Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #9) - Page 33

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I WOKE INSTANTLY, my skin jumping with a rush of magic that left me gasping. My body strained, writhing as the power rode over and through my body in a burning surge that just kept growing. My hands and legs strained against the chains that held me down. Chains? I turned and stared at my wrists, head still thrashing, my body jerking as the power roared through me. My arms and legs jerked, not because I was struggling against the chains but as a reaction to the power.

The magic began to fade, leaving my breath coming in pants. One thing I knew. If didn't get my breathing under control, I was going to hyperventilate. Passing out again would be bad. Heaven knew what I'd wake up to a second time. I concentrated on my breathing, forcing myself to be calm, and take deep, even, normal breaths. It's hard to be totally panic-stricken when you're doing breathing exercises. It poured a false calm over my body, and my mind. But it let me think, which was good.

I was lying on my back, chained to a smooth stone surface. There was a curve of cave wall beside me, and a ceiling lost to sight in the darkness above. I'd have loved to believe that Bernardo and Olaf had rescued me and we were back in the cave entrance, but the chains sort of ruined that pleasant thought. This cave was much taller, and without looking it just felt bigger. Firelight bounced in orange shadows along the cave, like being in a ball of darkness and gold light.

I finally turned my head to the right and let myself see what was there, At first I thought it was Pinotl, Itzpapalotl's human servant, I had a few seconds of cursing myself for believing her when she said she didn't know about the monster, then I realized it wasn't him. It looked like him. Same square, chiseled face, dark, rich skin, and the black hair cut long and oddly square, but this man was narrow through the shoulders, thin, and there was no air of command to him. He was also wearing a pair of loose-fitting shorts instead of the nifty clothes that Pinotl wore.

There was a smooth rounded stone like the one at the Obsidian Butterfly. There was a body draped over that stone. Foreshortened legs and arms, short dark hair, and for a moment I thought it was Nicky Baco, then I saw the naked chest more clearly, and it was Paulina, Nicky's wife. There was a hole under her ribs like a great gaping mouth. They'd torn out her heart. The unknown man stood there holding the heart in his hands, above his head like an offering. His eyes looked black in the uncertain light. He lowered his arms, walking towards me with the heart cupped in his hands. His hands were so thick with blood that it looked like he was wearing red gloves. There were four men standing at attention around the altar. They were wearing some sort of soft leather on their bodies, hoods up and covering them from head to foot almost. There was something wrong with what they were wearing, but my eyes couldn't make sense of it, and I had other more immediate problems than what people were wearing.

I was still wearing the Kevlar vest and all the rest of my clothes. If they meant to take my heart, they'd have taken the clothes. It was a very comforting thought as the man, the priest, walked towards me with the heart in his hands. He held the heart over my chest and began to chant in a language that sounded like Spanish, but wasn't.

Blood dripped from the heart, splatted on the vest. It made me jump. The calm of the breathing exercises was wearing off. I did not want him to touch me with that thing. It wasn't even logic, fear of some spell or magic. It was pure revulsion. I did not want to be touched by a heart that had just been torn out of someone's body. I've put my share of stakes through hearts. I've even cut a few out for burning, but somehow this was different. Maybe it was being chained and helpless, or maybe it was Paulina's body lying limp over the altar, looking like a broken doll. The only time I'd met her she'd been so strong, threatening me with a gun, but lots of people had done that. Edward used to do that all the time. Starting out a relationship on the end of a gun didn't mean you couldn't be friends down the road. Unless one of you died. No friendship now. No nothing for Paulina.

The man ended the chant and began to lower the heart towards me.

I strained against the chains though I knew it was useless, and I said, "Don't touch me with that." It sounded sure and strong, but if he understood English, I couldn't tell it because he just kept lowering his bloody hands, closer and closer. He laid the heart on my chest, and I was almost as grateful that the Kevlar kept me from feeling that thing next to my skin, as I'd been for the extra protection from bullets earlier.

The heart lay on my chest like so much meat. There was no magic to it. It was just dead. Then the heart took a breath, or that's what it looked like. The skin rose and fell. It sat on my chest, naked and attached to nothing and pulsed. I was suddenly aware of my own heartbeat. The moment I noticed my heartbeat, Paulina's heart stuttered, then began to beat in time with mine. And the moment the rhythms were shared, I could hear a second heart beat. Except that Paulina's heart had no blood to pump, no chest to resonate in. It should have been a pale sound compared to the real thing, but it was a solid pulsing beat. It was as if the sound reached through the vest, through my skin, my ribs, and pierced my heart. The pain was sharp and immediate, stealing my breath, bowing my spine.

