She looked around, waiting for an answer.
“All right. There are too many people in here. You and you,” she said pointing at Livvy and SK, “need to leave. Only family right now.”
“Come on, Livvy,” said SK. “We can’t do anything here.”
“I’m sorry,” she said to the family, bursting into tears, covering her face.
SK took her by the arm. “Let’s go,” he said, as the mother muttered something.
The boy was about to translate but SK held up a hand as he ushered Livvy out. At the nurse’s station, he grabbed a couple of tissues.
“Her vitals are dropping,” Livvy whispered. “But the family doesn’t want the feeding tube. They don’t want life support.”
She started to choke up.
He let the conversation die as they entered the elevator, joining a few people who wore scrubs and white lab coats. As they rode down, he passed a tissue to her. The hospital people looked on in sympathy, familiar with these types of scenes. At the lobby, they all exited together. SK guided Livvy toward the parking lot.
“Here, sit down for a second,” he said as they passed a stone bench.
Livvy sank down, keeping the tissue to her nose.
“The first thing is,” said SK, pulling himself onto the bench, “this is not your fault.”
She laughed and shook her head.
“It’s not,” he said. “I’m serious. Look at me.”
A couple of passersby glanced over and finally Livvy did as well, her green eyes looking almost purple from the black circles underneath.
“She was already having trouble waking up, like Indra,” said SK.
“But you were right,” Livvy said. “The rules are there for a reason.” She shook her head. “You should have seen it, SK. The Underworld was so different, and I think it’s because we were together. Nothing was familiar, and I think that made it harder. I think it was harder to come back because we were together.” She shook her head again. “I should have listened. I shouldn’t have asked her to do it.”
“All right now, listen to me on this: she volunteered, you didn’t ask her.”
Livvy wiped her nose again and then took in a long shuddering breath.
“If it hadn’t been for you, she’d be dead,” he said, quietly. “You did everything you could, and then some. You nearly died yourself.”
Livvy looked up at the building, to the floor where Min was staying. “There’s only one way to save her,” she said.
“Forget it,” he said quickly.
“There’s nothing wrong with her body.”
“Forget it.”
“She only has a few days,” Livvy said, still looking at the building.
“Liv, it’d be suicide. You know it would. Is that what you want? To die because Min won’t live?”
She looked down at the bench between them.
“To die because you feel guilty over something that you had no control over?”
He reached up a pudgy hand to her cheek, wiping away a tear with his thumb. She placed her hand over his, pressing it to her face, closing her eyes.
“Come on,” he said quietly, as she leaned down. She put her head on his shoulder and started to cry. He rubbed her back as far as he could reach.
“Come on, now. It’s gonna be all right.”
After several minutes, she straightened up and wiped at his wet shirt.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, glancing down. “As long as you didn’t drool.”
She laughed a little and blew her nose but left one hand with his, together on the bench. He watched a few people leaving the hospital.
“How is it going to be all right though?” she said finally. “How will it ever be all right with Tiamat?”
“You can’t defeat her,” he said. “Ten shamans together couldn’t defeat her.”
She nodded and sighed. An ancient god of Sumeria, of all things. Why couldn’t it have been one of the nice ones?
Livvy froze.
After several moments, SK said, “Where did you just go?”
“What?” she said surprised.
“You were a million miles away just then. Where did you go?”
“Sumeria, I think.”
SK nodded. “Tiamat,” he said.
“No, not Tiamat. Marduk,” said Livvy.
“What?”
“Marduk,” Livvy said again, more animated. “Marduk. Do you remember?”
She stood up.
“No,” said SK, jumping down off the bench.
“We need Marduk,” she said.
“What? Isn’t one enough?”
“No,” she said, banging a fist lightly on his shoulder. “Find a dog who’ll eat a dog.”
He scowled, still trying to puzzle it out.
“Come on,” she said, tugging him toward the parking lot. “Where’s that book of yours?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
IN THE BASEMENT of the hospital, Dr. Clarence Dorsey was finishing breakfast. He sat in a small office outside the swinging double doors that led to the morgue. He crumpled up his fast food bag and tossed it through the air for a free throw. It hit dead center in the garbage can.
“Cause of death,” he read on the computer screen in front of him. “Coronary infarction,” he typed. He hit the tab key and looked down at the chart next to the keyboard.
“Time of death,” he read.
“10:44 a.m.,” he typed and hit the tab key.
As he looked back at the chart, he heard a small sound outside the office. He glanced up but the doorway was empty, as was the hall beyond it. If someone had come down in the elevator, he’d have heard them.
He took a sip of his mocha java and turned his attention back to the clipboard. There was the sound again, like a dull bump, but louder this time. He got up and went into the short hallway. To his left were the double doors that led to the morgue. To the right was a small room with elevator doors–a room just large enough for a gurney to turn around. He heard the sound again much more clearly, but it came from the left, in the morgue.
