Certain Dark Things(57)

Quinto looked like he wasn’t going to move an inch, but the dog growled and he grabbed a blanket.

*

The city seemed strange as they drove to the kennels, quiet and gloomy, the only noise in the car the back and forth of the windshield wipers and the patter of the rain. Quinto wasn’t too thrilled that, on top of a vampire, he’d asked him to bring the dog along, but they’d all crammed into the Volkswagen in the end, with Atl in the backseat.

Quinto parked the car behind the old factory that had been retrofitted to serve as kennel and fighting arena for the dogs, and together they carried Atl inside. The place was a major disaster zone, a jumble of crates littering the main entrance. They walked down a narrow hallway that led to a large room filled with cages, most of them occupied by sad-looking dogs, and kept going. Their destination was the “hospital”—that’s what Quinto called it—a room that was fitted with several tables and special instruments so Quinto could patch up the dogs. Quinto turned on the lights and the room lit up.

“Over here,” Quinto said, and they lowered Atl onto a wheeled veterinary surgery table. “Christ. Okay, let me wash my hands and find my things.”

Quinto rushed around the room, pulling bottles off shelves and grabbing scissors, knives, and pliers. He dumped them onto a smaller table and dragged it next to Atl, muttering to himself.

“Okay, I see this *. The projectile, whatever the hell it was, broke into shards and is embedded in her arm and leg. I can clean it up and stitch her up, but I have no damn idea if I should administer epinephrine.”

“What do you mean?” Domingo asked, watching Quinto as he made a small cut on Atl’s arm.

“It could give her a heart attack for all I know. Okay, here’s one shard. Pass me that dish.”

Domingo stretched out his hand and held out a white ceramic dish. Quinto dropped a metallic sliver into it.

“I guess you shouldn’t give it to her, then.”

“Well, I don’t know. Her face is swelling. She’s lost a shitload of blood. Do I give her a transfusion? Where the hell do I get blood? I have no idea what I’m doing here. Here’s another shard.”

Quinto dropped the shard into the dish and Domingo watched him as he pulled several more bits of metal out and then stitched and bandaged Atl’s arm and leg.

Quinto kept muttering to himself. He grabbed a syringe and looked at Domingo. “I’m going to try and give her an intramuscular injection. I don’t know if this is going to help or not.” Quinto pushed the plunger down.

He took Atl’s pulse and shook his head. “Let’s try again.”

Quinto kept checking Atl’s pulse, watching her and shaking his head. “I think it’s working,” he said at length. “Shit. It’s like trying to treat an elephant. She’s got a ton of adrenaline pumping through her body and she barely twitches.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. There’s nothing I can do about the blood she lost.”

Domingo smoothed Atl’s hair away from her face. It was starting to change, slowly morphing into a more human shape. “And now? What do we do now?” Domingo asked.

“I think you ought to let her sleep. This is so wrong. Damn, what is it with you and girls? First you get your ass beat because of Belén and now you’re hooking up with a monster?”

“She’s not a monster.”

“Vampires … they suck people’s blood, man. Come on, you know that.”

“She’s not going to hurt me.”

Quinto gave him a skeptical sigh and crossed his arms. The light in the room was harsh, drawing stark lines upon Atl’s face so that he felt he could almost see every bone underneath her skin.

“I’m off,” Quinto said.

“What? Where? You can’t leave her alone. What if she needs help in a couple of hours?” Domingo protested.

“Yeah, I need to shower and go straight to bed.”

“Quinto—”

“Look, I’m just going to pull out the old cot you slept on a few times and nap. If she needs me, come and look for me in the back, all right?”

“All right. Thanks, by the way.”

Quinto didn’t reply. He moved toward the door, but paused to give Domingo one last look. “She’s a vampire. You need to get rid of her before it’s too late.”

Domingo did not reply. He bent down to pick up Atl’s jacket, which Quinto had tossed to the floor, and placed it on top of her, also drawing up the blanket they’d wrapped her in. He guessed he ought to find her clean clothes and a clean blanket, but there wasn’t much in terms of that around the room and he was afraid of looking outside and Atl suddenly having a relapse while he was gone. She was looking better now, but there were no guarantees she wouldn’t need more medical attention.

He patted her hand and pulled up a chair, sitting by her head.

*

He supposed he was dreaming, because he was standing in the middle of the desert and there was a tortoise crawling next to him. Domingo looked at it. The sun bleached the desert white, the animal looked like it was made only of bones. He turned and saw a fire burning in the distance. Smoke billowed up, black, staining the sky, but when he approached the fire had stopped burning and there were only ashes left. A pile of ashes blanketing the desert, which was now gray.