Tlaloci stood, head still bowed. “There must be powerful magic at work here, my lord. First Nicky Baco is lost to us, and now this one is closed to your vision.”
“She must be open to my power or she cannot be the perfect sacrifice,” Red Woman’s Husband said.
“I know, my lord.”
“You are the magician, Tlaloci. How can I undo this magic?”
The magician put some serious thought into it. Several minutes passed while he thought. I just lay there trying not to draw their attention back to me. Finally, Tlaloci looked up. “To believe in your vision, she must believe in you.”
“How do I convince her to believe that I am a god if she cannot feel my power?”
It was a good question, and I waited patiently for Tlaloci to answer it. The longer he thought about it, the more delay time I was getting. Ramirez was coming. I had to believe that because my options were limited unless I could figure out a way to get them to untie me.
I could feel the pen still in my pocket with its hidden blade. I was armed, if I could get my hands free, and if steel could hurt him. Of course, there were the four helpers, and Tlaloci, and a small army of flayed ones. So even if the god could die, I’d have to do something about everyone else. They’d probably be pissed if I killed their god. I just wasn’t sure how to get out of this one.
If Ramirez didn’t arrive with the cavalry, I was in deep shit. Edward wasn’t out there looking for me this time. For the first time since I came to, I wondered if Edward was alive. Please, God, let him be alive. But alive or not, Edward was out of the rescuing game for tonight. I admitted I needed help on this one, and the only hope I could count on was Ramirez and the police. He’d been late in the hospital. If he were late tonight, I probably wouldn’t be around to complain.
Tlaloci motioned for his god to follow him a little away from me. I think they were whispering things they didn’t want me to know. Why did it matter if I overheard them or not? What could they possibly be talking about that they needed to hide from me? They’d cheerfully told me they were going to kill me. It wasn’t like they were trying to protect my feelings. So what was going on?
The Red Woman’s Husband unfastened the necklace of tongues and handed it to the priest. He took off the steel breastplate and one of the skin guys came and took it from him, kneeling in front of him. He took off the skirt of intestines, and another skin guy hurried forward to take it. The “god” never asked them to help him, just sort of assumed that someone would be there to help. He was almost perfectly arrogant, but his ego was fragile, an arrogance that had never been tested in the outer world. He was like one of those fairy tale princesses that had been raised in an ivory tower with only people who told them how beautiful they were, how smart, how good, until the witch comes and lays her curse. Maybe I could be the witch, though truthfully I wouldn’t have known a curse if it bit me on the butt. Maybe I could be the prince that comes and takes him away. At this point I wasn’t picky.
The “god” was wearing a maxilatl like everyone at the Obsidian Butterfly had worn. But this one was black with a heavy fringe of golden thread hanging in front. He wore black sandals set with turquoise, which strangely I hadn’t noticed when he was wearing all the severed body parts. Funny how you don’t concentrate on the small details when you’re scared.
He walked towards me, confidence showing in every step. The maxilatl left his lower body bare on the sides from waist to sandals. It was a nice length of thigh, but you know what they say. Pretty is as pretty does.
“Is this better?” he asked, his voice light, almost teasing, his eyes back to that peaceful contentment, as if things had always gone his way, and he didn’t see why now should be different. Itzpapalotl had been arrogant, but not peaceful.
“Much better,” I said. I thought about remarking on how much I liked seeing nearly naked men, but didn’t want to take it to such an obviously sexual tone unless I ran out of other options.
He came to stand beside me again. The eyelids were still on his arms, blinking at me like the winking lights of fireflies, random, and alien.
“It’s a big improvement,” I said. “You can’t do anything about the eyes on your arms, can you?”
He frowned again. “They are part of me.”
“I see that,” I said.
“But they are nothing to fear.”
“If you say so.”
“I want you to know me, Anita.” It was the first time he’d used my name. I hadn’t thought he knew it, until then. Of course, Paulina had known who I was. The Red Woman’s Husband reached down to my right wrist, and he undid that little piece of metal that held the manacle closed.
The skinned man who was still standing on the other side of the stone took a step forward, hand on the knife at his belt. I froze, not sure if I was really going to be allowed to have my hand free.
The “god” lifted my hand free of the chain and laid his lips on the back of my hand. “Touch them. See that they are nothing to fear.” It took me a second to figure out that “them” meant the eyes on his arms. I was relieved to realize he didn’t mean anything below his waist, and so not happy that he meant all those eyes. I did not want to touch them. I wanted nothing to do with anything that had been carved off of a dead body, especially while that person had still been alive.
He held my wrist and tried to bring my hand over his arm, but I kept a tight fist. “Touch them, Anita, gently. They will not harm you.” He began to pry my fingers open, and I couldn’t fight him. I could have fought harder, maybe make him break a finger or two, to persuade me, but in the end I was going to lose this wrestling match, so I just let him spread my hand open. I didn’t want anything broken if I could avoid it.
He guided my hand just above his arm, and the eyelids fluttered under my touch. I jumped every time one of them blinked, but the eyelids moving against my skin in a line of butterfly kisses weren’t as scary. The lids felt full, as if there was an eye behind them, and there wasn’t. I’d seen that.
