Mike frowned heavily. “She shouldn’t have done it, but she did anyway. Inca was only eighteen at the time, young, impetuous and rebellious. I don’t know whether it was out of spite for Grandfather Adaire, who had released me to make my choice to die, or if it was just that damned stubborn streak of hers to save a life…. Anyway, Inca joined with me…as I joined with you to save your life in Lima. My spirit was too weak to fight her, and so she was able to stop me from going over the threshold, into the light, and dying.
“The next morning, I awoke and I was coherent. I remember weakly sitting up, and I saw her lying curled up in a fetal position, next to me. I saw blood all over the damn place around her. She’d bled out. I was terrified. About that time, Grandmother Alaria appeared and quickly went to her side. I saw her do something that just blew me away. She knelt over Inca, gently cradled her in her arms like a child and held her face very close to hers. Inca was a gray-blue color. I knew she was dead. I saw Alaria breathe into her slack, parted lips. I watched—and saw—this golden, living energy flow back into Inca. I was transfixed. I knew that what I was seeing was a miracle. There was no question of it.” His voice shook with emotion. “Alaria brought Inca back to life.”
“My God, Inca died giving you life? Is that what you’re saying?”
Mike nodded. “I’m going to skip the technical stuff with you and just say that Inca struggled to stop me from choosing death and tried to heal me, and she didn’t have the necessary power to do both. She’d had two years of training with Adaire and Alaria, and she knew a lot of different healing methods. With her energy, she managed to stop me from crossing over the threshold. She had very little left with which to heal me, though. Instead, what Inca did was transfer my wound, my condition into herself. She gave me her own life-force energy so that I could live. That’s what killed her.”
Ann’s eyes widened. “Then…she acquired your wound?”
“Yes.” Houston sighed. “Inca knew if she could bring me back, that I’d still die. I’d bleed to death on the floor of that hut. Grandfather Adaire had released me, so that meant I’d be the way I’d been before he found me in the jungle.”
“And Inca willingly sacrificed her life for yours?” Ann quavered.
“Exactly.” Houston raised his eyes to the roof of the hut. “She was a wild, impetuous young woman then. I think she thought that she could pull it off and heal herself of the wound she took on from me. She bit off more than she could chew. Usually she is very good at taking care of her own needs first, above anyone else’s. She still is.”
“Even if that’s true,” Ann said, feeling the truth of Inca’s goodness in some deep intuitive level of herself, “Inca gave her life for you.”
“No question,” Mike murmured.
“And Grandmother Alaria really did bring her back to life?”
He nodded, then frowned. “Grandmother Alaria is very, very ancient….” Awkwardly, he continued, “Alaria and Adaire are role models here at the village of what we can become, if we follow our heart’s path. But we’re all terribly human, too, and each of us has our own flaws, problems and weaknesses to overcome, first.”
“Yet,” Ann said, “it’s obvious Adaire didn’t want Inca here.”
“That is his karma, something he must work through with her,” Mike explained. “He has yet to do it, or she with him. It’s still an open, bleeding wound between them. Alaria has forgiven Inca, which is why I suspect she allowed her back here to see us just now.” He smiled a little. “Grandfather Adaire isn’t happy about it, but there’s not much he can do. I pray that he and Inca make peace between themselves. The sooner, the better.” He opened his left hand and showed Ann an inch-long white scar in the palm of his hand. “Once I understood what Inca did for me, when I’d mended and finally accepted that I was one of the Jaguar Clan, I sought her out. I asked her what I could do to balance the scales of karma between us. To thank her for fighting for my life and saving me even when I’d given up and was ready to leave this body. She said she wanted me to be her blood brother. She had no family of her own and she wanted to be part of my family.”
“So, you shared one another’s blood?” Ann asked.
“It’s more than that, but yes, it’s one of five powerful ceremonies we have: life, death, birth, joining and adoption. The adoption ceremony is like a linking between our spirits, but not like the marriage that took place between you and me. It’s different, but in some ways similar. She loves me and I love her—sister to brother and vice versa.”
“And Inca came here when she wasn’t supposed to? To see you?”
