by Tara Janzen
It was an invitation, painfully clear. Tutanji had her, and if Will wanted her back, he was going to have to come and get her.
More shots zinged into the rain forest, some cracking into trees, others burying themselves somewhere in the jungle. Then the cry of “Jacaré!” went up again out on the river, and Will knew, for the moment, he was forgotten.
He didn’t waste the chance.
Slipping the necklace over his head, he scanned the soft ground of the riverbank, until he found what he needed—footprints heading away from the river, into the forest. With only a half-moon to light the way, he picked up the weapons and took off down the path.
CHAPTER ~ 19
Reino Novo
Fat Eddy Mano was sweating. Corisco could see the dampness staining not only the man’s shirt, but his pants legs, could see a regular stream of sweat running down the man’s brow and wished he’d held the audience someplace other than in his richly appointed and extremely difficult-to-maintain office. Rot and mildew were constant enemies, and both of them were born of humidity, the water thickening every square centimeter of air in the tropics. Profuse sweating only added to the problem. Now he not only had to deal with the humidity and the rain and the occasional flooding that did its damnedest to inundate his sanctuary above the riverbank, now he had Fat Eddie adding his own personal water supply to the one place in the whole damned Amazon Corisco tried to keep livable. His damned office.
Nobody else dared to sweat in his office, or even in his presence.
He didn’t sweat.
Ever.
A pencil snapped in two in his hand, and with a small sound of disgust, he threw the pieces onto his desk.
“And the woman, Senhor Mano? What happened to the woman?”
Fat Eddie and his ragged little entourage had arrived at Reino Novo just as the sun was setting, the promised emeralds and diamonds in hand, retrieved from William Sanchez Travers the evening before in Santa Maria, apparently mere hours before the man had been eaten by a giant caiman near the mouth of the Rio Marauiá.
It was a mildly interesting story, the type of larger-than-life escapade that could only come out of a landscape as immense and incredible as the Amazon, but it was child’s play compared to the reality Corisco would soon impose on the area.
“Ah, the woman,” Fat Eddie said, looking thoughtful, a feat he pulled off with remarkable skill for someone with filed teeth. “Which woman in particular are you interested in, Major Vargas? I have many in Manaus.”
Corisco’s mouth twisted in disgust. “I am not interested in any of those putas you sell out of the Praça de Matriz. I want the doctor, the woman on Travers’s boat.”
Fat Eddie lifted his arms in a bulky shrug. “The boat was destroyed. I said this, no? And the woman—if there was a woman—maybe she was destroyed, as well.”
“But you didn’t find a body.”
“No bodies. No,” Fat Eddie said.
“Her name is Annie Parrish. Doutora Parrish,” he told the fat man, carefully watching him for a reaction. The bastard was lying to him. Corisco knew it. Annie Parrish had been on that boat on the Marauiá last night, and if she wasn’t dead, she was somewhere in the forest, but for some reason, Eddie didn’t want him to know she’d been on Travers’s boat, and that meant the fat man was hiding something.
He wouldn’t be for long, though. Fat Eddie’s twenty or so men were no match for Corisco’s elite squad of soldiers. Torturing Fat Eddie might prove to be a disgustingly fascinating experience.
“Ah, the Woolly Monkey woman,” Fat Eddie said. “I heard she was back in Manaus, but she has nothing to do with me or my business.”
More lies, Corisco thought. Every jagunço from Reino Novo to Manaus knew about the price on Annie Parrish’s head by now.
“She is with the River Basin people, a meddler, a cientista. It was you who had her deported, wasn’t it?” the fat man continued.
Corisco wasn’t surprised by the question. Everyone knew the Woolly Monkey story, even if they knew it wrong. What they didn’t know was where Annie Parrish had really been, what she’d been doing, or what had happened to her in Yavareté.
All he cared about now, though, was what had happened to her on the Marauiá. She’d come back to Brazil, and if she wasn’t already dead, he wanted her, by God. He wanted her for his sacrifice.
