Shaman Winter (41 page)

“I checked through Chernenko's records, the scientist on the list of names you gave me. The man was getting e-mail messages from the Avengers.”

“Chernenko was working with the Avengers?”

“Yup,” Cyber replied. “The messages are coded; it would take an expert to break them. In the ones I could read, they gave Chernenko instructions to pass on to Raven. They called him Ke-mo-sab-ay.”

“Kimo Sabi?” Sonny interrupted. “What Tonto used to call the Lone Ranger?”

“Yeah, that's it. It's not a word from the Pueblo languages, I checked that. I think it's a name taken from the northern tribes. I can do a search—”

“No, no, I don't have time,” Sonny said. “Kimo Sabi,” he repeated the word. “Kimo sabe. Kimo knows something. What?”

“You tell me” came Cyber's reply, irritating Sonny more, because on top of the headache he felt a numbness spreading over his body, entangling his mind so he could barely think. The Avengers used both Raven and Chernenko, then played them against each other, and Raven used everyone.

“Kimo Sabi is Raven?”

“Yes,” Cyber replied.

“Thanks, Cyber, you've been a great help. Now get out.”

“What are you going to do, Sonny?”

“Go see a play,” Sonny replied, and clicked off the phone.

Dolores Saavedra had said Celeste was in a play at the Kimo. He opened the Sunday paper on the table and flipped through it until he came to the Arts section. There it was: a Christmas play at the Kimo Theater downtown.

He looked at his watch. If they hurried, they might catch Raven before he took Celeste!

25

“The Kimo downtown!” Sonny said, grabbing his jacket and turning to Chica. “Stay, Chica. Sorry to leave you again, but this is an emergency!”

He told Lorenza what Cyber had found as they sped downtown.

“According to Cyber, the Avengers were using both Chernenko and Raven.”

“They thought they were using Raven to bring in the plutonium—” Lorenza said. “Nobody
uses
him.”

“Celeste is in the play at the Kimo. She's Raven's last target!” Sonny said. “Consuelo, Catalina, Carmen. Celeste is number four.”

They reached downtown in record time. Lorenza took the red light at Fourth and Marquette, scooted to Sixth Street, then to Central. There were no parking spaces near the Kimo.

“Park in front!” Sonny cried out.

Lorenza made a wild U-turn on Central and climbed the sidewalk to stop the van right in front of the box office.

There were no city cops in sight, but an angry, dark-haired Chicana came running out as Sonny let his chair out of the van. “Hey! You can't park here! It's against the law!”

“Who are you?” Sonny asked.

“I'm CC, the director, that's who. And who are you?”

“Police,” Sonny said with authority, taking out his wallet and flashing his great-grandfather's sheriff's badge. “I need to get in there.”

“That's a cheap way to see the play,” she complained. “I would have sent complimentary tickets.”

“Is Celeste here tonight?”

“Celeste? You mean Gila. Yes, but the play's already started.”

“Get us in,” Sonny said. “It's a matter of life and death.”

CC grimaced. “Spare me the bad lines.”

“Step aside,” Sonny said, and plowed his wheelchair into the lobby.

“No need to interrupt the play,” she cried, rushing after him.

Inside, the lobby was warm and deserted, except for a dark-haired woman who stood behind the punchbowl.

“I need to get in there!” Sonny insisted.

“Okay, okay, but try to be quiet.”

She led them into the darkened theater. On stage the confrontation scene between San Miguel and el Diablo was just starting.

“Who's the Devil?” Sonny asked.

“Vic Silva. He's great. Did you see him in
Billy the Kid
?”

“The play? No.” But where's Raven?

The actors, a motley crew that made up the cast of shepherds, had just stepped back to allow the Devil to take center stage. Sonny spotted Celeste, playing the role of the shepherd girl, Gila, the only woman in the group.

Vic wore the mask of a devil, a resplendent red cape, two horns, and a pitchfork. Speaking lines in old, archaic New Mexican Spanish, he angrily stepped forward, lifted his pitchfork, and looked out at the audience as he called for war and destruction:

O, Miguel, suspende tus dulzuras.

Lo primero que tengo que borrar es el mundo.