"Hold her," the man yelled.

The men who'd been standing by the altar ran to me, strong hands pressing on my legs, pinning my shoulders. My spine tried to bow with the pain, and a third set of hands pressed down on my thighs, three of them pinning me to the stone, forcing me to ride the pain and not struggle.

Paulina's heart was beating faster and faster, speeding, speeding, towards some grand climax. My heart thundered against my ribs, as if it were trying to tear loose of the tissue. It was as if a fist were beating on the inside of my chest, trying to smash its way out. I couldn't breathe, as if all of my chest was caught up in the frantic race, and there was no time for anything else.

The pain was centered in my chest, but it spread down my arms, my legs, filled my head until I thought that it might not be my heart that exploded. It might be the top of my head.

I could feel the two hearts like lovers separated by a wall, tearing it down between them until they would be able to touch. There was a moment when I felt them touch, felt the thick wet sides of the two organs slide into each other. Maybe it was just the pain. Then the heart stopped like a person caught in mid-motion, and my heart stopped with it. For a breathless moment my heart sat in my body and did nothing, as if waiting. Then it gave one beat, then another, and I drew air into my lungs in a frantic rush, and as soon as I had air, I screamed. Then I lay there, still listening to my heart beat, feeling the pain begin to fade like the memory of a nightmare. Minutes later, the pain was gone. My body didn't even hurt. In fact, I felt energized, wonderful.

The heart on my chest had shriveled into a gray, used up piece of flesh. It wasn't recognizable as a heart, just a dry ball smaller than my palm. I blinked up and saw the face of the man holding my shoulders down. I'm sure he'd been looking down at me for a while, but I hadn't seen him or hadn't understood what I was seeing.

He wore a mask over his face. Only his lips, eyes, and ears showed through the thin covering. His neck was bare, then a ragged bow neck of the same material of the mask covered him. I think part of me knew what I was looking at, before the rest of me would accept it. It wasn't until I turned my head as far as I could to one side, and saw the hands that I knew what he was wearing. The empty hands bunched at his wrists like limp, fleshly lace. It was human skin. I'd finally found out what had happened to some of the skin the flayed ones had lost.

The eyes that stared out of that horrible thing were brown and very human. I looked down the line of my body and found that the other two men holding my legs wore the same thing, but the skins weren't all the same colors. One dark, two light. The chests had thick cord sewn across it where the breasts and nipples would have been, so there was no clue to whether the skin had been male or female.

The first man I'd seen stepped forward. "How do you feel?" His English was heavily accented but clear.

I just looked at him for a second. He had to be kidding. "How am I supposed to feel? I just woke up in a cave where you just performed a human sacrifice." I glanced at the men still holding me down. "I'm being held down by men wearing flayed human skin suits. How the hell I am I supposed to feel?"

"I am asking after your bodily health. Nothing more," he said.

I started to say something else sarcastic, but stopped and really thought about his question. How did I feel? Actually, I felt good. I remembered that rush of energy and well-being that had spread over me when the spell finished. It was still there. I felt better than I'd felt in days. If it hadn't required human sacrifice, it would have been a great medical treatment.

"I feel okay."

"No pain in the head?"

"No."

"Good," he said. He motioned, and the skin guys moved away from me. They moved back to stand against the wall by the fourth man who hadn't been needed to hold me down. They stood there like good soldiers, waiting for their next orders.

I turned back to look at the other guy. Everyone in the room was scary, but at least he wasn't wearing someone else's skin. "What did you do to me?"

"We have saved your life. Our master's creature was overzealous. There was bleeding in your head. We needed you alive."

I thought about that. "You used Paulina's life force to heal me."

"Yes.

"I'm glad to be alive, honest." I looked past him at Paulina's body lying broken and forgotten. "But she didn't volunteer to trade her life for mine, did she?"

"Nicky Baco began to suspect what price he would have to pay for our master's blessing. She was a hostage to make sure he came to this our last meeting," the man said.

"Let me guess. He didn't show," I said.

"He no longer answers our master's call."

Apparently, Ramirez had taken my advice of having Leonora Evans do some sort of magical barrier around Nicky so he couldn't contact his master. Good to know it was working, but you try to do the right thing and it ends up getting someone else killed. Why is that always the way it works? But I admit that I was happier for me than sorry for Paulina. Not about her trading her life for mine, but if Nicky was being protected by magic, then he and the police were on their way. All I had to do was stall and keep them from doing whatever it was they had planned for me.

"So when Nicky didn't show up, you didn't need to keep her alive." My voice sounded calm, but better than that, I was calm. Not normal calm, but the cool distant calm that you either learn to do during the really bad stuff, or you run screaming. I'd done all the screaming I planned on doing tonight.