“What’s inside them?” I asked.
“Everything,” he said. Which told me nothing. “Explore them, Anita.” He pressed one of my fingertips to the edge of an eye. Then he urged me to put the finger inside the eye.
I pushed my finger into that empty seeming eye, and there was a resistance like pushing against something thin and fleshy, then my finger was through and I could touch what was inside. Warm, a warmth that flowed through my hand, up my arm, and spread like a blanket over my body. I felt safe, warm. I stared up at him and wondered why I hadn’t seen it before? He was so handsome, so kind, so . . . My finger was cold, so cold that it hurt. It had that stinging pain that you get just before you lose all feeling in the limb, and frostbite settles in and spills over your body, and you fall into that last gentle sleep, never to wake.
I jerked my hand back, and blinked awake, with a gasp.
“What is wrong?’ he asked, and leaned over me, touching my face.
I jerked away from him, cradling my hand against my chest, staring up at him, afraid. “You’re cold inside.”
He took a step back from me, and the surprise showed on his face. “You should feel safe, warm.” He leaned over me, trying to get me to gaze into his blue-green eyes.
I shook my head. Feeling was coming back into my finger in a stinging rush, the way circulation comes back after frostbite. The throbbing ache helped me think, helped me avoid his gaze. “I’m not safe,” I said, “and I’m not warm.” I looked away from him, which put me gazing at the skin-clad guy. But truthfully even that was better than staring at the “god.” Itzpapalotl’s touch was helping me, but it had limits. If I fell into his eyes, wherever they might be, they’d just kill me, and I might go willingly, eagerly into that last dark.
“You are making this difficult, Anita.”
I kept my gaze on the far wall. “Sorry that I’m ruining your night.”
He stroked the curve of my face. I flinched as if he’d hurt me. I’d thought what I was trying to
delay was my death. Now I realized that I was trying to delay falling into his power. They’d kill me after that, but I’d be gone before the knife fell. Had Paulina gone like that, willingly, eager to please the “god?” I hoped so, for her sake. For mine, I wasn’t so sure.
“I want you to believe that your death will be for a great purpose.”
“Sorry, not buying swampland today.”
I could almost feel his puzzlement like a play of energy along my skin. I’d felt anger, lust, fear dance along my skin from vampires and wereanimals, but I’d never felt puzzlement before. I hadn’t felt his emotions before I touched that damned eye. He was sucking me down a piece at a time.
He grabbed my hand.
“No.” I said it through gritted teeth. He could break my fingers this time, but I wasn’t just opening up and touching him again. I couldn’t just cooperate with him anymore, not even to buy time. I had to start fighting him now, or there’d be nothing left of me. I’d had vampires roll my mind before, but I’d never felt anything like him. Once he got a really good hold on my mind, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d come back. There are a lot of ways to die. Being killed is only one of the more obvious ones. If he rolled my mind and there was nothing left of who I was, then I was dead or would wish I was.
I flexed my arm, hugging it to my chest, straining my muscles to keep it there. He lifted the wrist and my whole upper body with it, but I held the arm, fingers closed into a fist.
“Do not make me hurt you, Anita.”
“I’m not making you do anything. Whatever you do, it’s your choice to do it, not mine.”
He laid me back down, gently. “I could crush your hand.” It sounded like a threat, but his voice was still gentle.
“I won’t touch you again, not like that, not voluntarily.”
“But lay your hand upon my chest, above my heart. That is not a hard thing, Anita.”
“No.”
“You are a very stubborn woman.”
“You’re not the first one to say it,” I said.
“I will not force you.”
The skinned man moved forward until he was directly against the stone, mirroring his “god.” He drew an obsidian blade and bent over me. I tensed, but I didn’t say anything. I could not touch him again and promise I’d come out the other side. If I was going to die anyway, I’d die whole, not possessed by some would-be god.
But he didn’t stab me. He slipped the tip of the blade under the shoulder of the Kevlar vest. Kevlar isn’t meant to stop a stabbing motion, but it’s not an easy thing to cut through, especially with a stone knife. The empty skin hand that decorated his wrist wobbled back and forth, back and forth, as he sawed. I stared past him at the far wall, but my peripheral vision just couldn’t get rid of that flopping hand. I finally had to stare up at the ceiling, but it was just darkness. It’s hard to stare into the dark when there are other things to look at, but I tried.
I almost asked them if they knew what Velcro was, but didn’t. It would take them awhile to cut the vest off with an obsidian blade. Hell, I might not have to do anything else to delay them. It’d be morning by the time the obsidian cut through the material. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who figured that out.
The skin man put the blade back in his sheath and pulled a second knife out from a sheath behind his back, the way you’d carry a backup gun. When he raised it into the firelight, it glimmered silver, steel. With or without high silver content, it would still cut through the vest a lot quicker than the obsidian.
He slipped the tip under the shoulder seam of the vest. I finally had to say something. “You just planning to cut my heart out?”
“Your heart will remain in your chest where it belongs,” the “god” said.
“Then why do you want the vest off?” I finally turned my head and looked at him, though not at any of his eyes.
