THEY TOOK THE TOP three floors of the casino’s hotel. They put it all on Simon’s AmEx Black, which Aznar found hugely amusing.
They explained to the hotel management that this was all for a top-secret visit by a celebrity, very hush-hush, someone you’d definitely recognize, but please, keep it to yourself.
The Council now milled around in one of the top-floor conference rooms.
David was downstairs in one of the hotel rooms, but Simon sat in a chair at the back of the room, hands cuffed.
“I’m not sure why I’m here,” he said, when Aznar came close. “If you’re looking for a consultant for your plan, I don’t think you can afford my fees.”
Aznar turned and slapped him.
“Shut up,” he said. “You’re only here because Max insists. But that doesn’t mean we can’t hurt you.”
“Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?”
Aznar leaned in close, with a smile that reached all the way to his eyes. He looked around to make sure no one else was listening.
“Because I want you to see how easily I can accomplish everything you’ve always failed to do, of course,” he said. “In less than a week, I will secure the Council’s future, eliminate its greatest enemy, and solve the problem of the Water. Then I’ll kill you. I should have thought that was obvious.”
Simon considered that. “I never liked you, Juan.”
“The feeling is mutual, Simon.”
“Can we please discuss Shako now?” Max asked, calling Aznar away from his fun.
She was still in the back of one of the vans. Max wanted to interrogate her immediately and force the location of her supply of the Water from her.
It was Aznar, surprisingly, who objected.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m happy to torture her. I will gladly begin slicing strips from her skin if you want. It just won’t do any good.”
Max didn’t believe it. “Surely you have more faith in your own skills.”
Aznar rolled his eyes. “I’ve been fighting her, harder and closer, than you or Simon ever have. In Kosovo, I saw her pull a chunk of shrapnel out of her own abdomen and use it as a knife. I hate her more than you can understand, Max, but I know exactly what she is capable of. She will resist. We could remove her spleen and show it to her, and she would still resist. It’s who she is.”
“So, what do we do?”
“Keep her alone. Do not allow any of the men near her. Not even within arm’s length, even to feed her. Lock her in a cage and keep a gun on her at all times. Any one of our men who tries to touch her will die, and she will use the opportunity to escape. You know it’s true.”
“Oh, come now,” Max said. “She’s not a wild animal. She’s still no more than we are.”
“Really? Have you not spent the last five centuries hiding from her? Was that just me, then?”
Max made a face, but Aznar could tell: he’d won the argument.
“What if she doesn’t have any more?” Peter asked. “What if it turns out Shako has run just as dry as we have?”
“Then we have David,” Max answered. “And he will give us whatever we want to avoid anyone else getting hurt.”
“Or maybe you’ll just kill us and take what’s left for yourself,” Sebastian snapped. He’d been angry since Aznar had killed Carlos.
“Carlos forgot his place,” Aznar reminded him. “Don’t forget yours, and you’ll be fine.”
Peter hoisted the briefcase they’d taken from David at the airport. “Why don’t we just take our medicine now? Then we don’t have anything to worry about.”
“You trust Robinton that much?”
“He didn’t know Carlos would deliver him to us. You saw the look on his face.”
“He’s not an idiot. Maybe he planned for this. Maybe there’s some kind of poison,” Aznar said. “It’s what I would have done.”
They all thought about that for a moment.
“Bring him in,” Aznar said to one of his men. “There’s one way to know for sure.”
“And what about Shako?”
Aznar already had the answer in mind. “She said she was willing to see her people die again,” he said. “So let’s call her bluff. Let’s show it to her.”
THEY RELEASED DAVID FROM his cuffs.
Shako watched from a chair. She had come quietly from the parking garage with three of Carlos’s men. It made Max nervous, but all three men were already standing next to her with guns, so he didn’t know what else to do about it.
Aznar had the briefcase open on the long table and the injection guns out.
He summoned David over to the table.
“We’re anxious to try your miracle cure, Dr. Robinton,” Aznar said.
David stared him down. “You’ve made it pretty clear you don’t need my permission.”
“Well, this is our problem. We’re not sure that it’s entirely safe. We suspect you might have done something that could actually harm us rather than help us.”
“That’s not very trusting of you.”
Aznar smiled. “We live in cynical times.”
“So what? You want a guarantee?”
Aznar took one of the injectors from its foam cradle. “I want you to try it first.”
David didn’t say anything. He took the gun, popped the cap off, and shot himself in the arm without hesitating.
He handed the gun back to Aznar. “Feel better now?”
The others waited. Nothing happened.
One by one, the Council took the guns from the table and injected themselves.
They waited again.
“It doesn’t feel like the Water,” Aznar said, smacking his lips, as if trying to rid himself of the aftertaste.
“Simon said it would be different.”
“I told you, Max,” Simon said, from his chair at the back. “It’s not the same thing.”
“That’s true,” David said. “I couldn’t duplicate it exactly. But it works. Aznar should be able to tell you. He saw the girl I gave the first dose.”
