“Leave him,” he snapped, unable to contain his irritation. “He’s not for you.”
Alioune jerked her head to the side, hurt a twitch catching the corner of her wide lips. Kueur looked down at him. “Tonton?” she said.
The government man’s gaze captured their moment of stunned silence. Kueur slipped out from under Max and gently propped his head with a cushion. As she picked up the bowl of vomit, her face a mask, Max felt shame redden his face. Alioune wrapped the prayer rug around him, making sure his crotch and belly were covered, and he nodded, wondering if that was enough of an apology. The twins stood, ignoring each other and him, turned to go. The government man came to a stop at Max’s feet.
“I—I’m sorry,” Max said, stunned, lost in a dense fog of irrational fears and inconsistent emotions.
The twins stopped, looked at each other.
“I just don’t know what’s happening to me,” he said. “I can’t control—”
“I understand,” Kueur said softly, flashing a smile at Max. “It’s not easy acting human.”
Alioune nodded once, took the bowl from Kueur, and went to the bathroom. Kueur headed back to the kitchen, ignoring the stir the sway of her long, elegant arms created. Dex and the men at the alcove followed her walk until the kitchen counter shielded her from their view. The mambo’s loa cackled and shook its hips in a crude pantomime of provocativeness.
Max turned to his latest visitor, who moved a nearby stool to sit at the foot of Max’s improvised bed.
“Hello, Mr. Johnson,” said Max. It was not his real name, but since the government man had never shared any personal information, Max had named him George Johnson, based on no one he had ever known. Having only a shell of worldly power granted by those who worked for him, and for whom he worked, the names of Mr. Johnson and the other major representative in the alcove, Mr. Tung, came easily to Max. “I didn’t realize you knew my new address. I thought the drop was as close as you cared to come to my affairs.”
“If you liked fingers up your ass, Max, all you had to do was ask,” Mr. Johnson said, wiggling two fingers in Max’s face. He laughed and patted Max’s distended belly. “I thought I’d drop by when I heard you were under the weather. Of course, I knew about you moving in with the girls. I keep track of all of my good friends. Never know when I might want to give a surprise party.” Max’s gut twisted. The Beast rose for a moment, hauling with it rage and power, and a knife stroke that would have opened the government man from neck to groin. No one spoke to him that way, ever. No one threatened his home, his family. Who was this? Dizziness swept away Max’s outrage, leaving him feeling small and vulnerable before the representative of vast but unseen powers. He realized in that moment that Mr. Johnson was as much a shaman as anyone else in the loft, though his soul and magic were both rooted in material planes.
“Since when are you and Mr. Tung associates?” Max asked, looking to the alcove at the Chinese man who did not care if anyone knew his name. Max hoped he was hiding the extent of his illness from Mr. Johnson’s quick and greedy eyes.
“We’ve been elected to represent your contractors, Max. All the sides. Everyone knows what happened at the airport. There are rumors. Concerns.”
“So soon?”
“It’s the age of technology, Max. Modems and computers.”
“I completed the assignment.”
“You crawled into a baggage mover and called the girls to fetch you. Didn’t even clean up after yourself. You were lucky, working outside the main terminals. Thank God for cell phones, eh, Max?”
“It’s the age of technology, yes. Your concern is touching.”
“I’m sure.” Mr. Johnson kept a steady gaze locked on Max.
“But you’re too early for my funeral.”
“We want to be sure what happens, happens. Whatever that may be.”
“In a roomful of magicians, you want certainties?
“When it comes to life or death, Max, trust me, Mr. Tung and I can tell the difference. We brought experts. Equipment.”
“I never took you for a healer.”
“I’m not.” Mr. Johnson’s lips set into a thin line, and his eyes hardened.
Max scowled. “Your secrets are safe.”
“Normally, yes. We’ve all trusted you to take what you know with you in case a job went bad. But now you’re vulnerable. So’s your information. If things don’t go well for you, what you know might be … excavated … by whoever has gained power over you. Odd things happen in your world, Max.”
