"Sacrifice," she said, and there was enough heat in that one word to make me shiver.

Seth put the blade point to his flesh again. It seemed harder to get a clean cut when he wasn't fully erect, but he managed. Blood spread in fine rivulets over his skin, staining his fingers with tiny hits of red.

Diego stayed kneeling, but made no move to feed. The fire faded from his eyes, the glow leeched out of the skin, leaving him still lovely, a contrast of pale skin, dark hair, and blue eyes, but he looked defeated somehow, hands limp in his lap.

The four women moved around behind Itzpapalotl, gliding as a unit until they stood in a half-circle behind the kneeling vampire. "You have disappointed me again, Diego," the goddess said.

He shook his head and bowed it, eyes closing. "I am sorry for that, my dark goddess. I would not disappoint you for the sun and the moon itself." But his voice was tired when he said it, like it was a memorized line but his heart wasn't in it.

The four vamps surrounding him pulled black leather bound rods from their belts, and lifted leather bags off the ends. Dozens of thin leather cords spread out from each bag like obscene flowers. Silver balls were braided in the cords so that they sparkled in the torchlight. It was a cat o' nine tails, except it had a lot more tails.

"Why do you insist on refusing this honor, Diego? Why do you make us punish you?"

"I am not a lover of men, my dark goddess, and I will not do this. I am sorry that my refusal pains you, but this one thing I will not do." Again, his voice was tired, as if he'd said all of it before, many times before.

He was about five hundred years old, like the four women that surrounded him. Had he been turning the «honor» down for five centuries?

The four women watched their goddess, not glancing even at the vampire at their feet. Itzpapalotl gave a small nod. Four arms went back, flaring the cat o' nine tails in a fan of silver and leather. They whirled it through the air like they knew what they were doing. They hit him in sequence, right to left, each whip landing a blow, then the next, the next, the next. The blows fell so close together it was like the sound of hard rain, except that this rain was smacking into flesh, and you could hear it thudding home. They whipped him until they drew blood, then they stood motionless around him, waiting.

"Do you still refuse?"

"Yes, my dark goddess, I still refuse."

"When you raped these women long ago, did you dream of the price you would pay?"

"No, my dark goddess, I did not."

"You didn't believe in our gods, did you?"

"No, my dark goddess, I did not."

"You thought your white Christ could save you, didn't you?"

"Yes, my dark goddess, I did."

"You were wrong."

His head hunched between his shoulders as if he were trying to draw into himself like a turtle. The metaphor was funny. The gesture was not. "Yes, my dark goddess, I was wrong."

She gave another nod, and the women began to whip him in a blur that made the whips gleam silver like lightning in their hands. Blood ran in streamers down his back, but he never cried out, never asked for mercy.

I must have made some movement, because Edward stepped close to me, not grabbing my arm, but touching it. I met his eyes, and he gave the barest shake of his head. I wouldn't really risk our lives for a vampire I didn't know, really I wouldn't, but I didn't like it.

Olaf made a small sound. He was watching it with glowing eyes like a child at Christmas who comes down to find that he'd gotten exactly what he wanted. He'd put up the gun, his big hands clasped in front of him, clasped so hard they were mottled, and a fine tremor ran up his arms. I might not like it, but Olaf did.

I glanced at Edward, sort of nodding to the big man. Edward gave the barest of nods. He saw it, too, but he was ignoring it. I tried. I caught Bernardo's eyes. He was staring at the big man, a look very close to fear on his face. He turned and concentrated on the stairs, turning his back on everything in the room. I'd have liked to join him, but I couldn't turn away. It wasn't just macho crap, you know. If Edward could stand to watch it, then so could I. Though there was a little of that. Mostly it was if Diego could endure it, I could watch it. If I wasn't going to stop it then I had to at least watch. To do nothing to help him and to turn away would have been too much cowardice for me to swallow. I'd have choked on it. The best I could do was try to watch other things around him. The way the women's arms went up and down like machines, as if they would never tire.

The five guards stood impassive, but the vamp that walked at Itzpapalotl's right side watched it with half-parted lips, eyes intent as if afraid to miss even the smallest movement. He was almost as old as the goddess herself, seven, eight hundred years, and for five hundred of those years he'd been watching this particular show, and he still enjoyed it. I knew in that moment that I never wanted to make an enemy of the creatures in this room. I never wanted to be at their mercy. Because they had none.

The other two Spanish survivors had moved back to stand against the far wall, as far from the show as they could get. The one with salt and pepper hair stared at the ground as if there was something of great interest there. The starved one on his leash had curled into a fetal position, as if he were trying to disappear altogether.

The women turned Diego's back into bloody ribbons. A red pool formed at his feet. He curled his upper body over his legs until he was like a little hull of pain. Blood began to drip down his shoulders to form a second puddle in front of him. He was weaving, even that low to the ground, as if he might pass out. I hoped he passed out soon.

I finally did take a step forward, and Edward grabbed my arm. "No," he said.

"You feel pity for him," Itzpapalotl said.

"Yes," I said.

"Diego was one of the strangers that came into our lands. He thought we were barbarians. We were things to be conquered, robbed, raped, slaughtered. Diego never saw us as people, did you, Diego?"

There was no answer this time. He wasn't exactly unconscious but close enough that he was beyond words. "You didn't think we were people, did you, Cristobal?"

I didn't know who Cristobal was, but there was a high keening sound. It was the vampire on the leash. He unrolled from his tight fetal ball. The keening ended in that same awful laughter that I'd heard earlier. The laughter rose up and up until the vampire holding the leash jerked it tight, pulling him like you'd discipline a dog. I realized that the leash was a choke collar. Shit.

"Answer me, Cristobal."

The vampire let up on the leash enough for the starved one to get a ragged breath. His voice, when it came, was strangely cultured, smooth and sum "No, we did not think you were people, my dark goddess." Then the ragged laughter came from those thin lips, and he huddled around himself again.

"They broke into our temple and raped our priestesses, our virgin priestesses, our nuns. Twelve of them raped these four priestesses. They did unspeakable, vile things to them, forced them with pain and threats of death to do whatever the men wanted them to do."

The women's faces never changed during the speech, as if it were about someone else. They had stopped whipping the man. They just stood there watching him bleed.

"I found them dying in the temple from what had been done to them. I offered them life. I offered them vengeance. I made them gods, and then we hunted down the strangers that had raped them, the ones that left them for dead. We took each of them, made them one of us, so their punishment would last forever. But my teyolloquanies were too strong for most of them. There were twelve of them once. Now only two remain."