“You’ve got some eyes,” Quinto told Atl, and Domingo felt as though he were slowly blending into the shadows, disappearing as Quinto focused utterly and completely on Atl.
“Why, thanks,” she said, but her voice was indifferent.
Atl leaned against the wall and Quinto leaned a bit toward her. He was trying to look suave, making eyes at her, the kind of stuff that worked with the girls they knew. Domingo had asked Quinto how he did it and Quinto had told him it was natural charm, at which point Domingo gave up on the idea of hotties pining for him.
Atl shifted away, her expression turning from cool to flat-out frosty.
“Domingo, are we heading out?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Domingo said.
“Just let me borrow him for two seconds,” Quinto said, winking at Atl and pulling Domingo away before he could protest.
“We’re in a bit of a hurry,” Domingo explained.
“You didn’t say you were busy busy. Who’s the chick? Oh, and don’t try to give me that bullshit about a cousin. I know she ain’t related to you.”
“She’s a friend, all right?” Domingo said, pulling his hands into his pockets and finding a piece of bubble gum, which he unwrapped.
“She’s a babe.”
Domingo grumbled a soft sound that was entirely noncommittal and wished Quinto would stop staring at Atl like she was a cut of choice meat. It made him feel very embarrassed. She was going to think humans in Mexico City were members of a race of troglodytes—which was a really fancy way of saying “caveman” that he’d picked up from a graphic novel. Domingo didn’t want to be a troglodyte. It just sounded nasty.
“How’d you meet her?”
“Just … walking around downtown,” Domingo said, popping the gum into his mouth and chewing loudly.
“Well, you should most definitely go to my next party, okay? Bring her along. I’m dying to get into her pants.”
“I don’t think you’re her type,” Domingo muttered. “See ya around.”
He walked toward Atl and they exited the café together. Outside an organillero was playing his musical instrument, turning a crank and making a metal cylinder spew an old melody.
“Sorry about that,” Domingo said. “I wasn’t planning on bumping into him.”
“He’s annoying,” Atl said.
Domingo chewed his bubble gum and gave her a sideways glance. “He’s all right. Most of the time. He’s lent me money when I needed it once, before I moved into the garbage business.”
She made a face, as though she’d just stepped on something nasty. He’d never felt ashamed of his work. Things were what they were and that was it. But the look on Atl’s face made him feel … small.
Domingo found an empty soda can and began kicking it down the street.
“How’d your family get into dealing drugs?” he asked.
“They started in the ’40s, cultivating opium. The Americans wanted it and Sinaloans harvested it. Then in the ’60s it was pot. Everyone in the hills was harvesting it. It was small stuff, though. It was the ’70s when it got real. Cocaine was hot. People were making a lot of money, trading their huaraches for fancy shoes. In the beginning it was mostly humans dealing cocaine, but families like mine got into it. Vampires control the drug trade now. I think the government tried to clean up Sinaloa in the ’70s, but then we figured out a way to survive, as we always do.”
Atl smirked, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear with her gloved hands.
“Of course, then just a few years later we had these European vampires inching into our territory. Motherfuckers in snakeskin boots and stupid cowboy hats. Guys like Godoy. Fucking Necros.”
Necros. Big fangs. Pale and skinny. Hair on their palms. They sounded cool, since—if you believed TV and shit—they also tended to have fancy clothes and some type of sports car, which was kind of awesome.
“They’re supposed to be hot, no?”
“They’re also filthy,” Atl said. “They’ll make you sick if you come in contact with their blood. If they fuck you, same deal, meet the worst STD ever. You get a literal mind fuck.”
“Like, gonorrhea or what?”
“No. They make you do anything they want. Eventually you die, but not until you’ve done the bidding of a pasty asshole for a good long while. It doesn’t work on other vampires, but humans should really stay the hell away from them.”
“Oh,” Domingo said. That didn’t sound so cool. “Well, at least you can’t get it. Though what happens if you eat someone who was infected by a Necros?”
