Part 43 (1/2)

”What's your son's name?” Mahasti said, threat implicit in her tone. The babe had not s.h.i.+fted.

The mother settled back on her heels, but the stretched tension in the tendons of her hands did not ease. ”Alan.” She gulped air. ”Please don't hurt him. We have a little money. We don't have any drugs-”

Mahasti stood away from the door. ”We're going out front,” she said to the man. ”And then you're going to open the front door.”

It took thirty seconds and a glare from the woman before the man decided to comply. Once he had, though, he moved quickly around the bed and past Mahasti. He was lean as a vampire himself, faded tattoos winding down the ropy stretched-rubber architecture of his torso to vanish into striped cotton pajamas.

He paused in the doorway and glanced back once at the nightstand. Mahasti coughed.

He stepped into the hall. The woman made a noise low in the back of her throat, as involuntary as an abandoned dog.

”You, too.” Mahasti snuggled the baby closer to her breast. ”Go with him. Do what I say and you won't get hurt.”

She made them precede her down the short hall to the front of the house, which had been converted into the two rooms of the tattoo parlor. A counter constructed of two-by-fours and paneling divided the living room. Cheaply framed flash covered every wall.

Bullet-headed as a polar bear, sparing Mahasti frequent testing glances, the man went to the door. He turned the lock and pulled it open, revealing Billy with his hat pulled low, on the other side of the security door. A muscle jumped in his jaw as the man opened that lock, too, and stepped back, as if he could make himself flip the lever but not-quite-turn the handle.

”Invite him in,” Mahasti said.

She came from another land, where the rules were different. But unfair as it was, Billy was cursed to play the game of the invader.

”Miss-,” the woman said, pleading. ”Please. I'll give you anything we have.”

”Invite,” Mahasti said, ”him in.”

”Come in,” the man said, in a low voice, but perfectly audible to a vampire's ears.

Billy's hat tilted up. In the shadow of the brim, his irises glittered violet with eyes.h.i.+ne.

He opened the security door-it creaked rustily-stepped over the threshold, and tossed Mahasti's Crocs at her feet. ”Your shoes.”

”Thanks.”

He shut the security door behind him. The woman jerked in sympathy to the metallic sc.r.a.pe of the lock. An hour still lacked to dawn, but that didn't concern the rooster that crowed outside, greeting the first translucency of the indigo sky. Dawn would come soon, but for now all that light was good for was silhouetting the shark-tooth range of mountains that gave Needles its name.

The man drew back beside the woman, against the counter. ”What do you want?”

The baby, cool and soft, had fallen asleep on Mahasti's warm breast. She gently disconnected him and tugged her s.h.i.+rt down. ”I want you to change me. Change me forever. I want a tattoo.”

She told him to freehand whatever he liked. He studied her face while she gave him her left arm. Billy held the kid for insurance, grumbling about the delay. The mother went around hanging blankets over the windows and turning on all the lights.

”What are you?” he asked.

”A 'wetback f.u.c.king junkie,'” she mimicked, cruelly accurate. ”Do you think if you talk to me you'll build a connection, and it will keep you safe?”

He looked down at his tools, at the transfer paper on the book propped on his lap. ”You don't have much accent for a wetback.”

He glanced up at Billy and the baby, lips thin.

Mahasti held out her right hand. ”Give me Alan, please. He needs to suckle.”

”Ma'am.” The woman pinned the last corner of a blanket and stepped back from the window. ”Please. I'm his mother-”

Billy glared her still and silent, though even the force of his stare could not hush the sobs of her breath. He slid the baby into the crook of Mahasti's arm, supporting its head until the transfer was complete.

”When I learned what would become your language”-Mahasti spoke to the man as if none of the drama had occurred-”it was across a crusader's saddle. I was too young, and the child the b.a.s.t.a.r.d got on me killed me coming out.” She smiled, liver-dark lips drawn fine. ”And when I was dead I rose up and I returned the favor, to both of them.”

He drew back from her needle teeth when she smiled. His hands shook badly enough that he lifted his pencil from the paper and pulled in a steadying breath. Without meeting her eyes, he went back to what he had been drawing once more.

At Mahasti's other breast, the child suckled. The touch still warmed her.

”Somebody will notice when we don't open,” the woman said. ”Someone will know there's something wrong.”

”Maybe,” Mahasti said. ”In a week or two. You people never want to get involved in a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing. So shut up and let him f.u.c.king draw.”

He drew, and he showed her. A lotus, petals like a crown, petals embracing the form of a newborn child. ”White,” he said. ”Stained with pink at the heart.”

”White ink.” She held up her brown arm for inspection. ”You can do that?”

He nodded.

If a child changed her once, maybe a child could change her again. She said, ”You've got through the daylight to make me happy. When the sun goes down we're moving on.”

He didn't ask ”and?” Neither did the mother.

As if they had anyway, Billy said, ”And there's two ways we can leave you when we go.”

”I'll get clean needles,” said the man.

Billy paced while the man worked on Mahasti's arm and the baby dozed off against her breast once more. Dimly, Mahasti heard the flutter of a heart. The woman finally sat down on the couch in the waiting area and pulled her knees up to her chest. The man kept wanting to talk. The dog barked forlornly in the yard.

After several conversational false starts, while the ink traced the arched outlines of petals across Mahasti's skin and the at first insistently ringing phone went both unanswered and more frequently quiet, he said, ”So if she was a kidnapped Persian princess, what were you?”

Billy skipped a boot heel off the floor and turned, folding his arms. ”Maybe I was Billy the Kid.”

Mahasti snorted. ”Billy the Kid wasn't an Indian.”

”Yeah? You think anybody would have written it down if he was? What if I was an iron-fingered demon? I wouldn't need you to get me invited in.”

With a cautious, sidelong glance at Mahasti, the man said, ”What's an iron-fingered demon?”

”If I were an iron-fingered demon,” Billy said, ”I could eat livers, cause consumption, get on with my life. Unlife. But no, you get to be a lamashtu. And I had to catch the white man's bloodsucker disease.”