River of Eden

by Tara Janzen

  It had been six months since the last time he’d been with the Indians, too long, perhaps, and he didn’t want Tutanji to make any mistake about who and what he still was, the man who had run the shaman’s jaguar to ground and cut the cat’s fangs out of his skull, the man who had killed the shaman’s anaconda. There was blood on his hands, powerful pasuk blood, and Tutanji forgot it at his peril, especially where Annie was concerned.

  “The Dakú do not sell their women,” he said, his voice utterly emotionless, his gaze fixed on the paper Tutanji had given him.

  She looked like hell in the photograph. Even in the poorly made black-and-white copy, he could tell she’d been hit. Her cheek was bruised. What he thought was blood matted her hair, and even though the picture had been cut off just below her shoulders, she didn’t seem to be wearing a shirt—details he’d missed in Santa Maria.

  “She is not Dakú,” Tutanji said, the words coming out softened on the edges, the result of many missing teeth.

  “She is mine, and I am Dakú.” He brought his gaze up to meet the old man’s. “You have seen the truth of my blood. It is the same as yours.” Through a yagé vision, they had watched their histories twine together, backward to an ancient Dakú ancestor. Neither of them had doubted what they’d seen at the time. Will wasn’t going to let the old man doubt it now. When Tutanji had gone looking in the forest for a white devil apprentice, it was not a stranger he’d been looking for—and the shaman knew it.

  “You’ve had many women on your boat and claimed none of them in all these years.”

  “I have claimed this one.” And a fine mess he’d made of it, losing her on the river to an old friend who wanted to sell her to Corisco Vargas for ten thousand reais. Where in the hell, he wondered, had Tutanji gotten hold of a wanted poster while the ink was practically still wet? Vargas had worked fast. There had been no wanted posters in Barcelos.

  “No, little brother,” the old man disagreed. “No one has claimed this woman. She is still wild.”

  “Wild or not, she is mine,” he said, knowing by Dakú standards Annie was wild. Hell, even by his own standards she was pushing the envelope—not such a bad thing considering that they’d ended up in a camp with a bunch of Indians who had been pushed to the edge of desperation by forces neither their shamans nor their warriors could control.

  That, of course, was where he was supposed to have come in, and a damn lousy job he’d done of it so far. He’d been fooled by the pace of life on the river, fooled into believing time ran on forever and he could take as much as he wanted.

  His glance strayed back to the wanted poster in his hand.

  He’d been wrong. He should have taken care of Vargas a year ago, before the bastard had gotten his hands on a blond-haired Wyoming botanist who’d been minding her own business making the plant find of the century.

  But a year ago, he hadn’t known it was Vargas that he wanted. The mine bosses on the Cauaburi had been reporting to a man named Fernando, and the connection between Vargas and Fernando had taken a long time to make—too damn long.

  Without Fat Eddie, he might still be looking.

  “Merda,” he whispered under his breath.

  She hadn’t had the scar on her right temple before Yavareté. The fresh wound showed up in the photograph as a black line on her pale, frightened face.

  He forced himself to take a deep breath, looking for a calm that wouldn’t be his until Corisco Vargas was dead.

  No shirt.

  Blood on her face.

  Yes. He would kill Vargas.

  “The Dakú have never wanted white man’s money or trade goods before,” he said, glancing back up at the old man. “Why now?”

  “Kiri and Wawakin, Shatari and Mete, they are all gone, along with many others. We will buy them back with the money we get for the white woman.” Tutanji spoke in the punctuated rhythms of the Dakú language. “Look around you and see all the missing faces. We hear their cries at night in our dreams, but we cannot find them.”

  Will had already noticed how many people were missing from the tribe, and wondered if they’d stayed at another camp. If they’d truly all been stolen, things had gotten far worse in the last six months than he’d imagined.

  “Buy them back from whom?”

