Lucero stood on the open air balcony, high up the side of the San Marcos teocalli. The stone under her feet radiated warmth from the day's heat. The night air hung still and hot even this late. Atop the hill directly across from her, Lucero caught the silhouette of the old amusement park tower, stabbing up into the sky like a stiletto dipped in black blood. Directly below it was the spring-fed lake; it glowed a blue-green from the submerged floodlights. In the center of the lights was a cut stone of obsidian black, and around that were crews in scuba gear with excavating machinery.
Lucero felt the power of the magic coming from the lake. It beat around her like a living drum. Whatever Senor Oscuro was doing there must be creating some powerful juju. Lucero hadn't lost all of her magic, but enough of it was gone that she rarely assensed things without great difficulty.
The spring site emanated power, it touched her and beckoned to her. It brought her hope that she might wield the mana again. That she might be as she once was, a manipulator of life energy. A mage.
If only I had another chance, she thought. / would not accept the taint. The addiction to blood magic. The desperate need that stains my soul.
Two temple servants came to her side, and bade her follow them. Her presence was required for another exposure. She followed them into the sanctuary, paying her silent respects to Quetzalcoatl as she passed the sculpture of him. A small group of young adepts and trainees stood in sacrificial robes, entranced by Oscuro, who waited for Lucero at the altar. They did not know that they were to be sacrificed. Or perhaps they did know and were eager to give up their life energy for the god they loved so dearly.
A thin, tight smile graced Senor Oscuro's face, barely discernible beneath his black mustache and beard. He was hopeful; his eyes showed intense eagerness to proceed with the ritual. He held out a strong white hand for her, and as she approached, she focused on that hand, on the individual black hairs that protruded from the back of his fingers. Like tiny snakes; she imagined them writhing over his skin, all of his hair transformed into living flagella.
The image passed, and Lucero climbed up onto the altar, the chill of the stone passing through the thin cotton cloth beneath her. She lay completely still as Senor Oscuro opened her robe, spreading the sides of it so that the front of her body was naked. She did not look down at her own flesh, the hideousness of the scarred skin. She focused her gaze on Quetzalcoatl, on the god's brightly colored feathers shimmering in the yellow light. He seemed almost indifferent to her inside the statue.
Oscuro started his spell, summoning the first adept. Holding the girl's head at the proper angle to give the knife easy access to her throat. Lucero saw the cut, the ceremonial obsidian blade opening the girl's neck, the welling of her blood. It pooled on Lucero's stomach, filling the room with the iron tang, before Oscuro dropped the dead girl and spread her blood over Lucero. Over the scarred flesh of her breasts, stomach, and thighs.
The liquid was warm and sticky for a second. Then Lucero lost consciousness and was flying through the astral. Crossing over the threshold to the metaplanes, past the guardian blood spirit. On her way to the place of light and song.
She came to a stop in the place. She knew that she stood on the hard stone of an unfinished bridge, but she could not see her feet. The light was so bright and white that she could see nothing else. And the music, the song of the woman whose name she did not know, was beautiful, clear, and crystalline in its pitch, exact in timbre. Lucero loved that voice.
The dark stain of her blood tie was the only blackness there. And as Lucero stood, basking in the ocean of light and sound, the stain began to spread again. Like last time, it
welled forth from Lucero's heart, a black ooze that darkened the space immediately around her. It grew until a ragged shell had formed, a tattered swatch of bloody cloth on white linen.
Suddenly, Lucero felt a surge of power so immeasurable that she could not fathom it. Oscuro had formed the connection to the submerged obsidian stone. The Locus, they called it. The extra power was helping her darkness grow, making her thirst for the blood magic again. Lucero did not care, as long as she could stay and listen to the voice. But the voice was growing more and more distant as the power grew, the connection to the Locus.
As the darkness around her gained strength, Lucero became aware of the precipice, of the huge crevasse between the narrow outcropping where she stood and the other side, a wall of stone in the distance. And she felt the presence of creatures, of nightmare entities with frightening power, held barely in check by the strength of the song. They wanted to come across, she knew. They wanted it more than anything, and they would stop at nothing to accomplish that. Her presence made them happy.
Then, as suddenly as the first time, the dark stain was washed away in a flood of light. Her power could not hold out against the sheer impenetrable beauty of that voice, of the song that resonated deep inside Lucero. Touching a chord, a harmonic thrum through the core of her spirit.
Throwing her back into the physical world.
Lucero woke on the altar, her naked body slick with blood from the sacrificed adolescents, the adepts and trainees who had given their life energy so that she could stay in the place longer.
Oscuro's face hung above her, hair and beard as black as soot, eyes like chips of coal in his head. But he smiled down at her, flashing white teeth. "Well done again," he said. "The Locus helped, but it is still too weak. Next time we will assemble the Gestalt."
Lucero nodded her understanding, and sat up. Oscuro wrapped a clean white sheet around her. She had never felt better. Energy pulsed through her body, making her ecstatic. Like fire in her veins.
Power. Close to what she had felt when she'd been part
of the Gestalt. It was enough to make her forget that she hated her addiction. That she abhorred the stain on her soul. She climbed down from the altar, and made her way out of the sanctuary and to her chamber so that she could wash herself. The rush inside her would fade, she knew, and so she enjoyed the sweet ecstasy of it, the pure pleasure of invincibility.
But through the burning ambrosia of her high, she felt a twinge of yearning. A desire that was growing stronger and stronger. It was the desire to return to the place of light and song. To simply listen to the beautiful music. She would do anything to stay there forever.
Anything.