" Maman' s a woof!" Leila shrieked.
The little girl flung herself at the great beast's neck; a hundred and twenty pounds wasn't much for a human, but it was very large indeed for a wolf.
Adrienne ducked into a crouch as the small body landed on her back and clung with hands and feet. Then she jumped and bucked and swung back and forth mock-growling; carefully, just short of throwing her off, leaving her squealing with delicious terror. Leon laughed and darted in, grabbing at her tail.
Ouch, she thought. Well, they are my children!
That would have been obvious even to someone Power-blind; they had her olive complexion, regular high-cheeked faces, straight noses, Cupid's-bow lips and hair the color of a crow's wing. They resembled their father too, of course.
A twist within, and she was an Arabian mare. Leila drummed heels on her ribs, and Leon pulled over a footstool and used it to scramble up behind her. They whooped as she trotted out the open French doors and into the garden courtyard of the nursery section. Then she broke into a slow, even gallop-running was fun when you were a horse-on the turf around the pool. The night was even dimmer to horse eyes, but she knew the terrain, and the juicy-sweet scent of the grass and the cool air were exhilarating.
At last she halted by the doors. Transforming back to your own etheric form was always easiest, and the children tumbled onto the soft carpet with more laughter. A surge of effort overrode somatic memory and made the body she wore like her normal one, not the still-healing physical frame.
"More, Maman!" Leon said. "Be a tiger!"
"No more, my little weasels," she said firmly. "It's one o'clock. Go get ready for bed, and I'll tell you a story."
Leila pouted a little, then sighed. "You don't go to sleep yet," she pointed out hopefully. "We missed you a lot."
"My body is still a little sick, so I sleep nearly all day, little weasel one. And I need to feed after you go to sleep; turning into animals takes a lot of Power."
"Who will you bite?" Leon asked with interest.
"Peter," she said. "And then perhaps Monica, for dessert."
"Monica's nice," Leila said. "She smells like cake. I don't think Peter likes us, though. I can feel it in his head. He feels real scared, too, even if he doesn't look that way. That makes my head…all prickly."
Adrienne smiled, full of pride. Six was young to be that sensitive. She suspected Leon would have a little more raw strength when he was grown, though they'd both be very formidable. But the Power was a saber, not a club. Without subtlety, it could be dangerous to the wielder.
"What're you going to do to them to make them taste good?" Leon asked, slightly ghoulishly.
"Things that will make them have very strong feelings," Adrienne said. "Starting with chasing them. That's how you prepare humans for feeding."
"Like putting ketchup on frites?"
"Yes. It spices their blood with things we need and that taste very good, and you can…mmmm…get inside their minds and sense their feelings. That's a lot of fun too."
"Not for the human," Leon said, with a smirk.
"Sometimes it is, sometimes not," Adrienne said. "But it's what they're for, after all. They're our food."
"If we drank more blood, could we do more things with the Power?" Lelia asked hopefully. "I like the way using the Power feels. I can keep the feather up for a whole minute now. Maybe-"
"No," Adrienne said again, firmly. "You have to wait for that. You have to grow up and become strong first."
This time she used a little of the Power herself, cloaking herself for a moment in shadow and awe and a tinge of fear; the two children blinked their yellow-flecked black eyes and looked away. She could feel their minds roiling, slightly startled, instinctive childhood deference and an equally inbred defiance. More pressure, until their eyes dropped.
You had to be careful with purebred Shadowspawn children, and there had been none so pure as these for twelve thousand years or more. Not since the Empire of Shadow. More than one Council member had argued that they should be destroyed before they reached adulthood as too dangerous. It probably was going to be trying when they hit puberty, but if the world didn't like it, the world could do the other thing.
Inwardly she bared teeth at the universe; let any try to harm her get! And at the thought her spine bristled, the little hairs trying to come erect. She blinked at the thought, grasping with the Power for the thread of possibilities, but it spun away into infinity. Children were made of potentials, and these more than most.
"You're too young for more than a sip of blood now and then," she said, bending and putting a hand behind each head, locking their gaze with hers. "It'll be years yet before you can really feed, or night-walk. You have all the time in the world to wait. Now off with you!"
The two slight raven-haired forms scampered away to don pajamas and brush their teeth. She picked up a robe and threw it over herself as she walked into the bedroom; it opened on a balcony with a chest-high balustrade of carved marble fretwork, and over that in the distance she could see the moon setting over the Coast Range hills.
The room was big, and there was a spray of toys, shelves of picture books and murals of children's stories from the manor's last rebuilding in the 1920s: Bre'r Rabbit squealing in bulging-eyed despair and agony in the jaws of Bre'r Fox, Cinderella trimming the feet of her stepsisters as they screamed and writhed, Jack stamped beneath the giant's foot, Hansel and Gretel burning in the witch's oven…
All the classics, she thought. Tradition does have its place.
The children returned, smelling of soap and toothpaste and virtue. She gave each a hug, and then they climbed into their beds. Leila cuddled her doll, and they both rolled over to face her with the covers drawn up as she sat on the chair between them.
"Story!" Leila said, her voice carrying a hint of her mother's firm tone of command. "You promised."
"Yeah!"
