by Tara Janzen
“Going where?”
“Bogotá or bust. You’ve got to be out of the country, not just off the river.”
The rain started again, a soft wash of it dappling the surface of the water and streaking the windows around the helm. On the shore, two caimans slipped into the water, jacarés. The largest was near ten feet, big by normal standards, but still far smaller than one of the reported monster caimans of the Marauiá.
“Missionaries and cargo flights don’t normally leave Santa Maria for Bogotá, and I don’t have enough money to convince anybody to do otherwise.” She looked back over her shoulder at him.
“We’ll let this one be on Fat Eddie,” he said, pulling the bag of gems out of his pants pocket and hefting it in his hand.
“You’re going to a lot of trouble to get rid of me.” And she wasn’t going to ask why. She had a feeling the answer wasn’t quite as simple as it had been before Barcelos.
What he said next proved her right.
With his dark eyes narrowed at her, he asked the million-dollar question. “Where in Wyoming are you from?”
She let her gaze slide away. William Sanchez Travers and Amazon Annie were not a match. It was impossible, and she’d be damned if she would let herself think otherwise.
“Laramie. But if you get out of here alive, don’t come looking for me. I don’t think I could survive the wait, if I thought you were coming.”
“You don’t have much faith in me, do you?”
“No jaguar gave you the scars on your chest.” A jaguar who had gotten its teeth into him that deep would have taken off his shoulder.
“No, it wasn’t the jaguar,” he said. When he didn’t offer more, she just waited.
His gaze didn’t waver from hers, not for a second—and suddenly she knew. A cold, disbelieving dread washed down the length of her body.
“Sucuri.” She barely breathed the word.
“I was camped up on the Cauaburi the night it happened,” he said, “and nothing has been the same since.”
The snake had been huge, as big as the snake in her dreams, as big as the one in his cabin.
“Are all the rumors true?”
“Mostly.” He nodded. “Except for the one about having my head shrunk, but Fat Eddie is going to do his best to change that.”
“The caapi?”
“Drank my share and then some,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. It’s not a recreational high, but you’ll learn things you can’t learn any other way.”
“Things about plants?” She couldn’t quite keep the interest out of her voice. The orchid had proven to her that there was more to learn in botany than she’d once ever dreamed possible.
“Yes.” His voice remained perfectly neutral. “And things about fear and snakes and death, and your own terrifying insignificance that will forever change the way you look at the world. I was killed once by a jaguar in the Otherworld, a golden cat with black spots, and after I died, my spirit rose up as the sucuri and killed him.”
There it was, the hoodoo, voodoo shamanistic sorcery she’d spent her career avoiding. Not that any shamans had offered to share the Otherworld with her, or given her a chance to have her skull crushed or her neck snapped in a vision dream starring Panthera onca. Women weren’t allowed to drink the yagé made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, the vine of the soul, the sky rope that connected heaven and earth and revealed the secrets of the forest.
“Must have been one hell of a fight.” She gave him that much.
“Very real, very desperate, very terrifying,” he said, and she believed him. Banisteriopsis caapi was a powerful hallucinogen. That much was undeniable scientific face.
“But in this world, you killed the jaguar.” That was the true reality, the world she lived in.
“And cut out his incisors to make a charm. That doesn’t make me much of a scientist anymore, does it.” It was a statement of fact, not repentance, and he finished it off by taking another sip of his coffee.
“What about the sucuri on the Cauaburi, the anaconda? Did you kill it, too?”
“Cut it open with my bush knife, but don’t ask me how. I nearly drowned in the blood. I did pass out, and when I came to, it was to the smell of roasting meat, the sound of an old man chanting, and pain. Pain everywhere, inside and out.”
“The old man saved you?”
He let out a short laugh and dragged his hand back through his hair, his first sign of emotion while telling his whole amazing story. “No.” He shook his head and laughed again, a dry, disparaging sound. “Tutanji didn’t save me. He sicced that snake on me, and after it cracked two of my ribs and nearly asphyxiated me, he spent the rest of the night putting a tattoo on my back.”
