38
Nick ripped the bandage from his cheek, irritated by the way it itched, and scratched the new skin as he walked around the shacks. Scared humans peered through makeshift doors and windows, and hid quickly as he passed by.
He saw a figure running with a dog. Atl’s human friend. No one was getting out of this place, not the dog and not that boy and not Atl.
“Get him back here. Alive,” he told La Bola, and La Bola nodded, running clumsily toward a shed. He looked at Ana. “Go with him.”
He had never trusted the efficacy of Rodrigo’s friends, and he wasn’t going to start now. Ana was only a meat puppet, but she was his meat puppet, under his control.
“All four of you, I want that girl alive, too,” he told the others.
“Might be easier to finish her off here,” Rodrigo replied dryly.
“That’s not what my father wants, is it? It’s definitely not what I want.”
No. He wanted her dead real slow. He wanted Atl to enjoy the same pain that afflicted him as his muscles stretched and tried to achieve their proper form.
“As you wish,” Rodrigo said.
He snorted. They split up, Nick and two of the men heading in one direction, Rodrigo taking the others.
They stomped through the landfill, the men raising their flashlights while Nick scanned the darkness for the girl. Broken glass crunched under his shoes. The overwhelming scent of rotten food filled his nostrils and Nick wished he had a damn handkerchief. And his clothes … his clothes and shoes would no doubt be ruined. He could never wear this again, not after walking through such a shithole.
That was another item to add to Atl’s list of sins. She’d dragged him from his home, across the country, all the way to Mexico City and into a fucking landfill. She had insulted him, she had kicked him, she had tried to blow his head off. That bitch had a tab a mile long and Nick was going to collect.
Suddenly he heard three shots in rapid succession, followed by Rodrigo’s piercing scream.
Nick spun around and ran to the place where the screams and shots had come from, the two men rushing after him. They arrived in time to see a vampire draped over what had once been Rodrigo and was now a sack of flaccid flesh and bones.
It was feeding.
Nick recoiled in horror and then stood still. He had a stun baton with him but he had forgotten how to wield the weapon, too disgusted to process what was happening. His men seemed equally shocked, their hands trembling.
He took a deep breath. “Kill him,” he told the men.
They stared at him, utterly horrified.
Nick bared his fangs at them. “Go, now, or I’ll gouge your eyes out,” Nick ordered.
The men still looked terrified, but they obeyed. They carried short-barreled, pump-action shotguns and the bullets were silver-coated, but even though they peppered him with bullets, the Revenant didn’t seem too concerned, darting forward and pressing his hand against the face of one of them. The man began to convulse and Nick watched with sick fascination as the victim’s whole body quickly shrank, the skin turning yellow and wrinkled as life was drained out of him.
The other man had lost his composure and now began shooting without any finesse, shooting both his twitching friend and the vampire. The vampire let go of the man he was clutching and jumped onto the fool with the rifle, ripping it from his hands, then shoving him against the floor and squatting over him.
Nick, who had been holding back, pressed against the wall of a sad shack, crouched on the ground, and grasped a long, rusty piece of metal—perhaps once part of a fence—that was being used to support a clothesline. He pulled it out and walked behind the vampire. The creature was too busy feeding to notice him coming. He jammed the piece of metal down, into the vampire’s back, pinning him down as though he were a butterfly, on top of the dead goon.
“Stake through your damn heart,” Nick said, feeling terribly accomplished as he did this.
A muffled groan made Nick turn around. Rodrigo, now closer to a mummy from Guanajuato than a real person, was still alive. He opened and closed his mouth, his hands scrabbled the dirt.
“Ha,” Nick said, glancing down at the old man who had pestered him for years and years. “Look at you.”
Rodrigo moaned. Nick raised his foot and brought it crashing down into Rodrigo’s head. The skull cracked like a porcelain teacup, bits of bone spilling and jumping through the air.
“Idiot,” he whispered.
The night air felt good against Nick’s face and he grinned.
Ana came then. She was not alone. The teenage boy was with her, his eyes wide with fear.
“Good work,” Nick said, clapping his hands. “Bola?”
“Dead.”
“So much for that,” Nick said. His father might regret the loss of Rodrigo and La Bola, but Nick considered this a great victory for himself. Father would look at him with a newfound respect after this. After he brought him the girl.