“Man, it feels like we’ve been driving all day.” Dion turned the wheel into the open desert. The heat forming a kind of wave pattern above the ground of the even horizon. Small bouts of grass split the cracked earth, jackrabbits ran from bush to bush avoiding snakes. And Dion tried his hardest to turn the wheels away from each critter large or small. It was hard. Because the more erratically he drove, the more animals seemed to come out.

“We’re coming up to it soon. Right?” Apollo looked behind, to the passenger's seat where Dolores waited with folded hands.

“Why’d I need to come?” She asked.

“Because you didn’t want to take a ticket out of this shithole.” He said. “And if you don’t want to leave, staying with us is the highest probability of you living.”

He turned to face her, his eyes narrow. “And I do need you alive, after all.”

“Turnus wouldn’t hurt me…not like that at least…” She said.

“Somehow, I doubt that,” Apollo said.

They must have driven an hour inland the desert. Into a stretch far beyond the reaches of the city, into land so deep that even the casino seemed to dissipate into nothing. And just about the time when the emergency lights appeared on the dashboard, and the engine was going to blow up into a loud mess, Dion stopped the car. Before them laid the house.

“We’re here.”

There was nothing, some dangling fence perhaps a few acres away but nothing to mark the territory on the map. No address, no mailbox, not even a sign. No printed or digital map would probably show this house. And strange then, that they saw a car. A convertible whose black hood had a giant sunspot down the center. It was parked near a sharp boulder. And it didn’t seem the type of car that’d belong to anyone, certainly not the Wolfes.

Apollo walked to it, searched the glove compartment. A clip for a pistol, some money and two fluffy dice roll plushie on the dashboard that rattled from the opening and closing of the doors.

“I couldn’t tell you who this belongs to,” Apollo said.

“Probably Turnus, right?” Dion said. “Let's go inside and find out.”

“This is the house, right Dolores?” Apollo asked.

“Yeah. I think so. I’ve never been inside myself though…” She said.

“What?” Apollo asked.

“He always kept me in the car while he handled stuff. I don’t know.”

“You’ve never been inside?” Dion asked.

“I didn’t want to impose, I’m saying! It’s his mom’s house. He didn’t owe me letting me in or anything.” She said.

“Alright. Alright.” Apollo took the keys from the ignition. “Wait in the back then, we’ll be out in a second.”

“I thought you were going to stake him out?”

“If he’s smart, he probably already knows somethings up. At this point, I’m going to look for a reason for him to find us.” He said.

They closed the doors on her, Dolores, who pouted in the backseat with her arms still crossed and her eyes glaring at both of them.

“You’re not going to cuff her or restraint her or anything?” Dion asked.

“I mean, where the hell is she going to run anyways?”

Beyond them, beyond the house, the waste expanded. A massive stretch of cracked dirt in a land so inhospitable that even the scorpions and the rabbits and the snakes were nowhere to be seen. The only sign of construction - of human touch - being the electricity poles. Even those were bent over and half deep into swallowing earth.

They stepped in the house, small glass bulbs were centered across the walls of the living room and kitchen. They were burned out, blackened. They smelled of nothing, and the light bulbs lay fragmented inside. A bent lampshade rested on a table, there was dry blood on it. Apollo flipped a black switch, the bulb broke exploded. Dion jumped.

“Can you warn me before you do stuff like that?” Dion shouted.

Apollo rolled his eyes. He turned his head to the window. There were markings along the frame where human nails had scratched out paint.

Furniture was minimal, some blue rugs accenting grey carpet, brown sofas lying about in front of a tube television. The kitchen had not been touched, there were still scraps of food on year old dirty plates laying on one side of the sink. No food in the fridge.

The stairs were the most peculiar. Apollo went up to the guard rail.

“It’s snapped off.” He said. “Someone had grabbed onto the wooden rail and had stripped it clean with one jerk. Or maybe they fell down the stairs, I don’t know.”

Dion looked at the walls leading up.

“There are holes here,” Dion said.

“Probably a fight,” Apollo said.

“Who against who?”

“I don’t know.”

Upstairs the air was dirty. It smelled dirty, musky was the right word. Dreadful was the more poetic though. Two bedrooms and one bathroom waited at the end of the floor. They hit the first room, the master bedroom. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing worth investigation, a couple of drawers, a bed with a stained mattress. A signed baseball and a jersey.

“Thomas Wolfe liked the Yankees,” Apollo said.

They went into the other room. And it couldn’t have been more strange.

