Chapter One
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She looks like hell.
They find her embedded in the stones stabbing out of the beach, a curved hunk of granite cupping the bowl of her skull. Dried sand is slapped across her face and black mud smears her dress. A translucent finger of blood oozes from her temple down to her chapped upper lip.
For the first time in quite possibly ever, a shocked silence falls over the group. An unpleasantly cool breeze whispers over the shore, lifting to a howl as the shipped-in palm trees tremble beneath it.
His calloused fingers ghost over her ice-cold face. Even his greenish skin looks healthy against her ghostly pallor.
"What're we gonna do, Bossss?"
Ace's eyes fix on a grain of sand caught between two long, black eyelashes. The pulse is barely visible under her jaw, but it's there.
The cigarette falls from between his lips to skitter over the beach. Arturo gazes after it until it dives beneath a newspaper. They loom over the splayed figure, a quartet of degenerate sentries, their leader blocking their discovery from the oncoming rain.
"I dunno, boys."
Her lips are drier than sandpaper. Ace's nail catches a crease in her flesh and, for a second, Ace thinks it will tear. "I dunno."