Certain Dark Things(5)

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“You need to eat well. You need to drink foods rich in iron. I also have a few iron supplement pills for you. If you drink them with orange juice they’ll be more effective.”

She walked him to the table. Domingo had to lean against her. His hands trembled, but he managed to pop the pills into his mouth. He drank the whole glass of juice.

They stood together, Atl propping him up, for what seemed like a long while. The feeling had returned to his legs and the slight light-headedness that was plaguing him had vanished.

“Are you ready to go home?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She walked him to the door, holding it open for him. He attempted to say goodbye, but she closed the door before he could speak.





CHAPTER

2

She ought to have killed him. She should have drained him whole, broken his neck.

And then what would I do with a corpse, stuff it in the refrigerator?

It’s not like she knew the first thing about disposing of a body.

Izel would have known.

She wasn’t Izel and she couldn’t dwell on this. She’d done what she’d done. The boy would live. Let it be. No murder. It would not have been honorable anyway, he was no armed foe, nor the member of an enemy clan. Perhaps, considering that, Izel would have agreed it was best to let him go.

But you have no honor, a nagging voice that sounded like Izel whispered in her ear. Guilt spoke with her sister’s voice.

Atl stopped scratching the dog’s head and opened the bedroom window, letting in the night air. She felt strong. Alert. Giddy and brimming with energy. She thought about stretching her wings, sneaking along the rooftops.

It was too dangerous. Everything was too dangerous in this city. She missed the North and the desert with its endless dark skies, the coldness of its nights against her skin.

The Tlāhuihpochtin had moved around Mexico through the centuries. They had likely originated in the north of the country, coming in contact with the Aztecs long before the foundation of Tenochtitlán and the establishment of their empire. They spread through central Mexico during the time of the Spanish Conquest and several clans ventured back north in the nineteenth century. Atl’s mother was born in Sinaloa in 1895, and though she lived in Mexico City for several decades, she never forgot the North.

Atl sat by the window, trying to remain still, holding her cup of tea between her hands. She took a sip and grimaced. It wasn’t right. She headed back into the kitchen, in search of sugar cubes. She found them and discovered that the ants from the other day had returned and were eating the cubes she had left out in the open.

She crushed the ants with the palm of her hand, even though it would likely do little good. If they had found their way in once, they’d find their way in again.

She popped two sugar cubes into her mouth and wondered what she’d do about this pest. Ant repellent. What was a good ant repellent? Vinegar? Perhaps. Cinnamon. She didn’t like the smell of it. Pepper? She thought ants didn’t like pepper. Except for sugar cubes, some drinks, her tea satchels, and a bag of dog food, her kitchen was empty.

Atl supposed she ought to stop by the supermarket to buy pepper. She could also buy food. Cans of tuna and vegetables. Cereal. She would not eat it. It was for show. In case she had visitors, as she’d had tonight. Not that she planned to have many visitors. She wasn’t staying in the most elegant of buildings. But that meant more sanitation sweeps. If a sweep did take place, they would look around, either to make sure she wasn’t harboring illicit substances or to see if they could steal something. She could see a curious sanitation worker going through the kitchen drawers and finding them empty, a bit fishy, that. She could picture the worker staring at her. A young woman, alone, no ID papers and no food. Northern accent. Let me check … my, this woman’s body temperature is not right.

Maybe they wouldn’t peg her for a vampire. Maybe the curious sanitation worker would think she was a junkie or a Croneng. There were tons of people with Croneng’s disease running around these days. It was a virus that made humans hemorrhage from the nose and gave them sores, spoiling the blood supply so that now on top of cancers, STDs, AIDS, and tuberculosis, vampires had to also watch their food to make sure it wasn’t tainted with this new disease. Vomiting dirty blood was no fun.

She’d heard people blaming vampires for this, saying they had caused it, which was ridiculous, but humans had a way of blaming vampires for everything these days. Back in the Middle Ages—back when her kind was still half-hidden behind myth and superstition—some people thought vampires caused the plague. They did not, though the bubonic plague did help to expand the reach and power of the Necros. Necros, just like the German Nachzehrers, when in a pinch, could feed off carrion, something unthinkable to other vampires. They found a plentiful supply of corpses in Europe while other vampires would have starved, deprived of a clean blood supply. The old wives’ tale that vampires liked nubile virgins perhaps had some root in the sensitivity of vampires to tainted blood. If you had a virgin on your hands then you could avoid drinking the blood of a syphilitic. But since STDs were not the only awful diseases humans carried, that did not provide much protection against anything.

The boy had remarked about her lack of furniture. The furniture could be explained by a recent move, but the lack of food … yes, she must do something about that.