"Her life did not matter. Yours does."

"I'm glad to be alive, and don't take this wrong, but why do you give a damn if I live or die?"

"We need you," a male voice said from behind me. I had to arch my neck and crane my head backward to see the owner of that second voice. I didn't see the man at first because he was surrounded by the flayed ones. I'd known that Edward was worried that they'd missed some bodies. He had no idea. There must have been twenty-five, thirty-five animated corpses standing behind me. They'd been standing so quietly, I hadn't heard them or sensed them. They stood there now like robots with the switch turned off, waiting for life to return. Zombies never got that still, never went that empty. At the end, when they started to rot and you had to put them back in the grave before they melted into little puddles, they were more alive than this. I realized in that instant that the bodies were raised, but the person inside that body wasn't raised. The master ate that which made them individuals. He ate that which made them more than so much muscle and skin. He didn't eat the souls because I'd seen one of them in a house where two flayed ones had been made. But he took something out of their bodies, some memory or remnant that I left in when I raised the dead. They stood like rocks carved of flesh, utterly empty. At least the ones in the hospital had pretended to still be alive. There was no pretense here.

My eyes finally found the man. He wore a steel helmet and breastplate like the history books are always showing the conquistadors wearing, but the rest of the outfit was straight out of a nightmare.

He wore a necklace of tongues, and they were all still fresh and pink as if they'd just been cut out seconds ago. He wore a skirt of intestines that writhed and twisted like snakes, as if each thick glistening strand had an independent life of its own. His arms were bare, strong and muscled, and covered in the missing eyelids of the victims. As he moved close, the eyelids opened and closed. He came to stand beside me, next to the first man. The eyelids blinked at me and there were eye shaped holes underneath every lid that I saw. The holes held darkness and the cold light of stars.

I turned away because I was remembering Itzpapalotl's starry eyes. I didn't want to fall into these eyes. At that second if you had given me a choice, I'd have taken the vampire in town to the thing that was standing in front of me.

After what I'd seen at the murder scene, I expected to feel evil emanating from him, but there was no evil. There was power like being next to a battery the size of the Chrysler building. The energy hummed along my skin, but it was neutral energy. Neither good nor bad in and of itself, the way a gun is neither good nor bad but can be turned to evil purposes.

I stared up the line of his body, and the tongues were moving as if still trying to scream. He took off the helmet and showed a slender, handsome face that reminded me of Bernardo's, not the pure Aztec ethnicity I'd been expecting. He had turquoise ear spools in his lobes, and they matched the blue green of his eyes. He smiled down at me, looking like a fresh-faced twenty-something. I could feel the weight of the ages in his gaze like some vast weight pressing down on me, as if just being this close made it hard to breathe.

He reached out to touch my face, and I jerked back from him. That one movement seemed to break his hold over me. I could move. I could breathe. I could think. I'd been on the receiving end of enough magical glamour to know it when I felt it. You're either a god, or you're not. He was not. And it wasn't just my monotheism showing. I'd felt the magic of monsters and preternatural beasties of all sorts, and I knew one when I saw one. Power doesn't make you a deity. I don't know exactly what does, but power ain't it. Some spark of the divine was missing from the being that gazed down upon me. If he was just another monster, maybe we could deal.

"Who are you?" And I was happy that my voice was confident, normal.

"I am the Red Woman's Husband." He gazed down at me with eyes so patient, so kind. You think angels must have eyes like that.

"The Red Woman is the Aztec phrase for blood. What does it mean that you're blood's husband?"

"I am the body, and she is the life." He said it like it answered my question. It didn't.

Something wet and slimy touched my hand. I jerked back, but the chain didn't let me go far. The length of animated intestine followed my hand, nuzzling it like some obscene worm. I swallowed a scream, but I couldn't keep my pulse from speeding up.

He laughed at me.

It was a very ordinary laugh for a would-be god, but it was nicely condescending and maybe that's how would-be gods laughed. But it was a peculiarly masculine condescension, long gone out of style. The laugh says, "Silly little girl, don't you know I'm the big strong man, and you know nothing, and I know everything?" Or maybe I'm just too sensitive.

"Why intestines?" I asked.

The smile faded around the edges. His handsome face looked puzzled. "Are you making fun of me?" The intestine dropped away from my hand like a date that I'd rebuffed. Fine with me.

"No. I just wondered why intestines. You can obviously animate any body part. You can keep detached parts from decaying like the skins your men are wearing. With all that to choose from, why people's guts and not something else?" People love to talk about themselves. The bigger the ego, the more they enjoy it. I was hoping that the Red Woman's Husband was the same as everyone else, at least in this one thing.