“Yes, I had her deported,” he told Fat Eddie, “but I’m afraid she still has something to do with my business. Something I would like finished.”
“So maybe she’s worth her weight in gold?” Fat Eddie asked with a chuckle, his eyes lighting up with avarice. “If someone could bring her to you?”
Corisco snapped his fingers, and Fernando stepped forward. Corisco handed him one of the wanted posters off his desk and gestured for him to give it to Fat Eddie.
“Yes, Senhor Mano. She is worth a great deal,” he said as the fat man looked the poster over and did a fair job of feigning surprise. Yes, she was worth a great damn deal, and the closer she came to slipping through his fingers, the more he wanted her. It was time to send his own men after her. If she’d been near the mouth of the Marauiá last night and her boat had blown up, she couldn’t have gotten far. He had men leaving Reino Novo today to capture the rest of the needed cordeiros. He would split them up, and they could search for Annie Parrish, as well. He would put the men under Fernando’s command. The giant would sniff her out.
“Then for you, Major, I will find this woman and bring her here. If she is still in Manaus, I can have her picked up in a matter of hours. If she is already on the river, it will take longer, I fear. The Rio Negro, she is a very big place.” He smiled, showing off his sharp teeth.
But not big enough for the two of us, Corisco thought, not in the least bit intimidated by Fat Eddie’s gruesome grin. The Night of the Devil was coming, and after the dark sacrifice, Eddie Mano would either be dead or destroyed. Corisco hardly cared which, but he could see where it might be to his advantage to forgo torturing Fat Eddie today in hopes of a greater benefit tomorrow. Annie Parrish was far more important to him than the fat man from Manaus. If Eddie Mano could bring her in, so much the better, and if not, he and his henchmen would become sacrificial lambs for El Mestre.
A startled gasp from one of the jagunços had Fat Eddie turning around. The man was staring at the huge glass tank.
“I see my pet has come out of hiding,” Corisco said, gesturing for Fernando to turn on the lights in the shadowed tank.
The scarred giant moved forward to a bank of switches on the wall and flipped them on one by one. Slowly, by muted degrees, the full dimensions of the tank came into view, the lights coming on in the back first. Full of vegetation and carefully chosen tree trunks with branches for climbing, it looked like the rain forest just outside the door complete with a small stream running through the middle of it, continuously cycled by a pump from the river.
It was a rare event when the tank’s inhabitant could actually be seen. Corisco was pleased by the snake’s timing.
“Thirty-six feet, Senhor Eduardo,” he said. “The largest anaconda ever held in captivity. Six hundred pounds. I usually feed him deer. I insist that you come back in a week, as my guest at a function I’m hosting, very elaborate, very festive. You can watch him hunt. It’s a fascinating sight, I assure you, nearly as fascinating as watching him swallow his kill.”
Fat Eddie didn’t doubt it for a minute. No more than he doubted that Major Corisco Vargas was dangerous, powerfully dangerous, with his own private army culled from the elite Brazilian forces he commanded, and his gold.
Gold was power, and Vargas was loaded with it. Shipping less than half of what he pulled out of the mines, it was said, and using the other half—it was also said—for darkly demonic purposes.
Fat Eddie had to fight to restrain his laughter. The fucking Amazon was full of friggin’ demons, and he had met them all. Vargas, a city boy from São Paulo, didn’t know the first damn thing about the jurijuri and the brujos, the boraro,
and the wawekratins. Whatever the hell he thought he was up to, Fat Eddie’s money was on the demons. He just wanted to be around to pick up all the gold when Vargas fell on his prissy, sadistic, epauletted ass.
Idiota.
It was impossible for Fat Eddie to have any respect whatsoever for a man who couldn’t think of anything better to do with virgins than to cut them open on an altar—but he wanted the altar. Solid gold, according to rumor, and hidden somewhere around Reino Novo.
He wondered if the altar was what awaited the little cat, when he found her—and he would find her. He’d already set those wheels in motion, ordering a hundred of his jagunços up the river to meet him on the Cauaburi.
