Spoiler: the dog lives.

This book does some more original things with the idea of Vampires that I can remember seeing anywhere else: the idea that there are mutliple types of vampires, each quite different, from different parts of the world and adhering to the different myths of that place.

The story takes place a little in the future, and some time not too long ago, people figured out vampires were real, and steps were taken to expell them. Like all human endeavors, this one was undertaken piecemeal, enacted differently by different governements. In Mexico, there are no vampires in Mexico city, but they run drug cartels in the north. Then young Domingo, who makes a living picking garbage in Mexico city, runs into a vampire girl and is instantly smitten.

The vampire girl is Atl, an Aztec vampire, on the run from a competing vampire group who slaughtered her family.

From here it would be quite easy to set up a dark romance, and although Atl and Domingo both feel the pull of that, from the reader's perspective it seems obvious that something more parisitic is happening. Atl does not ring human, and mostly sees humans as cattle. Domingo has never been treated well in life and doesn't care that Atl is either uninterested in doing so, or incapable. Although many vampire books are interested in portraying vampires as seductive, these vampires are mostly only somewhat sympathetic.

Read this book if you like vampire world-building, Mexico City, or people without much capacity trying to be good to each other.