Well in Time (14 page)

“Here. Drink this. It’ll give you strength.”

Hill took the bowl from her and stared into it.

“I’ve never felt more dubious,” he said. “We’re a long way from medical assistance.”

Calypso sighed in exasperation.

“Here. Give it back to me.” Hill complied and Calypso tilted the brew to her lips without hesitation and drank deeply. “If I die in the next few moments,” she said acidly, “just bury me here. Don’t trouble yourself trying to lug me down the mountain.” She smiled at him brightly and when he reached for the bowl, held it just out of his reach. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want any medical emergencies.” She shifted the bowl further still, as he leaned, reaching for it. “And no gagging, grimacing, or agonizing allowed.”

“I promise,” Hill said and his stomach gave a vicious growl as if in agreement. “I’ll be manly as Socrates with his hemlock.”

She relented and handed him the bowl. He sipped the liquid reluctantly and then his face brightened with wonder. He took another tentative sip and raised his face to the warmth of the just-risen sun.

“Well, I’ll be damned! It tastes good! Delicious even.” He buried his lips in the green liquid and drank deeply.

Calypso sat by the fire, snapping sticks and throwing them into the flames, a small smile playing around her lips. She could feel the tangy brew making its way inside her. Its living warmth, along with her fondness for Hill and his nattering ways, was the heat she needed to fuel another day of exertion.

In her mind’s eye, she clambered downhill through the boulder field, all the way to the old mule trail that ran along the riverbank. The river would be rushing over its stones, with a slight morning breeze riffling the surface and water ouzels bobbing on spray-misted rocks midstream. Alders, bare now in the autumn cold, would lift their dark limbs in silhouette against the clear and piercingly blue sky. It would be a scene of serenity and peace and it would belie all that the dreams had told her.

§

It was an image straight out of her dreams but it was real, and it was standing not five feet away, elevated on a flat outcrop of rock. Without a sound, a large animal had materialized and with a gasp, Calypso turned to face it. She heard Hill give a yip of alarm and brought her hand down, in a gesture demanding his silence and immobility.

This, she knew instantly, was the creature that had left its prints in the mud of the grotto. It was not a large dog or a panther, as she had suspected, but a wolf.

“Good morning,” she crooned softly. “You’re looking very beautiful this morning.”

It was true—the wolf was a magnificent animal, tall, lean and sleek. Its charcoal and gray coat, deep, soft, and silvery, russet around the face, sifted gently in the morning breeze. Its yellow eyes stared into hers unwaveringly and Calypso stared back.

The standoff continued for several seconds, during which the wind brought the sound of the river’s rushing far below, the chirp of birds in nearby bushes, and the green scent of the grotto. Calypso’s mind was frozen. She could think of nothing to do about their situation. The wolf seemed equally undecided.

The small sound of rolling pebbles broke their trance. The animal turned its head toward the noise, and Calypso’s eyes darted in its direction, as a man emerged from the foliage near the mouth of the grotto.

“Down, Lobo!” he commanded and the wolf sank dutifully to the stone. Calypso had expected a Rarámuri but the man was Anglo or part-Hispanic and spoke English. He was tall, lean, and gray-haired like the wolf and his stance was tense, as if any quick movement on her part would set him into instant and deadly motion. She had met men like him before, men cut off from the mainstream of society, accustomed to making their own laws, imposing their own judgments. Altogether, she thought fleetingly, she would rather take her chances with the wolf.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, scanning Calypso and Hill behind her with pale blue, expressionless eyes.

“We’re hiking in the canyon,” Calypso answered. “We spent the night here. We’re just preparing to leave.”

The man continued to stare, and the wolf’s yellow eyes were also unwavering. Calypso felt a crawl of dread move through her. Had they escaped the battle at the ranch only to fall into far worse hands? She squared her shoulders and stared back at him impassively.

The man moved closer. He was wearing faded jungle camouflage pants and a black windbreaker, and something in the way he moved caused his image to blur into the surrounding shadows, rocks and greenery, and then come into focus again, mirage-like. Ex-Recon, her intuition told her. Silently, on crepe-soled boots, he crept closer until he was standing above her, with the wolf at his feet.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, never breaking his stare.