Yo mando el sol, mando la luna,

mando ese cielo estrellado.

El sol se vera eclipsado solo porque

yo lo mando. Yo haría todo un infierno.

An appreciative audience applauded the poetic delivery.

Now San Miguel, dressed in white with feathery wings flapping behind him and a wooden sword in one hand, stepped forward and answered the Devil's challenge, declaring that Christ, the Messiah, had been born and that the shepherds would adore him as king of the universe.

San Miguel's speech was not convincing nor as poetic as the Devil's, but he struck at the Devil with his sword and the Devil stumbled backward. A second figure appeared and pushed both San Miguel and the Devil out of the way.

“That's not in the script,” CC whispered to Sonny.

The flash of a fireball exploded in front of the actor who had suddenly taken center stage. Dark smoke swirled around him. The audience held up their hands to shield their eyes from the bright flash. A ripple of oohs and ahhs swept through the theater. The stage effects were great.

Nervous theatergoers jumped into the aisles, unsure of what was happening.

“Raven!” Lorenza exclaimed.

Raven in black, the stage lights shining off his silk outfit, raised his cape and looked fiercely at the audience, and those in the front rows, seeing his hideous face, drew back in horror.

“It's just a mask,” said a boy in the front row.

“The play's ended!” Raven shouted. “Gila's mine!” He grabbed the unsuspecting Gila by the wrist.

“No!” she cried in pain.

Raven's piercing eyes found Sonny. “Mine!” he repeated. He had come to kidnap Celeste in front of Sonny, left him the clues to follow, daring him, as always, to stop him.

“Get off the stage!” CC shouted, pushing her way through those crowding the aisle. “Where's José Rodriguez when we need him!”

Others in the audience began to shout: “Get off the stage! We want the old Devil.”

“Is this for real?” somebody asked. The play was quickly falling apart.

“Let me go!” a confounded Gila cried, struggling to get loose. The other actors on stage also appeared confused. This was not the play they knew.

Raven turned to the audience. “There will be no birth of Christ,” he said scornfully. “The land of Canaan shall remain barren, and your women will remain barren. You must turn to me and pray that I relent. Pray to me as your king!”

A few, believing the scene was part of the play, nodded in agreement.

“Gila!” Sonny shouted, his cry echoing through the theater. “Don't go with him! Fight him!”

“She's mine!” Raven shouted. “Number four! You lose!”

He pulled Gila away, and the audience, hearing her cries, sensed something wrong. This is not the way the play should end. San Miguel the archangel was supposed to beat the Devil and drive him away.

A couple of the actors started forward to help Gila, but a second flash filled the stage, and Raven and the girl were gone.

“Back alley!” Sonny cried, and he and Lorenza turned to push their way through the crowd.

Outside, Lorenza started the van, and as soon as Sonny boarded, she stepped on the gas. The van lurched forward, leaping off the sidewalk and just barely missing the stoplight on the corner. She turned right onto the street, then into the alley behind the theater. Ahead of them a black van was just squealing away, leaving a cloud of burned rubber in the dark alley.

“That's him!” Sonny shouted.

Now it was onto the streets of Alburquerque, with Lorenza pursuing a reckless Raven who loved the games he played.

He tried to lose them by driving around downtown streets, in and out of alleys, but Lorenza clung to him. Then he raced up Central Avenue, not stopping at the red lights. The late hour and the cold meant there was little or no traffic. Raven gunned his van up Central, and by the time they drove past Jack's Cantina, they were doing ninety.

“Don't lose him,” Sonny whispered, peering intently at the tail-lights they were following. If they lost Raven, they had nothing. Nada. The clock would quit ticking for Sonny and his grandmothers.

At University Avenue, Raven made a wild left turn, sped to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and hung another left. Then he gunned it down the hill toward the center of town.

The van's speed attracted a siren, a red light flashed. They had picked up a city cop, one who quickly got on Lorenza's tail. A bullhorn sounded but the words weren't recognizable.

“We've got help,” Lorenza said.

“We need it,” Sonny replied, glancing out the window at the car with the flashing light. The men in blue sometimes did come in time. Sonny took the phone, dialed 911, and asked for Police Chief Garcia.