The major would pay more than ten thousand reais to have the woman. He could see it in the man’s eyes. Vargas wanted the little doutora very badly, indeed.
No body meant she hadn’t been on Travers’s boat when it had fallen apart, and it had fallen apart. There weren’t any burn marks to indicate an explosion. The sucuri had left, that was all, and when the snake had left, the boat had fallen apart and mostly fallen into the river, including the Sucuri’s cargo.
A smile flickered across his lips. He’d gotten his guns back, by God, and only lost one man doing it. Whatever protection Travers had enjoyed these last couple of years hadn’t quite left him, or that giant caiman would have had him for dinner instead of one of Fat Eddie’s boat captains.
Travers had gone after the woman, Fat Eddie knew, and he’d been in a hurry to do it.
Taking the woman away from him might not be so easy. Guillermo had lied and stolen his way into an early grave for Annie Parrish, and he’d jumped into the Rio Marauiá with a twenty-foot caiman in order to go after her.
Eddie was beginning to think his old friend was in love, but love wouldn’t be enough to save either one of them. It never was. When Eddie got back to his boat, he would radio the band of men he’d left on the Marauiá. They’d had a day to track the pair through the jungle and must be closing in. The woman he would bring to Reino Novo.
And Guillermo?
Fat Eddie had told Vargas he was dead, more for Guillermo’s sake than his own. He liked the man too much to kill him. Guillermo was no fool, not like the major. Guillermo knew the jurijuri and the brujos. There were times when Eddie wondered if Guillermo was a brujo himself. There was a look he got in his eyes sometimes that reminded Eddie of his father, a brujo from Ecuador. Like Eddie’s father, Guillermo had blood on his hands. Not the weak blood of women, like Vargas, but blood rich with power.
No, Guillermo was not to be underestimated.
A movement in the tank caught his eye, drawing his attention, and Fat Eddie had to admit that Vargas had gotten himself a fine snake, big and brutish looking, its coloring dark and splotchy, its head blockishly large without any of the delicacy or fineness of the other rain-forest serpents.
His glance strayed back to Vargas, sizing him up. The snake was big, and the major was a skinny son of a bitch. A good fit, he thought, his face splitting into a big grin.
Yes, he would be back in a week.
CHAPTER ~ 20
Will passed his hand over a circle of burned wood in a rain-forest clearing, feeling the warmth left by the fire. Tutanji and his group were no more than two hours ahead of him, and Fat Eddie’s men were still somewhere behind him—and somewhere behind Fat Eddie’s men was another group. He’d heard them when he’d circled back to see how many jagunços Eddie had put on his tail. There were fifteen men from Fat Eddie’s boats, and the group following the fifteen had sounded much larger than that. Either way, the drainage between the Marauiá and the Cauaburi was getting damned crowded. He looked up at the circle of sky outlined by the canopy trees. It would be dark before he caught up with the Dakú.
A soft scrabbling in the forest brought his head around, his gaze quickly scanning the perimeter of the clearing. When a paca, a spotted rodent, trotted out of the deepening shadows of the trees and made a beeline for the overgrown gardens, Will looked back to the fire ring.
He’d been in the camp before... before he’d killed the jaguar and set himself free. He’d lived in the clearing with the Dakú during the first few months after his encounter with the anaconda. He’d done his healing here beneath the peach palms, before they’d all headed farther north.
He sifted his fingers through the cooling ash before slowly rising to his feet.
Tutanji was heading north again and had been for the last four days with his band of men and Annie. Will had lost the trail the first night at a stream crossing, but found it again at dawn. Fat Eddie’s men hadn’t been far behind him then, but had been losing ground ever since. The larger group would be moving even more slowly. He hadn’t heard Eddie’s men for the last night and a day, but he didn’t doubt that they were still there, any more than he doubted the others were still behind the jagunços, tracking them with the same diligence he was using to track the Dakú.
Marcos was good. Damn good.
