Blood Sport

  LET THE GAMES BEGIN

  Mama Grande streaked through Leni's life like a bad dream. She arrived out of nowhere, claiming to be the ex-Lone Star detective's grandmother. She prophesied rivers of blood and an earth in flames. But her murder was even more bizarre: she died at the hands of two Yucatán missionaries hiding a secret of the Gods.

  With combat biker wannabe Rafael in tow, Leni dives into Mama Grande's past...and hurtles into the dark heart of Aztlan—where human sacrifice is all the rage, and where ancient ceremonial games could trigger the end of the world. Are they crazy cultists or true harbingers of doom? The closer Leni and Rafael get to the answer, the nearer they move to the brink of oblivion. Either way, their futures could be cancelled....

  BLOOD SPORT

  APOCALYPSE, SOON!

  Mama G sat on a chair in the middle of the room... her dress was soaking wet and a blanket had been draped around her shoulders.

  “What’s wrong, Mama Grande?” I asked softly.

  She shook her head. “I had to tell,” she moaned. “The magic . . . Lenora ... I had to tell her . . . They made me tell ...”

  “They?” I echoed. I knelt down in front of Mama G, tried to catch her eye. “Who are ‘they’, Mama Grande? Were they thieves? Burglars? Did gangers attack you?”

  Mama G stood up suddenly and looked wildly around her. Her attention became riveted on the floor, although it was clear she was looking right past the objects that littered it. “The hole! The hole in the earth. It’s the end. The end of the world! Oh blessed Virgin, the end!”

  SHADOWRUN : 29

  BLOOD SPORT

  Lisa Smedman

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks again to B.C. Science Fiction Association writers’ workshop members who helped to critique this novel. Thanks also to Toni, for answering my various “trivia questions” on Catholicism, and to Luis for his help with the Spanish.

  1

  I knew it was going to be a bad day when I saw the dead snake on my doorstep that morning. I should have recognized it for the omen that it was. But at the time, it was just another annoyance.

  Everything had gone wrong that week. On Monday, my computer caught a case of “Tourette’s virus”—a nasty little program that seeded my outgoing reports with four-letter words, causing my clients to think I’d lost it. On Tuesday my car was vandalized and the jerk I hired to fix it tried to rip me off, not realizing that this was one woman who knew as much about bodywork as he did. On Wednesday, I came down with a head cold that settled in my sinuses, making my forehead pound and my thoughts go muzzy. And on Thursday I received a notice from the Internal Revenue Department via telecom, announcing that last year’s return was going to be audited. Again. It was clear that the accountant who kept the books for my one-woman detective agency needed to be fired. Or burned at the stake, with my tax returns as fuel for the flames.

  Friday . . . well, I still didn’t know what more could go wrong, but it was already a bloody miserable day just the same. It had been raining steadily for the entire month of November, and Seattle residents were starting to joke about 2057 being the year when they’d finally need to build their arks. Nobody even looked at the sky any more; it was always the same lead-gray. The constant drizzle combined with the condensation in my basement flat to produce a faint miasma of mold. Not that I could smell it. My sinuses were filled with concrete. At least, that’s how it felt.

  The snake lay on my doorstep, spine bent at an acute angle just behind the head and its “throat” chewed open. I could guess who the culprit was. Pinkerton, my cat, usually practiced “catch and release.” I’d found rats, starlings, moles—even a squirrel one time, although spirits only knew how Pinkerton had wrestled it in through his cat door—hiding under couches or peeking out at me from shelves. But this time, Pinkerton had gone for the kill.

  The snake was an odd-looking specimen. Not the usual greenish-brown garter snake so common in the Pacific Northwest (and that Mama Grande always talks to while puttering in the garden), but instead a mottled buff and brown—desert camouflage colors—dotted with tiny flecks of brilliant turquoise. I’d never seen anything like it. Maybe it was one of the multitude of strange new creatures mutated by the magic of the Awakened world.

  I picked the snake up by the tail and looked around for a place to put it. I considered burying the corpse, but getting a shovel meant unlocking the tool shed and I didn’t want to get my hands muddy by scraping around in the flower bed. So I carried the snake out to the lane and dropped it in a trash can.