Aznar nodded. “I did. She was recovered. Healthy.”
Another moment passed.
“I’m feeling a bit parched,” Simon said from his chair. “And I notice there’s one dose left.”
“No, Simon,” Aznar said. “Let’s see you get old and gray for a change. See how you enjoy it.”
He took a step closer to Shako but still kept a respectful distance.
“Pay attention now,” he said. “This next part is especially for you.”
THEY GATHERED ALL THEIR hired guns, Carlos’s people and Conquest’s. Altogether, they had fifteen men.
Simon and David and Shako were at the back of the room, uncomfortably close, their hands all tied. Shako had David’s cuffs around her ankles now as well. David was tied with a set of plastic zip-cuffs.
They waited. They had no choice.
Aznar stood at the front of the room and addressed his men like a general.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Five miles down the road from this casino is a small town called Cypress Grove. We are going to kill every man, woman, and child who lives there.”
The men Conquest had hired looked around, as if to see if someone was filming this for some obscene joke. Carlos’s men did not move. It was not the worst thing they had ever been asked to do.
No one objected.
“We will take out the cell-phone towers first, then the phone lines coming out of the town. You’ll all be given maps. We will begin at the police station. There shouldn’t be much of a problem after that. This is Florida, however. Most of the homes will have at least one gun. But they won’t be ready for us. No one is ready for something like this.”
He looked at the back of the room.
“Do you hear me, Shako? Do you understand?
We are going to kill them all. Just like we did before. Unless you cooperate. Unless you tell me where I can find the rest of your Water.”
She said nothing.
“You’re a cruel woman, Shako,” Aznar said. “I wonder how many people will have to die before we can soften that hard heart of yours. Perhaps we will start at the elementary school.”
There was a knock at the door. Aznar looked annoyed. He’d just been warming up.
One of Carlos’s men cracked open the door. A young man wearing the uniform of a hotel waiter stood there.
“The management wanted to know if you would like some complimentary champagne.”
Then his eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of the room. “Whoa. That is a serious number of guns, man.”
“Bring him inside,” Aznar barked.
The sicario yanked the boy into the room and shoved him to the carpet, Uzi barrel nudged close to the back of his neck.
Shako sat perfectly still.
Aznar’s eyes flashed at her. He crossed the room to the boy. The kid could not have been much more than nineteen, built like a jock but still baby-faced. He was Seminole, his smooth skin a darker version of Shako’s own.
Aznar waved away the gunman and brought out his own weapon. He pointed it at the boy’s head. “Tell me, young man. Do you live in Cypress Grove?”
The kid looked up, eyes wide. “What?”
“Simple question. You work here part-time? Is this how you make a little extra money after school? Serving drinks to drunken palefaces as they gamble away their Social Security?”
“Yeah,” the kid said. “I mean, yeah, I’m from Cypress Grove.”
Aznar beamed. “Well, then. I think we can begin. What do you say, Shako? Are you willing to save him? Tell us where to find the Water now, and you stop it all.”
Her voice was ice cold. “You won’t spare him. Not even if I tell you.”
Aznar shrugged. “Then it looks like we’ve found our first victim.” He aimed the gun.
The boy began to yell. “No, no, no, man,” the kid said. “I’m not!”
Aznar lifted the gun, amused. “No? You’re not? This isn’t really up for debate, son.”
Then the fear seemed to drop away from the kid. He actually smiled.
“No,” he said. “I’m not that. I’m the distraction.”
There was just enough time for a ripple of unease to spread through the room.
Then everything exploded.
THEY WERE UP ABOVE the ceiling. They were all Seminole.
They dropped straight through the tiles, moving incredibly, impossibly fast.
They fell among the gunmen and started laying waste to every body within reach.
They were unarmed, for the most part. The oldest of them was the same age as the waiter. They were kids. Teenagers going up against a roomful of hardened killers.
It was no contest.
One boy punched a sicario in the throat, turned and snapped the neck of the man next to him. A Conquest thug aimed his gun at the boy and immediately had it taken away, his arm folded back and broken by a girl half his age. Another young man faced off against an experienced Colombian enforcer and knocked the man across the room with a front kick, breaking his spine.
Aznar screamed in rage. He aimed and pulled the trigger of his hand cannon. He blew a chunk out of the wall.
The waiter leaped up to face him. Aznar was fast enough to bring the gun around and pistol-whip the boy across the face.
Then Shako stood and, with a sudden, unbelievable strength, snapped the chains of her cuffs.
Aznar looked as if he couldn’t believe it. He brought his gun up to aim it at her. But she was no longer where he was aiming. Instead she was coming up on his side, moving too fast.
She leaped and brought her heel against the side of his head.
There was a sickening crunch.
Aznar’s mouth was still wide open, even though he didn’t make a sound. The gun dropped from his hand.
He seemed to fall in slow motion.
Shako landed and then leaped again. She came down on his neck.