"But certainly," Adrienne said. A moment's thought, then:
" 'Once there was a little girl with a red hood. She was a pretty girl, with pale skin and veins that showed, and she smelled like flowers and hamburgers and chocolate-chip cookies, just scrumptious. But everyone knew she'd come to a very bad end, and she did!'"
The children grinned, their eyes alight. Their mother went on:
" 'Well, one day she was walking to her grandmother's cottage in the woods. Her grandmother was old and useless, but a beautiful strong wolf broke down her door and chased her around and ate her right up, yum! yum! Then-'"
Eyes drooped as an active day took its toll. She put the book down and began to rise. Leila was snoring, but Leon blinked at her.
" Maman?" he said, his voice slurred.
"Yes, my darling?"
"What's Papa like?"
Ah, she thought.
"Well, he looks a lot like you," she said. "And a lot like me. And he's very, very powerful. His name is Adrian."
"Will Papa ever come and live with us?"
"I don't know, sweetie. I hope so, someday."
"I would like that," Leon said. "I dream about him, sometimes."
Leila murmured drowsy assent, and Adrienne felt the Power prickle at her nerves again, a message too faint to read, like a sound not quite heard in a nighted forest.
When she felt the minds of both children spiral down into deep sleep she walked to her own chambers-through the walls for practice's sake, pausing a moment before each to will them open. It was really more a matter of making yourself impalpable, but that was the way she'd always visualized it and you didn't alter what worked. A glitter, the solid plaster and stone fading, and the slightest tug as she walked through- the probability matrix that made up an etheric body interpenetrating with the gross material atoms of the structure.
When her corporeal form opened its eyes she stretched.
"Now I'm hungry," she said.
"How do I look?" Adrienne Breze said a few hours later, glancing over her shoulder at her nude image in the mirror. "Sort of a butch thing, perhaps, with the hair still short?"
Hmmm. I'm still too thin; it's the Case of the Amazing Disappearing Tits. And I do not like my hair only an inch long. If I want to look like a man, I'll night-walk and turn into a man.
That was easy enough; all you needed was an individual's DNA to copy him or her in etheric form, and it was slightly easier with a human than a wolf or a tiger. It could also be a lot of fun, though if she had had to choose one or the other she'd have picked female without hesitation.
We're more flexible, literally and metaphorically, she thought. Fortunately, I can take my pick.
She had a remarkably wide selection of templates. Biting someone did nicely, and semen was even easier than blood as a source sample. Any body fluid would do in a pinch.
And my new foot is still a little smaller than the other and disgustingly pink and gets sore easily. Still, I look much better than I did a few weeks ago. And my appetites are coming back, I feel almost normal as long as I don't overexert.
Peter Boase mumbled from the bed, three-quarters unconscious. The room smelled of sweat and blood and musky sex, and strong, sweet lady-of-the-night jasmine in great terra-cotta jars outside the glass doors. This was his own house on Lucy Lane, not her chambers in the casa grande above; logically enough, it was where her lucys lived. The houses were comfortable, middle-class buildings in the same Spanish Revival style as the whole of the town, about twenty-five hundred square feet, with rooms grouped around an interior courtyard patio; those backed on the outer wall of the estate gardens.
She walked back to the bed and climbed onto it, onto the man there, and straddled him, resting her chin on her palms and looking down at him. He was short, only a few inches taller than she, perhaps five-six, blond and fine-featured and slim. His skin felt warm, almost flushed, compared to the cool linen on her knees and shins.
"Peter," she whispered. And, within: Peter.
He was deeply asleep, wandering through evil dreams. She touched the surface of his interior dialogue delicately, her eyelids drooping as she let the rhythms of consciousness synchronize. You couldn't talk to someone's mind like this-not if they weren't Shadowspawn of fairly pure blood-but you could suggest things. The thoughts were one. You could persuade…
Adrienne is dead.
A startling leap of joy, life, freedom-the sort of pleasure that came when a long-existing agony was relieved. Then crashing despair.
No. She's alive. Sick, but alive.
Adrienne is dead.
Make it his own thought; not a wish, the ring of conviction.
I saw her die. Overtones, joy…not too much, not the savage exultation she'd feel herself watching an enemy perish, add a little revulsion.
Now guide, gently, gently. The mind wanted to believe, and they were deep-linked, by pleasure, by pain, by the bond of blood.
The heavy bullet ripped Hajime's head open, and the Shadowspawn lord disappeared, a fucking sabertooth leaping at him as he died.
All that was real, that had happened.
Gone, gone, Hajime just gone, Monica down and Jose protecting her with his body, get between her and the danger too, another bullet going by with an astonishing crack sound, not a bang at all, not like anything he'd ever heard in a movie, and a peeeenngggg sound as it hammered off stone. Shadowspawn running riot, the night-walking or postcorporeal guests transforming into a nightmare collection of beasts and birds.
The thoughts/memories/images/sensations ran faster and faster, with the iron taste of truth.
Ellens face contorted with rage and smashing the foil-sheathed hypo down on Adriennes foot, the great silverback gorilla standing roaring with the bench in its hands, Ellen riding the sabertooth as it leapt for the roof of the pavilion -
Adrienne jerking, screaming, slumping in death No.
