Chapter Text
Chapter One: Go to Hell, Seth Gecko
“Grief is the price we pay for love.” – Queen Elizabeth II
“You gonna be alright in here by yourself?”
Richie nodded, shivering, and adjusted himself in the car seat. His arms crossed, he scratched his jaw and closed his eyes. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I just feel like a jackass for letting you go in there alone.”
“Hey,” Seth hit him lightly on the shoulder. His brother opened one eye. “You don’t worry about that. You focus on getting better and I’ll do the rest.”
Under the yellow spotlight of Buffalo Bill’s parking lot, Richie’s skin was bleached white. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. Only an hour ago he had finally stopped coughing up blood. The puncture wound on his right shoulder was leaking puss and had already ruined all his starched white shirts. Bucky’s Gas station in South Texas was selling sweatshirts for nine dollars a pop. Richie groaned when he saw his brother approach the car with the grey thing in his hands.
“You call if anything changes, alright?” Seth put the extra burner phone in his brother’s hand. His palms were clammy and his skin was cold. “Hang in there. The professor’s gotta know something.”
“And if he doesn’t?” The whites of his eyes were a sickly yellow.
Seth’s mouth went dry. “Not gonna happen.”
He took a pair of black leather gloves out of his back pocket. Uneasily, he slipped one over his left, and then his mangled right. He knew Richie was watching so his gaze couldn’t linger, so he covered his hand as quickly as he could. What would have happened if Richie hadn’t found him that night? So high and so close to an overdose, he floated over the crevice between life and death. How many times had he told his brother to keep his own gun cleaned? How many times?
Another reason among the other thousand that this had to work. The professor had to know something because with every passing day, what now felt like every hour now, Richie was getting worse. He wasn’t healing from the bite. The whole job had gone belly-up about a week ago and Richie resembled a diseased skeleton more and more as each day passed. They were out of options. Seth never believed he would ever have to look up Professor Aiden Tanner’s number, after everything that happened at the Twister. And yet, here he was. Almost seven years later back in Texas and right back in the shit that they waded through last time. Seth was sick and tired of rustling up dusty corpses.
He stepped out of the car, and slammed the door after him. Richie had his eyes closed again. A hard knot forming below his heart, Seth turned and headed into the professor’s choice of meeting place.
The moment his brother left, Richie knew he was going to be sick. He cracked the door open just as a hot swoop hit his stomach and he retched, mostly blood. He wiped his cracked lips with the back of the sweatshirt. Something came off on the sleeve, and it wasn’t blood. Squinting, Richie held it up to the light. A thin layer of skin. Like he was molting. Rotting from the inside. In the car next to him, he caught eyes with two tiny brown ones staring at him. In one hand, the little boy clutched a toy dinosaur, the rest of his face obscured by the car door. He waved slowly.
Another pang hit Richie in the gut, but it wasn’t nausea. It was hunger. Richie leaned back into the car, slammed the door shut, and locked himself in. The little boy was still watching him.
“You know, of all the shit that’s happened, I don’t know why I’m surprised the Sex Machine is still a fuckin’ pervert.”
“That’s Professor Pervert to you, shithead.” The waitress, dressed in what could only loosely be described as clothing, dropped their drinks off. Tanner eyed her and Seth could have sworn there was a flash of yellow as he followed the curve of her ass, his mouth pulled up into a twisted smirk. “What can I say? As an immortal, I don’t gotta do a whole lot to keep myself in the ring, if you know what I mean.”
Seth rolled his eyes. “Then how do you explain the thing growing off the side of your head?”
“Oh, this?” Tanner grinned, all teeth, and turned his head to show off his greasy top knot. “This, you backwater idiot, is a man bun. The college chicks go apeshit for it. Couldn’t tell you why. But what I can tell you is that I am literally drowning in the sweet p—,”
“Nope, stop right there.” Seth leaned forward and tapped the sticky table. “I’m not here to talk about how you manage to trick dumb co-eds into sleeping with you. How you’ve ever touched a female vagina is beyond me, but that’s not why we’re meeting.”
Tanner shrugged and took a sip of beer. “Suite yourself, homebre. Lay it on me, then. Why did Los Hermanos Geckos suddenly show up, askin’ lil old me for some help?”
The knot under Seth’s heart shifted. “It’s Richie. He was bitten by something.”
“Uh, duh, I was there, remember? I got bitten myself, you know—,”
“No, not then, at the Twister. Recently. We heard rumors that there was culebra hide-out near Zacatecas, one with more gold than we could carry out. So, we talked to the right snakes, we greased some palms, and it seemed like a pretty in-and-out kinda deal.”
Tanner’s face flickered with something resembling a frown, but he let Seth continue.
“From the intel, this place was apparently the drop point for some big mob boss—,”
“Culebra boss?”
“No, and here’s the rub, it was a different group of other fuckers that makes the snakes look like little fucking earth worms—,”
Tanner nearly spat out his beer. “The felidaes? You went after a felidaes treasure trove??”
“What? They’re just a little furrier than you fucks.”
“And our natural enemies! Okay, like on the supernatural food chain, culebras are generally top bitch, but shit— you do not fuck with a felidae and live to tell the story, man!”
“Well, it would have been fucking different if it was only the West side we had to deal with . . .”
The professor leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Seth sighed, focusing on a point on the table. He scratched the back of his head, the hair longer than it had been in a while and it was driving him batshit. Then again, he had been a bit busy. “Look, the mob boss had a name. They called him El Devorador.”
“And that is where this fair tale comes to an end!” Tanner stood up, waving for another waitress. “Yo, check, please.”
Seth sprung to his feet. “Whoa, whoa, I paid you five hundred bucks for you to sit here and tell me what the fuck is wrong with my brother. You haven’t done jack shit!”
Tanner froze, any trace of that queasy bravado gone from his face. “Please, for the love of the Almighty, please tell me El Devorador didn’t bite Richard.”
Hunger. Raw hunger.
Richard felt his joints crack from the starvation settling into his bones. His body lurched forward, every muscle constricted, his mouth salivating. He could hear them all. The blood rushing in the bodies of waitresses, cooks, patrons, those on the highway ten miles behind him. He shook his head to clear his mind, to focus on what mattered, and flakes of skin fluttered into his lap. Panic lanced through him before another wave of hunger crashed into him. In his clenched fist, the burner phone dissolved into particles.
“You can’t fucking leave now!”
“Watch me, cowboy.”
Tanner finished paying the waitress before finishing off his second beer in two gulps. Seth grabbed him by the shoulders, knocking the bottle out of his hands. “You tell me how to save Richie, or I swear to Christ, I’m going to use your skin as the interior leather for my car!”
The professor made a face of disgust. “Ooh, that’s graphic some imagery for you. But, alright, look, take this.” He took out a book from inside his leather jacket and handed it to Seth. “In the culebra community, there’s been talk of someone who is seen as both a healer and a, uh, fixer of sorts. She mends you, is the actual translation. They call her La Muñeca. She lives in a place where no culebra can survive, in the palm of a bear.”
Seth frowned at the book. It didn’t even have a title on its brown exterior. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Tanner rolled his eyes. “It means she’s probably somewhere North, if she exists at all. Her story, as culebra mythology goes, is actually a sad one. She started out as a young priestess in her village, all sweet and pure-like. But her beauty upset the gods, so they sent two warrior brothers to kidnap her and take her away. In the process, they burned down her entire village and killed her whole family. Now the two warriors have goals of their own, mind you, and so they split up, one brother going after glory, the other going after gold. The brother who wanted nothing more than to swim in lakes of gold takes her with him. They traverse up and down Mexico, looking for their next score, for years and years. By this time, she’s no longer this little backwater girl, but a fighter. But she never kills. She teaches this brother about compassion, and love, and dumb shit like that. One day he falls in love with her and takes her like all real men do— Seth, are you gonna puke? Aim that-a-way—”
He had fallen down into the seat behind him. There wasn’t enough air, or too much of it. His head was spinning. This was all . . . familiar. “Yeah— I’m fine— what happens next?”
