We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from V. Castro’s new dark fantasy novel Immortal Pleasures—out from Del Rey on April 16.
Hundreds of years ago, she was known as La Malinche: a Nahua woman who translated for the conquistador Cortés. In the centuries since, her name has gone down in infamy as a traitor. But no one ever found out what happened to La Malinche after Cortés destroyed her people.
In the ashes of the empire, she was reborn as Malinalli, an immortal vampire. And she has become an avenger of conquered peoples, traveling the world to reclaim their stolen artifacts and return them to their homelands.
But she has also been in search of something more, for this ancient vampire still has deeply human longings for pleasure and for love.
When she arrives in Dublin in search of a pair of Aztec skulls—artifacts intimately connected to her own dark history—she finds something else: two men who satisfy her cravings in very different ways.
For the first time she meets a mortal man—a horror novelist—who is not repelled by her strange condition but attracted by it. But there is also another man, an immortal like herself, who shares the darkness in her heart.
Now Malinalli is on the most perilous adventure of all: a journey into her own desires
Is it really our life? Perhaps we are gathered to dance to a shaman’s chant we cannot hear until we find ourselves moving to the beat.
Chapter One
It’s my last night in Dublin before I head to the south coast. Ireland was the first stop on my way to London because of its landscape, particularly its grass—that dreamy electric green surrounded by dark cold waters and even colder winds.
That landscape had called to me while I was flipping through an airline magazine during one of my business-class flights across South America. The advertisement showed a green pasture that ended with a cliff dropping to leaping waves in the shape of giant conch shells. I had to see that grass with my own eyes, feel it beneath my feet.
You see, my name is Malinalli, which means grass in my native Nahuatl language. The glossy photo ignited my soul with wonder, and I knew I had to overcome my irrational fear of exploring this part of the world, Europe. It was a European who changed my given name Malinalli to La Malinche and Doña Marina. Neither did I choose, nor could I refuse as a human. At least as a vampire I could take back my name. Small steps.
But you may wonder why a Nahua vampire from the sixteenth century like me would harbor a fear of anything after being an apex predator for so very long. After all, my blood is powerful and intoxicating—it comes from a vampire made by one of the very first vampires. However, like the demolished temple Tenochtitlán, my heart still bears the scars of history.
Before this trip was even an idea, my concentration on work had been waning. I kept finding myself slipping into daydreams of distant places. My heart would sink to depths of emotions I could not allow myself to wade in. In train stations and airports, I used to walk with a smug swagger past couples if I saw an obviously out-of-sync partnership, and families if I saw screaming children throwing themselves at the feet of exhausted parents. Ain’t no one holding me down or holding me back, I’d think. But recently I’d also think soon after: Ain’t no one waiting for me either. Walk enough crowded terminals alone, your hand swinging aimlessly by your side, and it starts to feel dead. And mine had hung empty for centuries. I could care less about the offspring. As a vampire, my bearing a child was not an option. But lately I’d wanted to feel an arm around my waist. A companionship that lasted longer than a night would be nice.
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Immortal Pleasures
Two days after the idea of traveling to Ireland first struck me, I received an out-of-the-blue opportunity to purchase rare Mexican artifacts from a dealer in London. I am a collector, buyer, and seller of antiquities from all over the world; however, my speciality is Mexico and South and Central America. As a blood huntress it was a natural fit.
Since 1972, I had made my living tracking rare objects, although I began my search for these objects long before I’d ever earned a cent. My career had begun not as a career, but as a sort of spiteful secret mission to reclaim our culture’s lost treasures one object at a time from the colonizers. The more I learned about my new vampire life and all its strengths, the more I thought about my purpose in life. My work has given me purpose beyond servitude or mere survival. I could create some good for myself and others.
The artifacts are two skulls I first encountered when I was still human. When I read the email and saw the photos of the skulls, the excitement in my work that I’d lost came back, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. My instinct told me these were the very same treasures I had been hunting for since I began my journey in acquiring antiquities. One skull is carved from pure clear quartz. The other is an embellished mosaic of turquoise and obsidian set in a human skull with most of the teeth still intact. Judging from the photo, the gold that once plated the human skull had been scraped from the bone
The skulls had once belonged to someone I loved dearly. Her name was Chantico. She was like a mother to me when I first became a vampire. She helped me find the will to live for myself.
I had been searching for centuries for these skulls with no luck, and I’d been on the brink of giving up on ever finding them. It wasn’t until the birth of the internet my journey began to gain a little momentum, though every path had led to a dead end until now. However, life can be as unpredictable as the height of waves crashing on a shore; now, at long last, the skulls were within my reach. The universe presented me the perfect opportunity to act on my desire to reclaim these treasures.
So I simply had to fly across the Atlantic to purchase those skulls and keep them safe. The catch was the skulls were now in London with a private collector. But this purchase was too important to leave to chance, to buy on the evidence of digital photographs alone, even if the photos I’d been emailed appeared legitimate. My usual London based antiquities broker, Horatio Hutchings, a trustworthy man in the business, assured me it was not a scam. However, he did not possess the same skill that I did in detecting forged objects—and I had seen my fair share in my many centuries of existence. To reclaim the skulls—and with them, a part of my soul—I had to take the trip. And that trip would be first class all the way, including the best hotels. Everything paid for by the business I had built from scratch and the antiquities I’d acquired over time. I deserved to have everything I wanted in this life. Divine timing can be a stubborn bitch, but when she comes through, she delivers divine rewards.
