T

The Monster

We don't know how something like her comes to exist. She has no more memory of her origins than I do of mine--and she lacks the birth certificate, baby photos and parental accounts that fill in my backstory The first thing she remembers is wandering out of the woods behind my house. We know she's not human; this isn't just a case of an identical twin, somehow separated at birth. When the Blossom of the West was caught in that firefight in Kryvyi Rih last month, my Brândușa fell down screaming in the kitchen, a bullet wound in her shoulder. We took her to see Doc Harris, told him she'd been rushing to shoot a Coyote in the chicken