Certain Dark Things

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Which I still haven’t seen,” he reminded her.

  “Suddenly you are an unbeliever?” Atl asked, leaning down to look at him.

  “Kiss me again and I’ll believe you.”

  She grabbed his hand and planted a kiss on his palm. The gesture was endearing; it filled him with delight. “How come vampires are so different?” he asked her.

  “We are all supposed to have a common ancestor and diverged in the distant past, with the Necros probably being the youngest subspecies. However, if you listened to my mother’s stories, she said we were created by Huitzilopochtli and when we die, we become stars.”

  She spread the fingers of her good hand, tracing a line in the air, above her head, as if marking a constellation. She smiled for a moment, but then her expression grew serious and she dropped her hand, pressing it against her mouth. Just as quickly she smiled again, her voice sounding a bit strained, but aiming for levity.

  “The first thing we’ll do when we get to Brazil is visit a tailor and buy you a suit. A nice gray pinstripe will do,” she told him.

  “I’m not a suit guy.”

  “You’ll look handsome.”

  “Let me guess. You have a thing for guys in suits. I bet you lied about not having a boyfriend and you’ve had a dozen, in pinstripe suits,” he said, winking at her, matching her cheery tone. He wanted her to be happy. He didn’t want shadows or fear or anything to taint this moment.

  “You’ve found me out.”

  “I’ll keep your secret, hope to die,” he said, pressing a hand against his chest.

  She turned her head and watched him, her mouth curving into a grin. Something new there, sweetness dancing at the corners of her lips, a detail he couldn’t have known existed before.

  “I’ll show you a real secret,” she whispered.

  Atl sat up and turned around. He watched in amazement as wings started sprouting from her back, unfolding, forming. Bone and tissue and feathers opened like a fan. They weren’t small wings, no little white, fluffy Cupid wings. The wings were massive, and seeing them like that he realized why she’d never shown them to him before: they would have been impossible to hide under her clothes. Feathers of a shimmering black that was almost blue also sprouted along her spine, ending at her tailbone.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “Definitely not a butterfly,” she said, looking at him over her shoulder.

  He wondered how she did it. He was going to launch into a dozen questions, one after the other.

  Atl wrapped her arms around him and then her wings also wrapped around him. He figured he’d ask some other time. Right that second his breath had caught in his chest, burning fast, and he couldn’t have uttered a single word even if he wanted to.

  * * *

  Atl lay on the bed. Her wings had disappeared, folded back into her flesh. He caressed her back and was struck with sharp, quick images of the desert, a turtle, dead bodies. More dead bodies. A young woman, dragged into the darkness.

  He withdrew his hand, as if he’d been shocked by an electrical socket. He remembered what the old man said, that he’d kill for her soon enough.

  God, he hoped not.

  God, it didn’t matter.

  After a couple of minutes, gently, he pressed himself against her body, nestled against the curve of her back, and closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER

  35

  They were sitting together in the kitchen, Domingo’s hand resting on her knee. He was eating a sandwich, she was drinking tea. Domingo looked at her and gave her a smile and a peck on the cheek. Atl thought that if anyone should walk in, they might think this was a regular, happy couple. Bernardino did walk in, throwing them a guarded look. He was carrying a black case.

  “I’m coming to check on you,” he said. “To see how the flesh is healing today.”

  He walked out without another word. Atl followed him. Domingo stood up, as if intending to go with them, but she motioned for him to sit down.

  Atl and Bernardino went to the study, where he unrolled the bandage and looked at the hand. Bones and muscle were starting to grow and she had a palm and the beginnings of two fingers. Bernardino observed them carefully, bending the fingers, even pricking the skin with a tiny needle. He applied a salve to her skin.

  “Sometimes the flesh twists and the scarring is poor. It’s not the case. You are doing fine.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “There’s been a development, hasn’t there?” he asked.

  Atl frowned as he changed the bandage, but did not reply.