“Why?”
“To make me into what he needed, a weapon to use against his enemies.”
Annie’s dread deepened. “Have you killed for him?”
“Not yet. But it’s starting to look like an inevitability.”
“Vargas.” She said it without thinking.
He nodded. “Your timing is awful, Annie. You’ve shown up at the end. If you were just a botanist doing research on peach palms at Santa Maria, I could take you there, and you would be well out of it. Very few people in the rest of Brazil are ever going to know what happens up on the Cauaburi, and by the time Carnaval hits Rio, it will all be over, one way or the other.”
“But I’m not just a botanist,” she said.
“No. You’re not. You’re trouble, the most amazing amount of trouble I’ve ever seen.”
This from a man who’d been bitten by a giant anaconda? And lived to tell the tale? Annie was pretty sure she’d just been insulted.
“I think you’ve got bigger problems than me.”
“Probably, but right now it doesn’t feel like it.”
She looked back out the window. Bogotá
If she left, the dream was over. Vargas would win. But the price of staying could very well be her life.
Her fingers tightened around the small jar in her hand. She could feel the heat coming off the orchid. It was ever so slight, but it was there, a faint bit of warming from the miraculous light emanating from the petals. It was to have been her chance for glory and world renown: Annie Parrish, Queen of the Tropics, discoverer of the Epidendrum luminosa.
It was to have been her redemption. Why else would she have spent most of her adult life alone in the wilderness of South America, if not to finally come home with a prize?
Home. The word went through her mind shadowed by an old ache. She had no home. She hadn’t had one since her mother had walked out on her when she’d been five years old, walked out and never looked back.
She dropped her face into her hand and swore softly. Now was not the time to be hashing over old emotional baggage, not when she was literally up the creek without a paddle.
She lifted her gaze to the jar in her hand. As always, the flower inside filled her with wonder. It wasn’t just light coming off the orchid. It was waves of light, creamily golden light tinged with a border of green, and within its vacillating luminescence was a message. She knew it as much by scientific observation as by intuition. She just hadn’t been able to crack the code. She’d spent her year of exile studying all forms of bioluminescence, and the orchid was different. It didn’t fit the norms. The only thing she’d ever seen that even came close to it wasn’t biologically luminescent at all.
It was the aurora borealis, those far northern lights that draped the sky above the frozen lands at the top of the world. And here was its sister, locked in the steaming jungle of the equatorial tropics, the orchid’s long, midnight-blue sepals twisting in a delicate Art Nouveau spiral, the cream-colored frill spilling off the edges of lushly dark petals flecked with gold.
“You can come back in a year,” he said next to her. “I have relatives in Venezuela. Fly into Caracas, and I’ll bring you in over the mountains and down to the Marauiá.”
“No,” she said on a sigh, rubbing a hand
across her forehead. “I lied about that, too. I found the orchid on the Cauaburi, near the place Vargas calls Reino Novo, not on the Marauiá.” She put the orchid jar back in her fanny pack and zipped it up.
He was silent for a long moment. She could just imagine what he was thinking, but all he said when he finally spoke was, “All the more reason for you to leave now. There’s nothing but danger waiting in Reino Novo. When you come back, the Brazilian government doesn’t have to know where you are or what you’re doing. If you find what you’re looking for, I’ve still got legal status as a researcher for RBC. We can collect and ship anything you want and be in compliance with the law as long as Gabriela and the Brazilians get their share.”
It was a long shot, a very long shot, that his plan would work, and she could get back into the country undetected, find the orchid, and get back out with everything she needed, while he funneled specimens through RBC. But maybe it was a better plan than going up against Vargas and his Night of the Devil, and all these damn snakes that seemed to be everywhere, and Fat Eddie Mano with his piranha teeth and shrunken-head plan.
“And what do you get out of all this?” she asked, slanting him a long look.
