River of Eden (36 page)

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

C
orisco 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 distaste. 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.

But her skin was soft, so very smooth, looking like gold satin in the light of the flames. The silk he'd wrapped her in was nearly transparent, it was so finely spun. Her hair was wild in its little-boy cut, but would grow in time, if he gave her time—and he was tempted, so tempted to keep her. He had a terrible sadistic streak when it came to women, and he'd hurt her before, but he actually thought that for her he could change. That he could control his more primitive instincts and perhaps re-learn the art of tenderness.

She was so unusual, so unique, truly a prize worth keeping.

Or he could make an offering of her to the devil gods of the Amazon and send those images rocketing around
the world via satellite and make himself a name unlike any other in history.

Decisions, he thought in irritation. He usually had no trouble making decisions, but just like in Yavareté, she made him hesitate, made him doubt.

He came up behind her on the golden platform and smoothed his hand over her bare shoulder, and felt her flinch. Sex had been so strange for him since he'd first taken the devil frog potion. The visions, which had made him powerful beyond his dreams, had also made him impotent, an odd contradiction he'd learned to live with in his own twisted fashion.

“What am I going to do with you, Dr. Parrish?” he asked, letting his hand continue to trail over her skin, all the way across her shoulders and then down the lovely curve of her back.

She trembled beneath his touch, and Corisco found her reaction appealingly erotic.

“Keep our deal,” she said succinctly, and he smiled again. No one made him smile more than Annie Parrish.

“You should know better than to deal with the devil, Doctor.” He continued along with his hand on her body, walking around the platform, breaking their contact only once when he rounded one of the fangs. Then his hand was back on her, trailing down the front of her arm and coming to rest on her breast.

With his other hand, he lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. Nothing but revulsion showed in her eyes, but he found that erotic as well, so much so, a spark of life actually stirred in his groin.

It happened now and then, but never with enough force to accomplish anything. So why keep her? he asked himself, and with his answer, her fate was sealed. He
lowered his hand from her breast. She was unique, yes, but still no match for him.

As for the orchids? The Amazon's single most unendangered species was the
Cientista south americanus.
They could be found hanging from the trees, snorkling through the water, padding around after the Indians, cutting plants, stealing insects, tagging mammals, tracking birds, and generally sticking their noses in, under, and around every single living thing in the rain forest. If he needed one, he wouldn't have to look far to get one.

A
NNIE HEARD
C
ORISCO
descend the stairs behind her, and she wanted to scream in frustration, which beat the hell out of giving in to her fear. She'd seen the look in his eyes, and he was going to kill her and Will. She knew it. Her strategy had backfired.

Biting off an oath, she jerked against the ropes tying her to the golden fangs.

She'd clung to stoic resistance in Yavareté, close-mouthed, unyielding resistance, and gotten herself beaten from head to toe and hung naked in chains. She'd thought she'd try a different tack this time, and though Vargas hadn't raised so much as a hand to her, and she was still clothed—in a manner of speaking—overall, she feared the consequences of capitulation, even feigned capitulation, were going to be far harsher.

And where was Will? She'd been brought to the plaza hours ago and had yet to see him. The light from the torches caught every ounce of gold on the paved courtyard and the snake tower, making the plaza shimmer with flickering brilliance, but it also made seeing into the cages on the perimeter impossible. Everything outside the
circle of gold was cast in the deep darkness of the rainforest night. Now and then, she glimpsed the movement of one of the guards patrolling the cages, or caught a brief shift of shadows inside the iron bars, but nothing she could identify, and certainly not Will.

Below her, row upon row of armed soldiers were standing at attention, their assault weapons in their hands. It was going to be a massacre, a bloody, bloody massacre, and she was going to have a bird's-eye view.

Corisco was crazed.

And she was trapped in the mouth of a giant snake hammered out of gold. Tied to its teeth, for God's sake.

She jerked her arms again and swore beneath her breath, her fury and her fear rising to the surface in equal measure. She had to get free. Will was down there, wounded, and if she couldn't get free, she was going to end up watching him die.

CHAPTER 29

W
ill dragged the unconscious
guard into the forest, his knuckles still smarting from the hit he'd taken, before he'd grabbed the man's rifle and jerked him hard into the iron bars, knocking him out cold. As soon as he'd unlocked his own cage, he'd tossed the keys to Tutanji. The captives were already swarming out of the cages, keeping to the shadows, and as soon as someone noticed—any second—all hell was going to break loose. Will was going to use that chaos to get to Annie.

He grabbed the guard's rifle and pumped a fresh round into the chamber. He'd seen Corisco bound up the stairs to see her. The bastard hadn't stayed long, just long enough to manhandle her a bit and cop a feel.

He jerked the guard's knife out of its sheath and took off running, his jaw tight with anger. He'd graduated from Harvard
summa cum laude
, but he hadn't played this hand smart at all.

He was halfway to the snake tower, skirting the outside
edge of the cages, when a huge explosion from down by the river stopped him dead in his tracks and almost stopped his heart. The earth shook with the force of it, the tremors racing beneath the ground and knocking half of Corisco's troops in the plaza off balance. Will rode the tremor out and knew there would be hell to pay, a thought he no sooner had than he heard a tree crash in the forest behind him, taking out everything in its path. Above the river, a huge fireball lit up the night sky, with smoke and flames spewing from its core, and Will wondered who in the hell was blowing up Reino Novo.

F
AT EDDIE SAT
in his big wooden chair with the detonater in his hand, chuckling, his big belly rippling in cadence with the sound. What a day, he thought. What a hell of a day.

He and his men had taken over the camp of the number two mine on Reino Novo's northernmost boundary early in the afternoon, and he'd had the
jagunços
hauling out gold all day—up until Vargas's troops had flanked them and cut off their route to the river.

Things had gotten sticky then for a while, but in the end, sheer numbers had prevailed. When they'd discovered Vargas's men rigging the camp and mine to explode, they'd taken over the job and done it right.

Maybe too right, Eddie thought, grinning through the soot and ash that now dusted everything in sight.

One of his men came running up to where he sat, mouthing words and gesturing, and Eddie realized he couldn't hear him through the ringing in his ears. But he understood exactly what the man was saying—“The second blast, she is ready,
senhor
!”

A
NNIE HUNG PETRIFIED
from her ropes, trying to stand perfectly still, a near impossibility with the snake tower swaying from side to side. As terrifying as her situation was, she found herself suddenly fixated on who in the hell had designed the tower, and if its infrastructure had been engineered to withstand small earthquakes.

She didn't think so. She could feel the tremors running through it.

In the aftermath of the explosion and all the chaos erupting on the plaza, with downed troops trying to scramble to their feet, and her own immediate problem, it took her a moment to realize the captives in the cages were escaping.

Her thoughts immediately flew to Will. He had a chance.

But in the next moment a second explosion rocked the sky, sending another shock wave through the ground. The tower shuddered beneath her again, a long, deep, aching shudder centered in its core, sounding a lot like collapsing panels of steel, or the opening up of a giant, squeaky door hinge.