Had he left some equipment on?
He looked through the windows of the large double doors, but the lights were off. He hit the door button on the wall and they automatically swung open. As he stepped in, he turned on the lights. The autopsy tables gleamed with polished cleanliness, and the surgical tools were all stowed, including the saws. He glanced at the sinks along the wall, but there was no water running. The refrigerated units on the far wall were all closed and clamped shut. It was utterly quiet, as usual.
He waited a few seconds, listening and looking, but still there was nothing. Satisfied, he went back through the morgue doors and sat at the desk. He finished the last log entry and tossed the empty coffee cup in the garbage can on his way to the elevator. As the elevator doors opened and he stepped inside, there was no way he could hear the muffled groan that came from behind one of the refrigerator doors.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“WHAT THE HELL happened in here?”
SK stood inside the threshold.
“A little visit,” Livvy said. “I think the door was probably unlocked yesterday, when we were at the hospital.”
SK stepped in, closed the door behind him, and locked it. He stayed like that for a second, staring at the lock, and then spun around. “Oh no, Livvy,” he said. “Did I not lock it?”
She headed over to the kitchen and started rummaging through the stuff on the floor. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It’s the last thing I would have thought of either.” She looked back to where he had seemed to freeze in place. “Seriously, don’t worry about.” She went back to rummaging. “Besides, it was just a bunch of junk anyway.”
SK bent over and started picking up some of the small statues. “It’s not junk,” he said quietly. He took a few items over to an end table that was standing and set them up. “They’re your altar objects,” he said, making a small arrangement
. He picked up a few more items and looked at the spray-painted Bible verses. “You’ll never get that paint off, but it wouldn’t take much to paint over it.”
“Never mind the paint,” she said. “Here it is.” The book was lying face down on the floor. She took it over to the kitchen counter and found the etching of Tiamat and Marduk. She brought it over to SK. “Look.”
He set down a crystal pyramid that had somehow escaped damage, and took the book as they both sat on the couch.
“It says Marduk subdued Tiamat in the days before time,” said Livvy, pointing to the etching. “But where do we find Marduk?”
“Marduk came from the deep abyss,” said SK, flipping the pages back and forth. “He rode a chariot pulled by four white horses, was given fifty blessed names, controlled the earth and gave it shape and law, and made the Tigris and the Euphrates flow. They say there is a ziggurat where, to this day, he waits with the tablets of destiny to defend his creation.”
“A ziggurat,” said Livvy, thinking. “A tower.”
“The ziggurats of Mesopotamia have been gone for thousands of years, melted back into the landscape, back into the mud that they came from,” said SK.
“But it’s not talking about a real ziggurat,” said Livvy. “This is the time before time, before there was an earth.”
“Have you seen a ziggurat in the Multiverse?” asked SK.
“No, but I’ve never looked either. It wasn’t until I went with Min that I saw what the real landscape of the Multiverse looked like. It’s not what either of us had thought.”
There was a knock at the door.
Livvy stood still and held up a finger to her lips.
There was another knock, louder this time.
“I know you are there, Olivia,” came a woman’s voice.
“Who’s there?” Livvy asked, moving closer to the door.
“We have never met,” said the voice. “But I am a shaman.”
Livvy shot a puzzled look at SK, who shook his head. It apparently wasn’t a voice that he recognized either.
“My name is Eugenia Martinez,” the voice said.
Livvy unlocked the knob and dead bolt, but left the chain on as she slowly opened the door a crack. The middle-aged woman who stood there looked as though she could have stepped out of a travel magazine. She was a shaman, all right, but unlike any that Livvy had ever met. Her black robes were stitched with brightly colored threads that created hundreds of small symbols arranged in rows and columns. In her earlobes hung large onyx flares with holes the size of a quarter. Was she insane dressing like that in broad daylight?
“What do you want?” asked Livvy.
“What I have to say is not for hallways,” said the woman, her dark eyes so black there didn’t seem to be a pupil. Her English was impeccable, only the slightest trace of a Spanish accent.
Livvy undid the chain, stood aside, and let the woman pass. As she entered the room, she surveyed the mess before her eyes landed on SK, and she froze.
“El enano,” said the woman quietly. “We are a far distance from Uxmal.”
El enano, thought Livvy. The dwarf. What was Uxmal? As she closed the door and locked it, the woman turned to face her.
“Indra was my niece,” said the woman. “And my pupil. Her fiancé seems to think that you had a hand in her death.”
“Your niece? Her death? Jack?” said Livvy, all of the questions tumbling out at once. “I tried to save her. I did save her, once. The last time I saw Indra, she was well.”
“The last time here or the last time there?”
“The last time I saw Indra was in the real world, and she was fine.”
“It is quite a coincidence that you should be the last shaman to see her before she dies a strange and inexplicable death,” said the woman.