Tanner frowned, unconvinced. “Well, okay, one day warrior brother realizes she’s made him weak and he no longer loves the flashy gold like he used to. So he cuts her lose. Says, sayonara, and peaces out. But what is she going to do now? She hikes up her skirts and goes back to where her original village burnt down and rebuilds the damn thing. People from all across the land come to see this lady build houses and create lakes and plow the land . . . all by her lonesome. A couple of them stay, and she swears protection over them. As long as she leads this village, no harm shall ever come to anyone who lives there. It was said that she gave people exactly what they needed when they came into her village, like she could see right into their souls and fix them. She’s got the name La Muñeca because she was so pretty, like a doll, but she also fixes and sews us back together . . . you get it?”
Seth’s mouth had gone dry. No. No way. There was no possible fucking way that—
“D-did she have a name before all that?”
Tanner’s eyebrow quirked up and he grinned, like he had a juicy secret. “Nope. Nobody knows her real name. That’s part of the whole gig, man. She never let anyone knew her name because she wants to curse the sunovabitch who hurt her. If he doesn’t know her name, he can never find her. How’s that for revenge porn?” He picked up Seth’s untouched beer and sipped.
“And you think this chick can help Richie? Wherever she is?”
The professor smacked his lips, judging Seth’s drink of choice. “Yep. Legend goes that the gods turned her one surviving family member into a culebra to make her suffer his eternal life. But he, suffering his terrible affliction of eating people, wanted to change. So he went to La Muñeca and she took the snake right out of him.”
“What? Like she defanged him?”
“Like made him mortal again, Seth.” He gazed over the rim of the bottle, his words heavy. “This Muñeca is the real deal. That story is the only known case of a culebra ever reverting to their non-scaly ways. If your boy needs a good kick in the pants, she’ll do it.”
Seth leaned back, mesmerized by a drawing in the book. It was of a small, brunette girl bowing her head in prayer. His stomach churned.
“So, hypothetically, if one wanted to find this Muñeca . . .”
“Bear Claw, Alaska.”
“Excuse me?”
Tanner leaned back, his arms stretched across the back of the seat, grinning like a cat with his mouthful of feathers. “These stories aren’t just bedtime tales that culebra parents tell their culebra babies to keep them in school. Mostly everything has some truth to it. Me and a buddy of mine did some calculations, some research, and yeah, if I had to bet my sweet left ass cheek, Bear Claw is where Kate Fuller now lives.”
Seth could feel his pulse in his throat as he looked up to the professor, who had known exactly where to punch. “Oh, get off your high horse. You thought your little getaway into the Mexican desert with one of the tightest little yummies I’ve ever laid eyes on, wasn’t going to be public culebra news, then you are about as dumb as you look. I don’t know all the details, but shit, Seth, you fucked that one right up.”
“This can’t be Kate,” he argued. “She wasn’t some priestess in Mexico five hundred years ago.”
Tanner shrugged. “Culebras get a little . . . hyperbolic about this shit. It’s their religion, man. But okay, fine, let’s say the answer to your problem isn’t with the girl you abandoned five years ago. The woman, or whatever, who can fix your brother lives in Bear Claw, Alaska. I’d bet my—,”
“Ass, you said . . .”
The picture was pulling his gaze downward again. It was just Tanner being the dick he always was. Kate wasn’t in Alaska. She was back in Bethel, or fuckin’ Georgia, already through school, maybe with a job and a boyfriend and maybe a fuckin dog too. She was happy, wherever she was. Away from all of this shit.
“Look, Seth, I gotta ask.” Tanner leaned forward as though asking for personal advice. “Did you ever hit that? The Fuller girl, I mean, because, wow—,”
A petrified scream shattered the loose atmosphere of the restaurant. Seth immediately reached for his gun, the knot pressing painfully against his heart. No, Richie, no!
Feed. Consume. Satiate.
His hands were already bloody, shredded from breaking his way out of their stolen car. He rained down a thunderstorm of fists against the glass of the car nearby. He could hear the boy’s pulse pumping in his ears. Gallons of blood rushing. Blasting. Red and hot. Like the sun just waiting to be swallowed. A copper sun, brilliant and shrieking. His fangs were vibrating from need.
The glass finally gave way.
Seth knocked open the restaurant doors, his heart pounding. Across the deserted parking lot, the scream grew louder and he heard something not even remotely human roar in agony.
He saw the little boy locked inside his parent’s van, clutching that dinosaur to his chest, his eyes wide and wet, and his little lungs aching in terror. Richie was clawing at him through the opposite window, fangs fully extended, and the front of the sweatshirt was covered in blood.
Richie grabbed the ankle of the little boy . . . and time slowed down.
Someone was screaming Richie’s name and the gun in his hand was cold but so far away. Everything was so far away.
Please, let me get there in time.
They were in southern Wyoming when it started to snow. Seth tried to turn on the heater but the professor’s truck only spluttered angrily.
“C’mon, you piece of shit, work.” He smacked the top of the dashboard, trying to keep an eye on the increasingly dark road ahead. He rolled up the window next to him as several flakes fluttered inside. He stuck his free hand up into his armpit for warmth, his breath coming out in white puffs before his eyes.
The clock read 11:27 and the professor had said to feed Richie every two hours. Seth’s own stomach gurgled at the thought of food, so he pulled off to the side of the road. He yanked the 420 Blaze It sweatshirt from Colorado over his head and reached into the medical bucket on the floor of the passenger’s side. He thought of Tanner’s face as he beat his brother unconscious to keep him away from the kid. Tanner gave up two weeks of blood bags without a second thought. The truck and subsequent trailer, preloaded with a refrigerator and generator, was actually proposed by the professor as well. Seth slid out of the seat, two blood bags, and a bag of burgers and fries in his arms, the keys jangling in his pocket. He unlocked the trailer and climbed in.
Guilt bloomed in his chest. It was pitch black and freezing. He thought the padlock was a bit much, but Tanner insisted, his face pale and his eyes wide as they loaded a bloody and unconscious Richie into the trailer. Seth’s stomach twisted when he realized the white flecks covering Richie were skin particles. Tanner just shrugged. I got no fucking clue about that, man.
Seth unlocked the lock and cracked open the door. Richie was sleeping, his skin covered in a fine sheen of frost.
“Hey, Richie, wake up.” He shook his brother’s shoulder and heard ice crack.
Richie’s eyes fluttered open. Even his voice sounded frozen. “Seth? What’s up?”
“I’m gonna need you to eat, buddy, alright?” Seth cut a hole in one of the blood bags and held it in front of Richie. Large patches of skin were missing from his face and hands. Underneath was a thick gray layer. In the right light, Seth could have sworn they were scales. But for now, Richie’s bloodshot eyes no longer looked so clouded. He shifted and sat up, one blue-tinged hand reaching for the bag. “There ya go. Eat up.”
Richie closed his eyes almost peacefully as he drained the blood. When Seth had woken him up in North Oklahoma and explained what had happened— why all of this was necessary— it looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. All the air had been knocked out of him, and Richie merely nodded. He refused the blood bag that night.
Seth sat back on the floor of the trailer and took out his own burger. It was cold, but so was Richie’s dinner.
“Where are we?” Richie asked, licking his mouth clean.
Seth shrugged, his mouthful of food. “Somewhere in Wyoming, I think.”
Richie nodded slowly. “We’re making good time.”
“We’ll get there when we get there.”
Richie was fiddling with the next blood bag. “Seth, what happened at the restaurant—,”
Seth made a noise of indignation, half a burger still in his mouth. He shook his finger before swallowing. “Nope, Richie, don’t do that to yourself. You weren’t in control. You wouldn’t have done that if it had been you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m getting real sick and tired of being somebody’s bitch.”
“That’s why we’re doing this. We’re gonna find this Muñeca chick and everything’s gonna be fine.”
