Born Into Love

by LaClaire, Catherine

  Mercedes dusted her khakis and swore under her breath. “Where’s my stuff?”

  “Replaced,” Remy answered.

  Teodoro pointed to new, smaller knapsacks. Her hand landed protectively over the canvas pack circling her waist.

  “What’s in there?” Remy asked.

  “Women’s things. I suppose you’d like to run your hands over tampons.” She slipped the pack from her waist and offered it to him.

  “If you knew the power I hold over you.” His gaze then leaped to Diego. “Control her or else.”

  Diego grabbed their new gear. “Be quiet, Mercedes, and put on the repellent.” He guessed she carried it. She ignored him concentrating on Remy with a gaze hot enough to burn a hole in his corneas.

  “Bastard.”

  Procteur folded his arms genie-like. “What’re you going to do, cry?”

  Diego cut off the encounter. “Mercedes, the insects are diving for you as we speak. Use the repellent.”

  Exposed parts received a dose. They wore long sleeves, sturdy boots and long pants made of fabric that breathed but could still offer protection. Diego wore a shirt that had been treated by Luz to shield his skin from the sun should it penetrate the canopy.

  Leather boots covered most of their calves, a safeguard against bites. The danger existed not for him, but for her. “If you trip, do not grab a vine or a branch. It could be home to something nasty or be coated in poison or spines.”

  Diego headed for an open spot between trees with buttress roots. Insects coated gashes made in the bark due to the recent tremors. The scent he needed had evaporated. He did not let this slow his footfall.

  Their journey had begun.

  Plants with enormous leaves, spiky vines and lumps of fungi stood before their cortège of grave robbers. They walked into the wall of vegetation. Even the muted light held an olive tinge.

  After twenty minutes, the jungle closed in. Diego stopped.

  Teodoro pounced. “What’s the delay?”

  “I need a machete. Without it, the group will have to crawl.”

  Teodoro spoke with one of the soldiers in a tongue he did not understand. The mercenary maneuvered to the front of the line. “This man knows how to wield a machete. Direct him. He’ll clear the path. No one wields the blade better than José. Manuel, however, has other talents.”

  “English or Spanish?”

  Teodoro considered. “Use English to avoid misunderstandings and it is the only language Remy comprehends.”

  “What about her?” piped Remy.

  Mercedes bluffed. “Comprendo todo.”

  Diego indicated the route and José raised a muscled arm in a perfect arc and sliced.

  Before dusk while Remy and Teodoro plotted under a mahogany tree, José felled an area for camp. Mercedes slumped to the ground. Her hair curled away from her sweaty face. A baker’s dozen of bites swelled along her hairline and around her wrists. At the back of her head wet strands fell onto her shirt.

  She scratched the rising bumps. “I’m never coming here again.”

  “Then neither am I.” Diego made himself useful and opened the knapsacks. Although they were without tents, they had netting and Diego had his shroud and the small sack of soil he traveled with. She accepted large flat leaves from José.

  “For bedding?” she asked.

  He nodded and pointed to the ground.

  “Shouldn’t we have hammocks? Something to protect us from bugs and snakes?”

  José shook his head and pointed at Teodoro. “He do magic. Camp okay.”

  Mercedes frowned. Diego passed her the protective net. “Sleep under this and do not irritate the bites you have accumulated. If you bleed, insects will find you even more irresistible.”

  “I guess for tonight you mean just the disobedient insects. Thanks for the warning.” She examined her leafy mattress. “I hope there aren’t spiders in here.”

  She must have been satisfied because she copied José as he made his own bed using the leaves. With more energy than Diego thought natural under the circumstances, she tied the netting to an overhead branch and stretched out within the cocoon of fabric. “With my luck a creature’ll tumble down, crash into me and bite my leg off.”

  Even though his exit would seem abrupt since he offered no comment, Diego excused himself to speak with Teodoro who sat mumbling into his hands. Was that more magic? The sorcerer raised his head.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “An assurance that Mercedes will not be molested when I feed.”

