The Obsidian Mirror, page 8
“Why not?”
“It’s not like he lives there,” Chaco replied. “He’s gone back.”
“Gone back where? Can’t you call him?”
“He’s gone back to wherever he is when he’s not somewhere else,” responded Chaco, with the maddening air of pointing out the obvious. “And no, I can’t call him. Did he seem like somebody you can ring up on a cell phone?”
“No,” Sierra muttered. Her thoughts were muddled, her side and head hurt, and she wondered if she had a concussion. “What are we going to do, Chaco?”
“Nothing for tonight. You’ve been unconscious for days, you know, and you’re in no shape to do anything until you’ve healed a bit.”
“Days?” asked Sierra. “I’ve been out for days? Why?”
She was wearing pajamas, and not the jeans and camp shirt she had been wearing when Mahaha attacked her. That meant Chaco had carried her up the stairs, undressed her and put her to bed. Her face suddenly felt warm.
“Mahaha wounded you pretty badly, in your side. You’re lucky he didn’t get to your heart—that’s where he was aiming. You were horribly cold, like a corpse. Does your side still hurt? You kept crying out about your side hurting.”
“Yes,” said Fred, solemnly. “It was awful, especially when you screamed and screamed.”
Sierra felt her right side, which still ached with cold. There was a thick bandage covering her ribs beneath her pajama top.
“It hurts,” she said. “But not too badly. Thanks for taking care of me.”
She didn’t want to think about days spent writhing unconscious in a fever. She hoped she didn’t say anything embarrassing.
Fred said, “And you said Chaco was muy guapo, and so were Aiden and Clancy. Who’s Clancy? I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”
Helplessly, Sierra felt her face flame.
“Never mind that,” she said, crossly. “When my grandmother was coming out of anesthesia she said she wanted spider juice to drink. It doesn't mean anything.”
Fred looked thoughtful. “Sounds kind of tasty,” he said, “Depending on the type of spider.”
Sierra tossed the covers aside and said, “I’ll let you do the experimenting, Fred. Now, both of you—out. I need some privacy.”
“Wait!” cried Chaco, but she was already on her feet.
“C’mon, guys. Out you go.”
“I’ll go get you something to eat,” said Chaco. “You must be starving.”
She was still shaky and weak, but she stood steadily on her feet until Chaco and Fred left. She closed the door and grabbed the soaking pillows from her bed. Thankfully, the bed itself seemed fairly dry. She rummaged in the closet and found an old, rather flat pillow which would have to do for now.
Then she collapsed breathlessly on the bed and began peeling the bandages away from her side. Beneath the bandages, her skin was covered with a pungent, greenish paste. There was just one ragged cut, but it seemed very deep. She touched the scored skin gently and winced. It felt like a shard of ice was lodged between her ribs. But the cut was scabbed over and apparently healing cleanly, from what she could see in the mirror. She got into the shower to wash off the stinky paste. Afterwards, she dried the wound carefully and applied antibiotic ointment and new bandages.
Chaco brought her soup and toast in bed, and sat in the armchair while she ate.
“I almost forgot,” he said. “You had a few phone calls. I took messages.”
He ran lightly downstairs and then returned with a slip of paper. Sierra was faintly surprised to see that his handwriting was delicate, with swooping flourishes, like Victorian script.
Sierra deciphered the notes. There was a call from her dentist reminding her of a cleaning appointment.
“What day is it?” she asked Chaco. He told her. “Damn,” she said. “I’ll have to reschedule.”
Her father had called, asking her to phone when she was back from her trip. Kaylee had left an almost identical message. And there was a message from Clancy Forrester, asking her to call him at work. Sierra groaned.
Chaco looked at her.
“Are you in pain?”
“No,” Sierra sighed. “At least, I’m not in any more pain than I was. It’s this guy Forrester. Why on earth would he call me? He’s the head of security at Black Diamond, so it can’t be good news. Maybe he thinks I stole the secret formula for Black Diamond silicon,” she finished bitterly—and then recalled that she did, indeed, know the secret.
“Probably just routine,” said Chaco in a comforting tone, scooping up the soup bowl. “You should be resting.”
