Diego went to the taller man, putting a hand behind his neck, and another at the small of his back. It looked oddly like a kiss, as he drew the werejaguar’s head downward. The vampire’s mouth sealed around the earlobe, drawing it and some of the ear into his mouth. His throat worked as he swallowed, sucking on the wound, drawing it down. The pale blue of his eyes had spread to a sparkling fire like palest sapphires sparkling in the sun. His skin began to glow as if there was white fire inside. The brown of his hair darkened, or maybe that was illusion because of how glowing white his skin had become.
The werejaguar had closed his eyes, head thrown back, breath catching in his throat, as if it felt good. One of his hands lay on the vampire’s bare shoulder, and you could see the pressure of his fingers in that pale, glowing flesh.
Diego drew back, flashing fangs. “The wound closes.”
“Another offering, my cat,” she said.
The vampire moved back just enough for the other man to use the silver blade on the other ear. Then he fell on him, like a lover long refused. He drew back, eyes sparkling with blue light. He looked blind and heavy-lidded as he drew back from him. “The wound closes.”
It was actually interesting that the wound closed as fast as it did. Vamps had an anticoagulant in their saliva that should have kept it flowing, and silver should have forced the shapeshifter to heal human normal, but the wound was closing pretty fast, not fast enough to make me comfortable, but a lot faster than it should have. The only thing I could figure was that Itzpapalotl had somehow given her shapeshifters even more healing ability than a normal shapeshifter. Maybe normal silver bullets wouldn’t work on them, not to kill them anyway. It was something to think about, just in case.
“I want them to see what it is to be a god, Diego. Show them, my cat.”
The werejaguar opened a seam on the fur that looked almost like it was Velcroed shut. He slit open the front of the fur, having to stop and undo the belt that held knives and a small pouch. The belt dropped to the floor, and he slipped the fur down his body. The golden tan was an all-over tan, complete with . . . um, you know. Nude sun bathing, how unhealthy.
The jaguar slipped out of the skin until he stood completely nude. He still had the silver knife in his hand. I didn’t have a clue what he was about to use it on, but having to strip couldn’t be a good sign. He cupped his own penis, and it had come out of the fur smooth and hard, excited. He put the point of the blade against that delicate skin and drew it in a thin crimson line. His breath ran out in a ragged gasp.
It was echoed by me and Olaf. Bernardo said, “Shit!” Eeeyah. I don’t think I had as much sympathy as the guys, but that had to hurt. Edward was the only one of us who hadn’t made a sound. Either he knew what was coming, or nothing surprised him.
“Diego,” Itzpapalotl said, “show them what it means to be a god.” There was a thread of warning in her voice, as if she were warning him to do his job. I wasn’t sure why because Diego had seemed to thoroughly enjoy the ear sucking. Why wouldn’t he do this?
Diego dropped to his knees, and his face was very close to the offered blood; all he had to do was reach out and take it. But he stayed kneeling, staring at the cut flesh with eyes that still blazed pale blue fire. He stayed kneeling until the cut began to heal, and finally vanish as if the flesh had absorbed it. I’d never seen a shapeshifter heal silver that well. Never.
Seth looked over his shoulder, one hand still around his naked penis, though it was beginning to wilt a little. “Holy mistress, what do you wish me to do?”
“Sacrifice,” she said, and there was enough heat in that one word to make me shiver.
Seth put the blade point to his flesh again. It seemed harder to get a clean cut when he wasn’t fully erect, but he managed. Blood spread in fine rivulets over his skin, staining his fingers with tiny bits of red.
Diego stayed kneeling, but made no move to feed. The fire faded from his eyes, the glow leeched out of the skin, leaving him still lovely, a contrast of pale skin, dark hair, and blue eyes, but he looked defeated somehow, hands limp in his lap.
The four women moved around behind Itzpapalotl, gliding as a unit until they stood in a half-circle behind the kneeling vampire. “You have disappointed me again, Diego,” the goddess said.
