Certain Dark Things(62)

Quinto, Belén, and the two men looked at him with mute incomprehension. Domingo tossed himself against the mesh door, shaking it hard.

“She’s going to die! Quinto, help her!”

Quinto took out his keys and with shaking fingers opened the door. Belén and the two men just stared at the unfolding scene, watching as Quinto dragged his backpack inside the cell and began rummaging in it.

“Do something!”

“I’m trying to find the damn epinephrine!”

Quinto managed to pull out a syringe and drove it into Atl’s chest. She immediately yanked it out and rammed it into Quinto’s eye. Domingo stepped back and lost his footing.

Atl pulled out a knife from between the folds of her jacket and threw it at one of the men, hitting him square in the middle of his forehead. The other man reacted quickly enough, grabbing a gun and shooting at her, but the bullet did not hit her and she landed on the man’s chest, breaking his neck with one clean movement.

Then she was up and standing with such speed Domingo did not understand what was happening at first. Belén gasped as Atl grabbed her by the neck, her long fingers squeezing.

“What are you doing?” Domingo asked.

“I need blood,” Atl said.

“Don’t hurt her!”

Atl turned her head and stared at him; her voice was hard. “I won’t. Get my dog,” she said.

Domingo scrambled toward Quinto and pulled the keys out of his pocket. Quinto was moaning in pain, but Domingo had no time to help him. He hurried down the hallway, looking at each of the meshed doors. Cualli was way down the hallway, and when he came back with the dog, he found that Atl had Belén pinned against a wall, her mouth pressed against the girl’s neck. Belén gave him a panicked look.

“I told you not to hurt her!” he cried.

Domingo pulled Atl back. She looked at him with her other face, her bird’s face, her eyes narrowed into two angry slits.

“Atl, let her go,” he said.

She hissed at him and continued feeding. Belén was weeping, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Domingo swallowed. He bent down and grabbed the gun one of the men had dropped. His hands trembled. He had no idea how to use the weapon and he didn’t want to do this but he knew he had to. Atl just wasn’t herself right that instant.

“Let her go,” he said. “You’re going to kill her.”

“Don’t interfere.”

He pressed the gun against her back. “Atl, stop. I mean it.”

Atl spun around and clutched his face with one hand, tilting it a little and tilting her own head in turn, staring at him. Her eyes were dark and hard as obsidian.

“You mean it? Have you ever pulled a trigger, hmm?”

“Atl,” he muttered. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her.”

“This won’t kill her.”

“Fine. Let her go now,” he said, and somehow he managed to speak calmly.

She seemed to respond to his tone, her hand sliding down his face and pulling away.

“Very well,” Atl said, and she shoved the girl aside like she was a wet rag, then walked into the cell where Quinto lay whimpering.

Domingo caught Belén in his arms and held her as she sobbed. For a moment he thought Atl was going to kill Quinto, but all she did was grab her jacket from the place where it lay on the mattress and put it on with the greatest care, as if it weren’t stained and filthy. Then she walked out, pulled her knife from the corpse where it was lodged, and hid it between the folds of her jacket. When she raised her head to look at Domingo her face had shifted and seemed human again.

“You should run now, girl,” Atl said.

Belén disentangled herself from Domingo’s arms and, obeying Atl, rushed down the hallway, away from them. She knew the building, and Domingo was confident she’d find her way out safely. Or she’d hide until it was safe enough to exit.

“Do you want to follow her?” Atl asked him, her voice a challenge.

No, he thought, and another part of him cried a definitive Yes, I want out of this. And he kind of wondered why he was doing this, why he was sticking to her. The answer was not a coherent thought, merely the thump of his heartbeat.

He shook his head and offered her the gun he was holding. She snatched it from his hands.

“You know a way out?”

“There’s a loading area,” Domingo said. “We can get out from there.”

Atl raised her head, as though she were listening for something. “They’re here. We need to go.”





CHAPTER

25

Rodrigo said he had a team of people ready, but in Nick’s opinion the seven goons that comprised the team looked pretty damn shitty. Nick didn’t know what sewer the new recruits had crawled out of, but they certainly didn’t seem very skilled. Hell, none of them had even met a vampire before. They were Mexico City lads, cocooned in their shit city for far too long. Nick looked at their weapons, scattered over the living room, and smirked.

Regular guns. As if that could kill one of his kind. Nick grabbed a rifle that had been left on a large dining room table and held it up, pointing at one of Rodrigo’s paintings. He quickly turned his attention toward the knives, which were more interesting, and the stun batons. Now that was real vampire-hunting gear.