"Do you want to live forever? What prices would you pay? Would you buy magic? Sell your body? Sacrifice a human being?" Morgan bid these questions back to his patron, in prayer.

He had forsaken his vows, but the one beside him had not.

Father Emilio was a much different man than Morgan. Some things just don't have the same meaning in another language, this is why evil has a way of insisting on certain words. So does magic.

"Always be careful with magic...it is fundamentally wrong to alter Creation. Use not the feeble will of man with magic. Always pray instead of casting spells. Through God we may work our will, through God's Will." Father Emilio would say. His familiarity with the occult was the thing he had in common with Morgan.

They both stood before the statues of Santa Muerte. These wore a red shawl that imitated in pose and garb the Virgin. But they were skeletal death figures. Some held swords or scythes such as the Grim Reaper would hold. This thing was not exactly the Grim Reaper. It was subtle differently.

Father Emilio did concern himself with Morgan's soul. Father Emilio dealt with the cultists in this barrio. They were a nasty bunch, accused of human sacrifice. The police didn't understand. To them it was just routine murder and kidnapping. Father Emilio saw it as much worse than that.

One of the cultists sat there, her arm tattooed. She was particularly crone-like and a known harridan. Among the cultists, harlotry was common, but this hag was arpía.

Hoping to convince Morgan that this was a bad place to pray he pointed to her and started proclaiming her alignment with the dark cult:

"la marca de la muerte santa." Father Emilio pointed to the old woman's tattoo.

Morgan had already decided that this was way too much trouble to buy some marijuana. He sipped the petrol soaked mescal and genuflected in front of the effigy. He was ignoring the short priest.

The priest wasn't with him. Morgan glanced at the priest and rolled his eyes defiantly. He spoke directly to the old woman:

"Creo. I see you there. Véndeme un poco de hierba?" Morgan said with a white man's accent.

"¿Quieres marihuana? Quiero sexo." she smiled toothless and unfolded her skirt. She found Morgan to be a very desirable man, and the stuff he was asking for was rare, illegal and potent. Morgan wanted it, the weed that is.

"Fine." Morgan agreed.

"Pecadores, gente malvada, adúlteros!" Father Emilio glared. This was not what he had agreed to. He left the two of them, the cultist and her new friend, in disgust.

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Morgan offered her his hand and she took it, even her eyes were smiling. He took her behind the curtain into her desolate apartment and in the dark he pleasured her first with his tongue and then he made love to her.

She lit up a joint to reward him. Morgan coughed.

"Could I get this by tomorrow morning?"

"Si." she agreed. Morgan lay down and slept.

In the morning he awoke to a black plastic bag with about two pounds of the world's most powerful weed:

"hierba del diablo." she laughed playfully. Morgan noted she was a hag. He wanted that weed and took it without hesitation. This was for Santa Muerte.

"For my lady." Morgan told her. She nodded and stopped smiling for a moment. She knew the importance of a devotion to the sacred one, the spirit where God comes first. It is with Death that one arrives at God clean and ready to face the Creator.

Death is a privilege and Death is noble. Morgan tied the bag shut.

"Thank you." he said to her as he put clothing on. She watched him get dressed.

"Gracias por el sexo." she raised eyebrows, feeling she had gotten the better deal.

Morgan left her and went to the Hill of Sorrows outside of the neighborhood where he had collected the ingredients. He didn't need an entire two pounds of weed but it would help, a little bit would have been fine, the quality-smoke would please his Goddess.

In a brass bowl gilded with silver was holy water provided by Father Emilio before he knew who he was dealing with. In a brass bowl lined with pure gold, an expensive but required element, he placed all of the weed and soaked it in lighter fluid and lit it. Her effigy stood there made of carved human bone, life sized, the skull was real. So was the black iron scythe.

The second-to-last ingredient, in a bowl made of palo wood, he produced by cutting open two fingers on his left hand and letting the blood pour into the bowl.

Then he began to pray loudly in an incantation.

The effigy suddenly had a presence, a tangible presence.

"Stop!" Father Emilio had followed Morgan. This man, Morgan, was worse than the cultists. This man...a breaker of vows...a knower of secrets...a warlock...Morgan had once been a priest! To know such things!

Father Emilio was holding a revolver loaded with three bullets.

"Too late." Morgan laughed. The final ingredient had presented itself, right on time.

Two shots were fired, and dust exploded from the effigy, landing all over Morgan and on his upturned hands where he knelt. Morgan wasn't looking at it. He knew it was moving, that is why the priest shot it.

As it walked around Morgan the priest whimpered in terror. He was pissing himself and trying to pray for help from God. In panic, in mortal terror and mind-shattering madness he turned the gun on himself and tried to shoot himself.

The ambulating relic let him. As the blood sprayed onto it the thing stopped. Santa Muerte was in her robes and she stood there and then turned and faced Morgan.

"Qué buscas?" she asked in a demonic sounding voice.

"The Mark of Death. Place the Mark of Death upon me. I want to live forever..." Morgan sighed, raising his eyes to the beautiful looking creature. It wore a red hood, decorated in beautiful patterns and it stood over him. One hand of bone it placed upon his forehead.

"Entonces para siempre vivirás." she blessed him in the same inhuman voice, but this time softer and slower, a prayer.

And then it returned to its place and stood once again unliving.

Morgan climbed to his feet and examined the priest. He had worried that blood would not be enough to receive such a blessing, the Mark of Saint Death. Emilio had effectively sacrificed himself.

A willing human sacrifice...or close enough.