Calypso did not believe him. Everything instinctual was aroused. Red lights flashed and alarm bells clanged beneath her immobility. She felt her body tense, her breath coming in short gasps, and her leg muscles tighten. She knew she should run, but instead watched him warily, feeling already overpowered.

The move was too sudden for her to anticipate. In an instant, he had leapt beside her and her arm was in his vice-like grip. Before she could react or even cry out, he whipped his hand from his jacket pocket and flung a fistful of white powder into her face. She heard Hill’s yell and felt the collision of his body against hers as he tried to intervene. Then a wave of dizziness hit her brain and she felt herself slip down, away from the man’s grip. Her last impression was of the stones coming up to meet her and then everything went black.

§

A confusion of sounds, like voices on a tape being eaten by a boombox. Through one squinted eye, a sliver of piercing light. The voices warped and gurgled through the background, alternately liquid and viscous. She felt deeply ill. The hard surface under her seemed to be spinning and the centrifugal force of it blasted her out of consciousness again, sending her into a blackness slashed with yellow sabers of light.

§

Light and voices again. A splitting headache. Mouth unbearably dry. Heart hammering arrhythmically. She tried to concentrate, to understand. A mixture of English and Spanish. The word
drug
. A surge of oblivion, overwhelming her like a black wave.

§

Finally, the ground under her stopped spinning. Voices no longer eddied and chuckled around her like fast-flowing water. Still the headache, still the dry mouth, but her heart no longer felt as if it were bursting.

She heard her first coherent sentence: “She ought to be coming out of it soon.” English. The voice deep and male. Not the voice of her attacker. She lay still, gathering her strength; gathering her wits.

A hand gripped her shoulder and rocked her, not ungently.

“You in there?” The same deep voice. Rocking again. “Come on. It’s time to wake up.” She thought she detected an element of concern. She tried to speak and heard an unintelligible mutter in what might be her own voice. The hand shook her again.

Calypso opened one eye and winced at blindingly bright light. She clamped her eye closed again and whispered, “Water.”

There was a pause and then a hand slid under her neck and her head was bent upwards. A glass was pressed against her lips. Water coursed into her mouth and down her throat. She choked, gagged, began to cough. The coughing made her head ache unbearably.

The hand had not moved from her neck. When the coughing subsided, the voice said, “Take another sip. Not so fast this time. Just a sip.”

She sipped. Cool water penetrated the parched recesses of her mouth and a trifle of the desperation subsided behind its fluid promise. She sipped again and then rolled her head back as a wave of dizziness hit her.

“Dizzy.” Her voice was scratchy and weak.

“It’ll be wearing off soon.” The hand went away. She lay inert, savoring the wetness of the water, asking nothing more of herself. Then she slept.

§

When she awoke, there were no voices. Through slitted eyes, she took in a room washed in evening light entering one small, high window set in a wall of roughly plastered stone. Her hand wandered out from her side and felt the abrasion of a wool blanket. She blinked, tried to focus.

Above her, a ceiling of pale plaster was washed with rose in the falling light, with triangles of deep indigo shadow hanging like kites in the corners. She raised her head and caught sight of a crude wooden table and chair and a fire burning low on a small hearth, before her head dropped back of its own weight. She closed her eyes. The nausea had passed, and the headache. Her mind felt clear but she was completely without volition.

She heard a heavy wooden door scrape open and then closed. Footsteps. They stopped next to her bed.

“You’re awake.” The same male voice. Not unkind. Not frightening. She opened her eyes.

A man of medium height stood over her. He was broad-shouldered and powerful looking despite his age. Calypso put him somewhere in his late sixties. His skin was brown like the local indigenous, but he spoke uninflected English. Black hair salted with white framed a slightly pocked face made handsome by strong bones and deep-set, intelligent eyes.

“You were out a long time.”

“How long?” she whispered.

“Twelve hours or more.”

“Why?”

“The Devil’s Breath.”

Calypso shook her head.

“Scopolamine. You got too big a hit.”

She rolled her head to see him more clearly and was surprised that he was wearing a black cassock.

“Priest?”

He gazed down at her and said with a small smile, “Of a sort.”

