by Lisa Smedman
Caco was dressed in plain jeans and a white shirt that smelled faintly of men’s cologne, and so I slotted the data dealer as “him” in my mind. But dress Caco up in a skirt and pumps and I’d just as easily have used the pronoun “her.” Either way, the data dealer had the sort of face that would blend into any Aztlaner crowd. Even a trained observer like myself would be hard pressed to provide a description the policía could use to pick Caco out in a lineup.
A round of pulque appeared on our table, delivered by the bartender. It seemed to be on the house. I figured I should be polite, and took a sip.
“You wanted to buy some information?” Caco asked.
I hadn’t said so—out loud, at any rate—but I nodded. “That’s right. We want data on a certain Tenochtitlán resident.”
Caco stared at me. I wondered if he was mind-probing me a second time. I was already thinking of the trid image of the Aztlaner priest, but I tried to keep the anger and sorrow I felt out of my mind, tried to suppress the gruesome images of Mama G’s murder that came bubbling up unbidden. It was impossible. The most certain way to think about something is to try not to think about it. I wondered if my urgent need to see justice done would affect Caco’s price.
“Domingo Vargas, bacab of Xipe Totec . . .” Caco said quietly. I was relieved that he maintained a low voice. The patrons of the pulquería might be Caco’s people—but that didn’t guarantee that they weren’t also working for Aztechnology at the same time.
“What do you want to know about him?” Caco asked. Rafael leaned over his pulque, speaking in a low voice. “His movements. What he’s doing and where he’s going in the next few weeks. We need to .. .” He stopped, not wanting to say more.
Caco stared at Rafael for just a moment then nodded. “To get close to him,” Caco said, supplying the unspoken. “For vengeance, and for honor.”
I decided to take the plunge. The mage had already read my mind, after all. If Angie was wrong about us being able to trust Caco, we were as good as dead anyhow.
“We want to confront him,” I said. “We want to get to him when he’s alone and unprotected by bodyguards. Just to question him—not to take vengeance on him.” I shot a meaningful look at Rafael. “We’re not going to play judge and jury on this one.”
Rafael stared at his cup of pulque, refusing to meet my eyes. He muttered something that sounded like agreement. But then my cyberear caught him adding under his breath: “Not unless we have to.”
The data dealer sat back and sipped from the glass of pulque. “I have little to offer at the moment, and it may not be useful to you,” Caco said. “So I will charge you only a small mordida of 250,000 pesos. For that, I can tell you where the person you are interested in will be making a public appearance. But I must warn you that getting close to him there will be impossible.”
I looked at Rafael and raised an eyebrow.
He shrugged. “Better than nothing, I guess.”
I nodded and pulled five plastiweave 50,000-peso notes out of my pocket. I figured that Caco would want to avoid leaving an electronic data trail behind.
Caco neatly folded the bills and slipped them into a pocket. “Your target will be making only one public appearance in the next two weeks, when he attends the final game of the ollamaliztli finals. He will most likely be chauffeured to it from his castillo in a government VTOL, which usually lands directly on the rooftop of the adjoining teocalli. There is a private balcony in the temple, overlooking the ball court, from which the priests and their attendants watch the game. A number of sacerdotes—priests of the sun—will be there.
“As a priest of Xipe Totec, your target is one of the four bacabs who will oversee the sacrifices to the gods that the victors traditionally make in the teocalli when the game is over. The other three bacabs will include those of the gods Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcóatl, and Huitzilopochtli. If you require the information, I can give you the names of two of those priests—although they have yet to appoint a successor to replace Guzman, the bacab of Huitzilopochtli who was killed in the VTOL explosion last week. That information will cost you more pesos, however . . .”
I declined the offer with a wave. I didn’t see how the information could help us. Later, I would wish I’d had more foresight.
“When the victory celebrations have ended, your target will most likely depart via government VTOL, which will take him directly back to his castillo. There is a chance that he will enter the tlachtli briefly when the playing field is consecrated at the beginning of the game, but only a small one. His god does not traditionally have a part in the blessing of the court.”