Yes. That happened -
An image of Michiko leaping forward with the wakizashi raised To fight the sabertooth, holding it out two-handed, looking around in terror. Adrienne just lay there, and she breathed a few more times, then her chest jerked and there was a sound in her throat and it stopped. Her eyes, the pupils didn't dilate anymore. Dead, dead…
Yes.
Yes. Saw that. Saw that. Fear since, fear of her parents, they're dead but somehow they're alive…
His mind trailed off into a matrix of equations, trying to understand how a neural net could float free of the flesh that had given rise to it, wrap a synthetic body around itself to go forth and feed. Curiosity burned almost as strong as the need to live, somehow tied into reproduction and the life-death cycle down in the base of his hindbrain.
His mind was almost as unusual as Ellen's, in its way.
Withdraw, withdraw, let the pattern repeat, repeat. Memories uncoiled as they were recalled, reknit as they were stored, again and again. Memory wasn't a recording, it was a song, a story the mind told itself, very slightly different every time. Croon it into the shape of desire…
Got to get out, got to get out. GottoGETOUT!
Pushing on an open door. She drew herself back and he turned on his side, drawing into a fetal position, his arms wrapped around his chest.
Chuckling, she let thoughts trickle through their linked minds, tumbled images of her mother baring her teeth-it would be easy enough to mistake one for another, and he'd been appropriately frightened when introduced to her postcorporeal but very much alive and hungry parents. Thoughts of pain, fear, the terrible unwanted ecstasy of feeding. Then the car in the garage, the money in the drawer. Decision firming.
Backwards inch by inch, letting his mind flutter down deeper into sleep, breaking physical and mental contact. His eyes were flickering here and there in rapid eye movement, real dreams, but she'd seen how they would be shaped. Humans had such odd dreams, so…so uncontrolled.
It could be enormous fun to ride their nightmares, in a subtler way than taking their personalities into your own memory palace, but Peter had had enough. This was business.
Soon she was standing at the foot of his bed. "Poor Peter, I'm going to miss you," she murmured. "But perhaps we'll meet again, eh? Bon chance, little physicist."
She turned and walked out into the dark courtyard, stretching with her arms over her head, blinking and yawning and favoring her tender new foot a little. The night was fairly young: around three o'clock, which was halfway through her waking cycle in normal times. There was more than enough light to see by, the glow from the town's streetlights and a few on the casa's grounds; even a human could have made his way, and it was enough for a Shadowspawn pureblood to read by, if the print wasn't too small. She took a long breath of the air.
Now I'll pay Monica a visit…no, I'll have her up to the casa and play a little while I'm night-walking. Then a nice light meal, an omelette perhaps, maybe look in on the children, then some sweet, restorative sleep. And first a shower. Ah, the bourgeois pleasures!
She let herself through the gate and walked upwards on a sweeping stone staircase between rows of cypresses.
More night-walking, now that I can safely leave my body to take care of itself. The scents are lovely this time of year, with a nose that really works.
And there was always the details of her plots. Plots and plans and intrigues, and so many crossed threads that even she had trouble keeping track of them. Nudging them through the web and warp of probabilities, towards…
"The part where I get to be God," she mused. "Not just a God as I am now, but the God, with my face carved upon the moon."
In the meantime, it was extremely convenient that everyone thought she was dead-including Peter, now, ready to walk out like a ticking bomb that her enemies would hug to their hearts.
And Peter gets to be very, very brave and suffer a great deal. What a tragedy!
"Fix us a drink, cherie?" Adrienne said.
Muffled sounds; she concentrated, and things that might have happened did, even if they wouldn't have by themselves before the sun expanded and then collapsed into a red dwarf.
The effort moved her hunger into the sharp, demanding phase; she'd drawn on her inner reserves for that. Adrienne suspected that metabolizing some sort of trace element was involved, but nobody had ever done much research on the biochemical pathways.
Buckles unfastened and snaps clicked free. Monica lay for a moment panting around the gag before she pulled it free, wiped her face on a towel and rose from the great bed and walked stiffly towards the sideboard. This was Adrienne's own chambers in the casa grande, pale arched Fragonardesque elegance and space, which she'd missed so badly while she was sick and crowded by machines and people.
Monica's step swayed more as she stretched, and she glanced aside at herself in one of the eighteenth-century mirrors in its ormolu frame.
"And to think I once thought 'spank me rosy' was a figure of speech," she said playfully.
Adrienne laughed. "It's your fault for having such a delectably elegant posterior."
Michiko was right, she thought. She does look remarkably like Ellen apart from the hair color, and they both do look like Monroe, and I'd never thought of that before she mentioned it; Michiko can be disturbingly acute sometimes, when she bothers to make the effort.
"Anything in particular?" Monica said. "Your word is my command."
"Use your imagination, cherie. You're good at that."
Monica laughed and struck a thoughtful pose, like Rodin's Thinker but standing up and female.
Or Monica looks like Norma Jean before she became Monroe and went blond, whereas Ellen was a natural platinum. But the figure is very similar, allowing for Monica being a few years older than Ellen. Odd. But then, its logical that Adrian and I should have similar tastes, no? I don't think I have any particular type when it comes to males, except of course that they be pretty in one way or another. And their minds are almost as important.