He shook his head and bowed it, eyes closing. “I am sorry for that, my dark goddess. I would not disappoint you for the sun and the moon itself.” But his voice was tired when he said it, like it was a memorized line but his heart wasn’t in it.
The four vamps surrounding him pulled black leather bound rods from their belts, and lifted leather bags off the ends. Dozens of thin leather cords spread out from each bag like obscene flowers. Silver balls were braided in the cords so that they sparkled in the torchlight. It was a cat o’ nine tails, except it had a lot more tails.
“Why do you insist on refusing this honor, Diego? Why do you make us punish you?”
“I am not a lover of men, my dark goddess, and I will not do this. I am sorry that my refusal pains you, but this one thing I will not do.” Again, his voice was tired, as if he’d said all of it before, many times before.
He was about five hundred years old, like the four women that surrounded him. Had he been turning the “honor” down for five centuries?
The four women watched their goddess, not glancing even at the vampire at their feet. Itzpapalotl gave a small nod. Four arms went back, flaring the cat o’ nine tails in a fan of silver and leather. They whirled it through the air like they knew what they were doing. They hit him in sequence, right to left, each whip landing a blow, then the next, the next, the next. The blows fell so close together it was like the sound of hard rain, except that this rain was smacking into flesh, and you could hear it thudding home. They whipped him until they drew blood, then they stood motionless around him, waiting.
“Do you still refuse?”
“Yes, my dark goddess, I still refuse.”
“When you raped these women long ago, did you dream of the price you would pay?”
“No, my dark goddess, I did not.”
“You didn’t believe in our gods, did you?”
“No, my dark goddess, I did not.”
“You thought your white Christ could save you, didn’t you?”
“Yes, my dark goddess, I did.”
“You were wrong.”
His head hunched between his shoulders as if he were trying to draw into himself like a turtle. The metaphor was funny. The gesture was not. “Yes, my dark goddess, I was wrong.”
She gave another nod, and the women began to whip him in a blur that made the whips gleam silver like lightning in their hands. Blood ran in streamers down his back, but he never cried out, never asked for mercy.
I must have made some movement, because Edward stepped close to me, not grabbing my arm, but touching it. I met his eyes, and he gave the barest shake of his head. I wouldn’t really risk our lives for a vampire I didn’t know, really I wouldn’t, but I didn’t like it.
Olaf made a small sound. He was watching it with glowing eyes like a child at Christmas who comes down to find that he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. He’d put up the gun, his big hands clasped in front of him, clasped so hard they were mottled, and a fine tremor ran up his arms. I might not like it, but Olaf did.
I glanced at Edward, sort of nodding to the big man. Edward gave the barest of nods. He saw it, too, but he was ignoring it. I tried. I caught Bernardo’s eyes. He was staring at the big man, a look very close to fear on his face. He turned and concentrated on the stairs, turning his back on everything in the room. I’d have liked to join him, but I couldn’t turn away. It wasn’t just macho crap, you know. If Edward could stand to watch it, then so could I. Though there was a little of that. Mostly it was if Diego could endure it, I could watch it. If I wasn’t going to stop it then I had to at least watch. To do nothing to help him and to turn away would have been too much cowardice for me to swallow. I’d have choked on it. The best I could do was try
to watch other things around him. The way the women’s arms went up and down like machines, as if they would never tire.
The five guards stood impassive, but the vamp that walked at Itzpapalotl’s right side watched it with half-parted lips, eyes intent as if afraid to miss even the smallest movement. He was almost as old as the goddess herself, seven, eight hundred years, and for five hundred of those years he’d been watching this particular show, and he still enjoyed it. I knew in that moment that I never wanted to make an enemy of the creatures in this room. I never wanted to be at their mercy. Because they had none.
The other two Spanish survivors had moved back to stand against the far wall, as far from the show as they could get. The one with salt and pepper hair stared at the ground as if there was something of great interest there. The starved one on his leash had curled into a fetal position, as if he were trying to disappear altogether.
