“So,” boomed Flores from the white walls of the compound’s main building, “so, I have found you at last, mi amigo.”

Hector didn’t know what to say to this. “Uh… so it seems… I guess… yeah.”

There was an awkward silence for several seconds. The henchmen on either side and in front of Hector had formed into a sort of sparsely spread circle, though Hector still didn’t think anyone was directly behind them. Yet.

“Who are these? You did not tell me that you had these friends, eh?” Flores gestured towards Goonda and Yogwo, who flanked Hector, eyeing the crowd of drug-dealers warily.

“They are my friends,” replied Hector. The statement on its own seemed lacking, so he added, “Better than any friends you’ve ever had.”

Flores laughed. “Sure, sure, amigo.” He paused, then briefly turned to the short man at his side and exchanged a few inaudible words. “Better friends than that Fernandez, I see?”

Hector glared fiercely at Flores. “I’ll get Dante out of here once I kill you,” he snapped, before realizing that a death threat was not exactly a good idea in his current situation.

“Fine,” said Flores. “I would think it is hard to kill me when you are dead, no?”

“Hector,” whispered Yogwo, “they’re aiming at us.” For once, the Grand Shaman didn’t seem relaxed- he looked like a coiled spring, ready to act at the slightest notice.

“Yogwo,” muttered Hector, “run for the car as soon as he says-“

“Fire,” said Flores.

Heat and cold, light and darkness, sound and silence, engulfed Hector. He stumbled and fell to the dirt. It was so dark. So loud. He could hardly see the ground inches away from his face.

It took about three whole seconds- seemingly a lifetime to Hector- before he realized that the chaos that had overwhelmed him was not something that would naturally result from small-caliber gunfire- even a lot of small-caliber gunfire. Something was off. Very off.

Hector’s eyes focused suddenly, and with them, his mind.

Goonda.

He leapt to his feet and spun, looking for a friendly face in the rolling mountain dust. Hector had no idea what Goonda had done or how- but whatever his plan, it had worked. Thick, billowing waves of dust had erupted from the dry mountain soil, obscuring everything around him. Where is Goonda? Where is Yogwo? Hector shouted their names, but the sound was lost in the ever-present miasma of ear-ringing, yelling men, and punctuated pops that suggested blind, panicking gunfire. Far away, Hector heard some kind of horrible, whistling shriek. What was that​? It didn’t matter.

Flores. Flores was why he was here. With a pang of regret, Hector stopped looking for his two friends. The drug-lord could be anywhere. He could be gone by now. How long has it been? Time seems… weird.

Hector began running. He had no idea if he was going towards the compound or away from it- the dust-storm obscured the terrain in an ever-blowing haze- but one direction was as good as another. Hector headed into the wind. On either side of him, he glimpsed occasional bursts of light- muzzle flashes, probably, although some of them had taken on a strangely electric-blue tint. Hector ignored them. Flores. Flores. Need to find Flores.

Suddenly, he collided headfirst into a supremely solid wall. Nearly falling to the ground again, pain stinging like the blowing dust, Hector began to move to the left, keeping himself pressed against the wall. If this was the main building in the compound, and if he had run in a roughly straight line, then the door Flores had come out of would be in that direction.

His hands found empty air. The door, standing open to the arcane gale outside. He moved forward, thick concrete walls providing a barrier to the cloud of whirling confusion outside. It was quieter in here, and less dusty- although he could still hardly see three feet ahead.

“What is it? What is it? What is it?”

Hector froze, ears struggling to catch another scrap of voice. The speaker, whoever it was, had been to his right. I think.

“What is it? What is it?” The voice sounded shocked, frightened, even insane. It was a flat, low, dry voice. It was definitely to his right.

Hector stuck out his hand, felt someone’s face. The man yelled. Hector grabbed at the man’s head with one hand and punched as hard as he could with the other. The scream stopped.

It hadn’t been Flores, that was for sure. Flores wasn’t bald. Hector kept walking.

***

Yogwo had been sure something like this would happen. Goonda had a lot of tricks up his sleeve, he knew, and this was classic Goonda- dramatic and unexpected. He couldn’t see a thing in the tempest- dust and debris stung his face and blinded his eyes- but he didn’t need to see to know where the fat guy was.

He pursed his lips in a practiced position and whistled. The sound was awful- unearthly, uncanny, otherworldly. As he had expected, there was an instant reaction.