He laughed, a low chuckle. “If I’m still alive this time next year to bring you in over the border, call it good. Don’t worry, if I was going to ask you for something, it wouldn’t be your orchid.”
Typically, he made it damn hard to hold his gaze, and she looked away.
“Okay,” she reluctantly conceded. “If you can buy me a place on that plane, I’ll go. You can have the guns to give back to Fat Eddie, maybe get him off your back.”
The minute the words were out of her mouth, a knot formed in the pit of her stomach, as if she’d just made a huge mistake.
“Wait,” she said quickly. “Wait just a minute. Don’t... don’t give Fat Eddie both Galils. Keep one for yourself. Tell him I sold it in Barcelos or something.” That’s what she needed to say—protect yourself.
“You want me to keep one of the Israeli rifles?” The look he gave her was slightly confused.
“Yes.” She was adamant now. “They’re the best money can buy. Accurate, reliable. If you want, we can get one down, and I’ll show you how it works. You’ll want to keep at least a thousand rounds of ammo, and maybe a couple of grenades, and—”
Will let a grin slowly spread across his face as he settled back against the counter and let her ramble on, extolling the virtues of her arsenal and how he could use it to save his ass. She was amazing.
“Everybody worth their salt in Colombia is using the Galil now. You won’t have any trouble getting more ammunition. The dynamite is fairly lightweight for the amount of punch you get, and it’s easy to fit a stick or two in a pack. You might—”
“Annie,” he finally interrupted her, setting his coffee aside and pushing off the counter. “That’s about the sweetest thing anybody has ever said to me.”
“Sweet?” Now she was the one who looked confused. “We’re talking ordnance.”
“You don’t have to worry. I can take care of myself.”
“Bullshit, Will,” she was quick to protest, her brow furrowing and her hands going to her hips. “I put you down with a move you’ve never even heard of. I don’t care how long you were out there in the jungle chasing down jaguars and anacondas with your bush knife; these are men you’re going up against now. Bad men. Very bad men, and you... you’re a botanist, a plant guy with a snake tattoo and a magic necklace, and they are all going to have guns and—”
“Annie, Annie.” He moved in closer, his hand coming up to capture her chin. She went perfectly still, though her expression remained mutinous. “I’ve been running contraband for Fat Eddie for over a year now. Believe me, I know these guys a hell of a lot better than I ever wanted to know them.”
“But you haven’t met Vargas, have you?” Her voice was soft, intent, and edged with a type of fear she hadn’t shown even with the snake.
“No. That’s what this trip is all about. Fat Eddie finally trusting me enough to deliver straight to Vargas.” She was a mess, her hair flying every which direction from a night in his hammock, her clothes so rumpled she looked like a walking laundry bag, but her skin was soft and flushed from sleep, and her eyes were flashing with sparks of green and gold, and he wanted to kiss her more than anything else in the world.
“Do you know what the gems are for?” she demanded.
“I think so, yes.”
“I think I do, too, and I think you should tell this Tutanji that you’ve changed your mind about working for him.”
He could have told her he’d tried doing that about a thousand times those first few weeks with the Dakú. It hadn’t worked then, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to work now. He was in too deep.
“I don’t exactly work for him, Annie,” he said, releasing her chin with a reluctant shrug. “I belong to him. I’m his apprentice.”
She looked perfectly nonplussed. “A shaman’s apprentice? Like the sorcerer’s apprentice in the Disney movie?”
“No.” He shook his head. “More like Faust.”
Her face fell. “The guy who sold his soul to the devil for knowledge,” she said flatly, pretty much summing up the bargain he’d made with the Dakú medicine man.
“Yeah. That guy.”
She stared at him for a moment, then made a strangled sound and buried her face in her hands. At first he thought she was stifling sobs, but when he listened, he heard differently. She was swearing a blue streak in two languages, cussing him out and calling him every name in the book.
He didn’t blame her. From her perspective, the price he was paying must look kind of high.
