* * *
The knock on the closet door woke her up. She slid the door open and glanced at Domingo, who gave her a nervous smile in the darkness of the room. His face was half-hidden by his mop of brown hair.
“I’m here.”
“Good,” Atl said, reaching for and grabbing the watch before she stepped out of the closet. She stuffed it into one of her jacket’s pockets.
The room seemed colder. Atl bit her lip, wondering if she’d get the shivers soon. She didn’t want to get them on the street. People might think she was a Croneng, they’d assume she was sick with that stupid disease.
Atl stood by the window, trying to see how much sunlight there was. What if she postponed the visit?
“I’m sorry about what I said.”
“What?”
“You were offended. I only asked if you’d killed anyone because … I dunno. It’s … um … the kind of thing they say about vampires.”
Atl glanced at Domingo. He was nervous. She didn’t want him nervous. She didn’t want him thinking she was dangerous. There was no room for doubt.
“I’ve never killed anyone. I don’t hurt people,” she said.
It was so easy to lie. He wanted to believe her and smiled brightly when she said this.
“We should head out,” she said.
“I was wondering about that. Can we go out? It’s still daytime.”
“I was hoping it would be raining and I could take the umbrella,” Atl said. “I like cloudy days better. I can walk around in the daylight. It’s just harder on me.”
And it takes too much damn energy, which I don’t have, she thought ruefully. She wished she could avoid this trip, but she needed to see Verónica in person. It wasn’t like Bernardino, where it was a good idea to send Domingo. Having an intermediary smoothed things over with vampires. Not the case with the human woman.
Atl took out her sunglasses and put them on. She tried not to wear them, but it might be best that afternoon. She had a feeling her eyes were going to be completely bloodshot by nightfall.
“Let’s take Cualli for a walk.”
* * *
The subway was giving her a migraine. She could smell the dirt and accumulated sweat rolling off people’s bodies. It was a miasma of disgusting proportions, which was not the least lessened by cheap colognes and perfumes. The stench of cigarette smoke clung to their clothes, wafting through the subway car.
Domingo didn’t smell that bad, but she wished he would take a bath every morning, though she supposed it to be in bad form to point this out.
“You know, I really think this is, like, the coolest dog ever. Its coat is so shiny,” Domingo said, chatty as always. She was getting used to that. “How’d you get the Doberman?”
“Cualli takes care of me. I’ve always had a dog, since I was a child.”
When she’d fled south, she thought about leaving the dog behind. But she couldn’t part with it. Cualli was part of her life, her constant companion for many years.
“You know, I’ve never figured how that works.”
Atl clutched the dog’s leash. “What?”
“You know…” Domingo leaned next to her ear, whispering. “Vampire children.”
She thought about her childhood, her family home. Mexican families tended to be extended, several generations clustering together, but Atl’s family had been massive. The women lived in one house, a complex, really, and the men in another located just across from them. Boys were raised in the women’s complex, but at the age of ten they were sent to the male quarters to learn the way of men: agriculture, medicine, scribing in the traditional codices, and soothsaying. Women were schooled in combat, commerce, and politics.
Atl’s father was a talented soothsayer, could predict events none of the other men glimpsed, or so they told her. He’d left when she was very small. There had been an altercation, the discovery he’d been embezzling money. So he took off. Atl thought he might have gone to the United States. It hardly mattered.
“What about it?” she asked.
“Well … what’d you eat?”
“Milk. Fruits.”
“Not blood?”
She thought about pulling his leg and telling him yes, blood, but then he might actually believe it.
“My diet changed when I hit puberty,” she said instead.
“Was it scary?”
“Were you scared when you started growing hair in your armpits?”
The subway seats were rock hard and this with the scents around her aggravated the ride. Atl leaned forward, so her back wasn’t flat against the plastic seat, and looked at Domingo.
“Not really.”
“Same for me. It was what I expected,” Atl said.
Domingo sat quietly for a couple of minutes before turning to her again and whispering in her ear.
“Are you going to get old? Or will you look like this forever?”
A man walked the length of their subway car, selling potato chips and peanuts. The peddlers always worked in pairs: one sold the product, the other was the lookout who, whistling and making hand signals, would alert his partner if a cop was approaching. There was also a small-time Mafia at work. Certain lines were controlled by a specific group, and you couldn’t just show up and try to sell shit if you didn’t pay an initiation fee to the local boss.
The man with the peanuts glanced at Atl and Domingo, but seeing their Doberman, kept walking by.
“I’ll age, but I’ll look young for a very long time,” she told Domingo.
“How long?”
“I can easily remain young for decades and decades. It’s quite similar for most of us. When I’m eighty I’ll seem forty. There’s a point where our bodies just remain still, seem to stop aging.”
“That guy I went to see, Bernardino, I think there was something wrong with his bones.”
“Yeah, that’s an issue with his kind. Their bodies … age more quickly, grow deformed, though I’m not exactly sure how it happens.”