  Remy glanced up from a laminated map. “Don’t worry. We aren’t planning to attack her.”

  “Good. A wise decision. Retaliation would be unpleasant.”

  Teodoro called to Manuel and barked an order, forgetting to use English. The henchman spread his legs in a comfortable stance and held the weapon across his chest. The sorcerer turned to Diego. “You have my word that she will be unharmed except for the poison that breathes in her veins.”

  * * *

  Night dropped like a heavy burden. José stirred the fire and delivered dinner, pale meat in a can, crackers, a small tube of vanilla wafers and a packet of flavored crystals. Teodoro informed them that the camp water came from a nearby stream and had been decontaminated. This Diego accepted as true. The sorcerer would benefit by keeping everyone free of dysentery.

  Mercedes ate the cookies and crackers. When Diego offered the flavored water, she shook her head. “If you dehydrate, you will feel worse. Drink.” She accepted his logic, he thought, because exhaustion stifled her need to argue.

  Remy’s whining voice called José away from the fire. Exhausted, pale against the rainforest night, the treasure hunter ordered the man to prepare his bed. If the soldier thought Procteur a fool, his expression betrayed no such assessment. Was José’s indifference a learned response or a strategy?

  Remy, now settled, called across the small campsite. “Hey Castilla, what’re you eating for dinner?”

  Diego ignored the taunt. Movement in the camp decreased. Teodoro added more leaves to his green mattress and loosened his boots. Smoke from a lantern curled around him.

  “When will we reach our destination?” he asked.

  Diego told him what he thought would be true. “As soon as we reach a riverbed our chances increase. I need to examine the soil.”

  Teodoro slurped coffee. “Do not pretend you have forgotten the way.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew a pen and notebook.

  Diego did not want Mercedes out of his sight, but he could wait no longer. She glanced up as he passed. He kept his voice low as he squatted to speak through her netting. “Stay where you are. Incite no confrontations, at least until I return.”

  “Tell me something,” she said.

  That she initiated conversation came as a surprise. “Anything.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I am a bit rusty, but some of the foliage looks familiar.”

  * * *

  The selva turned black at night which suited Diego’s transformation into a bat; easier to travel in that form and important to establish distance from the camp quickly because his need had intensified and the larger animals avoided their presence. Another reason also existed: he did not want to feed close to the woman he loved.

  Even after all this time, he was not sure how he shifted species. The process was a mystery that did not require his complete comprehension to work. A vision of the animal formed in his mind. Maybe the atoms shattered and reassembled. He did not know. The metamorphosis was painless but drained energy. For several seconds he would lose a sense of self. Perhaps the feat was magic, but he had never divined the method and he would never create another like himself to compare notes.

  Vines blocked his path. He went higher. Sounds that separated one creature from another hovered in the air. Suddenly, he was not alone. He flew with real bats, creature cousins. They were simple beasts that belonged there.

  Ripe fruit. The air drowned in t
he fragrance.

  He tore away to a glistening stream. Lower. He had to go lower. Hooves stomped as he resumed his human form. He fed, but his bones still ached from need. He searched impatient for another source of nourishment. A nose twitched when it should have been still. That creature would not return to the burrow.

  Later, awash in rainforest scents, and living through a wolf’s form, he dug his snout into many trails this time trying to recover the past. Other predators sniffed his tracks. Defensive, he growled.

  Then the soil of his death entered his nostrils. He did not want to roll in it, but he did. He howled in misery for even as he walked on paws, dread consumed him. He smelled the riverbed of his misfortune, the cradle of his heartbreak.

  * * *

  A few kerosene lanterns still burned in camp. The fire smoldered. José rested under a lean-to and the other guard smoked a cigarette. Diego slipped under his netting. He did not need it, but pretense saved explanations.

  “You were gone so long,” Mercedes said.

  Had she been worried? “I mixed with relatives.”

  She raised her head. “What?”

