Charlie Hernandez & The League of Shadows

CHAPTER ONE
Myths, my abuela used to say, are truths long for gotten by the world. Which is probably why she collected them the way some people collect stamps. Or mugs with pictures of kittens on them. She gathered tales of enormous, horned, snakelike sea creatures, of two-headed vampire dogs with glowing red eyes, of terrifying man eating ghouls that stalk the night, searching for naughty children to kidnap.
The myths came from all over the Spanish-speaking world. From Madrid to Quito. Mexico City to Buenos Aires. Most of them were hundreds of years old, almost as old as the cultures that had inspired them. Some had spread quickly around the globe, spread like wildfire. Others never even left the tiny rural towns where they’d first been told.
All her life my grandma had been obsessed with Hispanic mythology, with all the legends and stories and folklore, and had spent years teaching them to me.
When I was little we used to hang out in the kitchen on lazy Saturday afternoons, me in my Power Rangers pj’s and chancletas, my abuela telling her favorite tales from memory, making the epic battles and ghoulish monsters come to life with every gesture of her brown and wrinkled hands.
Afterward, she would quiz me on what I’d heard; we played this little game, sort of like Pictionary, where she’d draw a quick sketch of one of the characters, and I would have to guess who-or, in most cases, what-it was. If I got four in a row, she’d let me eat leche condensada right out of the can, which might’ve been the only thing I enjoyed more than listening to her stories.
At the time I thought it was all just for fun, a cool little game between the two of us. But I should’ve known better; my abuela hated party games.

CHAPTER TWO
I still remember the first night in the police station like it was yesterday. The tall sheriff’s deputy telling me that everything was going to be okay, that there was nothing for me to worry about, that they’d find my parents promising me that.
Then he handed me a chewed-up number two pencil, dropped a yellow notepad on the desk in front of me, and told me to write down everything I remembered. Told me not to leave anything out. Not even what I was feeling.
I’m not sure which was more embarrassing-the fact that I could barely hold the pencil in my sweaty, trembling hands, or that I didn’t have anything to write. See, I wasn’t there the morning my parents went missing-I was at the local guitar shop. And I wasn’t there later that afternoon when our house burned down-I’d biked over to Zoo Miami for the day.
So forty-five minutes later I’d gotten down only two words, but they were the truest words I’d ever written:
I’m scared.
So scared I could barely breathe. So scared I could actually feel the blood pulsing through my hands and feet. But I didn’t write any of that down.
Instead, I sat frozen in the small interrogation room with tears running down my cheeks, waiting for the deputy to come back. Waiting to wake up from this horrible nightmare.
And that was when the pain came. It felt like two little bee stings up near my temples. Hot and sharp, but lasting for only a moment.
I remember running my hands through my hair and feeling something strange. I remember getting up and walking to the tiny half bathroom at the end of the hall for a closer look. I even remember the small, squeaky sounds my sneakers made on the scuffed and dirty tiles.
But what I remember most was the pair of stubby horns I discovered growing out of the sides of my head. They were a dark golden color. Like honey mixed with dirt.

CHAPTER THREE
That day was the single worst day of my life. But the days that followed were almost as bad. Since I didn’t have any living relatives (my abuela died when I was nine) and child services was having a hard time finding a place for me, I spent the next two weeks sleeping on a scratchy cot in one of the empty cells at the front of the police station. Every night I planted myself on the folding chair outside the station’s 9-1-1 call center, listening in on the dispatchers, hoping to hear something-anything about my parents. And every night I was disappointed.
Obviously, with a pair of horns growing out of my head, I couldn’t help but think back to my abuela’s myths-especially the one about the Morphling. In those stories, the young hero would always defeat his nemesis-an evil, narcissistic, twice cursed witch-by manifesting some kind of animal trait.