Лорел Гамильтон - Obsidian Butterfly

Seth dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands. His hands paled with the force of squeezing nails into his own flesh. He threw his head back suddenly, breath coming fast, faster, fastest. The vampire pulled off of him, leaving him hard and still intact. "The wound has closed."

Chualtalocal stood and went back to his mistress. The moment there was room, Seth collapsed to his knees, opening his hands slowly as if they hurt There were bloody half-moons where his nails had bitten into his palms. But it had worked. Any distraction to keep him out of the clutches of the goddess's pet freaks.

"I offer you hospitality, to you and your friends. You may have Seth if you like and finish him as his body seems to so badly need."

I suddenly knew what she meant by hospitality. Somehow I didn't think that was Aztec culture, though if I remembered correctly, hadn't some of the Aztecs sent Cortez and his men women along with food and gold? Maybe this wasn't any different. But I didn't want to mess with it.

"Dawn is coming. I can feel it pressing against the darkness like a weight about to tear the night apart."

She turned her head to one side and seemed to think, or maybe she was sensing the night, the air, something. "Yes," she said, "I feel it, too."

"Then if it isn't too large an insult, can we skip the hospitality for tonight and get to the murders?"

"Only if you give me your word that you will return and taste our hospitality before you go back to Saint Louis."

I glanced at Edward. He shrugged. I guess it was up to me. What else was new when it came to monster? "I don't agree to having sex with your people, but I'll agree to a return visit."

"You seemed to like Seth. I would offer you Cesar, who your power seemed to like even more, but he does not make sacrifice, nor does he act as hospitality. It is his price for letting us come so near killing him twice a month."

"You mean because he lets you nearly tear his heart out twice a month, he doesn't have to make sacrifice or all the other stuff?"

"That is what I mean."

It made me think better of ol' Cesar. I'd seen his show, and now I'd seen some of the behind the scenes stuff, and I had to say that it was a close call which was worse. Letting someone cut your chest open and touch your still beating heart, or letting vamps suck blood off of tender body parts and be offered for sex to strangers. No, come to think of it, I'd have rather had my chest cut open, as long as I knew I'd heal completely every time.

"It's not that Seth isn't lovely to look at. I'm sure it would be a pleasure to be with him, but I don't do casual sex. Thanks for thinking of me though. I know the police spoke with you."

"They did. I do not think they learned anything of value from me."

"Maybe they didn't ask the right questions," I said.

"And what are the right questions?"

I was about to do something that the police wouldn't like at all. I was about to tell the monsters, someone they had suspected at one point of being the murderer, details of the crime. But she needed specific details or how was she to recognize the marks of some Aztec bogeyman? I knew how the cops had done it. They'd been so general, it was almost useless to show up. I understood why they did it that way. Once I opened my mouth and let out details to Itzpapalotl, then she was contaminated. They'd never be able to slip her up in an interrogation, because she got the secret details from me.

What I knew and the police couldn't was that they'd never interrogate the truth out of her. She was the kind of vamp that could sit in a dark room and watch the colors on the inside of her own eyeballs and be content. The only thing they could threaten her with was the death penalty, and if she was behind the murders, it was already a death penalty. One of the downfalls to a swift and certain punishment was that it took a lot of the give and play out of an interrogation. Once someone knows they are going to be executed, you can't bargain with them.

"Can we clear the room out a little?"

"What do you mean?"

"Can we have fewer of your people in here? I'm going to share confidential police information with you, and I don't want it to get out."

"Whatever you say in this room remains in this room. No one here will talk of it to anyone else. I can promise you this." She was utterly sure of herself, arrogant. But why not? All of her people were terrified of her. If what happened to Diego was commonplace, then think what the exotic stuff must be. If she dictated that the secrets were safe, they were safe.

Edward stepped close to me. He lowered his voice though he didn't try and whisper. "Are you sure about this?"

"I'm sure, Edward. She can't help if she doesn't have enough information." We looked at each other for a few seconds, then he gave a small nod. I turned luck to the waiting vampire. "Okay," I said, and I told her about the survivors, and the dead.

I don't know what I expected, maybe for her to be titillated, or to go, aha, and recognize the monster responsible. What I got was serious attention, good questions at the right places, and a glimpse at a very intelligent mind behind all the games. If she wasn't a delusional, sadistic, megalomaniac, would-be goddess, she might have been likable.

"The skins of men are valuable to Xipe Totec and Tlazolteotl. The priests would flay the sacrifice and wear the skin. The heart had many uses for the gods. Even the flesh was used, at least in part. Sometimes, the insides of a sacrifice would have some strange thing inside it, and be an omen. Then the other organs might be kept for a time and studied, but it was rare."

"Can you think why they would cut out the tongues?"

"To keep them from speaking the secrets they have seen." She said it, like of course that was the reason. It made sense ritually, I guess.

"Why cut off the eyelids?"

"So they can never not see the truth, even though they cannot speak it. I do not know if this is why they have done these awful things."

"Why would someone remove the outward secondary sex characteristics?"

"I do not understand," she said, and she was holding the cloak close about her, as if she were cold. We'd been talking long enough, I had to remind myself not to look directly in her eyes.

"The genitalia on the men, the breasts on the women, were removed." She shuddered, and I knew something I hadn't before. Itzpapalotl, the goddess of the obsidian blade, was frightened. "It sounds like some of the things the Spanish did to our people."

"But the flaying and taking the organs, that's more Aztec, than European»

She nodded. "Yes, but our sacrifices were messengers to the gods. We caused pain only for sacred purposes, not for cruelty or a whim. All blood was holy. If you died at the hand of a priest, you died knowing it served a greater purpose. Literally, your death helped the rain to fall, the maize to grow, the sun to rise in the sky. I do not know of any god that would flay people and leave them alive. Death is necessary for the messenger to reach the gods, Death is part of the worship of the deity. The Spaniards taught us to kill for the sake of killing, not as a sacred trust, but just for slaughter." She stared past me at the four women that waited patiently for her to notice them, for her to give them a purpose. "We have learned the lesson well, but I would rather have stayed in a world where it was not true." I saw in her face that she had some clue to what she'd lost, to what her vampires had lost when she decided they would become as cruel as their enemies. "The Spaniards killed so many of our people along the road to Acachinanco that they tied white handkerchiefs over their noses because of the stench of rotting bodies."

She looked at me then, and the hatred in those eyes burned along my skin. After five hundred years, she still carried a grudge. You had to admire someone who could hold on to hate like that. I thought I knew how to hold a grudge, but looking into her face, I realized I was wrong. There was room in me for forgiveness. In Itzpapalotl's face there was room for only one thing, hatred, She'd been angry about the same thing for over five hundred years. She'd been punishing people for the same crimes for five hundred years. It was impressive in a psychotic sort of way.