“I would reject the blood. It’s a very simple rule of thumb: tainted blood, vomit. It’s like trying to chug down expired milk.”
“Gross.”
They were now right behind the old Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where unauthorized street vendors gathered to offer candles, images of the Virgin, and miracles—pieces of tin in the shape of an arm, heart, or foot that were supposed to heal the sick. In December the place was simply impossible to navigate, hundreds of Catholics swarming it to pay their respects to the Virgin. That evening it was not so busy and the vendors would be packing up soon.
“There was some writing on the Net,” Domingo said, “something about disease among vampires. It means you get sick, don’t you? Sick from stuff other than dirty blood, no?”
“Human diseases can’t kill us, but then the Necros aren’t human. In the times of the Aztecs, when the first Necros arrived upon our shores, they quickly spread disease among the local vampire populations. Many members of my family died simply due to coming in contact with the Necros, greatly reducing our capacity to fight against the invaders. Germs can be much more effective than swords. And then there is the issue of tainted human blood and the illnesses the European humans carried. What could we eat if the humans were sick and dying too?”
He kicked the can in her direction and she kicked it back.
“The Necros probably ate too many rats in the Middle Ages and that’s why they’re so filthy,” Atl said. “We were warriors.”
“What kind of warriors?”
“We guarded Huitzilopochtli’s temple. It was more of a warrior-priestess kind of deal,” Atl said.
“Ain’t that, like … Aztec?”
“Yes, Aztec,” Atl said, laughing. She spread her arms. “Mexico City used to be a city of canals. People would go down in canoes instead of streets and there were great temples downtown. And that’s where my people used to live.”
“That’s cool. Being a warrior. Must be cool.”
Domingo kicked the can too hard. It rattled, spinning away from them and under a vendor’s table. Atl stared at it.
“Must be,” Atl muttered.
She was standing in front of a stand selling T-shirts with the image of the Virgin on them, and the irony wasn’t lost on him that this was a vampire, right by the basilica, right by a bunch of rosaries and crucifixes and cheap plastic saints. She looked kind of sad, and he had no idea if it was because of the talk of her kind or maybe because vampires don’t deal well with Catholicism, but he wanted to make it right.
“Do you want to see my place?” Domingo asked, and he knew it sounded dumb, but he wasn’t smooth like Quinto and other guys. He never knew the right words or the right stuff.
Atl didn’t answer. She was still staring at the can.
“It’s real close. That’s the only reason I’m saying. ’Cause it’s nearby.”
A few stops on the subway and they’d be there, it was really nothing at all. Atl finally raised her head to look at him.
“A quick stop,” she said.
* * *
Domingo guided her into the tunnel, carefully illuminating the way with his flashlight. It was an easy walk, but you had to watch the bends of the narrow tunnel and sometimes the ceilings dipped and if you didn’t hunch down a bit you’d end with a big bump on the forehead. During his first weeks underground, that’s exactly what had happened. Now he had mapped the tunnels and he could walk them in comple
te darkness. Still, it never hurt to flash a bit of light in there, especially with the rats around. And, who knew, maybe a hobo could have snuck in. Domingo was pretty sure no one else knew about these tunnels, but he had learned to be careful.
“What is this place?” Atl asked, and he could tell she was a bit in awe. He congratulated himself on deciding to change the scenery.
“There are a few tunnels around downtown. Someone told me they were used by priests and nuns or guerrilla fighters, I’m not sure.”
“When?”
“A long time ago, I dunno,” he said. His grasp of these things, like of so many others, was incomplete.
She looked up at the tunnel’s ceiling. Water dripped around them, slipping through tiny cracks. It was cold and humid below, but Domingo didn’t mind, he peeled layers on or off as necessary.
“How did you find it?” she asked.
“I was looking for a ghost station.”
Atl chuckled, her voice echoing around them.
