River of Eden

by Tara Janzen

  “And you will?” he asked, sounding deliberately doubtful.

  “Given time and a lab. Yes.”

  It was an option he hadn’t considered, having her work for him instead of dying for him. The idea was certainly intriguing.

  “What about Travers?”

  Her expression altered ever so subtly, and Corisco wanted to chide her for being so transparent. She’d been less easily read in Yavareté, more of a challenge, but love had a tendency to soften one’s defenses as well as one’s brain.

  “He’s brilliant. Far more so than me.”

  “So I should keep him and kill you?” he asked with feigned casualness, and was delighted by the frightened ambivalence he got for a response. It was his forte, really, torturing with chaos, churning people up and turning them inside out, usually metaphorically, though once he’d actually done it.

  Ah, but he and Annie—they’d had such a time of it in Yavareté. Stripping her down for Fernando had been his only mistake. He should have kept her all to himself. Under the influence of the uyump blood potion, she’d nearly glowed, even in the dank gloom of the Yavareté jail.

  Killing her would make his reputation. She was well known, high profile, and had once been highly respected. Killing her would prove to everyone how dangerous it was to come into the Amazon, into his Amazon.

  But keeping her had its own obvious rewards.

  “I could keep you both, if there were enough orchids to make it worth my while.” It was a fair offer.

  “It could take years to find more.”

  “Not if a person knew where to look, and you do know that, don’t you, Dr. Parrish?” he said, his patience thinning. They’d danced the same dance in Yavareté, and he wasn’t interested in a repeat performance. “This is your life we’re bargaining with, Doctor, yours and William Sanchez Travers’s. Don’t doubt me on that score.”

  A shouting from down toward the mines pulled his attention to the window. Something was going on. Setting the orchids aside, he picked up a portable two-way radio off his desk and headed for the patio off his office, calling his captain. Before he could raise the man, an explosion rocked Reino Novo.

  Corisco didn’t miss a step, only walked steadily toward the doors, and when he reached them, stood tight-jawed, watching what was left of his number two dock flying in pieces up into the air. The number three dock exploded next, and Corisco felt a wash of cold anger pour down through his body.

  He turned and gestured to his guards. “You’ll be eating your balls for breakfast if she’s not here when I return. Dr. Parrish”—he turned fully to face her—“I suggest you consider my offer very carefully. Without the promise of more orchids, you’re worth far more to me dead than alive.”

  Annie believed him. Down to the core of her being, she believed him.

  “What about Travers?” She had to know.

  “Fat Eddie finds him more interesting than I do,” he said dismissively. “Fighting has been going on around the plaza all night. Some of my cordeiros have been shot. Your Sanchez Travers was put in the main cage and wasn’t in the best of health when he was thrown inside, having a bullet wound and a fractured skull. His chances of surviving the day were slim to begin with, and that he will die tonight with the rest of my sacrificial lambs is a foregone conclusion. It is your own life you are fighting for, Dr. Parrish, only your own. Please us both by making the wise decision.”

  ~ * ~

  Will woke up in the night with a splitting headache, his skull feeling as if it had been cracked open. He was sweating and cold, and that wasn’t good, not on the equator. Squinting, he gingerly investigated his scalp. From the matting of blood and hair and the size of the lump he felt above his left ear, his head just about had been split open. He tried rolling over to get on his feet, and stopped in mid-roll, a whole new world of pain coming to life in his arm.

  He collapsed back down, a curse on his lips. What had he done to himself? he wondered.

  The soft murmur of voices behind him brought his head around. A group of Indians, frightened women and old men, were huddled together not too far from where he lay on his back, backlit by flickering light.

  Indians were good, he thought, better than soldiers, and he recognized Tutanji among them, which was even better. At least he wasn’t alone. On the other hand, as his eyes adjusted to the night, he noticed they were separated from him by iron bars.

  The disturbing bit of information slid into place, and suddenly he remembered a few things that made any sense of relief premature.

