Shadow Play (9 page)

Dissonant music rent the air as dancers whirled and leapt around them, spinning yards and yards of bright paper streamers in their faces, forcing Morgan to shove them away or rip the pennants from their hands. Others, covered from head to toe in dragon costumes, undulated between the stalls like startling monsters flushed from their caves, their fire- breathing masks muting the almost maniacal-sounding laughter from within.

Sarah and Morgan rounded a corner and skidded to a stop. For a heart-stopping instant there appeared to be no way out. A wall rose up ten feet ahead of them, and in front of it sat a withered old man, his yellow skin seamed and his straight gray hair plaited all the way to his knees. In one hand he held an iguana as long as his arm. In the other, a knife. With a lift of the bloodied blade, his knotted hands slit the reptile's belly, spilling entrails to the ground by his feet where numerous snakes lay coiled, asleep in the sun, or already skinned. Nearby, several burlap sacks convulsed with doomed reptiles whose hisses of outrage could be heard even over the distant music.

Sarah gasped and turned away, terrified.

Morgan, however, stared down at the ancient one's lap, where a
surucucu
lay as docilely as a cat. Its beadlike black eyes stared up at Morgan with a cold malevolence that almost succeeded in turning his blood to ice.

Behind them, footsteps drew nearer, and Sarah whispered with strained urgency, "Morgan... Morgan, oh God, Morgan, do something.
Please
..."

The Chinaman's eyes rolled up at Morgan, their pupils cloudy white with cataracts. As he smiled, revealing nubs for teeth and a tongue which had been split like a snake's, the hide of the reptile he'd been skinning rolled smoothly from the limp carcass and fell to his robed lap.

"Yes?" he seemed to hiss.

"Morgan, he's coming!" Sarah cried.

"The snake," Morgan said quietly. "Give me.. .give me that snake. There.'' He pointed to the cobra coiled within the folds of the old man's lap.

"We've got to get out of here!" Sarah looked around, her features freezing as Morgan walked to the old man. As if sensing his presence, the snakes in the burlap bags began a

thrashing that strained the string-bound enclosures to their limits.

The Chinaman only smiled and stroked the serpent's head, closing his gnarled hands behind the snake's hood as Morgan drew nearer.

As he reached for the cobra, the creature raised its head and hissed its vehemence. He froze. Sweat beaded his brow as he realized that if the old man decided to release his hold on the snake, he was a dead man.

' 'How much?'' he sneered at the Chinaman. "How much, you slant-eyed bastard? How much!"

"What is it worth, your life?"

His mouth curving in a smile, Morgan again withdrew his knife from its scabbard and, holding its glinting blade up for the Chinaman to see, said, "How much is
your
life worth, old man? Before I die from the
surucucu's
venom, I will have cut your throat a dozen times and skinned you like that iguana."

Their eyes met in understanding.,

Slowly, very slowly, hearing King's men closing in on him Morgan reached again for the
surucucu,
eased his fingers around the cobra's body, and gripped it just behind its massive jaws.

"Sarah," he ordered quietly, "get behind the old man." As she did so, shying away from the snakes as much as possible, he said to the Chinaman, "There has to be another way out of here. Where is it?"

"Beyond those crates." He motioned toward a stack of bamboo cages, then, smiling, added, "Be very careful. Many snakes hide in alleyway."

"Thanks for the warning, you old—"

"Kane! Drop your knife!" came a harsh voice from just behind him.

Morgan spun and threw the writhing snake in his pursuer's face, and as Sarah screamed, he bent over and cut the cord of one of the burlap bags, spilling the reptiles in a squirming flood over the ground and onto the terrified assassin. In another lithe move, he grabbed Sarah and shoved her out of the way.

Without hesitating, Sarah ran through the shadowed corridor made up of hundreds upon hundreds of snake cages piled one atop the other, forming an eerie, wavering mountain above them. They broke into the open, gasping in much- needed air. But as Sarah spun around to grab Morgan in relief, Gilberto de Queiros appeared out of nowhere and moved up behind her so quickly that Morgan had no time to react. De Queiros closed his arm about her throat, pulled her back against him, and slammed the barrel of his pistol into her temple. As Morgan froze, his eyes pinned on Sarah's stunned face, de Queiros said,

"At last we meet again, Senior Kane. It is about time,
s(V

Morgan closed his eyes in frustration.

