The 5th Witch (27 page)

They had reached the Pacific Coast Highway. The ocean was dazzling, like liquid bronze, and the silhouettes of walkers and joggers on the beach looked as if they were being melted in a blast furnace.

Dan turned left and crawled slowly southward. He had only driven two hundred yards before he saw Orestes Vasquez’s Porsche Cayenne parked by the side of the highway, two of his bodyguards standing beside
it. He pulled in behind a lime-green Jeep and switched off the Torrent’s engine. “There,” he said and pointed down to the shoreline.

The White Ghost and Lida Siado were standing close to each other, watching the three albino Great Danes as they bounded around in the surf, barking. Lida Siado was wearing a loose red kaftan, which billowed in the warm evening breeze. The White Ghost was wearing a white linen suit and a Panama hat, and carrying a cane.

A third bodyguard was standing to their left, about twenty yards away from them, with his hands cupped between his legs.

“Think we can take her?” asked Dan.

“I’m not sure. I’m worried about innocent bystanders, too,” said Annie. “When I drum this spirit up—”

Dan looked around. The sun was already touching the horizon, and there were only six or seven other people on the beach.

“We’ll have to risk it,” said Dan. “God knows when we’ll get another chance like this.”

Annie took off her sunglasses. “All right. Let’s see if I’m any good at Uitoto magic, shall we?”

“If you’re not, we’ll soon know about it.”

They climbed out of the SUV, but stayed behind the lime-green Jeep so that they were out of Lida Siado’s line of sight. Annie swung her drum around so that it was angled across her breasts, and she immediately started to tap it with her fingertips. The rhythm she played was completely different from Lida Siado’s. Instead of a regular systolic heartbeat, it was quick and complicated, with an insistent, underlying
bomma-
da-
bomma-
da-
bomma-
da-
bomma
. It sounded like an animal running through the undergrowth.

“That’s terrific,” Dan told her. “Let’s hope your spirit digs it, too.”

Two young Rollerbladers cruised past and circled around so that they could listen to Annie drumming.

“Hey, that is really cool, lady! You can really play that thing! What is it? Looks like a giant pickle!”

“Beat it!” Dan hissed at them.

“Hey, come on, dude, we’re not doing nothing.”

“I said, beat it, asshole!” Dan repeated, and he drew back his coat so that they could see the butt of his gun.

“Sure, dude, whatever,” they said, and went Rollerblading away as fast as they could, until they were almost out of sight.

Annie kept on drumming and drumming, and after two or three minutes, she started to chant—a soft, low incantation that sounded like “Da-
dot-
da! da-
dit-
da!” interspersed with tongue clicks.

Dan looked around them. Toward the northwest, along the coastline, the sky was beginning to grow black, as if a storm were boiling. He could see snakes’-tongue flickers of lightning in the clouds and hear a very low rumbling. The wind began to rise, too, and sand began to sizzle across the sidewalk.

He wanted to ask Annie what was happening, but she was concentrating so hard on her drumming and her chanting that he didn’t dare interrupt. Whatever she was doing, it appeared to be working. There was more lightning and thunder, and he could see sheets of silvery rain, high in the air, like curtains.

Instead of the fresh ozone smell that usually preceded a rainstorm, however, Dan smelled heat and humidity and tangled vegetation. He smelled
jungle
.

Lida Siado, standing on the beach, looked up at the sky. She said something to Orestes Vasquez, and Orestes Vasquez whistled for his dogs to come out of the surf, but both he and Lida Siado remained where they were.

Annie stopped drumming, but she continued to chant and click her tongue. Then she stopped chanting, too. She closed her eyes, waited, and then she said, “
Now!
”

Dan went back to the Torrent and lifted out a black canvas satchel. Then he crossed the sidewalk and began to walk toward Lida Siado, although he kept slightly to her left so that it didn’t look as if he were approaching her directly. The sand was dry and very soft, and he couldn’t walk too fast, but it took him less than fifteen seconds to reach her.

As he neared her, she slowly turned around, as if she could sense him. But it was Orestes Vasquez who recognized him first.

“
Madre mia!
Detective Fisher, isn’t it? What do you do here on the beach, Detective Fisher? Not following us, I hope? Not interfering with our human rights?”

Dan stopped, frowned at them, and staggered a little, as if he were drunk. “Human rights? Didn’t anybody ever tell you? You have to be human to have human rights!”