Adrienne put her hands behind her head and looked down at her toes; the left set was only a little paler than the right now, and no longer sore. She wiggled them with some satisfaction; it wasn't worth the trouble to override somatic memory when the waking form was so nearly back to normal.
"Cocktail?" Monica asked. "One of those antique styles your parents like?"
"Splendid idea. Retro can be amusing."
She went to work with bottles and shakers, making a little dance of it, which was entertaining.
Next to the bed was a painting; French Symbolist, showing the death angel bending over an old grave digger in a snowy cemetery, a soul-light in one cupped hand and her black wings making a counterpoint to the leafless branches; he'd dug his last grave, and it would be his own.
Schwabe's La Mort et le Fossoyeur had always been a favorite of Adrienne's. For the obvious reasons, and for another: the model the artist used for Azrael's face had been her great-aunt Zoe. Who had long since died the Final Death, a matter of a little family disagreement, but Adrienne remembered her fondly from her own childhood.
"Champagne Apricato," Monica said proudly, handing her a cocktail glass and drinking from her own.
Adrienne took hers and sipped the chilly tart-sweet mixture. Champagne, apricot liqueur made on the estate, gin and the juice of fresh-squeezed lemons from just down the hill.
"A bit too sweet for constant consumption, but superb of its kind," she said. "Much like you, Monica."
The human blushed and smiled as she sat down on the edge of the bed.
"In fact, when I was tucking Leila in earlier, she said you smelled like cake."
Monica laughed. "They're wonderful children," she said. "So cute and smart…Do I really smell like cake?"
"To a child. To me…a little. Definitely tasty. Perhaps a little more like kebab with a honey-mustard glaze. Also like sex on two legs, right now."
"You are feeling better," Monica said as she sipped at her drink. Softly, glancing over her shoulder: "Will you kill me when my looks go, Dona?"
They locked eyes. "Possibly. Or maybe not. But I'm going to swallow your soul in any case, so you'll never really die."
Adrienne tickled her delicately with a toe-the pinkish, new oneand the human shivered.
"That'll be…interesting, dying and knowing I'm not really going to die."
"I can assure you that at the time you'll be very focused on the physical side of things."
Another shiver. "But we get to go on with things together."
"True. Of course, who knows what I'll be like in a few thousand years? Or what you will be? But we're both going to find out."
The human's mind roiled, longing, lust, fear, adoration, and far down a faint screaming from the deeply buried core personality. She put her drink down by her feet; Adrienne knelt behind her and grabbed a handful of her hair, bending her head back. A shiver as the last of the cocktail was poured along her neck…
Sometime later Monica sighed drowsily and wiped at a drop of blood on her forehead with the back of her hand. The delicious coppery smell of it mingled with the earthier body musk and sweat.
"It's lovely to have you so active again, Dona," she said. "It's been a little lonely on Lucy Lane."
"It has?"
"With Jabar…gone…even if he wasn't very friendly."
Well, he shouldn't have tried to run, Adrienne thought, and grinned. Though it was a nice bonding experience to hunt him down with Maman and Papa when they arrived from La Jolla. How he cursed and then squealed, there at the end when we ran him to ground in those woods. Papa was so inventive I wouldn't have thought a reptile could do that .
"And Ellen too; it was nice to have another girl as a neighbor."
"Cheba might be described as a girl," Adrienne said.
"Cheba…Cheba isn't adjusting very well."
"I thought you had her enrolled at all those ESL and adult-education classes at the high school? She's a veritable Horatio Alger story of immigrant success, in a way."
"Yes, that's working out, but…There's Jose, of course, and Peter, they're both dears. I was going to ask Peter if he wanted to go up to San Francisco and take in the opera, if that's all right?"
"Alas, I'm afraid Peter will be going too. You won't be seeing him tomorrow, in fact."
Monica went very still; Adrienne tickled the back of her neck, savoring the chill of despair.
"No, I'm not going to kill him," Adrienne said. "Not anytime in the immediate future, that is. He'll just be going away for a while."
"I didn't think…" Monica said, over a rush of relief.
"That I ever let anyone go? I don't."
Like a cat with a mouse, Monica thought.
"Exactly. And you should be prepared for some travel in the immediate future."
"Paris?" Monica said hopefully.
"Among other places. I've got a new plane, you'll enjoy it. An Airbus A380."
"Oh, that sounds like a dream."
"One of the better ones," Adrienne replied. "Though nightmares have their charm."
Me llamo Eusebia Graciela Conines Angeles. Nanotoca Eusebia.
"I name Eusebia."
Cheba sat at her kitchen table, in her kitchen, in her house…in a country and state and town very, very far away from where she had been given her names.
"I am practice my English. I…I am practicing my English…?Que lengua mas estupida!"
Before her, scattered over the table, were books, a computer pad, notebooks and paper, all dappled with sunlight from the garden outside.
The building wasn't totally unlike what she was accustomed to seeing, nor ones that her mother had occasionally scrubbed floors in: rooms grouped around a courtyard, pale stucco walls, red-tile roof. Nothing like anything she'd ever lived in, of course. This kitchen was bigger than any house she'd ever lived in before; at least, it smelled more the way she was familiar with now, cinnamon, cardamom, of fresh peppers and the strings of dried ones over the stove, poblanos, pasilla, chipotle, serranos, negros. A pot of corn was boiling with a hint of cal, chicken bubbling in a stew.