  He’d been shot in the arm, and captured, and he was in a cage, one of Corisco’s damned cages. The Indians were in another.

  A burst of automatic gunfire stuttered through the night, coming from down by the river, and he jerked his head around—a big mistake. Lights flashed before his eyes, each one ripping through his head and leaving a path of pain.

  Rolling back into a ball on the ground, he swore between his teeth. Either Corisco was starting his noite do diabo party, or Reino Novo was under attack.

  He prayed for the latter. Destroying Reino Novo had been his goal for months, up until... until...

  Something wasn’t right. He was missing something important, something really important. He’d been heading for Reino Novo on his boat, the Sucuri, and he’d had diamonds and emeralds and...

  Annie.

  Annie was gone.

  It all came back to him in living color and an awful feeling of dread: the Night of the Devil, the race up the river, the dead soldiers, and Corisco showing up in the plaza and taking her away.

  He swore, a savage curse. Vargas had gotten to her, before she could get to the keys. That’s how they’d been caught, trying to save the Indians and caboclos.

  The keys. He needed them. Pushing himself upright, he nearly passed out again. Shooting pains rocketed around the inside of his skull. A ragged groan left his lips. The keys. He had to get the keys and get out of the cage so he could save Annie, but he was a mess, a physical mess, wounded and beaten—like she had been in Yavareté.

  “Here, little brother, drink this.”

  He looked up to see Tutanji opposite him, reaching between the bars to offer him a small gourd.

  “You are back, little brother,” the shaman said.

  “Yes, I am back,” he ground out in a whisper, careful not to cause himself any more pain. “The woman? Where is she?”

  “The Jaguar Woman?” the old man asked, and Will was confused all over again. He didn’t remember any Jaguar Woman, not ever. “She is there.” The shaman pointed. “Inside the jaws of the golden anaconda, and truly, little brother, I fear her soul will be stolen tonight.”

  Will followed the old man’s gesture past the cages to the tower of gold rising out of the plaza. The reflected flames of a circle of torches licked up the serpent’s golden scales, higher and higher to the gaping jaws and the woman tied with her arms outstretched to the snake’s gold fangs. Smoke curled around the curved, stalactite-like teeth, the flames making them glitter in chatoyant shades of red and yellow.

  His heart stopped for one shuddering second. It was Annie, and she didn’t look like a jaguar to him. She looked like a woman terrified of dying. He slowly rose to his feet and stumbled to the edge of his cage, his hands tightening around the iron bars. She looked like a living sacrifice, like she’d said she’d felt the last time Corisco Vargas had captured her.

  Fear and guilt collided in his chest. He should have tried harder to get her out of Brazil, especially once he’d realized what was going to happen. There must have been a way.

  A guard passed by on his rounds, walking between the cages, tossing insults to the Indians and using the butt end of his rifle to rap the knuckles of any hands clinging to the iron bars.

  Will kept his hands inside his cage and waited until the guard passed, before returning his attention to Annie. The necklace he’d given her was still around her neck, though he doubted its ability to protect her now. The scrap of gold material wrapped
around her body was meant to make her look like a whore, and the sight of it gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Corisco hadn’t raped her before, and Fernando was dead. He tried to take hope in the two facts.

  “How long was I out?” he asked the shaman. It had been dark when he’d been captured. Maybe he’d only been unconscious for a few minutes, long enough for Corisco to get her into that outfit, but not long enough for him to have done much else.

  Tutanji’s reply destroyed that idea.

  “You were gone the whole day, little brother. The sun has come and gone and much fighting has started while you were sleeping.”

  Then the Night of the Devil was upon them, the players put into place. He looked up through the bars to the sky. There was no moon, only the sweep of the Milky Way. The noite do diabo was a dark moon night.

  His gaze came back to Annie. Anything could have happened to her in the amount of time he’d been unconscious. His only consolation was that she didn’t look hurt. No blood marked her face or body, and even without the ropes tying her to the snake fangs, she looked as if she could stand on her own two feet. She hadn’t been beaten.

