Tlanextic shook out his fist. “By all the Four, that girl’s got a hard head.” He peered down at Mal as she squirmed and groaned. Then he about-turned and motioned to his lieutenants to carry on. They resumed dragging Reston towards the staircase.
“Wait,” said a thick, unsteady voice behind them.
Tlanextic looked back to see Mal rising to her feet. She was using the wall for support. Her legs seemed barely able to function.
“What?” he said, exasperated. “You want me to deck you again?”
“By the power vested in me by His Very Holiness the High Priest of Great Britain,” she said, “I demand that you hand Stuart Reston over.”
“Hold on, men,” Tlanextic said to his lieutenants. “This won’t take a second. Listen, Miss British Jaguar.” He crossed back over to Mal. “Maybe your Nahuatl isn’t what it ought to be, so I’ll keep this as simple as I can. Me Serpent Warrior, you not. Get it? Me very big man round these parts, you silly little white policewoman with funny accent. Me told what to do by Great Speaker himself. In pecking order, me up here.” He raised a hand level with his eyes. “You down here.” He lowered the hand to his crotch. “In more ways than one.”
“With all due respect, colonel,” said Mal, “go screw yourself.”
There was a gasp from behind her — Aaronson. At the same moment, Tlanextic punched her again, this time in the solar plexus. It was a mighty wallop, carrying all his weight behind it, and Mal collapsed to her knees, winded and in agony. She fought for breath. The world wavered darkly around her. As if from a great distance, his voice booming and echoing, she heard Tlanextic say, “All right. You’ve made your point. Enough’s enough. Next time, it’ll be my macuahitl rather than my fist. This is over.”
She fought the tide of blackness that was threatening to engulf her. Do not pass out, do not pass out. She clutched the wall, hauling herself upright inch by trembling inch. Bile burned in the back of her throat and she felt close to throwing up. Aaronson was desperately urging her, “No, boss, don’t. It’s not worth it. Stay down.” Even Necalli, who hardly knew her, was offering the same advice.
“Is that…” she said hoarsely to Tlanextic. “Is that… all you’ve got… you big pussy?”
Aaronson clawed his face in anguish.
Tlanextic’s expression turned to one of pure spite and fury. He snatched the stun gun off the belt of his junior officer and sprang at Mal with the device humming in his hand. He touched it to her chest — her left breast, to be exact — and pain like she’d never known before coursed through her. Her whole body seemed all of a sudden not to belong to her. It was a convulsing, juddering bag of meat that she just happened to be connected with. She felt her bladder let go and warm wetness spreading between her legs. She heard sounds coming out of her throat that she didn’t think any human being could make. Tlanextic kept the stun gun pressed to her, his thumb hard on the trigger. His eyes were alive with sadistic pleasure.
Eventually the stun gun’s charge ran out. The pain subsided, but Mal’s body still kept twitching spastically. Had she not been leaning against the wall, she would be sprawled in a heap on the floor by now. She tasted blood from where her teeth had clamped down involuntarily on her tongue. She could smell singed cotton and skin, and her own urine.
The effort it took to lift her head was almost superhuman. Harder still was finding the muscular control necessary to peel back her lips in a grin.
“I’ve used… vibrators… with more power… than that,” she gasped.
Colonel Tlanextic stared at her in open disbelief. What does it take to put this woman down? How can anyone be so obstinate, so insanely stubborn?
“Please, colonel,” Aaronson implored. “Don’t do anything more. She’s had enough. She didn’t mean to be disrespectful. She’s passionate about her job, that’s all. Takes it very seriously indeed. That’s no crime, eh? I mean, we’re all basically on the same side, aren’t we?”
Tlanextic raised a hand: shut up. He peered closely and quizzically at Mal — her wan face, her striving-to- focus eyes — as though she were some kind of zoo animal he’d never seen before. He was trying with all his might to fathom her. Both Aaronson and Necalli fully expected that within the next few seconds he would draw his macuahitl and run her through.
Instead, he laughed. It was a laugh that was utterly devoid of warmth, but it came from the belly and it went on and on.
Tlanextic found her amusing.
More than that, he grudgingly admired her. The laughter was congratulation.
“Fuck me rigid,” he said. “You’ve got a serious hard-on for this man, haven’t you? What’s your name anyway?”
“Vaughn,” Mal said feebly. “Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard.”
“Well, Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard, I’ll tell you what. I like you, and you might even come in useful as a translator if Reston gets uncooperative and insists on using your own gibberish language again. You’ve just earned yourself the right to accompany us to Tenochtitlan. How about that?”
Accompany them to Tenochtitlan? It wasn’t what Mal wanted. Not at all. But it was the best she was going to get, she knew, and it would keep Reston within her sight. The alternative? She didn’t think she had one.
“Sounds… fine,” she said.
“Good,” said Tlanextic. “You know, I could do with a dozen like you under my command. Men? Take note. You think you’re tough?” He wagged a finger at Mal. “This bitch — this is tough.”
“My sergeant comes too,” Mal added, gesturing vaguely in Aaronson’s direction.
“Whatever. No skin off my nose. Long as you both keep up. Time’s wasting.” Tlanextic set off along the corridor at a firm and forthright pace.
Mal, with Aaronson propping her up, followed.
TWENTY-THREE
Same Day
They flew out over Lake Texcoco, skimming above the wavelets that turned the expanse of freshwater into a vast sheet of crepe paper. The Serpent disc was a small, short-range craft with a spartanly furnished interior, and Mal and Aaronson perched at the rear of the cabin on a narrow bench adjacent to the armoury and uniform lockers. With Colonel Tlanextic’s permission, Mal had helped herself to a spare pair of Serpent Warrior trousers which just about fit, changing out of her own soiled trousers and underwear while Aaronson acted as a human curtain, shielding her from sight of everyone else on board. Tlanextic hadn’t even been tempted to laugh when she’d made her request. To him it had seemed simply a practical solution to an unfortunate sartorial mishap.
“Why are we doing this, boss?” Aaronson whispered. He nodded over at Reston, who was slumped inside the disc’s prisoner transport cage, wrists and ankles chained together. The one-time Conquistador looked despondent, utterly defeated. Cage and restraints seemed superfluous. Reston was going nowhere. “We’re never getting him back. Even if the Serpents let him live, there’ll be nothing left once they’ve finished with him. Nothing worth anything.”
“If they kill him, at least we’ll get to see justice done,” Mal replied. “But as long as there’s a chance I can still bring him home, however slim it is and whatever condition he’s in, I’m going to keep hanging on for it.”
“I swear, if you didn’t hate the bloke so much, anyone would think you were in love with him.”
“Don’t be a twat.”
“I’m just saying. It’s a thin line. You’ve been hounding him so hard. Cops and villains sometimes get this attachment for one another, don’t they? It’s a, whatchemacall… Symbiotic relationship. Mutual thing. Can’t live with each other, can’t live without.”
“When you’re quite done with the cheap psychoanalysis…”
“Myself, some of the young roughs I’ve arrested — they’re quite beautiful, in that scrawny, surly way of theirs. A few of them know it and they’ve made offers. You know, ‘Let me go free. I’ll do anything you ask.’ Can’t say I haven’t been tempted.”
“I trust you haven’t given in.”
“No, never. But I’m not blind. He’s a looker, that Reston. If you like ’em posh and well-spoken, that is. And he
