Elena Vasquez

The staircase didn’t wait for permission.

It took me.

One moment I was on my knees in the alley, the red vein burning over my heart like a brand pressed by Javier’s own hand; the next, the pavement liquefied beneath me, and I was falling—not down, but through, the way a subway train plunges into a tunnel at full speed. The air turned cold and wet, thick with the smell of rust, rat piss, and something sweeter—ozone and old blood, the perfume of the city’s underground ...