Certain Dark Things

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “I took half,” Ana said, wanting to be precise.

  “If you want the other half you should show up,” Kika said. “Don’t look so glum. Have a cigarette.” Kika took out her cigarette case and opened it, offering it to Ana.

  Ana stared at the cigarettes, but shook her head. “I’m trying to quit.”

  “I’d think you’d be jumping over another chance to kill a couple of vampires,” Kika said, snapping the case shut and tossing it back in her purse. “It sounds like the stuff to get the blood running.”

  “You’ve never been near them, have you?”

  “Can’t say I have. But it sounds fun.”

  “You have no idea what you are talking about,” Ana muttered.

  “Tell me then.” The woman scooted forward, smiling.

  “Tell you what?”

  “What it’s like to kill them.”

  “I don’t know. What’s it like killing people?” Ana shot back.

  “What makes you think I kill people?” Kika asked.

  “What’s your line of work, then?”

  Kika shrugged. “Oh, I’m more of a personal assistant. Keep tabs on the money. Recruiting security. Asset collection. Mostly.”

  “What did you do before this?”

  “How come we are talking about me and not you?” Kika asked, chuckling. “You’re trying to turn the tables on me, Detective, but you’re the one with an interesting story.”

  “I’m curious about who I’m working with.”

  “You mean you haven’t looked me up in your police databases?”

  Ana had looked for the woman in red, but she’d gotten no hits. Could be she was new or could be she was simply smart. The girl held her cigarette in midair and blew a ring of smoke.

  “You have a Rita Hayworth vibe,” Ana said. “I know your name’s not Kika, so who are you modeling yourself after?”

  “It’s a diminutive of Francisca. It means ‘free woman.’”

  “You weren’t free before.”

  “Not quite.”

  Ana sipped her coffee and nodded. She carefully unwrapped her sandwich and began eating it. “Killing vampires is hard. They’re tough, they’re resistant, and they won’t hesitate to bite off your head. But that doesn’t make it fun,” she said. “I joined an operative. It was not supposed to be big, we were serving as backup for the folks in the Secretariat of National Defense. That’s where most of my kills come from. It wasn’t glamorous. We had twenty-two dead people, total, including nine of our own. I killed three vampires that night. I joined a second operative as backup a few months later. Killed another two vampires. And then I was done with that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought Mexico City would be better.” Ana wrapped the remains of her sandwich and placed her hands on top of it.

  Kika was still smoking, the ash falling upon the table. “I’d still like to kill one,” Kika said, dropping the cigarette to the floor and smashing it under the heel of a red shoe. “Get some sleep. We’ll be seeing each other in a little while.”

  The younger woman rose but paused for a moment, frowning. “Who’s Rita Hayworth?” she asked.

  “She was an actress. Used to dance,” Ana said.

  “All right,” Kika said. “See you around.”

  Ana looked down. The cigarette on the floor bore the imprint of Kika’s lipstick. She grabbed her sandwich and exited the eatery.

  * * *

  She was up early and made an effort to cook eggs and quesadillas for Marisol. Her daughter seemed startled by the sight of Ana in the kitchen.

  “Marisol, sit down, have a bite,” Ana said, setting a plate on the narrow plastic table where they had all their meals. They had no proper dining room.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong,” Ana said. “I make breakfast and something’s got to be wrong?”

  Marisol shrugged. Ana supposed that she had been skimping on the cooking lately, although she did work a lot of nights. It was a hectic schedule. They sat down and ate quietly. Her daughter checked her phone constantly.

  “I’ve thought about the Acapulco thing and I don’t think it’s a good idea, but we should go see your aunt soon. You know, a trip to Zacatecas. And I was thinking maybe, after that, Cuba.”

  “Cuba?” Marisol said, raising her head. “Like a real vacation?”

  There were no vampires there. And there were other places. Hawaii. New Zealand. But they could speak Spanish in Cuba, the culture shock wouldn’t be so bad, and the money would stretch, very, very far. And almost any place would be better than Mexico, wouldn’t it?

