Demon Seed (18 page)

“The end?” She shot him a sidelong glance.

“One more. Tomorrow I’ll have this one printed for you to keep in your new wallet.”

Something in his voice must have alerted her, because her eyes lit up like a Broadway sign, all aglow with excitement. “My mother.”

Gaze rapt, she picked up the phone and examined the photograph. Enlarging parts, scrupulously studying every feature, and then she sighed. Her eyes held pooled moisture. “Thank you. From my heart’s bottom.”

He didn’t correct her idiom.

The doorbell buzzed. They both ignored the first ring. Demon gave her shoulder a squeeze. Though it went against every instinct, he forced himself to back down. She wanted to do the room service thing, and he’d let her. It wouldn’t make up for doping her and stowing her on the plane tomorrow, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances. “I’ll get the tip. You let him in.”

“Okay.”

Tomorrow he’d get an eight-by-ten framed copy of her mother and stick it in her luggage before handing her over to Xavier. He opened the dresser drawer where he’d stowed his wallet, heard Jacinta’s gasp, and every hackle rose. He spun around, and a shot rang out. The bullet plowed into his shoulder. The impact slammed him so hard the drawer banged shut.

Fuck.

Chapter Ten

It all happened so fast that Jacinta didn’t have the time to breathe.

Emilio and his friends at the door.

The gunshots.

Half turning to see Demon drop to the floor.

Being punched in the jaw.

The pain, the sheer impact of the blow sent her reeling across the room.

And now, here she was in some shack in the middle of nowhere. Alone. Bound. Gagged. Tied to a rusty pipe sticking out of the wooden wall.

How long had she been passed out? She didn’t remember much. A car ride. Being jostled and hitting her head. Emilio’s smug smile.

Demon. Oh God. Demon. Emilio shot him
. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Please, please let him be alive. How did Emilio find them? Where is he? And his amigos?

Calm. She must be calm. Breathe. Inhale, exhale. She focused on her lungs. Shutting out the greasy, oily gag bruising her lips. Blocking out the leather strips stinging her wrists and ankles. One minute. Survive one minute. Continuing her rhythmic inhaling and exhaling, Jacinta counted the seconds.

One minute done.

By the time she’d counted off thirteen minutes, Jacinta had enough control to take stock. She glanced around. No windows, but the darkness wasn’t absolute; light snuck under the cracks from the doorway. Moonlight?

No sounds other than those normal at night. Crickets, frogs, owls hooting to each other. A dirt floor. No furniture. Just the rusty pipe. No smells other than that of manure. A field?

She had planned to sneak out after their dinner. Maria had told her that there was an early morning bus to Roraima. That was why she’d put on her boots and not complained about Demon ordering her to put in the contacts. She had the two knives she’d taken from the boat’s kitchen earlier taped to the insides of her boots. And a wad of cash she’d taken from his wallet. How much time did she have?

Not enough to waste a single second. After seven tries, she managed to snag her feet around the pipe. Thank the Lord for Sister Helen’s insistence on teaching her tai chi and yoga. She was short but agile and very, very flexible. Her right wrist started bleeding just as she gripped the hilt of the knife.

The pain served as an incentive rather than a deterrent. She worked up a sweat sawing at the surprisingly strong leather strips, but freed both her wrists and ankles in less than a count of seven minutes.

Jacinta crawled to the door, taking care to make no noise, keeping her breathing even and slow though she longed to draw in huge gasps of oxygen. The shack stank of chicken shit, and each shallow inhale felt fetid and unclean.

She set her ear to the rough wooden panel and listened. Nothing. Was it a ruse? Were they waiting for her to burst out? Watching and anticipating killing themselves with cruel laughter because she thought herself freed?

Never had time slid by so slowly. Never had she found it so hard to concentrate. Tranquility achieved only by visualizing a baby Demon. A family. That porch of her dreams.

Lurching to her feet, she almost overbalanced and then had to lean against the wall and count off seven more seconds before she gripped the knotted twine that served as a doorknob. One, two, three. She flung the door open and bounded out of the shack, fists pumping, legs striding wide and fast.

