Certain Dark Things(24)
“Yes, I read your mind. Pray that’s the only thing I do. I might kill you for coming here, insolent brat. It might teach a lesson to that stupid girl who sends you. What does she think? Who does she think she is? People have begged for my audience, sent gifts and proper letters, there are protocols, and there is tradition, people have…” He trailed off, frowning, as if he’d run out of breath.
“Sir, she really needs your help,” Domingo whispered.
Bernardino lifted a hand dismissively and stepped away. He stroked the cat’s back and shook his head, muttering a couple of words in a language Domingo failed to understand.
“My apologies. Time and isolation do strange things. Of course, the levels of serotonin do not help,” the vampire said.
“The what?” Domingo asked.
“Serotonin. A neurotransmitter. The low levels in our brains make us violent, impulsive, self-destructive. It’s worse in some types than others. We are not very nice creatures. You are foolish to seek the company of vampires. Have you any idea what I am talking about?”
“Humans are not very nice either,” Domingo said. He thought about the Jackal, who beat him. Domingo didn’t want to say that everyone was an *, but many people are *s when you’re living in the streets.
“Apples and oranges. Most humans would not look at you and wonder what your bone marrow might taste like, would they?”
Okay, yes. Maybe. But it wasn’t like you wouldn’t get killed in the streets for your wallet, and sometimes simply for the hell of it. Kids disappeared and they weren’t snatched by vampires. Maybe vampires were bad, but other things were just as bad. Cops could spend the weekend beating you or pimps could decide they needed a new warm body. Atl wasn’t beating him and she wasn’t pimping him.
“It doesn’t matter what she thinks of me,” Domingo said. “What matters is she sent me and she needs an answer, so stop trying to scare me, I ain’t gonna scare. So, what’s it gonna be?”
Bernardino chuckled. The way he carried the cat it seemed like he was carrying a baby. Domingo wondered if vampires liked animals. He might ask Atl about that. There were a ton of things he didn’t know about her kind.
“You are … plucky,” the vampire said. “It amuses me.”
The vampire’s face had the coldness of an autumn moon yet Domingo sensed he had passed muster.
“Whatever you say, as long as you help Atl,” he replied with the stubbornness that can only be present in one’s youth, when a boy doesn’t know any better.
“Ah, Atl. Yes. Very well. I can’t give you exact coordinates. I can give you another name, though.”
The vampire moved to stand by the curtains, ripping a piece of paper from a pile of notebooks and scribbling on it. He motioned for Domingo to come closer. He rose and walked to the vampire’s side.
“Elisa Carrera,” Bernardino said in a low voice, handing Domingo the scrap of paper.
The vampire pulled away the curtain, revealing a bricked window. He smiled. Domingo could see the tracery of dark veins upon his skin.
“Run along now,” the vampire muttered. “We are done. I’m tired.”
Domingo moved toward the door. The vampire began to crank the phonograph, stale notes spilling out. The cat meowed.
CHAPTER
10
It took a while, but Ana found what she was looking for after combing through the police’s image database. It was not well organized, which was what caused the delay, but she didn’t want to stamp UNSOLVED on this file without at least giving the investigation some minimal effort.
And there it was, under the gang and symbols category: the shark tattoo. It belonged, just as she’d thought, to a group of Necros. Northern narcos. The Godoy family. She’d heard of them. The discovery did not make her happy.
Most countries had taken measures against vampires since the ’70s, measures that grew increasingly hostile. Many vampires, a lot of them from Europe, knowing how these things went, simply underwent a mass migration toward the countries that would take them. Countries with corrupt officials who would issue admission papers for vampires who should have been turned back at the airport. Places where citizenship was easy to purchase or sanitation officials were not too stringent if one could cough up the necessary dough. Mexico, corrupt yet stable, free of wars and political upheavals, was a favorite destination, though Brazil and Argentina also enjoyed a steady influx of vampires.
By the time Ana was in high school in the ’80s, all ten vampire species were represented in Mexico, in varying degrees. Most numerous were the Necros.
At first, things remained pretty much the same. This stasis was interrupted in the ’90s. More vampires arrived or expanded their power base, rivalries grew, alliances evaporated. In Mexicali, the Chinese vampires that had controlled the city and much of Baja California for decades suddenly faced encroaching rivals. In other states near the border, Tlahuelpocmimi clans that had commanded respect by their sheer age—they could trace their roots to Pre-Hispanic Mexico—saw their authority undermined by well-armed bloodsuckers fresh off the airplane.
Ana remembered speaking to an old, toothless Chinese vampire who said that what had really altered the balance of power had not been ease of movement among vampires itself: the Necros changed the game.
“The Necros, they hold nothing sacred. They threaten the tlacoqualli in monequi,” the old vampire said, using a phrase the Aztec vampires employed that meant “the middling,” a balanced state.