“She’s a very well-known vampire. A queen, some say, of the dark world. I’ve never met her myself, but I hear good things.”
Nalida grimaced. “I guess to a person who does what she does, sure.”
“What does she do?” I asked.
“Large blood orgies, mostly.” Gianni grinned, flashing his fangs at Nalida and me. “Ritualistic sacrifices, eating still-beating hearts. Brutal stuff.”
Nalida’s eyes went wide, and I reached for her arm.“It’s fine. He won’t do anything. Tell me about this high priestess.”
“I didn’t look into it too much,” she sighed and looked around the room. “But basically, she is a vampire like you.” She pointed to my brother. “A Bloodborn. Before Magdalena even turned, she drank blood and became popular. She had a cult of men in the sixties.
Humans started coming up missing or dead. Eventually, the authorities caught up to her, and she was sentenced to prison for fifty years.”
“And she survived?” I asked incredulously. “How?”
Nalida scrunched up her nose. “According to the internet, the rumors are that she stayed only until she truly turned. When she rose up in her vampire form, she killed everyone in that prison who tried to stop her escape. Now she lives as a free queen, doing whatever she pleases.”
“So the legends go,” Gianni added, and she nodded.
“What does this have to do with Scout?” I asked.
She blinked and furrowed her brow.
“Scout wanted to find her and see if she could help her locate any other Bloodborn families.”
“And did you? Find her?” I asked. Nalida shook her head.
“No. The High Priestess keeps her den a secret. We traveled for years looking for a clue and got nowhere.”
“So you came back,” I said, not really a question.
“I convinced her to. I wanted to settle down with my boyfriend— now husband. I was aging, and she was not.” She shrugged.
“And you didn’t want to turn?” I tilted my head, curious.
“I’m Catholic. Suicide is a mortal sin. Even if we don’t truly die. I could never.”
A cold silence fell over the storage unit. I quickly moved on to another box. This one was full of sketch pads.
“She has tons of these at our apartment.” I grinned at Gianni as if to say,“See, I do know stuff about her.”
“She wanted to do comics.” Nalida laughed. “She had this one guy she drew just about everywhere in Mexico. It was, like, her tag or something.”
“Gum Man?” I asked, flashing her a sketch of a little cartoon guy with the name emblazoned underneath his pegged legs.
“Yes! Gum Man!” She laughed. “She had a whole collection for him. Let’s see if it’s in here.” She started digging through the notebooks with me and then found what she was looking for. She took the one out of my hands and traded me. “You’ll love these. Here.”
I opened the book and grinned. There he was, Gum Man.
“What style is that?” Gianni asked over my shoulder. We both looked up at him.
“I never knew much about her art,” Nalida admitted. “Other than that, she loved getting a laugh from everyone with this guy.” She pointed at the drawing I had paused on. The green cartoon character was sitting down, covered in pink goo. Underneath was the title, written in her handwriting.
Gum Man had the hiccups.
It was adorable, and I found myself wanting to bring this out of the unit and back home. I perused the pages as Nalida and Gianni spoke about Mexico and Scout’s journey to finding her real family.
Gum Man went to the dentist.