The Beast paced among Max’s thoughts, restless with the verbal fencing, eager for action. Death. It nuzzled images of Max jumping up, ripping Mr. Johnson’s throat out with teeth and nails, cracking the man’s skull open and sifting through whatever government secrets he kept hidden in the flesh off his brain. But Max’s body remained leaden, paralyzed by a lack of strength. The Beast howled in frustration, and Max seethed with sympathetic rage.
Kueur appeared, as if sensing his crisis. She placed burning incense the Indian sadhu from Flushing had brought to clear the air of bad spirits on the coffee table. Alioune glided to a halt behind Mr. Johnson and stared over his shoulder at the floor between him and Max. The men in the alcove stirred, but Mr. Johnson shook his head once. Alioune came around and stood behind the couch, by Max’s head.
“Do you think you can finish whatever was started against me?” Max asked. Words of challenge did nothing to mollify the impatient Beast.
Mr. Johnson’s shoulders relaxed. He gestured with his hands, as if clearing a game board of pieces. “Max, you’re taking this far too personally. We know the dead can be made to speak. If you die, we want only to make sure you don’t talk. If you live, we have work for you.”
“And if I live but can’t work? If this is the best I can do for the rest of my life?”
Mr. Johnson leaned forward. “Max, it’s been my experience that when things start to go up or down, they reach some kind of climax, one way or the other. I don’t think you’ll let yourself crawl toward death. You’ll either get up and walk, or roll into a hole in the ground.”
Max’s silence echoed his resolve.
Mr. Johnson patted Max on the thigh, stood up, started to turn. He faced Alioune, who did not make way for him. Mr. Johnson glanced over his shoulder and pointed a thick, rigid finger at Max’s crotch. “Well, at least I know the appeal you hold for the young ladies,” he said with a leer. He spun smoothly around Alioune and headed back to the alcove, telling the suited men to go ahead with the operation in a loud, commanding voice that sent ripples of unease through the loft.
“Why can’t we take him into the Box?” Kueur asked.
“He wants to go,” Alioune said in a low, grumbling voice. “He is one of those who thinks he can survive our affection. Let us. Join us. Perhaps it will help to—”
“Leave him. His death would cause more problems than it would solve.”
“Maybe he’s the cause,” Kueur whispered, bending close to Max’s ear. “Wouldn’t he, or Tung, or the others do anything they could to take what you know and gain the advantage over the others?”
Another wave of nausea came crashing down on Max, and he slid to the couch and lay on his side, drawing his knees up and facing the kitchen. He breathed deeply and concentrated on talking to distract himself from feeling sick. “They don’t have that kind of power over me. They only have electronic toys and ordinary men. And even if one of them, or some faction, stumbled onto something to use against me, how long would they have to pick me clean of codes and drops and contacts? Victims, past and future? Operations they don’t even realize happened? There’s too much information. They’d hardly know what to look for. They barely know each other, really. Corporations, faiths, secret societies as old as civilization, shadow governments, all scrambling in the darkness looking for an advantage. I’m their light. A light that illuminates a little corner of the universe they want to know every time I kill.”
A sharp pain cut into the small
of Max’s back, bled a dull ache up and down his spine, around his hips and belly, into his groin. He curled more tightly into a fetal position while holding on tight to the prayer rug. A spasm seized his stomach, and he dry-heaved, shaking and sweating, until the nausea exhausted itself and his body relaxed. The Beast, its lust for death unsated, pulled back from his body’s betrayals and sulked in a pit of hate.
Alioune’s eyes opened wider, as if to contain the tears pooling in their corners. She gesticulated frantically as she said, “He’s just another distraction. They are all distractions. I am sorry, Tonton. We were just so frightened, we have never seen you this way. We called everyone we knew in the city, hoping—”
“I understand,” Max croaked. In a moment of clarity between attacks of illness and moodiness, he saw fear breaching the cool, sensual surface of the twins’ demeanors. A chill seized him, touching him more deeply than the wild fluctuations of his own body heat. He knew for that moment what they felt for him, what the twins meant to him. He saw the abyss that would swallow them all if the bonds between them were broken. Tears burned his eyes. A moment later, understanding dissipated like mist under the sun’s scrutiny, leaving behind the raw edge of appetite, the driving fury of need.
