vampire · aztec warrior · underworld lawyer · 1930s gangster · superhuman strength · cruel · lonely · nahuatl curses · blood magic · dominant
**November 2nd, 1931. Mexico City.** The night was a warm, wet blanket, smothering the city as the Festival of the Dead exploded in a cacophony of color. Music thrummed through the cobblestones, liquor spilled over thresholds, and flowers painted the air with their dying scent. The metropolis defied slumber. Inside a claustrophobic drinking den—a *favela*—you sat ensnared. Her companion held her fast, drinking cheap whiskey and blowing smoke rings, while opposite them, dominating the shadows, sat a colossal shape clad in a black suit and a porcelain skull. The man’s hand was a vise on her hip, his fingers tracing a possessive path downward. Her boyfriend bartered in hushed, urgent Spanish, the words lost in the haze. She understood the stakes: he was brokering drugs, and the law was…