Blood Sport Read online

  The cultist leader pointed his bloody obsidian dagger at the spirit. “I am the master here!” he screamed at the thing. “And you shall answer my questions. On what day will the Sun of Motion end?”

  I shuddered at his ferocity. If the cultists were this aggressive with a thing as awe-inspiring as a spirit, I could just imagine how rough they must have been with Mama G.

  On the day Four Motion. Just as all the other ages have ended on that unlucky number, so too will this one.

  Although my head was ringing with the spirit’s words, my cyberear still caught the whisper as one of the kneeling cultists spoke to another in a worried voice: “But that’s only one day after the final—”

  “At what hour must the itzompan be filled to bring about this end?” the leader of the cultists shouted.

  Itzompan? I had no idea what the word meant. It sounded like something from the ancient Azzie language. Was it some sort of magical contract, perhaps? But he’d used the Spanish verb for filling a vacant space, rather than filling an obligation. He had to be referring to an object. Or to a place . . .

  The itzompan must be filled when the precious twin rises in the east. At this moment may the motion of the Earth be triggered. The new age shall be ushered in with the blood of the victor.

  The spirit loomed above the cultist leader like an angry thunderhead. I have answered your questions, it shouted into our minds. Now you will release me!

  “One more question,” the cultist leader said. “And then I will return you to your rest. Where is the itzompan?”

  I thought I saw the spirit’s face twist into an evil grin, but it was hard to read the expression of a thing whose body was little more than a pool of blood. You do not need me to tell you that. Ask your blood brother. He knows where it lies hidden.

  “But the other sacerdote has ... He is unavailable to us,” the leader protested. “That is why I summoned you without him. We cannot—”

  I tire, the spirit said. Feed me.

  “No. First you must answer—”

  Feed me! The voice hit me like a physical blow, leaving the inside of my skull ringing. When I looked up, I saw that the cultists were also cringing. A few were even holding their heads.

  The leader of the cultists turned and flicked a hand in the waving gesture that to gringos looks like “go away” but to Azzies means “hurry forward.” I saw movement inside the darkened doorway of the teocalli and braced my pistol. I gazed down the sight of my gun at the priest, who was addressing the spirit once more.

  “You will enjoy this one,” he told the spirit. “Her will is strong and her blood pumps fiercely. She—”

  Rafael let out a strangled scream of rage as the cultists led Teresa out of the teocalli. She was naked, aside from the gold necklace that still hung around her neck. And she looked dazed. She stumbled blindly between the two cultists, nearly falling . . .

  In that moment, Rafael opened up with his pistol. I joined him a split second later, squeezing the trigger of my Savalette Guardian. I was still aiming at the leader of the cultists, but in that split second he’d already reacted, throwing himself to the side in response to Rafael’s gunfire and the collapse of the man next to him. In addition, I wasn’t used to the recoil of my acquired weapon. It kicked violently as it spit out three slugs in rapid-fire succession, jerking my hands back and throwing off my aim.

  Cursing, I braced my weapon more carefully this time. I picked off one cultist, two . . . Then, when I was satisfied that I had the weapon under control, I aimed at the cultists to either side of Teresa. One went down as two bullets of my three-round burst exploded through his gut. The other screamed and dove for the cover of the teocalli.

  At first I fretted, thinking that Teresa might still be in a dazed state. I worried that she would wander into the line of fire. But then a strange transformation occurred. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye—I was too busy sighting and shooting at the cultists who scrambled every which way, some of them hurling themselves down the steps and tumbling to the base of the pyramid in a flailing jumble of arms and legs.

  Teresa dropped to her knees and braced her arms in front of her so that she was in a crouch and shook her long dark hair so that it fanned across her naked back. Then her forearms lengthened and her knees suddenly bent the wrong way. Hair flowed across her body, growing in a shimmering wave of black until it covered her skin in a sleek pelt. At the same time the hair on her head shrank back upon itself and her ears flowed upward, extending into triangular points. A long tail grew from her haunches and began lashing angrily. She threw open her mouth and roared—the sound was amazingly similar to a human scream—and in that instant her face transformed into the fang-filled visage of a jungle cat. In the blood-red glow of the flare, she was a frightening sight indeed. She looked alert, tense. Not dazed at all.

