be, s’posed to do. I can’t think in ‘supposed to’ anymore, only what ‘is,' what I can do with that. If anything.”

He stops mid-thought, exhaling energetically and Andrea gets the impression that this is the most he’s said out loud in a long time. To anyone. Or maybe it’s  just a heavy topic and a long day and he’s tired. She doesn’t know this kid that well, Julian. But she has to give it to him. He knows how to close. She purses her lips, digesting what he’s said, deciding to match his transparency with her own.

“Well, Julian. I hear a lot of bullshit in my line of work. And I wasn’t certain what I’d find here, but of course, you have to understand I always prepare myself for that inevitability.” He chuckles at that and the muscles in her temples soften, eyes cast down to look at her hands, as she picks her cuticles nervously. “But you've laid out your truth, so I’ll lay out mine. I came here ready for it. Ready to hate him. Wanting it even. I’d hate you if you’d given me the slightest justification. I came here expecting all the things I’d read and heard to be confirmed, that the monsters I’d made in my head were real because it’s so much easier–“ she trails off. Easier to what?

She doesn’t know, all she knows is, "it’s easier to–“ she huffs, frustrated. Where are the words? Why can't she find the right ones? Oh, fuck it. “Eas– ugh, because it’s just fucking easier. And all I want is for this to be easy because everything else is hard. But you met me with nothing but you and the truth. And all I feel is guilty that I can’t hate either of you.” She throws her hands up in defeat, letting them land on the table. The contact rattles the table and their cups. “But I can’t. I can't, I can't. Because the more I learn, the more it becomes clear that nothing is simple. And that the world isn’t made up of heroes and monsters. Just broken people balancing between the two.”

He laughs, “Yeah, well,” like none of that surprises him. Although given everything he’d been through, there were probably precious few things that surprised him. He surprises her though with what he next, less because it happens and more because he didn’t lose a tooth to her fist for doing it. “My mother used to tell us the only certain thing is absurdity and uncertainty,” he says, reaching across the table for one of her hands, then bringing it on the table to hold in both of his, dark eyes pleading with her own. “And the best way to deal with it is to say the things out loud. Call it what the fuck it is.”

An honest-to-goodness, real and genuine smile smile breaks out across Andrea's face and deepens as she’s filled with relief that she’s still capable of forming is still in working order. She was scared the mechanism would be broken forever. Squeezing his hand like she can telegraph gratitude through her fingertips, she gives a nod, “Thanks.”

He beams back at her like the sun. 

About to let go of his hand, she remembers what she’d thought about earlier – how he started off with little and has nothing to lose because he has nothing now – and grips it tighter still, “Hey, Bugsy,” drawing a puzzled look from him. “About your brother. I’m j– I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“Just ... for everything.”

═

The night he got bit, he was antsy and moody. Sitting in the house was only making it worse, so he went out. Ramón was in one of those moods where he didn’t want company, or to party - so went out alone. He was only out there a half hour before he got attacked. And no matter how much he shot, that fucker got away.

Ramón even followed the blood drops but didn’t find a body. Just thinking about it again pissed him off and started to sour his mood.

He took a bigger hit, took his leather jacket off, then rolled up his left pant leg. Before it was a bloody vicious bite, now, it looked more like a scar, it was healing itself.

Ramón cursed under his breath, shook it off, then looked up at the moon.

For the last three days it’s had an unusually powerful hold on him, he almost crashed his car yesterday because he gazed at it for so long.

Then there’s his dreams. They’ve been weird as fuck. Animals running in the woods, paw prints, the moon, blood and flesh - and it always ends with a dark-haired woman in the distance. None of it made any sense….

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