“Who’s going to watch over him?” Naeva asks.

She follows me into my bedroom. I sit back down in front of the vanity and get back to work on braiding birth control pills into my hair. From the corner of my eye I see my cell phone screen light up, indicating a call. I ignore it and let it go to voicemail.

“I hired outside help,” I say. I see Naeva, in the reflection of the mirror, sit down on the foot of my bed. “They’ll be here in an hour to take him to another location. In case Artemis shows up, which I fully expect that she will. Sooner rather than later.”

“Sarai?”

The concern in her voice makes me look up and pause what I’m doing.

“Yeah?”

She hesitates, maybe searching for words, and then asks, “I don’t know you outside from what I’ve heard about you through Brant, and I know the girl I knew all those years ago when I first met you is long gone by now, but I don’t have to know you to see that you’re deliberately pushing my brother away.” She points at the door, indicating Apollo down the hallway. “He has people looking for Apollo and Artemis. You have one of them in custody right now, but you don’t want him to know. And then the whole thing with you going to Mexico alone.” She glances at the floor, then back up at me. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m not judging you, I just don’t understand what you’re doing. I…I guess I just…”—her gaze strays again, her expression clouding over with a deep-rooted pain, it seems—“…I guess I just can’t imagine pushing away the man I love for any reason. When you find that one person you know you were meant to be with, to live and die with, you do just that—you live and die with him. For him, if you have to.” I know she means well, but the only person she’s thinking about right now is that man, Leo.

I turn around on the little stool to face her instead of her reflection; I drop my hands from my hair and place them into my lap. “You’re wrong, Huevito,” I say softly. “The girl you knew all those years ago, is sitting right in front of you.”

She looks at me for a long moment, seeming in search of her own understanding of my words, or rather the ones I refuse to say, and then I turn around and go back to braiding my hair.

“We leave for Mexico in five hours,” I tell her. “Are your tubes tied?”

It takes her a second; perhaps she’s surprised by the question, but she answers, “Y-Yes.”

“Good,” I say. “Now, I’m gonna need you to hit me in the face.”

“What?”

Snapping on the last tiny rubber band around the end of a braid, I get up from the stool and walk toward her.

“I need you to hit me in the face.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d rather it be you than Ray—he doesn’t seem the type to wash his hands after he takes a piss.”

After Naeva beats the shit out of me—she’s stronger than I expected—and I rip her clothes and rough her up a little myself, I spend the next five hours telling her everything she needs to know, and the role she needs to play. I admit, I was worried about her tagging along in the beginning, but after only a short time, I realize she needs no training. Naeva is, unfortunately, even more experienced than me when it comes to underground Mexico.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The stars will die before we do, Izabel…the stars will die before my love for you does. I am not good at these things; I am inexperienced. Romance. Gestures of affection. Words weaved together poetically to proclaim love. Gifts and smiles and laughter and conversation about the simple things in life—I know nothing of these things. They make me uncomfortable, the way that embracing my father would have made me feel if I had not killed him, or crying on my brother’s shoulder. I may never understand these rituals, these feelings. But we have an eternity to find out. It takes an eternity for a star to die.

Those were the words I wanted to say to Izabel the last time I saw her.

If she had come here tonight, I would have worked up the courage to say them. I thought that she…no, I had hoped that she would come to see me one last time before she left for Mexico. I called her, but she did not answer, and so I left a voicemail with cryptic details only she would understand about the hotel I am temporarily staying in. For the night, anyway. I wanted to remain in Boston tonight, close to the residence Izabel and I once called home. Just in case.

But I know she is gone.

I glance at my Rolex. Four a.m. I wonder where she is. I wonder if I will ever see her again. Or if the talons of her old life with sink into her, fatally this time.

Clenching my fists, I resist the desperate urge to go after her.

I resist.

I resist…

Instead, I picture her radiant smile, and the light in her eyes, and her laughter, and her warmth. I picture the first time I saw her, hiding in the backseat of my car, and I remember the first time I heard her play the piano. And I wonder what I could have possibly done to deserve her. All I have ever done is wicked. I am a monster in the shadows; the blood of many stains my gnarled hands; the souls of the innocent are forever caught in my blade-like teeth.

So how can this be, that even an ounce of light be given to a monster such as me?

I go to the window of my top floor hotel room and gaze out, not at the glittering city, but at the stars fully awake in the early morning sky. And I see her, Izabel, Sarai, in every single one of them. And this is how I know, that because of her, because I see her in everything, I am not only a monster, but a man. 

-A GLIMPSE INTO FUTURE BOOKS IN THE SERIES-

(Note that the following books are not listed in any particular order. Also note that the following books are not the only books left in the series. Lastly, please note that as storylines progress in the series, some titles listed here, as well as the content accompanying them, may change.)

THE RED LOTUS - #?? 

“Life is not is journey, nor is it a destination, it is merely an experience in which no one possesses genuine control; paths are never chosen, but taken, blindly, as if walking through a dark corridor, barefooted, where the ground is soft in some places, but sharp, and missing, in others. There is no God; there is no puppet master pulling the strings; there is no Heaven or Hell; there is only Life and Death—all of the in-between is merely existence. Because, after all, a flower that grows in a meadow, is just a flower that grows in a meadow.”

The victim cries out as the blade splits his flesh, the hand that wields it, delicate and precise; the arm that moves the hand, frail and soft; the shoulder that connects the arm, dainty and flawless; the mind that controls it all, tranquil and unhinged.

“I’ll tell you aaanythiiing!” the victim screams, his voice booming in the small confined space. “What do you want from meee?! Unnn-Ahhhnnn!” He passes out from the pain, his head lolls to the side; blood from his missing teeth drips from the corner of his mouth onto the shiny metal table his body has been strapped to.

“I want the roots that give your petals life,” the Red Lotus answers, and continues cutting.

THE DARKEST HALF - #??

“Look at me, Fredrik,” Seraphina says; her slender fingers grip the man’s bloodied cheeks. “Look at me, my love—you can do this; you can because you’re strong, and because the demon inside of you is hungry”—she wrenches the man’s face, digging her fingertips into his flesh—“and it can’t live on blood alone. Mine never could.”