Certain Dark Things(32)

“What kind of warriors?”

“We guarded Huitzilopochtli’s temple. It was more of a warrior-priestess kind of deal,” Atl said.

“Ain’t that, like … Aztec?”

“Yes, Aztec,” Atl said, laughing. She spread her arms. “Mexico City used to be a city of canals. People would go down in canoes instead of streets and there were great temples downtown. And that’s where my people used to live.”

“That’s cool. Being a warrior. Must be cool.”

Domingo kicked the can too hard. It rattled, spinning away from them and under a vendor’s table. Atl stared at it.

“Must be,” Atl muttered.

She was standing in front of a stand selling T-shirts with the image of the Virgin on them, and the irony wasn’t lost on him that this was a vampire, right by the basilica, right by a bunch of rosaries and crucifixes and cheap plastic saints. She looked kind of sad, and he had no idea if it was because of the talk of her kind or maybe because vampires don’t deal well with Catholicism, but he wanted to make it right.

“Do you want to see my place?” Domingo asked, and he knew it sounded dumb, but he wasn’t smooth like Quinto and other guys. He never knew the right words or the right stuff.

Atl didn’t answer. She was still staring at the can.

“It’s real close. That’s the only reason I’m saying. ’Cause it’s nearby.”

A few stops on the subway and they’d be there, it was really nothing at all. Atl finally raised her head to look at him.

“A quick stop,” she said.

*

Domingo guided her into the tunnel, carefully illuminating the way with his flashlight. It was an easy walk, but you had to watch the bends of the narrow tunnel and sometimes the ceilings dipped and if you didn’t hunch down a bit you’d end with a big bump on the forehead. During his first weeks underground, that’s exactly what had happened. Now he had mapped the tunnels and he could walk them in complete darkness. Still, it never hurt to flash a bit of light in there, especially with the rats around. And, who knew, maybe a hobo could have snuck in. Domingo was pretty sure no one else knew about these tunnels, but he had learned to be careful.

“What is this place?” Atl asked, and he could tell she was a bit in awe. He congratulated himself on deciding to change the scenery.

“There are a few tunnels around downtown. Someone told me they were used by priests and nuns or guerrilla fighters, I’m not sure.”

“When?”

“A long time ago, I dunno,” he said. His grasp of these things, like of so many others, was incomplete.

She looked up at the tunnel’s ceiling. Water dripped around them, slipping through tiny cracks. It was cold and humid below, but Domingo didn’t mind, he peeled layers on or off as necessary.

“How did you find it?” she asked.

“I was looking for a ghost station.”

Atl chuckled, her voice echoing around them.

“Not like scary ghosts. Seriously. There are supposed to be abandoned stations down here. There’s one that is used by soldiers, like a secret one. And one is near a subterranean lake. I’ve never found the lake, though.”

He jumped over a puddle and turned around to offer Atl his hand, but she needed no assistance and evaded it with the ease of a dancer, landing next to him and giving him a smirk.

“It probably doesn’t exist,” she said.

“Well, I’m not sure. There are all kinds of weird things beneath the city. I know a guy who said they once found an abandoned bag on one of the trains and there was a human fetus inside. And there are rats. There’s this huge rat that hangs around near La Merced. It’s bigger than a dog.”

“Maybe it’s a dog.”

“It has yellow glowy eyes.”

“Well, then, that’s scientific proof,” Atl said, sounding amused.

“You sound really skeptical for a vampire.”

She smirked once more. “It’s probably because I am a vampire.”

They reached Domingo’s chamber and he hurried in, quickly illuminating the room with several of his lanterns. He had a lot of stuff, but he tried to keep it in order. There was his pile of clothes, a pile of plastic, a pile of old electric parts. Atl drifted toward the wall covered with illustrations from books and magazines. It was random clippings. Pretty girls mixed with funny drawings. Panels of Tarzan hovered next to a postcard of a painted ocean, which was the closest he’d been to a beach.

Atl leaned down to look at the image of the vampire woman in the white dress, and he felt himself blushing, feeling foolish.

“Dracula’s Mistress,” she said, reading the title out loud. “How Gothic.”

“I … I’ve read comics about vampires of that sort,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand. “The ones that turn to mist. Of course, you don’t turn to mist.”

“No one turns to mist. That’s just stuff they tell kids to sell shit.”

“It sounds cool,” Domingo said. “Plus the whole harem.”

Vampires in the stories were hyper rich. They got to live in castles and had lots of servants. They were mesmerizing. And there had to be an element of truth to the stories because Atl did have money and she wasn’t nowhere near ugly.