Orestes Vasquez pointed a finger at him. “You think you can talk to me like that? I’ll have them take away your badge for that!”

There was another rumble of thunder, much closer this time, and Lida Siado touched Orestes Vasquez’s arm.

“Something is wrong here, Orestes, I’m sure. This storm—it does not look natural. It does not
smell
natural.”

“Seems like you and the storm got a couple of things in common, Mr. White Ghost, sir,” said Dan. “It don’t look natural, and it don’t smell natural, just like you.”

Orestes Vasquez took two steps toward Dan, his fist raised. “You want me to have my bodyguard beat you up?”

But Lida Siado said, “Something is wrong, Orestes! He’s playing you!” She turned around and around, frantically looking for the danger that she could feel but not identify.

Dan, however, had seen Annie coming toward them, although she was keeping herself hidden behind a silvery-haired couple strolling along the shoreline hand in hand.

Dan lurched toward Orestes Vasquez and said, “You know something, Mr. White Ghost, sir, you make me sick to my stomach. You and this piece of Colombian trash. In fact, I detest you so much, I would rather go blind than ever set eyes on you again.”

“Hey, Detective, I can arrange that.”

“I’m sure you can, sir. I’m sure you can. But I would much prefer to do it myself.”

With that, Dan pulled two steel knives out of his coat pocket and held them up in front of Orestes Vasquez’s face. His bodyguards immediately began to hurry toward them, but Orestes Vasquez raised his hand and called out, “Stop! I want to see what this gentleman intends to do!”

Dan looked up at the thundery sky, and said, “God, give me the strength to do this, so that I don’t have to look at this scumbag for a single second longer.”

The expression on Orestes Vasquez’s face was extraordinary: he was elated; he was aroused; he was almost salivating. Lida Siado, however, was frowning, and she began to step away from him. “Orestes, I think we should go—”

At that moment, however, Dan lifted both knives in front of his face.

“
Orestes
—!”

Lightning flickered, and there was a deafening burst of thunder right over their heads. Raindrops began to patter onto the sand. But Orestes stayed where he was, staring at Dan and his upraised knives, his eyes bright with anticipation.

“Come on, Detective Fisher! What kind of a man are you, who cannot keep a promise?”

But Lida Siado started tapping at her drum. “Night Wind!” she called. “Night Wind!”

Dan stood with his face tilted upward, the two knives only inches away from his eyes. Orestes Vasquez
shouted, “Do it, Detective! Do it! Don’t disappoint us!” Even though she was panicking, Lida Siado had to stop chanting and drumming to see whether Dan would actually blind himself.

Dan hesitated for a moment. Then he screamed, “
Aaaahhhhhh!
” and stabbed himself straight in both eyes. He staggered backward in the sand, spinning around off balance. Then he bent forward, still holding both knife hilts. He stayed there, shuddering, as if trying to summon the courage to do what he had to do next.

Orestes Vasquez looked at Lida Siado in excitement, but also in horror. “Did you see him? He is mad! He is totally loco!”

Lida Siado said, “This is not right. Believe me, Orestes. Something is wrong.”

But then Dan shouted, “Christ! Oh, Christ! Oh, holy Christ!” and tugged both knives out again.

He turned to face Orestes Vasquez and Lida Siado, and he held up the knives so that they could see for themselves that there was a glistening eyeball on the point of each of them. His eyelids were closed tight, and thin streams of blood were trickling down his cheeks. Orestes Vasquez and Lida Siado stared at him in shock.

“For the love of God,” said Orestes Vasquez. “When I said to do it—I didn’t actually mean to
do
it!”

But now, only fifteen yards behind them, Annie had broken cover and was running noiselessly toward them over the sand. It was only when she had almost reached them that she started to shake her split-drum like a rattle and sing out, “Come to me! Ik’ib’alam! Come to me! Bring me your darkness, Ik’ib’alam! Bring me your grace! Bring me the power of darkness and evil!”

Lida Siado suddenly realized what was happening, and she held up one hand to deter Annie from coming any closer, while at the same time she began tapping
on her drum again. “Night Wind! Night Wind! Send me your scavengers! Send me your
kukurpas
!”

She was too late. The lightning crackled, and the thunder rumbled again, but as the thunder subsided they heard a heavy, loping sound, like a large animal running fast. Lida Siado dropped to her knees in the sand, her eyes wild, although she kept tapping her drum and crying out her incantation to the Night Wind and the
kukurpas
.