  “What would your mother say if she knew you were sleeping with a human?”

  “She’s dead, so her opinion doesn’t matter,” she said.

  Atl thought about Izel and what she’d told her about humans: Neanderthals. In Bernardino’s eyes she’d let a monster rut between her legs. She would have agreed with him just a few days before.

  “Even if he’s a Renfield?”

  “Like you’ve never—”

  “No,” Bernardino said, his voice clipped. “I don’t play with my food. That is for the Necros. I thought you had more pride.”

  They burned, his words, and she felt herself branded by them. Atl might have given him a good kick in the gut if they didn’t still need his sanctuary. She took a deep breath, composing herself, though she couldn’t help the defiance in her voice. “It doesn’t make a difference,” she said.

  “You should be thinking with your head.”

  “I have yet to lose my head over a boy.”

  “I expect a certain degree of naïveté from him, but not from you, my dear. As I explained to our mutual friend, ultimately we are entirely selfish creatures.”

  “What did you tell him?” she asked, her voice almost a hiss.

  “I told him we are our hunger. I don’t think you’d deny that.”

  It was the kind of thing Izel might have told her, and Izel had always been right.

  “Have you thought about killing him?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You have. In the—”

  “No,” she cut him off, knowing that he was reading her mind and that he was very much right. After they escaped Nick and his men, just a few days ago, she’d wanted to hurt him. She hadn’t cared, her head too foggy with pain.

  Bernardino looked almost bemused, his lips curling into a smile. “So much for young love,” he said.

  She opened her mouth and then shut it, uncertain how to respond. Or if she should even attempt a response. Bernardino finished fiddling with the bandage and let go of her hand.

  “Don’t complicate things for yourself,” he said.

  Why not? she wanted to shriek, but of course, he was being completely reasonable. She was the hormonal girl who couldn’t keep her hands to herself.

  “Well, you are healing and I’ve had a word with you already,” Bernardino said. “I suppose you want to return to him for a few more hours of idiotic, useless comfort before our departure. Go ahead.”

  Go to hell. She dearly hoped he was able to read that thought.

  * * *

  “Did you know Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest country?” Domingo asked. “It has a coastline of 7,491 kilometers.”

  Domingo had found an encyclopedia lying around the house and promptly pulled out the letter B. He proceeded to recite factoids to Atl while they sat on the bed. He’d taken off his shirt and was only in his trousers while she wore an old-fashioned white nightgown she found in a drawer. It reached her ankles and the irony did not escape her that it resembled the outfit the woman wore in the vampire book she’d seen at Domingo’s home. Dracula’s Mistress. Only the roles were reversed, since she was the vampire, not the girl fleeing a dark castle.

  “It also has major shipping lanes, in case we need to get out of the country,” she said.

  “You don’t think anyone would follow us there, do you?” he asked, lowering his book.

  She opened drawers and found a blouse and trousers. The t
rousers looked too large for her, but there was a belt. She did not want the nightgown anymore. Did not want to look like a joke.

  “Probably not,” she said.

  “It’ll be strange being so far from Mexico.”

  “Having second thoughts?” She peeled off the nightgown and put on the trousers. He was looking at her.

  “No,” he said simply. “I don’t have no one here.”

  I don’t have anyone either, she thought. Perhaps that was why she’d let herself be swept into this. He hadn’t seduced her, not by far, but she’d been seduced anyway by the thoughts of comfort and companionship. Her family was gone, her home razed. She must scrub herself of her name, her identity, her very self. She had a need for an anchor, a friendly face.

  Weak, she thought. You are no warrior, never will be.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, brushing her hand as she drifted by, tucking the blouse into her trousers.

  “Fine,” she muttered.

  “I always wanted to travel places,” Domingo said, his hands tracing the contours of Brazil. “Faraway places. Not that I ever could do anything like that. And never with a girl like you.”

  “A girl like me,” she repeated dryly.