  He turned to Tutanji, his voice tight. “We need to get out of these cages.”

  “Yes,” the shaman agreed, lifting the gourd again. “I’m waiting for the keys. Here. Drink this. It will make you strong.”

  Will took a good-sized swallow from the container and damn near choked on the bitter liquid as he handed it back, the taste a warning that he should have asked what the stuff was before he’d drunk it.

  Hell. Tutanji had half killed him dozens of times. There was no reason to think their current situation would change anything. The old man ran on Otherworld time. Then again, elixirs for a man’s strength were Tutanji’s specialty.

  And Will needed his strength. He needed it fast.

  He shook the bars on his cage with his good arm, but none of them gave way, not so much as an inch.

  A ring of keys, he remembered, had fallen to the ground in front of the cages. Now where had the soldiers been when he’d killed them, and how far could the keys have fallen from that spot? He turned to check his position, but turned too quickly and had to slap a hand onto his forehead.

  Sweet Jesus, his head was going to crack open.

  “Do you know where the keys are?” he asked, his voice a pained whisper. Streaks of light ricocheted behind his closed eyelids.

  “Yes. A monkey will bring them to us.”

  A monkey?

  Will opened his eyes to a bare slit and slanted them toward the old man.

  “What monkey?”

  Tutanji pointed to a spot in the forest, and by the light of the torches, Will saw a small emperor Tamarin monkey with a flowing white mustache sitting on a low branch in a tree no more than five feet away, the ring of keys clutched in its tiny hands. Its little face was turned toward the torches around the plaza, its expression one of pensive anticipation—as if it knew something terrible was going to happen.

  Fucking doomed.

  “Is that you?” he asked Tutanji.

  “No. I am a caiman, an anaconda, a jaguar shaman, but never a monkey shaman. Call to him,” the old man suggested. “Maybe he will come.”

  Maybe? That was the best Tutanji could come up with after three damn years? Will wanted to reach out and grab the little monkey by the throat, because he sure as hell didn’t think the animal was going to walk over to the cage and hand him those keys.

  Frustration made him shake the bars again, and this time they did make a small grating noise, enough to make the monkey turn and look him straight in the eye.

  Will held himself very still, not daring to blink.

  “Little brother,” he said softly. Behind him, he heard Tutanji start to chant in a soft singsong cadence, the notes lifting on the slight breeze blowing through the trees.

  The monkey just sat and stared, its jaws working on an invisible nut, its expression as worried as ever.

  “Get your skinny little ass over here, little brother,” Will crooned, working hard not to grit his teeth. “Get your skinny little ass over here, or I’ll hunt you down with my bush knife and use your guts to string my bow.”

  Still staring right at him, the monkey stopped chewing, leaving its jaw hanging open. Then it screamed and took off up into the tree.

  Will swore and hit the cage. So much for Tutanji’s idea. He whirled around, searching for an alternative—and damn near passed out again, but with more of a hallucination problem than just the simple dizziness of before, a bright, neon-pink snake dancing before his eyes.

  Slowly, he straightened back up, his gaze sliding toward Tutanji.

  “What did I drink, older brother?” he asked. Now was not the time for visions and the Otherworld, not the time for caapi. If he was going to save Annie, he needed to be in this world.

  “The snake will pass by,” the old man assured him, “and then you will be strong. It is not yagé, not vine of the soul. A little tobacco maybe, to make you strong again, to make you forget where you were hit, where you were shot with the white man’s bullet.”

  A nicotine rush then, Will realized. That’s all it was, a slightly hallucinogenic nicotine rush. Ingesting the stimulant as brewed sludge was about a thousand times more potent than smoking it and just about guaranteed a man was going to see something that wasn’t really there—like a pink snake phosphene.

  “The mother of the mother of tobacco was a snake, little brother,” the shaman continued. “You need the power of snakes.”

  Will bit back an irritated retort. According to Tutanji, he was always in need of something’s power. In truth, what he needed was to get out of the friggin’ cage.