"I wear the roots of their bodies so that all that see me will know that my enemies are empty shells and I have all that was theirs."

Ask a silly question. "Why the tongues?"

"So that the lies of my enemies will not be believed."

"Eyelids?"

"I will open the eyes of my enemies so that they may never again close their eyes to the truth."

He was answering questions so nicely that I decided to try for more. "How did you skin the people without using a tool of some kind?"

"Tlaloci, my priest, called the skin from their bodies."

"How?" I asked.

"My power," he said.

"Don't you mean Tlaloci's power?"

He frowned again. "All his power derives from me."

"Sure," I said.

"I am his master. He owes all to me."

"Sounds like you owe him."

"You do not know what you are saying." He was getting angry. Probably not what I wanted. I tried another more polite question.

"Why take the breasts and penises?"

"To feed my minion." He did nothing, but suddenly I felt the air in the cavern move, and it was as if the shadows themselves drew apart like a curtain revealing a tunnel about thirty feet from the foot of where I lay. Something crawled out of that tunnel. The first impression was of a brilliant iridescent green. The scales changed color at every turn of the light. First green, then blue, then blue and green all at once, then a pearl white glitter that I thought I must have imagined, until it turned its head and flashed a white underbelly. The green scales went closer to true blue as the color moved up towards the head, until the square snout was a clear pure blue the color of sky. There was a fringe of delicate feathers in a rainbow of colors around that face. It turned and stared at me, fanning the feathers around its scaled head into a display that would have been the envy of any peacock. Its eyes were round and huge, taking up most of its face like the eyes of a bird of prey. A pair of slender wings was folded along its back, rainbow colors of the fringe, but I knew without seeing that the underside of the wings would be white. It pushed forward on four legs. Counting the wings, it was a six-limbed animal.

It was a Quetzalcoatl Draconus Giganticus, or at least that was the last Latin classification I was aware of. Sometimes they were classed as a subspecies of dragons, sometimes as a subspecies of gargoyles, and sometimes they had their own group all to themselves. Whatever classification, the Giganticus was the biggest and supposedly extinct. The Spaniards had killed a lot of them to dishearten the natives to whom they were sacred, and because it was just the European thing to do. See a dragon, kill it. It was not a complex philosophy.

I'd only seen black and white photos, and the stuffed one in the Chicago Field Museum. The photos hadn't come close to doing it justice, and the stuffed one, well, maybe it was a bad taxidermy job.

It glided into the room in a shimmering roll of color and muscle. It was literally one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. It was also probably what had been gutting people. It opened that sky-blue snout and yawned showing rows of saw-like teeth. The sound of its claws clattered over the stone floor like some nightmarish dog.

Red Woman's Husband lay his Spanish helmet on the stone by my legs and went to greet the creature. It lowered its head to be petted, very like a dog. He stroked it just above the eye ridges and it made a low, rolling sound, eyes closing to slits. It was purring.

He sent it away with a playful push against one muscular shoulder. I watched it vanish back through the tunnel like it wasn't real. "I thought they were extinct."

"My minion helped bring us to this place, then it slept a magic sleep, waiting for me to awake."

"I didn't know Quetzalcoatls could hibernate."

He frowned at me again and came to stand by my head. "I know what your word hibernate means, but it was a magic sleep, done by the last of my warrior priests. The priest sacrificed himself, putting all of us in an enchanted sleep, knowing that there was no one to aid him, and that he would die alone in this alien place long before I rose."

Enchanted sleep. Sounded like Sleeping Beauty. "That's true loyalty, sacrifice yourself for the better good."

"I'm so glad you agree. It will make what has to happen much easier."

Didn't like the sound of that. Maybe flattery wasn't the way to go. I'd try something more normal for me ¨C sarcasm ¨C and see if that led us away from the topic of my impending doom. "I don't owe you any loyalty. I am not one of your followers."

"Only because you do not understand," he said, and those smiling eyes gazed down at me with a look of almost perfect peace.

"That's what Jim Jones said just before he gave every one the Kool-Aid."

"I do not know this name, Jim Jones." Then he turned his head to one side, and it reminded me of Itzpapalotl when she listened to voices I could not hear. Now I realized that it might just be a way to access other people's memories. "Ah, I know who he is now." He looked down at me with those calm, beatific eyes. "But I am no madman. I am a god."

He was getting distracted, as if it mattered to him for me to believe he was a god. If he had to convince me that he was divine before he killed me, then I was safe. He could kill me, but he'd never convince me he was a god.