Rafael’s eyes glittered menacingly. “So all we have to do is get tickets to the game, pretend we’re going into the temple with the other worshippers and . . .”
Caco smiled and gave a slight head shake. “Tickets to the final? Perhaps. But you will never get close to your target. Security at the ball court and temple—both physical and magical—is airtight. A number of Aztechnology executives will be on hand at the finals, and they’re a prime target for the rebels, who are bound to step up their activities in response. Everyone entering the stands will be searched, assensed, probed . . . It’s a game you’d lose before ever setting foot on the playing field, carnal.”
I could sense Rafael bristling with frustration. Like me, he hates to be told he can’t do something. But I had the sense to see that Caco was right. I knew enough about the Path of the Sun, thanks to the documentary that Angie had scrounged up, to realize that Aztlaner temples were off-limits to the general public. Only priests—and victorious ball players, I supposed—would be allowed inside the teocalli that adjoined the ball court. Just trying to penetrate the security that would be in place at the ball court itself during the national ollamaliztli finals would be hard enough, let alone trying to enter the teocalli. Trying to sneak into the temple would be equivalent to lying on an altar and handing the ACS guards the sacrificial blade. Suicidal, without a doubt.
“See what else you can dig up,” I told Caco. “We can afford to wait—at least for a little while. There has to be a better approach.”
“Perhaps,” Caco said. “If I hear anything, I’ll send an esquincle to your hotel to sell you some Chiclets.”
Rafael frowned. “How do you know where we . . .”
Caco winked. “Tenochtitlán has many eyes and ears. Not all of them are as sharp as those of your friend, but they hear what they hear. They—”
I heard the scream at the same time that Caco did. It was a child’s voice—the same one that had called out a warning about the ASC patrol car earlier. The kid got out two words—“Espíritu sangriento!”—before the voice was choked off in an ugly gurgle. I heard the clatter of a bucket falling to the sidewalk, and then the slow, rolling rattle of a hubcap.
Caco’s face went white. “Es malo,” he said. Then the seat in front of me was suddenly vacant. Caco had become invisible once more.
I had only a few seconds to wonder what a “bleeding spirit” was before the drek hit the fan.
11
Everyone in the pulquería scrambled as the “bleeding spirit” entered. At first I thought it was a freshly killed victim, already brain-dead but still staggering into the bar on automatic pilot like a chicken that continues walking after its head has been cut off. Male, human—but with a face that looked somehow wrong. Flat. Deflated. Expressionless.
Dead.
The corpse was studded with what looked like the quills of a porcupine. Then I realized that they were the broken stubs of arrows—some still with feathers intact. Blood seeped from the wounds like mist, evaporating before it hit the floor. The corpse wore only a weird loincloth to which feathers had been stitched. Its bare feet slapped heavily against the pulque-slippery concrete and it staggered, turning slightly.
That was when I saw the crudely stitched seams that ran up the legs, back, and arms of the corpse. And got a glimpse into its empty head. This was no victim only recently killed, but a walking balloon of sk
in from which the flesh and bone had been removed. A spirit made entirely of blood encased inside a homunculus made of human flesh.
It was headed straight for me, arms outstretched to wrap me in its foul embrace.
I screamed—adding my voice to the others that rang out around me. The corpse projected a palpable aura of fear that twisted my stomach into icy knots and that made me want to throw my weapon down and run wildly away. I fought the emotion back, my hand shaking almost uncontrollably as I tried to reach into my jacket for the Beretta. I prayed that my legs wouldn’t buckle under me.
The gangers must have thrown off the effects of the magical fear a second or two before I did. In an instant, the room was filled with the echoing roar of gunfire. At last I was able to haul the Beretta out of my shoulder holster. I didn’t even bother aiming for a vital spot—just pumped round after round into the balloonlike body of the spirit.