Richie sat quiet for a moment, sipping almost hesitantly from the bag. He glanced at his brother, before reaching down beside his hip and taking out the leather-bound book the professor had given Seth. “Quaint little bedtime story you got right here.”
Seth looked down, rubbing ketchup off the side of his mouth.
“It does sound a lot like what we did to Kate.”
He looked into his brother’s eyes and saw shared guilt there. Richie took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses of the layer of ice. “Why do you never talk about what happened with her in Mexico?”
“Because nothing fucking did,” Seth murmured, hurling the half-eaten burger back inside the soggy bag. He stood and opened his hand. “Gimme the book, Richard. You need to rest and we gotta get back on the road.”
“Why do you always do this, Seth?” He tried to stand but his muscles gave too easily. Richie settled for glowering and keeping the book tight to his chest. “Why is it every time this shit comes up you shut down? You gotta talk it out, brother.”
“No, I fucking don’t. Give me the goddamn book so we can get out of here!”
Richie continued to scowl. Sighing impatiently, Seth snatched the book from his brother’s clutches and turned to go.
“So what part of it’s true?”
Seth froze, his back to the refrigerator.
“If we’re hauling ass all the way to fucking Alaska, you gotta believe that some of it’s true. Which parts?”
Seth chewed a bit of his cheek, still not turning around.
Richie felt a flush of real anger go through him. “What are you going to say to her, huh? After all these years? You were so strung out when I found you in that alleyway, Seth, I know she did a number on you. What was it?”
Seth sighed and rubbed his palm into one eye. His fingers were going numb from the cold. He finally turned around. “Look, when you make it through this and you get better, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything, alright? What happened after the Twister, it’s . . . complicated, okay?”
Richie only glowered, petulant as always. Seth crouched by the edge of the refrigerator and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You just gotta trust me on this one. We’re gonna fix this and the Brothers Geckos are gonna be back, baby. Just you wait.”
His brother’s pale face fell, as though something dark and unsettling occurred to him too late in life. “Do you ever wish—,” he cut off, knowing he couldn’t finish without ruining everything.
“Wish what, Richie?”
His lips cracked when he tried to smile. “Never mind, brother. Just getting delusions of grandeur again.”
Seth reached forward and put their foreheads together, as he always did before a big job. “We’ll get through this. I swear it.”
Richie nodded and Seth leaned back, patting his cheek. “Sleep if you can. I’ll wake you up in two hours.”
Seth stood and Richie laid down, crossing his arms like one of those cheap movie vampires. He closed his eyes and Seth shut the door again. He locked it and headed back to the truck.
It was still freezing inside the cab. Seth tossed the book into the passenger’s seat and started the engine again. A weak puff of hot air bloomed in the cab. “Thank Christ,” Seth moaned and put both hands over the heater.
As the cab warmed slowly, Seth glanced at the book beside him. It was a book of culebra lore, La Muñeca one of the stories in its pages. He had read it word for word and the words now infested his mind like a sickness. She was seen as a heroine, this little girl turned warrior. Seth felt his cold dinner rise in the back of his throat and he shoved the book into the glove compartment. He adjusted his rearview mirror and pulled out onto the road again.
With a chill that ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature outside, Seth considered it. She was twenty-five now, wherever she was. Five years without him. He turned on the truck’s bright lights to cut through the thick drifting snow.
Wherever that somewhere was, he hoped with every fiber of his being it wasn’t Bear Claw, Alaska.
It was minutes before day broke when Seth crossed the second American border into Alaska. His back ached from hunger, exhaustion, and the cold. From a glance in the side mirror, the half-rimmed circles beneath his eyes had darkened somewhere between British Columbia and McCarthy. The thick black beard lining his jaw was greasy and unkempt. He also hadn’t showered since Washington. Seth pulled the stolen woolen grey hat over his ears and another overcoat on top of the 420 sweatshirt that reeked of day old burgers. He vaguely wondered if he smelled as sour as he felt.
“Up and at ‘em, little brother.” He tossed a blood bag onto a sleeping Richie’s lap. He only stirred, shifting slowly in his sleep. There were patches of hair missing from his head.
“C’mon, wakey, wakey.” Seth dropped into his spot next to the refrigerator. The metal immediately froze his ass, but this far into the trip, he barely registered it. He popped open the coffee he had picked up at the rest stop five miles back. Miraculously, it was still warm and Seth held it under his chin, letting the heat melt the ice on his beard. He took two big gulps before turning to the McGriddle in the bag.
Richie still hadn’t woken up. Seth kicked the side paneling. “C’mon, get up, you gotta eat.”
“Five more minutes . . .” His brother rolled over, still deeply asleep.
Seth rolled his eyes and finished chewing his bite. “God, you are useless.”
Richie only murmured in response.
“Even as a kid, it took you twenty minutes to get out of bed. You were always first in everything, except that.”
The sweatshirt over his chest barely even moved as Richie slept. Seth watched him but saw the road ahead. Over a thousand miles of driving had opted for a lot of thinking time, and that was Seth Gecko’s least favorite type of time spent. The radio had crapped out early and it was either contemplate this possibility or listen to the air get colder and colder by the mile. He had been picking at Richie’s question, like scratching off cheap paint, for days now and hadn’t come up with a single cohesive answer.
What could he possibly say?
His right hand tightened painfully, as it always did when it got cold out. As they drove deeper into the Great White North, the pain was increasing and every time he thought of what they would find in Bear Claw, it became unbearable. He thought of the night he ruined his hand. It had been exactly six weeks to the day that he had . . . that they had . . . and he was alone in the world. Truly alone.
“Seth, what were you doing in the bathroom? Where are you going? Last night . . . are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong? Did you not like . . . it?”
He thought of the two years in Mexico leading up to that night. It wasn’t happiness he had been chasing the night he got dangerously high. It was a shadow. A shadow that he had watched out of the corner of his eye for two years, but then it was gone and there was nothing but an agonizingly bright light he couldn’t hide from. The shadow, a mobile dancing figure that stood statuesque in all of his dreams and memories, was gone and he felt a hole in the world. Sure, at one point, there was happiness. There was happiness, and doubt, and anger, and fear, and a strange thrill that gripped him so tight it kept him awake every night until the sky was pink, like her—
Her fist tightened around the white bedsheet, pulling up over her chest, as though he was no longer allowed to look. “Why are you saying these things to me? I thought—,”
“Because they need to be said.”
“Seth, I can change. I promise—,”
“You’re too dependent on me. And I can’t do this shit anymore.”
He ran away one morning because in a single decision, it became clear to him that the darkness inside, shoved in there by his father, patted down by his mother as she walked out the door, and left to fester, was never going to go away. He had made her cry in the worst possible way. He never even said sorry for that, among other things. He just got up and left her with the money, the car, and the part of himself that was aching and desperate for him to stay.
At least, that’s how it had been that morning as he took a bus to nowhere. There was a morning after that, and another one. And at least a dozen more before he got his hands on a fix that stifled everything. It tasted like cotton going down, but felt like a blue wave in Havana. It drove her out. It kept her out, as it did with everything else. He wasn’t sure why he, of all people, continued to wake up morning after morning when there was nothing more that he wanted than to lay down in the cold dark earth. The blue wave crashed, throwing him on the rocks, and Richie— God love ‘im— dragged his limp body onto shore. Things were better after that, after Richie ditched his new culebras buddies and came back to what mattered. In the nick of time, too.
Kate hadn’t been a name he thought of, or even said in years, and as Richie said, there’s a reason for all that. Kate was poison to him. It was either her or heroin and Richie made damned sure to keep both at bay. If Seth Gecko had a lick of sense in him, he would have turned this shit bucket around and drove to the nearest beach, letting his brother die in peace. But no, since birth, Seth Gecko was a fighter, built like one too. He had ingrained the same damned will to live into his little brother and together, the two of them probably could have stopped Death its tracks, out of sheer stubbornness. He was going to save his brother, and pay his debt, because what was life but a series of IOUs that built up like chains until one day you were thrown off the damn pier and you best hope you could swim with a fifty-pound choker around your neck. So, Seth was swimming. He was always swimming up, towards the light he said he was owed, but didn’t believe in for a second.