Calypso frowned and tried to sit up. The man reached down and restrained her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Better stay down awhile.” He reached behind him, dragged the wooden chair beside her bed and sat. “What’s your name?”

Calypso was suddenly wary. She and Javier and Rancho Cielo were known throughout the canyons. How could she be sure it was safe to reveal her identity? She countered: “What’s yours?”

“You can call me Father Keat.” He said it with the same small, self-deprecating smile.

Calypso nodded. “You can call me Jane.”

The man nodded with a chuckle. “All right, Jane.” He cocked his head and regarded her appraisingly. “So how do you feel?”

“Better now. I thought my heart was going to burst.”

He nodded. “Tachycardia. And then bradycardia. Your heart rate was down to thirty-three beats per minute. You had me worried.”

“What happened?”

“You met up with Los Lobos, man and wolf. They’re quite a team.”

“Why did he. . .?”

“It’s our policy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. Just rest for now.”

Calypso had a sudden rush of remembrance and pushed herself up on one elbow.

“What about Hill?”

Father Keat did not answer. Instead, he took a stout Mexican tumbler of handblown glass from the table and held it again to her lips.

“Drink. You’re dehydrated.” She drank. “I’ll come by later.” He stood.

“What about Hill?” she asked again. Even to her, her voice sounded like the wail of a child.

“We’ll talk about Mr. Hill later.” Father Keat rose, threw a log on the fire and exited, closing the door firmly behind him.

§

Calypso awoke to a deep, mellifluous voice speaking English.

“Hey! You’re awake.”

She blinked her eyes, frowned, and squinted in the low light. The fire burning on the hearth sent soft, undulant waves of light across the man’s face, half of which was burnished by firelight and half hidden deep in shadow. One massive hand rested on a black-clad thigh thick as an oak trunk. The hand was black.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better. Hungry. Thirsty.”

The black hand moved, reached, brought the white glass to her lips. “Icepick’ll be bringing some food, in a few minutes.”

“Icepick?”

“You’ll get used to the names. Mine’s Lone-R. That’s capital-L-o-n-e-dash-capital-R.” He smiled down at her serenely. He had huge, dark, wide-set eyes, the kind she had seen in photographs of Tibetan
rinpoches,
that bespoke lifetimes of spiritual evolution. His head was shaved and it shone in the firelight like an orb of onyx. She noticed he wore a black priest’s robe like Father Keat’s.

“
Father
Lone-R?” she asked, with a ghost of her old verve.

“Not yet. I’m still an acolyte.”

“You’re wearing the same robes as Father Keat.”

A chuckle rumbled out of his vast chest.

“Yeah. We watched
The Matrix
and really dug seein’ Keanu Reeves kickin’ ass in that black coat. So we decided to wear ‘em, too.”

“Where am I, Lone-R? Who are you people, anyway?” Despite his impressive size and the rock-hard muscles of his forearm as he served her water, Calypso felt safe with this huge man.

“You’re in our monk house, here in the bottom of the canyon. A few miles from Batopilas.”

“You’re
monks?
”

“Yeah. In a manner of speaking. We call ourselves The Ghosts.”

Calypso frowned. Was she still under the influence of The Devil’s Breath?

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

“Am I safe here?”

He chuckled, again.

“You kiddin’? This place is a fortress. You wouldn’t be as safe in the Pentagon!”

“A fortified monastery.”

“Exactly.” He clenched his hands and cracked his knuckles. It sounded like a pistol going off and Calypso jumped. “That’s exactly right. We’re a fuckin’ fortified monastery.”

There was a sharp knock at the door and Lone-R went to answer it. He opened it just as the man on the other side—Icepick, Calypso presumed—was turning his back to give the door another clout with his boot heel. He held a tray of steaming food in both hands and above his black cowboy boots he wore the same style of black robe that Lone-R wore.

As he came to her bedside, Calypso observed him. On this man, the small, high collar of the flowing robe looked appropriate. The skirts moved gracefully, as if the man were a dancer. Above the collar, however, his face was ashen and blank, as if he had spent too many hours in a cell meditating. About seventy, wrinkled and with a thatch of steely gray hair, he exuded an icy chill that forbade any contact. Without speaking, he deposited the tray on the table, turned as if pirouetting, and departed, pulling the door closed almost soundlessly.