“If you will not touch my chest with your hand, there are other parts of your body that can feel,” he said.
It was almost enough to make me give him my hand, almost. I didn’t trust what he might consider other parts of my body that could feel. But it would take time to get the vest off, and if I just gave up my hand, that wouldn’t take any time at all. I needed the time.
The vest came off quicker than you’d think. It was not designed to stand up to a sawing blade. They pulled the pieces of the vest off me, tugging the last from under my back.
The Red Woman’s Husband climbed up beside me. He knelt, staring down at me, and he wasn’t staring at my face. He traced the outline of my bra with the tip of one finger. Trailing, oh, so lightly, along my skin. “What is this?” He traced under the bra back and forth, back and forth.
“Underwire,” I said.
He traced the black lace at the top of the bra. “So many new things to learn.”
“Glad you like it,” I said. He didn’t get the sarcasm. Maybe he was immune to it.
He did what I’d thought he’d do. He climbed on top of me. But he didn’t get into a standard missionary position. He scooted lower until his chest was pressed against mine. With our height differences, that put his groin safely below mine. So it wasn’t rape that we were doing. Maybe it was just me that worried so much about that. But somehow the knowledge that it wasn’t sex he was after scared me more. There were worse things he could take from me than sex, like my mind.
His chest pressed against mine, smooth, warm, very human. Nothing bad happened. Funny, that didn’t slow the frantic beat of my heart, or make me look him in the eyes.
“Do you feel it?” he asked.
I just kept staring at the far wall of the cave. “I don’t know what you mean?”
His chest pressed harder against me. “Do you feel my heart beating?”
It wasn’t the question I’d been expecting, so I actually thought about it. I tried to feel the answering beat of his heart against me, but all I could feel was my own panicked pulse.
“Sorry, all I can feel is mine.”
“And that is the problem,” he said.
I actually looked up at him then, getting a brief glimpse of his face, leaning so close below mine, the startling glimpse of his blue-green eyes in that dark face. I looked back to the wall. “What do you mean?”
“My heart does not beat.”
I tried to feel his heart then, tried to sense the pulse of his life through the warm flesh of his chest. Concentrating on it slowed my own heart. You aren’t always aware of a man’s heart beating against your body, but when they’re lying chest to chest, you usually feel it. But his chest pressed quiet above mine. I moved my free hand slowly toward him. He raised up, supporting himself with his hands, so I could press my hand against his chest.
His skin was warm and smooth, almost perfect, but nothing beat under my hand. Either he had no heart, or it wasn’t beating.
“I am only a body. The Red Woman does not live in me. My heart is not a fit sacrifice without her touch.”
That made me look back at him. I looked into his peaceful eyes. “Sacrifice? You’re going to sacrifice yourself?”
His eyes stayed gentle and hopeful. “I will be a sacrifice to the creator gods. They need to feed on the blood of a god as they did at the beginning of time.”
I tried to read something in that peaceful handsome face. Some doubt, fear, anything I could understand.
“You’re going to let your priest cut you up?”
“Yes, but I will be reborn.”
“You’re sure of that?” I said.
“My heart will be strong enough to beat outside my body, and when it is placed back within me, the old gods will return from the exile that your white Christ has cast them into.” His face, more than his words, said that he did believe it.
I’d read enough of the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish to doubt that Christ had much to do with it, no matter how many things had been done in His name. “Don’t blame Jesus Christ for what the Spanish did to your people. Our god gave us free choice, and that means
we can choose evil. I believe that that’s what happened to the men who conquered your people.”
He looked down at me, and he was puzzled again. “You believe that. I can tell you believe that.”
“With all my heart,” I said. “No pun intended.”
He sat up, sitting across my waist. “Most of the people I have taken as offerings did not believe in much of anything. The ones who did believe, did not believe in your white Christ.” He touched my face. “But you do.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“How can you believe in a god that would allow you to be brought to this place and sacrificed to a foreign god?”
“If you only believe when it’s easy, you don’t really believe,” I said.
“Is it not ironic that you, a follower of the god that destroyed us, will be what allows me to come into my power. When I have taken your essence, I will be strong enough to make the precious liquid, and I will be free of this place at last.”
“What do you mean, take my essence?” I’d stopped being afraid because we’d just been talking so long, or maybe I just can’t sustain fear for that long. Eventually, if you don’t kill me or hurt me, I stop being afraid.
“I will but kiss you and you will become as light and dry as the aged maize. You will feed me as the corn feeds men.” He began to lie down beside me on my right side, near my free hand.
I was suddenly scared again. I hoped I was wrong, but I was pretty sure I’d already seen what he meant to do to me at the Obsidian Butterfly. “You mean you’ll suck the life out of me and I’ll end up looking like a dried mummy.”
He stroked a finger down my cheek, his eyes sad now, regretful. “It will hurt a great deal, and I am sorry for that, but even your pain will go to strengthen me.” He leaned his face towards mine. I had a free hand and a knife in my pocket, but if I went for it too soon and failed, I was out of options. Where the hell was Ramirez?
“You’re going to torture me. Great,” I said.
He drew back from me, just a little. “It is not torture. It is the way all my priests waited for my waking.”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 191