  She looked at Domingo and remembered what Bernardino had said. Despite his sweet smile he was human, made of fragile flesh and bones. He was meant to snap like a twig. He was meat. Nothing but meat. And she was lifting him and crowning him her companion in a twisted parody of the princess and the frog.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, noticing her unkind stare.

  “Nothing.”

  “Did Bernardino say something to you?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “He said something.”

  Atl walked across the room, her arms crossed. A china doll on the shelf stared at her, golden curls and a mocking crimson smile.

  “He’s wrong. Whatever he told you, he’s wrong.”

  “Shut up,” she said, turning her back to him.

  Domingo moved from the bed to stand behind her, whispering urgently in her ear. “He doesn’t know us. He doesn’t know who we are, so he’s wrong.”

  “You don’t know me either,” Atl replied.

  “Then tell me every single thing and I’ll learn it.”

  She moved back to the bed, sitting at the foot of it and staring at the sheets. On his wrists, his neck, she’d left the faint marks of her feeding, as all vampires do. She thought he was going to leave a mark on her, as idiotic as that sounded since he had no fangs or stinger. Yet she was sure of it, that it’d be on her skin.

  He was quiet, but the silence hurt more than any recrimination.

  Atl sighed. She no longer had any idea what she was doing. She was drifting. It was easy to be pulled by the current, it was pleasant.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He stretched next to her on the bed and held her with his quiet, easy affection. She traced the bones of his arms, his rib cage. She knew the names for each of them. She listed them in her head: tibia, radius, sternum. Bones that couldn’t heal like her own, flesh that wouldn’t knit itself back together. Had Nick maimed him, had they shot him, he’d be gone in a second.

  And then, that other nagging thought: bruises heal, marks fade from purple to blue to yellow, but what about the damn mark he was making right now? How do you get rid of that? Fingerprints that cannot be wiped and incisions that don’t cut muscles or tissues. How? She had no idea.

  She was losing her head over a boy. But it’d be him who’d lose his head. Or them both, depending on how things went.

  The thought made her feel cold.

  Domingo had lain perfectly still so far, but when she dragged her knuckles against his clavicle he pushed himself up on his elbows, kissing her, dragging her down. The coldness melted away and she kissed him back. He embraced her again and they lay like that, quietly, until she fell asleep.

  * * *

  Somewhere inside the house, the dog barked. Only once. Once. Intruder. It made her jump up in bed. Her sudden movement awoke Domingo, who stirred and raised his head.

  “What?”

  “Quiet,” she whispered. “Put your shirt on.”

  She now had two fingers and the beginning of a third. When she put on the jacket she pressed her hand against the pocket where the switchblade was nestled and took it out, handing it to Domingo.

  “Grab it,” she said.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Someone’s in the house,” she said, putting on the backpack.

  Domingo reluctantly took the weapon and she stepped out of the room, observing the darkened hallway. Bernardino’s room was past the staircase, but she didn’t think he was there. She could hear music playing downstairs, an old record spinning.

  When they reached the ground floor, she saw them coming down the hallway. She jumped up, reaching the ceiling and dangling from it like a lizard and scuttling forward.

  She looked down to see two men looking up at her in turn with puzzled expressions right before she let go and pounced on them, slashing their necks with her good arm and swiping their guns.

  “They better not have hurt my dog,” she muttered.

  They advanced down the hallway and some moron stepped in front of Atl, trying to pin her with more of those damn darts, but she wasn’t having any of that. She shot him smack in the chest, and then a second time, this time in the head, because she wasn’t allowing any accidents.

  They were wearing infrared goggles, but she could see in the darkness, no need for fancy gadgets. She dispatched another two before one of them actually managed something smart. She was blinded by a sudden burst of UV light, the brightness making her close her eyes and roll on the ground, her skin itching all over.

  “Inject her with that silver nitrate, Kika!” someone yelled.