For two years, that light was Kate. Before he nearly destroyed her life again.
“Seth, please, I—,”
“Save it, princess. Save it for someone who cares.”
Her tears raced red against her pink face. She was ashamed and mortified that she found out he was a monster too late and he couldn’t feel his tongue in his mouth anymore.
“Go to hell, Seth Gecko. Fuck you.”
But she did smile, didn’t she? Discounting the glances, the questions, the teetering line they edged against for two years— Kate Fuller had been his best friend. His only friend and his conscience in a Mexican endless wasteland in an absurd chunk of time where even death was hot and reeking, and it took lovers, and strangers, and fathers, and little brothers and returned demons with their faces instead. . . so maybe it didn’t count. Maybe none of it really counted because if life had followed the straight and narrow, their paths never would have even crossed and his face would have been a flash on the screen she saw at breakfast, the reporter announcing the deaths of two small-time bank robbers. Maybe she even would have prayed for him.
But five years later and a thousand miles between dusk and dawn, Seth knew he was reaching for a bad hit again. What a shitty thing to admit— that he was hoping he would see her again.
Just to see her face even for a second would be—
But this was why he was a bastard and always would be a bastard. If Kate was actually in Alaska, that would mean walking away would have been for nothing. It would have been easy enough to ruin her, to bring her into his world. He could have kept her as his prisoner for the rest of their lives, but then one day, the Kate brought him to his knees would be gone. He needed to be a better man around Kate, needed to be everything he wanted to be but didn’t know how. But she made him try and that was important. So he left. He left and he was ripped at the edges, and she was crying but firm when she told him to go to hell. Richie would call that irony, on the account of him already being there.
He used to love mornings, in a cheesy kind of way that Richie would no doubt tease him endlessly for. Now they were a memory of a crying young woman who had been his whole world.
His hand ached. His appetite was gone. Richie was still asleep in front of him. The McGriddle sat on the floor between his ankles, wrists resting on his knees.
Outside the trailer, it was dawn, the soft blue lens slowly retreating into the sky.
Seth scratched the back of his head again. What do you say to someone who was almost?
It was about 2:30 in the afternoon when Seth drove past a faded sign, half of it covered in ice so that it blurred the remaining visible letters. He almost missed it, his mind elsewhere, and it wasn’t until the image registered in his sleep-deprived brain that he slammed on the breaks. Seth cut the engine and leapt out of the cab. With one shivering hand, he cleared away what he could.
You Have Now Entered Bear Claw City Limits
Seth released a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. “Ho-ly sh-i-i-i-t . . .”
He stretched his back. Something cracked. He wasn’t sure if it was a joint or ice.
“Hey, you new here?”
The sound of another human voice seemed almost alien in this white empty space. Seth glanced around the sign and saw someone approaching, with two very large basset hounds. They sniffed the ground and dragged their master forward. The man, who looked like an oily Santa Claus, was eyeing Seth with some curious distain.
“Uh, yeah, we just pulled in.”
“What’s your business here, mister?”
Great fucking question. “I’m looking up an old friend. Her, uh, cousin is sick and I need to tell her.”
“Couldn’t’ve picked up the phone, could ya?”
It was about six hundred miles back that Seth’s patience for crotchety, nosy old men ran out. “Look, is there going to be a problem?”
The dogs paused, as if all three of them glaring would make him turn around. “No, no problem, unless you come here looking for a fight.”
Seth Gecko learned a long time ago that all the world’s language is money and that included Deliverance yuppies. “I’ve got a hundred bucks for you if you let me use a barn or something to keep my trailer in for a week. Another two if you keep quiet about it.”
The old man blinked and the dogs went back to sniffing. “Uh, yeah, I got somethin’ that might work for yuh. It’s off the side of the road, but nobody comes down that road much anywho.”
Seth took out his wallet. “One last thing, old timer, does the name Muñeca mean anything to you?”
White hairs around his lips bristled as Seth handed over the money. The old man shook his head. “Nah, that name don’t mean much, I’m afraid.” He began to count his bribe. “But there is a moon-eeka diner downtown.”
“What?” A pounding started behind Seth’s right eye.
The old man didn’t even look up. “Oh, yeah. M-u-n-e-c-a. Down off Main. Lady moved here a couple of years ago from way outta state, with her brother, and opened up shop. Serves the got-damn best flapjacks I ever had.”
“Is it open now? What’s her name?”
He frowned at Seth, xenophobia beginning to creep back in despite the large wad of cash in his hands. “No. The place closes at one on the weekends. Not at lot of folks want flapjacks after eleven. But you might catch her at Danny’s pub. She goes in there after she closes, but she don’t talk much.”
Seth rubbed his eyes, a headache beginning. “I’ll throw in fifty bucks if you let me use your shower.”
The key to the barn safely in his pocket, Seth closed the stable hand’s exit door behind him. The water inside the tin can that served as the outside shower during the summer was ice cold, but at least he no longer reeked of BO and Burger King. There was nothing to be done about the beard or hair now, but perhaps she wouldn’t vomit at the sight of him. Well, maybe she would, but for different reasons . . . hopefully.
Seth double-checked the lock before sliding his hood over his head. The sun was setting and a different kind of chill had set in. This kind was barreling, like a drill head, into his skin, freezing him from the inside out. The cold had been manageable, up until now. Seth let out a trembling breath and headed up the road, based on the directions of the suddenly very rich greasy codger.
True to his word, the town only had one main road, which was easy enough to follow. It seemed everyone had turned in early. Most of the store lights had been shut off, the upper apartments bearing the only warmth. Out of curiosity, he paused at the intersection of Main and Grey, looking down the street. The old man had said, at the end of the two streets was where “Moon-eka” Eatery was, but Seth couldn’t quite get a glimpse. He wasn’t entirely sure if that was a bad thing or not.
He went on.
He passed the post office. The general store. He passed a boarded up barber shop with a sinking feeling that this town was eerily similar to the thousands of faceless towns they had wandered together in Mexico, except about a bazillion times colder. Did she know that?
Seth rolled his eyes at himself and trudged forward, his hands stuck up under his pits for warmth. If she was even here . . .
He reached Danny’s bar just after sundown, when a wind picked up that had started to toss around unpacked snow. It was small, as most no-Starbucks town went. But it was warm and smelled like pretzels. Only a few patrons loitered, lazy and sleepy from a long day. There was chatter, but it was easy, unhurried, pleasant. One could slip in here and be lost without a care in the world.
Seth glanced around. Nobody registered his appearance, so as casually as he could, he slid into one of the tables on the far right. The lookout had a view of both the exits, the bar itself, and the bathrooms. If his ghost was coming back to haunt him, at least she wouldn’t be able to sneak up on him.
A bulky woman of about forty-five came up to him asked him what he wanted to drink. He replied just a beer and she came back with something that tasted like warm dirt. But at least there was alcohol in it.
An hour into sitting and Seth’s eyelids were drooping. To be sitting in something other than that god-awful pleather chair was a blessing, but also a curse, if he was meant to spot her after all these years. Maybe a ten-minute nap wouldn’t hurt . . . .
The bar door swung open and flushed in the cold air, rousing him from the near clutches of sleep. But it was only another burly woman. Did they just come in boxes around here?
The woman was shedding layers as she approached the bar. Not so large after all, rather tiny, in fact . . .
The bar tender greeted her as she slid up onto a seat. She took off her hat, and dark hair spilled down onto her shoulders. She took off a large overcoat, the tips of her hands glowing pink out of fingerless gloves.
Seth’s heart was racing. He couldn’t see her face, damn it, her back to him.
He hadn’t really thought of this moment. Of what this meant. Of what it all meant. His palms were sweaty. His stomach churned.