“Perhaps we should send them all away,” Alioune continued, her eyes darting, searching for something to fix on.
“No,” Max said, surprised by the exhaustion in his voice. “Let the healers work. Let the vultures circle.”
“Do you feel the evil spirit troubling you yet?” Kueur asked hopefully, taking Max’s hand and squeezing it.
“Aside from the Beast, no. But something sucks the life from me. If only they can find the hole my enemy has made in me.” Nausea crept like a slow, cold mud slide over the borders of his awareness. Max rubbed his slightly distended stomach and asked, “Who’s next to try their skill?”
Kueur and Alioune surveyed the loft. They were each about to speak when a disturbance drew attention to the alcove, where Mr. Johnson and Mr. Tung, along with their associates, surrounded a small, thin figure with a cane.
Max thought at first a child had come bundled in a ski jacket and scarf, but then saw the straight, silver hair slipping out from under the newcomer’s baseball cap and falling to the figure’s slightly hunched shoulders.
“Mrs. Chan,” Max called out. Her name burned in his mind almost as brightly as the twins’, though she was not a lover. One of the healers brought in to help him, she was also the latest in a long line of teachers whose wisdom and talents substituted for the mother he had never known.
The woman glanced in his direction and nodded curtly, then turned on Mr. Johnson, who was holding a handheld metal detector and trying to sweep it over her body. Mrs. Chan whipped the cane around in a circle, striking Mr. Johnson’s wrist sharply. The detector flew out of his hands, and he gave out a yelp, seizing his wrist and taking a step back. One of the dark-suited men stepped forward, reaching for the cane. She slid her grip down to the end and swung the cane, curved handle first, down on the man’s face. He staggered sideways, both hands covering his bleeding nose. A third man danced forward, arms, head, and torso moving snakelike from side to side. Mrs. Chan feinted a thrust to the solar plexus. The man froze, ready to embrace and trap the strike. Mrs. Chan’s front foot glided toward her opponent. She dipped, impossibly quick and agile, and hooked the cane handle around the man’s foot. With a snap of her body, she pulled the cane and sent the man flipping backward. He landed on his shoulders with a surprised grunt, recovered quickly with a kick-up, but assumed a low, and unmoving, guarded stance.
Two other men pulled guns. More agents crowded the outer door, coming from the hallway. Racks of electronic equipment in the alcove shook from the sudden action. Mr. Tung called out in a sharp voice. Everyone froze except for Mrs. Chan, who resumed a normal grip on the cane and brushed her silk pants and windbreaker as if a dust devil had just passed over her. Mr. Tung bowed and spoke softly. Mrs. Chan replied curtly, sparing him a brief, glowering look. Mr. Tung bowed once again and waved her into the loft.
Mrs. Chan walked briskly past the others. The Navajos, without breaking the rhythm of their chanting, watched her go by with bemused expressions. Dex gathered his crystals and moved hastily out of her way, while the mambo hooted and called out, “Make way, bad spirit, here comes your master.” The mambo waved her cane in mocking imitation of Mrs. Chan’s fighting style, thrusting to a finger’s breadth away from the elderly woman’s arm as she walked by.
Mrs. Chan ignored the antics of the mambo’s loa and stopped beside Max. Shaking his hand, she smiled and said, “Good afternoon, my friend. Not feeling well, I hear.” She released Max, slowly ran the palm of her hand a few inches over the length of his body. “Have you been practicing your chi kung exercises?” she asked, the smile fading from her face. Her eyes narrowed, her hand trembled, and shadows seemed to gather in the folds of her flesh.
“Every day, master,” Max replied. “Until this.”
Mrs. Chan reached under the prayer rug and pressed her palm against his belly. “So. Something blocks the chi. Thought? Spirit? Body?”
Warmth blossomed below Max’s belly button. His stomach settled, and a sense of well-being surged through him. Feeling suddenly stronger, he started to get up.
“Body,” Mrs. Chan said, pushing him back into the sofa. “My friend, you have a most interesting problem. One I cannot help you with. But do not worry, it is not serious. It will pass on its own, and quite soon. My congratulations.”
