caught as she saw the finger close on the trigger.
Click-crink!
The gun misfired, and there was the unmistakable crinkling sound of something metallic snapping as it did. He stared at it incredulously, and tried to fire again three more times as the crop slashed at him. Then her hand blurred and he screamed with the pain of a broken finger as she snatched it away.
“Automatics have a high probability of failure,” she said cheerfully.
Paco began to back up, hands in front of his face. Adrienne followed, teeth showing in a happy smile, delivering a series of cruelly precise strikes with the crop, each ending in a meaty smack sound.
Several of the prisoners surged forward as Paco was driven back towards the wire mesh, reaching their hands through towards him. One very dark and very pretty young woman was leaping up and down, shaking her fists in the air and shouting: “!Orale y?rale!!Dale!!Jodele al bruto! ”
“Meaning, smack him, harder, fuck him up,” Ellen muttered to herself, clutching one hand against the other to control the shaking. “Oh, I guess he’s not really popular in there right now. And I can guess why she doesn’t like him in particular.”
Adrienne laughed and pounced. Suddenly Paco was held helpless across her body, one of her arms pinning his, the other bending his jaw back. The shouts from the cage died away as she struck; Paco froze, and her throat moved as she fed briefly. When she released him he slumped down, dazed, and she looked up smiling with blood on her chin and lips and teeth.
One man blurted into the silence: “Es chupacabra!”
The goat-sucker of Hispanic legend.
Another barked harsh laughter: “No seas g?ey… Paco no es cabra, es cabr?n!”
Ellen found her eyes prickling for the first time; the second man had managed to make a pun, of all things, in the middle of this, calling the coyote cabr?n, a bastard, rather than cabra, a goat.
Adrienne laughed. “I completely agree,” she said.
She grabbed Paco by the back of the neck. Three steps and she flung him through the door, and Mendoza clashed it shut. For a moment nobody moved, and then the young woman stepped forward, waving the others back: “M?o! Es m?o! Y solo m?o!” she half-screamed.
She launched a vicious kick, gathering up her skirts in both hands to get a better swing, and shouting to the rhythm of the solid blows as she struck again and again. Ellen didn’t have any trouble following it despite the volume and machine-gun speed; curses were the first things you picked up.
Thud.
“?Te sientes muy macho, ahora?”
Feeling like a big man now?
Another thud.
“!Orale, trata de jodernos ahora!”
Try to screw us over now!
Adrienne was laughing as she watched. Then she called out sharply: “Ni?a!” The young woman looked up, and Adrienne shook a finger at her.
“Puedes matarlo si quieres, pero le haces un favor enorme.”
Kill him if you want, but you’ll be doing him a big favor, Ellen translated to herself.
“What’s your name?” Adrienne went on.
“Eusebia,” the woman said.
“I like your spirit, little Cheba. And now…”
She looked up. There were open windows at both ends of the barn-prison, under the peaks of the roof. A great snowy owl swept through, turning and banking and braking to a landing, folding its five-foot wingspan. Then there was a naked man rising from one knee.
“Efectos especiales,” one of the Mexicans said, loudly as if to convince himself.
“Inahualli, inahualli!” another cried, which wasn’t Spanish at all.
“It’s Nahuatl. Shapeshifter,” Adrienne said over her shoulder to Ellen. “Absolutely everyone has legends about us.”
The man stretched and then bowed over Adrienne’s extended hand with the panache of one used to the gesture, touching only the fingertips.
“Wilbur Peterson,” he said; he spoke as if his voice was slightly rusty with disuse. “We haven’t met, Miss Br?z?. I’ve been… very out of touch for a long time. Thank you for your invitation. My… baggage and servants are on the way, but…”
Ellen looked at him and felt an odd shock of recognition and relief.
Which is crazy. He looks a little bit like Adrian except for that brownybronze hair, but he’s just another monster.
“Then I’m honored you should choose this little affair to get back into the social circuit, cousin,” Adrienne said. “You must be ravenous. Feel free to choose.”
She indicated the prisoners with a gracious wave of her hand. They were stock-still now, staring huge-eyed. Several crossed themselves, and Ellen heard the murmur of prayer.
I wish I could pray. Oh, how I wish. Or that I could call to Adrian.
“Thank… you. That one, please.”
He pointed to the girl who still stood near the semiconscious Paco. The others backed away from her as if from plague, and she looked wildly around herself.
“A good choice,” Adrienne said. Then sharply: “Ven t?, Cheba. Come and meet your fate, the purpose for which you were born.”
Mendoza opened the gate. “Better for you if you come now, chica,” he said roughly. “Don’t make them chase after you.”
She did, first wiping her palms on her skirt, then walking slowly towards them. Mendoza opened the door briefly, then clashed it shut again. She slowed still more as she approached the Shadowspawn, walking step by step. The man took her by the arm and smiled; she gave a little gasp as she met the sulfur-yellow eyes.
“Feel free to feed as you will,” Adrienne said. “It’s… neater to start here, if you mean to kill your first one.”
Ellen’s eyes darted around. The textured concrete of the floor and lower walls, the big screened drains… and the neatly coiled hoses beside the large-capacity water outlets for sluicing it all down. Things like bronze showerheads shaped into the mouths of bats, with wrought taps below them. And all of it old, generations old, carefully maintained but at least three times as old as Ellen Tarnowski. For an instant she thought she could feel the shrieks sunken into the fabric of the place, a century of agony and death, and she gave a little whimper.
“No, I’ll… take my time,” Peterson said.
“Ah, a man of taste. My renfields are waiting to show you to your rooms in the casa grande. If you don’t kill her, she’s yours to take with you when you leave, of course.”
“Very… hospitable of you. But I wouldn’t expect anything else of a Br?z?.”
He bowed slightly and began to lead the girl away. She started to squirm and then try to pull free, but the grip on her upper arm was evidently like a band of steel as she was marched into the darkness.
“The early bird and the choice worm,” Adrienne said absently.
Another whisper of wings, and three more birds soared into the big chamber; a golden eagle, a bald eagle, and a red-tailed hawk. They fluttered to the ground, and were Shadowspawn in human form-Dale Shadowblade, Dmitri Usov and T?kairin Michiko. A moan went through the men and women behind the cage as the three touched fingertips with Adrienne.
“You’re early, but you’re not the first,” she said. “Wilbur Peterson, of all people. I never expected him to actually attend.”
“I thought he’d gone seriously hermit?” Michiko said, stretching luxuriously, rising on the balls of her feet with her fingers linked high over her head. “God, but I love flying.”
“He hasn’t left his nest for thirty years!” Adrienne confirmed.
“Peterson is another ancient fossil of the type we will have to deal with,” Dmitri snorted. “An obstacle to the progressive forces.”
“Oh, now, Dmitri Pavlovich, we have to be tolerant and inclusive,” Adrienne said unctuously.