  If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have been concerned that Mama Grande would see it. Rafael was at work until later that evening, and she’d be the only one to take out the trash before the truck came around in the afternoon. At the very least, I could have hidden the snake under one of the bags. But I just dropped it on top, in plain view.

  As I put the lid back on the garbage can, I succumbed to a fit of sneezing. By the time it was over, my eyes were watering and my nose was running. The drizzle of rain had turned into a steady patter and my hair hung limp. So when Mama G opened her window and called to me to come inside, I opted to spend a little time warming up in her kitchen before setting out. Frag the appointment. I could be a little late for it, if I had to.

  My self-appointed grandmother and her grandson Rafael live—lived—on the main floor of the rental house that also held my basement doss. It’s an older building, dating from the middle of the last century—solidly blue collar, like the rest of the houses in Auburn. Square and boxy, its two-story bulk covered with stained gray stucco, the place has no pretenses. It probably never did.

  The back steps leading up to the main floor are riddled with dry rot. I constantly warned Mama G not to use them, but she just laughed at me and rolled her eyes. I guess when you come from a country that’s been torn apart by civil war, a shaky staircase doesn’t seem like much to worry about.

  I climbed the steps, expecting my foot to go through a weak spot at any moment. With the way my luck had gone lately, a twisted ankle wouldn’t have surprised me. But I made it to the top without injury. Miracles, it seemed, still happened.

  As I reached the top, Mama G opened the wooden door and pushed open the torn screen door that fronted it. I hadn’t heard the click of a lock, and so I scolded her. “Rafael spent a lot of time installing those voice-recognition locks, Mama Grande. You really should use them.”

  “Eso no los detendrá.” she answered.

  Some time ago, I’d uploaded the contents of a LinguaSoft into the permanent memory of my headware so that I could understand Aztlaner Spanish. That didn’t mean I could always understand Mama G. “That won’t stop who?” I asked. But she was already off in another world, bustling about the kitchen.

  I stepped inside, wiping my wet feet on the mat, and closed the door behind me. I activated the security system, even though I knew full well that Mama G would spend the day in the garden tending her plants—rain or no rain—and would probably leave the back door wide open.

  I saw that Rafael had plugged up the holes in the door again. A month ago, Mama G had used his drill to bore a series of five-centimeter-wide holes near the bottom of the door. She said it let “the spirits” inside. As far as I could tell, the spirits amounted to nothing more than a cold breeze on the ankles. But to Mama G, they were real—old friends who shouldn’t be forced to wait and knock. Hence the holes.

  Mama G was following her usual routine, shuffling in a repetitive S-pattem at the center of the kitchen. It was what she always did when she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words, even in Spanish. It gave her time to think.

  While she worked out her frustration, I looked around the room to see how the woman I’d come to regard as my grandmother was getting along.
The ceiling was festooned with the usual collection of herbs, hung to dry from a series of screw-in hooks. Jesus in his crown of thorns stared mournfully down from a holographic portrait above the doorway; his slightly bulging eyes seemed to be following Mama G’s progress around the kitchen. A chrome-legged table was covered with a layer of newspapers that protected it from the oily collection of motorcycle parts that Rafael had been working on. Beside them sat an ashtray filled with stubbed-out cigarettes. But the dishes had been done and none of the stove elements were on—Mama G’s short-term memory seemed to be holding, even though her long-term retention was glitched.

  I wondered what she wanted. Perhaps she was going to hint, once again, that I should get married. In her opinion, Rafael and I were the perfect match—we’d known each other for three years, ever since my brief stint working as a security guard, just after I left the Star. It didn’t matter to Rosalita that we had nothing else in common—or that I wasn’t interested in repeating my last disastrous relationship, no matter how aesthetically appealing Rafael’s muscular body might be.

  Rafael had put in a good word for me with the landlord after the previous tenant of the basement flat had bugged out. He was a good friend, and often came downstairs for a cup of soykaf or invited me up for some home brew. I liked his company—and adored his grandmother. But that was as far as it went. I wasn’t going to marry any man who put his motorcycle first and his girlfriend of the week second.

