They ventured into the alley behind the club.
She kissed him and Nick kissed her back with the indifference of a man pressing his lips against a piece of mutton. But she did not care. She did not notice. Her hands drifted toward his belt and he considered his options. Sometimes sex and blood mingled well together. He didn’t mind playing with his food.
Nick grinned against her mouth and bit his own tongue, hard, then kissed her again, his blood coating her mouth. It took only a few seconds and the girl went lax in his arms.
“Take off your shirt,” he commanded her, and she did, an obedient doll.
“Your name is Atl.”
“My name is Atl,” she said.
She sounded wrong. Atl had a beautiful voice.
“Kiss me,” he said, deciding it was better if she didn’t speak.
She did. But then, when he looked at her, he frowned. He liked doing this. He liked using his power to control humans, wrap them around his little finger. Something felt wrong, though. It wasn’t a sudden attack of morality, but the realization that Atl would never, ever yield like this to him.
Staring at the girl, he realized what a cheap imitation she was.
“Put your top back on,” he said.
Her black hair, now that he looked at it more carefully, was a bad dye job. Her eyes, which had seemed as dark as Atl’s inside the club, were a honeyed brown. She looked nothing like Atl. The mere sight of her repulsed him.
“Bite your tongue,” he said, and she did. Hard.
Blood dribbled down the corner of her mouth.
He threw his head back before crashing down on her, his serrated teeth tearing the skin like it was papier-maché. Yes, they were also different from the Aztec vampires: his kind had fangs. They had sharp teeth and strong neck muscles to pull and rend the skin. The Tlāhuihpochtli had her nails and a stinger.
A stinger. Nick thought that was ridiculous. Give him strong fangs to eat his meat.
Nick slurped at the blood and took another bite of the woman’s flesh, enjoying the taste. She whimpered and in response he bit her harder, bit her right ear and tore a chunk of it. After that she didn’t complain and he was able to drink without her annoying noises bothering him.
He could hear the music coming from the club, he could feel its vibrations as he pressed the woman against the wall. Her heart beat erratically and she opened and closed her mouth, like a fish out of water.
It was good to have a proper meal again and he was enjoying himself immensely when the girl had to ruin it, suddenly growing still. She had died quickly, useless in every single way.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then looked around. The music was still beating loudly. No one had seen him. He dragged the girl behind a bunch of wooden crates. He discovered a dirty blanket on the ground and covered her with it.
CHAPTER
7
My arm hurts. That was Domingo’s first thought.
Cold. That was the second.
“Drink,” Atl said.
It was a glass. She was pressing a glass against his lip and it felt cold. Domingo swallowed.
“Open your eyes.”
He did. She was sitting beside him, on the floor. Domingo blinked. His head felt like it was about to explode.
“Am I a vampire now?” he asked.
Atl chuckled. “Don’t be silly. I told you that wasn’t possible. You should stop believing the crap they say about us.”
He rubbed his hands together. “It’s what they put in books,” he said. More like comic books, but what was the big difference?
Atl snorted and pressed the glass against his lips once more. Domingo swallowed obediently.
“The books, right. All that garbage from before 1967 still sticking around,” she said. “Can you hold this?”
“I can try.”
Domingo clutched the glass with both hands and slowly raised it to his mouth.
“What about 1967?” he asked, because he wasn’t sure of the reference.
“Doesn’t ring a bell?”
“No. I didn’t do well in school, though,” he admitted.
It hadn’t been Domingo’s fault. Most days his mom didn’t pack a lunch for him and it was a pain in the ass completing his homework with his stepfather bellowing. His brothers were not much better. He had liked art class and music class and reading, but the teachers were indifferent and many of his classmates unkind. He didn’t mind dropping out.
“That’s the year humans discovered we existed, that it wasn’t just folklore and superstition. There was a huge panic. A bunch of countries tried kicking the vampires out. Spain and Portugal made a big show of it. That’s how we ended with so many European varieties in Mexico.”