Sights and sounds and smells filtered in with each burning stride. A field. Half a moon. No clouds. Many stars. Sugarcane, the pointed blossom arrows ready for harvest. Not a moving creature in sight. The realization made her stumble, but she steadied and kept on sprinting. Faster, faster, she had to get as far away as possible.

In the distance, she spied trees. Cover. She increased her speed. Her lungs blistered. The trees loomed closer, and she redoubled her efforts. She reached beyond the first line of wild schefflera trees and bent over, gasping, readying for another burst of energy.

“How long do we keep her alive, Emilio?”

She almost burst into tears.

She glanced up and met Julio’s beady black eyes. They had played the game again. Hunting her down. She knew showing fear would only incite their fervor, so she strived for a composure totally lacking. Straightened. Threw her shoulders back. Lifted her chin. Searched the loose line of trees. Found her half brother and met his stare head-on. Knew what she had to do in an instant.

“You would let your amigos do the plucking?” Jacinta issued the threat and set her hands to her back, thrusting her breasts forward, knowing the skimpy tank didn’t cover her fully, and gambling on the men’s distraction. In one fluid move, she lifted the shirt.

Emilio sneered, his full lips sliding into a cruel slant. “You’ve been plucked and skinned, sister. I may take a dip after my men have had you.”

“You are too the chicken to do the deed yourself.” She tugged off the tank and bent over, sliding one bra strap off her shoulder and freeing one breast while her other hand slid to the boot. For a half breath, a mere instant, she thought of the cloister, of how scandalized the nuns would be to see her thus, stripping for distraction, surrounded by men who wanted nothing but rape and murder. But then she smiled and went into action.

The first knife hit Emilio in the chest. He stumbled backward and grabbed a tree branch before collapsing to his knees. Her grin widened. The second dagger struck Julio in the belly. He squealed like the pig he was. Blood spurted in a wide arc. He grabbed the knife and tried to dislodge it. The other two men stood as if paralyzed, jaws dropped, hands hanging.

Jacinta took off.

Running through the trees, dodging stumps, and hopping across a gushing stream. She ran and ran and ran. Not stopping even when her legs shook, stumbling on and on, crossing a river, tripping across another sugarcane field. Darkness lifted. Dawn’s early rays made her blink.

She halted when a few huts came into sight. Crouched low behind a tree and watched as a small village came to life. A stout woman fed a flock of chickens. A farmer led a mule to a field. Two toddlers crawled through an open doorway. Though her instincts told her all was well in this place, she waited until midmorning before venturing across the shallow meadow fronting the village.

Jacinta stole a shirt from a laundry line, a man’s plaid shirt, and buttoned it fully, even the top button. She felt dirty, soiled beyond redemption. She had killed a human being. Maybe even two. She knelt behind the shack and retched and retched, vomiting until the last drop of saliva erupted from her mouth. Not the time to be so weak. She stared at the dirt and leaves, at her encrusted fingernails. She heard voices, tried to force her legs to work, to stand up and keep on running.

“Señorita? Are you hurt?”

Jacinta jumped to her feet and faced the stout woman she’d seen feeding the chickens earlier. She licked her lips. “No. I am lost, not hurt.”

“Señorita, you have many scrapes on your arms. And you are wearing my husband’s shirt.” The woman carried a wicker basket.

“I’m sorry. I lost my shirt. I will pay you for it.” She still had the money in her boots.

“
No importa
. Come inside. You need to wash the blood from your skin.”

Blood. Jacinta glanced at her arms and fingers. Nicks and dried blood covered her flesh.

“I think a cup of ginger tea will make you feel better too. Come inside.” The woman touched her shoulder.

Jacinta had not a drop of energy left. Not a single iota of mental control. Grateful for direction, any direction, she followed the woman into her one-room hut. There were only a few pieces of furniture. A bed, two rickety chairs, a small round table, and, against one wall, an uneven counter that supported two gas burners; the tank lay on the floor.

The woman, Esmeralda, insisted Jacinta eat a full bowl of chicken stew and rice and beans in addition to multiple cups of ginger tea. She chattered nonstop, exchanged her husband’s shirt for a peasant-style, scooped-neck blouse, helped clean Jacinta’s scrapes, and refused to accept any payment when Jacinta offered her money after she finished eating.