Every detail was wrong, though. Better than the barrio, she had to admit. No wood smoke, no kerosene. The town wasn't big, but it made her feel alien and exposed.
As for what lived here Her hands began to shake, and she stared at them stubbornly until they stopped. She had not slept very well. You didn't, when you were waiting for…No.
Then she took up the pencil again. Her teacher had told her that handwriting was one of the best ways to make her new words sink into her brain.
"I'm not feeling very smart today."
Early in the morning, well before dawn, Monica and her mother had had a screaming fight out in the street. Cheba hadn't understood much, but she hadn't been able to get back to sleep. It was best not to think about that. She frowned at the last sentence instead. It wasn't right. She tugged on the gleaming black curl she'd wound around her left forefinger. ?Ingles! she thought in exasperation.
It had auxiliary verbs. And they don't make sense! Oh! My, it is "my" name, mio! And my fathers and my mothers.
The words hit her in the chest, squeezing, as memories opened and bled, and a single coughing sob burst out before she choked her lips shut. Images Father, happy drunk and mean drunk.
They'd lived with her mother's parents in a brightly painted little cinder-block hut, on the edge of a small village. The dusty unpaved steet outside ran from the tiny town center to the hot, humid green jungle. Her mother, Alma Marta, had been an only child, and her husband had expected to inherit the lands from his father-in-law. But it hadn't happened. The elders hadn't liked his drunkenness, or the slovenly way he worked the lands for his father-in-law, and a cousin of hers had been granted the lands by the ejido when her grandfather had died.
Unitario Cortines Cruz had left the village to find other work. She and her mother had stayed with the cousins.
The only thing Papa found was his way into the grille of a very large truck. And I cannot even pretend it wasn't his own fault. He was probably looking at it and laughing when it hit him.
That had been near Papantla, Veracruz. The news arrived at the village a few months later.
Alma Marta Angeles Zapatero had found only cold charity with her cousins. She and her surviving child had walked and hitchhiked to Tlacotalpan.
I do not remember the village all that well. We were hungry there, sometimes, yes. But it was not like the homeless camps and the shantytown. And selling those ugly baskets to the tourists for centavos on the peso didn't pay any better, and we had to buy everything. Everything stank of sewage. Even the sun and the rain were worse, all crowded together, and never any quiet, never a place to be alone even for a moment. Waking up and the bugs crawling on me and eating the calluses off my feet. I had to come to el Norte. The thieves, they were as bad as the bugs, and as many as the rats and pigeons and seagulls. The rats stole our food and the thieves stole our money.
"Mama, you saved everything, for years. Sometimes you would tell me you had eaten when you hadn't, so we could put a little more in the box."
She squeezed her eyes shut again. The final day had been hot and muggy even to her, raised in the coastal lowlands; just like all the others before it, but worse. She had danced across the great highway first, carrying most of the baskets, the fresh straw smell strong as she peered around them.
I could see it on the men watching. They were looking at me, at my legs, and then their eyes went up and they saw behind me and they shouted.
Brakes squealing and engine roar and tires skidding across the hot asphalt screaming like a trapped rabbit. Her own voice shouting, No, no, as she dropped the baskets and turned. The heavy, meaty thump came through the air like a blow, like a fist in the belly. A crackling with it, like sticks being twisted off a bush. All that before she could even turn and see, see what she knew and would not believe even when she saw it.
There were baskets scattered all over the busy fairway, and she stood, teetering on the edge of the curb, watching the broken rag doll tossed into the air and rolling, bouncing and banging, under two more cars before traffic split about the shattered body. The screams of the sirens had echoed through her head, the flashing lights had played on her eyes as she stood frozen, watching the emergency crew bag the body up and bundle it into the back of the ambulance. The police had held people away, but they hadn't asked questions and the great truck was long gone.
Who cares for the death of one more useless old India? And now, I have my truck. Her name is Adrienne, she told herself mordantly.
The doorbell chimes startled her out of the fruitless reverie. Like everything in this maldito country; they were wrong! Who would have tooting, galloping horns for a knocker! She stumped through the living room and opened the door, scowling. Jose was there.
They try, she thought. They try to be so nice. And I try, try to be polite to them. She silently stood aside to let him in and waved towards the kitchen.
She frowned as he sat down; there was a blanched look to his skin, and the small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were tight and tense.
"?Una chela?" she asked.
He nodded and wagged a finger at her. She stuck out her tongue, feeling as awkward as usual. He was Hispano like her, she should feel at home with him, but it didn't happen. He didn't feel like a bad man; she had experience enough and to spare with those, and you could tell. But he was different.
"?Una cerveza?" she asked instead.
He opened his mouth and then wagged his finger again. She sighed.
" Bien, bien. Do…you…like…the…beer?"
"Would you like a beer?" he corrected her. "Don't sigh, Cheba. It's really important you work at fitting in. Yes, there are many who can speak Spanish in this town, more than in most places around here-"
"Why?" she asked.