When you think of worship, you think of idols, no? The cross or the Buddhist statue. A mat for prayer, a candlelit kneeling-station for forgiveness.

When you think of worship, you think idolatry, no? It was no different here.

Not at all.

The walls were marked red with the symbols, some curving circle that went on and on into incoherent scribbles like a Pollock painting. The runes etched into the walls.

Mammon. Mammon.

In front, at the very end, the worshiping station laid. No other furniture but that singular little table. Upon it, the severed head of a desert wolf. An old decapitated and dried head, staring westbound, a singular blue eye staring back at the two Vicars. The body was strewn and pinned on a hangar. There was a pool of dried blood underneath.

“Jesus.” Dion gestured the cross in front of his body. Head to the chest, shoulder to shoulder.

“A wolf for the Wolfes.” Apollo walked up to it, the candles long since used. “Though not surprising. Wolves are the associated animal for Mammon. Demons tend to personify themselves with a creature.”

“Paimon with pigeons. Mammon with wolfs. Satan with Jackals. Snakes sometimes too, right?”

“Right,” Apollo said. “God might have made the world, but the devils shaped it. That’s why they personify and embody certain animals, in the same way, they personify and embody certain people - as a kind of lineage.”

“Wolfes, wolves, whatever. What do we got here?” Dion asked.

“A monument. The wax is almost crystallized, and a little melted by the natural heat of the sun from outside.” He turned the rug in front of the monument away. There were stained and bruised markings on the floor. “Whoever worships here does it often. Real often.”

“And…the walls…the runes…is that?”

“Dry blood, probably,” Apollo said. Dandelions scattered about the table fell to the floor as Apollo turned. They scattered their seeds across the air, Apollo covered his mouth. Dion stepped back, into the hall, sneezing. He wiped his nose.

And there he heard the buzzing sound of flies.

Dion drew closer to the sound.

Apollo knelt down. He was inspecting the flowers, the head of the animal. The picture frame and the little statue. They seemed painted by hand, and depicted a strange green creature, with black eyes and scale skin sharp-fanged and with eccentric mirth about his smile. This figure was deep into the darkness of the canvas.

He couldn’t quite stop looking at it. He turned his head, his eyes focused keen onto the green-smiling face of painting. Like it was moving? Winking? Turning its smile?

“The demon of greed.” He muttered. “Of the earth, of all valuable and material things.” His voice was drawn out, a little low. “The Alchemists worship him. As do the money men. Mammon.”

Apollo extended his singular hand out to the painting, just a touch, just to feel the canvas texture .

“Oh my God!” Dion shouted. He dropped the painting. He drew his hand back. One heavy footstep after another, running into the hall towards Dion who was walking away from the restroom. He had a hand covering his mouth.

“What?” Apollo asked. Dion closed his eyes, he couldn’t look straight. He pointed to the restroom, still walking away.

So he took stead into the horribleness. The whiff of sweetness, a familiar scent, hitting his nostrils. The flies dancing around his hand as he waved them away. The bathroom was simple, a toilet and a bathtub covered by a plastic curtain.

And he had the idea, judging by the face Dion made and the smell protruding, that what he was going to see would be a hazard to his sanity.

And he knew he had to see it all the same.

He drew the curtains with slow shakiness.

Oh, god.

He keeled over.

He held his mouth shut and tightened his throat. The vomit almost slipped out. He turned over and worked the muscles of his body to look up, straight at the mess.

Blonde straw hair. Jewelry wrapped around the swollen fat-maggot eaten fingers. The infestation of bugs was deep into the tub, squirming. The body, separated from the bones, into a thick skin-glop mess clogging the tub.

He stepped out. His eyes, darkened and weary. If there was such a thing as an emotional callous, they must have looked like how Apollo’s eyes looked. The haggard, deep worn look.

He walked up to Dion, now turned towards the edge of the guard rail.

“Blonde hair. I’ve seen that jewelry in the newspaper clippings of the other brother, the other Santana brother.” Apollo said. “I guess we found out who the car belongs to, huh?”

Dion couldn’t even answer. And Apollo couldn’t blame him. So he walked to the other end, away from the smell as far as the house would let him. He looked out one window, into the backyard where plastic scraggy fake lawn looked back. Beyond the lawn, some old trees begging to be chopped. Around those trees, a shed.

“We’re not done here, Dion. Leave the body.” Apollo said. “There’s more waiting for us.”

“More?” Dion asked.

“What else would you expect from this family?”