The Devil's Elixir (45 page)

“Yes. He was obsessed with it. He spent years following Eusebio’s trail. And he did it.” Navarro’s gaze hardened into an icy glare. “And then you came down here and killed him and took it away from me.”

I wasn’t moved. “So you came after Alex.”

“I didn’t have years to waste, and McKinnon’s tribe didn’t want to be found. I knew Eusebio’s mission was in Wixáritari territory—that was in his journal, and that’s where McKinnon started following his trail. The tribe originated in the mountains around San Luis Potosí, and to escape the conquistadors, they spread west. That’s where Eusebio founded his mission, in Durango. Then the Jesuits got pulled out by the king of Spain, and the natives found themselves at the mercy of the miners who wanted to use them as slave labor. So they scattered again, ending up all over the place. There are a few of them still around. We call them Huichol now.

“I hired some anthropologists to try and follow McKinnon’s trail,” he continued. “We went down south and talked to Huichol and Lacandon tribes in the rainforests around Chiapas, which is where McKinnon said he came across the formula. We found some tribesmen who remembered meeting him, who remembered him and his old journal and his questions. And then the trail went cold. We couldn’t find the tribe he’d ended up with or the shaman who’d shown him how to make it. Who knows? Maybe he’d lied about where he’d found it. Maybe he found it somewhere else completely. And all I had left was this,” he said, picking up a small stainless steel vial with a sealed lid, about the size of a cigar tube. “The leftovers of what McKinnon gave me.”

“So you started kidnapping scientists to get them to recreate it for you,” I speculated.

“They couldn’t do it,” he told me. “They couldn’t identify all the ingredients or the chemical reactions that produced it. I was losing patience. And then I heard about Alex and his sessions with you, doctor.” He swung his gaze back to me. “And when I discovered he was your son,” he said, his face lighting up, “the stars had aligned. It was perfect karma.”

“How?” Stephenson asked. “How did you know I was treating Alex? My work isn’t public.”

“You’re the West’s top authority on reincarnation, doctor,” Navarro said. “And I probably know more about your own work than you do.” He gave him a smug, cold smile. “College computers aren’t as safe as you think. It wasn’t hard for a hacker to get me into your hard drive. I read everything you were working on, all your emails to your inner circle of researchers.”

I was still working through what he was telling us about the drug. It lets you relive past lives. And he was going to get hold of it through the past-life experience of someone—of my son—who was the reincarnation of the guy who’d brought it to him.

My temples were pounding.

Navarro stepped up to Stephenson and put his arm around him. “I need you to get me this formula from Alex, doctor. I need you to make sure all of this hasn’t been a waste of my time. I can be very generous. Or I can be unpleasant.” He moved closer to him and cupped Stephenson’s chin in one hand, squeezing it hard. “And to make sure you understand what I mean, I want you to pay careful attention.”

He turned to me. “Sadly, for you all this will be nothing but talk, as your soul is about to take its final journey. A journey from which there is no way back.”

Navarro opened an intricately carved wooden chest and took out a length of silicone tubing, a terracotta bowl, a carved wooden stick, and five clay vials. He crouched down and began to pour liquids from the vials into the dish. As he did so he muttered under his breath. The mixture took on a sickly mustardy color and had the consistency of sludge.

His men positioned themselves on either side of me and began to steer me toward a heavy wooden chair. I decided to at least not make it too easy for them. I barged into one of them with my right shoulder, linebacker style, catching him off guard. My momentum carried us forward till I had him against the wall, and I kept pushing, forcing the air from his chest.

Then a searing pain erupted in my back, where the lower spine is right up against the tissue. I spun around to see that the other goon had hit me full force with a length of metal pipe. He swung the pipe back and hit the same spot again. I tried to turn all the way, to take the next blow to my front, but the guy I had pushed against the wall grabbed my arms and was holding me firm. The goon with the pipe swung it at me one more time for good measure, and I screamed out in pain before crumpling to the floor, groaning.

The goons lifted me up, one under each shoulder, and dragged me over to the chair, beside which Navarro was now standing. They strapped me into the chair. The fact that my now swelling back felt tender against the hardwood of the chair’s upright wasn’t helping.

One of the goons grabbed my chin with one hand and squeezed my nose shut with the other, forcing me to open my mouth. Navarro then expertly inserted the tube down my throat. I fought the urge to gag, but I couldn’t breathe. My throat tried unsuccessfully to eject the foreign body that was being forced into it, but to no avail. Navarro held the end of the tube in my throat till I had no other choice but to swallow. Then he continued to push the tube down into my stomach.

The goon let go of my nose and I took a few deep breaths. Both goons moved away from the chair and Navarro stepped around to face me.

“You’ve been a pain to me in this life, and the last thing I want is for your soul to cause me more trouble in the future. Because after you die, your soul will move from this body of yours to a new body. From one life to another. But the soul can also be annihilated completely, if it leaves the body and can’t find a path back. If it is in so much pain that its only option is to blink out, like someone has extinguished a flame.”

He held up the bowl.

“This will force your soul from your body. Then it will attack your soul with such brutal force that the only way to put a stop to the torment will be its own end. If your soul dies before your body, then the connection between the world of souls and the world of matter is broken forever. Your chain of birth and death will end with you. It will end now. Soon even the blackest darkness will be lost to you.”

He began to stir the mixture inside.

“I know you probably don’t believe a word of it. I have no way of knowing if it’s true or not myself, or if it’s just the naïve belief of the shaman who taught it to me. But all that really matters is that, either way . . . you’ll be dead. And that’s good enough for me.”