"Drop the knife, senior. And kick it over to me,
porfavor."

Morgan did as de Queiros said. Blotting the sweat from his face with his sleeve, he tried to breathe through the stifling heat. Another moment passed as he allowed his frantically pounding heart to slow. Yet each time he looked into Sarah's white face trepidation washed over him again.

"Let her go, de Queiros. She has nothing to do with me."

"No? She's not another of your many
putas?”

"No." He shook his head. "She's nothing to me. Let her go and you can do what you want with me."

De Queiros tightened his grip around Sarah's throat. "You're a liar, Kane. You always have been. Seniorita, you must know that when this man says something is white, it must be black. Therefore, you must be of great importance to him,
querida."

Morgan took a step toward him, but was brought up short as de Queiros pulled back the hammer on the gun.

De Queiros smiled and shrugged. "You would not do anything foolish, senior. You know by experience that such stupidity is met with grave consequences where we come from. You have already committed the unforgivable—"

"Then kill me, but leave her out of this."

"That's not our friend's way, is it? It's a shame, however. She's very young and beautiful. But she made the grave mistake of becoming involved with a condemned man. Now she must die."

Sarah whimpered, her eyes wide and bright with tears as she looked at Morgan. She bit her lip to keep from crying aloud, and a drop of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth. Then, with no warning, her eyes rolled back in her head, and with a sigh, she sank in a faint against de Queiros. Taken by surprise, he stumbled back, her weight too much to control as her body slid toward the ground in a heap of tattered taffeta and silk.

Morgan ran, sprinting up the cobblestone passageway between two buildings.

"Stop!" The gun exploded and a bullet splintered a brick to the right of Morgan's head. "I'll not miss next time, senior!"

Morgan slowed, then stopped, turning his face up to the yellow light overhead, waiting for a bullet to blow out his brains. He counted the seconds, hoping his attempted

escape would give Sarah time enough to recover and escape before de Queiros went back to finish her off.

De Queiros walked to him. "So we are face-to-face at last, and this time I have the knife.'' He turned the weapon so the sunlight glinted off the blade like a streak of lightning. "Perhaps we shall see how brave you are without the knife,
s(?
First, though we'll see how manly you are without your dick. What you say, big man?
Mucho hombre.
Think the senioritas will like you so much then?"

Pressed back against a wall, Morgan winced as the blade sliced through his trousers and bit into the skin of his scrotum. "What difference does it make if I'm dead?" he said with a tight smile.

"You're right. Why waste time? I'll have more fun carving up your face and disemboweling you while you watch.'' De Queiros raised the knife and pressed it into the underside of Morgan's chin. If he swallowed he would cut his own throat. Then he realized there wasn't enough spit left in his entire body to make him swallow.

"So, amigo, have you any regrets that you would like me to relate to our mutual friend?"

"You mean that bastard King?"

"I see your disposition hasn't improved. It's a shame after all he did for you."

"Did
to
me, you mean."

"I'm sorry, but I could never understand your attitude. Randi showed great benevolence toward you during your stay."

"Imprisonment."

"Had you only shown some gratitude. But you were always so belligerent, so rebellious. You could have become as powerful as Randi himself; there's nothing he would not have given you had you only... cooperated a little more. Now, I regret to say, I must kill you. It's nothing personal, you understand. Were it up to me, I might simply cut open your face, as you did mine, and leave you with a remembrance of our friendship. But Randi is King, after all. And his word is law. Regrettably, you never understood that.
Via con Dios>
my friend."

The edge of the wood plank hit de Queiros solidly at the base of his skull, driving him into Morgan, who grabbed his hand before the knife could cut into his throat. The killer sank slowly to his knees, his eyes vacant pools. Then Sarah brought the board down over his head a second time, and he toppled to the ground, facedown in a puddle of sewage.