He turned off the light and left the room, leaving Sierra to reflect on how little Avatars understood what was routine in the high-tech business environment. It certainly was not routine to get a call from the head of security of the company that had just fired you—not unless you were in some sort of trouble.
Sierra lay in bed, worrying about Clancy’s call. Did he think she had taken something proprietary? He had watched her clear out her things, so he knew she hadn’t had time to copy anything from the computer. What did the man want? Couldn’t they just leave her alone, after booting her out?
As Sierra fretted over Clancy’s call, she began to drift off. Just as she sank into true sleep, she saw Mahaha leaping at her out of the darkness, and she jerked herself awake, causing another lance of icy pain in her side. This happened again and again, but each time it became harder to rouse herself from the nightmare. Finally, she lay on her bed, muttering and jerking, skin cooling despite the warm spring night.
Chapter 8
The next morning Chaco prepared a tray with oatmeal, orange juice, and toast. He ascended the stairs, humming tunelessly, and knocked on Sierra’s closed door. There was no response. He knocked again and waited. Finally, he opened the door a crack and peered in. In the darkened room, he could see the covers humped over Sierra’s motionless body.
“Rise and shine!” he called, switching the light on and stepping into the room.
As soon as he saw her pale and sweating face, he knew something was terribly wrong. She was cold to the touch, breathing shallowly. He shook her. Her eyes opened a bit, but showed only half-moons of white under the lids. She did not awaken.
Chaco dropped the tray on the nightstand and ran downstairs.
“Fred! Sierra’s worse. I’m going to get help,” he called. He found the number Sierra had scrawled on the pad of paper next to the phone and had a brief, urgent conversation with someone on the other end.
Fred pattered upstairs to check on Sierra. He clambered onto the chair next to her bed and felt her forehead.
“Oh, this is bad,” he muttered to himself.
He climbed back down and went to the bathroom, where he had to scale the toilet to reach the sink. He put a towel in the sink and flooded it with warm water. Climbing back down, he returned to her bed, tenderly placing the wet towel on Sierra’s clammy forehead and soaking her one remaining dry pillow. Then he settled down to worry and wait.
A half an hour passed, and Sierra twitched and mumbled unintelligibly but did not wake. Fred had just completed his third trip to the bathroom and back to soak the towel with warm water when the doorbell rang. Fred instantly disappeared. He heard Chaco answer, and footsteps came quickly up the stairs. Chaco entered the room accompanied by a tall, dark-skinned woman wearing an orange, black, and brown Africa-print dress and a chunky stone necklace. She had large brown eyes—currently shadowed by a tense frown—and a generous mouth to go with her generously endowed hips. She rushed to Sierra’s bedside and felt her face.
“She’s all wet and cold!” Kaylee turned accusing eyes on Chaco. “What happened to her? Who are you, anyway? What are you doing here? Why didn’t you take her to the hospital?”
She seemed likely to continue with her questions without waiting for an answer, but Chaco held up a hand.
“Sierra has been…wounded badly.”
He held up his hand again as Kaylee drew breath for another barrage.
“Hear me out. Please. I need to find someone who can heal this kind of injury.”
Kaylee narrowed her eyes dangerously.
“What do you mean by that? I know a doctor. And Sierra needs medical care…”
“No, she doesn’t,” interrupted Chaco. “Sierra’s wound can’t be healed by a doctor.”
Kaylee blinked at him, long, curly lashes flickering over her dark eyes.
“Just who are you?”
“I’m Chaco. A friend. It’s a really long story, Kaylee, and we don’t have that kind of time. Later, I promise. Sierra needs help, now. She needs someone who—I can’t think of any other way to say it—who deals with the supernatural. Someone who can heal a supernatural injury.”
“Show me.”
Chaco gestured at the bandage under Sierra’s pajama top. Kaylee eased the fabric up and gently peeled back the bandage. She hissed between her teeth at the side of the puffy, white flesh ridged around the wound.
“She’s so cold,” Kaylee whispered. “Why is she so damn cold?”
“The creature that attacked her uses cold as a poison. I don’t really know how it works, but I’m afraid she’s freezing to death from the inside.”