Houston smiled thinly. “Inca comes and goes where she damn well pleases. She treads where angels and spirit guardians fear to go, believe me. She’s a hellion, a rabble-rouser, a zealot, an extremist, but I love her and admire the hell out of her for what she’s been able to do…for what she is doing to save the rain forests of Brazil.” He opened his hands. “Because she’s so driven, so focused, she’s out of balance. But she doesn’t care. She has the power of the Jaguar Clan in her veins, she has her guardian and she knows how to use—and abuse—the power she has. As she said earlier, she walks a fine line between darkness and light. To her enemies, she’s the devil incarnate. To the people of Brazil, who love her, worship the ground she walks on, she’s known as the jaguar goddess.”
“Like you’re known as the jaguar god here in Peru,” Ann ventured.
“Similar, though I play by the rules set out by the Sisterhood of Light. Inca plays by her own rules. But then, if I’d gone through the living hell she did when she was a child, and later as a young adult, I don’t think I’d be half as good as she is about it. I’m afraid I’d have been very tempted to side with the Brotherhood of Darkness and go after my enemies, one by one, to even the score….”
Sliding her hands over his, Ann said, “I like her, Mike. I don’t care what Inca’s done. When she leaned down and pressed her face to my body, I felt and saw the real her.”
Mike entwined his fingers with hers. “Yes,” he rasped, “you did. That’s only the second time I’ve seen Inca unshield herself completely. I was stunned that she’d do it here, with Adaire present. But…” he gazed at her “…she can see how pure your heart is, how pure you are, and she knew she could entrust herself entirely to you without fear of reprisal. And Inca runs on fear.
“She gave you two gifts. The first was her friendship, her heart, and the second is something that I know you don’t understand—that jaguar claw. It’s half of her protection, something she always carries with her. She gave it to you…to our baby….” He blinked a couple of times, his voice suddenly emotional. “I don’t know about her. She’s so damn unreliable, and yet she turns around and does something like this. I saw and felt her just like you did. We were seeing her good side, the side of her that’s whole and not shattered by what life’s done to her.”
“It was a real privilege, then?”
Mike slowly rose, wanting to continue the conversation but knowing it was time to go. “It was a gift, mi querida. A gift of such unselfish proportions that I would never in a million years have expected it from Inca. I know she put herself on the line for me once, but she has been very protective of herself ever since.” Mystified, Mike held his hand out to Ann and helped her stand. “Inca knows something we don’t. But then, she’s farseeing, like Grandfather Adaire, whether he admits it or not. She’s got tremendous skills and abilities in place—far more than most of the Jaguar Clan members. More than I do, that’s for sure. I know she saw something…and that’s why she gave you that gift, that protection….”
Ann slid her arm around Mike’s waist and leaned on him. She hated to leave, yet it was time. “Then, darling, she’s given the gift not only to me, but to our baby and you.”
Mike caressed her hair. “I know,” he murmured worriedly. “I know….”
Chapter 15
“Ann, you must rest,” Pilar Lachlan pleaded, guiding her over to a rough-hewn chair in the hut where Ann had been seein
g patients all day. “Eight months along and you work like you’re not pregnant at all!”
“I can pretend, can’t I?” Smiling wearily, Ann allowed Pilar, who was married to one of Morgan Trayhern’s ex-employees, Culver Lachlan, to sit her down. It was late afternoon and Ann was tired and thirsty.
As if reading her mind, Pilar, a petite woman, of Quechua and Spanish heritage, poured her a glass of water from a clay pitcher on the table. “You can try, my friend, but I see dark circles under your eyes. I can tell your tiredness goes to your bones.” She frowned and handed Ann the glass. “I know it has been a month without a visit from Mike. I’m sure it’s been hard on both of you. But he’ll be here tomorrow morning.” Reaching out, Pilar patted Ann’s hand.
Ann moved her other hand gently across her very swollen belly beneath the pale pink cotton smock she wore. “I think we’re both excited about seeing Mike. She’s kicking up a storm in here.”
Grinning knowingly, Pilar murmured, “I remember the feeling well. My daughter Rane, who is ten now, was our first child.” She cast a glance toward the straw cradle in the other room of the hut. “Maria is only four months old. She is our second heart child.”
