“Yeah, and the airport has too much security and too many scanners. I’d be dead before I get to my seat. It has to be by ground.”
“Then I don’t understand why you simply didn’t try to cross the northern border. It would have been easier to take your chances with the coyotes, no?”
Yeah, like Atl hadn’t thought about that.
“The Necros dominate the North, so that’s a no go. They don’t own Guatemala. Not yet. There will be checkpoints, but with the right papers I can make it down into South America. It’s easier this way.”
“Nothing is easier,” Elisa said. “It’s just another way to get killed.”
“Well, I can’t exactly head back north right now so the only option is south. You used to be a runner for my mother. Surely you can make one more run.”
“Have a good journey. You can walk yourselves out, I trust?”
She ought to have more respect for me, Atl thought. For my family. Though there was precious little left of her family to respect.
Elisa placed her manicured hands on the desk, lacing them together. She returned Atl’s stare.
“My mother was your protector,” Atl said in a low voice. “She pulled you out of the gutter. She housed you, fed you, clothed you. If things were the other way around, if it were your daughter asking her for help, she would offer assistance.”
“I paid my debt to your mother. I paid it in blood and I don’t owe you anything. Why don’t you go bother Bernardino? Maybe he can do something.”
Atl scrutinized the woman’s face. She analyzed the stern line of her mouth, the gray of her hair. Elisa said the words but she didn’t mean them. Elisa was pretending, and Atl knew the deck was stacked in her favor, that she need only find the right words.
“I’ve come for your help. My mother would have … well, if she were alive, she might have come to you herself,” Atl said. “I didn’t know where else to go and she told me that you were the only person she trusted in the whole world. She absolutely trusted you.”
That was not exactly what Atl’s mother had said. No. She’d said that Elisa was like all other humans: a weak fool, predictable and simple. A useful fool, at times. And that if things should worsen Atl would do good to find her because she was not crafty enough to betray anyone and sufficiently nostalgic to remember her years as a vampire’s assistant fondly.
Elisa was leaning forward. Her mouth opening a little, almost as if she was hesitating to ask a question.
Atl lowered her gaze, focusing on her hands.
“She said you were like a sister to her. That’s why I came.” Atl listened to the tick of a clock upon the wall, waiting patiently. Elisa shifted in her seat and sighed. She had her.
“What you ask is not achieved quickly,” Elisa said. “Fake passports, fake ID papers … And the car, of course. I suppose I’ll have to drive you across. It might take me a few days. I can’t produce this stuff out of thin air.”
“I can manage to survive for a few days.”
“I said it might,” Elisa cautioned her. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do it. Security gets tighter each day. No one wants more vampires in their territory anymore. Most governments consider you a plague, you know? Have you heard how they’re dealing with your lot in the U.K.? They’ve now got a police force dedicated to handling your kind.”
“Yeah, the Van Helsings. I heard that. They’re only in the large cities, though. Never fancied seeing London anyway.”
“They’ve had their powers extended, just a few weeks ago.”
“We’ve been around for a long time,” Atl said. “We’ll be around for a while longer.”
“You’ve also been hunted for a long time. For a reason.”
Mother had told her that in the old days, before the Europeans washed up on the coast of Veracruz, when her kind were priestesses, the Great Temple ran red with rivulets of blood, offerings of hearts and heads to the gods. The bodies of sacrificial victims tumbled down the steps of the temple. The people below stabbed, pierced, and bled themselves in sacrifice. They were not a plague, nor vermin, nor common killers that hid in the shadows. Not the Tlahuelpocmimi. Not her family.
“So we have been hunted,” Atl replied coolly. “Yet despite your greater numbers, you humans haven’t quite figured out how to get rid of us.”
“One of these days, maybe.”
Atl decided she did not want to get into this conversation. It would lead nowhere and she was tired.
“I’ll need two sets of IDs,” Atl said instead.