  A collective gasp in the glade brought his head around, and this time there was no dizziness, no hallucination. He was getting stronger, and in the nick of time. Corisco was coming. The sound of boots in a lockstep march could be heard approaching on the river path. Fear rippled through the plaza, a palpable fright jumping from cage to cage, making the Indians nervous as hell. The soldiers came into view, and Will swore. Corisco must have had a hundred men with him, each with a semiautomatic rifle and double bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossing their chests. There was enough firepower on the plaza to annihilate a thousand people, cut them down into shreds. Taking out a hundred unarmed Indian woman and frightened old caboclos was nothing less than slaughter—and there wasn’t a damned thing Will could do to stop it.

  Unless...

  The guard was coming back again on his next round, and when he got close, Will grabbed the bars of his cage in both hands and started shaking them.

  CHAPTER ~ 28

  Corisco entered the plaza flanked by a hundred men, each of them ready to die for him, each of them ready to kill for him. Today he had required both.

  Fat Eddie’s jagunços had descended on Reino Novo like a swarm of mosquitoes, no match for trained soldiers except in their irritating numbers. His guerilla tactics had held Vargas’s army at bay at the number two mine for most of the day, his snipers picking off Corisco’s snipers in a game of attrition, but not for much longer. Corisco had cut off the fat man’s escape and was going to blow the number two mine, Fat Eddie, and his mosquitoes to hell.

  What a waste of a day, he thought with disgust. He was unbeatable in a penny-ante war, and soon would be unbeatable on a much larger scale.

  Fools. Everyone who defied him was a fool, and no one had defied him more than Annie Parrish. She’d been such a disappointment when he’d returned for her answer at midday, begging for the gringo’s life instead of her own, telling him everything, promising him hundreds of orchids and her services in discovering their secrets, giving it all up with barely a threat between them.

  Utter and abject surrender, he’d discovered, was the greatest defiance of all, depriving him of more sadistic delights, but he would take her offer. He would let her slave for him in exchange for William Sanchez Travers’s life.

  His mouth curled in dista
ste. He couldn’t believe how cheaply she’d sold herself, and for nothing. The sodding gringo wouldn’t last the night. She’d thought herself worth more in Yavareté. Much more.

  He strode across the plaza and took the stairs up the tower two at a time, while his men lined up in formation in front of the cages. Despite Fat Eddie, the Night of the Devil was coming off as planned. Tonight, a legend would be born. He would not be made to look the fool, not by a fat man from Manaus, and not by a gringo whose preferred weapon was a primitive blowgun.

  Good Lord. How far had the man thought to get with a blowgun? Corisco wondered.

  Farther than most, he had to admit, remembering the ease with which Travers had dispatched his guards and the hapless Fernando. Fat Eddie had been wrong about the gringo’s death on the Rio Marauiá, as he was being proved wrong about everything, especially his decision to bring war to Corisco’s door.

  But it was Dr. Parrish’s capitulation that irked him even more than Fat Eddie’s acts of aggression. If she wanted to enslave herself for the love of a drunken has-been who happened to be handy with a blowgun, fine. He would see to it that she paid the price in a thousand little ways every day. She’d stolen guns from Fat Eddie in Manaus, and the little filha been heading up the river to do him in with grenades and dynamite.

  His man in Manaus had discovered the facts surrounding Fat Eddie’s flight up the Rio Negro after the good doctor and his stolen guns. He’d even seen Johnny Chang’s severed head, before it had been sent to Ecuador, an interesting item, but one that did nothing to address the real problem as Corisco saw it.

  Scale. Simple scale.

  The difference between him and all the other would-be river lords was scale. No one was thinking outside the box of their measly little existence, except him.

  He made the landing where Annie Parrish was tied to the golden fangs twenty feet above the plaza, and knew he had his foolish moments, as well. He should kill her, let her fulfill her place in his planned ceremony. Her martyrdom would do far more to promote his cause than any amount of orchid research she might manage.