  “Can we afford that?”

  “I’ve got a bonus,” Ana said. “I put the bulk of the money into the savings account and I have cash, in the cigar box under the bed, for emergencies. So yes, we can afford it.”

  “Cool.” Marisol went back to checking her phone, but she paused to give her mother a smile before running off to school.

  Ana sat for a few more minutes at the table before making her way to her bedroom. The Virgin shot her an accusing glance from her shrine, but Ana could not allow herself to feel any remorse. She was going to capture a pair of vampires with the assistance of a known criminal group and she was going to do it for money, but fuck it, sometimes you have to sin in order to earn your way to paradise. Or in her case, a couple of tickets to Cuba and the promise of a comfortable life.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Mexico City was an apocalyptically dysfunctional place at the best of times, what with the pollution, the flooding, the teetering concrete slums, and the city sinking into the lake bed upon which it was built. However, that day, with the sun hiding behind thick clouds and the rain coming down so heavily, it was damn hellish. Rodrigo wished he could head home, back to the sunny, arid North. But there was too much work to be done.

  Rodrigo closed the blinds and circled his desk, standing before a bookcase and staring at a picture of himself when he’d been much younger, sitting behind the wheel of a convertible. When he’d started working this business, Rodrigo hadn’t intended to get himself so involved with vampire narcos. He just liked cars. Vintage cars, custom cars. His brother had a garage and a gentleman had come in one day to get some work done on his vehicle. He’d struck up a conversation with Rodrigo and they’d talked cars, and the man wondered if he was a good driver. It turned out the old man was a Renfield who’d come from Europe with a few bloodsuckers two years before, right after vampires started immigrating to Mexico in big numbers.

  The U.K. had major restrictions against vampires, but it wasn’t the only country with a hard attitude when it came to bloodsuckers. Spain and Portugal had plain expelled them in 1970. France, Germany, and Italy didn’t like them much either, though they had not kicked them out. There had been major clashes in the late ’70s and a clusterfuck in Paris in 1981. By 1985 Mexico City was a no-vampire zone. Also by 1985 Rodrigo was a Renfield.

  Rodrigo tore his eyes from the photo and glanced at the phone number on the notepad.

  Rodrigo didn’t have as many contacts in Mexico City or as much pull as he would have liked, but he did have people he could rely on. So far, they’d produced nothing. Atl had vanished into thin air, slipping into Mexico City with an ease he thought was beyond her capacity. But a nice juicy tidbit had just rolled in.

  An employee with the Secretariat of Public Safety informed him that the person assigned to the case of the girl Nick had killed was called Ana Aguirre. Lately Aguirre had been accessing the databases and pulling information about both Nick and Atl. That the investigator could have tied the killing to Nick did not sound so far-fetched, but Atl … that could not be a mere coincidence. This woman knew something.

  Rodrigo dialed the number and waited.

  “Hello?” a woman said.

  “Is this Detective Aguirre?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m calling about a mutual friend. His name is Nick Godoy.” He could hear her adj
usting the telephone, moving the mouthpiece closer.

  “Who are you?”

  “Look, I’m really terribly sorry for disturbing you, but I’m interested in knowing how your investigation is going. I’m especially interested in hearing why you are looking into Atl Iztac.”

  “Who are you?” she asked again.

  “Why are you linking Nick to Atl?” Rodrigo countered.

  “Who have you been talking with?”

  “That doesn’t matter.” She hung up on him. Rodrigo smirked.

  He thought about calling her back, but decided he had bigger fish to fry. Nick’s dad had sent a text message, wanted to know how things were going. Although Rodrigo had very little interest in talking to his boss, he decided he might as well do it now. It was better to get these things out of the way.

  “Hello, Mr. Godoy, it’s Rodrigo,” he said.