“Will he also be going with you?” Elisa pointed at Domingo, who was sitting very still and quiet in his chair.
Atl glanced at the boy. “Yes. He’s human, though.”
“I can tell. Do you have a passport?” Elisa asked.
“No, I don’t, miss,” Domingo said politely.
“He has no fixed address,” Atl said.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Domingo, miss.”
“Domingo, if you go south with this girl you might get into a lot of trouble.”
Elisa again sounded like a schoolteacher when she spoke, warning a kid about the dangers of doing drugs. Atl scoffed.
“I’d like to see Guatemala. If it’s okay with you,” Domingo replied.
Elisa nodded. Her expression was skeptical. She let out a bitter sigh. “Stand against the wall; I need to take your photo.”
Atl went first, her eyes wide open as the flash went off. Then it was Domingo’s turn. Elisa muttered to herself and sat behind her desk again, shaking her head.
“I need to get in touch with someone,” Elisa said. “Will you two be all right until next Thursday?”
“Yes,” Atl replied. “What time should we come back?”
“Not here. There’s a bar in Plaza Garibaldi, the Tenampa. Meet me at ten.”
“We will.”
Elisa tapped her fingers against the desk. Their meeting had clearly concluded and Atl pushed her chair back.
“Who killed her?” Elisa asked, just as Atl opened the door.
“Godoy,” she said.
Elisa nodded gravely. She didn’t ask anything else and Atl walked toward the elevator, one hand in her pocket, the other on the dog’s leash.
On the subway she thought of axolotls and her mother’s head, delivered in a cooler.
Hide, Atl. Hide, Izel whispered in her ear.
CHAPTER
15
The ride back was quiet. Atl kept her head down in the subway. Sometimes she would close her eyes and Domingo would think she was asleep, but then a sudden movement would jolt her and she’d snap her eyes open. When they reached her apartment Atl walked straight toward the bedroom, flopping upon the bed and pressing her hands against her face. Her dog padded in behind her, lying down at the foot of the bed. Domingo hovered at the door, not knowing if he was allowed inside.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want some of that tea?”
She did not reply. Domingo put the kettle on to boil. He found the sugar, the tea, and picked two mugs. One of them was chipped, a hairline crack running down a side of it. He dragged his thumb over the crack. When the tea was ready, he walked back to her room.
He knelt by the bed, a cup in his hands, and looked at her. With her eyes closed, Atl’s features seemed to soften, like a switchblade that has yet to snap out. He guessed he should have been afraid of Atl, but he wasn’t. The terror wasn’t there. It was as simple as that. He supposed he was foolish, but couldn’t be bothered to worry. Not yet, at least.
Domingo bit his lower lip, wondering if he should wake her up. He extended his right hand, his fingertips resting upon her shoulder.
He felt an immediate jolt, like an electric current, running through his veins and something like a spark lighting him inside. All of a sudden the apartment was gone, melting beneath his feet. He saw a barren desert landscape with a sky of the most unbelievable blue; a blue he’d never seen before. A tortoise walked before him, slowly following a
highway that was a black ribbon, twisting, turning, melting into the distance, and he sank into the highway, into the melting blackness of the pavement. Then he was running through a city. Past warehouses and shacks, past a circle of homeless people sipping booze in the darkness, until he reached a chain-link fence and scrambled up it. The fence was gone and he was holding a gun in his hands, and then it wasn’t a gun, it was a decapitated human head. He dropped the head and it rolled onto the floor, spreading a coat of red upon the white tiles. Red the walls and red the ceiling and red every single speck of everything until—
Atl’s hand wrapped around his wrist, steadying him, and he stared at her.
“You’re going to drop your cup,” she said in a hushed voice.
Domingo blinked.
The cup, he thought, and looking down he realized yes, he was holding a cup.
He took a deep breath.
“I got you a drink,” he said.