Tutanji was better, but he’d lost his advantage when he’d reached the clearing and taken on women and children.
Will looked around the area again, noting signs of domestication: manioc gratings on the ground, a half-finished basket woven from palm fronds. The Dakú’s women and children had waited here while the men had gone south to get Annie. She must be exhausted by now. It had been a long time since he’d run night and day through the forest. He doubted if Annie had ever had to push so hard.
It had been even longer since the first time he’d journeyed into the low mountain ranges at the base of the Serra da Neblina, into the lost world where Tutanji’s anaconda had found him. The shaman could be taking her there, to the misty headwaters of the rivers.
It was a land under siege, like all the Amazon, and Will knew Tutanji would go to any lengths to save it from the white man’s incursions, even share its secrets with him if that would save it from gold miners’ greed and rampant scientific exploration, both of which tore away at the Dakú’s way of life, upsetting balances and creating discord. The mere act of observing, however objective the gaze, changed what was observed. Tutanji knew this and had kept his people hidden, a people known only by myth and rumor, until gold had been discovered on the Cauaburi and the demon Corisco Vargas had brought in his hordes of garimpeiros, his diesel-powered engines, his hoses and planes and began tearing up the earth and poisoning the rivers with mercury. No woman was safe from the garimpeiros, no settlement safe from attack. Many of Tutanji’s people had already been lost, much of their once rich hunting grounds decimated by the hundreds of miners needing food, the fish-poor blackwater rivers giving less every year. Soon there would be nothing but starvation and hardship and disease left in the land between the rivers.
The wind picked up, rustling through the palms, and with one final look around, he turned back to the trail.
The Indians were moving too fast for anybody to be getting any jaguar-bait ideas about her—which was going to save Tutanji a whole lot of trouble when he finally caught up to the old man.
A tired Annie he could handle. A hurt or raped Annie would make him cruel.
~ * ~
Annie ran in her dreams, chased through the forest by a thousand demons, purple agoutis with sharp, tearing teeth; bloodred caimans of enormous size, hungry and searching; orange frogs with poisonous skin leaping at her from every direction; scorpions glowing blue underfoot, their tails raised to strike.
Run. Run. Run.
She jerked awake in her hammock, her heart racing, ready to flee.
But the night was not full of demons, only a warm wind and the chirping of tree frogs. All around, the Indians were sleeping under miritisabas, temporary palm-thatched roofs, mothers with babies at their breasts, children snuggled together, men with their wives. Fires burned at regular intervals around the camp. Men guarded the perimeter, some with bows and spears in their hands, others carrying her guns with rounds of ammunition in bandoliers slung across their chests.
Two
men sat by the closest fire, talking in low voices. One was Tutanji, the paint on his legs and arms glowing red in the light of the flames.
The other was William Sanchez Travers, his blond-streaked hair unmistakable.
He’d come.
Relief washed through her in a slow-moving wave, easing the tension from her body.
He’d come.
He’d found her.
Her hand went to the necklace she wore, his necklace. The chunk of quartz was jagged without being sharp. The teeth were smooth, weighted around her neck. There had been no snakes in her dreams, no giant anacondas, and no jaguars, only the lesser demons.
Will had found her, and now everything would be all right.
Her eyelids, so heavy, drifted back down over her eyes. A sigh left her mouth.
Everything would be all right... everything would be all right.
Will glanced over to where Annie slept, checking for himself one more time that she was okay. Being the only towhead for a good five hundred miles, and the only person wearing clothes, she was easy to spot among all the hammocks full of naked Indians. She was also still wearing her fanny pack.
For himself, he’d long since stripped out of his own clothing, tearing his shirt into a makeshift sling and stuffing his shorts inside. He’d come to the Dakú as one of their own, with a loincloth strung around his waist and toucan feathers tied into his hair. The transition—as always—had been disturbingly easy, like walking into warm water, making him wonder if he only fooled himself on the river, pretending to be a civilized man, when at heart he’d been claimed forever by the rain forest.
