Layers of old blood were black on the porous ancient stones. They might have been manufactured, angular blocks of plastic or colored cement, but they looked like old carved rocks and that was the important thing. Slightly pyramidal, chipped, flat-topped, the newborns and the fetuses were placed upon the stones and their hearts were cut out and offered up and other warm plastic portions of them offered and more of their blood offered to the flowing secret river of life which would take the offerings, the messages and the hopes outward to everywhere. As rivers always had.

 

The costumed pilgrims paid for the opportunity to offer the little sticky cups of blood to the black subterranean river. They paid to drink the blood from cups in participation in the trans-time rites hoping for healing, for life, for revelations and for immortality. And for the thrill of it. The risk and the illegality of it. For the horror of it.

 

Georgina put on a show. She gave them what they needed.

She scorned them.

She scorned all, with vicious unabated hatred.

 

Strong, dark voices chanted. Female and male, the strong smoky voices chanted unseen though perhaps tantalizingly glimpsed in the shadowy recesses more than once. The chanting went on and on. They were invoking Venus, planet and spirit of war and death and renewal.

"Play for me, dance for me." Georgina's voice was a whisper but it rived minds as wind did rock.