“Not like scary ghosts. Seriously. There are supposed to be abandoned stations down here. There’s one that is used by soldiers, like a secret one. And one is near a subterranean lake. I’ve never found the lake, though.”
He jumped over a puddle and turned around to offer Atl his hand, but she needed no assistance and evaded it with the ease of a dancer, landing next to him and giving him a smirk.
“It probably doesn’t exist,” she said.
“Well, I’m not sure. There are all kinds of weird things beneath the city. I know a guy who said they once found an abandoned bag on one of the trains and there was a human fetus inside. And there are rats. There’s this huge rat that hangs around near La Merced. It’s bigger than a dog.”
“Maybe it’s a dog.”
“It has yellow glowy eyes.”
“Well, then, that’s scientific proof,” Atl said, sounding amused.
“You sound really skeptical for a vampire.”
She smirked once more. “It’s probably because I am a vampire.”
They reached Domingo’s chamber and he hurried in, quickly illuminating the room with several of his lanterns. He had a lot of stuff, but he tried to keep it in order. There was his pile of clothes, a pile of plastic, a pile of old electric parts. Atl drifted toward the wall covered with illustrations from books and magazines. It was random clippings. Pretty girls mixed with funny drawings. Panels of Tarzan hovered next to a postcard of a painted ocean, which was the closest he’d been to a beach.
Atl leaned down to look at the image of the vampire woman in the white dress, and he felt himself blushing, feeling foolish.
“Dracula’s Mistress,” she said, reading the title out loud. “How Gothic.”
“I … I’ve read comics about vampires of that sort,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand. “The ones that turn to mist. Of course, you don’t turn to mist.”
“No one turns to mist. That’s just stuff they tell kids to sell shit.”
“It sounds cool,” Domingo said. “Plus the whole harem.”
Vampires in the stories were hyper rich. They got to live in castles and had lots of servants. They were mesmerizing. And there had to be an element of truth to the stories because Atl did have money and she wasn’t nowhere near ugly.
Atl sat down on a plastic chair and leaned back, stretching her legs, her lips curving into a dismissive smile. “A harem?”
“Vampire guys have lots of babes with them. Dracula has three, four, probably more than that. Lavud also has a few. Your vampire men, the ones like you, they must be good with the ladies.”
“There’s no vampire men like me. Men of my subspecies don’t shift form, they’re weaker, and they live shorter life spans than the women. I guess you could call it a sex-linked disorder.”
“Oh. But still, I mean, do you have a guy back home?”
“No,” Atl said, picking up a graphic novel and thumbing through it. “No vampire women, either.”
Domingo felt better hearing that. For a moment he had been afraid there was a big vampire dude waiting for her, in a cape. Okay, maybe not a cape. A leather jacket. Though he found it hard to believe that vampire men or, you know, women, were not all over her.
“Yeah. I know how it goes. I used to have a girlfriend but that’s not the case anymore,” he told her because he figured it sounded like the mature thing to say. He was attempting to go for “aloof” and “sophisticated,” like they said in the magazines.
Atl stretched her arms up, as if reaching for the ceiling, and yawned, tilting her head. “Hey, just so we are clear: I’m not looking for a boyfriend. Especially not a human one.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Domingo stammered.
Though maybe he did mean it a little like that.
“Just in case,” she said, staring at him.
An uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Just when he thought they had a rhythm to their conversation going. Domingo chewed on his lower lip, racking his brains for something to say. Something to pull Atl back, something that would be interesting.
Domingo wanted to be interesting but he didn’t have much to say. He could tell her about the garbage, how the business of being a binner works, how you find stuff and sell it for scrap. It was the only thing he really knew a lot about. That, and comic books. ’Cause his stories, about the ghost station and the big rat, sure as hell didn’t seem to interest her.
He wanted to tell her something that didn’t make him seem like such a kid.
“Have you killed anyone?” he blurted.
“Enough,” Atl said, pushing herself up. “Well, I did your tour. I should head back to my apartment.”