  “The pishtacos,” Tutanji said, using a Quechua word for white men who came into the rain forest and killed Indians to extract their fat. They were a horror to the Dakú, whether they existed or not, and Will wasn’t putting any money on it. Not even Corisco Vargas would kill Indians for their slim resources of body fat. There simply wasn’t enough to make it worth anybody’s while. Anybody who wanted human fat would be better off in Manaus, lying in wait on the Praça de Matriz.

  “Pishtacos? Or garimpeiros?” he asked.

  “Are they not one and the same?” Tutanji said. “They raid. They steal. They kill. Then they run to their motored boats and fly up the rivers with our people in chains.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “To the mines. A Tukano man saw many Indians and caboclos at the Cauaburi mines. A hundred, he said, Tukano, Desana, Dakú, Yanomani. The mine bosses work them until they are broken, the women in their whorehouses and the men in the pits, then they put them in cages, cages built around a small gold mountain.”

  The altar at Reino Novo. Nothing Tutanji could have said could have alarmed him more. A hundred caged Indians and caboclos, Corisco Vargas, and the Night of the Devil were a combination for disaster of nightmarish possibilities.

  Sweet Jesus, what was the man thinking of doing?

  “The dark moon is coming, little brother,” the shaman went on. “The woman may be our only hope. Ten thousand reais will buy many people and keep them from being slaves.”

  “No.” He pinned the shaman with his gaze, fearing far worse than slavery for the captives and Annie. “Vargas wants the woman for herself. The money he’s offering means nothing to him. He won’t trade or sell Indians for her.”

  Tutanji stabbed at the fire with the stick, his face set in grim lines. “No, brother. In this you are wrong. All white men want money. They tear the world apart and burn down the forest for money. This is true.” He stabbed the fire again, raising a shower of sparks, his voice rough with the forceful expulsion of his words. “I speak the truth.”

  It was true, but it wasn’t the only truth.

  “And all men want power,” Will said. “There is power in sacrifice, in a man killing his enemies. The woman is the enemy of Corisco Vargas, the demon who takes our ancestors’ gold, the demon who has stolen the Dakú and Yanomani, the Tukano and Desana. He will not give up the Indians or her for money, not when he already makes himself rich on Dakú gold.”

  He held the old man’s gaze as his words sank in, watching the subtle play of emotions on the weathered and lined face. The shaman had magic, powerful magic in the Otherworld, but Vargas was in this world. It was why the shaman had taken Will that long-ago night.

  With a grunt, Tutanji looked away.

  “Can you take me to where they keep their boats?” he asked.

  “Yes. It is a long day from here. Two with the women and children.”

  “Then send them north with the warriors.” They didn’t have time for women and children. “We will go alone.”

  “And the white-haired woman?” the old man asked.

  “She’s mine,” he said succinctly. “She goes where I go.”

  The old man accepted his ultimatum with a sage nod. “The sucuri left your boat. It was best that I brought her with us, even if we don’t get the money. She wasn’t safe alone.”

  Hell, she wasn’t safe anywhere, Will thought, and certainly not where she was now, practically in Vargas’s lap with Fat Eddie’s men and God knew who else on their trail. He’d tried to get her out of it, but he was beginning to believe that in some inescapable way, Annie was as much a part of what was happening as he was—an unpalatable truth confirmed by Tutanji’s next words.

  “I recognized her, you
know, when I saw her on your boat.”

  “Recognized her?”

  “From before, when she was here and killed the monkey. She is wild, this woman you have taken, with a spirit anaconda of her own. She needs much working on.” Tutanji stabbed the fire again, and more sparks rose into the night.

  Unlike most tribes, the Dakú were truly nomadic. If Annie had spent any time at all on the Cauaburi when she’d collected her orchid, it was likely that they had known about her.

  But Will was more interested in what else the old man had said.

  “She has a spirit anaconda?”

  “Yes. She is wawekratin, a sorceress, I think. It could have been her snake on your boat all this time.”

  Nonplussed, Will could only stare. “I thought it was your snake on the Sucuri all this time.”

  The old man looked up from the fire, surprised. “You killed my snake, little brother. Don’t you remember?”

