Certain Dark Things(58)

And that’s when he saw them, under the shadow of a dead tree: three bodies. Two teenage boys. Someone had inflicted tiny cuts on their faces and bodies, then cut off their heads, and the severed heads stared at him, their eyes bulging out. The third was a pregnant woman. A shot had blown off half her head and she’d been decapitated. Her belly was a bloody mess.

He knew, in a corner of his heart, that this was a true memory and no nightmare. It was Atl’s memory.

Domingo opened his eyes and lifted his hand, glancing down at Atl. She was breathing slowly, eyes closed, and her face now was that of a normal young woman. Just a girl, asleep, but for the first time he felt apprehension, the trickle of fear upon his shoulders.

And then he heard it. Footsteps. Several people.

He whirled around to find himself face-to-face with Quinto. He wasn’t alone. The Jackal and two of his buddies were with him.

“Hey, *,” the Jackal said. “I came to meet your new girlfriend.”

“Fuck,” Domingo whispered.





CHAPTER

23

Atl waited for Izel to scream. She waited for her to wail. She waited for anything except the calm, restrained look on her sister’s face, as though someone had dragged an eraser across a blackboard, cleaning the slate.

“Aren’t we doing something?” Atl asked.

“I am making arrangements for the funeral,” her sister said.

“I’m not talking about the funeral. I mean something.”

Izel was standing beside the large axolotl tank, observing the white and black salamanders as they swam up and down.

“You know, people tend to focus on the neoteny of the axolotl. It reaches sexual maturity without ever undergoing metamorphosis. But its more interesting aspect, the reason why we’ve always kept a few as pets, is their healing ability. They are capable of regenerating whole limbs, even vital parts of their brains. We are able to do that too, of course. In that sense we are like cousins.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Atl said.

“We will grow anew. We have been damaged, but we will heal.”

Atl circled the axolotl tank. “Yeah, and that’s fine, but what are we doing about them? What are we doing with Godoy? What are we doing with the *s—”

“We do nothing,” Izel said.

Atl did not speak, could not find the words, any words, for the span of a good couple of minutes. “Mother has been murdered. They delivered her head to us,” Atl said.

“I know. The elders spoke yesterday, I am the cihuātlahtoāni now. And I say there shall be no retaliation.”

“No retaliation?” Atl repeated. “They sent us her damn head!”

They hadn’t even bothered returning the remains of their two cousins who had been with their mother. Rumor had it they’d fed the corpses to their dogs.

They did write a note to go with the head: GODOY CONTROLS THIS TOWN, BITCHES.

Izel’s nails were pressed against the glass; she tapped them once, twice, thrice and raised her head to look at her sister. Her eyes were two pieces of onyx. “They’ll send us more heads if we attack them. Our cousins, our aunts—”

“Our cousins, our aunts, they want revenge.”

“Revenge is too costly.”

Atl scoffed and stared at her sister. She acted so strong, so sure of herself, and now here she was, unable to make what should have been a simple decision.

“You think if we stay here, with our arms crossed, they’ll magically leave us alone? They took out Wu last year and they’ve kicked out two of the Nachzehrer clans. If we don’t make a stand now we’ll be next.”

“I think I can probably negotiate a solution,” Izel said.

“You’d speak to them? You’d barter with the men who killed our mother?” Atl asked, aghast. “They broke the rules.”

Atl inched closer to her sister. The rage she felt could have filled the stupid tank, the whole damn room, while Izel looked indifferent, as if their mother were on vacation and everything was fine.

“We are in a vulnerable position. My resources are limited.”

“To hell with your resources. What about the family?” Atl asked. “Our hearts want nothing but a war death.”

It was a line from a Nahuatl poem they had both learned as children. But Izel, rather than looking uplifted by the words, seemed disgusted.

“You don’t give one shit about this family,” Izel said. “You never have.”

“And you’re probably glad Mother’s dead so you can boss us around like you’ve always wanted,” Atl said, her voice rising, shrill and strange, like she’d never heard it before. She was at the edge of panic.

Izel slapped her hard, her ring cutting Atl’s mouth. Atl tasted her own blood and glared at her sister. Izel turned back to the axolotl tank, while Atl grabbed her jacket and barged right out of the room, hurrying downstairs.

Three days later, Atl killed two of Godoy’s nephews and his favorite concubine. It was easy. They had a couple of bodyguards with them in the apartment, but the guards were human and there were old codes against slaying enemies’ wives or concubines. They were not expecting Atl, safe in their expensive nest. Godoy had violated those same codes when he killed Atl’s mother on neutral ground, but apparently he feared no retaliation.