Scaly skin shifted around his neck. An arrow-shaped head raised itself next to his ear.

“Lead on, Ike!”

***

“Where is Doran?!” Flores screamed, cowering on hard dirt. Marcus was right beside him. Caglio had been hurt- shot, most likely- and was bleeding out somewhere in the confusion.

“I dunno, suh’,” panted Marcus in reply. Flores squinted at the place where his voice had come from. Marcus Angel appeared as little more than a dark blur. This storm is- it’s- insane. It’s not natural. Flores’ scowl was invisible in the whirlwind, but he scowled just the same. Whatever had happened, that [redacted] Hector Domini was at the core of it. But where was he?

Flores slowly rose to his feet, legs trembling slightly. He needed a radio. Doran had a radio. Doran was nowhere to be found. Did he get inside before it happened?

Flores had seen the whole thing, or as much of it as one could at a distance. The three intruders- Domini, a long-haired madman, and a very elderly man who wasn’t quite Hispanic- had been eyeing Flores’ men warily when Flores had given Doran the command to fire. The drug dealers surrounding them had raised their weapons, aimed, and-

Here, Flores wasn’t quite sure what happened next. It had seemed so clear at the time- an earthshaking boom, a sudden blast of wind hitting harder than a semi truck, dust, dirt, and debris flying everywhere, a tornado, or something like it, and the strange afterimage of a bright blue light that Flores could still see when he closed his eyes. Which is strange, he considered. I never actually saw a flash of light.

Yelling indecipherably at his bodyguard, Flores turned around and stumbled towards the building. Strange, rattling pops like gunfire were ringing out, all around him. Judging from the fact that he never heard a pop in the same place twice, the shooters were either many or moving quickly. Did Domini rat us out? Is this another SWAT raid? Flores shuddered. He had no idea what the noises were, or where exactly they were coming from, but thinking that would do him no good. He kept moving forward.

Suddenly, an evil, blood-curdling shriek lived and died away not far behind him. The sound reverberated in his mind long after the maelstrom of confusion had swept it away. Demonic, surely. Perhaps the dying cry of one of Domini’s allies. Whatever it was, just knowing that the source of the noise was behind him was enough to spur Flores to greater speed.

It wasn’t long before he had reached the solid mass of white-painted concrete bricks that marked the main building. Slumping against the wall, Flores watched as the dim form of Marcus Angel reached him. He could just make out the prominent form of a Desert Eagle pistol in his bodyguard’s hand. If there was one thing Marcus was good at, it was fighting- and at the moment, the huge man was as alert as a hawk. More particularly, he was as alert as a half-blinded hawk caught in a Saharan dust storm, but it was better than nothing.

As if on cue, Marcus locked his gaze on something that Flores couldn’t see through the raging storm. Silently, he raised his pistol.

“Who ah’ yuh’?” shouted Marcus. Someone must be there, Flores realized, though who it could be, or how far away he was, he had no idea.

There was no response.

“Give yuh’ name or ah’ll fire on yuh!”

Flores sat up. His hand went to the holster on his belt.

“Hey, dude,” said a voice as dry as the dust around them, “I’m Yogwo, Grand Shaman of the Divine Celestial Monarchy.”

There were two very loud bangs, so close together as to almost be one sound. Flores glimpsed a muzzle flash.

Marcus Angel toppled to the ground beside him, hands clutched to his chest. Flores couldn’t see the blood, but he knew it was there. Marcus might feint in a gunfight, but he would never drop his pistol unless he had been injured.

“Oh, no,” breathed Flores quietly. Marcus groaned in agony beside him.

A shape loomed out of the tempest in front of him- the shadowy form of a man, though unlike any man Flores had ever seen. It was tall, thin, with what appeared to be waves of black hair whipping around its face. It- he– was wearing some kind of lumpy scarf, or mantle. It was hard to tell.

Cruz K. Flores leapt hoglike to his feet and scrabbled for the pistol at his waist. He had just realized what the thing around the man’s neck really was.

This was no ordinary man. As far as Flores was concerned, the Grim Reaper himself couldn’t have been more terrifying.

