The Furies (44 page)

“I apologize, milady.” Grinning again, he bowed in front of his mother. “I don't know what came over me. I must've succumbed to the influence of that pernicious protein.”

The Riflemen laughed in the background, but Elizabeth grew angrier. “Don't jest with me, varlet! If you break your promise, our truce is over!”

By this point, Ariel had lifted her head from the floor and sat up. She wasn't hurt, but with her hands tied behind her back it was a struggle for her to stand up. Elizabeth bent over her, offering to help, but Ariel scowled. “This makes no sense, Mother. Before we left Haven you told me that Sullivan couldn't be trusted. So what makes you think he'll keep his word now?”

“Believe me, our truce isn't based on trust. The Riflemen have spent all the gold they stole from our vaults, and now they're in dire need. The catalyst is useless to them without the money to acquire the fetal tissue. And I still control our family's financial assets.” Elizabeth gave her son a pointed look. “If Basil and his men abide by the terms of the truce, I'll give them a yearly income that will meet their needs. If not, they'll get nothing. This arrangement will keep the peace between us.”

“Nay, he'll trick you.” Ariel shook her head. “He'll figure out a way.”

Sullivan wagged his finger at her. “Ah, such lack of faith. When did you become such a cynic, Sister? Frankly, I think your paramour has had a bad influence on you. We need to do something about that.” Tapping his finger against his chin, as if in deep thought, Sullivan stepped toward John, who was still too dizzy to sit up. “By the way, under the terms of the truce, I decide what happens to this outsider. Although I can't touch you, Sister, I'm free to do whatever I like with him.”

“What?” On her feet now, Ariel turned to her mother. “Is this true?'

Elizabeth nodded. “I'm afraid so. Basil was insistent on this point.”

John clenched his jaw and bit the inside of his cheek, doing everything he could to dispel the fog in his head. His situation wasn't good. Elizabeth had used him as a bargaining chip in her negotiations with Sullivan, and now the madman was going to kill him. His throat tightened, but not because he was afraid. He felt an unbearable sadness. He hated the thought that he'd never spend another night with Ariel.

He lifted his head, suddenly desperate just to look at her. But she was focused on Sullivan. Her face reddened and her eyebrows skewed in anger. “Nay! I'll stop you!”

Sullivan snapped his fingers. “Percy, Giles.”

Two of his men stepped forward, emerging from the darkness, and flanked Ariel. Sullivan gave her a scolding look. “Sister, you should know better. I can't let you interfere with my plans. We'll have to put you under guard. You can join Mariela and your other cousins from the Caño Dorado expedition. They also objected to the truce that Mother and I negotiated. They're in one of the cavern's lower recesses at the moment. My men had to tie them up, unfortunately.”

The Riflemen grabbed Ariel's bound arms. She struggled in their grasp, twisting and squirming. “Mother! You're going to let them do this?”

Elizabeth didn't answer her. She turned to her son instead. “Don't drag this out, Basil.”

“Of course not.” Sullivan snapped his fingers again, and two more Riflemen stepped out of the darkness and headed for John. “We'll take care of the paramour immediately.”

John looked up at the two men approaching him. One of them had a bandage on his shoulder and a tattoo of a spiderweb on his face. It was Marlowe, the man who'd tortured him once before. The prick smiled, clearly delighted to get a second chance.

“We got a surprise for you,” he muttered, bending low so that no one would overhear. “I hope you like ants.”

THIRTY-TWO

Fifteen minutes later they left the cavern and returned to the bend in the Yarí River. It was a grim procession through the rain forest led by Sullivan, Elizabeth, and Comandante Reyes. The guerillas and Riflemen trailed behind, pointing their guns at John, Ariel, and the six women from the Caño Dorado expedition, all of whom marched with their hands tied behind their backs. John trudged a few yards behind Ariel and Mariela, the expedition's leader, who was remarkably tall, almost six and a half feet. She was also remarkably combative. As she walked down the trail she cursed Sullivan's men, using some of the foulest language John had ever heard. The Riflemen retaliated by jabbing their carbines into her back, but that only made her curse louder. Finally, Ariel shook her head and whispered something to Mariela, who fell silent at once. Then Ariel glanced over her shoulder at John and managed an anxious smile. She was trying to give him some hope, but she clearly had none herself.

