"At least we think they got 'em; ain't found no bodies yet, but the husband and the ex are hollerin'

up a storm. Two broads," the Chief said, totally disgusted. "An' both of 'em pokin' their noses inta places ain't n.o.body with the sense G.o.d gave a mosquito would go." He threw down two pictures that looked to have been cropped and enlarged from vacation photos; one of a post-middle-aged woman with dead- white skin and overly black (obviously dyed) hair, the other of a younger woman with round gla.s.ses and brownish hair the length of Di's, tied back with a scarf. "'That 'un, that one's fr'm Frisco," he said, pointing his cigar at the second. "She was cruisin' th' barrio fer G.o.dssake! Her ol' man says she was looking fer folk music." The Chief's expression spoke volumes about what he thought of that. "T'other idiot's a touristo too fr'm KC. She was you ain't gonna believe this, boy lookin' fer a gay bar. Th' ex says she was suppose'ta meet a friend'uv hers, what useta be a tenant. Gawdawlmighty! How th' h.e.l.l are we suppose'ta keep d.a.m.nfools from gettin' killed by their own d.a.m.nfoolishness?"

"I dunno, Chief," Mark sighed. "I dunno. Sometimes I think it's a losing battle."

He looked over the makesheets, and suppressed an hysterical desire to laugh.

Living with Sherry had certainly given Robert a very distorted view of women. And Tezcatlipoca wouldn't know any better, either.

Robert was used to having a wife with child, and one who handmade all her own clothing. That, naturally, had made her perfect for the sacrifice. And there was no reason for him to suppose all women were less domestic than Sherry, despite the fact that Robert had worked for the fashion industry.

Both of the women abducted had disappeared while wearing all-white outfits and since neither of them were the least virginal, he figured Tezcatlipoca expected that one of them, at least, should have had a child.

In point of fact, neither had.

And neither was at all likely to have made her clothing, since the younger one was wearing a bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt ripoff of one of Sherry's designs, made in Mexico and bought just that afternoon and the other had been gowned by Calvin Klein....

DFW; it all begins and ends here, Mark thought, as he and Di scouted for empty seats in the waiting area.

"Well, did you get any research done?" Mark asked Di, while the gate agent announced the delay of her flight.

"Believe it or not, yes," she said with a certain weary content. "Between all that Mexican and Indian stuff we waded through and your darling aunt, plus spending all that time hauling around Dallas and Fort Worth, I have plenty for a linked family series. Just a matter of getting it organized and doing the outlines I have most of what I need in my head."

"Thank G.o.d for small favors," he replied, giving up on finding a seat; he fed the paper-vending machine next to them with the last of his coins and extracted the afternoon newspaper from its bowels.

"Which one?" she asked impishly. "G.o.d, I mean."

"Jehovah, the Almighty," he replied serenely. "I've decided I'm perfectly happy with a masculine deity that operates on a solar schedule, Catholic style. And I'm equally happy to let anyone else choose differently."

"Good," she replied with a sincerity no one could doubt. "That's all I've ever hoped for. Quick two chairs!"

They scrambled for them before anyone else could grab them, and settled in. Beyond them, a cold winter rain lashed at the window and the tarmac beyond.

"Look at that beautiful rain," she said, nodding at the drippy gray sky beyond the gla.s.s.

"Never thought I'd be happy to see cold rain again," Mark confessed. "Now every time it gets warm in midwinter I'm going to have nightmares."

"Don't blame you; the heat wave sure moved out when Burning Water and company did, didn't it?"

"You figure they were causing it?"

"Uh-huh. No doubt in my mind. Can I have some of that?" she asked, setting her carry-ons down.

He handed her most of the paper, reserving to himself the only two important sections the sports and comics.

They slumped into the hard plastic chairs that no one could be comfortable in, and perused quietly until Di made a choking noise.

Mark looked up, startled. "What "

She pointed to a tiny article on the bottom of page five.

Mexico City. a.s.sociated Press. American photographer Robert Fernandez was found murdered today on the tip of the Pyramid of Tlaloc, it read. Fernandez, who was known throughout the fashion world for his photographs of four young Mexican models recently was named as a suspect in the ma.s.s slayings in Dallas and Fort Worth attributed to the "Texas Ripper." He fled the country with his models, and until now his whereabouts have been unknown. He is also suspected of having ties to the radical Indian movements and to a cult that he apparently founded among the radicals. This cult apparently advocated terrorist-type activities, which may have been the goal of the murders, and his death has been attributed to those activities. The whereabouts of his four models are still unknown.