And so, eager to finally possess the skulls, and with a nagging desire to travel, I created a four-week itinerary to explore Ireland and England at the same time. Spain would be the next place I’d visit—where perhaps I could finally lay my anger at its colonizers to rest—and finally Vienna, Austria to see the Penacho, a rare surviving Aztec headdress, bright green and feathered, that didn’t belong halfway around the world from its country of origin, in a museum for people who could not fully appreciate its true importance. Indeed, part of my mission has been to reach out to museums around the world and broker deals to give back stolen items to their original cultures. The treasures can then go on tour or on loan to museums in other lands; however, sole ownership belongs to the people who created them. This particular headdress had long been on my radar. I figured my kind emails to the museum were not doing enough, and that my power of persuasion in the flesh could serve me better. After years of practice, vampires can use their energy to influence the emotions of humans. We can’t force them to do something, just steer toward what we want from them. I was not opposed to using my vampire magnetism to get what I wanted, and I wanted this headdress back in Mexico City.
In my human life, as a translator, I’d watched villages and temples be sacked by the conquistadors. The terror and sorrow of one’s powerlessness to stop the destruction of one’s home is something no one should experience or witness. And with the treasures of our past stolen, our children would grow up without anything to remind them of their history or story. The children of Europe had no tie to this object and could, at best, see it only as a unique piece of history of a people they could not fully understand, but more than likely, as just a nice artifact with pretty feathers from a bird they had never seen before. But the headdress had the potential to instill pride and awe in my people if returned to its rightful place in Mexico. And that is exactly what I was going to do. The Hapsburg Archduke Ferdinand II was long dead—what would he care if an item he acquired out of imperialist greed was taken back?
And as soon as I landed on the distant cool shores of Ireland, I knew I had made the right choice. Even the sight of the drizzle on the small window as we landed excited me. An undercurrent of expectation made my body alert to every sensation and sight. The climate in Ireland differs greatly from my home. Although it is summer in Ireland, there is always a damp chill in the evening air. What a change from the heat I’m accustomed to! This is exactly why I’d made the decision to cross the pond to explore the Old World. My trip would be a gust of change to rid myself of my inner demons—and perhaps introduce me to a few new ones along the way, just for laughs.
All of this to reclaim the freedom once stolen from me back when I was a mortal. Imagine going from “Will this be the day I die as a slave?” to becoming the very embodiment of death. And now I wanted to appease the restlessness that had settled over me the last few years. I am worth millions, but as life has shown me, cash only goes so far in creating a fulfilling life.
And so on this trip I felt open to the unexpected. Perhaps destiny had even brought me across the pond for a reason beyond the skulls. Part of me wanted to believe Chantico watched me from wherever her spirit hovered and sent me a blessing of joy.
* * *
Later that night, I am on my final stop on a pub crawl and my third glass of sparkling water with a wedge of lime. What a great way to end the evening: “Big Love” by Fleetwood Mac playing on speakers mounted on the front of the bar. The paunchy bartender wearing a rugby jersey bellowing “Last call” over the din of the bar. People guzzling whatever they’re drinking and shuffling toward the door. Through the thinning herd, I can now see the corner booth.
And there he is, sitting with his mates at a table covered in Stella Artois bottles and pint glasses. His blue eyes flash with the same allure as his smile surrounded by a light stubble. The sleeves of his T-shirt creep over defined biceps. Candy for the eyes and body. A box of new books rests at his feet. The covers are all dark with red titles. One has a skeleton key and skull with what look like fangs. I chuckle to myself. He has a thing for vampires. I wonder if he is selling the books. Or did he write them? Doesn’t matter. I want the pleasure of his company, or at the very least the comfort of his body.
During my human life, romance and sex for pleasure had not been options for me. I had gone from being a teenage handmaiden serving the Tabascan royalty to being owned by the Spanish colonizer known as Hernán Cortés. Not only did I translate for him, we Indigenous women could not say no to any “advances” made toward us. First, he’d given me to one of his captains, Alonso Puertocarerro, then to himself, and finally to my Spanish husband, Juan Jarmillo, before my human death.
When I was reborn, I relished my newfound freedom, but I had much healing to do after the trauma of witnessing the conquest in all its horror—and the horrors inflicted on me. My history had left me with deep scars, one of them the fear of being used. There was the lingering paranoia that once my use was over so would be my worth, my life.
But after some time, I began to allow myself the luxury of physical pleasure even though I still was not able to give my heart freely. My experience of not being accepted, respected, or loved as a Brown woman by colonizer men made me self-conscious, about myself, and also my vampire nature. Not all vampires felt like this, as I found out centuries later, when I finally befriended one.