Atl sat up on the bed and took the cup from his hands. She sipped her tea. Domingo stayed by the side of the bed, still too rattled to attempt to stand up.
“They’re just memories,” Atl said.
“Huh?”
“Memories,” Atl said. “My memories. It happens, when you’ve shared your blood with someone. There are echoes, bits and pieces that stay in your head. When you touched me … I’m tired, I wasn’t prepared for it, and you saw.”
That’s almost like a superpower, he thought.
“I saw a highway,” he said, frowning, and now he did move, by her side, sitting on the bed. “And there was a human head. What was that? Was that real?”
“They sent the head in the cooler,” she said, speaking as if she’d informed him about the weather or the time of day.
Domingo blinked.
“My mother’s head,” Atl said. “They chopped her head off and delivered it to our house in a cooler. The funny thing about a decapitated head is that it looks completely fake. You stand there and think, ‘This isn’t real,’ because it’s simply so rubbery. And my sister, they killed her too, burned her.” Her eyes fixed on him, cold, unpleasant. Her gaze was hard, black enamel.
Domingo didn’t know what to reply. He swallowed.
“They killed her. But I got back at them. I got them where it hurts. There is a phrase, ātl tlachinolli, ‘the water that scorches the earth.’ My name means ‘water’ but it is also war.”
She laughed, a brief burst of derision.
“What did you do?” he asked.
She shoved the cup back into his hands, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. I’m too tired and hungry and it’s not making any sense and you shouldn’t know this. You shouldn’t listen to me.”
Atl covered her eyes with both hands. He thought she might cry by the way her voice cracked, and it might have been better if she did because he was befuddled, watching her sudden distress and not knowing what to do. She teetered at the edge of panic but did not quite fall.
“Do you want blood?” he asked. His body, after all, was the only thing he could offer.
She snapped her head up and stared at him. “Blood volume is replaced within twenty-four hours. Red cells need about a month for complete replacement. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“I can’t be drinking too frequently, no matter how much I want it.”
“Um … you don’t look too hot.”
“It’s my fault,” Atl said. “I’m soft. Pampered. My sister was right. She should be alive. She’d know what to do, how to do it right. I just keep messing up.”
“It’s all right,” he said, resting a hand upon her shoulder.
Atl smirked. He saw the white of her teeth. Normal teeth. Not fangs like in the comic books. But her eyes were odd, red, like she’d been weeping.
“Your eyes,” he said. “They’re—”
“I can feel it,” she said. Atl walked to the bathroom; the dog followed her, quiet as a shadow. She leaned against the sink, opened the faucet, and splashed water on her face with both hands. She placed her lips against the faucet and drank directly from it. When she was done, she looked into the mirror with a sigh. She peeled off her jacket, tossing it to the floor. She followed it with her blouse and stood in her undershirt.
“Are you going to shower? Should I turn around?” Domingo asked, and he immediately wondered if he was a total perv for asking that.
“No.”
“No, I shouldn’t turn around?”
“No, I’m not showering,” Atl replied, stepping out of the bathroom and sitting in the middle of the living room, her hands resting against her knees. “I’m…”
The dog headed toward her, sat next to its mistress, and her hands fell upon its head, an automatic gesture. Her lips moved, but she made no sound. The silence seemed to stretch for minutes and minutes.
“You know, I used to have a swimming pool as big as this apartment,” she said, the words slurred, as though she’d been drinking. “And now here I am. My kingdom for a fan. Or an ice tray. I feel warm and cold at the same time. Damn it.”
“If you really want a fan I can get you one,” he said.
“You don’t need to get me anything. You don’t…” She sighed. Her hands twitched and she clasped them together, as if in prayer. “Talk to me for a bit, will you?”
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“A movie you saw. Your favorite color. Anything,” she said, shrugging.
“I saw Dracula on the TV one time. Black and white,” he said, sitting down in front of her.
Atl rolled her eyes at him. “Good God, it’s always Dracula.”
