"The skins of men are valuable to Xipe Totec and Tlazolteotl. The priests would flay the sacrifice and wear the skin. The heart had many uses for the gods. Even the flesh was used, at least in part. Sometimes, the insides of a sacrifice would have some strange thing inside it, and be an omen. Then the other organs might be kept for a time and studied, but it was rare."

"Can you think why they would cut out the tongues?"

"To keep them from speaking the secrets they have seen." She said it, like of course that was the reason. It made sense ritually, I guess.

"Why cut off the eyelids?"

"So they can never not see the truth, even though they cannot speak it. I do not know if this is why they have done these awful things."

"Why would someone remove the outward secondary sex characteristics?"

"I do not understand," she said, and she was holding the cloak close about her, as if she were cold. We'd been talking long enough, I had to remind myself not to look directly in her eyes.

"The genitalia on the men, the breasts on the women, were removed." She shuddered, and I knew something I hadn't before. Itzpapalotl, the goddess of the obsidian blade, was frightened. "It sounds like some of the things the Spanish did to our people."

"But the flaying and taking the organs, that's more Aztec, than European»

She nodded. "Yes, but our sacrifices were messengers to the gods. We caused pain only for sacred purposes, not for cruelty or a whim. All blood was holy. If you died at the hand of a priest, you died knowing it served a greater purpose. Literally, your death helped the rain to fall, the maize to grow, the sun to rise in the sky. I do not know of any god that would flay people and leave them alive. Death is necessary for the messenger to reach the gods, Death is part of the worship of the deity. The Spaniards taught us to kill for the sake of killing, not as a sacred trust, but just for slaughter." She stared past me at the four women that waited patiently for her to notice them, for her to give them a purpose. "We have learned the lesson well, but I would rather have stayed in a world where it was not true." I saw in her face that she had some clue to what she'd lost, to what her vampires had lost when she decided they would become as cruel as their enemies. "The Spaniards killed so many of our people along the road to Acachinanco that they tied white handkerchiefs over their noses because of the stench of rotting bodies."

She looked at me then, and the hatred in those eyes burned along my skin. After five hundred years, she still carried a grudge. You had to admire someone who could hold on to hate like that. I thought I knew how to hold a grudge, but looking into her face, I realized I was wrong. There was room in me for forgiveness. In Itzpapalotl's face there was room for only one thing, hatred, She'd been angry about the same thing for over five hundred years. She'd been punishing people for the same crimes for five hundred years. It was impressive in a psychotic sort of way.

I hadn't learned much more about the murders than when I'd stepped through the doors. I'd mostly learned negatives. A genuine Aztec didn't recognize the murders as the work of any god or cult associated with the Aztec pantheon. It was good to know, something to cross off the list. Police work is mostly negatives. Finding out what you don't know, so you can decide what you do. I didn't know anything positive about the murders, but I knew one thing for absolute certain as I listened to the outrage in her voice about atrocities older than the entire country we were sitting in. I never wanted this woman mad at me. I'd told people that I'd chase them into hell to have my vengeance, but I probably didn't mean it. Itzpapalotl would mean every word.

IT WAS STILL DARK as Edward drove us homeward. Still night, true dark, the vampires still roamed, but that soft edge in the air let you know the light is coming. If we hurried, we'd make it into bed before true dawn. If we dawdled, we'd get to see the sun come up. None of us seemed to be dawdling. We sat in the car in a silence that no one seemed willing to break.

We left the club behind and drove out into the hills beyond towards Santa Fe. Stars spread like a blanket of cold fire across the soft black silk of the sky. The sky had that larger than life, empty quality it gets over large bodies of water or in the desert.

Olaf's voice came out of the darkness, low and strangely intimate the way voices can be in a car at night. "If we'd accepted their hospitality, do you think I could have had the vampire they whipped?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Define have?" I said.

"Have, to do with as I liked."

"What would you have done with him if they had?" Bernardo said.

"You don't want to know, and I don't want to hear it," Edward said. He sounded tired.

"I thought you liked women, Olaf," Bernardo said it. I didn't say it, honest.

"For sex I like women, but so much blood. It shouldn't have gone to waste." He sounded wistful.

I turned in my seat and tried to see his face in the dark. "So it's not just women who have to be careful around you, is that it? Does it just have to bleed to be attractive?"

"Leave him alone, Anita. About this, leave him the fuck alone."

I turned to look at Edward. He rarely cussed, and he rarely sounded as tired and almost overwhelmed as he did now. "Okay, I mean, sure."

Edward glanced in the rearview mirror. There wasn't a car in either direction for miles. I think he was looking at Olaf. He stared into the mirror a long time. I think they had some major eye contact going.

He finally blinked and went back to staring at the road, but he didn't seem happy.

"What aren't you telling me?"

"Us," Bernardo said. "What isn't he telling us?"

"All right, what aren't you telling us?"

"It's not my secret to tell," Edward said, and that was all he'd say. He and Olaf had a secret, and they weren't willing to share.

We finished the rest of the drive in silence. The sky was still black, but it was a paler black, the stars dim in it. Dawn was tremblingly close when we went into the house. I was so tired, my eyes burned. But Edward took me by the arm and led me down the small hallway away from the bedrooms. He kept his voice low. "Be very careful of Olaf."

"He's big and bad. I get it."

He dropped his hand from my arm, shaking his head. "I don't think you do."

"Look, I know he's a convicted rapist. I saw the way he looked at Professor Dallas tonight, and I saw his reaction to the blood and torture. I don't know what you're not telling me, but I know that Olaf would hurt me if he could I know that."

"You're afraid of him?"

I took a breath. "Yeah, I'm afraid of him."

"Good," Edward said. He hesitated then said, "You fit his vic profile."

"Excuse me?"

"His favorite victims are petite women, usually Caucasian, but always with long dark hair. I told you I would never have brought him in on this case if I'd known you were coming down, too. It isn't just because you're a woman. You're his physical ideal for a victim."

I stared at him for a few seconds, mouth opened, then closed it, and tried to think what to say. "Thanks for telling me, Edward. Shit. You should have told me this up front."

"I was hoping he could hold his act together, but I saw him tonight, too. I'm worried that he'll snap. I just don't want you to be the one in the way when it happens."

"Send him back to wherever he came from, Edward. We don't need him if he adds to the problem."

He shook his head. "No, he's got a specialty that's perfect for this case."

"And that specialty would be?"

He gave that small smile. "Go to bed, Anita. It's already dawn."

"No," I said, "almost, but not quite."