As though summoned by her thought, a small cockroach crawled through the door’s keyhole and then along the back of the room’s only chair. La cucaracha paused midway along the chair’s back and then reared up on his hind legs. He seemed to sneer at her—Buenas noches, Senorita Gringa. Welcome to the first of many perreras where the unwanted dogs of the earth go. I am sure you will be with us para siempre—forever—now. My million cousins and I shall enjoy getting to know you, sleeping with you, sharing your food, swimming in the same cesspools. I shall return inmediatamente and tell them of your arrival. We shall have a party tonight, si? Then he sang: Porque necessito marijuana que fumar.
La cucaracha might have said more, but Corazon chose that moment to eat him, and since the cockroach had been mocking her, Ninon let her cat enjoy his snack. She wasn’t crazy about his new eating habits, but she didn’t think the bug would hurt him. After all, he had taken to eating rock scorpions last year, even though they had enough poison in them to euthanize all nine of his lives, and the island’s indestructible wild goats too. He was also missing his favorite treat of frozen green peas and inclined to be cranky about changes in his diet.
Ninon watched while he ate, welcoming even that disgusting distraction. The bug dinner didn’t lasted long, though, and she and Corazon soon returned to brooding in the quiet that was as deep as the hush of a cathedral, but one where perhaps murder was to be done.
She had known all along that she had to eventually stop running from Saint Germain and formulate some definite plan for dealing with her nemesis. The man now called himself Ramon Latigazo, a supposed real estate tycoon, but she knew he was really the son of the Dark Man. Yes, Ramon or Saint Germain, he was the son of the serpent who had offered her the fruit from the tree of unhappiness. It was he who chased her, not the Dark Man himself. She had to remember that. The son was not the father. The Dark Man had died on Christmas Day last year in New York at the hands of Lord Byron—and many blessings upon the poet for ridding the world of that insane beast. Her present nemesis had other strengths and weaknesses.
The next step of their deadly dance could be up to her—if she chose to take it. That was a dreadful thought, but her chances of survival would improve if she went on the offensive, if she took a stand.
The one good thing about Saint Germain’s many attempts on her life was that Ninon no longer felt guilty for planning on ridding the world of him. There was no time for guilt about his murder. It was self-defense. Her brain, the storehouse of several lifetimes of knowledge, applied logic, and bruising memories, was failing. And she was beginning to feel blurred around the edges. Her ability to project a confident image, to control her expression and hide her superior reflexes, was bleeding away in a painful trickle. Every day she appeared less human. Her lungs, too, were beginning to relapse into their diseased state. But that was no longer what drove her to fight Saint Germain and seek this darker gift of Mexico, this gift that would surely damn her if she were not already condemned. No, she sought to renew her strength not to save her life or end her pain, but because she had to stop Saint Germain before he unleashed whatever new evil he planned to loose on the world. That he meant the world harm she did not doubt.
And she would do it as soon as she was strong enough.
Or before, if she never were truly strong enough.
In the next room the bedsprings began to creak and the filtered sound of at least one party’s lust seeped through the cracked plaster. The other party remained silent, so silent that Ninon wondered if she might be of the rubber blow-up variety. She listened with slight interest as the man began exhorting his manhood in original if graphic terms, some of which she had not previously heard—at least not in Spanish. Two long minutes later the moaner climaxed with a self-congratulatory yodel that would have impressed Slim Whitman, though it made Corazon sneer. Ninon sympathized. She had nothing but contempt for a job done hastily and sloppily.
Why did you do it? the voice asked suddenly. Why did you take the dark gift from Dippel?
Ninon turned from the wall and shrugged. At the time, it had seemed the right choice to make, to accept that astonishing offer of everlasting beauty. So many of her friends had died young of terrible diseases. Many more were disfigured by pox, their personalities as marred as their flesh while their chances of marriage were destroyed and the bitterness and loneliness infected their souls. The year she had succumbed to Dippel’s plan, the hand of death had been suspended over her neighborhood in Paris, striking out at almost every household with plague. Her own health had been failing when the Dark Man appeared at her door on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. His offer of long, healthy, beautiful life had seemed the answer to a prayer. He hadn’t told her that it was life everlasting, though. Or about the lightning, the Saint Elmo’s fire—that heart-stopping fire she would have to bathe in every half century in order to sustain herself but whose power to heal would slowly fade. He hadn’t told her that she would live forever, her brain slowly slipping away unless she would commit the sin of suicide.
Sin? Do you really believe in that anymore?
Yes, a part of her still did. You could take the girl out of the Church, but you couldn’t take the Church out of the girl. That was sadly all too true. As a child she had lived in a world of religious constraints that had threatened to repress her soul. Mass three times a day and hours of prayer in between. She had finally sought to escape the constant boredom by living with her hedonistic father, and then through a traditional male education that exercised her active mind. Neither act of societal defiance had set her truly free, because though one unchained her body and the other her mind, neither could unchain her soul. One parent or other had to win the tug-of-war for their child’s philosophy, and she had decided on music, mathematics, learning—and, yes, hedonism—over life in the convent. But in spite of her decision, her mother’s early teachings had deep barbs that she felt in her heart, an anchor to her past. She worked diligently to rid herself of her mother’s indoctrination, but some clung like burrs in shoelaces. Memories of childhood could be the cruelest of taskmasters, tyrants of the mind that refused to be dethroned. She might love God, but she also feared Him.