Chaco twisted his long fingers together nervously. Kaylee stared at him for a beat, then made up her mind.
“I need to make a phone call,” she said, and whipped out her mobile phone and punched in a number. She had a brief conversation, giving directions to Sierra’s house, and put the phone away.
“We’ve got a few minutes now,” she said. “I think you’d better tell me exactly what’s going on while we wait.” Kaylee sat, settling herself in a chair with a determined thump.
“Suppose you tell me how you know about me for a start,” Kaylee said, her dark eyes boring into Chaco’s amber ones. “I never told Sierra about me. Thought she’d freak, I guess. But somehow you know that I practice Vodún, don’t you?”
“Easy. It was your necklace,” Chaco said. He gestured at the carved piece that Kaylee wore around her neck. “Sierra showed me a picture of you, and you were wearing it. I recognized it right away.”
She touched the stone absently, her slender fingers exploring its surface as though trying to remember what it was. Carved from red-orange stone, the pendant was heart-shaped. Lines were incised across it, making squares, which were pierced, forming a kind of filigree. A snake wrapped around the heart, its head resting across the widest part.
“You recognized the vévé of Madame Ézilee?” she asked, one eyebrow cocked.
Chaco nodded. “I did,” he acknowledged. “Of all your loa, she is my personal favorite.”
“So she’s your favorite, eh? Our goddess of love, our black Aphrodite?”
Chaco nodded earnestly again, but smiled this time. “I look forward to my next encounter with her—more than I can say!”
Kaylee eyed him with amazement. “You know Madame Ézilee?” she asked, incredulously. “Who are you?”
Chaco’s rather self-satisfied grin faded and he shifted uneasily. “I’m—well, I’m sort of like Ézilee,” he responded. “I’m Coyotl the Trickster. An Avatar.”
Kaylee regarded him for another moment in silence, apparently turning this information over in her mind. “What do you mean by an Avatar?” she asked finally. “I know what the dictionary says, but how do you define it?”
Chaco looked cornered. “There are so many names,” he replied. “Gods. Spirits. Sidhe. Loa. Deities. Some are called demons. Or angels. We aren’t physical, but we can take physical form. We aren’t mortal, but we can be destroyed under certain circumstances. We have great powers—but we aren’t all-powerful. I can do many things that humans can’t, but I can’t heal Sierra. I have no influence over the evil that hurt her. That’s why I called you.”
“I see,” said Kaylee. “Well, then, Mr. Coyotl. What are your special powers?”
She smiled slightly, as though not expecting much. The smile vanished abruptly, replaced by a look of wide-eyed alarm, as Chaco’s body began to melt and flow into his coyote form. He sat on the floor, looking up at her with yellow eyes and panting a bit, but definitely grinning.
Kaylee recovered from her astonishment quickly.
“OK,” she said. “That’s enough. I believe you. And don’t think I haven’t seen stranger things, because I have!”
She sat back, arms folded across her chest, as Chaco returned to human form.
“And who’s that other person? The one who’s been sneaking around the room while we’ve been talking?”
Kaylee smiled again, knowing she was scoring a point.
Chaco, now completely anthropomorphic, brushed a few coyote hairs off his jeans.
“Oh, you probably mean Fred,” he replied. “He’s not exactly a person.” How’d you figure out that he was here?”
Fred exploded into view, his orange eyes wheeling madly in several different directions. Kaylee started violently, but maintained her composure.
“And just what the hell are you supposed to be?” she inquired sweetly.
Two or three digits popped wetly out of Fred’s mouth as he answered, “Mannegishi.”
As Fred didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, Chaco said, “Mannegishi are sort of like leprechauns…”
“Not!” exclaimed Fred. “That’s insulting. Take it back!”
“Well, let’s see,” snapped Chaco. “You can disappear, you trick people, you steal stuff, and you’re green. The only difference is…”
Fred swelled ominously, making little spluttering sounds of indignation, but Kaylee intervened.
“It doesn’t matter, Fred, Chaco. We have a desperately ill woman here. This is no time to get into a spat.”