"This was a rancho…hacienda…long ago, before the Americans came. Under Spain, under Mexico. After that it was out of the way, not close to any of the cities. Anglos settled here only slowly; then the Brezes came, long ago-more than a hundred and fifty years-and since then, not many people leave, not many come in, we are a bit apart from the world. But it is still California, and if you cannot speak English well you are like someone with only one eye or one leg. Also my tia Joan has spoken to me about you."
Cheba went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of the beer with the pretty label for Jose and a Jarritos soda pop for herself.
"Your tia?. Is she a sister of your father or mother? And why does she care?"
He took a long gulp from the bottle. "My father's older sister. As to why…Because…it's part of being human?"
Cheba snorted. "Not like your tia Theresa?"
She had met the Breze household manager that terrible day the people-smuggler Paco had delivered them to Rancho Sangre. They called them coyotes, but he'd met real shape-shifters. He had deserved to die; the others hadn't.
He laughed. "Theresa? There's a story here that a snake bit her once, a rattlesnake."
"What happened?"
"The snake died."
That made her laugh, a brief, unwilling snort. Jose leaned forward, speaking earnestly.
"Listen, Joan lived in Mexico for many years, studied there and all. She owns an import business, goes back a lot. She asked me what you did all day. I didn't understand why; but she says that the women of the villages are never idle. They always have something in their hands, embroidery or crochet lace, or weaving, but never idle."
Cheba closed her eyes, seeing the brightly embroidered blouse her mother had been finishing, soaking up the blood, turning from white to dark red, and shuddered unexpectedly.
"It costs money," she excused herself. "And I am…sad all the time. I like to crochet, and sometimes embroider."
"Money…" exclaimed Jose. "You know you have as much as you want. And making things that are pretty will make you less sad."
"But, where?"
Jose sighed and waggled his finger at her again. She laughed, a bit sourly.
"You mean, where would you buy the stuff? In town, of course. There are three or four shops that sell craft stuff. Monica would take you, and love doing it."
He looked at her and she dropped her eyes to the papers on the table. Her classes were over the Internet, she didn't need to go out and try to mix. Jose had taken her to the library and introduced her to the librarian. Cheba had not been back.
Jose made an exasperated sound. "?Mira, tu!" he said with some heat in his voice. "We are all trying, but you are not."
Cheba bit her lip and tried to stop the tears. "What should I try? Try to be a puta and food?" she asked, feeling the raw anger crowd forward.
I had to leave my village because my papa was a drunk and died…walked in front of a truck. My mama died crossing a street…another truck, so, I took a truck up to here, trying to get away from the bad luck and a new life. And look what picked me up!"
"Yes. But now you have that new life. A house, a life, things to learn, people to meet…What is wrong?"
"It's all wrong!" Cheba shouted. "It's not the right size, or shape; the rugs are dirty! There aren't nice floors to sweep, the kitchen is closed in; the windows too big; the lights too bright; the roads…"
"I want to feel the dust between my toes, the sun on my back, pick the corn and beans in my grandfather's milpa, hear the voices of the village, of the market, of the children…"
More tears threatened and she held them back with her scowl.
"But what did you expect?" he asked her, a puzzled note in his voice. "Of course it would be different!"
She looked around, surprised, and thought back to that day, the day of death when she had carefully stolen ten wallets, carefully, oh, so carefully, and added the money to her little hoard and begun her flight north. What had she expected? Difference, just something different from her real life.
"I guess, different; I wanted something different. No more poverty or living like an animal? To be rich."
"And in comparison, here you are rich!"
"But it is not rich like I know rich! It is wrong…Everything is different, yes; but evil!" Cheba shook her head and watched Jose take a quick gulp of beer.
"Yeah," he said, surprising her. "It is." A grim smile at the look on her face. "Do I look stupid?"
"But if you hadn't fallen in with La Dona, you'd have been slaving in the fields, living crowded cheek by jowl in tar paper shacks, hiding from la migra, eating worse than you ever have in your life…and raped, often, by the men who hire the wetbacks. That man Paco who sold you and your friends to La Dona was not interested in taking you anywhere good. I don't have to draw you a picture about that, no? So, it kinda balances out."
Cheba clenched her jaw. He is right, the trip across the border and to here taught me that! This piece of logic of Jose's she could follow; she couldn't always understand his thoughts.
" La Dona is better than working in the fields? A bruja, a chupacabra, and I am not a goat!"
"You are a goat." Jose's voice was flat. "Or you're a bird and she is a cat. We all are. And it is better than the fields. At least she doesn't roast us over fire; just over the coals of our emotions. Rape is rape, and that hasn't changed."
"There's a lot you don't understand and we've tried to tell you. Not just my tia has sent me to talk to you. La Dona called me in and told me…"
"She confides in you," Cheba observed sourly.
He hesitated and then shrugged.
"I was born here, and my ancestors. One chance, Cheba. You have one chance left. If you don't do what La Dona orders you to she will eat you up tomorrow."
He took another swallow of the beer and Cheba glowered at him; this nice young man who looked so much like the young men in Coetzala and Veracruz and was so very different in how he saw the world. She couldn't help herself.
"You are gringo, gabacho, you don't understand!"