  Rafael must have witnessed the transformation as well. His mouth gaped open and his pistol hung forgotten in his hands. In the instant that neither of us was shooting, I heard the roar of an engine, the scraping of gears being shifted too hurriedly, and the spinning of wheels on dirt as a vehicle roared off into the night.

  “Frag it, Raf!” I shouted. “They’re getting away.”

  The caped man who had been leading the ritual chose this moment to try to escape down the stairs that fronted the pyramid. Before he had taken two steps, the sleek, all-black jaguar that was Teresa launched itself into the air. The cat sank the claws of its forepaws into his chest, bit savagely at the cultists’s neck, and then rode his body down the stairs, lashing out with hind legs and raking his lower body with its rear claws. Feathers from his shredded cape flew everywhere as the pair tumbled, and when they reached the bottom of the pyramid the leader lay in a bloody heap. Teresa sprang away into the night, still in jaguar form.

  All this time, the spirit that the cultists had summoned had simply hung above the pyramid with arms crossed, watching events unfold with an aloof expression. But as soon as the leader of the cultists lay still, it collapsed into itself, reverting back to its whirlpool shape. It condensed, drawing into a perfect sphere—and then it exploded with a flash of magical energy that knocked me sprawling. Tiny droplets of blood spattered my body with the force of a stinging rain. I heard the spirit scream a single word: Free! and then my brain seemed to go into overload and shut down.

  I don’t remember what happened next. All I know is that when I came to, something rough and wet was rubbing my cheek and something heavy was pressed into my chest. I opened my eyes—and screamed as I saw a jaguar’s face mere centimeters from my own and realized that its heavy paw was upon my chest, holding me down. Then the jaguar backed off and watched me with eyes that reflected green in the moonlight. I noticed the gold cross that hung around its neck from a chain. And I realized who it was.

  “Teresa?” I sat up and rubbed my aching temples. I looked around, saw that Rafael was lying beside me, his back propped against a pile of masonry. His eyes opened, and he sat up and shook his head.

  “Looks like Teresa didn’t need to be rescued, after all,” he said with a weak grin. “She’s been watching over us, instead.”

  I sat up, saw the Savalette Guardian lying a meter or two away, and crawled over to grab it. I holstered the gun, then looked at my watch. I’d been unconscious for more than an hour. And I felt like drek. Every muscle ached and my head was pounding. I felt as bad as I had the night after my own grandmother died in hospital—after my all-day, all-night drinking binge. I even had the foul taste in my mouth. I wiped my mouth—and my hand rubbed away crumbs of dried blood. My lips weren’t cut—it must have been the blood from the spirit. Feeling queasy, I spat until my lips were clean again.

  Later, Teresa told us what had happened that night. She was a rebel—a courier for the Cristeros—and had traveled to the village carrying a “package” for them inside the false bottom of her travel bag. She was to pass it along to another rebel at the fiesta, then make her way back to Izamal the next day. She didn’t really hav
e relatives in the village—hence her reluctance to let Rafael walk her “home” or to let him carry her bag, which she had deliberately left on the base of the statue in the plaza for her contact to pick up.

  Teresa didn’t know why the cultists had singled her out as a sacrificial victim. Perhaps because she looked young, fragile, and alone. Perhaps because they sensed the magic in her and knew it could feed they spirit they were summoning. Or they might just have seen the bag slung over her shoulder and assumed her to be a traveler nobody would miss—especially if they hadn’t noticed Rafael and me escorting her earlier. In any case, the skinny cultist with the beard had used a spell to overpower Teresa and force her to accompany him. Then he’d locked her in the back of the van.

  When the van stopped and the cultist opened its doors, expecting to find a terrified teenager cringing inside, he was confronted instead by a snarling jaguar. The scream I’d heard when we stopped the scooter had been Teresa’s triumphant roar as she launched herself at her captor, tearing open his throat. She’d dragged his body off behind some bushes, quickly licked his blood from her sleek sides, and then changed into human form. She’d been about to put on her clothes and drive away in the van when the other cultists surprised her. Once again, she fell victim to their spells.