  “Bats.”

  “Seriously, things are so crazy that if an alien beamed in from Venus, I wouldn’t be shocked.” She used her head to indicate Remy and Teodoro. “I’m going to fight those sickos. I hope I won’t have to do it alone.” She sniffed. “What’s that scent?”

  “Fruit.”

  “My mouth’s watering.”

  “I should have brought more than the aroma. Tomorrow I will go shopping.”

  “Want to hear my escape plan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tomorrow night, ten minutes after you leave, I’ll ask to use the facilities. The request’s never been a problem. But this time, you wait for me. We’ll hide. When they give up, we’ll locate a settlement and contact the Peruvian government.”

  Mercedes had a real penchant for contacting authorities which was a good idea, but they could not do so in this situation. Not yet. “José and Manuel are trackers. How far do you think we would get? ”

  “We’d do okay if we found a river. There’s bound to be a village sooner or later.”

  “Suppose we don’t find a river?”

  She stuck her head out of the netting. “Don’t you want to get away?”

  “Of course.”

  She rolled on her side no longer facing him and tucked her arm under her head. “When I get away, I’ll see Teodoro and Remy behind bars. You’re not the man I knew. You’re hiding something from me. I don’t like it.”

  Chapter 14

  Monkeys shrieked and bounced from tree to tree. Centuries ago he and Rodrigo joked they were a chorus leading them to treasure; now they served as an alarm clock.

  Mercedes sat next to her jungle mattress outside the netting. She nibbled a maize roll and drank coffee. Weariness puffed her upper eyelids and she had been scratching the banner of bites along her forehead. One had bled. She blotted the tiny wound with the edge of her shirt and looked at him.

  “Am I tempting you?”

  “That is an unfair question, but I will answer.

  She sighed. “I’m waiting.”

  “Human blood excites me, but I know how to fight the desire.”

  “What’s your secret?”

  “I pretend it is fattening.” They gathered their gear. Diego slipped both packs over his shoulder and gratitude accentuated her smile. Teodoro joined them.

  “Take this.” He handed Mercedes a cup of water and dropped a seed into her palm. Jungle travel took a toll and she obeyed without comment. That worried him.

  Diego focused on Teodoro. “Today I take the machete. Otherwise we waste time.” The sorcerer’s eyes darkened like the waters of the Río Negro.

  “Is this a trick?” He fondled the pouch at his neck.

  “No.” Were the seeds inside the bundle?

  “So wise of you to cooperate.”

  Mercedes barged into the conversation. “Stop carrying on. He’s cooperating. I’m cooperating. Grow up.”

  There was only so much patience a woman could possess when poison circulated in her blood.

  * * *

  When the noon heat quieted the jungle, Diego rested the machete. They had reached the spot he had recognized the night before: an ancient tributary, now a shadow of its former self. Time had altered the watercourse and carved out the embankments, but the soil did not lie. Whatever remained of the village lay upstream.

  “We might reach the area by dusk. Much depends upon the terrain.”

  Interest rose in the sorcerer’s eyes. “You like feigning uncertainty. A vampire trait? A way to con your intended victims?”

  Diego did not answer nor did the sorcerer expect he would. What crossed Diego’s mind was how easily he had found the soil. He wondered if everything had been planned. Not the rebelliousness of the earth, but perhaps a dusting of particles strategically scattered so he would find them. If Teodoro knew the route and had salted the earth, was leading him to his fate part of the game?

  Teodoro announced lunch. Remy had already eaten several energy bars. Diego used the break to rest. Mercedes sat closer to José than to him. His clone had disappeared.

  “Where’s the other guard?” she asked.

  Remy laughed but not for long. A beetle, the size of his hand, crashed into his cheek. He swatted, lost his balance and before he became fodder for the passing voracious inhabitants of the jungle floor, José caught him.

  “Keep your mitts off me.”

  José faded back, his expression again unreadable. Mercedes chose the after-moment to repeat her inquiry in typical form. “So where’s the other killer?”