The women turned Diego’s back into bloody ribbons. A red pool formed at his feet. He curled his upper body over his legs until he was like a little ball of pain. Blood began to drip down his shoulders to form a second puddle in front of him. He was weaving, even that low to the ground, as if he might pass out. I hoped he passed out soon.
I finally did take a step forward, and Edward grabbed my arm. “No,” he said.
“You feel pity for him,” Itzpapalotl said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Diego was one of the strangers that came into our lands. He thought we were barbarians. We were things to be conquered, robbed, raped, slaughtered. Diego never saw us as people, did you, Diego?”
There was no answer this time. He wasn’t exactly unconscious but close enough that he was beyond words. “You didn’t think we were people, did you, Cristobal?”
I didn’t know who Cristobal was, but there was a high keening sound. It was the vampire on the leash. He unrolled from his tight fetal ball. The keening ended in that same awful laughter that I’d heard earlier. The laughter rose up and up until the vampire holding the leash jerked it tight, pulling him like you’d discipline a dog. I realized that the leash was a choke collar. Shit.
“Answer me, Cristobal.”
The vampire let up on the leash enough for the starved one to get a ragged breath. His voice, when it came, was strangely cultured, smooth and sane. “No, we did not think you were people, my dark goddess.” Then the ragged laughter came from those thin lips, and he huddled around himself again.
“They broke into our temple and raped our priestesses, our virgin priestesses, our nuns. Twelve of them raped these four priestesses. They did unspeakable, vile things to them, forced them with pain and threats of death to do whatever the men wanted them to do.”
The women’s faces never changed during the speech, as if it were about someone else. They had stopped whipping the man. They just stood there watching him bleed.
“I found them dying in the temple from what had been done to them. I offered them life. I offered them vengeance. I made them gods, and then we hunted down the strangers that had raped them, the ones that left them for dead. We took each of them, made them one of us, so their punishment would last forever. But my teyolloquanies were too strong for most of them. There were twelve of them once. Now only two remain.”
Itzpapalotl looked at me, and there was a challenge in her face, a look that demanded an answer. “Do you still feel pity for him?”
I nodded. “Yes, but I understand hate, and revenge is one of my best things.”
“Then you see the justice here.”
I opened my mouth. Edward’s hand tightened on my arm, until it was painful. He forced me to think before I answered. I’d have been careful, but he didn’t know that.
“He did a terrible, unforgivable thing. They should have their revenge.” In my head I added, though five hundred years of torment seemed a bit much. I killed people when they deserved it; anything beyond that was up to God. I just didn’t think I was up to making decisions that would last five hundred years.
Edward eased up on my arm and started to let go of me, when she said, “So you agree with our punishment?” His hand locked back onto my arm, if anything tighter than before.
I glared up at him, hissing under my breath, “You’re bruising me.”
He let me go, slowly, reluctantly, but the look in his eyes was warning enough. Don’t get us killed. I’d try not to. “I would never presume to question the decision of a god.” Which was true. If I ever met a god, I wouldn’t question their decision. The fact that I didn’t believe in any god with a little “g” was beside the point. It wasn’t a lie, and it sounded perfect for the situation. When you’re prefabricating as fast as you can, it doesn’t get better than that.
She smiled, and she was suddenly young and beautiful like a sudden glimpse of the young woman she must have been once. It was almost more of a shock than the rest. I’d expected a lot of things, but not Itzpapalotl to have retained even a shred of her humanity.
“I am very pleased,” she said, and she looked it. I’d pleased the goddess, made her smile. Be still my heart.
She must have made some sign because the whipping continued. They beat him until the white of his spine showed through in places where the flesh had worn completely away. A human would have died long before they got that far, or even a shapeshifter, but the vampire was as alive as when they started. He had collapsed into a little ball, his forehead on the floor, arms trapped under his body, his weight resting on his legs. He was unconscious, but the body didn’t fall over. It was propped up by its own weight.