Smiling softly, Ann studied the tiny little baby with reddish hair sleeping soundly in the cradle. “She’s so pretty, Pilar.”
Squeezing her hand, Pilar laughed and said, “Yes. All children born of love are beautiful. Yours will be, too, though you won’t think that when she gets you up every two hours to be breast-fed!”
Ann smiled. She didn’t know what she would have done without Pilar’s help during her pregnancy. Ann had traveled on a monthly circuit to five different villages in the highlands, all within a hundred miles of the nearest fighting that Mike waged against Escovar’s men. During that time, Morgan had put Ann in touch with Culver, who lived in the village of San Cristobal. It was Culver’s wife, Pilar, the daughter of a jaguar priestess, who had not only helped Ann establish a circuit and routine, but had been her right hand all these months, even while she’d been carrying her own baby! Ann had helped Pilar deliver the strapping eight-pound Maria four months earlier, with Culver there to catch his second daughter as she crowned and slid into his large hands. It was in Culver’s hands that Maria drew her first breath. It had been a beautiful birth.
Ann sighed and blotted the perspiration from her brow with a pink linen handkerchief. It was September, and it was hot and humid. She felt the heat more than usual because of her pregnancy. “You need to get home,” she murmured, looking out the door at the angle of the sun on the horizon. Pilar drove ten miles over heavily rutted roads to be with her each day, her daughter in tow on some days. The rest of the time, Rane and Culver took care of Maria, providing Pilar had stored up enough breast milk to make that possible.
To look at Pilar, who wore a blue cotton skirt and white blouse, her black hair long and flowing, one would think she was like any other Indian villager. Yet she was a college graduate and once had worked for the Peruvian government as an undercover spy, as well as for Morgan Trayhern. She and her norteamericano husband had met and fallen in love ten years ago. But it wasn’t until they had rescued Morgan Trayhern from Ramirez’s fortress in the highlands that they finally admitted their love and married. Everyone had said Morgan’s rescue couldn’t be done, but this brave woman had teamed up with a giant of a man—a hardened mercenary—and accomplished the impossible.
Mike had played a role in Morgan’s rescue, too. And he knew Culver and Pilar very well. Ann was glad to have such friends, because Mike was gone more than he was at her side. It had been a terrible period of adjustment for her in many ways. Yet every few nights Mike entered her dreams, and she made love with him at the pool of life, or they walked hand in hand in the Village of the Clouds. Sometimes they sat by the rainbow waterfall and talked over what their day had been like. She loved this added form of communication, another hidden plus to his being a member of the Jaguar Clan. His visits in her dreams didn’t take place every night, because often, he was attacking Escovar’s holdings in dangerous night raids.
“Tonight,” Pilar said, standing and smoothing her skirt, “is the first night of the jaguar moon.”
Ann tilted her head. “That’s a term I’ve never heard before.”
Pilar went over and gently eased her baby daughter from the straw cradle and nestled her against her breast. “The jaguar moon is the seven days before a new moon, when the moon sheds no light on Mother Earth.” She walked back and stood near the table. “It is said that this is the time when the Brotherhood of Darkness is at its greatest strength because the Great Goddess and her symbol, the moon, cannot shed her light of protection across our mother, the earth, and all her relations. It is the time when evil spirits have power over the force of light. The Goddess cannot protect us as this evil stalks our land.”
Ann raised her brows. “I don’t feel anything different,” she said.
Pilar caressed her sleeping daughter’s chubby little face. “Soon I will know more of these things. I am going into training, my grandmother Aurelia told me. I’ll become a member of the Jaguar Clan.”
“What do you do for seven days in the dark of the moon?” Ann teased. “Hide?”
With a chuckle, Pilar shook her head. “My grandmother, who is in her nineties, is a very wise woman. She told me to tell you that when the sun goes down, you must remain inside this hut and meditate or pray. Do things that allow you to go inward. These seven days are a time of introspection, of moving deep within ourselves, to see our truth and to feel our way through this time of darkness. It’s not a time for many external events, or to start new projects. This is, she has told me, a time when a seed is planted in the ground. It’s very dark for that seed in the soil, no?”