Morgan and Sarah stared down at de Queiros's body as if anticipating his immediate resurrection. Finally, covering her mouth with her fingertips, she looked up at Morgan, her small face almost lost in her wild spray of gold hair.

"Oh, my," she said. "Have I killed him?"

Morgan bent, grabbed a handful of hair, and jerked back de Queiros's head, then released it and frowned. "Nah, he's still breathin'.'' Morgan pried the knife from the man's hand and slid it back into the scabbard. "You should've got the blazes out of here when you had the chance," he told her.

"Probably, but then he would've killed you."

Morgan shrugged and turned up the alleyway, anxious to put distance between himself and de Queiros.

"I should have let him kill you for all the thanks I get for saving your bastardly life!" she cried out after him. "Especially after you said those horrible things about my father!"

"So why didn't you?"

"Because I need you," came her small voice.

Stopping, he turned. She reminded him of a brightly colored rooster come up on the short end of a cockfight. But there was something, too, in the willful set of her chin, and in the eyes that, though shining with tears, refused to cry.

He shook his head. "You see what you're up against. You can multiply this sort of danger by a thousand and not begin to equal the perils that are waitin' for you in Amazonia. Sweetheart, faintin' just ain't gonna cut it when you're face-to-face with Xavante headhunters."

Raising her skirts, she stepped over de Queiros's unconscious form, her eyes locked on his. In a firm voice, she informed him, "I didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"Faint. I only pretended to, knowing he would be forced to drop me. I counted on you running so I'd have the chance to find a weapon and sneak up behind him." She beamed him a proud smile. "It worked."

"Yeah." He grinned. "I guess it did."

"So will you do it? Take me to Japura!'

Sarah waited, the minutes dragging by like an eternity as the American considered her request. When he smiled again, the rigid lines of his face relaxed into an odd sort of acceptance that fluttered her already pounding heart.

"Yeah," came his soft drawl, "I'll do it."

Her reaction was immediate, surprising even herself. She ran to him and threw her arms around him, burying her face against his chest. Laughing and crying at once, she

breathed in the musky scent of his skin. For an instant the past horrible minutes might never have happened.

"Thank you!" She wept and held him tighter, only vaguely aware of how stiff he had become in her arms. When she looked at him again, her head falling back so that she peered through tears of relief, she saw a strange light in his silver eyes. With a stunned amazement, she was conscious of an overwhelming impulse to take his stubbled face in her hands and kiss him.

But she didn't. She wouldn't dare. The very idea of such a thing shocked her. Instead, she fled up the alleyway in search of Kan.

By the time Henry arrived at Tobacco Row, Morgan had finished his evening meal of whiskey
and feijoada,
a mixture of meat scraps and black beans that had cooked all day. He had bathed and changed into his fine linen suit. He was positioning his white, wide-brimmed Panama hat low over his brow when his friend knocked on the door.

"Yeah," he said.

Henry stepped in, his brown face unusually somber as he regarded Morgan. "I say, old man, I spoke to Kan. He told me what happened at the market today."

"Well, ain't it always the way? Where the hell are your friends when you need them?"

"You seem to have handled yourself respectably well."

"We're alive, by the skin of our teeth." He cocked the Panama rakishly.

"Kan told me about the snakes."

"Christ, I hate snakes." He shuddered.

"I'm proud of you, Morgan, not only for the way you handled yourself but also for deciding to go to Japura."

He swept several coins from the crumb-littered tabletop into his pocket. "Don't go getting the idea that I'm being valiant. It's just that until now we haven't had the resources to go into Japura. Now we do. We'll get King, and his gold."

"Along with a few thousand rubber seeds."

Angrily, Morgan faced him. "I ain't goin' into Japura" for rubber seeds."

"But—"

"But nothin'." He flipped open the top two buttons of his shirt, exposing a dark vee of hair on the upper portion of his chest. "You were right," he told Henry. "The only way to deal with King is to confront him face-to-face. I can't keep running, Henry. I can't look over my shoulder for the rest of my life. Eventually one of his henchmen is going to kill

me, and believe it or not, I'd rather know it was coming than to get it in the back. So I figure, why not take the bastard with me when I go?"

' 'You make this sound like some sort of suicide mission.''