  Shit, Atl thought, and raised her hands in what was surely a futile attempt to ward them off.

  “Leave her alone!” yelled Domingo.

  There were two shots, the scent of blood, and she opened her eyes.

  CHAPTER

  36

  Kika was near Atl, ready and eager to drive a massive dose of silver nitrate into the girl’s chest. Ana felt the tugging inside her head. It was a searing pain that made her groan and through the pain came the unmistakable command.

  I don’t want her dead.

  Nick. Inside her. Inside her mind. Like a parasite. She’d felt him during the drive here and she’d stared at Kika, unable to warn her about what had happened. Unable to tell her that Nick and his friends had decided to make cannon fodder out of them.

  For a few seconds she was able to discern his thoughts, vague and deformed, like watching an old TV tuned to the wrong channel, lines running up and down the screen. She had the impression of a strong, sickening hatred and then images of blood and mayhem and the girl … the girl he was after. Atl. Cut, mangled, violated, tortured … these were Nick’s desires, his plans for the woman. Sickening ideas.

  Another idea darted through his head. Ana caught a glimpse of herself, throat slit, bleeding to death. Then another vague thought: Marisol, also dead. No loose ends. Kill the cop and the bitch daughter.

  And Atl, Atl, Atl, darling Atl. Like a mantra, the name dancing in his head, making Ana want to vomit, the psychotic fuck’s thoughts mingling with her own.

  She wanted to open her mouth. She wanted to yell and instead her mouth was clamped shut.

  I don’t want her dead. Give her to me now.

  Compelled by Nick, Ana raised her gun and shot Kika and her companion in the back, the sound of the shots echoing down the hallway. The young man who was standing behind Atl stared at her, as though she were an apparition, while Atl lay on her knees, squinting, still blinded by the light.

  Grab her.

  Ana prepared to obey the order, but then came a hard blow to the head and she dropped to the floor with a loud thud, the gun slipping from her grasp. She heard them as she lay just inches from Kika’s c
orpse, her ears ringing with the violence of the blow. The pain seemed to snap her connection from Nick. She felt like a sudden weight had slid from her body, and she was now mercifully alone inside her head. In pain, but alone.

  “Are you hurt?” asked an older male voice.

  Ana blinked tears away, trying to focus her eyes. She saw the older man scooping Atl up onto her feet. He was very tall, hunched.

  “UV blindness. I’m seeing all fuzzy right now. You?” said the girl.

  “Two silver bullets to the leg. Very unpleasant,” the man replied.

  The young man was now touching Atl, one hand on her arm, the other on her cheek. His mouth was moving but he was speaking so low Ana didn’t catch what he said.

  “You’ve seen my dog?” she heard the vampire girl ask.

  “Safe and sound in the kitchen,” the older man said.

  “We need to get him and get going.”

  “How are we going to reach Bordo Blanco?” said the young man. “We can’t just call a cab.”

  “We’ll steal a car,” Atl said.

  Ana closed her eyes. She heard them walk away. When the house was quiet she stood up, holding on to the wall for good measure. Blood was leaking from one of her ears. She thought it was busted. She took a deep breath.

  There came footsteps again. Different ones.

  Nick stopped in front of her. “We got cut off back there. Where’s the girl?”

  She tried to swat his hand away, but he had already cut his wrist again and was pressing it against her mouth. The blood rushed through her veins, the pain was dulled, and she could hear him inside her once more, scratching, scratching, scratching until she had to speak.

  “They escaped. Both vampires are still alive. He’s injured. She sustained some UV damage. There’s a young human man with them and they said something about a dog.”

  “So much for your plan, Rodrigo,” Nick said, sneering. “Do you know where they’re going?”

  “They’re heading to Bordo Blanco,” Ana muttered.

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s a landfill,” said Rodrigo.

  Ana looked down at Kika’s corpse, her blood staining the floor. Kika. Who’d thought this was exciting, who was so eager.