  Rodrigo was very polite to Godoy. He never called him by his first name, even after all these years. He’d been twenty, driving merchandise across the border for small-time gangs, when he met Godoy. Rodrigo was smart, bookish, spoke English without an accent, didn’t look the part of a gang member. Godoy, an ambitious vampire who had made it through both world wars, took notice of Rodrigo. Godoy’s Renfield was getting creaky, and this young chap was brighter than your average goon for hire. Godoy saw potential. Rodrigo saw money.

  “My boy, I’ve been expecting your call.”

  Yes, and Godoy always called him “my boy,” even though Rodrigo was hardly a boy anymore. To be fair, he supposed everyone was a “boy” to the vampire. Godoy was inching toward a hundred and looked fortyish. Sometimes Rodrigo’s back ached and he envied the vampire’s youth. Other times he was glad to get old and one day, very soon, slip out the back and into retirement.

  “I’m sorry I took so long. We’ve been busy,” Rodrigo explained.

  “So I heard. Nick phoned.”

  “Oh?” Rodrigo said. He was supposed to be the only one contacting Sinaloa.

  “He said you’re in Mexico City and have lost the girl.”

  Damn it. That was not the way he wanted the conversation to begin. Rodrigo sat down behind his desk and modulated his voice so he sounded perfectly calm. “That’s not exactly accurate,” Rodrigo said.

  “She was not supposed to get that far.”

  “We had trouble in Guadalajara.”

  “You did not mention that when we last spoke. You also did not say anything about visiting Mexico City.”

  Rodrigo did not want to say anything because he knew exactly how it would sound: like he’d fucked up. The truth of the matter was, yes, it had all gone south, but it had been in great part thanks to Nick. Godoy thought a great deal of his son, but the boy was raw, impulsive, and stupid, an explosive combination. “We know she’s here.”

  “Where?” Godoy asked.

  “I’m working on finding her.”

  “Nick said you lost Justiniano.”

  “Yes,” Rodrigo said. Justiniano had been the kid’s personal escort, not a fellow Rodrigo had especially liked, but at least he was able to keep Nick under control. Well, so much for that.

  There was an unpleasant silence. “I almost feel like pulling you out, Rodrigo. Let someone else clean up this mess.”

  Rodrigo recalled the vampire’s idea of cleaning. It involved chopped bodies dumped in a vat of acid. Rodrigo was not about to let his career end in shame with his tail between his legs, or worse, as an unidentified corpse dumped next to a highway.

  “I can do it. It’s been a bit more complicated than I’d anticipated,” he said, thinking about Nick’s murder feast the other day. He hoped Nick hadn’t told his dad about that, though the boy probably had enough common sense to keep those details to himself.

  “Complicated, yes,” Godoy said. “Overly. She’s a girl.”

  Well, she’s got some balls, Rodrigo thought.

  “She’s Centehua’s daughter. She’s got money and enough contacts to hide for a bit. But not forever. Sooner or later someone’s going to turn her in. I’m working old contacts as best I can. Street level, even cops. I’ve put the word out and her photograph. Someone will spot her.”

  Before she leaves the country, he thought. If Atl had any brains she was already trying to find a ticket out of Mexico, though it was going to be tough. He had spread her image wide and far. Every Necros remotely near the northern border was expecting her. She couldn’t fly out of Mexico City, and if she stepped foot in the outskirts of the city, she’d be toast. No, Atl was still in Mexico City because it was the only place left to hide. For now.

  “Solve this. Do it quick.”

  “Yes, sir. She’ll be dead in a week’s time.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry?” Rodrigo said.

  “Nick feels like playing with her. I agree. A quick death is too good for the girl.”

  Rodrigo mouthed an angry “motherfucker” to the phone but he kept his voice level. “It’s going to be difficult to abduct her and drag her out of Mexico City and back home,” Rodrigo said.

  “I don’t care if you have to break her limbs in order to do it, make sure she’s alive.”

  This was his punishment. There was no point in rejecting it.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. Rodrigo hung up, moving back toward the bookcase and running a hand through his thinning hair. He glanced at the photo of himself and thought of the days when his only concern had been getting his hands on nice cars and racing them.