“Yes,” Ann said, pouring herself more water, “it certainly is as dark as a night with no moon for that little seed buried in fertile earth.”
“So,” Pilar said, “use this time to plant new seeds of awareness within yourself.” She smiled and raised her hand in farewell. “I will see you tomorrow morning? Mike said he will be here no later than noon?”
Ann nodded. She held up her crossed fingers. “If everything goes according to plan, he’ll helicopter in.”
“And I will do what I can here tomorrow, at your clinic, to help out until he arrives.”
Ann waved goodbye, thankful for Pilar’s care and love. Without her friendship, she knew that she wouldn’t have fared half as well. Sitting at the table, she gazed down at the white-and-purple orchids that Pilar had brought that morning. Though they were beautiful, they had no scent, not like those gorgeous red-and-yellow ones Mike had given to her in Lima. With a sigh, Ann rested her head on her arms on the rough-hewn table. Exhaustion ate at her. How she missed her husband! She never knew when he would visit until a day or two beforehand, because he feared Escovar finding out.
This time, however, was going to be different. Mike was coming to take her to the Village of the Clouds for the last month of her pregnancy. He wanted her to have a month of serenity, with him at her side. Grandmother Alaria, bless her, had given Mike permission to bring her “home.” Ann understood enough to know that the village was indeed a very special place. It was available only to those of the Jaguar Clan, or to a person whose heart was in the right place and who sought healing at the pool of life. Otherwise, one could look at the slopes of the Andes and never even see the village. Ann couldn’t explain how that could be and had given up trying. All she knew was that the village was real, and she was eager to be a part of incredible peacefulness and joy that always resided among the heart-centered people who lived there.
In the distance, Ann heard a car entering the village. Frowning, she wondered if Pilar had forgotten something. Or perhaps it was Mike? Her heart lifted a little at that thought. Sometimes he came by car, with Pablo as his driver.
Ann heard the chickens clucking and squawking in protest as the car slowly came to a halt just outside her hut. She didn’t sense it was Mike and
swallowed her disappointment. She would know if it was him; he always sent his jaguar guardian ahead to tell her of his approach. At those times, Ann had felt the guardian’s warmth and strength like an embrace. Hearing two car doors open and then shut, she straightened up in the chair and waited.
Sometimes people in the surrounding villages brought their sick to her. Some of the farmers who made a better living could afford some old clunker of a car to get around in, instead of traveling by foot or donkey, which was the usual means of transportation up here in the highlands.
A man, very lean and around six feet tall, dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt and tan slacks, stepped into the doorway.
Instantly, Ann went on guard. She met his dark, narrowed eyes as they settled on her.
“Yes?” she asked firmly. “May I help you?”
He suddenly smiled. His thin face lost its hardness.
“Ah, are you…Dr. Barbara Forest?”
Ann nodded. Her “other” name was what she went by. No one knew her real name, except for Pilar and Culver. “Yes, I am. Are you ill?”
“Well.” He laughed apologetically. “I was driving to my land holdings, up east of here, and I suddenly got very dizzy. Very dizzy.” He touched his brow. “They said there was a Red Cross doctor here in the village. So I said, ‘Why not stop?”’ He walked into the hut and stood in front of her table. “What could cause my dizziness, Doctor?” His gaze moved to her left hand, where there was a plain gold wedding ring on her fourth finger.
Ann slowly rose. “If you’ll have a seat, señor, I’ll take your blood pressure and pulse. We’ll see if maybe it’s due to high blood pressure. Are you on any medications right now?” She reached for her black physician’s bag, put the stethoscope around her neck and drew out the blood pressure cuff.
“No…no medications, Doctor. Ahh, I see you are with child. Soon, eh?”
Ann smiled her perfunctory doctor smile as he pulled out the chair and sat down. Something bothered her about this man. He was, for this area, very richly attired. His shirt was not made of cotton, but of silk, and it clung to his rounded chest. As she approached him, she judged him to be in his middle forties. His skin was a pale gold color, and she guessed that he might be of Spain’s Castilian aristocracy. From a very rich family, no doubt. His features were sharp, almost gaunt looking, and his dark brown gaze ferreted around the silent hut.
Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of the Jaguar Page 28