A flash behind the bar caught his eye. He hadn’t noticed the mirror behind the rows of liquor bottles.
The woman settled, unwinding a scarf from her neck. She dropped it off to the seat next to her, looked up to the bartender, and smiled. Her Kate smile.
Kate Fuller was in his life, once again.
She sat there for an hour, drinking her beer slowly, and chatting occasionally with the people around her. But for the most part, they left her alone, and she seemed entirely at peace with that.
Unconsciously, Seth began to count the things he noticed that were different about her.
- Her hair was shorter. Just above her shoulders. It kept falling forward in front of her face in between conversations.
- Her nails were painted. Not sure what color.
- She wasn’t carrying a purse. But she did not hide the small 22 strapped to her hip.
- Kate Fuller was still carrying a gun. Why? What was she fighting?
- Her face was thinner. Her skin was tighter, her nose sharper. Her lips were a bright pink from the cold.
She still picked at the label of her beer bottle while she worked on it. There was a perfect little mound of white paper on the bar in front of her after an hour. Inside him, something ached painfully.
At eleven o’clock, she paid and began to redress. The waitress came over to him again, asking if he wanted something else, or another refill— he wasn’t entirely sure, there was a buzzing in his ears that was making everything difficult to hear. He shook his head, his eyes not leaving her back, as he paid and waited for her to leave before following her out.
She was a good few steps ahead, head down against the wind. Her arms were crossed in front of her. His mouth was dry and he was desperately trying to remember the few good opening lines he had thought of in the car. Of course, they were long gone from his panicking brain by now.
They passed under a few overhead lights, the sky entirely black by now, heading towards a blue Chevy truck. Seth’s shoe hit a patch of ice and the crunch shattered the silence.
Her hand snapped to her hip, and in a flash of bright black under the white streetlight, he was staring down the muzzle of that 22. A tight click echoed in the abandoned street and she breathed in – aiming, steading.
“You have three seconds to go home, before I paint the ground with your stalker brains.” Suddenly, the ground to his left exploded and he jumped. Steam rolled into the dark sky, the barrel of the gun high. “Two now. Fuck off and leave me alone.”
“Whoa, whoa, hey now, settle down there—,” Seth went to move his good hand up in surrender, but in the quick movement, his foot slipped. God, how he hated the cold. He was facing Kate Fuller with a runny nose and cracked lips. He sniffed and raised both hands fully. “C’mon, Katie-cakes, let’s talk.”
His hood was still up, his ears now painfully aching, and the bright light of the street light kept him as a silhouette. Her eyes narrowed, steeling, refusing to show weakness of surprise. Then, as though deciding, she set her jaw, uncocked the gun, and began to walk towards him.
“That’s right. You’d always remember your old buddy—,”
CRACK. With the gun tight in her fist, she punched him in nose.
“OW!” Seth stumbled and fell back. His hood sliding off his head, he landed in a patch of more dirt and asphalt than snow. Blood oozed out of his nose, covering his upper lip in wet blood and dried snot.
Kate Fuller stood above him, her hands clenched. “Seth Gecko. You look like shit.” She said his name like parents would warn their children about the boogeyman. “I thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, well, I get that more than you’d expect.” His hand was trembling as it went to clear his mouth of the dripping snot-blood. He couldn’t look up, couldn’t meet that face of final judgement. Half of him expected for her to smite him right there, and the other half wished she would. He didn’t move to get up.
It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t speaking, or yelling, at him for that matter. He could hear her breathing and nothing else. The ice was melting into his jeans and his left thigh was starting to go numb. The tingles were just beginning.
“Look, I know this is a shock after –,”
“How did you find me?”
It was wrong not to face her like a man. She deserved that at least. He drove over a thousand miles and the best he could do was grovel. Get up, Gecko, Richie needs you.
Seth pushed himself up onto his elbows, the blood on his nose finally freezing, and lifted his eyes. Her short hair blew in the ice wind, cutting up under her chin. It was dark brown now, as though she had dyed it some time ago in an effort to hide. Her right knuckles were bruised, the rest of her palm hidden in thick fingerless gloves. The gun rested casually in her left hand like a protective dog would circle the ankles of its master. But of course, it was her face— it was her face that showed so much time had passed. In the darkly lit bar, he hadn’t seen— hadn’t looked for— the large scar stretching from the left side under her bottom lip, up through to just under her nose. It was a perfect line, made quickly in anguish, in anger. She had suffered under the blade of a sadist. Under the peeling light behind him, he saw just the small brands of laugh lines becoming harder, more permanent crows feet. Kate was twenty-five now. Aging.
Her mouth was a single line. And her eyes . . . they were simply impenetrable. Hard green permafrost in a white pale face. She looked exactly alike and nothing alike the girl he left alone.
Seth felt a rush of heat, a baseball bat cluttering around in his brain and making his stomach flip. He glanced down, his throat dry. He tasted blood on his tongue. This was a mistake.
“I’ll ask you one more time. How did you find me?”
The gun flickered at her hip, baring its teeth.
All of this was a terrible mistake. He should never have come.
Remember Richie. You’ve got him tied up in a fridge because if you don’t, he’s never going to be your brother again. When he spoke, the words struggled, caught in the sandpaper of his cheeks.
“There are rumors about Scott. That he’s cured of being a culebra. I just want that for Richie.”
The wind died down, and it seemed as though she had been turned to ice in that moment.
No. Not ice. Frozen steel.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Scott died years ago. Go home. There’s nothing here for you.”
Kate stepped back into the darkness, the gun retreating into her pocket. She pulled out the keys to her truck.
The air suddenly grew unbearably cold, as though she drew back an incredible heat source. Seth lifted the hood up again over his prickling ears and rolled to his feet.
“Kate, just hear me out. I wouldn’t have come all this way if it wasn’t for a damn good reason.” She was flipping through a keyring as though he wasn’t there. The wind blew again. “We ditched the snakes back in Mexico. It’s just Richie and me again . . . and I need your help.”
She unlocked the car door and with a tight pull, she yanked off the ice. Seth lunged forward, slamming the door shut. The gun clicked again and he felt an ice cold barrel pressed up against his stomach.
“Step back or you’ll be losing half of your right lung.” Her green eyes held. Solid. There would be no sweet-talking to her. There would be no dancing around, or fooling her. There was no bullshit he could summon strong enough to blind her. That petulant, headstrong girl had turned into a hurricane of a woman.
Seth stepped back, hands raised. His white breath tumbled away into the night as the corners of his mouth burned. The gun was aimed right between his eyes. “Look, I just need five minutes. It’s Richie, Kate. He’s messed up, bad, and the word in the shitty underbelly of Culebra Mexico is La Muñeca has the answers.”
With a sudden awareness that hit him like a mac truck, across the jet black slide of the gun, he was staring directly into her eyes. No longer did Seth Gecko tower over Kate Fuller.
“And what? I’m La Muñeca?” Her voice cracked as sharply as the gun in her hand.
“All I’m saying is that you’re part of their mythos now. Whether they know it or not.”
Those dark eyes narrowed again, her body nearly going flat against the truck. “How did you know? How did you know where to find me?”
Seth swallowed. “I followed the stories, alright? The snake-heads are cold-blooded. They won’t follow you here. But I had to.”
“For Richie?”
She still hadn’t lowered the gun. Seth nodded, his hands still raised. “I know I’m the last person you ever wanted to see. But he’s my brother and he’s in trouble.”
Silence folded around them, gripping them both in place more tightly than any frost bite. She adjusted her grip.
“You know I don’t trust you.”
Weighted darkness.
“This isn’t for me. I’m asking from one sibling to another . . . Help us.”
She was searching him for any hint of a lie. The nose of the gun thrust forward, sensitive to the smell of blood and filthy, back-stabbing, disloyal thieves, it traveled slowly from between his eyes, down his throat, pausing at his heart, all the way down his rib cage and settled for uncomfortably long on his crotch. Kate Fuller, resident of Bear Claw, Alaska, unlocked the hammer and, for a second time that night, decided not to shoot him.