Annie spread her arms wide and threw back her head, as if she were having a religious revelation. “Ik’ib’alam! Ik’ib’alam! Ik’ib’alam!”

“What the hell is going on?” shouted Orestes Vasquez. “José! Hilario! Round up the dogs! We’re getting out of here right now!”

But the loping noise grew louder, until it was a gallop, and then there was a roar that sounded like three tons of gravel being emptied into a truck. Out of the gloom, as fast as an express train, came an enormous black jaguar with burning red eyes. It collided with Orestes Vasquez with an audible
thump!
and sent him hurtling sideways into the sand.

One of the bodyguards hauled out his automatic, but he didn’t even have time to aim before the jaguar jumped and knocked him over, too. It stood on his chest, glaring down at him with its incandescent eyes. Then it gave another roar and bared its fangs and bit into the side of his neck.

The bodyguard let out a pathetic, childlike cry, but then the jaguar shook its head from side to side and tore away the side of his neck as far as his ear, and a thick triangular piece of his shoulder muscle. Afterward, it looked up, strings of flesh and sinew hanging from its jaws, and roared again. The other two bodyguards didn’t even attempt to draw their guns: they started running toward the highway.

Dan edged his way over to Annie, keeping his eyes on the jaguar the whole time.

“What is it?” he asked her. “Is this the spirit you were drumming up?”

She nodded. “Ik’ib’alam, sometimes known as Balam, the black jaguar god of the Amazon rain forest. Some say he is evil through and through; but some say he
commands
evil, and everyone evil has to obey him or suffer the consequences.”

Orestes Vasquez was trying to get back onto his feet, but he was obviously concussed. Meanwhile the black jaguar had finished tearing at the bodyguard’s remains and had turned toward Lida Siado.

Lida Siado was screaming now, although it was thundering again, right overhead, and they could hardly hear her. Off to the west, on the horizon, all that remained of the sun was a molten golden ingot.

“Night Wind! Night Wind! Bring me your messengers!”

The black jaguar was huge, over six feet from shoulder to claw, but it moved with a terrible fluid grace. Beneath its gleaming black fur, its bones and muscles slid together in a complicated ballet of tension and impending death.

It approached Lida Siado until its nose was almost touching her forehead, and Dan could see its nostrils flaring. Lida Siado was in a state of hysteria, sobbing and begging and tapping furiously at her drum.

“Look!” said Annie.

Dan narrowed his eyes. Out of the gathering darkness, a
kukurpa
was stalking toward them through the surf, pale and skeletal. Only one
kukurpa
, but one was more than enough.

Lida Siado turned her head and saw the
kukurpa
too. “Night Wind!” she shrieked out, triumphantly. “
Night Wind!
”

Ik’ib’alam lifted its head to the clouds and roared so loudly that it drowned out the thunder. Then, without any hesitation, it buried its teeth in Lida Siado’s face.

She let out a muffled scream, and thrashed her arms and legs. But the jaguar’s jaws were locked into her cheekbones, and no matter how frantically she struggled, it wouldn’t release her. Every desperate breath she took came straight from the jaguar’s lungs, and her face must have been slathered with the jaguar’s saliva.

The jaguar picked her up, and then it swung her violently from side to side, as if she were a child’s doll.

Annie covered her face with her hands, but Dan watched in dreadful fascination as the jaguar gradually tore Lida Siado’s head from her body, inch by inch, sinew by sinew, until she was lolling at an impossible angle and her limbs were flopping lifelessly across the sand.

But now the
kukurpa
had reached them, and it came toward the jaguar with its claws upraised. The jaguar dropped Lida Siado’s body and circled the
kukurpa
, snarling. The
kukurpa
moved jerkily, but it lashed at the jaguar and caught it with its claw. The jaguar had to spring backward to avoid being lashed a second time.

“I think this is where I give magic a helping hand!” Dan shouted, trying to make himself heard over the thunder.

“What?”

He lifted the black canvas bag that he had collected from the station and took out a Very pistol. “It’s not exactly a hut covered in ananaconda fat, but it’ll have to do.”

The jaguar and the
kukurpa
were ripping and tearing and lunging at each other now, and the jaguar was roaring almost continuously. Dan made his way around
them and approached as close as he dared. It began to rain, hard, and the sky was flickering with forests of lightning trees.

