By Yvonne Navarro
The night-sky sparkles overhead, reminding Mooney Lopez of the way her twins sometimes throw glitter at glue-spotted black poster board. Beautiful, serene in the way that only something vast and unemotional can be, infinitely removed from the grievances of earth’s creatures. The moon is just as distant, deceptively warm-looking in the abyss of the overhead universe, all the while casting its true, icy blue light on the desert below. God’s eye, perhaps—dispassionate, judgmental, condemning.
Her boyfriend, Tyler McKinzie, stands beside her but doesn’t break the silence. He knows intuitively that this is her time, to reflect, to plan, to question which path might lead to what future. Thanks to the war most of the human scientists are immersed in the study of the virus that activates junk DNA and triggers vampirism, but some still work on other medical conditions, industry, physics. Not too long ago, one claimed to have found proof that a person’s soul continued after the body’s death, as energy that passed into an alternate universe. Mooney finds it particularly interesting that humans have grabbed onto this theory with the same tenacity that the spine-covered joints of a cholla cactus sink into the skin of a careless hiker. How can they not realize that their alternate universes have already arrived?
Humans.
When had she started thinking in those terms? Humans: them. Vampires: me, my children, Tyler. For a long time she’d fought the notion, asking herself how could she suddenly not be human when that’s what she’d been born. In retrospect, the change hadn’t been all that fast, like some sort of then-that, now-this thing. It just felt that way in her memory. She still looked human, could pass for a normal woman anywhere as long as she stuffed her rattlesnake-patterned hair under a hat. When she’d turned, her ability to see at night had improved tremendously, and for a while she’d been worried that her pupils would change and take on the vertically elliptical shape so common in nocturnal snakes. Ultimately her pupils had remained round, although her nearly black irises had lightened to a rather lovely golden brown. Some folks even think she’s pretty.
But… no. She isn’t human. Not anymore.
“There,” Tyler says suddenly.
Mooney turns her head and follows the silhouette of Tyler’s pointing finger. In the distance, too far away to get there on foot, are moving lights, so small they look more like candle flames than spotlights or, more probably, headlights. There are six… no, eight of them, but there are no roads that far out and night driving is treacherous. One second you’d be inching around a boulder or across a rock-filled wash, the next your front end could drop two feet into a ground fissure and you’d have broken the axle. Whoever was out there would be long gone before Mooney and Tyler could close the distance, and she couldn’t spot any landmarks that were clear enough in the dark to call for a helicopter.
“No way to catch them,” Tyler says, confirming her thoughts. Then, “What the hell are they doing all the way out there? It’s close to the border but there are easier spots to cross.” He sounds irritated at his inability to decipher this middle-of-the-night mystery. They’ve been watching less than two minutes and four of the six lights have already disappeared; as they watch, the last two wink away.
“So much for that.” Mooney stares into the blackness for another few seconds, then turns back toward the truck. “Let’s head out. It’ll take us an hour to get back to town.” Tyler follows her without saying anything. That’s one of the things she likes about him—he’s a quiet young man who doesn’t feel the urge to always talk.
They are almost to Mooney’s truck when someone steps out of the overgrown mesquite brush six feet to Tyler’s right.
Tyler goes into an instinctive crouch at the same time Mooney hisses, the warning sound sliding up from somewhere deep in her lungs and incorporating a vibration in her throat that mimics the shake of a rattlesnake’s tail.
“Hi,” says a childish voice. “I’m lost. Can I go with you?”
***
The little girl tells them her name is Geneva and that she’s five years old. She doesn’t reveal it, but Mooney and Tyler know immediately that the child is a vampire, although she hasn’t yet manifested any kind of characteristic. Mooney’s own children, twins Sitol and Judum, are the same way—still externally featureless as far as their true ancestry but wild and dangerously untamed in their immaturity. Like most untamed young, Geneva instinctively submits when in the presence of those of her own kind who are larger and superior. Had Geneva been exposed to the ice virus by a bite? Born of a vampire mother? Or sired by a vampire father? Would a human woman be able to survive such a pregnancy? Mooney shudders at the sudden notion of an unsuspecting human woman being consumed from the inside out.
Mooney shakes herself, then walks over and starts the 4-Runner’s engine so she can turn on the headlights. She and Tyler study the girl in the paltry illumination; the glow seems to be eaten by the darkness that surrounds them, compressed by something so much bigger. Mooney thinks of that old science fiction question about what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Nowadays the darkness has become unstoppable but there’s no immovable object.
“What’s your last name?” Mooney finally asks. When Geneva looks at her with a blank expression, Mooney tries again. “Where do you live? You know, when you’re with your mom and dad?”
That same blank look.
And finally, “How did you get here?”
Not a word.
“I don’t like this,” Tyler says. “Something’s not right.”
Mooney scans the area around them, but the glare of the headlights makes it impossible to see anything. There is no sound above the slightly whiney hum of the Toyota engine. She pushes two fingers into the center of her forehead, tries to rub away the spot of tension that has suddenly settled there. “She had to come from somewhere,” she says. “Kids don’t just magically appear out of nothing.”
“I say we leave her and get out of here.”
Mooney’s mouth falls open. “You can’t be serious.”
“She’s a vampire child. You know she can take of herself.” Tyler’s gaze focuses on Mooney. “This is some kind of a trap.”
Mooney thinks of her own children. “No,” she says. “She’s just—”
“Please don’t leave me,” Geneva suddenly says. Her shrill voice almost makes Mooney jump. “I’ll be good, I promise.”