  “Shut up. You’ll see Manuel soon enough and you won’t like it.”

  “A guy with all that charm? How little you know.”

  Diego warned her with his eyes not to bicker.

  Teodoro drank from a canteen. “If you have enough energy to argue, then you don’t need a long rest. We will take thirty minutes.”

  On their way again, Diego directed her gaze to the machete in his hand and indicated the vegetation they were about to enter. “These are lianas.”

  “They’re scary.”

  He guessed that was true. “I will swing my arm in a different arc. Keep a wider space between us for safety.”

  She examined the steel blade as he balanced it in his hand. “It’s horrible.” Foolishly she reached out to touch it. “Don’t. It could slice off an arm.” She shrank back. “Do not worry. Today it is just a tool.” José jumped the line and relieved Diego of one of the backpacks.

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded. His eyes reflected intelligence. Manuel had been a different animal entirely.

  Hours later rain pounded through the canopy. Like other jungle animals, they sought shelter. José used the machete to chop huge leaves off palms. He handed one to each of them. Their undersides flashed silver.

  Mercedes waved hers like a fan. “I don’t want an umbrella. I want a shower.” Diego placed her backpack near her. She sat on it like a weary child, looked up, and let the rain wash her face. Dark circles owled her eyes.

  José captured raindrops in his mouth. Teodoro and Remy hovered near each other talking low, restricting their gestures and trying to stay dry.

  The downpour stopped but not in the understory.

  Mercedes nudged my leg. “Look at the plants.”

  “They funnel water.” He pointed to a dark green shrub. “These leaves have drip tips.” Her eyebrows rose. “Remember, I’ve had centuries to read.”

  She started to shiver. Diego stepped away and headed for Teodoro. “What did you give her?”

  “The medicine. I cannot account for every physical reaction.”

  Diego grabbed the sorcerer’s arm and squeezed. His outcry startled Remy and José, but neither raised a weapon. Restraint came harder for Diego under present circumstances.

  Mercedes caught the action and waggled her finger. “Now who’
s causing trouble?”

  He let Teodoro go and lowered his voice. “Be careful. She is all that is protecting you from me.”

  After marching what Remy identified as three miles through the jungle, Mercedes tapped Diego’s shoulder. Potsherds lay among the wood and multi-colored fungi on the forest floor. They kept walking. The trees thinned and the riverbed narrowed into a tannin-stained strip of soil. Tortoises scuttled into the underbrush alarmed by their trespass.

  “Stop!” Remy yelled.

  Two scarlet macaws burst from branches squawking and dropping bits of uneaten fruit. Procteur held a piece of silvery green ceramic and flashed it in the air. “The village must be close!”

  Diego remembered the pottery. Remy tossed the shard. Had the piece been whole, the shape would have been similar to the pots of other tribes, but the scenes would have a staggering power.

  The sorcerer marched to a break in the trees. “A courtyard!”

  Diego recalled it without the shrubs that now grew up to his hips. Granite slabs peeked through the rampant vegetation and resembled a Roman road but one that had been built with larger blocks. In his mind he saw Marta standing ahead of them waving for him and his brother to join her.

  Teodoro broke into a chant letting his voice wobble deep in his throat.

  José shifted his gaze to Diego. Remy spun around probably searching for the entrance to a tomb as if, after centuries, it would be visible.

  Mercedes whispered. “This is an ancient site.”

  He thought of Luz. She would have added that it stank of evil spirits.

  With his eyes glistening from a fresh dose of insanity, Teodoro stopped singing. He spoke more to the jungle than to them. Unbidden, José translated.

  “My Ancestors, I unite the old and the new. I, the avenger, will re-create what has been taken from us.” Overcome, he sank to the ground.

  “Is he dead?” Remy asked.

  Mercedes touched the sorcerer’s wrist. “He’s alive.”

  Procteur shrugged and dropped his backpack where he stood. “José, clear the brush. We camp here.”