  Of course he did, but sorcery and the metaphysical Otherworld always left him a little short of firm footing. The snake he’d killed had been real—powerful, bloody, and real. And the snake on his boat had been more of a vision, albeit one he’d never seen for himself. The way he understood things, their different corporeal states didn’t necessarily make them mutually exclusive.

  Obviously, he’d been wrong, which left him to wonder why Annie’s snake had been on his boat these last two years, protecting him, and why it had left just when the two of them needed protecting the most—questions he was unlikely to get answered anytime soon.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me at the boat?” He was curious to know. “You must have known I would return.”

  “I did wait for you.” If anything, the shaman seemed a bit affronted by the question. “Didn’t you see me there in the water, making all the noise and distracting your enemies?”

  The caiman.

  “That was you?”

  “Yes. Yes.” A toothless grin spread across the old man’s face. “That was me. A giant caiman.”

  “Did you make the storm in Manaus? The rain that moved faster than the wind?”

  “Yes, yes. That was me.”

  Somehow, Will didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  “You should take your woman to the river,” the shaman advised. “Wash her in the warm water and put your seed inside her to calm her down. Do this every day and feed her only fish and fruit. Then she won’t be so wild.”

  And according to Dakú wisdom, that would be that. Will couldn’t fault the old man’s reasoning. The Dakú considered all women inherently wild and kept tame only by regular doses of their husband’s semen.

  But he didn’t think Annie would concede him or his semen that much influence.

  No, he thought, that was a long shot at best, a damn long shot.

  The Dakú also stole women when they could, and Will didn’t doubt for a minute that Annie had been as much stolen as saved, no matter who she was, how much bounty was on her, or where she’d been found.

  “I have run her hard to wear her out,” Tutanji went on. “She shouldn’t give you too much trouble, if you want to take her now.”

  Will glanced back to where Annie was sleeping, and had to agree with Tutanji. She didn’t look as if she could put up much of a fight, but that wasn’t exactly the way he’d planned on making love to her, when she was too tired to give a damn.

  Hell, he was too tired to give a damn. He’d only had an hour’s rest here and there for the last four days. The hammock looked almost as good to him as the woman inside it.

  Almost.

  It had been a long time since he’d shared a hammock or a bed with a woman.

  “Go,” Tutanji said, rising to his feet. “Go, and in the morning, take her down to the river. She will be more content.”

  So would he, but that didn’t mean it was going to happen. In the short week he’d known her, contentment hadn’t been anywhere on the priority list.

  Will watched the old man leave, then looked around the hastily prepared camp. Only the fires proclaimed it a place of men. The shelters and the hammocks were nearly invisible against the backdrop of shadows and tangled vegetation, no more than cradles of leaves and lianas turned with a deft hand out of the forest itself.

  Climbing into Annie’s hammock, Will considered the shaman’s advice. It hadn’t been lightly given. Dakú men took the taming of women very seriously, as did Dakú women. More than sex, it was the order of things, a claiming of responsibility, a way of taking care.

  Slipping his arm around her, he rested her head on his shoulder and relaxed, letting her settle against him, and nearly was content.

  The tree frogs had grown silent, allowing the other night sounds to be heard: the distant flowing of the river, the descending notes of a nightjar’s song. He could smell the leaves on the trees, the rich greenness glossed by the fire’s smoke. Rain was coming before dawn, building in the clouds coursing across the moon. Six months ago, he’d drunk Tutanji’s yagé and seen the serpent vision again. The moon tonight was a portent from that vision, a silver scythe cradling Venus through streams of mist, heralding the coming darkness of the new moon.

  He wanted to take Annie and run.

  He wanted to keep her safe.

  He wanted to kiss her—and when she sighed and settled in even closer to him, he did just that, sliding his fingers through her hair, brushing it back off her forehead, and lowering his mouth to press against her skin. She was warm, and soft, and so very sweet to hold, her body sleepily pliant. He’d found her before anything too awful had happened, and for tonight, that was enough.