Atl was given to understand Revenants could absorb the life force of humans or vampires, and rejuvenate their bodies—even transfer that energy to others, like a walking battery—but her mother offered few details on their biology. She also offered few details on Bernardino. He was a rather obscure figure, someone her mother had had a feud with, one of the members of her old entourage.
“If I live long enough I’ll have health issues of my own, eventually,” Atl said, and chuckled.
“What?” Domingo asked.
“Nothing, it’s just not something I think about too often. Life expectancy is not very long for us right now. The drug wars are taking their toll.”
Atl had always known what her life would be like. Mostly it would consist of supporting her older sister. At one point she’d marry, likely one of her second cousins. Izel had spoken about Javier, who was a year her senior. But that milestone was still far off; their mother had said any planning in this regard was premature. Her sister had been pushing it, though. She had been worried about the stability of their position in Sinaloa, and she said maybe Atl could wed and head to Encinas, their home in Baja California.
At the time Atl had felt it was a way for Izel to punish her. She realized now it was an attempt to protect her.
She’d never see Encinas, or what remained of her family. If some remained.
A dog and a human companion, that’s what Atl had. Not much.
“Sorry,” Domingo said.
“No, it is what it is. It’s life. It’s a better life than many other people have,” Atl said as she looked to the train doors and shook her head because there was no point in crying over these things.
The doors of the subway car opened. The peanut vendor got off and more people climbed on. The car was getting fuller now, but it wasn’t rush hour yet. A man with a guitar boarded last and began strumming the instrument, singing a popular ditty. A corrido. She stared at a girl wearing a bracelet made of yellow beads, counting the beads in her head. This compulsio
n to count things was common of several vampire subspecies, an anxiety-reducing behavior that could assist the vampire in coping with the loud noises, sounds, or smells around them. It got worse when she was tired, the need to count. It wasn’t a good sign.
“… Atl?”
“Yes,” she whispered, trying to pull herself back and focus on him.
“It’s two more stops. Hey, are you okay? You seem a bit weird.” Domingo said, frowning.
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
“Your hands are trembling.”
So they were. Atl clutched one hand with the other. The emptiness in her stomach was increasing, the ache of the hunger building. She should have brought sugar cubes. They helped take her mind off the hunger. The lack of blood lowered her glucose levels, driving her close to what humans called hypoglycemia.
She was starting to lose her shit. Just like in Guadalajara. She’d faced off with Godoy’s men, managing to escape, though suffering a few scrapes. She ran. She jumped a barbed-wire fence to land on an abandoned property where a hobo was sleeping under a few newspapers. He wasn’t young. He was an old guy, his face wrinkled. But she had been hungry … and she’d attacked him. Ripping his throat open with her talons. A few minutes later she had puked the blood out, a sticky, dark, smelly mess that had splattered over the ground.
She had barely managed to drag herself back to her hiding place, back to Cualli. And then she’d gotten lucky. Because a girl was walking back home from a party as the sun edged the sky, dawn announcing itself.
And she’d fed. She’d fed well.
She couldn’t do that shit in Mexico City. It had been sloppy. Stupid killings, the bodies like markers pointing to her location in neon. No honor in it, either. Just fury and hunger.
“You don’t have gum, do you?” Atl asked.
Domingo patted his clothes and handed her a pink strip of bubble gum.
“Do you want something else? Do you need us to step down and go to a bathroom?”
“No,” Atl said. “I just need this.”
Focus. It wasn’t really that bad. It’s just that she was a pussy who had never worked for a meal, never spent a day—never mind several—eating but her fill, never mind hungry. At a biological level, though, she could take it. Her body could take it. Psychologically? It was getting weird.
Though that was perhaps not that uncommon. Atl had never expected to be in this position, half-starving, hiding in Mexico City.
The subway car moved jerkily and she clasped his shoulder, steadying herself, glad he was with her.
Aw, come on, her sister said. Are you going to faint in his arms?
“How’d you end up collecting garbage?” she asked him. There were definitely some psychological issues at this point and she didn’t want to dwell on them.
“I just kind of fell into it. When I left home I wandered around the city and met a group of kids living on the street. They washed car windows at the stoplights or sold candy to people on the street.”
It sounded familiar. Her family often recruited kids like Domingo for their operations. They’d offer them a hundred pesos to stand at a street corner and keep watch for them, in case the cops were in the mood for busting one of their joints. There was always a young fool willing to do anything for cash.
“Then I had enough of that, of them. It was harsh for a while. Quinto lent me money and that helped me. I started collecting bottles ’cause someone told me they gave you money for those at the recycling center. And when I was taking bottles there I met this rag-and-bone man who does a lot of business. He’s constantly looking for people to bring him stuff. So I started bringing him things. He likes the stuff I collect. He says I’ve got a good eye for it.”
“No offense, kid, but it sounds like a shitty business,” she said.
“Nah. Garbage is good. Trash pickers work hard. We sift through the crap and find treasures. It doesn’t pay too much and there are people who get a lot more than you do. But there’s no one beating you at the end of the day.”