He turned and sprinted to the right as fast as he could. There was a door that way. If he could only get inside…

It was open, Flores found. He stumbled inside and turned to face the door. It was much less dusty in here- though dust was still pouring inside in obscene quantities- and brighter, too. The room he was currently in was a sort of rectangle, with a long hallway opposite the door leading further into the complex. Flores couldn’t see any of this, but he had been here countless times.

His hand trembled as he finally unclasped his holster and drew a pocket-sized 9mm. It wasn’t much, but Flores liked to think that he could hit a man with it if he ever needed to.

Someone moaned in pain off to the right side of the entrance. Flores froze, then cautiously investigated.

It was Doran. His nose was broken and bleeding, and he appeared to be at least five-eighths of the way to unconsciousness.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, bro,” said a voice behind him.

Flores spun and fired at Yogwo, but it was hard to see in the swirling, dust-choked air. He missed twice- and in those two shots, Yogwo raised a stubby black gun that Flores instantly recognized. It was one of his guns.

Yogwo pulled the trigger. It clicked without firing.

“Dang,” he said.

Flores grinned and pulled the trigger of his gun.

It misfired as well.

Flores said something much worse than “dang” in that moment, but for the purposes of this book, “dang” will do just fine.

Out of the blue, a piercing shriek split the air. It took a second for Flores to realize that it was Yogwo. The man was whistling- though not in a manner that Flores had ever heard. It was more like a scream, or the cry of a predatory bird as it swoops on its prey.

Flores saw the thing around Yogwo’s neck- the snake- the snake that could kill him, so that mystic had said- twist and move forward, tongue flicking out towards him.

I have to get out of here, he thought in a sort of daze.

He turned and started to run again, deeper into the building.

About seven feet later, Flores collided rather startlingly with a flustered and definitely lost Hector Domini.

“Flores,” said Hector, blankly.

“Hector,” said Flores.

Then Hector punched Flores, square in the face.

***

Hector had been creeping through the passageways and rooms of the drug-dealers’ compound when, by some strange echo, he caught the voice of- Yogwo?

He froze, then turned slowly around, ears straining for another sound.

It came in the form of two frantic BANGs. Hector gasped involuntarily. Then he started to run back the way he had come.

After about a minute of twisting down empty corridors, the dust in the air growing ever thicker as he approached the storm outside the walls, Hector ran straight into Cruz K. Flores.

“Flores,” he said.

“Hector.”

WHAM. Almost without thinking, Hector slugged the fat drug-lord in the face. There was a sound like knuckles cracking, and a spray of blood. Flores staggered back and fell to the floor, eyes wide with terror, fruitlessly trying to stop the blood streaming from his broken nose.

“Yogwo,” said Hector, “you have the snake?” His voice was steady, calm, and cold.

Yogwo nodded without speaking.

“Kill him,” said Hector.

“No!” Flores’ plea came as a whining scream. “Do not do it! Please! No!”

Hector stared down at the pathetic man. Apparently, silence was more terrifying to Flores than speech.

“You can have my money, Hector! I will never hunt you again! I will give you my mansion! I will give you my second mansion! Maybe even my third! Please! Do not kill me!”

“I don’t want your money.” Hector glanced at Yogwo. “What do you th-”

And that was when Flores kicked Hector hard in the shin, yanked his pistol out of his pocket, cycled the slide, and fired.

Hector stared vaguely down at Flores, uncomprehending. He felt no pain. The echoes of the gunshot still rang in his ears, but Hector hardly noticed. It was weird, not feeling a bullet wound. Like… a dream.

“I can’t feel it,” mumbled Hector. “Shock, I guess.”

Flores chuckled.

“I don’t think your friend here is in shock, Domini,” he said.

Hector blinked. And right then, it all came into focus.

Yogwo. Yogwo was sprawled on the ground behind Flores, blood pooling around his unmoving body.

“No,” Hector said. “No.”

Reality started to flicker into uncaring blackness. He stumbled onto his knees, staring blankly at something that wasn’t there. “No. No. This can’t be happening. You can’t have.”

Flores smiled. “Yes, it is happening, mi amigo. Yes, I can shoot your friend. And I did.” He began to laugh, a cruel, triumphant sound- like an army, an army marching through the burning wreckage of a defenseless village. The laugh was pride, confidence, certainty, finality– without a hint of the fear that had been so prominent a moment ago. The laugh was victory.

Flores had won.

“And now,” chuckled the fat drug-lord, “I will shoot you.”