“You are the one who rescued Xavier and Maria and all the rest?”

Jacinta blinked. “You know them?”

“No. You are a good child.”

She stared at Esmeralda. “How could you know about Xavier and Maria?”

The woman pulled a cell phone from her skirt pocket. She shrugged. “Twitter.”

“Twitter?” Jacinta glanced around. A cell phone and Twitter in this remote, dirt-floored shack.

It turned out the village was on the bus route. And the bus was due at any minute. Esmeralda showed her to a building standing at the crossroads, which served as the post office/bus stop/gas station.

She had stolen enough money from Demon to pay her way back to San Carlos. Or farther to the cloister. Jacinta hesitated at the cashier’s desk. Go forward or back? Demon or Sister Helen?

He would be devastated by her disappearance. And she could never hurt him. San Carlos it was.

Because the bus stopped at every single village on the route, the journey took the rest of the day and then some. They arrived in San Carlos well after dark. She had slept for part of the trip, lulled by the constant chugging of the bus, into a deep, dreamless sleep. So when they arrived at the center of the city, she felt confused and bemused, as if her mind and body had separated and functioned in separate universes.

Shock. Demon had warned her about the symptoms. Numbness, chills, a horrible need to curl into herself. Jacinta trudged through the streets, unaware of the looks she drew at first. After seeing a couple point to her, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a store window and stifled a wince. She looked like a madwoman with her matted hair and torn and stained jeans and the oversize peasant blouse. Bending her head, she hunched her shoulders and focused on each groove in the sidewalk.

Less than two blocks from the hotel, she smelled smoke. Glancing up, she spied spirals of dark charcoal curling into ivory moonbeams. There had been a fire in town. The closer she got to the hotel, the more acrid and thick the aroma became. She reached the block for the hotel and halted.

Save for the two concrete buildings on either side of the hotel, there was not a single building left standing. She sank to her knees, scrunched into a corner niche fronting a store, and stared, unable to absorb what her eyes registered. Ashes and smoldering bits of walls, a few uniformed men picking through the remnants of what was left of the hotel and the department store she’d shopped in only twenty or so hours ago.

Demon.

He couldn’t be dead.

Her heart would’ve stopped functioning.

If he wasn’t dead, where would he be?

The medical center. The one where they’d taken the wedding guests.

She took off at a lung-singeing sprint. Maria had told her where the center was, but she only knew the directions from the docks. Not wanting to waste a single second, Jacinta begged directions from a passing stranger, then another and another until someone gave her the necessary information.

The reception room of the two-story building was packed to the limit. Jacinta had to shove and elbow to get to the front desk. And then she was totally stymied. She didn’t know his name. Damn him. She would kill him for not telling her.

“The hotel guests. Where are they?”

The white-capped nurse rolled her eyes before answering, “Are you a relative of one of the guests?”

“I am the wife of a guest.” She crossed her arms and willed the woman not to ask any other question. “My husband is a large man. He has a scar on the left side of his mouth. And dozens on his back.”

“Oh,
that
one.” She rolled her eyes again. “He’s in room 227. And we’d all be grateful if you could calm him down.”

Jacinta had to grab the counter, for her knees buckled. “He’s okay?”

The nurse shrugged. “Except for the bullet wound.”

She saw dark spots. “Bullet wound?”

“He’ll live. Just a shoulder graze.”

Jacinta took off.

“Hey! Hey! You need a visitor’s pass.”

She didn’t bother with the elevator but raced to the emergency stairs. It took a lifetime to find the room, and when she entered, it was empty. She stood there opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water, scanning the small room over and over.

Right then the door slammed open and a wheelchair flew across the white tiles.

“For the last goddamned time, I am perfectly fine and I demand to be released. Jacinta. Kitten. Oh Jesus.” Demon bounded out of the chair, hauled her into his arms, and squeezed like there was no tomorrow.

She couldn’t breathe, her ribs ached, and her heart beat so hard she knew it was ready to explode. But she didn’t care. Didn’t give a damn. He was alive and walking and holding her. “I want your baby.”

Oh, so not what she should’ve said, for he shook her like a rag doll. “Did he hurt you? Did he…”