You’d be better off dealing drugs up North, she thought. You’d make more. Die faster, and that’s not too bad sometimes. Not that I intend to die fast.
“Plus the Jackal never let me take a bath. Now I can go to the baths whenever I want. He ain’t there to tell me if I can bathe or if I can read my comic books. It’s honorable work. And I don’t get to hear him say I’m vain and stupid and ugly.”
“You’re not stupid,” she said, but not with any degree of kindness. It was a simple fact.
“You don’t have to tell me that. It’s all right. I don’t mind.”
“You can’t go around believing that you’re shit, all right? I said it was a shitty job, not that you were shitty. That dude who said you were stupid and ugly? I’d bet he’s jealous,” she said, and this time she did attempt a small amount of kindness, probably because she was tired or, you know, going crazy.
“That’d be something.”
Domingo scratched his head and smiled at her, showing her his goofy teeth. His teeth were bad, but his hair and eyes were dark and attractive, both a pleasing, rich shade of brown.
Their stop was coming up. She drummed her fingers against her leg, chewed the bubble gum slowly.
“Just … um … so you know. I think you’re really cool,” Domingo said. “I think you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met.”
“It’s bound to be a small social circle, huh?” she replied.
Domingo just smiled even more, in earnest appreciation.
“You’re a cool kid too. All right?”
He was. Sort of.
Atl grabbed the dog’s leash and stood up just as the subway came to a halt and the doors opened. Domingo followed Atl, stumbling behind her.
* * *
Elisa Carrera’s building was in a nice spot of town. Not super swanky, but nice enough that they had installed security cameras and there was a guard at the front. Two things Atl didn’t like, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about them.
The woman who opened the door to Elisa Carrera’s office didn’t look very much like the photograph Atl had studied. Her hair had gone gray and there were deep wrinkles under her eyes.
“Yes?” asked the woman, eyeing their dog. “It’s a bit late. I was about to close.”
“It’s an urgent matter. We have a referral,” Atl said.
“Who referred you?”
“Bernardino.”
Elisa’s face changed. It softened, wax drifting close to a flame, before hardening in a few quick seconds. Atl thought she might slam the door in their faces and then Atl would have to pull the stupid thing off its hinges, cause a scene, which she really didn’t want to do.
“We aren’t here to do you harm,” Atl said. “We just want to talk.”
“Who are you?” Elisa asked, her eyes narrowing.
“I’m Atl, Centehua’s daughter,” she said, though the resemblance should have been obvious. She took after her mother.
“If that’s true you’re very far from home.”
“It is true. May we come in?” Atl asked.
“Yes,” Elisa said.
The office was small. Elisa’s desk took up much of the space. It seemed large enough to sit three people, a grand monstrosity of carved wood with a chair to match. There were bland photos of boats and pretty landscapes with the words RELAXATION and MEDITATION printed beneath them. There was also a poster about Jesus and footsteps in the sand, as if banality could be exponentially increased.
Atl and Domingo sat across from Elisa. The dog curled at Atl’s feet and Atl patted its head.
“What do you want?” Elisa asked, and regarded them wearily.
“I need your help,” Atl said. No sense beating around the bush and it wasn’t like she was interested in a long conversation.
“I’m done helping your kind,” Elisa said. Her certainty struck Atl as inappropriate.
“My mother is dead,” she replied.
To Elisa’s credit, the on
ly reaction to that announcement was a slight tremble of her hands.
“I’m very sorry,” Elisa said.
“I’ll be dead too, if you don’t help me. I need to get out of Mexico.”
“I knew your mother. But if she’s gone then she’s gone, and so are my ties to your clan.” Elisa spoke crisply, the tone the one a strict schoolmistress might employ with the children.
“There are people looking for me. They’ll kill me if they find me,” Atl said, spelling it out, because maybe it needed to be spelled in very large, very crimson letters.
“That’s very sad, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Elisa pushed her chair back, as if she were about to rise. Atl spoke quickly, knowing she was losing the woman’s interest.
“You can falsify documents. Passports, ID papers. Stuff that could get me to South America. I have money,” she said, grabbing the envelope she was carrying in her jacket and dumping it on her desk. The woman looked at it as though she’d just skinned a live animal in front of her. Cualli, sensing turmoil, raised his head, alert.
“I haven’t done that in years. I run a clean business now. Clean life.”
“Really,” Atl said flatly.
Atl fixed her eyes on Elisa’s hands. Her nails were painted pink. It wasn’t a cheap manicure, she’d spent money on it. But it was starting to chip away. She saw the tiny spots with missing flecks of paint. One spot, two spots, three. Millimeters.
Atl raised her eyes and stared at Elisa. “I’m running out of time.”
Elisa stood up with her back to them, looking out the window. She wasn’t giving in, not yet, but she was wavering. Atl licked her lips. They felt chapped.
“I can’t stay here much longer. Mexico is too dangerous.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Elisa muttered.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I thought you and Bernardino might help me.”
“You have money. You can probably fly abroad.” Elisa made a motion with her right hand, pointing up.
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