Even with the gunfire, the slick pop-and-crack could be heard through the room.
Aznar lay on the floor, his head now at an unnatural angle to his body.
Then it was over.
Aznar looked up, mouth working but making no noise, as Shako towered over him.
“No,” he said. “Not like this.”
“Were you expecting more?” Shako asked him as the light began to dim in his eyes. “Your mistake. You always thought you mattered more than you did. But you were not my greatest enemy. You were a cockroach. Hard to kill, but in the end, just another insect. There is no clash of champions. There is no final battle. There is just you, dying, alone.”
Aznar began to choke. Shako made a face and stepped on his throat.
A moment later, there was nothing but silence.
Simon and David were still seated, slightly in shock, mere witnesses to all the carnage that had been delivered with such precision.
The men of the Council were all surrounded by at least three of the Seminole youths. They were kids. But they moved with superhuman grace and power.
Simon recognized it at last. They had all drunk the Water.
Shako pointed at David.
“Cut him loose,” she said.
“Yes, Cvcke,” one of the boys said, and went to David with his knife to cut his hands free from the zip-cuffs.
Simon recognized the word. It was different from the Uzita language, altered by centuries and different tribes, but still had the same root.
“Cvcke?” he said. “Why would they call you Mother?”
Shako said nothing.
David stood up, looking weak and unsettled. Simon wondered if he’d been hurt, but there were no visible wounds.
He’d figured it out first.
“Because she is their mother, Simon,” David said. “She’s the mother to all of them.”
CHAPTER 34
FLORIDA
1528
WHEN THE SLAUGHTER of the Uzita was finally done, Shako slipped from the tree and quietly escaped back into the brush. She knew she had to move quickly if she wanted to survive.
She raced back to her camp and took everything she could carry. Then she went to the cave.
At the Fountain, there was no time for ceremony. The power was not in the words, she knew. It was in the Water. And she was beyond forgiveness anyway. She filled several skins with the Water. Then she leaped into the pool herself, drinking deeply as she swam, letting the Water soak into her, saturate her, fill her up inside and out.
Her old self had died with the rest of her village. But when she emerged from the pool, she was reborn. Physically, she was stronger and smarter and now more durable than perhaps any human being had ever been.
She finally understood what her father had been trying to say. The future demanded hard choices at times. She carried that future now, and keeping it safe meant giving up on revenge, at least for a while.
Hirrihigua would not let her return to the tribe because she was carrying Simon’s child. She was tainted in his eyes, and so she was exiled. She never strayed too far, because she’d always hoped to be accepted back someday. She’d hoped her father could find a way to forgive her.
So she was nearby when Simon and his kind killed them all.
She knew she would need every gift, every advantage, for the purpose of her new life. She would hunt down everyone who participated in the slaughter of her people and make them pay in kind.
First, however, she ran. She ran because she was still outnumbered, and she didn’t yet know how to kill them all. She had to plan.
But, most important, she could not let the last of her tribe die.
She had to fin
d a safe place to have her child.
SHE TRAVELED NORTH. SHE found other tribes there, who were far away from the ships landing on the southern coasts. At first she was greeted with suspicion. But then they saw what she could do. Her strength was greater than their most powerful men. She could heal the sickest of them, although she saved that for the young and the children. She carried steel, which most of them had never seen before. And she had all the secrets of the Water Clan to teach them, learned when she was still just a girl with the Uzita. In time, she held a place of reverence among her new people.
Her son, when he was born, was treated like a prince. He would become a great leader, even if his skin was much paler than anyone had ever seen before, and his features far more delicate than the other boys’.
The other members of Shako’s new tribe assumed it was because he’d been touched by the same strangeness that allowed Shako to live without aging and to do so many other things.
In a way, that was true, Shako supposed. He was growing in her belly when she sank into the Water and came out again. But she recognized other things in her son that had nothing to do with her. His intellect, his ambition, and his talent for war—all of those were gifts from his father.
She didn’t discourage him in any of those things. She knew what was coming. And her new family needed a warrior to lead them and protect them.
When her son was almost twenty, she left them all behind. This was only a short stop for her, a place and a time to rest. She had her own tasks ahead.
But she never forgot them, and they never forgot her. Even as they moved south, into the lands once occupied by the Uzita, the Apalachee, the Timucua, and the Mocoso. Most of those tribes were dead now, killed by either the Spaniards or the diseases the Spanish brought with them. The stragglers and survivors were welcomed by Shako’s people.
Eventually, this band of Creek forged their own identity. They traded with and occasionally fought the Europeans who kept coming to Florida. The Spanish were always slightly afraid of them.
They called them the Seminole, a corruption of the Spanish term for “runaway,” or “wild one.”
And among them, there was always a select group of the finest warriors, young men and sometimes women who represented the tribe’s future. In secret, they would travel to a place in the wilderness. There they would be taken down a path that led into a tunnel, a tunnel that opened into a cave the size of a warehouse.
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