“Mortals only want one thing,” that vampire had once told me, shouting over pulsating disco at a nightclub in New York City in the 19070s. White light refracted across our faces from the spinning disco ball in the center of the dance floor. The vampire’s name was Catherine, and she was older than me by a few hundred years. She wore the best clothing in the current fashion and the brightest red lipstick, with a shine as blinding as the nail polish on the talons she filed to sharp points. Her life was a constant party; she was never not planning another wild bash, and she was never alone for long. If not planning that next party, she hopped shop to shop for the best her money could buy. So I was curious about her thoughts about life as a vampire.
“And what is that? A chance at immortal life?”
With her hot-blooded gaze, she flicked her feathered, bouncy honey-blonde hair and scoffed, “No, no. Very few mortals have the courage for that. Most really can’t stomach the idea of being a blood drinker day in and day out. They want to feel close enough to life after death to not feel afraid of death itself. Humans are so full of doubt and fear of the unknown. They can’t see the divine unless the signs hit them like battle axes and draw blood. And vampires tell them that death is an illusion.”
Her bright lips spread to a sinister smile. “But also vampires do not deny ourselves pleasure. And pleasure is everyone’s drug of choice.”
She raised a finger and motioned for someone behind me. A young woman slid next to her, exposing her bare shoulder blade as she continued to move to the music. Catherine laid a sticky lipstick kiss on the woman’s shoulder before pulling out a small velvet pouch from her metal clutch. The young woman giggled and purred with delight. From inside Catherine plucked a small white pill and placed it into the woman’s mouth. Catherine didn’t take her eyes off me as she bit deep into the shoulder blade of the young woman. Blood and lipstick stuck to her skin. The woman moaned and writhed in Catherine’s embrace. Catherine still had crimson beads clinging to her lipstick when she pulled away from the young woman.
“All the lords and masters are dead, Malinalli. It is our turn to celebrate in the streets. We are not dead. I hope they are all burning in hell while feeling the constraints of the tight corsets some of us were forced to wear. Let them choke on sulphur for a change.”
Catherine became a vampire during the thirteenth century in France. She had seen the evolution of Europe. As an aristocrat, she was by no means deprived or underprivileged in material wealth; however, her only worth was to be wed to create more of it. Her words hit me in the center of my chest even harder than the bass from the music. My wounds opened for a moment as the faces of my many owners flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t argue with that sentiment. I hoped in death they knew intimately the pain they had inflicted. Part of me wanted to embrace the carefree nature Catherine had adopted, but my resentment still glowed a little too brightly. More time, something I had plenty of, was still needed.
She let out a wicked giggle before shouting, “I fucking love the seventies!” Her hand slid beneath the low-cut collar of the young woman’s thin pink polyester wraparound dress to massage her breast. The young woman tugged at the fabric to expose her nipple. Catherine used the tip of her nail to flick the erect pink flesh. One swift swipe drew a bloom of blood, causing the woman to groan. Catherine bit her lip before lapping up the red liquid jewel.
Catherine hadn’t cared about being inconspicuous. That was her way of getting vengeance against her former masters. And now, so many years later, I was slowly reaching the same point. I had once kept my true vampire self in shadows, and now it was rising to the surface.
The longer I am far from home, the more open I feel to wanting my vampire half and human half to be equally free. I have left my past in Mexico and I have travelled across the waters that brought the many colonizers to my world. It was time to confront their world. My work requires me to seem human. And I have kept my sexual relationships superficial so as not to reveal I am a blood drinker by nature. There was a time in my life when the thirst and the hunt gave me immeasurable pleasure, the only pleasure, as I had retreated into hiding as the last of my people attempted to fight off the invaders. I orgasmed in the throes of draining a soldier dry and tossing his corpse where I knew the Spanish sent scouts. Every part of me let go in blinding surrender. The look of horror when they saw the new me, the vampire me, let me know this was a side of me humans would never understand.
Yet the lack of intimacy in my life had only become another wound. My heart feels tied in ropes of thorn. I had tried to place a vast distance between me and others, as vast as the depth and length of the ocean between the New World and the Old. All the while I ached for real connection, for a profound love to blow away the profound hurt I was still healing from. But now I was resolved: I did not come this far or live this long to become a captive again. I want a lover to love all of me, the woman and the vampire.
But I don’t believe we find our true soul’s desire, or purpose—it finds us. Perhaps, when you meet a soulmate, it is a sign that all those long-lost particles blown to bits at the beginning of time have found their way to one another again—stardust finding itself in another body. Until we reunite with those parts of ourselves, our thoughts and desires will burn like meteors scalding skin, brain, bone, and soul. And that’s how we end up choosing the wrong people, feeling the kind of heartbreak that teaches us lessons. After centuries alone, I hoped to find my soulmate as I did the treasures that made me my fortune. My soul’s aching desire was to discover real love, to feel true equilibrium with my match. To make up for when I had been passed hand to hand in my youth without choice. At that time, I was merely a treasure to be taken.
As I look at the stranger, I can’t tell yet how deep an encounter might be with him, but fate is somehow telling me I’m not going back to my room anytime soon.
Excerpt from Immortal Pleasures by V. Castro, copyright © 2024 by V. Castro. Used by permission of Del Rey, an imprint of Random House Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