  Or would have been, if she hadn’t rearranged herself, sliding her leg up between his.

  Interesting, he thought. Damned interesting and bound to get even more so, if she didn’t move her leg someplace other than where she had it.

  She did, but only to make things worse—or better, depending on how much he thought he could take. With her now lying half across him, her thigh pressing up against his groin, he was ready to say to hell with contentment. Then she sealed his fate, running her hand up his chest and bringing it slowly back down, her fingers absently tracing the ridges of his muscles.

  It was heaven, pure and simple, her soft breasts cushioned against his rib cage, her hand warm on his skin, and her thigh creating just enough pressure to make arousal hum throughout his entire body.

  He kissed her forehead again, then the bridge of her nose, and in an act of unconscious acquiescence, she tilted her face toward his. The offer was irresistible. Knowing she wasn’t quite cognizant of what she was doing, he gently touched his mouth to hers, and when her tongue instinctively came out to taste him, he discovered he wasn’t nearly as tired as he’d thought.

  Perfect.

  He opened his mouth wider, hoping for more of her, and she did not disappoint, licking at his lips and teeth in a delicate exploration, making him wet, and playing inside his mouth with a lazy indulgence that told him she was still at least half asleep.

  As a kiss it was artless seduction, his body awakening to hers in quickly escalating degrees, the muscles she lingered over tightening at her touch. Her unconscious desire fascinated him. He wasn’t even sure she knew it was him whose mouth she was mating, but her body knew. He recognized every move she made, every response from when they’d kissed before, right down to the way her hand slid down his chest and over his abdomen toward his groin, leaving a trail of heat in its wake—but this time she didn’t stop. She went the extra inch and then some.

  He stifled a groan, his body slowly arcing into her hand. In the back of his mind, he remembered they weren’t that far away from the next palm-thatched lean-to, but he wasn’t going to stop her. Everything she was doing, he wanted more of.

  Yes. His hips rose again to meet her, a primal reaction as her fingers wrapped around him, the soft warmth of her palm sheathing him.

  God, it was too good.

  He captured her mouth with his own, filled his hand with her breast, indulging himse
lf in her softness, the taste and feel of her a powerful catalyst to his arousal. He’d been hard since her first kiss, and now he was hard and aching, too hot to be teased, and not yet hot enough. He wanted every stroke of her hand doing to him exactly what it was doing, and through the haze of his thoughts, he knew he wanted to be inside her when he came.

  But, God, she was all over him, languorously, with drowsy, seductive imprecision, the catch of her breath in his ear, damp licks of her tongue along the side of his neck, her teeth grazing his chin—and her hand. She was going to devour him and take him right over the edge without ever waking up—and he would have let her do it, if he hadn’t wanted more.

  He flipped the button on her shorts and slid the zipper down, and with a wonderfully unselfconscious grace, she moved to help, lazily sliding one leg out to free herself. It was a haphazard business at best, but she was wet, and ready, and more than willing when he pushed up between her legs and slid inside, her breath coming in short, panting gasps against his shoulder that went into overdrive when he slipped his fingers into her soft folds and gently, so gently, rubbed the soft, sweet place on her body designed for her pleasure—and for his. He wanted his tongue on her there, promised himself that next time he would lick her until she melted into his mouth. Just the thought of it added intensity to what he was feeling, made him thicker, harder. He thrust once, moving his mouth to hers to kiss her deep, and her body tensed. Holding her to him with his other hand, he thrust again, losing himself in her soft, wet heat, and she started coming undone. He thrust again and caught her cry with his mouth over hers, her contractions rippling down the length of his shaft, her climax tautening her like a bow. Again, and every muscle in his lower body tightened and pulsed with the need for release. Again, and he jerked against her, shattering into ecstasy, pouring himself inside her.

  Minutes later, he slipped free of her body, and still felt as if he’d been hit by a freight train. Annie had fallen asleep on top of him and was softly snoring in his ear, completely oblivious to the fact that they’d just set some sort of world record for a quickie in a hammock with one partner asleep.