Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 9)

51

ONE OF THE THINGS I liked about working with the police was that when you went into a business and asked to speak with the manager or owner, no one argued. Ramirez flashed his badge and asked to speak with the owner, Itzpapalotl, also known as Obsidian Butterfly.

The hostess, the same darkly elegant woman that had shown Edward and me to a table last time, took Ramirez's business card, showed us all to a table, and left us. The only difference was this time we didn't get any menus. The two uniforms stayed at the door, but kept us in sight. I'd put the wrinkled jacket on to cover the guns and knives, but I was glad the club was dark, because the jacket had seen better days.

Ramirez leaned over and asked, "How long do you think she'll keep us waiting?"

Funny how he didn't ask if she would keep us waiting. "Not sure, but a while. She's a goddess and you've just ordered her to appear before you. Her ego won't let her be quick."

Edward was leaning in on the other side. "Half hour, at least."

A waitress came. Ramirez and I ordered Cokes. Edward got water. The lights on the stage dimmed, then came up brighter. We settled back for the show. Cesar had probably healed by now, but not by much. So it would either be a different wereanimal or a different show altogether.

There was what looked like a stone coffin propped up on the stage, sitting on its end with the carved lid staring out at the audience. Our table wasn't as good as last time. I spotted Professor Dallas at her usual table, alone this time. She didn't seem to mind.

The stone lid was carved in a crouching jaguar with a necklace of human skulls. The high priest Pinotl came onto the stage. He was dressed only in that skirt thing, a maxtlatl, that left the legs and most of the hips bare. I'd asked Dallas what the skirt was. His face was painted black with a stripe of white across the eyesand nose. His long black hair had been formed into individual strands curling at the ends. He wore a white crown, and it took me a second to realize it was made of bones. The stage lights flickered over the white bones, making them shimmer, and almost bleed white color when he moved his head. Finger bones had been restrung and formed a fan above the main band, reminiscent of the feathers I'd seen him wearing the first time. His ear spools of gold had been replaced by bones. He looked totally different from the first time, and yet the moment he stepped out on stage I knew it was him. No one else had had that aura of command.

I leaned into Ramirez. "You wearing a cross?"

"Yes, why?"

"His voice can be a little overwhelming without a little help."

"He's human, isn't he?"

"He's her human servant."

Ramirez turned his face full into mine, and we were too close. I had to move back to keep from bumping noses. "What?"

Did he really not know what a human servant was for a vampire? I didn't have time to give him a preternatural lesson, and this wasn't the place anyway. Far too many listening ears. I shook my head. "I'll explain later."

Two very Aztec-looking bouncers came on stage and lifted the lid of the coffin off. They moved to one side with it, and the way they shuffled, muscles in their arms and back working, it looked heavy. There was a cloth-draped body in the coffin. I didn't know for certain that it was a body, but it was shaped like a body. There just aren't that many things that are body-shaped.

Pinotl began to speak. "Those of you who have been with us before, know what it is to make sacrifice to the gods. You have shared in that glory, taken the offering into yourselves. But only the bravest, the most virtuous, are fit sacrifices. There are those that are not fit to feed the gods with their lives, but they, too, may serve." He drew the cloth off in one large movement, sending the black and sequined draped cloth spreading wide like a fisherman's net. As that glittering cloth fell to the stage, the contents of the coffin were revealed. Gasps, screams spread through the audience like ripples in a pool.

There was a body in the coffin. It was dried and wizened, as if the body had been buried in the desert and had mummified naturally. No artificial preservatives. The spotlight on the coffin seemed very bright, harsh. It showed every line in the dried skin. The skeletal shadow of bones underneath was painfully clear.

We were only three rows back, close enough to see more detail than I cared to see. At least this time they wouldn't be cutting anyone up. I really wasn't in the mood to see inside anyone's chest tonight. I was searching the crowd, trying to see if she was coming or if we were about to be surrounded by werejaguars.

I turned and looked. The dead mummy's eyes were open. I looked at Edward. He answered the question without me having to say it. "Its eyes just opened. Nobody touched it."

I stared at that skull trapped under dry parchment skin. The eyes were full of something dry and brown. There was no life to the eyes, but they were open. The mouth began to open slowly, as if the mouth were on a stiff hinge. As the mouth opened a sound came out of it, a sigh that grew into a scream.

A scream that echoed through the room, reverberated off the ceiling, the walls the inside of my head.

"It's a trick, right?" Ramirez said.

I just shook my head. It wasn't a trick. Dear God, it wasn't a trick. I looked at Edward, and he just shook his head. He'd never seen this particular act either.

The scream died, and there was a silence so thick you could have dropped a pin and heard it bounce. I think everyone was holding their breath, straining to hear. To hear what I didn't know, but I was doing it, too. I think I was trying to hear it breathe. I studied that skeletal chest, but it didn't rise and fall. It didn't move. I said a silent prayer of thanks.

"This one's energy went to feed our dark goddess, but she is merciful. What was taken shall be given back. This is Micapetlacalli, the box of death. I am Nextepeua. In legend I was the husband of Micapetlacalli, and I am still married to death. Death runs through my veins. My blood tastes of death. Only the blood of one consecrated to death will free this one of torment."

I realized that Pinotl's voice was just a voice, a good voice, like a good stage actor, but nothing more. Either he wasn't trying to bespell the audience, or I wasn't as susceptible tonight. The only change that I knew for certain was the marks. They were wide open now. I'd been told by my teacher and by Leonora Evans that the marks made me more vulnerable to psychic attack, but maybe on some things having a direct link to the boys helped me. Whatever it was, his voice didn't move me tonight. Great.

Pinotl drew an obsidian blade from behind his back. He'd probably been carrying it the way Edward and I were carrying guns, at the small of his back, He held his arm over the open coffin, over that gaping mouth. He drew the blade across his skin. It wasn't clear to the audience what he'd done. It would have been much better theater for Pinotl to slash his arm where the audience could see that first crimson slash. For him to hide it, there had to be some ritual significance, some importance, to those first drops of blood going into the corpse's mouth.

He dripped blood on the top of the thing's skull, dabbed it in the middle of that skull forehead, touched it to the throat, the chest, the stomach, the abdomen. He went down the line of chakras, energy points, of the body. I'd never believed in chakras until this year, when I'd found they were real, and they seemed to work. I hated all this new age stuff. I hated it worse when it worked. Of course, this wasn't new age stuff. This was very old stuff. With each touch of blood to that dried thing I felt magic. Each drop of blood made it grow, until the air hummed with it and my skin crept in waves of goose bumps.

Edward sat unmoved, but Ramirez was rubbing his arms, chasing goosebumps. "What's happening?"

He was at the very least a sensitive. I guess I couldn't possibly be attracted to a totally normal human being. I whispered, "Magic."

He looked at me, eyes showing too much white. "What kind?"

I shook my head. That I didn't know. I had a few clues, but I really had never seen anything like it, not exactly.

Pinotl walked around the coffin in a counter-clockwise motion, bleeding arm and bloody knife held apart, palm up while he chanted. The power built and built in the air like close thunder until my throat closed with it, and I was having trouble breathing Pinotl came back to the front of the coffin where he'd begun. He made some kind of sign with his hands, then flung a spray of blood onto the body, and began to back slowly away. The lights dimmed until the only light was the harsh white light on the thing in the coffin.

The power had built to a screaming pitch. My skin was trying to crawl off my body and hide. The air was too thick to breathe, as if it had grown more solid, thick with magic.