“I’m telling you, the last time I saw Indra she was here in the real world. I was the one who helped her to come back. I was the one who saved her in the Middleworld.”
“Why are you here?” interrupted SK. “Jack must have told you what happened. Why ask Livvy these questions when you already know the answers?”
The woman turned to him.
“I will tell you why, go-between, because I and the other Nahuals want this business ended.”
“Nahuals?” said Livvy, not believing she’d heard the word.
The Nahuals were a myth.
Deep in the Petén jungle of Central America, went the story, a continuous lineage of shamans that went back a thousand years still survived. They had escaped the Spanish onslaught by retreating into the remotest areas and had completely disappeared from historical records hundreds of years ago. Occasionally, their legend would be revived and someone would tell the tale of ancient wizards who could tap into a deep source of power, somewhere amid the ruins of the Olmec.
Livvy stared at the woman.
“Something has been unleashed, here, in Los Angeles,” she said, looking around again at the mess on the floor.
“I had nothing to do with Indra’s death,” said Livvy. “She was buried in the Middleworld, unable to wake up. I brought her back. I didn’t ‘unleash’ anything.”
“I understand Soo Min is in a coma,” said the woman.
“Now, wait a minute,” said SK. “I was here when that happened.”
The woman snapped her head back around to SK.
“Of course you were. And I know you should know better.”
“Look,” said SK, “I don’t need you to tell me how to run my business–”
“No, you are wrong, enano,” said the woman. “Somebody needs to put a stop to this. Shamans on television? People on the street talking about shamans? Blaming shamans for strange illnesses and deaths? Is that how you run your business?”
The woman didn’t wait for an answer.
“Consider me a friendly messenger. We do not like what is happening here. It is not good for shamans–shamans anywhere.”
She turned to Livvy.
“I do not like what is going on here. It is not good for my family.”
Livvy started to protest but the woman raised her voice and continued.
“We have tolerated techno-shamans long enough. No longer,” she said with finality.
“We’re not causing it,” protested Livvy. “We’re trying to stop it.”
“No, you are not,” said the woman. “Not anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked SK.
“No more healings, no more visits, no more experiments.”
“What?” said Livvy.
“You heard me,” said the woman calmly.
“And what makes you think you can tell us what to do?” said Livvy hotly.
The woman pulled up the long sleeves of her robe. Her arms were covered in tattoos of Aztec glyphs.
“Not me,” said the woman. “My ancestors.”
Livvy nearly let her mouth drop open but caught herself in time. She looked at SK, who slowly shook his head once. An invocation of the ancestors was the most serious threat a shaman could make. An invocation by a Nahual of potent ancestor spirits who must number in the hundreds–that was tantamount to a death sentence.
The woman lowered her sleeves and looked at Livvy and then at SK, daring them to say something. When they didn’t, she headed to the door, never once looking back. She opened it, pulled the door after her, and it shut with a loud thud.
Livvy sat down heavily on a folding chair as SK took a seat on the couch.
“What next?” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
AS THE NAHUAL descended the stairs, she suddenly felt a sharp, searing pain in her chest. She grabbed the railing and sat down, moaning and landing hard.
• • • • •
In Watts, Ursula cried out and dropped the bottle of herbal pills from which she was dispensing a prescription. Her client jumped back, alarmed.
“Ursula,” he said, “Are you–”
“Get Bruno,” she hissed, sinking to her knees as her flowing v
elvet robe rumpled like it was melting beneath her.
• • • • •
Alvina pitched forward next to the trash heap behind her house, dropping the pail from the kitchen. She clutched at her chest with both hands as the side of her face landed on the compacted desert clay. She closed the other eye against the glare of the sun and panted against the searing pain–but not from the external heat. It was the internal burning. She felt as though she were being baked from the inside out.
• • • • •
As she writhed on the ground, all the women crowded around.
“Sunny, what is it?” asked one of the women from the front row of the yoga class.
“Somebody call 911,” said another.
Sunny clutched her chest and her eyes bulged, but she couldn’t utter a word.
“It might be a heart attack,” someone yelled.
“Does anybody know CPR?”
• • • • •
Carmen’s body went stiff in the recliner, her head and the back of her heels digging into the Naugahyde as she clutched her chest.
“No,” she groaned. “No more.”
Her eyes were shut tight, but she forced them open and looked up at her skeleton army. It was only a moment though, before she closed them against the burning pain inside.
• • • • •
“Leave me!” yelled Wan-li, clutching the edge of the desk.
She watched as the last of the men exited through the portal, and then she doubled over. Her fist slammed into the teak as her breath fogged the gleam of the wood, but she did not utter a sound. She would not let the underlings see weakness. She pounded her fist again and gulped air.
• • • • •
As the pain subsided, almost as quickly as it had come, Livvy sucked in a deep breath. She had fallen from the chair to the floor and lain on her side. SK had immediately come over but knew exactly what was going on from the way she grabbed her chest.
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