"I know that! And it bothers me. What don't I understand? You're india; you and your people have lived for twenty, thirty generations as conquered people, on the edge! Where do you get that pride?"
"We still live!" she flashed back at him, and scowled as he dissolved into hearty guffaws. "What is funny?" she demanded.
Jose shook his head. "It's from a TV show, or a movie or something. It's used as a joke and also as defiance."
"Well," she said, glowering at him, "I'm defiant and it doesn't sound funny to me."
Jose shook his head and finished off the beer. "Look, you've survived for generations as a people, now you need to survive as a person. Independent, yes, doing things, being alive, or La Dona will eat you up."
"Then I'll be dead; grateful release!"
"Really? Hasn't La Dona taken you into her memory?"
Cheba made an involuntary movement and barely managed to catch the Jarritos bottle before it went flying across the kitchen. She started to say something and paused.
"Yes, you've met George, I see. Take what time you have and can use. My aunt says that the Shadowspawn, los hijos de sombra, she calls them in Spanish, were the kings and priests of the old ones before the conquest. So it really isn't new, even to you, from that little Huasteca village."
"So, they are chupacabra and we their goats! Nyyahahaha…"
"Yeah, pretty much. We are their barbacoa."
"It's worse than flames what she makes me do!"
Jose looked surprised. "You were a virgin? I'm sorry. It must have been very hard to learn the perversions she likes, not knowing the loving pleasure most of us can share."
Cheba snapped angrily, "No, I wasn't a virgin! Paco took care of that, he and five other men!" She turned away from his shocked eyes, picking up and draining the soda pop. She hesitated and waggled the bottle at him.
"How do they get the drugs into it? And what is it called?" she asked.
"Drugs?" he asked.
"If she doesn't like what I do she takes away the drugs. I never smoked, drank, did drogas! And now I am shaky, angry, confused, and she will only give me the drugs if I do what she says. But I don't know which drug or how it gets into me. If I knew, maybe I could run away. I thought it was in the Jarritos and that she took away the ones with drugs if she was angry at me. But now I don't think that's it."
"Ooohh, nina," exclaimed Jose. "It's the bite itself. La Dona is the drug. It's in the spit."
"?Ai!"
"See, I told you, they're made to prey on us, like jaguars on deer. You remember the night you came here, what happened-"
He pointed eastward. She remembered it, the killing hall, and La Donas guests…feasting.
"Well, you're lucky the Brezes don't always kill. I'm going to live a long time."
"What do you mean?"
" La Dona hasn't bitten me for five days, now. It hurts and I'm restless, and angry…and trying hard not to yell at you, you stubborn goat!"
"Oh," she said. "Then…why?"
"Because she says my time as a lucy is over. Now I go back to my life, get married, settle down. Protected, you understand? All the people born here are, the renfield families who serve the Brezes. And you could be. Or you could end up dead, or worse than dead-like George."
"You look sick," she said suddenly.
"I'm going to get a lot worse before I get better, and it takes a lot of work and other drugs to stop the addiction."
He shrugged. "Pain I can stand. There's pain in life, you know that. You let it be your master or you make yourself its master; there is no other way."
Cheba frowned. The blanched quality she'd noticed earlier was getting worse, and she could see pain lines etching themselves on his face.
"?Eso te pasa?" she asked sharply, feeling sick to her stomach as she understood.
He took the bottle to the sink and turned. "Yes. I was born here. I get to live when she is done with me, just like my uncle. You don't. If she had died, you, Monica and Peter would have been killed by her parents."
"Will…will it be very bad? I feel…itchy now. And I saw people at home who had no money for their drugs."
"Yes, it is very bad. Some kill themselves because of the pain; I won't, and I have the doctor to help me as well. Give me your cell phone."
Jose snatched it out of the air when she tossed it over to him.
"When I call you it will play 'Tilingo Lingo.' That's loud enough to wake you no matter what."
He tossed it back to her. "So, I am going through withdrawal. It's getting really bad, I've got a few more days before I begin screaming. Do you take this chance? Or die?"
Cheba looked at the gray and sweating man standing by her-her!kitchen sink. He, and Monica and even Peter had all tried to be nice to her.
No, she thought, were nice to me, helped me, tried to support me, teach me…and I was mean and nasty and sullen back to them. They are not her. I don't dare be that way to her.
"I don't know what to do," she said.
"If that means, yes, then go see Dr. Duggan tomorrow at eight a.m. Say it with words."
"Yes, yes, I will take care of you. And not because La Dona says so; but because you took care of me and I wasn't good back."
Jose's eyes were dark brown pools of pleading fear, and Cheba put out her hand. Hand in hand they walked through the house. She opened the door and they walked out into the late-summer day.
She looked over at Jose's house and the one beyond it. "Monica is still asleep. Her mother was pretty mad, last night," she observed in Spanish to Jose.
"It's hard; most lucies don't have kids. Monica tries to make sure they are always taken care of. I don't know what will happen next. La Dona will be traveling and she always takes Monica with her."
He shrugged. "She's sent Peter away somewhere, to do something for her. Poor guy; withdrawal will be hell for him, all alone. You might go with her and Monica-if you can get along with Monica. Try! Monica is a very nice person, and if you can't make her want you there, you might die, after all."