Her decision to visit the magician at Gentilly had been her last naive effort at external escape from that parental tug-of-war. Shortly after her encounter with him, she had learned one of life’s most valuable lessons: The things that constrained her were within, and no one on the outside could ever set her free as long as she chose to limit to herself with others’ expectations.
Mea culpa. But Christ-on-a-crutch! Who’d have ever guessed it would come to this?
Cherie, I wish you would not use American English to swear. It’s vulgar.
Ninon looked at her cat, who had two tiny wiggling legs still sticking out of his mouth, and she thought: Now that is vulgar.
“You need a napkin, my pet.”
Corazon just licked his lips and then belched delicately. He returned his eyes to the oil lamp he watched with fascination. He always had enjoyed candle-gazing, especially at night when there was no moon. He was the perfect familiar. She shared his need of light that evening. Night was vast in the desert, far larger than it was in the city. But even this darkness did not provide adequate hiding places for them. They were in a dark part of the world now where dark things with dark sight dwelled, and she also liked to keep a night-light on.
Not that she needed external light that night. Ninon looked at the shutters where slices of moonlight cut the darkness. Unwillingly, she thought again of Saint Germain. He had a smile like the moon, only it went through no dimming phases, so it shone almost endlessly on everyone around him. Like the moon, it was beautiful and cold. People did not notice the cold, so dazzled were they by his physical presence. And what his beauty could not seduce, his drugging voice could. He was charming, he was handsome. And he was soulless. In so many ways, he was worse than his father, who had at least been drawn to the dark arts out of scientific curiosity.
&nbs
p; He scares you badly, the voice said. More than the father.
She had seen the Dark Man only once in the last century, but that had been enough to repulse her. The first thing she had noted about Saint Germain’s father was that he called to mind rotten cheese. He had certainly been malodorous to her heightened sense of smell, a faint stench leaking out through the pores in his waxy skin. His flesh itself has been yellow like rancid tallow, falling into the small craters that pocked his face and hands. It was as though he were rotting from the inside out.
Still, as bad as that was, the father wasn’t half so scary as his beautiful son. That beautiful, crazy son. And he was evil.
As was she. Well, she was slightly insane and very beautiful. She couldn’t say if she was evil. It was the burden of the condition; most evil things were not self-aware. They did not know that they were wicked.
Of course he frightens me. Seeing him is like looking into a dark reflection of myself, a warning of what I might have become. This wasn’t thought with vanity. Ninon had long since abandoned any pride at the famous beauty and charm that had made her the toast of Paris for more than three-quarters of a century. Like Saint Germain, she too had been a gifted artist and musician, lauded—even lionized—by society. They had both been courted for their opinions and their ability to sway others.
That explanation was also not the entire truth, though. She feared Saint Germain mostly because once he had nearly seduced her. And it wasn’t until she had looked into his eyes, unveiled by a premature moment of triumph over breaking through her reserve, that she had understood that he wanted more than her body, wealth, and secrets. He wanted her soul. To do what with it, she could only guess.
What a fool she’d been! How blind!
Her inner voice sighed.
Well, there is some use in crying over milk that is spilt. You should sleep now. Aleister is standing guard.
Corazon, she corrected. Aleister died in the fire, and so did I.
Ninon awoke resolved. The time had come to make a stand.
She and her cat left the hotel early, declining breakfast but filling up the Jeep and its two spare gas cans. Smelling the gasoline made her think of the fire that had nearly killed her and how wretched she’d looked with singed hair.
You’re not entirely sane today, are you?
Ninon laughed grimly and then started to cough. Laughter was not the appropriate response to such a question, but it was one she seemed to be making more and more often as her control slipped away.
Is this plan wise? The paper said that the local police were holding practice drills in the area. Supposedly looking for drug dealers, but who knows? There are rumors that the United States military knows about you too. All of you, Dippel’s experiments.
Ninon shrugged. That could be true, since the U.S. government had raided Byron’s high-rise. But anything they gleaned would hardly be knowledge that the U.S. would share with the Mexican Federales. No one sensible would risk talking openly about Frankenstein-like experiments to corrupt officials in a foreign land. And even in the U.S. there were very few loonies with the kind of security clearances that could be had only by generals and tin gods who would hear and believe such a story. At least this was how Ninon comforted herself. Her protection was the utter ridiculousness of the truth.
She laughed again, the sound without humor.