He frowned. "You do not believe me." He sounded surprised again. And I realized that for all his power, he seemed young. The ages raged through the eyes on his arms as though you could see back through to the beginning of creation, but he, himself, seemed young. Or maybe he just wasn't used to people who didn't drop down and worship him. If that's all you'd known in your entire existence, then anyone not worshipping might be a shock.

"I am a god," he repeated, and his voice had that condescending tone again.

"Whatever you say." But I made sure my doubt showed in my voice.

The frown deepened, and again I was reminded forcibly of a pouting child. A spoiled, pouting child. "You must believe that I am a god. I am the Red Woman's Husband. I am the body that will be revenged on those that destroyed my people."

"You mean the Spanish Conquistadors?"

"Yes," he said.

"There aren't a lot of conquistadors in New Mexico," I said.

"Their blood still runs in the veins of their children's children's children."

"No offense, but you didn't get those turquoise blue eyes from anyone local."

He frowned again, and little lines formed between his eyes. If he kept talking to me, he was going to get frown lines. "I am a god created by my people's tears. I am the power that is left of the Aztecs, and I am the Spaniard's magic made flesh. We will use their own power to destroy them."

"Isn't it a little late to destroy them? About five hundred years too late."

"Gods do not reckon time as men do."

I believed that he believed what he was saying, but I also thought he was rationalizing. He'd have kicked the Spaniards' butts five hundred years ago if he'd been able to do it.

Maybe it showed on my face because he said, "I was a new god then, and I did not have the strength to defeat our enemies, so the Quetzalcoatl brought me here to wait until I grew strong enough for our purpose. I am ready to lead my army forward now."

"So you're saying that it took five hundred years for you to go from being a wee little god to a big bad god, the way soup needs to simmer for a really long time before it's soup?"

He laughed. "You think very strangely. I am sad that you will be dead soon. I would make you the first of my concubines, and the mother of gods, for children born of you would be great sorcerers, but sadly, I have need of your life."

We were back to killing me, and I didn't want to be there. His ego seemed pretty fragile for a deity. I'd see how fragile. "The offer doesn't sound very appealing, no offense."

He smiled down at me, fingers trailing along my arm. "That we will take your life is not an offer. It is a fact."

I gave him my best innocent eyes. "I thought you were offering to make me your concubine, the mother of gods?"

He frowned at me harder. "I did not offer you a chance to be my concubine."

"Oh," I said. "Sorry. I misunderstood you."

His fingers were still touching my arm, but they were still now, as if he'd forgotten he was touching me. "You would refuse my bed?" He sounded truly perplexed. Great.

"Yeah," I said.

"Is it your virtue you are protecting?"

"No, it's just your particular offer doesn't appeal to me."

He was really having trouble with the concept that I didn't find him attractive. He ran his fingers down my bare arm in a tickling brush. I just lay there and looked at him. I was giving him some of the best eye contact I'd given anyone this trip because if I looked anywhere else, I kept seeing severed body parts wiggling on their own. Hard to be tough as nails when you wanted to start screaming. He touched my face, and I let him this time. His fingers traced my face, delicately, gently. His eyes no longer looked peaceful. No, definitely disturbed.

He leaned into me as if he'd kiss me, and the eye lashes on his arms fluttered in butterfly kisses along my body. I gave a little shriek.

He drew back. "What is wrong?"

"Oh, I don't know. Severed eyelids fluttering against my skin, intestines that writhe like snakes around your waist, the necklace of tongues trying to lick me. Pick one."

"But that should not matter," he said. "You should see me as beautiful, desirable."

I did the best shrug I could with my hands chained higher than my shoulders.

"Sorry, but I just can't get past what you're wearing."

"Tlaloci," he said.

The man in shorts came forward, and dropped to one knee before him. "Yes, my lord."

"Why does she not see me as wonderful?"

"Apparently, the aura of your godhood does not work on her."

"Why not?" And there was anger now in his voice, in that once peaceful face.

"I do not know, my lord."

"You said she could replace Nicky Baco. You said she was a nauhuli as he was. You said she had been touched by my magic, and it was the scent of my magic that drew the Quetzalcoatl to her. But she lies under the touch of my hands and does not feel for me. That is not possible if my magic clings to her."

I thought, what if it's not his magic, but I didn't say it out loud. What if it was Itzpapalotl's? The being standing in front of me had nearly killed me from a distance. He'd roared over my mind and taken me, and I hadn't been able to stop him. Now, he was touching me, and evidently trying things on me, and it wasn't working. The only thing that had changed was Itzpapalotl's power filling me for awhile. Had that made the difference?

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 was Edward 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. Whydid 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 too