Chapter 6: The Crack

Elías was drinking his tea slowly, as if he had all eternity ahead of him. Perhaps he did.

I sat down in front of him with the robe tight around my belly, my dark hands surrounding the hot cup. The steam rose to my face and condensed into droplets on my gray mustache. I waited. Elías didn't seem to have any intention of starting until the silence had done its job, until the anxiety and anger and fear had settled at the bottom of my stomach like coffee grounds.

"Adrián is my brother," he said finally, without raising his eyes from his cup.

"Your brother?"

"Twin, to be exact. Although I suppose the physical differences between us must have been obvious to you. " He ran a hand over his shaved head and smiled with bitterness. "He's always been the handsome one."

"What are you, then?" I asked. Each word hurt me. Each syllable with that accent that wasn't mine reminded me how far I was from who I used to be. "Because you're not human, right?"

Elías put the cup on the table and looked at me directly. His green eyes — identical to Adrián's when they sparkled — had a different quality. Where Adrián's eyes radiated cruelty and dominance, Elías's conveyed something more like exhaustion. The weight of having seen too much for too long.

"No," he said. "We're not human. We never have been. What we are exactly is difficult to explain in terms that make sense to you, but the closest thing would be to say that we're prior. We were here before you. We feed on different things."

"Do you feed?"

"Adrián feeds on control. On absolute domination. On taking a life and twisting it until the original owner no longer recognizes it." He paused. "He loves playing with humans, David. He's fascinated by them. He's been doing it for centuries, and each time he gets better at it. Each time he's more refined in his cruelty."

I felt a shiver run down my spine, goosebumps spreading under the layers of fat.

"And you?" I asked. "What do you feed on?"

Elías took a moment to respond.

"Resistance," he said in a low voice. "The will to keep fighting when everything indicates that you should give up. It's... less satisfying than what my brother does, if I'm honest. There are very few who resist. Most break soon."

"Most?" I leaned forward, my belly pressing against the edge of the table. "How many have there been before me?"

"Countless. Over the centuries. Adrián gets bored easily. He finds a man, becomes infatuated with his partner, and the game begins. The pattern is always the same: he transforms the spare one, reduces him, degrades him, turns him into something unrecognizable. Then he stays with the other until he loses interest and moves on to the next one."

"What happens to the ones he transforms? The ones he changes?"

Elías held my gaze.

"They stay that way. Forever. They lose their will, accept their new rea...