It was good that there was no traffic around on these back roads, because she wasn’t in any mood to slow down or practice caution. Anymore. Yes, she had awoken clearer than ever about the where if not the why of her next destination. She and Corazon were going to the land of eternal white, Cuatro Cienegas, to find a murderous god who lived in a cave and traveled on an underground river where he collected souls. That sounded insane, of course. And dangerous. But she was running out of options. People said it was better to deal with the Devil you knew—but they were wrong. Sometimes the Devil you hadn’t had dealings with was the better choice. Especially if you needed special powers, the kind that would help you take on a enemy who could practice magic and summon demons. At the very least this god could call her a storm.
Demons? But were such things real? Could she trust her perceptions? Might they be just monsters of the mind?
They’re real enough, she assured herself. And she needed help against them and the man who sent them.
They say, cherie, that there is no free lunch. Best think of this. Why should the god Smoking Mirror help you?
Ninon sighed. I know there will be a price. Believe me, I know. But whatever it costs, I’ll pay.
She had no choice.
Ninon took up the quill and then wrote quickly:
Let no vain hope come now and try,
My courage strong to overthrow;
My age demands that I should die,
What more can I do here below?
This would serve as a farewell. She wished that it was possible to spare her friends grief at her supposed death, but it was time to leave. She could no longer disguise the fact that she was not aging.
And this might be her death in truth, should the lightning fail to revive her. It was her third time to submit herself to its fiery embrace, and each healing had been slower than the last, her heart and brain ever less eager to recover. There could be no long delay of this process either, for she knew how swiftly age could come upon her. In less than a month, her hair would fall out, her joints knot with arthritis, her vision would fail, and her lungs would fill with water. Lifetimes of delayed disease would gnaw on her innards. But she probably would not die.
A part of her wanted to give in and end it all. But was that suicide? If God had not intended for her to live, would he have sent the Dark Man her way? Surely she was intended for some important purpose.
She had lived ninety years, surrounded by the finest philosophical and religious minds, but still had no answer to this question. So, she would put it all in God’s hands. If he willed it, she would live. If not, she would die in the fire.
Ninon laid down her pen and sighed.
Where the carcass is, there shall the eagles be gathered together.
—Matthew 24:28
The greatest potential for control tends to exist at the point where action takes place.
—Ninon de Lenclos
No initiate was welcome if he could not heal—aye, recall to life from apparent death those who, too long neglected, would have died of lethargy.
—H. P. Blavatsky on the cult of St. Germain, from The Secret Doctrine
CHAPTER THREE
The dirt road she traveled might have been a relic from the days of Cortez, or at least Pancho Villa, and the longer Ninon traveled it, the more she felt that she was driving into the past instead of the future—and she wasn’t at all certain it was where she wanted to go. She also wished that her Buns of Steel DVD had actually given her a solidmetal butt. Along with a cast-iron bladder.
This land was closer to the Bronze Age than any New Age, and the old gods felt closer, too, probably because people still needed them and their call was answered by an artesian upwelling of power that seethed out of soil watered with their sweat and blood. The idea of wanting to be with these gods was alien, but she supposed that there was some comfort to be had in seeing aspects of your gods in their animal totems wandering your backyard. Her own bodiless deity, who only visited churches and cathedrals, felt uncomfortably far away out here in the desert.
In the blinking of a tired eye, the dirt track filled with birds, became a bowling alley of poultry with a death wish, which was Corazon’s favorite kind of meal and had him meowing excitedly. Not sharing her pet’s desire for a bloody strike, Ninon applied the brakes, forcing the cat to put twenty more holes in both the upholstery and the dashboard where he was leaning. Disgusted at her cowardice, he spat once and then leapt from the car’s open window to fetch his now-fleeing lunch.
“Corazon—merde! The dry crunchies aren’t that bad!” Ninon killed the engine and jumped out after him. She shoved her pistol in
to the back of her jeans. Possibly there was some law about abandoning a vehicle in the middle of the road, but she was willing to risk it. “Come back here, you black-hearted cat,” she called, but softly. The sudden and utter quiet demanded a lowered voice.
Her eyes itched, tired of the dust and from the soft brown contacts she always wore these days. The dust aggravated her lungs as well, causing her to cough more frequently.
She trudged after the cat. Over the crest of a white gypsum dune capped with stunted conifers, she came across a small pond—a poza—colored the deep brown of coffee and rimmed with dead golden grass that curved away like eyelashes on a coquette. A nice selection of water lilies bloomed in the tar-colored water.
Cuatro Cienegas. She was there.
The lilies weren’t the only nice thing in the water. Or, she amended while standing in the tree’s small shadow, not the only beautiful thing. The other creature—while splendid—might not be nice at all.
The man was tall, with dark hair and pale skin that glistened with either sweat or water. Perhaps it was a reflection of the golden grass that partially screened him, but it almost looked as if he were covered head to toe in gold paint. He was lean, carrying no extra baggage on his frame. He was also not an indio—at least, not full-blooded. Spain’s tentacles had reached far into Mexico while searching for gold, but Ninon doubted it was the conquistadors this man had to thank for his pale skin and height. Perhaps the stork had gotten lost while making his delivery and left this baby under a cactus instead of the correct cabbage patch in Iowa.
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