“Don’t the starys ever sleep?”
“They have a hibernation schedule.” August refilled his coffee and handed a cup to Deven.
“Thanks.”
“Stay alert,” August ordered.
It was still dark outside and Deven nervously fiddled with the knife at his belt. He wondered what Lord Knife’s reaction had been to the news of Night Axe’s return and Deven’s presence. He couldn’t imagine what Aztaw was like now—the revolution had radically changed the place in only a few years. For all he knew, every dynasty seat could have burned to the ground, the villages eradicated, the fields left untended.
Or something more positive could have sprung up in the place of destruction, as August would have hoped, although what such a reality would look like was unimaginable to Deven. Aztaw had always been endless dark, punctuated with grand palaces for the lords, pyramids of sacrifice, and the frightening tombs where humans waited to be bled. With all those elements under siege, Deven suspected anything could rise up and take its place.
72 parked his black sedan behind El Angel Hotel. Although Deven’s spectrum-enhanced sunglasses altered the colors of the world around him, he still saw pink in the sky as daylight broke. A murky smog hovered over the city. August and Deven passed once more through the service entrance toward the lobby.
Inside the hotel, all was quiet. A solitary, bleary-eyed woman attended the front desk, watching a telenovela with the subtitles turned on and the sound turned off. She offered a disingenuous smile as they crossed to the front doors.
There were no watchbirds. There were no people. At that hour only a few cars passed by, the rest of the city sunk in sleepy early morning silence.
They stepped through the revolving hotel doors. Deven turned and recognized Fight Arm as four tzimimi lowered torches to his trussed-up body and set him afire.
Chapter Fourteen
Fight Arm’s screams shattered the serenity of the morning. His body whooshed, covered in accelerant. He was bound in traditio-nal Aztaw funerary style in a squatting position, rope binding his thighs and arms tied behind him so he was unable to flail.
Deven rushed forward. He threw one knife at the nearest flying spirit, but all four of them took flight, talons clenching at the morning air as they streaked into the dawn.
Deven tried to help Fight Arm, who shrieked as he struggled. Heat rolled over Deven’s body, and August grabbed him by the shirt and wrenched him back. It was already too late. With a last howl Fight Arm’s efforts ceased and the flames charred his paper-thin translucent skin to ash.
“My God! I call police!” cried the hotel lobby clerk, breathless from her run outside.
“I’m with the police,” August told her, flashing his Irregulars badge. Deven hovered helplessly over Fight Arm’s burning corpse, the glow of his bones hidden under the flames and blackening ash. Deven glanced up, but the tzimimi were long gone. He saw no signs of any of Night Axe’s minions, and it looked as though nothing remained of what Fight Arm might have brought with him to their meeting. The only unnatural presence he could detect with his sunglasses was the thin ribbon of blood coursing out of August’s body and hovering down the road.
“Go back inside!” Deven heard August yell. He saw the hotel clerk rush indoors, fearful. August mumbled something under his breath, then came to Deven’s side.
“She’s going to call the cops.”
“Didn’t like your badge?”
“Didn’t like my attitude.” He glanced upward, his sunglasses reflecting the early light. “Did you see where they went?”
“The tzimimi? It doesn’t matter.” Deven leaned down and picked up his knife.
“We have to fucking capture them,” August growled. Deven remembered that August still held them accountable for Carlos’s death.
“They’ll no longer be a threat once we get Night Axe,” Deven assured him. He glanced back at the clerk. “Should we stop her from calling?”
August was already texting furiously on his phone. “Too late. I have to preempt the police force. Damn it!”
Deven kicked through the smoldering remains, hoping some piece of Fight Arm was left to save. He found his enemy’s jade necklace and lifted it carefully with the toe of his boot, separating it from the wreckage. He glanced at the glyphs carved on the jade. It was covered in a distraction spell, the one that had been keeping him unnoticeable. Deven pocketed it, fury throbbing through him. Fight Arm and Deven had spent thirteen years fighting for their lords and had survived war, assassination attempts, famine, and a brutal revolution. For Fight Arm to have died on a simple fact-finding mission on Deven’s behalf made Deven sick to his stomach. But he needed a clear head. He would kill Night Axe, at all costs. He didn’t care about the official Irregulars policy.
Given the lack of traffic at that hour, the Irregulars’ cleanup team arrived quickly and consoled the hotel clerk with their more authentic-looking Mexico City police identification. August spoke with one of them at great length, leaving Deven crouched beside the smoking remains of his nemesis, feeling a greater sense of loss than he should have, given the situation.
On the drive back to the embassy, Deven said, “There’s another way we could attempt to weaken Night Axe. We could bleed him.”
August seemed distracted. It took a few seconds for him to focus his attention on Deven. He scowled. “What?”
“Night Axe. If we bleed him out, he’ll lose the blood he needs to fuel his transformation house power.”
“Bleed him? How?”
“We cut loose the other sacrifices. Losing blood from twenty-nine severed arteries would weaken him. Then we use the connection to you to hunt him down and behead him.”
August looked disgusted. “Are you fucking nuts?”
“It would work, August.”
“No. I’m not sacrificing two dozen civilians, Deven. Think for a minute!”
August turned back to the window, angry. Deven swallowed, realizing he’d fucked up again. In a vague sense he understood August’s protests, but honestly, those other people were strangers, and meaningless, just casualties of a war.
But August was worth saving.
At the embassy August was immediately called into the office of a woman who looked as finely dressed as August and equally as pissed off. Deven made to follow, but the woman in the pinstripe suit held out her hand and stopped him.
“No. This is a private conversation, no consultants.” She slammed the door. Deven noticed the window was marked Director’s Office and realized that, indirectly this woman had hired him. He wondered if he should thank the person who gave him a job. He doubted the traditional Aztaw gift of a pulsing human heart would be welcome, but honestly, he had no idea what kinds of gifts were exchanged in the natural world, and other than distant memories of Legos and toy trucks for Christmas before his mother died, he hadn’t received any gifts except from Lord Jaguar.
Deven wandered the halls of the NIAD branch office, unsure how to occupy himself. Across from the director’s office he found a staff kitchen and ate several sticky pastries, putting one aside for August. He then considered visiting the armory but assumed the pixie would be as welcoming as the director.
A tired-looking older agent with an attractive profile and impressively shiny white teeth entered the kitchen and watched Deven for a few moments. He had a trim, graying moustache and pepper-gray hair. He didn’t wear a suit, but the badge clipped to his belt showed he was also an agent.
“You the Aztaw consultant?” the man asked, his accent thick.
“Yes.”
The man poured out two cups of thick black coffee. He offered one to Deven. “I’m Agent Rafael Ortega.”
Deven took the coffee. “Thank you.” It tasted like burned tar and he had to grimace a smile to stop from spitting it out. “You located the other sacrifices?”