“Three things are going to happen,” she said as she crossed her arms. “One, you are going to walk at least one step ahead of me at all times. Two, we’re going into that bar, we’re sitting down and you’re going to tell me everything— what’s happened to Richie, how you found me, and why you think I can help you. For your own safety, you should know every man and woman in that bar is fully armed at every minute of the day.” The dark eyes flashed again. “And three, you are going to swear to me the second you’ve gotten what you’ve come for, you’re going to put this town and me in your rearview mirror, and never come back. Swear to me.”
The wind whistled and Seth hardened himself against a shiver from the cold. A broken laugh spilled from the swinging wooden door as a couple left the bar, giggling into each other’s arms.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Kate—,”
“Swear to me, Seth, that you’ll leave me alone.”
Slowly, one hand dropped from beside his head, and extended forward, hidden in a gray glove. “I swear.”
Six Hours After The Fall of The Twister
The longer they drove, the darker the sky grew. Somewhere in the white space of her brain, she could feel the blood on her face drying and caking and cracking with the thick dust flying in over the open window. There was a burning somewhere, on her skin— her face was warm— and she wondered if she had sunburn. Her mother’s voice said, of course she did. Driving under a bright sun for hours would do that to a person.
Above her, in the purple bruised rolling clouds ahead, lighting cracked and the air changed and everything was heavy and dry. The car raced forward over sand and dirt, ignoring the lightning, its wheels furiously carving out an escape from a bloodbath that had stolen everything from two perfect strangers. Kate caught a glimpse of her face in the side mirror.
Occasionally, her church would host PSTD support meetings after hours. At nine, she wandered too deeply into the church one night after youth group, and the fear she saw on grown men had made her cry. She could feel her heart rattling in her chest, as if that was the only thing she had left within her. She was alive only because her heart was still stubbornly beating. It wasn’t fear on her face. It was just . . . emptiness.
The sky cracked and suddenly like the floodgates opening, their dusty convertible was suddenly berated with a torrential downpour.
It was only then that the car dropped its ninety mile an hour drive, down to sixty-five, forty, twenty, and off to the side of the road, just before the dirt had become mud. It was warm, the rain, as it thundered down her face, her nose, her shoulders. Her jeans were soggy now. She could hear the drip, drip, drip as water rolled off the dashboard onto her dirty sneakers. The dried blood dislodged itself in chunks from her pink skin like a landslide. Kate watched as the rain turned red as it slid off her and stained the black seat.
“Oh.” She murmured. His beautiful convertible. Stained. Forever. She looked up from watching the stain seep through the fabric to her stranger. The man who was suddenly intertwined with her fate in a way that was almost laughable.
The rain was clearing his face of blood, his white collared shirt faded dark with mud. He was staring ahead, hands gripping the steering wheel as if he were still driving furiously into the night. Fat brown droplets rolled off his long eyelashes and dribbled down his chin. He blinked when she said his name.
“Seth.” He swallowed and sat back. “Seth, the interior— it’s ruined. We got blood all over it.”
He turned his head to finally look at her and he did show fear. Horror even. As if every terrible thought he had kept at bay the past six hours of driving was suddenly crashing down on him. Drowning him in his black convertible as warm rain soaked both him and the girl he was now responsible for.
“Seth, we should find a hotel.”
He swallowed, as if to say something, but nothing came out. He tried again. “How much money do you have on you?”
She was suddenly dizzy. “I-I-I left my wallet . . . back in the RV.”
Seth took out his wallet and counted, the money immediately drenched. She wondered if he had heard her over the downpour.
“There’s enough for a night or so. Food too. But then—,” he stopped. The rain drowned out whatever he said next.
“We’ll figure something out.”
He looked over at her as if seeing her for the first time.
A purple light was bleeding across a metal gray sky and Douglas fir trees peppered the immersion. It was nearing dawn and Seth watched the sky break into morning from the passenger’s side of Kate’s pickup truck. The bite of cold had receded, the heater on full blast, and they sped along a frosted road, heading east from Bear Claw. The bar closed at two and her expression hadn’t changed once as Seth relayed the last year and a half of their lives. Starting from the job, to Richie getting bit, the terrible changes, and of course, the murder— her expression didn’t change when he said Richie had nearly killed a kid. She just drank another long sip of beer and asked him to continue. He told her about asking the professor for help, about how they found out about Devorador, and the felidaes— those fuckers— and how he knew where to find La Muñeca.
She was still silent.
They sat outside in her car for another two hours, Seth finishing his story, before Kate Fuller uncrossed her arms, inserted the key, and ignited the engine. They had been driving in silence ever sense.
Both hands, the good and the bad, felt odd sitting at his side. He was always the driver, always the get-away car back in the days of the Brothers Geckos. The adrenaline from a job would shoot like electricity into his spine and he could never keep his hands still. Driving at break-neck speeds eased it, made him focus on something, made him realize how much money they had just gotten away with.
The jitters took him again and he bounced his knee like a bratty kid. Again, he had stolen something and gotten away with it. But now, it was infinitely less gratifying.
“So then this means you believe me? If we’re going back to basecamp?”
He looked over at her, not entirely expecting a response. She was leaning away from him, her left elbow resting against the window with the back of her pale fingers pressed up against her lips. Her brow was furrowed in thought, making the scar on her lip ever more prominent. The engine revved as she sped forward through the faded gray morning.
“It means I’m looking out for my best interests. If you can find me, someone else can.”
She jerked left and the truck veered of the main road, the only road in Bear Claw. A small field stretched in front of them, and at the end, stood a thick forest. Without pausing, Kate gunned the engine and they lurched between two trees— two trees far too close together for Seth’s comfort.
“Jesus Christ . . .” he muttered as the cab bounced forcefully, the tires no longer on paved road. “Does your best interests include taking me out to the woods and shooting me?”
Kate shrugged. “I considered it.” The cab rattled again as they crossed what could technically be classified as a small wooden bridge. “If I don’t cut a path, makes home harder to find. During the winter, I leave the truck two exits down at in a shed. We’re not far.”
“This isn’t winter?” Seth scoffed and grabbed the handle attached to the roof.
Kate chuckled darkly. “Just go back to Mexico. El Rey, the arms of a beautiful woman, and all that. It’s what you’re good at.”
The engine revved again as they burst through the tree line. Here, the tall weeds had been hacked down and the land flattened out into an incredible golden sprawl. The morning rays set the dying spear grass ablaze with a soft but persisting light. Small patches of snow sprinkled the land like dropped and forgotten ice cream cones, splattered on a board walk. Only to a good eye was there a visible path, the grass beaten down over time and time again. In the distance, between two fat fir trees, there sat a brick home, with an adjacent structure nearby. Yellow lights danced behind white lace curtains. Hot smoke plumed from its slightly lopsided chimney. Someone was home.
Seth glanced at the woman next to him. She was leaning forward as though her body would go through the door before the truck even pulled up. But her eyes looked far into the distance. Seth swallowed the apology sliding up against the back of his teeth.
The truck grumbled and huffed as it pulled up to the wide building with a sliding door, clearly her garage. Kate cut the engine and sat back, the keys clutched in her palms.
Immediately, the cold began to seep in, free of the barrier of warmth the heater had provided. His toes began to tingle.
She sighed.
“Before we go any further, I need to say some things. You’re a goddamn idiot.” He opened his mouth, but she thundered straight on. “You’re a goddamn fucking idiot for coming out here to Alaska wearing Nike shoes. You’re a goddamn asshole, fucking moron idiot for driving from Mexico to Alaska to try and save your fucked-up brother. I don’t want you here, Seth. You’ve jeopardized everything I’ve been trying to build these past five years. Every time you come into my life, you ruin everything. You ruin everything you touch and I refuse to be your victim any more. I’m trying to be my own person.”
His stomach clenched. She was right. She was always right.
