Page 19

“Well?” he said, addressing the expressionless eyes. “What you waiting for? You like to play with your food before you eat it?” He pulled his fists in closer to his face. “Not this fucking chalupa, you undead piece of shit.”

Something other than movement drew his attention to the right—and he saw that there was another one. Standing there like part of the stone wall, a shade shorter than the first one, eyes shaped differently but similarly emotionless.

And then, to the left—gradually, to Gus’s eyes—a third.

Gus, who was not unfamiliar with courtrooms, felt like he was appearing before three alien judges inside a stone chamber. He was going out of his mind, but his reaction was to keep shooting off his mouth. To keep putting up the gangbanger front. The judges he had faced called it “contempt.” Gus called it “coping.” What he did when he felt looked down upon. When he felt he was being treated not as a unique human being but as an inconvenience, an obstacle dropped in someone’s way.

We will be brief.

Gus’s hands shot up to his temples. Not his ears: the voice was somehow inside his head. Coming from that same part of his brain where his own interior monologue originated—as though some pirate radio station had started broadcasting on his signal.

You are Augustin Elizalde.

He gripped his head but the voice was tight in there. No off switch.

“Yeah, I know who the fuck I am. Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you? And how did you get inside my—”

You are not here as sustenance. We have plenty of livestock on hand for the snow season.

Livestock? “Oh, you mean people?” Gus had heard occasional yells, anguished voices echoing through the caves, but imagined they were cries in his dreams.

Free-range husbandry has suited our needs for thousands of years. Dumb animals make for plentiful food. On occasion, one shows unusual resourcefulness.

Gus barely followed that, wanting them to get to the point. “So—what, you’re saying you’re not going to try to turn me into… one of you?”

Our bloodline is pristine and privileged. To enter into our heritage is a gift. Entirely unique and very, very expensive.

They weren’t making any sense to Gus. “If you’re not going to drink my blood—then what the hell do you want?”

We have a proposal.

“A proposal?” Gus banged on the side of his head as though it were a malfunctioning appliance. “I guess I’m fucking listening—unless I have a choice.”

We need a daylight serf. A hunter. We are a nocturnal race of beings, you are diurnal.

“Diurnal?”

Your endogenous circadian rhythm corresponds directly to the light-dark cycle of what you call a twenty-four-hour day. Your kind’s inbred chronobiology is acclimated to this planet’s celestial timetable, in reverse of ours. You are a sun creature.

“Fucking what?”

We need someone who can move about freely during daylight hours. One who can withstand sun exposure, and, in fact, use its power, as well as any other weapons at his disposal, to massacre the unclean.

“Massacre the unclean? You are vampires, right? Are you saying you want me killing your own kind?”

Not our kind. This unclean strain spreading so promiscuously through your people—it is a scourge. It is out of control.

“What did you expect?”

We had no part in this. Before you, stand beings of great honor and discretion. This contagion represents the violation of a truce—an equilibrium—that has lasted for centuries. This is a direct affront.

Gus stepped back a few inches. He actually thought he was starting to understand now. “Somebody’s trying to move in on your block.”

We do not breed in the same random, chaotic manner as your kind. Ours is a process of careful consideration.

“You’re picky eaters.”

We eat what we want. Food is food. We dispose of it when we are satiated.