  Mama G’s shuffling was slowing down. She moistened her lips with her tongue—her other nervous habit—then stopped suddenly and smoothed her white hair with a wrinkled hand. She stood blinking at me, one hand plucking at the fabric of her dress. Its colorful, pleated skirt was set with tiny round mirrors that had been appliqueed onto the cloth as protection against the evil eye. Then the confusion cleared from her eyes as she remembered what she had been about to tell me.

  “Lenora.” My name rolled off her tongue. Despite the LinguaSoft, I’d never been able to master rolling my Rs like a native Spanish-speaker. For the millionth time, I regretted not paying attention when my mother had tried to teach me Spanish. But I’d only wanted to fit in, had dreaded the prejudice that she’d faced as an emigre to Seattle. Perhaps that was why I always insisted on being called Leni, and never used my full name, which was a mouthful: Lenora Maria Antonia de Torres. But I made allowances for Mama G.

  “You have un resfriado, a cold,” she said. “I’ll fix you some tea.”

  “I don’t have time for tea,” I protested, thinking Mama G was going to try one of her odd-tasting herbal remedies on me.

  “No té, mí hija,” she said. “Magia.–”

  I was in for it now. Mama G’s “magic” could take hours—days, even, when she really got wound up—and was totally bogus. Not one of her “spells” ever worked. At one point, in an effort to persuade her to stop wasting the money Rafael gave her on thaumaturgical supplies, I’d had a mage friend give her the Dumas Test. She hadn’t registered any magical talent whatsoever. But that didn’t stop her from trying to cure every ailment known to metahumanity with a host of bewildering incantations and homemade charms.

  I suppose her lack of magical talent was for the best. At least I didn’t have to worry about her accidentally conjuring up a malevolent spirit with all of her mumbo jumbo.

  The trouble was, if you didn’t humor Mama G and play along with her “magic,” she became extremely agitated and upset. And I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I sighed and sat down at the table while she bustled off into the bedroom.

  She returned carrying a ceramic pot, which she set on a clear space on the table. The pot was painted with Mayan hieroglyphs and stylized images of humans wearing tall, ornate headdresses. Made from cheap red clay, it had been chipped and smudged to look like an antique but had in fact been mass-produced in Aztlan for export to “collectors” around the world. Rafael had picked it up at a garage sale a few years ago, back when he was in his “discovering my roots” phase. When that ended, he had used it as a storage jar, to hold odds and ends. As far as I knew, the jar was still filled with a miscellaneous collection of bolts and screws.

  Mama G took the lid off the jar and rummaged inside. A downy white feather spilled over the edge and drifted down onto the table. The jar must have been filled with them—although feathers weren’t the only thing it held. Her eyes sparkling, Mama G lifted out a snake. For a moment, I thought she really had performed magic by resurrecting the creature I’d found dead on my doorstep. It was a twin of the one I’d just put in the trash, a buff and brown snake with turquoise flecks, as long and thin as a chopstick. But as it wound around Mama G’s lean brown fingers, I heard rustling inside the feather-lined pot and realized she must have more than one snake inside it. I shuddered and placed the lid back on the jar, then watched with my nose wrinkled as she lifted the snake to her face and brushed her lips against it in a kiss. The tiny serpent flicked its tongue out in response.

  “Wouldn’t you rather just make me some herbal tea, Mama Grande?” I asked. I glanced hopefully at the battered kettle on the stove and started to rise. Skunky-tasting tea seemed the lesser of two evils.

  “Shh.” She frowned at me, her eyes darting to get that crazy edge that I knew all too well. “La serpiente is telling me his secrets.”

  The snake had disappeared. I hadn’t seen Mama G lower her hand but presumed she’d set the snake down somewhere. Maybe it had curled up in a fold of her skirt. But when she stood and crossed to the sink to fill a bowl with water, nothing fell to the ground. I wondered where the creature had gone. Perhaps it had already slithered onto the floor and away.

