“No,” said Xanthe, her face twisted into a mask of mingled hatred and disgust. “They just enjoy it.”
“We killed one of the brothers,” said Megaira. “Luis. He was the youngest, though. I think this is Miguel. There are two others, Esteban and Diego. They have killed many people for the joy of it. They’re extreme even for the Children of Phonos.”
“Fuck me,” murmured Nora, wondering how she had become the center of this insane war between people who worshipped homicide. Wars within wars within wars.
Selene nodded past Miguel, where a line of gray mausoleums stood in a long row, their granite sides choked with ivy. “The ritual is going to be in one of those.”
“Which one?” asked Nora.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to search them.”
Xanthe touched Nora’s arm. “We’ll have to be quiet about it. If they hear us coming, this will all fall apart.”
Behind them the murder golem snorted. Nora shot it a look. “Did you have a suggestion?… No? Then shut the fuck up.”
Damastes smiled at her through Shelby’s features.
“If there is one Garcia brother around,” cautioned Megaira, “the others will be close. They hunt together like wolves.”
“Like jackals,” sneered Xanthe.
“Whatever,” said Nora. “Can you take him out without giving us away?”
Xanthe and Megaira both looked uncertain, and that scared the hell out of Nora.
She glanced at Selene, who nodded. “The Garcia brothers are strange. I don’t know how they managed it, but they are faster and stronger than ordinary humans. A lot of people have tried to kill them, and from what I’ve heard, they have the walls of the den in their hacienda in Madrid lined with the mounted heads of everyone who’s gone up against them. I even heard that they mounted their younger brother’s head, too.”
“Jesus Christ.” Nora peered through the gloom to study the killer. Miguel Garcia had a face that was so hard and muscular it looked like a leather bag filled with walnuts. Uncompromising dark eyes and a cruel thin mouth. His strong hands rested on the handles of a pair of matched bayonets slung from a thick belt. The distance between them was about twenty yards, and it was mostly open ground. Dry old leaves and bracken were everywhere, which would make a silent approach virtually impossible. And now that Miguel had stepped away from the tree, he stood in a clear patch with no convenient shadows nearby for Indigo to step out of.
“I’m open to suggestions,” she said, but before the slaughter nuns could reply, another snort of disgust came from behind her.
“Amateurs,” complained Damastes, with Shelby’s mouth. “The world will grow old and turn to dust before you cows make up your minds.”
With that the Heykeli bent to snatch up a rock about half the size of a baseball, rose abruptly from the cover of the wall, cocked its arm back, and hurled the stone with incredible speed and force. It flew as straight and true as a cannonball, whipping across the intervening distance faster than Nora’s eyes could follow. Even so, Miguel Garcia must have heard or sensed something because he turned quickly, the blades beginning to slither out of their sheaths.
Then the stone hit him.
It struck with the force of a bullet, propelled by such ferocious velocity that it punched a big, wet red hole above Miguel’s right eye and then exploded out through the back of his skull, splashing the elm with blood and lumps of gray. The impact snapped the man’s head back much too far, and he fell without any attempt to cry out or break his fall. It was all immediate and messy.
But it was quiet.
There was a wet splut and then the soft thump of the man falling to the ground.
Everyone froze.
Everyone listened.
Everyone watched the cemetery.
Absolutely nothing moved.
Then the murder golem pushed past them all and vaulted the wall. “This is war,” growled Damastes. “Act like it.”
After only a moment’s hesitation the four women surged over the wall in the monster’s wake. For Nora this was a crucial moment because she wanted to be Nora, but Nora was a civilized woman without power or training. Nora was not Indigo. Nora was not a practiced and powerful killer. She wished she could retain all of Indigo’s powers while still being Nora—and maybe there was some path unknown to her to that goal—but now was not the time for self-discovery. The murder golem was correct, damn it.
So as she landed on the far side of the stone wall, it was Indigo’s feet that touched down. She conjured her cloak of shadows and the weapons that had already spilled so much blood.
This is who I am, too, she thought. For better or worse, this is who I am. God save my soul, this is who I am.
They went hunting through the trees and gravestones, through the forest of monuments and the neighborhood of mausoleums.
The other two Garcia brothers were there. Esteban and Diego. And nearly a dozen other men and women. Phonoi of different clans. Slavic faces, Asian faces, African faces, Arab faces, Germanic and Nordic faces.
They all bled the same color.
The slaughter nuns went in quick and low, their blades flashing into sight only at the last moment, too late for the flicker of light on polished steel to offer any warning. The murder golem moved on silent cat feet, using fists and elbows and rocks, a smile burned onto the borrowed face, mad delight in its eyes.
Indigo embraced her own nature, diving into shadows and emerging behind, beside, above, below. Appearing like the nightmare thing she was, her fighting sticks crunching through bone and pulping flesh and ending lives.
A few days ago this would have been an even fight. But things had changed and Indigo knew it. She felt it.
A dark and ugly joy was in her own soul as she fought, and with Damastes embodied in the Heykeli she could not truly blame him for that emotion. She felt it. Her. No one else.
That terrified her.
And it thrilled her.
The last of the Phonoi guards died, his throat smashed almost flat from a blow across the windpipe. He dropped to his knees and Indigo stepped aside, lowering her sticks as the man became dead meat and flopped bonelessly onto the dirt.
Selene snapped her fingers, and everyone turned to see her crouching by the door to one of the mausoleums. The faintest glow of light came from around the edges of the door. They all hurried over. Two dead Phonoi lay nearby; clearly they had been guarding this door.
Indigo knelt beside Selene and peered through the crack. Inside was a small chamber like a vestibule with a Coleman lantern, its light turned high. The room was empty except for a bench, which was piled high with coats and personal belongings. A second door was at the end of a short corridor, and as Indigo strained to listen, she could hear something. Strange music and the sound of voices speaking together in a cadence like a church litany.