Mooney’s mouth snaps shut. She’d been about to say She’s just a child, but there is something odd about the combination of Geneva’s words and tone of voice, almost mechanical. Practiced. Her eyes narrow and she backs away from the girl. “Get in the truck,” she tells Tyler. “Now.”
“Not a good idea.”
Mooney freezes at the voice and figures slide from behind the brush and rocks surrounding the small clearing they’re in. She counts three, four… a total of five shapes strategically placed at the points of a star around the 4-Runner. They are blacker silhouettes against the shadows except for their faces; those are pale, blurred ovals. Even if they are unarmed—which is a stupid thing to assume—there is no way to take all of them out at once. Their stealth alone makes her know they aren’t human. Geneva has sidled backward until she blends in with the dark and stands at the side of one of the unidentifiable shadows. Tyler was been right: this is a trap.
“Who are you?” Mooney’s right hand starts to creep toward her Beretta, then halts at the voice’s next words.
“We’re just as fast as you are, Agent Lopez. Faster, perhaps.”
Her vision catches movement just outside the circle of light only a fraction of a second before a new figure steps into view. She doesn’t have time to contemplate how unnervingly swift this man is, only sees that he’s tall and heavily armed, dressed like some sort of Mexican bandito. She has no idea whether this guy is authentic or not because she’s only seen them on television, but he has the bandoliers and oversized pistols hanging off each hip, old dusty boots, baggy faded jeans. The only thing he’s missing is a sombrero; instead, his head is uncovered and his hair, which looks black in the headlights, hangs straight to mid-bicep. Instead of the swarthiness so common in the poorer Mexican ancestry, his skin is startlingly white, the shadows on his face a deep, unrelenting gray. His skin is pitted with acne scars and his eyes focus on Mooney as though there’s nothing more important in the universe. A small crossbones—no skull—is tattooed on his left temple.
It’s the last thing she wants to do, but Mooney lets her hand drop. “What’s this about? Do I know you?”
“My name is Heitor Nicanor,” he says in heavily Mexican-accented but excellent English. He takes a shallow bow and makes a gesture that is similar to an Arabic salaam, which Mooney finds vaguely insulting considering she and Tyler are unquestionably prisoners. “You may call me Heitor. I feel certain you have never heard of me, but you will certainly remember me in the future.”
“Can we just get on with this without the game playing?” Tyler suddenly asks. “What do you want?”
Nicanor fixes his black gaze on Tyler and raises one eyebrow. “Ah, a man who is direct. An admirable trait provided it is not mistaken for impatience.”
Mooney doesn’t flinch. “We’re waiting.”
Nicanor sighs. “Very well. And I was so looking forward to more of a conversation.” He inclined his head to the side and another man, dressed a little differently but just as heavily armed, steps into the light. “There is me,” Nicanor said, “and there is my family. As you have no doubt figured out, we are vampires.”
“Your family,” Tyler repeats.
“Being related by blood is not the only way one becomes family,” Nicanor says. “Please do not interrupt me again.” From somewhere in the blackness it sounds like at least two rifles are cocked. “As I was saying, my family and I run a business. This—” he sweeps his hand from left to right, seemingly encompassing the entire desert “—is our factory.”
Mooney’s eyes are hooded. “I never would have guessed.”
“I have no time for your sarcasm, Agent Lopez,” Nicanor snaps. “I am here to present my terms.”
Mooney is taken aback, both by what he’s said and by the fact that he knows who she is. “Terms?”
“The lights you saw a few minutes ago were my employees, doing what I pay them for.”
“Which is?” Tyler interjects.
“Not your concern, Agent McKinzie,” Nicanor replies. “It is enough for me to say that the two of you will not return to this part of the desert, and my workers will remain unmolested by you. You will not speak of them to other Border Patrol agents, or to your superiors.”
So he knows Tyler, too. Mooney scowls as a double shot of anxiety winds down her spine. “That’s absurd.”
Nicanor sighs, as if this entire conversation is tiresome and something he would like to be finished. “This is not a negotiation, Agent Lopez. You will be well compensated for your silence.” The Mexican’s gaze flicks to Tyler, then back to Mooney’s face. “Although I am afraid your companion will have to be satisfied enough on your behalf.”
“We don’t take bribes,” Tyler says.
“Right. I am sure that you would rather die than be dishonest, protect the Border Patrol, save America, and all that bullshit.” Another sigh, but this one has an edge of impatience to it. “Agent Lopez, you will not be paid with money.”
Before Mooney can think of a response, Nicanor pulls something small and black from his pants pocket, then tosses it to her. Reflexes take over and she snaps it out of the air. When she looks down at her palm, she sees a battered cell phone, an older flip model. It’s obviously an untraceable burner. A small LED light at the top left indicates it has power. She looks at Nicanor incredulously. “You think I’m going to call you? To what—give you information or something?”
“There is something on it that you will want to see,” Nicanor says. His melodious voice is almost gentle. “It is the reason you will not only leave us in peace but steer others of the lawmaking variety away from our area.”
Mooney opens the phone and presses the ON button. A PIN number screen appears.
“What’s the number?”