Alioune and Kueur closed in around Max. The Navajos stopped chanting, and the other shamans and healers scattered throughout the loft broke through the veneer of their aloofness and stared at Mrs. Chan.
“What is it?” Max asked.
“You are pregnant.”
The silence was a stone no one seemed strong enough to break. Max opened his mouth, closed it. A smile flickered through his surprise as it occurred to him that Mrs. Chan was joking. But her appraising stare sobered him, letting him feel truth spread through him and numb any conscious reaction. He waited for what was coming next.
“Good luck, my friend,” Mrs. Chan said, squeezing his hand as she prepared to leave. “When this is over, you must be certain to return to your chi kung practice.”
Max bolted to his feet. Mrs. Chan withdrew, flowing backward like an exhausted wave from the beach. The prayer rug slid down his body and fell to the floor. The twins grabbed hold of his arms, pressed themselves against him.
“Tonton!” Alioune shouted, trying to hold him back. “Be careful!” Kueur screamed, pushing him in a circle so he would find himself back at the couch.
He shrugged, and they fell away. Thoughts sparkled like a thousand stars scattered across the darkness of his mind, remote, unattainable. Emotions rumbled through him, raw and intoxicating. The twins, his work as an assassin, his past of rape and torture and killing, the unfolding mystery of his future, spread before him like an endless savannah. He felt the power of creation coursing through his veins, felt a bond to everything that lived. He was a hunter surveying his territory, a god looking over what his hand had made. The world belonged to him for a bright, burning moment, and nothing seemed impossible.
Joy made Max cry out. As if through a fog, he saw Mrs. Chan waving her hands in his face, the oknirabata and the sadhu and the mambo and all the rest staring at him, mouths shaping chants and spells and curses. In the distance, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Tung stared up from their handheld electronics, faces sundered by expressions of astonishment. A moment later, the golden brown visages of Kueur and Alioune, skin smooth as polished wood, eyes deep as pools in the depths of undiscovered caverns, fell across his sight like a curtain.
Tears flowed, forging cold tracks across his cheeks. Terror shattered the foundations of his power. He collapsed into their arms, and the twins eased him back onto the couch. It was all too vast, he realized. Too much to hold, to own, to bear. Even the spark he carried that was his own life was too heavy a responsibility
. So much more dire, then, was the bud of life Mrs. Chan had identified in him. How could he bring another life into the world where everything was his to destroy?
Max cried out again. The Beast, cowed by the intensity of his visions and the glow of life within him, keened in mourning.
Thoughts extinguished. Emotion ran dry. Max surrendered with relief to the blackness closing around him.
“He’s only fainted,” the mambo said, and only stopped slapping Max’s face when he opened his eyes. She picked up the end of the prayer rug and began chewing at loose threads.
“Someone should feed the loa,” said the youngest of the Navajo shamans standing behind the crowd huddled around the couch.
Max grunted, feeling as if he had just woken from one nightmare only to stumble into another. Faces bobbed around him like multicolored buoys warning of secret tides and underwater reefs. His stomach lurched, and the room seemed to spin around his head. He clutched at the edge of the couch while Mrs. Chan pulled the prayer rug back over his naked body.
“I’ll get something for the god,” Kueur said. She patted Max’s hand but avoided eye contact. She stood and left the immediate circle around him, with Alioune following wordlessly in her wake. Distracted healers filled in their places.
Mrs. Chan took up Max’s hand. His fingers tingled. A river of warmth traveled up his arm and through his torso, settling his stomach and pooling in his belly. He rubbed the mound of flesh, looked up at Mrs. Chan.
“Is it true?” he asked, horrified.
“Do not worry, my friend,” she said. “The young ladies felt further involvement by Western medical professionals might lead to personal complications for you. I have assured them that, with the assistance of some of these good people, we can deliver your child. Everything is quite natural, I assure you. Except, of course, for you.”
“It’s true,” said Max, shaking his head.
“I have had some experience in the delivery of little ones, although,” she said, with a wink and a pass of the hand over his crotch, “the mechanics were not the same.” She laughed at his expression. “My friend, you will survive to make children in the more usual fashion, perhaps with your two lovely companions?”
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