The jaguar ripped at the
kukurpa
’s skull-like face, and the
kukurpa
lurched back and dropped onto one knee. That was Dan’s chance. He held the Very pistol in both hands and aimed it at the
kukurpa
’s abdomen. There was a sharp crack, and a dazzling scarlet flare shot into the
kukurpa
’s body, bursting its way through papery skin and lodging itself, sizzling, in the creature’s pelvis.

The
kukurpa
screamed and tried to pluck the flare out of its insides, but the flare was burning at nearly three thousand degrees Celsius, and the
kukurpa’s
pelvis acted like a natural fireplace, so that it burned hotter and hotter every second.

The jaguar gradually backed away into the darkness. But Dan stayed where he was, watching the
kukurpa
burn.

The creature didn’t fall over. It burned upright, crackling and popping and pouring out showers of brilliant sparks. All the time it burned, it appeared to be staring at Dan in resentment and hatred, but Dan knew that he had beaten it and that he had taken at least a token revenge for Ernie’s killing. There were probably thousands more
kukurpas
in the Uitoto spirit world, but that no longer mattered because Lida Siado was dead, too, and she couldn’t call up any more.

The
kukurpa
’s left claw dropped off, shriveling and clutching at nothing at all, and then its rib cage collapsed, and its skull-like head rolled across the sand and lay burning at Dan’s feet. In the distance he could hear the wailing and honking of fire trucks.

Annie came up to him and took hold of his hand.

“Where’s Icky?” he asked her.

“Ik’ib’alam? Melted away. I didn’t even see where he went.”

“He was damned good, that Icky, as gods of evil go.”

The sky was beginning to clear, and the rain had stopped. All along the Pacific Highway, emergency lights were flashing, and crowds were gathering to find out what had happened.

The last flame was dwindling on the
kukurpa
’s charred collarbone. Dan reached down and scooped up a handful of sand and put out the fire.

“This is for Ernie.”

They walked back up the beach. Orestes Vasquez was being helped away by his bodyguards, but he didn’t even look at Dan and Annie. His three Great Danes jumped up into the back of his Porsche Cayenne, and then he was gone with an exhibitionistic squeal of tires.

“Good trick with the sheep’s eyes,” said Annie as they climbed into Dan’s SUV.

“Sheep’s eyes? What do you mean, sheep’s eyes? They were pickled onions.”

They should have felt like celebrating that evening, but they were both very tired, and somehow there didn’t seem to be anything much to say. But they sat in Annie’s living room for an hour together and shared a bottle of pinot grigio, while Malkin purred on Annie’s lap and the Scissor Sisters played in the background.

“Gayle used to love the Scissor Sisters,” said Dan. “She used to sing all their songs. Well, let’s put it this way: she
tried
to sing all their songs.”

“Malkin’s purring,” said Annie. “Did you know that jaguars can’t purr? They don’t have the vocal cords for it.”

“No, I didn’t know that. I never really
needed
to
know that. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure I need to know that now.”

Annie said, “We only have Rebecca Greensmith to go for now. With any luck, she may decide that we’ve beaten her, and she’ll quietly disappear.”

“Either that, or she’ll want to take some hideous witch-type revenge on us.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist.”

“I’m a detective. I went to detective school. They give you a special course in Advanced Pessimism.”

Annie leaned against his shoulder. “Dan,” she said, “what am I going to do with all of this magical power?”

“Something good, I hope. Like clearing the smog or mixing up the perfect tequila sunrise.”

“It makes me feel strange. I almost feel like I don’t know myself anymore.”

Dan kissed her hair. “Don’t worry. I know you. If you’re ever in any doubt, just come up and ask me.”

It was well past 2:00
AM
before Dan finished his wine and went back up to his apartment. He took a long shower and almost fell asleep standing up. Then he brushed his teeth and heaved himself into bed.

He fell asleep within a few minutes and started to dream almost at once. He dreamed that he was walking along the beach with Ik’ib’alam, the black jaguar, walking beside him. Off to his left, a dozen strange figures were walking on the surface of the ocean, keeping pace with him, although they were more than a hundred yards away, and they kept their distance. They wore a variety of masks—white, expressionless masks like the Rusalka and bony staglike masks like the
kukurpa
—but apart from that they were naked, both men and women.