“There is a war going on,” Nicanor says, ignoring her question. He sounds absurdly like one of Mooney’s high school history teachers. “The biggest in history, with the highest stakes. The winners will take everything, but don’t doubt for a moment that there will be disagreements along the way as to who truly wins. New societies are already being born and bred and… nurtured.” His mouth stretches in a smile, the first she has seen. Behind the dark slash of his upper lip is a double row of sharklike teeth. Mooney has never seen anything like it; Tyler’s shoulder muscles go tight beneath his shirt, so he hasn’t either. She suddenly realizes that although she thought being isolated in Sells was an advantage, it’s a disadvantage, too. Beyond what she hears on the news, she knows nothing of the other types of vampires out there, what they can do, how they feed. The ones who stayed in Sells after Josh and Rose died weren’t much to contend with as far as violent tendencies—after all, they’d come to Sells on Josh’s fake promises of building a vampire utopia in a town that was accepting and free of danger. They are modern-day hippies who are happy to hunt in the desert and do menial work for the humans in exchange for the few material things they need. They have adapted to their new lives, and the humans in Sells have accepted them.
But in the rest of the world…
“What are you?” She wants to demand they tell her but she doesn’t; instead she intentionally modulates her tone so that it’s filled with admiration.
It works, and Nicanor’s expression turns arrogant. “We are cihuateteo,” he says. “Born of the Aztecs and their belief in the goddess Cihuacoatl, to whom many sacrifices were made. In fact, we still make offerings to her every day.” He chuckles unpleasantly. “The ancients built many wondrous things, but they also made many mistakes. Such as believing cihuateteo were only women.”
Before Mooney can ask any more questions, Nicanor suddenly flicks his hand. “Enough with the chit chat. I have things to do, and you do, too. The PIN number is 2012.”
He pauses, then the gaze he fixes on Mooney somehow intensifies. She feels it as an almost palpable, energy-sapping thing. For the first time since she turned, she suddenly knows what it’s like to be on the other side, prey instead of predator. His next words stab her with so much terror her knees nearly buckle.
“The number should be easy for you to remember. It’s the year your children were born.”
And as quickly and eerily as they appeared, Nicanor and his companions are swallowed up by the surrounding dark. One second they’re just inside the light cast by her truck, the next second they’re not.
Stunned, Mooney stares after them, the phone clutched in her hand. She can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think. In another second, she blinks as Tyler pries the phone from her stiffened fingers. Her mind registers that his hand is shaking as he punches in the number—2012—then stares at the screen.
“Oh my God,” he whispers.
Tyler offers her the phone and for a long moment Mooney doesn’t want to take it, doesn’t want to know what he’s seeing that makes his cheeks go pale and his eyes widen in a way that she’s only seen in late-night horror movies. Even so, she doesn’t seem to have control of her own body, because her hand reaches for it anyway, somehow holds onto the black plastic, then brings it to where her eyes can focus on the tiny screen. The image is in color, and—
Everything in Mooney’s universe just…
Stops.
Her daughter, Sitol, has a mesquite branch and pokes at something on the ground. Her brother, Judum, peers at the ground with a look of intense concentration on his chubby face. The trailer is behind them, so the photograph was taken from somewhere in the desert, looking at the back yard. Taken without her children, who have exceptional hearing and smell, knowing someone was watching them. Taken with the photographer getting close enough to clearly discern the individually embroidered flowers across Sitol’s blouse, count the number of portholes in the pirate ship image on Judum’s T-shirt.
Without consciously knowing what she’s going to do, Mooney’s thumb finds the right arrow button on the keypad. Despite the high buzzing in her head, she taps it. Another image flicks onto the undersized screen.
Her children, asleep on the pull-out sofa bed in the living room. Tangled in the sheets with them are the two new toys she bought them last Saturday, only three days ago. Their faces are relaxed and they look like little angels, with their long, dark eyelashes and pink, cherubic mouths. The photo was taken from above and at a slight angle. It’s twilight so the living room lamp is on but neither she nor Tyler is in the picture, which means they are relaxing out front or, worse, sitting at the tiny kitchen table while someone climbs up the backside of the trailer, looks in the window, and takes this picture.
Mooney presses the arrow button again, but the screen only goes back to the first image. So that’s all there is… perhaps. The number of photos doesn’t matter, she knows that. What matters is that someone—no, the eerie men and women who just seemed to melt into the darkness—knows about her children and can get that close to them, even with Mooney right there.
Close enough to kill them.
***
Mooney is waiting for Chief Delgado as soon as he walks in with his Starbucks coffee. She swung by the trailer to check on the kids, then headed right over to the station. He eyes her warily as she settles on the hard wooden chair in front of his desk. She’s seen him in town occasionally but not spoken to him face to face since the day he brought the Border Patrol to recruit her. Except for a deepening of the wrinkles in his forehead and around his mouth, he hasn’t changed.
“So,” Delgado says with false cheerfulness, “how are you doing, Red Moon? Word around town is that you have a boyfriend who’s also joined the Border Patrol and your kids are growing, uh…” He stumbles a little here and Mooney grins inside and doesn’t say anything, forcing him to admit what he knows. “Growing quickly,” he finally finishes. Then he brightens. “People are talking about how you’re doing a fantastic job.”
Delgado thinks he’s moved the conversation to safe territory, but Mooney is about to show him just how scary that can be. She leans forward. “I need your help, Chief Delgado.”
He blinks. “Me?”
She flips open the burner cell phone, enters the PIN, then pushes it across the calendar blotter in front of him. “These are my kids.”
Delgado looks even more confused. “Okay. Uh… cute.” When she says nothing, he scrolls to the second picture, then frowns. He is just as smart as she thought he was. “Who took this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Someone looking in the window.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
Suddenly he’s all business. “How did you get the phone?”