I
could feel the tube pressing against my esophagus. I desperately wanted to gag, but I tried to slow my breathing, to ignore what the back of my throat was shouting at me. Navarro finished stirring the mustard-colored mixture and nodded to himself, obviously satisfied that his creation was ready. Stephenson was watching him, too, his face white and glistening with fear.

In three words, we were screwed. There was no way out of this. Tess and Alex would die—and not quickly—and even then it probably wouldn’t be the end. The monster would probably go after Kim, too. What goes around really was coming around. With interest.

I closed my eyes briefly and, for some reason, I had this thought that I wanted a priest. It gave me a small measure of peace. Navarro must have seen my expression shift somehow, even though half of it was incapacitated by the tube. A quizzical expression animated his face. For a moment he must have wondered why I wasn’t pissing myself and begging for my life. He needn’t have worried; after seeing what he did to Wook and Torres, I was pretty sure I’d become a gibbering wreck given half the chance.

What hurt most was I couldn’t even say good-bye to Tess.

“Ready?” he asked, as if my saying no would change anything.

He raised the end of the tube and began to pour the gloopy liquid into the other end. I could see it dripping down the inside of the tube. It would be inside me in seconds and, I imagined, in my bloodstream in minutes. There was absolutely nothing I could do, no fanciful ninja move that would whip my arms free and slaughter my tormentors in seconds, so I fought with myself to accept that. An odd thought sailed into my mind. For the first time in my life, I wished I’d let my hair down a bit more in college. Maybe tried hallucinogens once, so I had some idea of what was about to happen. Would have maybe helped dampen the fear I was feeling right now. And, apparently, I wasn’t going to get a do-over either.

My eyes were locked on the sludge oozing its way down the tube when a deafening noise cracked the air, accompanied by a sodium-white flare.

The whole place shook.

Navarro dropped the bowl and spun his head away in total surprise—

Then another explosion, almost on top of the first. I summoned every iota of strength left in my bruised body and threw my entire weight to my left. The chair topped and flew, just as something flew into the room as another stun grenade filled it with blinding light.

The noise of the third flashbang was immediately replaced by the sound of machine gun fire from outside the building.

From my limited point of view on my side and pressed down against the floor, I spotted frantic movement around the room. Navarro may have been nuts, but he’d already well demonstrated that he was also a pragmatist when it came to self-preservation, and by the time the air cleared, he and his henchmen had already left the room through another door at its other end.

I craned my neck to try to get a better view, but I was facing the wall and couldn’t see anything. Then a familiar voice barked, “Get him up. The target’s heading back to the main house. Follow him.”

A couple of soldiers in full black Special Ops gear were all over me, and I felt the straps loosening and the tube being slowly pulled from my throat. I retched and threw up the bit of goop that had made it into me. My head was pounding. After giving me a couple of seconds, they dragged me to my feet, and I turned round to find myself facing Munro.

“You good to go?” he asked.

My head felt like it had been tossed through a giant pinball machine.

“How’d you find us?”

He dismissed it with a grimace. “Long story.”

“Alex, Tess—where are they?”

“In the main house.”

I snapped with surprise. “They’re not with you?”

“They’re in the main house,” he repeated, stern and a bit slower, like I was having trouble understanding the language.

I was furious. “Why didn’t you go for them first?”

“You were about to fucking die here,
amigo
,” he fired back. “You sure you want to second-guess my choices?”

I just glared at him in disbelief, then asked, “So where’s the damn house?”

“Follow me,” he said, pointing.

“I need a weapon.”

Munro swung his MP4 submachine gun off to one side, pulled his Glock from its holster, and handed it to me.

He moved to head out, then I remembered something.

“Wait,” I hollered. I scoured the room looking for the stainless steel vial that Navarro had shown us, but I was still dazed and couldn’t see it. I had no choice but to mention it.

“The drug. There’s a sample of it somewhere.”

I looked around urgently—then I spotted it, lying innocuously on the floor.

By Munro’s feet.

He read my reaction, followed my gaze to it, and picked it up. Then, with a smug grin, he pocketed it.

“Come on,” he barked, then he set off toward the house.

I followed, hot on his heels.

We followed a narrow passage that led to an old stairwell, then we were outside again, and we sprinted in a slight crouch along a tree-lined path that led across a football-field-size landscaped quadrangle and back to the hacienda. Off to the right, I spotted several men from Munro’s unit who were locked in a manic firefight with Navarro’s guards, the latter firing away from behind a pickup truck while three of Munro’s guys had taken cover behind a stone water trough.

Munro didn’t even cast a look at them as he ran toward the house.

We were still more than a hundred yards from the house’s main entrance when I saw Tess run out of there. I could see blood on the side of her face, but she was moving smoothly and didn’t seem badly hurt. I didn’t need any more information to know that Navarro had taken Alex and that she’d been helpless to stop him. I gestured with my arm and shouted out, “Stay down,” and as I pushed myself to move even faster, the sound of an engine straining to its limit rose above the gunfire. It was coming from the other side of what looked like some derelict stables off to the left of the house, and through an arcaded walkway, I glimpsed a Jeep tearing off away from us.

Navarro. And Alex.

Munro turned to me and pointed at the other side of the main house.

“I saw a couple of quad bikes over by the cemetery.”

Without waiting for an acknowledgement from me, he banked away and was running full tilt toward the handful of broken grave markers that were visible at the left-hand end of the house. Every muscle in my body wanted to run directly toward the engine noise. If we lost sight of Navarro and Alex, I was worried we’d never find them again, but Munro had made the right move. We’d certainly never catch the Jeep on foot. I also couldn’t take the time to go to Tess, much as I wanted to. Agonizingly, it would have to wait. So I ignored the thudding pain in my back and the torment in my head and forced myself into a run.