“I’m twenty-five years old and for the first time in my life, I’m trying to be my own person. Not what my mother wanted to me to be. Not what my dad wanted—,” her voice cut and Seth didn’t have the balls to see if she was crying. When she spoke, her voice was even. “This town means something to me. I’ve carved out something resembling an existence but whatever it is, it’s mine. Not a preacher’s daughter, not bait for a ritual sacrifice, not the partner to a rogue, broken cowboy—,”
At that, she stopped and her forward gaze softened, invisibly rifling through old memories. As though she remembered those years— perhaps even him— fondly and not like the hell-infested nightmares that they were. Seth swallowed, the right finger bone beginning to ache, just as it always had when he stopped to think about those two years. Yeah, maybe, there were good times. He thought of long roads on Mexican dirt, of infectious sunlight, of stars and tequila and scaring jackrabbits— yes, to him, there were good times.
“But I’m not doing this for you. I’m not even doing it for Richie. I – I don’t know why I’m doing this. You have no idea what you’re asking . . . I—I don’t even know if it’s really possible . . . This is stupid a-and I—,” Kate took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead with her unbruised knuckle, words failing her once again. “And just for the record, I’ve never forgotten what you said to me that night . . . when we parted ways.”
His palm ached righteously now.
“But that’s not me anymore. I don’t need you anymore. When I left, I didn’t just play in the darkness. I got swallowed by it. But you, what happened in Mexico, the darkness, everything— it got me here. And here . . . I’m happy.”
Dawn had officially broken through the balustrade of the grey metal clouds, in great sweeping swaths. The two fir trees were illuminated by a fantastic glow. A sheet of golden light poured down on the brick home and inside someone began to move. Kate glanced at the front door, waiting.
“Seth, what you’re about to see is something you can never talk about. You cannot tell anyone. Because if you do, they will come for me and everything here, everything I’ve worked so hard for, will be gone. And I . . . I won’t recover.”
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He followed her gaze to the small home. The smudged wooden door moved, and then the screen creaked on its hinges as it moved backwards, into the cold morning. A young man with long black hair tied at the nape of his neck came towards her truck. Seth swallowed. A dark beard lined his face, but the young man’s right eye was marred— grey and impassible . . . And yet, it was unmistakable. Scott Fuller walked out of that little house in Bear Claw, Alaska and into the crisp bright light.
He was human.
His denim collar brushed up high against the weak wind, he paused. “Mornin’, sis.”
By minute ten of their fighting, Seth was fairly certain that he had lost three toes to frost bite. Kate had made him wait in the car while she and Scott talked about temporary housing arrangements. Half a minute later Scott returned with a blanket and a single message: “she’s pissed.”
Muted by undoubtedly thick walls, their argument was only illuminated by muffled shouts and pots clanking, as though someone hurled a stack of dishes into the sink. If she was cleaning and arguing then all hell was breaking loose, possibly literally. He would have chuckled to himself, but there was a large chance his mouth had frozen shut. To come all this way, just to become a popsicle in Kate Fuller’s dingy pickup— he had imagined other ways than going out in a blaze of glory.
A moment later, the screen door popped back again, and Seth lifted his head off the back of the seat. Scott was coming towards him, a duffel on one shoulder and a thick paper bag in his opposite hand. He was shaking his head.
“You awake in there?” He hollered.
Seth nodded numbly. “I get it that this place is supposed to be backwater, but please tell me someone’s invented fire around here.”
“Seth Gecko, the comedian.” Scott nudged with his jaw towards the garage. “C’mon, let’s get you set up.”
Surprisingly, his fingers didn’t crack off as he unlocked the truck door and followed the younger Fuller around to the side door of the metal structure near the Fuller house. With a large key, he went through, Seth dragging the blanket around his shoulders like a lame cape. The garage was large enough for at least two cars, absolutely a large van. A converted farmhouse, the ground was littered with straw and salt, its high vaulted ceiling supported by crisscrossing wooden beams. However, what had been the hale storage had been converted to what looked to be an enclosed loft. High enough above the open space for potentially parked cars, the walls were sealed off with a locked door at the top of a wooden staircase.
Scott jangling the keys again, he led the way up the stairs and cracked open the thick door. He stepped aside and moved to let Seth in.
There was a bed in the far left corner, pressed length ways against the far wall. Against the opposite wall, there was a small wood fire stove, with some meager cabinets above it. The majority of front of the room was covered by a thick, braided rug, either as an attempt at decoration or additional warmth, it was unclear. Facing the stove, a thread-bare couch was accented with a stack of books and an end table with a white lamp. A white basin and pitcher accompanied a mounted mirror to the left of small window facing the bed.
“Some of the local kids run into trouble every once in a while. I built this place to give them a place to crash. It’s yours ‘till you don’t need it.”
There were a stack of thick blankets sitting at the edge of the bed and Seth eyed them as casually as he could.
“So if it’s good for a bunch of pot-smoking punks, it’s good enough for me?” Seth shuffled in and Scott closed the door behind him.
“That’s what Kate said.”
Seth pretended to be eyeing out the far window. “Did she? Is that’s what you two were, uh, arguing about?”
“She got testy when I said you would be staying for more than a day.”
“Did you now? And how did you convince her of that?” Seth frowned and turned around, still clutching the blanket to his shoulders. “No, wait, better question, why? Why would you help me?”
Fuller was hunched down, slowly throwing wood chips into the bottom of the stove from a metal pail. He took the top of a newspaper, set it ablaze with the flick of his pocket lighter, and tossed it into the stove. Closing the door, he stood up to his full height, now a man. He stuffed his hands into his front pockets, and pointed to the duffel bag and the sack he brought.
“There’s a change of clothes, should be warmer. In the brown one, breakfast. Have at it.”
“What’s with the eye?”
Scott shrugged. “Lost it in a bet. Long story.”
He turned to go, but Seth shuffled forward.
“Hey, c’mon, man, fess up. You don’t have jackshit to say about your favorite Gecko suddenly showing up after five years of radio silence?”
Fuller shrugged. “I trust Kate . . . and if you’re in trouble, the least we can do is give you a better place to sleep than the basement.”
Seth narrowed his eyes. “You know, way back when, you were a bit less of Xanaxed weirdo, and more pissed-off, fuck-everybody weirdo. What gives? Yoga? Geo-caching? Big bag of weed?”
“What can I say? That stuff about turn the other cheek, I’m kind of into it.”
Seth raised his eyebrows and adjusted his cape blanket.
“Are you telling me, after everything— being kidnapped by goddamn bank-robbers, you becoming a snake-face, your dad murdered— you’re still all about the man-of-the-Cloth-Praise-the-Lord-Halleluiah absolute bullshit?”
Scott sighed and flopped down on the couch, his eyes trailing out the window Seth had been blocking. “First of all, I’m not going to get into this with you because, and don’t take this the wrong way, but you wouldn’t understand. There’s a lot you don’t understand. But, in short, yes . . . but’s not the same as it was. Before, He was supposed to be the answer to everything. Now, He’s more of a side-line coach, inspiring the team.”
“But not leading the charge, huh?”
Scott glanced back at Seth, his eyes unreadable as his sister’s. However, the soft set of his jaw described more compassion than simmering rage. There was something he wanted to say, but instead, he simply nodded slowly. “It’s just . . . different . . . There’s food in the ice boxes under the floorboards downstairs and we go out to Cosco in the town over every Thursday. Under the bed, there’s some actual winter clothes because clearly you don’t know how to pack for anything but a beach front property. The pipes are connected to the house, so we have a guest bathroom around back. You can let yourself in to wash your clothes— I just don’t recommend it when Kate’s home. I’ll talk to her tonight at dinner about what to do about Richie’s condition. You’re welcome to come.”
He stood and tossed Seth the keys, moving for the door.
“So it’s really you in there?”
Scott froze and glanced back over his shoulder.
“What does that even mean?”
“You know damn well what it means. Are you really—?”