So Mooney tells him the whole thing, starting with the lights she and Tyler spotted along the border and all the way to the white-faced cihuateteo vampires who disappeared. He asks a few questions and she answers the best she can; the truth is, she knows next to nothing that she didn’t pick up from the web when she got back to the trailer this morning. She asked around, but no one at Border Patrol or ICE seems to have ever heard of this new breed of vampire, and no one has ever seen them except her and Tyler.
Delgado listens and finally leans back. “So what can I do? I can put a couple of officers on your house, but only for a few days. And let’s face it, even with guns, my guys are probably no match for these things. I don’t want to see people get killed.”
“I understand.”
“You tell your supervisor about this?”
Mooney shakes her head. “They’ll flood that area of the border with agents but they won’t find anything unless Tyler and I go with them. And that’s not happening.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not gambling with my kids’ lives. Yeah, they’re both vampires.” The look on Delgado’s face as she says this is priceless. “And yeah, they’ve grown really fast and they can fight, but they’re also just children. The equivalent of three-year-olds.” She gives him a sideways look. “Unless…”
It’s all over Delgado’s face that he doesn’t want to ask, but he does anyway. “Unless what?”
Mooney lifts her chin and meets his gaze steadily. “Unless I can leave them here at the police station while we raid that location.”
The chief’s eyes almost bulge in surprise. “Red Moon, you know that’s impossible.”
“Why?” she demands. “The only safer place in this entire county would be with me, and you know I can’t haul them around in the desert. That would be insane.”
“And babysitting a couple of vampire kids isn’t?”
“Look,” she says, “we’re all nice and insulated here in Sells, but in case you haven’t noticed, the human-vampire war is going on full strength in the rest of the world. Bombs, terrorists, probably the same kind of deceit and corruption that’s been in every war ever fought. Maybe you need to catch up, spend some time on the Internet. I’m thinking that something is building over the border and it’s about to spill over. I don’t want Sells to get crushed when it does, but I have to know my babies are safe before I can even think about moving to fight it.” When he doesn’t say anything, Mooney spreads her hands. “That’s it,” she says. “That’s all I’ve got.”
Delgado sighs. “So unless I figure out a way to look out for the kids—”
“In the station,” Mooney interrupts. “In a nice, locked cell.”
“—you’re going to look the other way on what you guys saw out there.”
“I don’t have any choice. Chief, these are my children.”
Delgado says nothing for a time, just drums his thick fingers on the desktop. When he exhales, Mooney knows she’s won. He squints at her. “You really want me to lock your toddlers in a cell?”
Mooney decides not to tell him that doing so is protecting both the toddlers and the humans in the building.
***
Knowing that the twins are safe is like being freed from a suicide bomber’s vest that has been strapped on too tightly—Mooney finally feels like she can breathe again. She and Tyler set up a meeting with their supervisory agent and the operations officer, and what starts as a thirty-minute briefing ends up incorporating eight more agents of varying ranks and taking until almost noon. Neither of them have slept and by the time they finally get back outside, she feels like they’re running on adrenaline alone. She would have preferred not to involve humans—sometimes they are so fragile—but she and Tyler can’t handle these cihuateteo alone. At least with the Border Patrol backing them up, there’ll be firepower and equipment, a lot more of a presence to push these crazy creatures back into Mexico, where the Mexican government can figure out what to do with them.
Theoretically.
***
To say it doesn’t go well is like saying you were involved in a fender bender when your Volkswagen Bug was hit by a commuter train.
Tyler, who is much more gadget savvy than Mooney, used the GPS in the truck to mark the location before they left, so there’s no problem finding their way back to the previous night’s location. The area is saturated with everything from Border Patrol agents to ICE human trafficking specialists to county sheriffs. They are armed as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator movies, and as jumpy as a man walking barefoot across a carpet loaded with mousetraps. Everything—the agents, dogs, vehicles, portable spotlights—is carefully moved into place after dark, and at three a.m., the time some overpaid government supervisor deems to be optimal to catch human movement, someone throws a switch and that whole section of desert is lit up like a night game at Kino Stadium in Tucson. The agents use the illumination and the dogs as they thoroughly search everything within a widening circle.
Nothing is overlooked. It takes a good three quarters of an hour, but a couple of Border Patrol agents and a dog finally find the entrance to a tunnel.
Five minutes later, just enough time for several dozen agents and supervisors to push into the opening, the operation disintegrates into a particularly grisly kind of Hell on earth.
***
Mooney and Tyler are in the middle of the flow of men and women when the walls come alive.
At first the tunnel, which slopes downward abruptly enough to make the descent precarious, doesn’t seem like much more than a standard drug-moving setup. But when they get past the narrow first four or five feet of crude, earthen walls, the passageway suddenly widens into a chamber that has supporting poles from the floor to the ceiling, the far end of which can’t be seen from where they enter. Agents move forward in silence—there’s nothing to see here, no empty water bottles, discarded clothing, or backpacks, nothing that indicates anyone has been here recently. Even with the stronger spotlights, the leading agents are no more than flickering circles disappearing into the darkness when the first scream comes. Then there’s another, and another.
Mooney crouches instinctively and swings her Remington 12-gauge up at the same time she aims her flashlight at the ceiling. It’s clear, but her peripheral vision catches a glimpse of something moving; she drops the barrel forty-five degrees and realizes the walls have come alive.