“I saw Germán Robles one time, for real. Well, I was walking down Florencia and he was having a coffee at a coffee shop, just like everyone else.”
“Who?”
He scooted closer to Atl, infected with the glee of sharing something new with her. “You know, Germán Robles! He was in movies. He didn’t look like he did in the movies, he was old, ancient, but I recognized him. He’s got the same eyes, used to play a vampire. He played Karol de Lavud.”
“You talked to him?”
“No,” Domingo said. “I was pushing my shopping cart and I didn’t think they’d let me in. You know, it wouldn’t look none too good to pull a shopping cart into a coffee shop to tell him hi.”
“I suppose not.”
“I’ve always thought vampires should be like Karol de Lavud,” he said, thinking back to the small TV set, the black-and-white images late at night.
“How’s that?”
“Well … uh…,” Domingo said. “With a cape.”
Atl cocked her head a little, smirking at him. “A cape?”
“It looks cool.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Domingo shrugged. He thought the old vampire images were awesome, with the mist and stars and moonlight and the cape flapping in the wind, but he supposed Atl might have a point. After all, there was no mist in Mexico City, just smog, and you couldn’t see any stars thanks to it. It was a lot less romantic, though Atl still cut an impressive figure. Even in her undershirt and jeans, no cape in sight, there was something almost magical about her. Like she didn’t need no mist and moonlight, her sharp features and the blackness of her hair enough to freeze any mere mortal in his tracks.
He’d moved closer, but she moved closer still, her knee bumping his own.
“You like music?” he asked, glancing down, fearing he was about to blush, pretending to fiddle with his music player.
“What have you got?”
“Oh, everything,” he said. “Concrete Blonde. Bosé. Depeche Mode. It’s mostly old stuff, but, here,” he said, handing her the headphones.
Atl carefully took the headphones, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, and put them on. Domingo pressed play. She frowned, but her frown soon relaxed and he saw her tap her fingers against her knee, softly, following a rhythm.
“I should go to sleep,” she said after a while, t
aking off the headphones and returning them to him.
“I’m going to head back to my place,” he said, pointing toward the front door. “You know, to give you your space, like you like.”
“No,” she said, surprising him with the casualness of her tone. “You can stay. If you want. There’s the bed and there might be food. I’m not sure.” Atl headed to the bedroom, opened the closet door, and slipped in. She closed it from the inside and the dog sat outside it, giving Domingo a menacing stare.
“No, worries, Cualli,” he said in a placating tone, standing at the doorway. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
Domingo walked slowly into the bedroom and lay on the middle of the bed. He placed his hands against his chest, as though he were dead, as he’d seen vampires do in the movies when they slept. It was an uncomfortable position. He rolled on his side, put on the headphones. The music was loud and cheery, music to dance to.
He wondered if Atl might have danced with him. Not right now, not here, but maybe in another place. Maybe if she weren’t being chased by bad guys they could have gone to Quinto’s party.
CHAPTER
16
Nick switched the blood pack from one hand to the other, still unable to bring himself to open it. He’d been drinking alcohol all afternoon to keep his stomach at bay, but there was no denying it now. He needed blood and the only thing around the apartment was the blood packs in the freezer. Rodrigo and La Bola were keeping their eyes on him like hawks. There was no chance to slip out again.
God, Rodrigo. He thought himself so high and mighty, when he was nothing but a servant like all the others. One day Nick was going to be the boss. He’d show the old human … the lofty peacock who looked down at him like he was scum. It was Rodrigo who came from nowhere, had been a nothing until his dad plucked him from the shithole where he lived.
He might even bite Rodrigo, force him to drink his blood, turn him into a mindless puppet.
They said the other vampires couldn’t make slaves like that, that their blood didn’t work in this way. Atl’s kind, he’d heard, treated the whole blood-sharing thing like some sort of reverential, sacred process. Aztec bullshit about life, sacrifice, renewal.
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