  Only when my bullet had taken out the cultist who was magically manipulating her had Teresa come back to her senses. Realizing her danger, she transformed into jaguar form to escape. And while she was at it, she took her revenge on the nearest cultist—the leader who was standing right in front of her. She’d then attacked every cultist she could find, finishing off those that Rafael and I had wounded. Bad news, since that left us with no survivors to question.

  Once I was able to move around again, I clambered down the mound where we’d hidden, then climbed the steps of the teocalli. The stonework was slippery with blood, and bodies lay everywhere—I counted seven cultists in all, including the leader. Three of them must have escaped while Rafael and I lay stunned by the spirit’s mental blast.

  Unlike the other cultists, the man who’d been leading the blood ritual did not have a calendar stone brand mark on his shoulder. His distended earlobes confirmed him as a priest, even though he wasn’t wearing the traditional gold ear plugs. Maybe he hadn’t trusted the other cultists enough to want to risk getting them stolen.

  The shieldlike object on his forearm turned out to be an oval of obsidian stone, glossy and black, mounted in a leather frame. I didn’t know much about Azzie religion, but I did remember one piece of trivia from Rafael’s “discovering my roots” phase. The god Tezcatlipoca was said to have a similar “mirror” in which he could read the fate of any human. In a way, it made an odd kind of sense to find a similar object on the arm of a man who had been summoning a prophesying spirit.

  Under his robe, the priest was dressed in conventional clothing—cotton pants, shirt, and shoes. The clothing had been shredded and bloodied in Teresa’s attack, but the pockets were intact. Inside one, I found something that was all too familiar—a simsense chip, its blood-smeared cardboard case emblazoned with the Aztec tree of life. It was a duplicate of the chip case that I had found inside Mama G’s kitchen after the cultist missionaries had roughed her up.

  At the time, I didn’t think my find was all that significant. The priest was obviously in league with the cultists, after all. Only later would I learn that the priest’s blood wasn’t the only stain on the chip case.

  As I searched the priest, I noticed something peculiar about his body. A catheter had been surgically implanted into his chest, over one of the major veins. Had he been undergoing some sort of medical treatment that required the regular attachment of an IV line? If so, he wouldn’t be facing any more hospital bills.

  The interior of the temple looked like something out of a horror B-trid. A total of twelve bodies lay in a tangled heap where the cultists had dumped them. Each had a gaping hole in the chest where the heart had been removed. The stones underfoot were slippery with blood, and the metallic tang of it assaulted my nostrils. My eyes began to sting as I looked at the corpses. Judging by their cheap, grubby clothing, they were all either street kids or poor campesinos from some tiny country town. One was an elderly man—his gray hair and frail body brought back vivid memories of how helpless Mama G had been. As I stared at the bodies, a tear trickling down my cheek, I felt the last shred of guilt at having gunned down the cultists disappear. Those bloodthirsty fraggers had deserved what they got. Every last bullet.

  It took us some time to get back to the village—Rafael wasn’t able to duplicate his trick of starting the scooter without a magkey, and so we had to search for the cultist’s van. When we found it, Teresa shifted back into human form. She picked up her dress and brushed it off, then began getting dressed. I’d have thought she would be demure, that she would step behind the van. But Teresa seemed perfectly comfortable with her nudity. Rafael tried not to stare, but couldn’t help himself. The girl was beautiful, with a body that was perfect in every way. Slender waist, full hips and breasts ... I fought back a twinge of jealousy and reminded myself that Teresa wasn’t deliberately showing off—shapeshifters are animals, born in that form, and only gradually learn human ways as they spend increasing amounts of time in human form. Nudity probably felt totally natural to the girl.

  We drove the van back to the outskirts of town, then ditched it in a side street. Since some of the cultists had escaped, I worried that they might recognize it. I’d insisted on bringing the scooter back with us—it was a stolen vehicle, after all, and should be returned to the village so that its owner could find it again.