“Look out!” she yells. “They’re coming out of the walls!”
The screams are escalating and now gunfire—automatic and semi-automatic—adds to the cacophony. In such an enclosed space, the noise is beyond deafening, nearly unbearable. The spotlights at the front go out, then there’s a surge of smaller lights headed back toward her and the exit behind her—whatever’s up ahead is enough to make the agents decide to retreat to where there’s more backup. She loses track of Tyler and has to hope that the training ICE gave him is enough to get him out of here, then barely dodges out of the way as something swipes at her from between the mass of bodies. She spins and catches it across the face with the butt of her shotgun, but it falls back for only a moment. An instant later a white-faced female cihuateteo is swaying in front of her. One cheekbone is shattered and spilling blood down her jaw and onto her shoulder.
“We should have known you would never be true to your heritage,” the vampire spits out. Her mouth is a tooth-filled horror and Mooney doesn’t want to think about what will happen if the woman gets close enough to bite. “You’ve betrayed us!”
“I’m not one of you. I never agreed to a deal with your boss,” Mooney says icily. “And I won’t be blackmailed. By anyone.”
The vampire throws her head back and lets out a soulless laugh that sounds more like the scream of a wounded cheetah than anything else. “You’ll be sorry, you stupid girl. Do you not think Nicanor already knows what you’ve done?”
“I’m sure he does,” Mooney says. Around her is still nothing short of chaos, but the submachine guns and full auto pistols are starting to pull the agents—the ones still alive—ahead in the game. She grimaces and glances over her shoulder as someone stumbles against her; the smell of blood and gunpowder is everywhere, soaked into the walls and ground and the clothing of the dead and wounded. “Where is he?”
The woman laughs again and Mooney almost cringes. “Where do you think?” Before Mooney can respond, the vampire opens her mouth wide and leaps for her. She is so fast there’s nothing Mooney can do to protect herself except reflexively squeeze the trigger of the Remington. The slug catches her attacker in the throat, almost decapitating her, and the heavy smell of blood in the chamber seems to increase by ten as Mooney is pressed back by the weapon’s recoil. The woman’s body slams against the wall, and only after the creature hits the dirt does Mooney realize that the cihuateteo was so fast she’d been able to rake her claws across the front of Mooney’s bulletproof vest. There are long, jagged rips in the nylon all the way to the panels underneath, and one of the Velcro straps has been completely cut in half.
The shooting and screaming sounds like it goes on forever, but in reality it’s only a couple of minutes before it’s all over. The cihuateteo, at least the ones who were down here, are all dead, and Mooney can see that the death toll for the Border Patrol and ICE agents is into the double digits. The limited air is full of smoke and there’s blood splatter everywhere—the walls, the floors, the ceilings, most of all on the humans. Mooney didn’t see any vampires with guns, but there are injured people, too, men and women who went down under friendly fire or the teeth and claws of the cihuateteo. The wounds are vicious and she suspects the death toll will grow by the time the medics get here and everything is cleaned up.
“Mooney!”
She spins at the sound of Tyler’s voice, but her relief fast forwards into concern when she picks him out of the bodies moving and staggering around her. “Are you—”
“I’m fine,” he interrupts. He waves off the hand she extends toward him. He doesn’t look fine. There is a wide, three-inch slash on the right side of his face that runs diagonally from this cheekbone to the side of his mouth. Everything below it is drenched in blood.
“Unless you can miraculously heal, you need to get that stitched up.”
“Later,” Tyler says. His gaze drops to her vest.
“No damage,” she tells him, then scowls at the mess surrounding them. Static-filled radio calls add to the discord, then a supervisor pushes past her with his radio clutched in one hand.
“Come in? Come in, base!” When he receives no response, he yells to no one in particular, “I’m going outside to get a signal!”
Mooney watches him leave, then turns her attention back to the bodies on the floor. Border Patrol green mixed in with the street clothes and black of ICE vests mixed in with scarlet. Lots of scarlet. After a couple of seconds, she walks over to where one of the vampire bodies lies face down, then bends and pulls the head up by the back of the hair. The creature’s ink-colored eyes have gone the color of spoiled milk above a thin nose and the nightmare mouth. She lets it drop. “It’s not Nicanor.” When Tyler gives her a questioning look, she says, “I need to know if he’s here.”
“I doubt it,” Tyler says as he looks around. “We haven’t figured out if they’re running drugs or people, but I think this is too much a peon’s place for him. Beneath him.”
“But talking to me wasn’t?”
“I think he saw you as kind of a… bonus. Someone he could get both protection and info from if the law was getting too close to his operation.” Tyler nods toward the other end of the room. “As soon as we get this all cleaned up and get the injured and bodies out, we’ll get reinforcements and move up the tunnel to see where it goes. Nicanor’s underground expressway will go down, but we’re going to find out what he’s moving first.”
Mooney scans the poorly lit chamber. She steps over outstretched limbs and finds another dead cihuateteo, but it’s not Nicanor. “Not good,” she mutters to herself as she searches for another dead vampire.
“What’s not good?” Tyler asks.
“The woman I killed,” Mooney answers. “She said I betrayed them. That Nicanor already knew that.”
Tyler frowns. “You’re right—not good.”
“Yeah.”
Abruptly he takes her by the elbow and starts working through the new people pouring into the tunnel, back toward the entrance. “Looking for him here is a waste of time,” Tyler says as he shoulders through agents and medical people.
“We need to get the hell back to Sells.”
***
But they’re too late.