Rafael had his Streetline Special out and was also popping away with it. Somewhere to my left and behind me, the HK227 opened up in a throaty roar. I glanced back at the bartender, making sure I wasn’t going to wind up in his line of fire, and saw the curtain behind him flapping shut. Someone was beating a hasty retreat—probably the invisible Caco.
The corpse shuddered under the hail of gunfire but seemed otherwise unaffected by the bullets. Bits of flesh flew away and within seconds it was more shredded than intact. But then it turned to confront the blonde. Her mouth dropped open in surprise as her boyfriend joined the others in scrambling madly away from the thing—perhaps she’d expected him to show some machismo by stepping in front of her to protect her—and then she snarled angrily. She got one good slash at the monstrosity with her implanted blades, tearing open its limp face and releasing a misty spray of blood. But this gutsy move put her in our line of fire. Forced to stop shooting, the other gangers could only gape as the spirit clutched her to its chest. For a second or two, the blonde disappeared from view. We still heard her screaming, though—a long, desperate wail that quickly faded into silence. Then her body suddenly became visible again as she thudded to the floor, dead. Her face was as bleached as her hair; it looked as though her body had been drained of its blood.
Scrambling backward to get another table between myself and the blood spirit, I changed the magazine in my weapon and began firing again. The thing was blocking the wide doorway, lunging out at any who tried to escape past it. I made my decision—if Caco had chosen the back door, it had to lead somewhere. Another glance told me that the bartender had already exited the same way.
I fired a few last rounds at the walking corpse before the panicked part of my brain realized that I was wasting my time. Its flesh was all but gone now, and in its place was a misty shape composed of droplets of red, still vaguely humanoid in form. It flowed across the floor of the pulquería, its “legs” walking with a smooth sliding motion. It didn’t exactly have eyes to turn upon me, but somewhere deep inside I knew that I was its target.
“Come on, Raf!” I screamed. “This way!”
We charged into the back room of the pulquería—only to be confronted by a dead end. It was a storeroom, filled with plastic barrels of pulque and without an exit.
“Drek!” Rafael screamed. “We’re trapped! There’s no way out!”
Then I saw the overturned barrel, still rocking gently back and forth. The wall beside it looked like solid concrete, but one section of blocks was a slightly lighter shade of gray. There was no time to search for the trigger to what must have been a hidden exit. “There!” I pointed at the differently colored patch. “Hit the wall, Raf! The bricks are fake.”
After only an instant’s hesitation, Rafael ran headlong across the room, throwing his shoulder against the wall. I expected to hear a splintering crash, but instead he just vanished through the bricks as though they weren’t even there. I heard him land with a thud somewhere beyond the wall, then roar in pain. He’d probably landed on his injured wrist. And that’s when I realized what I was looking at: an illusion. The wall—or at least, that section of it—didn’t really exist.
I scrambled in that direction just as the blood-mist spirit ghosted into the storeroom, flowing in around the curtain and then assuming humanoid form once more. Outside in the pulquería, all was quiet. The gangers were either dead or had escaped. I heard the wail of a policía patrol car, then gunfire, and was thankful I hadn’t run out into the street. Assuming I survived my run-in with the blood spirit, the last thing I wanted was to be face to face with an Aztechnology Corporate Security guard, a smoking Beretta in my hand.
I thought I had more time, but the blood spirit was quicker on its “feet” than I was. Just as I leaped over the barrel and through the illusionary wall, its misty hand brushed my shoulder. In that instant, the world fell out of focus around me and I felt an overwhelming weight of despair and hopelessness come crashing down upon me. I heard my voice, as if from a distance, wailing in the same tone the blonde had used seconds before her death. The cut on my chin sprang open and blood poured from it. A ruby-red mist filled my vision, blinding me. I knew I was about to die ...
And then I heard Caco’s voice. He was chanting in a strange guttural language I didn’t understand. One moment it sounded as if the words were coming from a great distance, from the bottom of a dark well. The next moment Caco’s voice boomed loud in my ears.