  We reached the town as dawn broke. The streets were empty and littered with the debris of the fiesta—streamers, broken bits of pihata, and plastic cups were everywhere underfoot. One or two celebrants lay in doorways or on benches, sleeping off the effects of the night’s party. Obviously, curfews were not as strictly enforced here as they were in Izampan. Or if they were, they’d been relaxed for the fiesta.

  The events of the night before had left me weary to the bone, and all I wanted to do was put my head down. But it was a sure bet that every hotel and posada would be full to overflowing with those who had come to town for the fiesta.

  Teresa came through for us, once again. “I have friends in town who have spare beds in their homes,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “Christian friends.” She placed extra emphasis on the first word, tipping me off to the fact that these “friends” were probably fellow Cristeros—or at least were sympathetic to the cause.

  Rafael broke into a wide grin. I thought he was going to make a none-too-subtle suggestion about sleeping arrangements, but he surprised me by being a perfect gentleman. “Great,” he rumbled. “I feel drek-kicked. And Leni and I have missed our bus connection, anyway. We might as well doss down. And then I’d like to hear more about the Cristeros. Can a lapsed Catholic join?”

  Rafael sounded so sincere, he almost had me fooled. Then I realized that he was just handing the girl a line. I felt sorry for Teresa—she was young, and not entirely human. She didn’t know bulldrek when she heard it.

  Once again, I was underestimating the girl. She was tougher—and more cunning—than she looked.

  18

  The events of the night before had been too frantic for me to be able to assimilate everything I’d seen and heard out there in the ruins. The horror of seeing a human being sacrificed had numbed me, and the sheer physical exhaustion I’d felt after the spirit had blasted us with magical backwash in its surge toward freedom had left me aching, tired, and unable to think clearly. But now, after a deep and dreamless sleep of several hours, I was fresh enough to start putting the pieces together.

  I sat on the rooftop of the home of Teresa’s friends, enjoying the Sunday afternoon sunshine. It felt so good I’d almost forgotten the Seattle rain that I’d left behind. I sipped a cool cerveza and poked with a fork at the remains of my chilaquiles—a spicy combination of eggs, chiles, chicken, and
leftover tortillas. Rafael and Teresa had gone to watch the fourth game in the ollamaliztli finals at a local cantina, and the woman who had agreed to let us sleep at her home was downstairs serving dinner to her husband and a horde of noisy children. She’d left me alone on the rooftop, lost in my thoughts.

  I had some solid information—and a number of guesses. The whirlpool of blood that had coalesced into human form had to have been another example of the blood magic for which Aztlan was starting to gain a whispered reputation. There was no doubt in my mind that the man leading the ritual had been an Azzie priest—his black-painted face and the shieldlike obsidian “mirror” on his forearm were symbols of Tezcatlipoca, god of the smoking mirror. More and more, it was looking as if the cultists had the official sanction of the Aztlan state religion.

  Yet appearances can be deceiving. The priest we’d seen in the village had been escorted by some of the most hard-hooped security fraggers I’d ever seen, yet the one who had summoned and bound the spirit on top of the ruined teocalli had no security escort whatsoever—Rafael and I would have been the ones waiting for MedíCarro body bags, if he had. It suggested that the priest had not been on official business that night.

  I suspected that Vargas had been in league with the cultists who had come as missionaries to Mama G’s door. In his capacity as an Azzie diplomat, he could have facilitated their travel visas to Seattle. And it was just a little too coincidental that he had been posted as a consular official to the same city, two weeks before the pair’s arrival. It would also explain how he had known where to find them—he may even have set up a meeting with them at Charles Royer Station. Whatever they had learned from Mama G, only Vargas had taken it back to Aztlan with him.

  I took a sip of my beer. Okay, so the apocalyptic cult and the Azzie priesthood—or two members of its clergy, at least—were working together, possibly in secret. They’d come north to Seattle to track down Mama G and unearth a memory that was buried after her encounter with the fovea. The memory of a place . . .