Being what she is, a vampire, and using those skills in her job as a Border Patrol agent to… eliminate certain unwanted elements along the US-Mexico border, Mooney has seen a lot of carnage in the relatively short time since the virus triggered her DNA and turned her. But this, she thinks dully, is not carnage.
It’s butchery.
Half of the day shift has already arrived, and their patrol cars and personal vehicles are parked haphazardly around the Sells police station. Somewhere above the fog she’s temporarily frozen in, Mooney can hear sirens; this tells her the rest are on their way. People are yelling inside and outside the building, their words cut by the static from walkie talkies. There’s so much blood—
Her paralysis snaps and she lunges forward, shoving people out of the way to get to the front of the building. Tyler is right behind her. When she gets to the door, someone yells something at her and foolishly tries to stop her. She gives the man a push that knocks him on his rear and strides past him, heading for the cells in the back.
When she gets there, when she sees, all she can do is open her mouth and wail, while Tyler wraps his arms around her and holds her upright.
***
By noon the bodies in the holding cells—what remains of them—have been removed, along with the corpses of nine Sells police officers and two Border Patrol agents. The attackers didn’t just kill their victims; they were particularly brutal, decapitating some, ripping the limbs off others, and, in the case of the people in the holding cells, splitting them open from throat to belly after they’d bent back the iron bars to get to them and then tearing them apart; what’s left behind is a jumble of parts, like the leftovers from some kind of mad scientist dissection. The death scene has been photographed a dozen times, the names have been recorded, families notified, the paperwork started. Clean-up has begun at the station by a crew of specialists who handle such things, and Chief Delgado watches over all of it, orchestrating what seems like an impossible task: restarting the Sells Police Department after a third of it has been wiped out.
Through it all, Mooney sits in the chief’s office, staring at the floor. Tyler is with her, but wisely keeps his distance. At no other time since she turned has Mooney felt so much like the rattlesnake that seems to have been incorporated into her DNA; she is devastated, yes, but not so deep inside her is an anger like nothing she’s ever experienced. It makes her want to strike out at anything and everything, not just to bite but to rip and split, to savage flesh in a do-unto-others flash of fury and retribution for the same deeds that were done to her children. Worse, she has no desire for the feeling to pass. She wants to revel in it, let it take her and be damned to the consequences.
Eventually, however, it does pass. When it goes, hours later, it leaves an emptiness within her heart and soul that can never be filled again.
***
“We don’t know who did it,” Delgado says. His dark brown eyes are sympathetic but unyielding.
“It was the cihuateteo leader.” Mooney’s hands are on her hips in a don’t-fuck-with-me stance. She is not finished mourning, but she is done with the tears. For now.
“You can’t be sure—” Delgado begins, but Mooney doesn’t allow him to finish.
“Yes, I am.” Her eyes flash. “I mistakenly thought the twins would be safe here.”
“I’m sorry,” Delgado says softly. “So did I.” He pauses. “A great many people lost loved ones last night.”
“Then all those people should be wanting revenge as much as I do,” Mooney replies.
There’s a knock on his office door and they all look over as a young policewoman motions to Delgado. “Excuse me,” he says, and goes over to her. They step outside, and even though she can, Mooney has no desire to eavesdrop. The chief’s expression is enigmatic when he comes back a couple of minutes later. He clears his throat. “My people tell me there’s a chance the children might have survived.”
Mooney’s head snaps up. “What!”
“Are you sure?” Tyler asks. “How?”
Delgado shakes his head. “No, we’re not sure. But here’s the thing: although there was a lot of blood and… pieces in the cell, when it was all sorted out, they didn’t find the children. We figured they would be found elsewhere in the building, but it turns out we were wrong. All the dead have been identified.” Reluctantly he met Mooney’s gaze. “Your kids aren’t in this building.”
Mooney stared at him, sitting very still. She’d assumed Sitol and Judum were dead. It had been an all-out massacre and there had been bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere, half in and out of the cellblocks, in the offices, the restrooms—even the other prisoners had been killed, apparently for the sheer pleasure of it. Every corpse had been dismembered, disemboweled. They were also all decapitated, the bodies bitten, the bones broken, no exception. So when the bodies of her children hadn’t immediately been found, Mooney had been too far into shock to assume they wouldn’t be discovered when the carnage was finally sorted out. To think they might still be alive…
That was almost worse.
What are they going through right now?
The terror that had come with the realization that the cihuateteo would attack the station reared again, viciously. Had her babies been taken? Why?
To make me suffer.
She stands. “I’m going back to the tunnel.”
Delgado looks up at her. “Red Moon, I don’t have any manpower to send with you. It’s too dangerous. If you can wait—”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Delgado nods as Tyler moves to stand next to her, then the chief sighs. “Load up on ammunition before you go. Extra pistols, automatic weapons.” He glances at the doorway, then lowers his voice. “It would probably be wrong of me to tell you that the grenades are in the cabinet next to the M14s, and that the cabinet lock was smashed during the attack last night.”
A slight nod is the only inclination that Mooney hears him.
“Be careful out there,” Delgado says. He looks truly unhappy. “We don’t know what you’re getting into, and judging by last night, you don’t either.”