“So what do you think the gems are for?” he asked during the first lull in her sotto voce diatribe.
She looked up and her glasses were skewed, the lenses so spotted with fingerprints, he doubted if she could see much past her nose. Without asking, he slipped them off her face and started polishing them, blowing on the lenses and rubbing the glass with his shirttail.
“All I think is that you are crazy, really crazy. You’ve convinced me. Congratulations.”
“Come on, Annie,” he chided her. “Give.”
After a moment in which she practically seethed with silent exasperation, hopefully getting it out of her system, she told him what he wanted to know.
“Vargas is building something in the jungle west of Reino Novo.”
“Something?”
“I don’t know what. I just caught a glimpse of it before the monkey fell on me, but it made me think those virgin-altar stories might not be all hearsay. There was gold on it, whatever it was, lots of gold. I could see it glinting in the sunlight, and I figure anybody who’s willing to squander that much gold on some edifice in the middle of nowhere might also want diamonds and emeralds on it, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what in the hell you’re doing going in there after him.” Her voice started rising on the last few words and kept going up. “I’ll be damned if I can figure out what this shaman Tutanji could know that’s worth your life, and be damned if—”
“No.” He stopped her with the simple expediency of capturing her face in both his hands, letting her glasses dangle from between his fingers. “No, Annie,” he said, adamant himself now. “You won’t be damned. That’s the whole point of the plane.”
“If it’s not Vargas’s,” she grouched, still trying to make her point. “And if you can buy the pilot off. And if—”
“Sempre tem jeito,” he insisted, interrupting her tirade. There’s always a way. It was the national mantra of Brazil.
“ ’Ta louco,” she told him. You’re crazy.
“Maybe, but I’m going to get you on that plane, and you’re going home to Wyoming, and when I’m finished with Vargas—”
“What if Vargas finishes with you first?” she demanded to know.
It was a legitimate question with a lot of unpleasant answers—none of which he wanted to dwell on.
Color washed into her cheeks—and there he was, holding a blushing Amazon Annie and wanting nothing more than to kiss her senseless.
“Time has nothing to do with it,” she said. “I don’t... I just don’t.”
Given how she’d kissed him, that was one of her more interesting statements.
“You will.” He didn’t have a doubt. “With me.” If he lived past Reino Novo.
“You’re awfully sure of yourself,” she reproached him, an accusation ameliorated by her downcast gaze and her all too obvious doubts.
“No. I’m sure of you,” he said, sliding his thumb across her mouth, loving its silky delicacy, the petal softness of her lips.
“Will,” she said, her gaze finally rising, her voice softly vexed. “This solves nothing You... I... we can’t ...”
“We can,” he whispered, then lowered his mouth to hers. Her response was instant, and instantly gratifying, proving him right. Her lips parted on a soft groan, her hands coming up to his waist and bunching up his shirt before slipping underneath and sliding across his skin. It was heaven, having her hands on him, having her mouth hot and sweet beneath his. There was no resistance in her, only a wondrous giving way.
He opened his mouth wider, capturing her deeper and pressing himself against her. She was so unexpectedly, so damnably alluring, and he wanted to kiss her endlessly.
Annie arched up on tiptoe, irresistibly drawn by the lazy, pleasure-inducing forays of his tongue into her mouth. He tasted so good, his kiss as boldly lewd as his dancing in Pancha’s. Again and again, he filled her, slowly, deliberately, making an aching heat rise in her belly, the same heat she felt hardening his body. He was aroused, his kiss meant to entice and please and arouse her, and the knowledge acted like a drug on her common sense. Smoothing her hand all the way up his chest, she tunneled it into his hair, feeling the long, silky strands slide through her fingers, feeling the soft edges of feathers drift across her skin. He was seduction incarnate, the taste and feel of him, all sleek muscle and leashed power where her other hand lay low on his abdomen, and despite what she’d said, she wanted to be closer, so much closer—and that was the danger.