“Or you could stay here,” Domingo said. “You can have my bed.”
Technically it was a mattress on the floor, but he thought it counted as a bed. He even had covers that matched, dark green.
“I’m heading to my place.”
“Okay,” Domingo said. “I just want to grab a few comic books and—”
“Stay here for now.”
“What for? I thought you needed my help, my blood.”
“And some fucking space to breathe,” Atl said, irritated. “Come look for me four hours before sundown, all right?”
He walked her back to the entrance they’d used, which led back to an abandoned building. Atl slipped out without a word or a look at him. He watched her walk away, hands in her pockets.
CHAPTER
13
When she was a kid, Ana had liked watching cowboy movies with her grandma. There was a simplicity about them that appealed to her: good guys win. She always wanted to be a good guy. Or gal. That’s why she got into law enforcement. Unfortunately, real life is not like in the movies. All that Hollywood junk where they have super-advanced tech and clean, heroic cops? Not true. Of course, back when she first donned the uniform she thought she was going to magically clean the force from within. Those hopes had been dashed in Zacatecas, but the faint glimmer of heroism still remained.
Mexico City, they had told her, was different. The police force there was being reformed. Before, women could only aspire to be traffic cops or belong to the incredibly sexist Ladies Auxiliary, which was mainly dedicated to visiting public schools and telling kids how fun it was to be a cop. But not the new Mexico City police, this was going to be a state-of-the-art, modern force. Women would be required. Especially women like Ana Aguirre, a police officer with solid experience in Zacatecas and a letter of recommendation. Detective Aguirre had a nice ring to it. At bare minimum there were no vampires in Mexico City. It was safer, less violent, and with the drug dealers she’d busted Ana hadn’t made many friends in the narco world.
It turned out to be a crock of shit. They had printed manuals with gender-appropriate terminology and the like, but detectives still called gay men “faggots,” women were “bitches,” and if a “lady” was raped the first question to ask was what she’d done to incite the crime. The worst part was that nobody wanted An
a there. Castillo plain detested her. In Zacatecas, Ana had been tolerated, if not fully accepted, because she proved useful. Most of the other police officers had no idea how to deal with vampires, and they didn’t want to learn how to. Ana was willing to go into the neighborhoods with a high concentration of vampires, she was willing to question suspects who made her colleagues wet their pants, and she could handle herself if some sick fuck decided he wanted to take a bite out of her.
It had been her grandma who taught her that. The old woman had lived through the Mexican Revolution and even in her old age she was an excellent shot. A country girl, Ana Aguirre’s grandmother had been exposed to much folklore and superstition. Some of it concerned vampires, and, it turned out, her stories were accurate. The result was that while other humans around the world had grown insulated from these tales, forgotten most of them, and entrusted themselves to modernity, Ana Aguirre’s grandmother had not, and she had been able to lavish her knowledge upon her granddaughter.
But in Mexico City vampire knowledge was not valued. Here she was just an annoying broad, her hair streaked silver as she inched toward fifty, someone to push around rather than respect.
Still. She was trying to do right. When she walked past her desk she tossed her raincoat on her chair and hurried toward Castillo’s office, skipping her customary smoke. He waved her in, looking none too happy to see her.
“All right, Aguirre, what do you want today?” he asked.
“That case, the girl attacked by a vampire behind the club,” she said, not bothering to sit down. She knew this was going to be a brief conversation.
“Yes, yes. What about it? Luna says it’s probably a junkie vampire who went bananas. Didn’t we have a couple of those biting an idiot in San Ángel or some place like that?”
Luna? What did Luna know, he couldn’t tell his dick from his thumb. A junkie vampire might have been a prime candidate at the outskirts of the city, not smack in the middle of the Condesa. If human junkies were bad, then vampire junkies were three times worse. They just couldn’t control themselves. A vampire high on Medusa’s Tears or whatever the drug du jour was wouldn’t have passed without notice.
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