***
This time it’s full daylight when Mooney and Tyler get to the tunnel’s entrance. The area is full of both ICE and Border Patrol agents, so a few more won’t make much of an impact. They both know instinctively that the key is to look as though they already have an assignment to complete, so they stride past the personnel at the tunnel’s entrance without so much as glancing at them. The interior has been strung with lights and they follow them as far as they lead; it takes awhile to get to the end—the tunnel doesn’t go very deep, but it’s long. It terminates at a fissured slab of gray-black rock. A handful of ICE agents mill around, clipboards in hand. Their faces are bland but it’s obvious they’re at a standstill.
One man, tall with graying hair and an air of authority about him, turns to look at them. He doesn’t bother to introduce himself but the name tag on his shirt says Williams, and the insignia marks his rank as a Supervisory CPB Officer. “Who are you?” he asks. “All BP agents have been assigned outside.”
“Agent Mooney Lopez,” she says, then indicates Tyler. “Agent Tyler McKinzie. We’re from Sells.”
His eyes darken for a moment. “I was briefed about that this morning. I hope you didn’t…” He sees Mooney’s expression and doesn’t finish. “What can I help you with?”
“We’re here to help you,” Mooney tells him. When he lifts one eyebrow, she says it straight out. “We’re vampires.”
The murmuring that had been going on around them stops as the other personnel turn to stare at them mistrustfully. Williams instinctively takes a step back.
“Don’t worry,” Tyler says. “We chose our side a long time ago.”
There’s a long moment of silence. Finally, Williams jerks his head toward the rock wall, “Not sure what you can do. We’ve done everything but blow this end of the tunnel, but we’re stuck. Only a handful of the, uh, attackers got away last night. But there are no side tunnels that we can find, so we don’t have a clue how they managed it.”
Mooney eyes the rock, taking it in inch by inch, carefully going over everything. She’s sure they’ve done the same thing, but they don’t have her instinct for detail, for prey. After a couple of minutes, she steps forward and runs her fingers along one of the jagged lines in the rock wall; this one is slightly deeper than the others around it. She glances at Tyler and he comes over and inspects it, then he steps sideways a couple of feet and passes his palm carefully back and forth on the cool surface until he, too, finds a corresponding place in the rock.
“One,” he says softly. “Two—”
“Three!” Mooney yells.
They throw everything they have into it and push.
The wall doesn’t give, at least initially. But Mooney feels it—the slightest scrape, rock against rock, grinding. Neither she nor Tyler lets up, keeping their weight going forward and their muscles tight. There’s another nudge, and another, and Mooney thinks of her twins, fierce for their age but helpless against the vicious cihuateteo, trapped in a jail cell that she’d insisted they be put into for their own safety.
Their safety, for God’s sake.
Her heart twists inside her chest and her brain feels like it’s boiling. The growl starts in her belly and works itself into a scream of rage unlike anything that’s ever come out of her mouth. She hears Tyler’s answering scream as he joins with her pain, and together they fight against this barrier as if it’s the last thing in the world they need to get past, to find—
A grinding sound fills the tunnel as a solid three-foot-square chunk falls away and into darkness.
Mooney ignores the shouts behind her and dives through the opening. She doesn’t have time for orders or humans and their sense of military do-this, don’t-do-that. The tunnel is devoid of light and even her night-sight doesn’t help, so she flicks on her flashlight and scurries forward. Tyler follows her, and she hears the voice of a dozen others behind him. Abruptly, finally, they fall silent, so she can listen to the empty space ahead to discern whether someone—something—waits in the blackness.
Mooney and Tyler put on speed, leaving the rest of the agents so far behind that the lights from their flashlights turn to pinpricks before they wink out entirely. The passageway feels like it goes on for miles, and it probably does. They are close to the border, right on the line, and any drug smuggler or human trafficker worth a damn knows the tunnel entrances must be well hidden on both ends. Somewhere ahead will be Mexico and the point of no jurisdiction, where her superiors will demand she and Tyler stop and wait while they contact the appropriate police authorities, while they negotiate stupid things like who gets credit, who takes over, and a host of other bullshit.
The radio at her waist crackles but she ignores it. She cannot follow orders she doesn’t hear.
The tunnel bends and twists as it snakes around underground boulders. Mooney and Tyler slip forward almost soundlessly, their way marked only by the occasional pebble sliding beneath their feet. Suddenly Mooney feels it—the beginning of a gradual incline. Another two turns and they are climbing steadily, following a worn trail that has been used by who knows how many people and vampires before them.
Then… light.
It’s dim but unmistakable. Not daylight but too soft to be candlelight, some sort of lighting placed at intervals along the passage. The ground has leveled out and it’s finally illuminated enough to switch off the flashlights and hook them back to their belts. Mooney’s heart is thudding in her chest, but she can’t tell if it’s due to anticipation, dread, or fury—or maybe it’s all three. The tunnel widens into a small room much like the one back on the US side; there are a couple of tables with a battery-operated lantern on each, a few chairs. Besides that, not much: an ashtray overflowing with American and Mexican cigarette butts, a couple of half-empty tequila bottles.
A second glance around the room reveals an exit neatly camouflaged by two walls, the edges of which overlap and blend into each other in the dimness. Tyler follows Mooney as she eases around the mazelike passageway, where the tunnel continues for another twenty feet and ends in a heavy wooden door. She pushes against it; it rattles slightly but holds—a padlock. Tyler comes up beside her and gives the door a kick that shatters the wood where the hasp was fastened on the other side and they hear a heavy clunk as the lock drops to the ground.
Mooney shoves the busted door out of the way and moves forward without hesitating. She takes three steps then stops, looking around carefully. Tyler is right behind her.
“What is this?” he whispers.