Olaf was making a high-pitched hiss under his breath, fast and faster. If the circumstances had been different, I’d have said he was working up to an orgasm. If that was what he was doing, I so didn’t want to know. I ignored him, or did my best to.
The werejaguar stood there through it all, nude, body going limp, the cut long healed as he watched the vampire’s body be torn apart. He watched it with a neutral face, but occasionally when a blow was particularly vicious, or when the first hint of bone showed through, he winced, gaze sliding away, as if he didn’t want to watch but was afraid to actually turn his head away.
“Enough.” That one word, and the whips stopped, drooping like wilted flowers. The silver balls had all turned crimson, and blood dripped from the end of the whips in slow spatters. The women’s faces had never changed, as if the faces were just masks, and what lay underneath was inhuman and held all the emotions that the masks could not show. As if the monstrousness inside was more human than the human shells they wore.
The four women walked in a line to a small stone basin in the far corner. They dipped each whip into the water in turn, then ran their hands over each lash almost lovingly.
Olaf tried twice to speak, had to clear his throat, and finally said, “Do you use saddle soap and mink oil on the leather?”
The four women turned as one toward him. Then they all looked at Itzpapalotl. She answered for them. “You sound knowledgable about such things.”
“Not as knowledgeable as they are,” he said, and he sounded impressed, like a cellist seeing Yo-Yo Ma perform for the first time.
“They have had centuries to perfect their craft.”
“Do they use their craft just on the bodies of the men who hurt them?” he asked.
“Not always,” she said.
“Can they speak?” he asked. He was watching them as if they were something precious and lovely.
“They have taken a vow of silence until the last of their tormentors is dead.”
I had to ask. “Are they executing them periodically?”
“No,” she said.
I frowned, and the question must have shown on my face.
“We do not execute them. We merely harm them, and if they die of their injuries, then so be it. If they survive, then they live to see another night.”
“So you’re not going to give Diego any medical attention?” I asked.
Edward’s hand had never let go of me during the to
rture as if he truly didn’t trust me not to do something heroic and suicidal. His hand dug into me again, and I’d had my fill. “Let me the fuck go, now, or we are going to have a disagreement . . . Ted.” I wasn’t feeling good about watching Diego bleed. I was feeling worse because it hadn’t bothered me as much as I thought it should have. I’d have helped him if I could have, as long as it wasn’t suicide. He was a stranger and a vampire. I wasn’t risking our lives for him, and that was that. Had there been a time when I would have risked us all, even for a strange vampire? I just didn’t know anymore.
“Diego has survived far worse than this. He is the strongest of all of them. We broke all the others before they died. They did everything we asked them in the end. Except Diego, and still he fights us.” She shook her head, as if dismissing it all. “But we must show you how it is to be done properly. Chualtalocal, show them how the sacrifice is to be embraced.”
The vamp that stood at her right hand stepped forward. He walked around the fallen Diego as if he were a pile of trash to be avoided, and left for someone else to clean up. He faced the werejaguar as Diego had faced him, but things had changed. Seth had been all pumped up from having his ears sucked when he first stripped, hard and eager to please. Now he was just naked, and his eyes kept going to the bloody mess that Diego had become as if he was wondering when his turn was coming.
“Make your offering, my cat,” she said.
Seth was looking from Diego’s body to the vampire in front of me. “My holy mistress, I am willing, you know I am, but I . . . I seem to be,” he swallowed hard enough that I heard it even over the still faint ringing in my ears. “I seem to be . . .”
“Make your sacrifice, Seth, or suffer my wrath.”
The four sisters weird had hung their cat o’ nine tails on small hooks in the wall, all in a row like a sadomasochistic version of the seven dwarves with their identical possessions. They glided back towards us all, like sharks scenting blood in the water.
Seth seemed to know they were there. He actually grabbed himself and started trying to get some attention going, but his eyes were flicking wildly through the room as if looking for an escape. He was making the effort, but nothing was happening.
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