At Broadway an old 1950s veterano in a customized Olds was creeping home toward Sanjo after sharing some mota with some compas in Martineztown. He started across the street, then stopped to stare blindly into the lights of Raven's van pressing down on him. The black van appeared as Doña Sebastiana's death cart. The old pachuco swore, made the sign of the cross, and closed his weary eyes. La Muerte had come for him this night.

Raven's van swerved, hung on two wheels as it went around the Olds, then sped up the overpass.

The old lowrider breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the Virgin. Then he saw Lorenza's van. “Chingao,” he whispered, and closed his eyes again. Muerte number one had spared him, but number two was bearing down on him.

Lorenza clipped the front end of the lowriding Olds and spun it around, metal tearing into metal. She swerved and straightened out the van. A ball of fire erupted in the back of the van as the ruptured gas tank caught fire.

“We're on fire!” she cursed, and gunned it up the overpass, Raven's lights were now barely visible, and a second police car was tailing them.

“Stay with him!” Sonny shouted. Raven turned right on Second Street and headed north. Now three police cars had joined the chase.

A police dispatcher came on the line, and Sonny tried to explain the situation, shouting into the phone. “I don't have time to explain! This is an emergency. Call Chief Garcia! This is Sonny Baca! Tell him I'm heading north on Second toward Alameda. I'm chasing Raven! Repeat, Raven! Tell him I've got Raven!”

At that moment a rear tire blew and pulled the van to the left. Lorenza struggled to hold the van straight as it bounced across the median, scooted a hundred yards up the wrong lane, then leaped over the curb onto the wide dirt path along the irrigation ditch.

“Can't hold it!” Lorenza cried, fighting the steering wheel.

She hit the brakes, but the tires couldn't grip the frozen dirt along the deep ditch. The van, trailing flames, skidded and flipped over.

Sonny grabbed the counter, but it tore loose and the books came crashing down on him. On the van's first roll the rear door opened and Sonny and wheelchair flew out. He went sliding down the slope of the ten-foot ditch, then the chair went out from under him and he hit the ground.

He was aware of the bouncing and rolling, then a brilliant light, like phosphorus burning, exploded in his brain, an explosion of lovely colors creating a luminous door through which he entered.

“I have entered the dream.” He heard his voice.

The pyrotechnic display coalesced into a rainbow, then the rainbow became a shower of bright butterflies, iridescent, many-colored butterflies that danced in front of him, then slowly fluttered away.

He heard a voice call his name.

A muddy hand reached out and touched his face.

I'm alive, he thought, his eyes fluttering open, feeling the frozen, damp earth of the ditch. His face was covered with dirt and mud, as were his hands and arms. He kicked and felt his feet strike the brittle grass and weeds of the ditch. He didn't know how long he'd been out. Down the ditch the burning van lit up the night.

Lorenza, he thought, and cried her name.

“I'm here,” he heard her response. She appeared, hovering over him, kneeling beside him.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Just roughed up. You?”

“I can't tell.”

“Any pain?”

“No.”

“Can you move?”

“Yeah.”

“I lost him …”

“Those lights …”

“Cops,” she said. “Do you feel any broken bones?”

“No.”

“God, you just flew out—I hit the air bag. Don't move; the cops will help. Luckily the gas tank didn't explode—”

The police cars that had been chasing them had skidded to a stop, their lights illuminating Lorenza and Sonny sitting in the ditch. Several police officers with pistols and shotguns drawn stood behind their cars.

“Don't nobody move!” one shouted.

“I can't, cabrón!” Sonny cursed.

“Hands above your heads!” the second officer shouted.

Lorenza stood, held her hands in the air. “We need an ambulance! We need help!”

“My books.” Sonny groaned. The books were burning to ash. “Sonofabitch was doin' a hundred,” one of the officers said, approaching them cautiously.

“It's a wonder anyone's alive.” Two drew close, a third ran toward the van with a fire extinguisher in hand.

“The chief just radioed in. He knows the guy.”

“Are you hurt?” one of the officers who drew near asked.

“No,” Lorenza replied. “We need help. He was in the wheelchair when we went over.”