When they reached the river they turned away from the guerillas' tents and the half-dozen beached skiffs, at least two of which must've been taken from the Caño Dorado women. Instead, they headed for the fishhook-shaped peninsula that curved along the Yarí's south bank. For most of its length, the peninsula was just a strip of mud and reeds, so narrow in places that they had to march single file. To John's left was the main channel of the river, flowing swiftly east, and to his right was the lagoon that the peninsula encircled. Its black surface swarmed with dragonflies and water striders. Every so often a fish splashed near the riverbank, disappearing before John could get a good look at it. He reminded himself that the world was beautiful, that it had existed for millions of years before he was born and would endure long after he was gone. But the beauty of the rain forest failed to comfort him. He closed his eyes and pictured Ariel's body in the moonlight. He didn't want to die.

As they rounded the peninsula's quarter-mile curve John noticed a bustle of activity near the tents on the other side of the lagoon. Laughing and shouting, the guerillas streamed out of their camp and raced to catch up to Comandante Reyes. No one wanted to be left behind. All twenty-three of Reyes's men joined the back of the procession, their faces rapt and eager and focused on John. They were looking forward to this unexpected bit of entertainment, and he was the star attraction.

At its tip the peninsula widened to a round, wooded knoll, about fifty feet across. The knoll rose a few yards above the water level, and a cluster of trees grew on top of it. The tallest was a kapok that stood at the very southernmost point of the peninsula. Its massive branches stretched over the shallow strait that separated the peninsula's tip from the Yarí's southern bank. As they neared the kapok John was surprised to see a pair of men squatting in the mud between the tree and the water. They were Amazon tribesmen, wearing nothing but loincloths, their chests and faces painted with black squiggles and lightning bolts. Both men hunched over a pile of bright green leaves, which they were tearing into strips and weaving into some kind of basket. For a moment John thought this encounter was accidental, but it soon became clear that the tribesmen were part of the show. The guerillas let out a whoop of delight when they saw the pair.

The procession halted in the shade of the kapok and Sullivan strode toward the base of the tree. He still wore his bomber jacket, which seemed an insane thing to do in the jungle's midday heat, but he wasn't sweating. He looked cool and comfortable and perversely cheerful. When he reached the kapok he bent over and picked up a long, straight stick from the ground. He swung the thing like a sword, slicing the air out of sheer exuberance. Then he poked its tip into a mound of brown soil between the kapok's roots.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I'd like to introduce you to my good friend,
Paraponera clavata.
More commonly known as the bullet ant.”

He pulled the stick out of the mound and moved closer to his audience. John saw an unusually big ant scurrying down the stick. It was at least an inch long and looked like a wingless black wasp, with oversized mandibles and a pointed abdomen. The ant sped toward the hand that held the stick, but before it could get there Sullivan grabbed the stick's other end instead.

“It's called the bullet ant because of its sting,” he added. “Paraponera's sting is more painful than any other insect's. As painful as a bullet hitting the flesh.” Sullivan walked past his Riflemen and their prisoners, giving everyone a chance to look at the insect. Then he stepped toward the pair of tribesmen squatting in the mud. “It's such a nasty creature, one might assume that the local people would steer well clear of it. But the inhabitants of the Amazon have devised an initiation ritual in which young men deliberately endure the stings to prove how tough they are.” He jabbed the stick at one of the tribesmen. “Show them.”