  CHAPTER

  21

  She dreamt of her sister, and when they were little. Izel was holding her hand and they were running down the stairs to hide from her cousins. Atl must have been four and Izel nine. Giggling, happy girls. Then the dream changed and Izel was a charred corpse, unrecognizable, a dark lump left upon the ground. The corpse writhed, opened its mouth. “Our hearts want nothing but a war death,” it said, the same line Atl had once recited.

  When Atl woke up, there was one thought ringing through her head: I should have been with her. She’d been such a petulant child, too busy picking fights with Izel to help the family. She had not wanted to help out with anything because that would spoil her easy life, would burden her with responsibilities.

  There’s trouble brewing, her mother had said, but Atl dismissed it. And when trouble came Atl was stupid and afraid.

  Her head still foggy with sleep, Atl stumbled into the kitchen, managing to fill herself a glass of water.

  “Hey,” Domingo said. “How you doing?”

  “Fine,” she muttered.

  Cualli walked into the kitchen as well. Domingo patted the dog’s head.

  “He must like you,” she said, looking at them and trying to remember if there had been any time when Cualli liked anyone but her.

  “He’s awesome. I never had any pets, you know? I would have loved a dog. Cats are just so—”

  “Aloof?” Atl ventured.

  “I was going to say smelly. Bernardino’s house reeks of cat piss, you wouldn’t believe it. If Dracula’s castle had smelled of cat piss I swear he wouldn’t be in that many films.”

  Domingo grinned at her and Atl chuckled. He was too honest, by far, and too silly, and still she enjoyed his company. For a moment things felt okay. Like the unbalanced mess of her life was now tipping in the other direction, balancing itself out. “Let’s go get a bite. For you, I mean,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  She grabbed her jacket, put the leash on Cualli, and out they went. It was raining, and Atl paused next to the building’s entrance to open her umbrella.

  Cualli growled. A few split seconds was all the warning Atl had, but it was enough. She saw them from the corner of her eye. She held her breath, pretended to fiddle with the dog’s leash and the umbrella, as she counted nine of them. They wore no uniforms. Not cops, not sanitation. They were human. Rodrigo and Nick seemed to be nowhere in sight. Were these their goons? Or someone else’s? It didn’t matter. They were waiting for her.

  Atl r
eleased her grip on the leash, dropped the umbrella, and let her breath out.

  She shoved Domingo behind a car and pulled out the gun, shooting two of them dead before they had a chance to blink. The others raised their weapons and shot back at her, but the loud bangs of pistols firing did not thunder along the street. Instead, there was a low, whooshing sound. Something silvery flew past her. Atl jumped behind the car next to Domingo, evading the projectiles.

  Silver nitrate darts. Shit. She would have preferred regular bullets. This could get nasty.

  “What’s happening?” Domingo babbled.

  “Bad guys,” she said. “Sit tight. Cualli!” She saw the dog leap in the direction of one of the men, knocking him down with its weight. There were startled cries and Atl stood again, shooting a couple of them while they were trying to drag the dog off their friend. She missed her third shot, hit a car instead, glass shattering upon the pavement. Darts whooshed by and she sat down again.

  “Behind! They’re also behind!” Domingo yelled.

  Atl turned and saw three men coming from the other end of the street. They aimed at her. She blew off the head of one of them and ran across the street, ducking and pressing her back against another car. Domingo followed her. He was too slow. The two men who had been aiming at her now ran in his direction, pinning him to the ground and wrapping a plastic tie around his wrists. She heard Domingo scream, but ignored the cry and glanced at the building closest to her. If she was fast enough, she could climb up its side and escape through the roofs.

  She looked across the street and noticed two corpses, their necks torn by her dog. That still left six attackers, although two were currently busy with Domingo.

  Cualli was barking and Domingo was being dragged away, kicking and screaming. She watched as they tried to place him into the trunk of a black car. Domingo attempted to hold on to something and they punched him, once, twice, thrice, until he fell to his knees.

  Damn it.