“No longer a creature of the night? Do I thirst for innocent blood? No. Can I run around in the sunlight without becoming crispy bacon? Yeah.” Scott swallowed and for the first time, that air of relaxed patience faded. He scratched his beard anxiously. “What Kate did for me . . . how she brought me back . . . it’s a story. And one that’s not totally mine to tell. My sister, she’s the only thing I have in this world and frankly, I don’t think I deserve her. She’s been through hell and somehow she dragged my ass back out. So, yeah, it’s really me. But I don’t know if that woman down there is the girl you left in a sleazy motel room.”
So . . . she did talk to him about it.
“No, Scott, it probably isn’t.” The keys jingling in his fingers caught a flash of bright light from the outside and Seth looked up through the window. Smoke poured grey into the sky from the chimney, and somewhere, beyond those curtains, Kate was making pancakes because that’s what she did when she was angry in the morning. Or, at least, that’s what she used to do when she was angry in the morning. “And for what’s coming, that’s probably the best thing for her.”
“I don’t know what’s best for her anymore.”
Seth looked back to Scott and momentarily caught a glimpse of a younger, more fearful Scott. One who stood in his father’s arms as two bank robbers took them prisoner in a dingy motel. And then like dripping mud, the adult Fuller was built up once again and he glanced at Seth.
“You’re staying here because I believe in second chances. For you to come all the way out of the ass-crack of Mexico, I don’t think you’re here just to fuck up our lives. You need help and like the good Samaritans we were raised to be, you will be fed, clothed, and housed. After dinner, we’ll go check out Richie and bring him to the barn. At least then, we’ll know if you’re telling the truth.”
“Scott, I swear I am—,”
The other man raised his hands, shaking that shaggy head. “Hey, I’m not the one you need to convince. But it is for everyone’s best interest if you get your business done here, and leave.”
Seth scowled. “The Fuller house is just full of love for extended family . . .”
“We’re fearful of strangers, Seth.” Scott Fuller, the adult, like his sister, was a force to be reckoned.
Seth swallowed. “Fair enough.”
Scott nodded to the cabinet. “There’s a spoon and some canned peach jars if you’re still hungry. Dinner will be ready at seven.” Then he turned and left the loft.
The freezing landscape was silent.
At least in Mexico, there were crickets.
The woodchips crackled, tumbling over one another and for the first time since the Canadian border, Seth Gecko was warm.
Bear Claw, Alaska— Jesus fucking Christ— why did it have to be fucking Alaska?
Seth woke with a start to a half-dark room. The purple sky was heavy and swollen with dusk, the wood fire stove turning his small loft into a foggy soup. He stumbled out of bed, panting, fighting with the blanket that had wound itself between his legs while he slept, and collapsed in front of the window. The heat making his head hurt, Seth scrambled to his knees, the ice cold air an inch from his nose on the other side of the pane. With one sweaty hand, he pushed the window open and gasped in the crackling air. It brushed against his face like a slosh of water and he drank it in. The blanket finally fell to the floor as he braced with both hands on the side of the windowsill. He could feel his skin solidifying, sweat turning into bone and tissue once again.
He looked out the small window, into the wide field they had driven in on. The sun had fallen, knocking a brilliant shock of lavender and pink across the Alaskan sky. The circle of trees that enclosed their field was slowly melting into staggered shadows, outlines of firs and pines, like models instead of the real thing. Somewhere in the black molds, an owl began its first call of the night.
He was no longer panting.
Seth looked at the clock on the end table with the white lamp. 6:17.
Swallowing, he shut the window and went to see how exactly to dress for the frigid cold.
A giant plaid coat wrapped up tightly around his torso and beard slightly trimmed (thanks to the clippers under the basin cabinet), Seth trudged down the wooden stairs and across the twenty feet from the garage to the Fuller home. At precisely 6:58, he knocked on the white door. The house itself seemed to freeze in surprise.
A familiar shaggy head appeared on the other side of the screen door and Scott smiled.
“Hey, man, glad you could make it.”
Seth narrowed his eyes as he walked through the open door and into the small house. “Yeah, and a monkey’s my uncle.”
“Shoes off. They track salt everywhere.”
The door opened up to a narrow hallway, expanding left and right. To the right was a meager living room, with a long, wrapping green leather sofa pointed at a small television with two large book shelves lining the walls on other side. A stone fireplace rose up to the far right of the television, centering the room. A sliding glass door led to a dark porch outside, and the hallway darkened as it went on, most likely leading to the bathroom and bedrooms. To Seth’s left a kitchen and dining room opened up. A dark wooden table, already set for a meal, with dark wooden chairs, stood only a few feet from a cream-tiled kitchen with a yellow backsplash. The entire house smelled of warm bread.
Kate, in jeans and a loose grey sweater, was pouring wine as the two men came in. She didn’t speak a single word as she put two filled glasses on the table, and sat down at the head of the table, her own glass waiting by her empty plate. Scott casually slid into the seat to the right of his sister, but Seth felt outrageous without his shoes. Grey socks, really?
“It’s a recipe from our grandma,” Scott said, his voice sounding like a foghorn in the deafening silence. He gestured at the red stone ware sitting in the center of the table, among fresh bread and a mash up of squash and carrots. “C’mon, try a bit.” Without preamble, Scott began shoveling a little bit of everything onto his plate.
Kate was leaning forward with her chin resting on two clasped hands. Her eyes flickered up to him, as if challenging him to get within hitting distance. “Yeah, c’mon, sit.”
Not even Richie ever looked so much as a snake about to strike. And, all things considered, if she was going to smack him again, he most likely deserved it. Seth slipped off his outer jacket, dropped it on a hook, and sat down.
Her knife was dangerously close.
“Here, I’ll get you started.” Scott reached forward and topped off Seth’s plate with some of the most deliciously-smelling creations he ever encountered. “Chicken casserole,” Scott continued. “We don’t have a lot of options out here, especially during the winter. So eat up, man, you’re not going to see carrots for a while.”
The words escaped his mouth before he could stop them. “What, no saying Grace?”
Scott froze and immediately glanced at Kate. Seth had meant it entirely as a joke, but Scott’s reaction was something more akin to a deer realizing it was in the sights of a hunter’s gun. But Kate did not pause in twisting the glass’s stem between her fingers. Scott put down the serving spoon and moved to touch her, but Kate spoke first.
“No. Not anymore.” She leaned forward and took the spoon to serve herself. “Eat up.”
Seth looked at Scott, who moved his head in a fraction of an inch back and forth. Don’t go there. But when did Seth Gecko ever listen to advice. “Why?”
Kate finished chewing, swallowed, and lifted her eyes to Seth.
“Penance,” she replied and took another bite.
Scott’s glare was one of parental disapproval.
It certainly wasn’t Scott, nor Kate’s unhelpful monosyllabic responses, but Seth felt a tug from his gut all the way up to his mouth, and it tied itself shut. Scott was still watching his sister for any more lit fuses. She rolled her eyes and gestured to the food in front of them. “Eat! Or it’s going to get cold.”
Scott tossed Seth one more rueful glares before going back to eat. Seth looked down at the plate in front of him. She had moved a bit past pancakes and Totino’s pizza rolls. Seth pulled at the casserole, slid up a big, cheesy chicken bite onto his fork, and tasted dear old Grandma Fuller’s famous recipe.
Oh God, so much better than pizza rolls.
“Holy shit. Seth, your hand.”
Seth paused and saw Scott staring horrified at his mangled right hand. Kate had stopped eating too. Sometimes, he too easily forgot about that misfire. He put down his fork and gazed at his gun hand. The broken bones in his palm that never healed properly. The missing pinkie tip. The melted finger nails.
He was fully aware of Scott’s pitying gaze, but that same string in his gut turned to his head to Kate. Her scar shone brightly with her lips pursed the way they were. Vague concern? That was new.
“Dude, what happened?”
Seth looked into her dark green eyes and thought of the forest they came rumbling through to get out of Bear Claw. A tunneling forest. With bending trees at impossible heights.
“Penance,” he said.