Chaco and Fred subsided, glaring at each other, and that was the last of the conversation until the doorbell rang. Chaco jumped up, but Kaylee rose with more dignity and said, “Better let me.”
She walked downstairs. Fred and Chaco could hear the door open and the murmur of women’s voices, followed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
Kaylee re-entered the room, followed by a second woman. The newcomer was tall and very dark-skinned, with the graceful bearing of a dancer. She was swathed in a white robe, a white turban was wrapped around her head, and she held a battered leather satchel. She turned her large eyes, slightly almond-shaped and thickly fringed with dark lashes, on Fred.
“Long time since I see one of those,” she commented in an accented voice as deep and rich as coffee liqueur.
“Fred, this is Mama Labadie. She’s a Vodún mambo from my hounfour—my temple,” Kaylee said. “She said she might be able to heal Sierra.”
Mama Labadie strode to Sierra’s bedside with an air of authority and twitched back the covers. She peeled the bandages back and gave a sharp hissing intake of breath.
“Look at this, coyote, you. No wonder.”
Without pausing to wonder how Mama Labadie knew what—or who—he was, Chaco looked at the gash in Sierra’s side. The skin was as white as bleached coral. The scab was black and oozing.
“It was OK last night,” he protested. “We put a shegoi poultice on her, but she must have washed it off.”
“That maybe help, but that ice demon, his poison too strong. She got ice in her ti bon ange now, her body too cold. She need heat.”
Mama Labadie set down her satchel and began fishing out various objects. She gave Fred several candles and instructed him where they should be placed in the room.
To Chaco, “Go get me banana, melon, rice, eggs, cornmeal, grapes. Any of that. And a basin of clean water.”
Chaco hurried out and came back with everything except bananas. She set the food in front of an improvised altar she had decorated with shells, beads and silk flowers.
“What are you going to do?” asked Chaco.
She glared at him. “You, coyote, you play drum for me. You, mannegishi, you take this rattle. Kaylee, you know how to chant. Make music for me. Don’t stop for anything ‘til it’s all over. I ask you to stop, don’t stop. You hear?”
Everyone nodded wordlessly.
“I call Damballah-Wedo. He is the wise serpent, and he have the power to heal this woman. He will be me for a while and I go away. When I come back, you stop. Only then. Do not talk. Just play and chant. You comprehend?”
Chaco, Kaylee, and Fred nodded silently again. Chaco began a rhythmic and hypnotic drumming; Fred’s rattle was erratic at first, but in time it melded with the drumming. Kaylee began a chant and Fred squeakily joined in. Mama Labadie began to dance gracefully on her bare feet. She swayed and spun, arms over her head. This continued for some minutes, and then she suddenly stiffened. Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the whites against her espresso skin. Sweat dripped down her face, and she smiled, a wide, gleaming, tender smile quite unlike her somber mien of a few minutes before.
Still showing only the whites of her eyes, she swayed toward the altar. First she plunged her hands into the basin of water, then bathed her face. She ate the food, smiling all the while but never speaking. Then she glided to the bed where Sierra lay. The mambo bent over and spread her arms above Sierra’s still figure, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of the instruments. Then, without touching the unconscious woman, she passed her hands over Sierra’s body, muttering softly. She kept this up a long time, Chaco doggedly drumming, Kaylee chanting, and Fred shaking his rattle all the while.
Finally, Sierra gave a long sigh. Black tendrils of cold mist issued from her lips, dissipating reluctantly like oil spreading across water. Mama Labadie passed her hands through the dark mist until it disappeared, then suddenly folded in on herself and sank quietly to the floor in a heap of white cloth. The others continued their chanting and playing until Mama Labadie raised her head, eyes now dark and very tired.
“You can stop now,” she said. “Ugliest damn music I ever hear.”
The drumming and rattling subsided raggedly. Kaylee went to Sierra’s side and inspected her wound. The skin was clean and smooth, the deep, fishbelly-white slash gone as though it had never been. She pulled the covers over Sierra and noted she was sleeping naturally and her skin was comfortably warm. Her face was rosy. Kaylee turned to the others with a smile.