“A stable,” she answers quietly. “We’re in a horse barn.”
They can hear the horses now, the restless movements of hooves interspersed with nervous whinnies. Something’s making the big animals unhappy, but Mooney isn’t sure if it’s their own sudden appearance or something else, something worse.
They’re in one of the empty stables and she moves to the gate, leaning over to check both ways before unlatching it and stepping into the main corridor. The air smells of hay and earth and large animals, of manure and horse feed. And something else… something that doesn’t belong.
She and Tyler crouch and study their surroundings. There’s a double row of horse stalls, some occupied, most not. The ceiling is clear, at least as far as Mooney can see; the rafters are empty but there’s a loft to their rear that looks like it’s filled to its edge with square bales of hay.
“Let’s go,” Mooney says.
They head toward the open barn doors at the far end. They see sunlight outside, but even after the menacing darkness of the tunnel it seems hot and vicious, not at all a welcoming sight. They move silently from stall to stall, checking each. There are only a few horses, geldings and mares plus one glossy black stallion in a larger enclosure reinforced with metal fencing. Nothing but the beautiful animals on the edge, pacing and nickering because they sense that something isn’t right.
Until the last stall on the right.
Mooney and Tyler stare over the gate. There’s a heavy canvas tarp, thick with the red dust of the desert, covering the entire floor, but the top of it isn’t smooth. It’s…
Lumpy.
In a smooth, quick move, Tyler does what Mooney can’t bring herself to: he pushes open the gate, then bends and yanks back the tarp.
Mooney gasps. “No.” Her words deteriorate into a stutter. “Oh, p-please, no…”
She takes two steps forward and goes to her knees, not registering when Tyler crouches beside her and puts his arms around her. He rocks her while she sobs into his shoulder, holding her as tightly as he can. “I’m sorry. Oh God, Mooney, I’m so, so sorry.”
***
By the time the rest of the agents and the supervisors arrive, Mooney has retreated into a stone caricature of herself, an emotionless clone who can deal with the kind of pain that no mother, especially a vampire mother, should have to endure. She stands and answers questions as best she can, watches while others catalog the dead and fill out reports and make the calls that are required in order to coordinate with the Mexican authorities. Outwardly she is calm and collected, totally professional. She can see that a few people even think she is cold-hearted and uncaring.
There is nothing further from the truth.
“How many are there?” she hears Williams ask.
There is a moment of silence before someone answers in a hoarse voice, “Eighteen.”
“How the fuck can eighteen children go missing and no one says a word?” The last part of his sentence rises to a frustrated shout.
“Sixteen,” Mooney says.
Williams whirls to face her. “What?”
“My children are in there,” she says in a flat voice.
“Your—” His voice cuts out and he shudders. “Jesus, Agent Lopez. I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t answer, just turns and walks back to the stall where the bodies are. There are three neat rows of six corpses each, placed side by side. It’s a mix of Americans and Mexicans, mostly toddlers, but none older than five years old. Although they aren’t the oldest, Sitol and Judum are—were—the biggest and, presumably, the healthiest. Geneva is in there, too. She looks at all of them, the small faces, the babyish features that will never grow up, the fine hair that will now never lose the silkiness of youth. Predictably her gaze keeps coming back to her twins, and she can’t help think that death wasn’t the worst thing that happened to them. Were they sacrificed by Nicanor to Cihuacoatl? A memory rises in her mind, how the now-dead Josh and Rose had tried to get to the twins because they believed that the blood of children, especially vampire children, would give them superior strength.
Whether or not it was true—and God, she hoped it wasn’t—doesn’t matter.
Because even when she squeezes her eyes shut, Mooney’s traitorous mind still shows her the deep puncture marks all over Sitol’s and Judum’s small bodies.
***
One Week Later
“Are you sure about this?”
It’s a valid question but Mooney is gratified to hear no doubt in Tyler’s voice, no second guessing. He wants to make sure that this path, this irreversible course, is the one that Mooney wants to take. She wouldn’t have blamed him had he backed out; after all, war was not what he had traveled to Sells to find. He’d wanted peace, somewhere away from the hatred and violence and prejudice. Instead, he’d found her.
“Yes.”
They are standing in the barn at the end of the tunnel, on the Mexican side. The entire tunnel is scheduled for demolition at dawn, in another two hours; Mooney knows, because she helped set the charges in the deepest parts. She and Tyler slipped past the guards in the middle of the night. Once it blows, there will be no going back.
She and Tyler are more heavily armed than they’ve ever been, weighed down by more weapons and ammunition than even the most physically fit human could have handled. The heat is like a living thing wrapping itself around her as she moves from stall to stall, opening the gates and chasing the horses out of the barn and into the scrub-filled, empty pasture beyond. Tyler herds them through an open gate and into another fenced pasture that puts distance between them and the structure, then ropes the gate closed. In another moment he stands beside her and scans the horizon. “Do you think they will come?”
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe not. It doesn’t matter.”
He nods, then leaves her to stand in the sun while he strides back into the barn. Three more minutes and she smells gasoline, then the first hint of smoke. By the time he returns the barn is an inferno, the fire rising up before them like some kind of incarnation, perhaps of the goddess Cihuacoatl herself. Mooney watches it dispassionately.
In the upper right pocket of her vest is a picture of Sitol and Judum, her beautiful children. Nicanor took them and she will never get them back. But she will give something to him, and to his cihuateteo. A gift from the twins, their legacy.
She will bring him war.
###