Suddenly the fog of despair that had filled my mind lifted—just a little. I felt Rafael’s broad hand clamp around my arm, felt his muscles strain as he tugged me to safety. I was heaved up into the air, and as the world came back into focus again, I found myself dangling over his shoulder, bouncing around and trying not to be sick as he ran down a narrow alley. I’d lost my Beretta, but didn’t care. I was alive.
Rafael had paid me back for warning him about the mine. With interest.
I couldn’t see Caco anywhere. I could only assume he was still invisible, could only hope Caco had gotten away.
We made it away from the pulquería somehow. I think Rafael hailed a taxi—I have vague memories of traffic blurring past, of a long ride first on elevated autoroutes and then through narrow, twisting streets in the gathering dusk. We didn’t go back to the Comfort Inn, but instead wound up dossing down in what looked like an even less reputable hotel.
If you could call it that. Tucked between the stanchions of an autoroute and so noisy and filled with vibrations that you’d swear the cars were driving through the hallway outside, it was little more than a flophouse in which closet-sized rooms rented for five hundred pesos an hour. Judging by the sweet smell of rotting garbage that hung in the air, it was situated close to the city dump. I hoped Rafael had the presence of mind not to use his lighter—the methane levels might be high enough to cause an explosion.
All the same, it was a place to rest my head. And I desperately needed down time. The blood spirit had taken something from me—something vital—and all I wanted to do was sleep.
Rafael spread a relatively clean blanket over the piece of foam that passed for a mattress and I lay gratefully down on it. Before allowing myself to pass out, I made him promise that he wouldn’t do anything stupid. And then I laughed silently at myself. As if I were in a position to issue warnings, after nearly getting us both killed by trusting a runner I didn’t even know.
Rafael solemnly nodded his head, promising to behave himself, and closed the door of the room, leaving me in darkness.
I woke up suddenly as the door opened, my hand reaching into my jacket in a reflexive motion. Drek! My shoulder holster was empty! Then I saw Rafael’s huge frame silhouetted in the dim light of the hallway and relaxed. He shut the door behind him, palming the sensor that turned on the grimy light bulb that hung above my “bed.” Then he squatted on the floor beside me, grinning. I could smell the beer on his breath. He’d been out somewhere, drinking.
It felt like only a few minutes had passed. But when I glanced at my watch I saw that it was already close to seven a.m. “Gods,” I said as I sat up. “I’ve
been out nearly eleven hours.” I hardly knew where I was for a moment. What day was it? Monday? No, by now it had to be Tuesday.
“I figured I should let you sleep,” Rafael said. His oversized canines were still bared in a gleeful grin. He looked tired, though. There were dark circles under his eyes. I guessed that he hadn’t slept.
“O.K., give,” I said. “What have you been up to?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out two rectangular pieces of plastiweave. As he waved them triumphantly in his hand, I noticed the holo-logos, emblazoned on either end of the tickets: a leaping jaguar, and a coiling serpent.
“I got them,” he said proudly. “Tickets to the fifth game of the ollamaliztli finals.”
It took a moment for my brain to clear. I’d only just woken up, after all. “Frag it, Raf!” I said petulantly. “Can’t you think of anything else but sports? For spirits’ sake, we’re here to catch Mama Grande’s killer, not to watch some fragging ball game?"
Rafael’s face fell. “But Vargas will be there,” he said. “At the game. It may be our only chance to grab him.”
All at once, I felt like drek.
“Sorry, Raf,” I said, lowering my voice. “You’re right. But let’s not use those tickets unless we have to. Trying to confront Vargas in such a public, well-guarded place would be a desperation measure only. I still think there must be some other way. There has to be a better time and place other than the ollamaliztli finals to catch up with Vargas. Perhaps Caco can come up with something else . . .”
Rafael stuffed the tickets angrily back into his pocket. “Frag Caco and the spell that drekker rode in on. I don’t trust that slag. I’ll bet he’s the one who led the spirit to us. The meet at the pulquería was a set-up.”