Then she took a step in that direction, walked right into me, kept pushing. I put my hands on her shoulders and tried to steady her, but she continued to walk, crying as she did so, and I almost lost my balance. “Emilia, no! Stop it!”
“I can’t help it!” she wailed.
Another step.
Then she screamed.
I followed the gaze of her wide eyes.
There, right as the crowd parted, I saw them.
They were at the end of la calle.
Julio.
Then, at the end of a leash made of a thick rope:
Un sabueso.
Emilia kept pushing against me, and I uttered a low moan. “Emilia, we can’t go that way, we have to—”
I shoved her in the opposite direction, and a growl rumbled over the sound of Obregán.
I spun back, tried to find them in all those people, and we found one another.
Our eyes locked.
Julio smiled.
He dropped the leash.
I grabbed Emilia’s hand, harder than I had ever grabbed another person, and I yanked her. My voice became shrill and horrible as I begged her to trust me, to believe in me, and I started running. I guided her north and we ran
and ran
and ran.
I heard the snarling first, then the screams that echoed from the already noisy crowd. I risked a glance back. I shouldn’t have. El sabueso—the same black-and-gray one from two days earlier—leapt up and bit at the throat of a man who had crossed its path while entertaining passersby with card tricks. He dropped the cards to the ground, and his hands shot up toward el sabueso to block it, but too late. There was a tear, a spray of red, and the man clutched at his throat as he thrashed on the ground.
By the time I stopped looking, he had stopped moving.
I kept my head up as we ran, held back my own tears and my own terror, and I forced Emilia forward while she repeatedly jerked me toward the oncoming sabueso. We passed a recess in the brick-and-stone wall of a building to our right, and a few people were tucked into it, smoking cigarillos, and they called out to us in slurred accents, asking where we were going. One of them stepped out into the road to continue flirting, and then el sabueso was on his leg, and we kept running, ignoring the sounds of death behind us. I pulled Emilia into an alley and she thrust her hand out and tried to stop herself on the wall of the building.
“It hurts,” she gasped, clutching at her stomach with her free hand. “It’s like something is trying to tear me apart if I go the wrong way.”
“We have to hurry,” I said, then stole a glance back, and it gained on us, its maw and horns stained red with blood and gore, and at the end of the alley, la ciudad lived on. It continued, unaware of what Julio had unleashed inside it. We burst out onto another busy calle, full of merchants peddling trinkets, ropa, and food, and a man with skin the color of the desert sand led a large white horse across the road.
The idea was terrible.
I had to do it.
I ran toward the horse, and el sabueso poured out of the alley behind me. I gripped Emilia’s hand and I led her directly in front of the horse, spooking it, and as I had hoped, it reared up and whinnied loudly, causing its owner to curse at us in an unfamiliar language.
As its front legs fell back to the ground, the horse saw el sabueso bearing down upon it, and it rose again, tried to strike la bestia with its hooves, and it worked. El sabueso growled at the horse and went for one of the back legs, then darted out of the way. But it was a futile thing, and suddenly, el sabueso was on the horse. It tore into flesh, and its snout was now deep into its body. Blood and entrails spilled to the dusty road, and bile surged into my throat.
I had never heard a horse scream. I won’t forget it.
It became easier to run, knowing that el sabueso was busy, and the farther we got from them, the less Emilia tugged me in the opposite direction. My head had started to pound, but I refused to give up. I couldn’t let Julio get her.
We ran. We twisted around people, we ignored the people shouting at us, and we ran.
I had been betrayed, hadn’t I? Used for Emilia’s own end, used to get her to safety, and she didn’t care. She wanted me for what I could offer, just like everyone else back in Empalme.
What was true? What was merely a story? Was Simone even real?
I had come so far and fallen right into the same pattern all over again.
Why did I care so much? I had known Emilia for less than a day. She had just lied to me and put both of us in danger. I wanted to leave her behind. I entertained the thought: El sabueso wasn’t after me. I could cut away from Emilia, disappear into the crowd, and it would be over. I didn’t need her. She needed me.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make a decision like that. It felt wrong, yes, but …
Julio was real. His power was real. And someone had given it to him.
There had to be someone to take my power away.
And maybe I could use Emilia back in order to get what I needed.
Emilia tugged me toward the left, tugged me hard, so hard I nearly fell over. “This way,” she said, and I yanked on her arm, my frustration finally overflowing.
“No!” I yelled. “We can’t double back.”
“I’ve been here before!” she said, and the fury welled up again.
Another secret? Another story she’d failed to tell me?
But there was no time for interrogations or for my
