Certain Dark Things(33)
Atl sat down on a plastic chair and leaned back, stretching her legs, her lips curving into a dismissive smile. “A harem?”
“Vampire guys have lots of babes with them. Dracula has three, four, probably more than that. Lavud also has a few. Your vampire men, the ones like you, they must be good with the ladies.”
“There’s no vampire men like me. Men of my subspecies don’t shift form, they’re weaker, and they live shorter life spans than the women. I guess you could call it a sex-linked disorder.”
“Oh. But still, I mean, do you have a guy back home?”
“No,” Atl said, picking up a graphic novel and thumbing through it. “No vampire women, either.”
Domingo felt better hearing that. For a moment he had been afraid there was a big vampire dude waiting for her, in a cape. Okay, maybe not a cape. A leather jacket. Though he found it hard to believe that vampire men or, you know, women, were not all over her.
“Yeah. I know how it goes. I used to have a girlfriend but that’s not the case anymore,” he told her because he figured it sounded like the mature thing to say. He was attempting to go for “aloof” and “sophisticated,” like they said in the magazines.
Atl stretched her arms up, as if reaching for the ceiling, and yawned, tilting her head. “Hey, just so we are clear: I’m not looking for a boyfriend. Especially not a human one.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Domingo stammered.
Though maybe he did mean it a little like that.
“Just in case,” she said, staring at him.
An uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Just when he thought they had a rhythm to their conversation going. Domingo chewed on his lower lip, racking his brains for something to say. Something to pull Atl back, something that would be interesting.
Domingo wanted to be interesting but he didn’t have much to say. He could tell her about the garbage, how the business of being a binner works, how you find stuff and sell it for scrap. It was the only thing he really knew a lot about. That, and comic books. ’Cause his stories, about the ghost station and the big rat, sure as hell didn’t seem to interest her.
He wanted to tell her something that didn’t make him seem like such a kid.
“Have you killed anyone?” he blurted.
“Enough,” Atl said, pushing herself up. “Well, I did your tour. I should head back to my apartment.”
“Or you could stay here,” Domingo said. “You can have my bed.”
Technically it was a mattress on the floor, but he thought it counted as a bed. He even had covers that matched, dark green.
“I’m heading to my place.”
“Okay,” Domingo said. “I just want to grab a few comic books and—”
“Stay here for now.”
“What for? I thought you needed my help, my blood.”
“And some f*cking space to breathe,” Atl said, irritated. “Come look for me four hours before sundown, all right?”
He walked her back to the entrance they’d used, which led back to an abandoned building. Atl slipped out without a word or a look at him. He watched her walk away, hands in her pockets.
CHAPTER
13
When she was a kid, Ana had liked watching cowboy movies with her grandma. There was a simplicity about them that appealed to her: good guys win. She always wanted to be a good guy. Or gal. That’s why she got into law enforcement. Unfortunately, real life is not like in the movies. All that Hollywood junk where they have super-advanced tech and clean, heroic cops? Not true. Of course, back when she first donned the uniform she thought she was going to magically clean the force from within. Those hopes had been dashed in Zacatecas, but the faint glimmer of heroism still remained.
Mexico City, they had told her, was different. The police force there was being reformed. Before, women could only aspire to be traffic cops or belong to the incredibly sexist Ladies Auxiliary, which was mainly dedicated to visiting public schools and telling kids how fun it was to be a cop. But not the new Mexico City police, this was going to be a state-of-the-art, modern force. Women would be required. Especially women like Ana Aguirre, a police officer with solid experience in Zacatecas and a letter of recommendation. Detective Aguirre had a nice ring to it. At bare minimum there were no vampires in Mexico City. It was safer, less violent, and with the drug dealers she’d busted Ana hadn’t made many friends in the narco world.
It turned out to be a crock of shit. They had printed manuals with gender-appropriate terminology and the like, but detectives still called gay men “faggots,” women were “bitches,” and if a “lady” was raped the first question to ask was what she’d done to incite the crime. The worst part was that nobody wanted Ana there. Castillo plain detested her. In Zacatecas, Ana had been tolerated, if not fully accepted, because she proved useful. Most of the other police officers had no idea how to deal with vampires, and they didn’t want to learn how to. Ana was willing to go into the neighborhoods with a high concentration of vampires, she was willing to question suspects who made her colleagues wet their pants, and she could handle herself if some sick f*ck decided he wanted to take a bite out of her.
It had been her grandma who taught her that. The old woman had lived through the Mexican Revolution and even in her old age she was an excellent shot. A country girl, Ana Aguirre’s grandmother had been exposed to much folklore and superstition. Some of it concerned vampires, and, it turned out, her stories were accurate. The result was that while other humans around the world had grown insulated from these tales, forgotten most of them, and entrusted themselves to modernity, Ana Aguirre’s grandmother had not, and she had been able to lavish her knowledge upon her granddaughter.