Fernandez is survived by his wife, Sherry, and a son, Robert Junior.

"So they went through with it anyway," Mark said softly. "I wondered when we found both those women skinned "

"They must have been hoping that a flawed sacrifice would do anyway." Her face was very quiet. "I could almost feel sorry for him; he was trapped in so many ways by the past...."

"Yeah," Mark said softly, sadly; remembering a friend, and a brother.

"Mark, don't you think you'd better go to Sherry? She's got to have been notified; surely she needs at least a shoulder."

"She's gotten a lot stronger and a lot more mature in the last six weeks. And besides, I'm playing that very cool," Mark replied. "If she needs me, she'll call me. It's touchy enough, what with me being the cop that fingered him."

"Hm. If this were one of my novels, there'd be an instant happy ending. It would turn out not be as touchy as you think," Di replied thoughtfully, her eyes shuttered. "Let's see, how would I plot this maybe I'd give you a quicky reading, a surface scan of Sherry's psyche "

"I " he hesitated.

"Then then I'd tell you something comfortable like that a good part of her standoffishness was guilt on her part; half of her feeling like she still should be loyal to Robert, half wanting desperately to go to you. Then I'd point out that now she won't have to deal with that now she can get her mourning over with, and come to you without the guilt. And I'd tell you that's what she'll do. Bingo, all better, everybody in love, or at least in bed."

"Right " He snorted. "Too d.a.m.ned easy and too d.a.m.ned convenient."

"Love, you're learning. No free lunch, and the happy endings aren't guaranteed."

"I don't suppose you have any deathless wisdom at all?"

She sighed. "Not a bit; I have no more idea what's in her mind than you do, and if I did, I probably still wouldn't tell you, because the information wasn't mine to give. We may be the good guys, but we don't get to ride off into the sunset with the significant other of our choice. You go back to try to deal with a lady as fragile as a gla.s.s unicorn right now, and I go home "

"To what?"

She grimaced. "A hatful of work, a man who can't understand why I won't make a commitment to him when he knows I care for him, and a good friend who's dying by inches."

"No happy endings."

"No happy endings. Does Sherry remember anything?"

He shook his head. "Not a d.a.m.ned thing. Her memory is that the girls roped Robert into a weird pro-Indian cult, probably involving drugs, and that was the reason for his personality change, and the things he did."

Di shrugged. "I won't swear to you that Quetzalcoatl didn't play some tricks with her memory to make it easier for her to cope. How's she really been doing these past few weeks?"

"Better than I expected, all things considered. You said one thing that was true, this makes an end to it for her. And I suppose that's the end of it for us, too."

"Huh," she said thoughtfully, looking out of the window in front of her, but obviously not seeing the plane pulling into the gate. "They failed this time, or I'd feel it. So now "

"So now, what?"

"Now I only wonder who the next one is."

AFTERWORD.

I apologize to any true devotee of Aztec culture for taking some liberties (sometimes extreme) with the Quetzalcoatl/Tezcatlipoca mythic cycles for the sake of the story. I plead poetic license. For the curious, it is likely that the sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca was indeed interrupted in exactly the way I quote it is known that the sacrifice was aborted, and it happened in such a way that it was a terrible omen, and that there was a measles epidemic raging in Tenocht.i.tlan at the time.

The omens that I quote preceding the invasion of the Spaniards are also noted in the chronicles of the times.

For those interested in Aztec mythology, I offer the following as excellent sources: Burland, Cottie. The G.o.ds of Mexico.

----------. Montezuma, Lord of the Aztecs.

Carrasco, David. Quetzalcoatl and the Ironies of Empire.

Davies, Nigel. The Aztecs, A History.

Duran, Diego. Book of the G.o.ds and Rites and the Ancient Calendar.

Lafaya, Jacques. Quetzalcoatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness.

Radin, Paul. Sources and Authenticity of the History of the Ancient Mexicans, Sejourne, Laurette. Burning Water: Thought and Religion in Ancient Mexico.

Vaillant, George. The Aztecs of Mexico.

Weaver, Muriel Porter. The Aztecs, Mayas, and Their Predecessors.Wolf, Eric. The Valley of Mexico.

And finally, please, please do not ask me to actually p.r.o.nounce any of the Aztec names! I had a hard enough time keeping them spelled right!

Mercedes Lackey January 1988