  Mama G placed the bowl on the table between us, opened a bag of dried corn she’d taken from the cupboard, and began dropping kernels one by one into the water. She studied them intently, muttering to herself. “Ah, it floats,” she would say. Or, “It sinks. It has come from the south. The cold brings the sickness, and the cold shall carry it away.”

  Just as I started getting restless, her hand darted out and caught mine in a tight grip. Before I could protest, she plunged my hand into the water. Strangely, it felt ice cold—already my hand was going numb.

  Mama G stared at a point on the wall behind me and began to chant, still holding my hand under the water. I didn’t recognize the language—in the year she’d lived with us, I’d never heard her use anything even remotely similar. It certainly wasn’t Spanish. It was more glottal, less melodic. Lots of “ah” vowels and “tl” combinations. I’d never heard it before. I thought I recognized the name Quetzalcóatl—the serpent god of the Aztlaner religion—but I couldn’t be sure.

  I sneezed violently, but Mama G held fast to my wrist. I had to use my left hand to fumble an already soggy tissue out of my pocket and wipe my nose, which had suddenly started to run again. My sinuses felt as if someone were blowing up a balloon behind my forehead—a balloon that was ready to burst. I sniffled, hoping Mama G would finish soon.

  No such luck. Now her upper body swayed back and forth in time with her chant. She wet her lips several times and stared unblinkingly past me. Although her eyes were unfocused, her forehead was wrinkled in concentration. I’d never seen her look so intense. It was a bit unnerving, and if I didn’t know better I’d swear she really was casting a spell.

  She switched suddenly to Spanish: “La serpiente says ... she says ... the blood. Jesus’ blood on the cross . .. the tree .. . the crossroads. Where the priest walks, the ground shakes. Beware the priest whose magic . .. beware the spirits ... Oh!” She shrieked and leaped to her feet. “His head! They have taken his head!” My hand emerged from the bowl, dripping water all over the table. Mama G gripped it like a drowning woman, so hard it actually hurt. Her whole arm trembled.

  I didn’t like the sound of this at all. Mama G often mumbled to herself or talked nonsense to her plants while she tended them, but this was something of a different order. She was scaring herself. She was scaring me. “Mama Grande!” I said sharply. “What are y
ou talking about? Nobody’s taken anybody’s head.”

  She let out a long, hissing sigh and her shoulders dropped. Her grip relaxed and her eyes refocused. She seemed surprised to find herself standing. I pulled my hand free of hers and warmed it under my opposite armpit.

  “It is done,” she whispered. “Your cold is gone. I have sent the airs of sickness back to the mountains.”

  “Muchas gracias,” I responded automatically. I sniffled and found I still couldn’t breathe through my nose. My sinuses were blocked. But then, I hadn’t expected the “spell” to work, anyhow. I peered at Mama G. Her face seemed more care-worn than before, but it may have just been the kitchen’s harsh fluorescent lighting. “Are you all right?”

  “Muy bien,” she answered after a pause. “Just a little tired. Why?”

  “You don’t remember what you said just now? About the blood of Christ and someone stealing his head?” I glanced up at the religious holo above the door. Aside from the clothes on her back, it was the only personal item she’d brought with her on the long journey from the Yucatán to Seattle. What was Mama G doing with a portrait of Jesus anyhow? I thought Catholicism was banned in Aztlan. The thing was creepy, with its puncture wounds and moving trickles of blood. No wonder it was giving Mama G waking nightmares.

  She ignored my questions. She seemed to have no recollection of what had just transpired. “You are going to work today, sí?” she said in a perfectly normal tone of voice. “I will make you some comida to take with you.”

  “I really should be going now, Mama Grande. I’m supposed to be meeting a client who wants me to run a financial scan on a potential business partner.” I glanced at my watch. “I’m supposed to meet him at.. .”

  “That is not the work you were meant to do,” Mama G said. “But it will come, soon enough.” She had already opened the fridge and was pulling out tortillas and roast chicken. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my second appointment of the day would take place at a restaurant over lunch. Instead, I accepted the food in its wax-paper wrapping and tucked it into the pocket of my jacket.