Jose walked to his house and gave her a small wave as he walked in.
She stood, troubled, on the doorstep, turning the cell phone over and over in her hands…hands that wanted work; a crochet hook, some thread, a pretty collar and some cuffs, a doily growing steadily, extra money as the tourists admired her mother's embroidered napkins and her lacy trims on them. ?Chupacabra! she thought.?Y yo, chiva! Cheba, la chiva, cabrita chula!
Calling herself a nanny goat, a cute little kid, didn't really make her feel any better. She went back to the kitchen, rinsed the bottles out and took them to the recycling bin on her back porch. The little orange cat that had belonged to the brujos wife, Elena, peered out at her from under the bush. She called it imizton, that woman's cat in Nahuatl, and fed it out of pity. She wondered what Elena had called it; Monica hadn't known.
She returned to the house and closed the door, frowning. The house was clean. The annoying rugs that couldn't be swept were vacuumed with the loud machine several times a week, her kitchen spotless…She grimaced, wishing for her grandmother's open-air kitchen, four poles, a thatched roof, a table and a little charcoal stove. Then she looked around the bright little room and scolded herself. It wasn't what she had wanted, or expected, and it was full of the…of Elena's things. But Elena had good taste and they were pretty and comfortable things. She should stop being angry, all it did was give her bilis.
One day, she thought, one day I will find a way to kill La Dona, and free myself. Elena nearly killed her, and what she could do, I can do! Until then I will take what I can and use everything I can find. I will be clever before I can be brave; then I will be brave and clever .
She nodded sharply and looked down at her clean brown foot, neatly shod in a pretty gold leather sandal, a light anklet around her right ankle with a little charm made out of amethysts. Her lilac pants, ordered with Monicas help off the Internet, were something Monica had called "pedal pushers," and fit perfectly. She had on a nice shirt in a soft gold color. Her feet were clean, her toenails and fingernails manicured, her hair soft and wavy, pulled up into a long ponytail; she had many luxuries she had never had in her life.
She shook her head thoughtfully, remembering the little stream where she and her mother had bathed every night in the warm, smelly waters that ran into the Gulf of Mexico, carefully using harsh yellow soap under their clothes; never undressing all the way. It had been hard to keep themselves clean, but they had managed that much.
Now, she thought. Now, I must make friends with Monica. How can I do that?
She stood by the living room window and craned a bit, looking towards Monica's quiet house. Generally Monica had the house open to the air and sun, nice smells coming out as she cooked a little snack for her children.
Oh! Cheba remembered. La Dona called Monica to come to her last night and she called her mother and her mother came but yelled and yelled at her. I hope they didn't wake the children. So Monica must be really feeling bad…A session with La Dona right on top of the fight with her mother. I guess her mama doesn't really know what La Dona is. Will the children travel with them or stay with their grandmother? What about La Dona 's children?
Cheba thought about Monica for a moment and then nodded to herself. She stuck the cell phone back into her pants pocket and walked out and down the lane.
Ringing the bell of number one wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. She wasn't a petitioner, a stupid from the bottom of the heap anymore. She was somebody who could help, and help in a real way.
The other woman's overly familiar manner and bubbly personality made her feel just like the orange cat backing away from her the first few days she'd been stuck in number five. But she could take it; it was well-meant. She firmly pursed her lips and pushed the button. Monica's ringer was something cheerful that sounded like kids' cartoons.
Monica didn't look much better than Jose when she opened the door: pale, moving a bit carefully, her hair tousled, and her sweatsuit rumpled.
"Oh, hi, Cheba," she said flatly. "What can I do for you?"
Am I too late? Does she already hate me? No, no, this is just her being tired from last night. The kids are going to be home from school in just a little bit.
"I am the sorry," she said. "I…" Exasperated with the difficulties of trying to speak proper English, she flipped over to Spanish. "I am sorry, I know you understand my language better than I speak yours. I woke up last night when your mother yelled. I have come to say, I will help you if I am not helping Jose. Can I help now? You need to sleep and I can look after the children. They are nice children and a pleasure to watch."
Monica sagged against the doorframe. "You'd do that? I can pay you! Oh, Cheba!" Tears leaked down her cheeks. "I've been so afraid somebody will tell La Dona what Mom said."
Cheba nodded firmly and pushed Monica into the house. "Go, go take a nice bath, listen to soft music, sleep. You do not need to pay me money; that we have."
"I will clean for you today, make dinner, watch children. This I can do and will. Then later you will help me buy things so I can make you some crocheted lace collars or trim an apron for you. And we will become friends; friends help each other. Now I pay you back for those first terrible days when you helped me so much."
Monica gave a sudden sob and clutched Cheba to her in a strong hug. Cheba stiffened, but held still. With a big sniff Monica let go and rubbed her face with a hanky.
"Thanks. Thanks. I know you don't like it here, but, oh, Cheba, I'm so lonely and alone. Ellen was nice. And she's gone and she can never be a friend again. Adrienne will just tear her to pieces when she catches her…"
Cheba turned the babbling woman around and pointed her down the hall. "Bath," she said firmly, and felt the first glow of positive action in a long time.