The man seemed terrified of Sullivan. With trembling hands, he picked up the basket he and his companion had woven and showed it to the crowd. It wasn't actually a basket, John realized. It was more like a sack, about the size of a large purse, and it was threaded with the wriggling bodies of dozens of bullet ants. The insects had been wedged between the tightly woven leaves, with their heads and thoraxes protruding from the outside of the sack and their pointed abdomens twisting within. The sight of it alone was bad enough, but the ants also made shrill noises as they struggled, a clicking, shrieking chorus.

Now John was afraid. His stomach heaved as he stared at the inside of the sack, laced with all the squirming stingers. It was the mouth of hell.

“I've modified the ritual a bit,” Sullivan continued. “Traditionally, the young men put their hands inside glove-sized sacks. They pass the initiation if they can endure ten minutes of stinging. Afterwards, their hands are paralyzed for several days. But I wanted something a little more dramatic.” He stepped directly in front of John and held the stick below his nose. The bullet ant scurried past, a few inches away. “I ordered the natives to make a bigger sack for you, paramour. We're going to put it over your head.”

Two of Sullivan's men stepped behind John's back and grabbed his arms to steady him. Sullivan threw away his stick and gingerly grasped the sack from the tribesman, and at that moment the guerillas let out a joyful roar. Their screams of excitement made John's stomach heave again. His knees shook and his skin went cold. Then he heard a higher-pitched scream, frightening but familiar, and he knew it was Ariel. He couldn't hear what she was saying, couldn't make out the words, but he told himself it didn't matter.
She cares about you. She loves you. Just focus on that.

Sullivan turned the sack upside down and held it in the air above John's head. The shrill clicking of the bullet ants grew louder. He could hear them rustling between the woven leaves, waving their stingers up and down, striving with all their might to free themselves and attack their enemy. He squeezed his eyes and mouth shut as Sullivan lowered the sack. For Ariel's sake, he would try to be strong.

The first sting was to his scalp, just above his left ear. Sullivan was right: it felt like someone had just shot him in the head. The pain exploded in the left side of his skull, and he involuntarily jerked his head in the opposite direction. An instant later he felt the stings on the right side, on his ear and cheek and temple, like lead slugs slamming into him. He kept his eyes closed as the ants stung him again and again. The bullets hit him from all directions, drilling into his skin and muscle and bone.

His knees buckled, but the Riflemen propped him up. He felt like he was floating on a sea of pain. He listened for Ariel again, but he couldn't hear anything above the shrieking of the ants. He wanted to tell her something important, something he'd forgotten to say before. He reached for her in the darkness, stretching his arms. She stood far away, in a blooming garden, hundreds of years in the future. She was in Paradise, leaning over a cradle. God had just been born.

Remember me, Ariel. Remember me.

 

 

Cool water poured over his chest and arms. John lay on his back in the mud, drenched and shivering. He could hear the water splashing over his face too, but he couldn't feel it. Everything above his neck was throbbing with pain. He felt as if he'd just pulled his head out of an oven.

He tried to open his eyes. His cheeks and forehead were swollen, but he managed to pry his eyelids apart. He saw a bright hazy swath of sky and a man standing over him with a bucket in his hands. This, obviously, was the man who'd just splashed water on his face to revive him. Although John's vision was blurry, he could make out the spiderweb tattoo on the man's face.

Marlowe smiled. “That was just the warm-up, asshole. There's more to come.” Then he rejoined the other Riflemen standing in the shade of the kapok.

John squinted at them, even though it hurt like a son of a bitch. They were still pointing their carbines at Mariela and the other women from Caño Dorado, but he didn't see Ariel among them. With a fierce grunt he craned his neck, trying to see behind them. Comandante Reyes and his guerillas were lined up along the edge of the lagoon, eager for more midday entertainment, and Elizabeth stood on the other side of the knoll, staring at the Yarí's main channel, her face resolutely turned away from the sadistic spectacle. But he couldn't find Ariel. Then, just as desperation started to overwhelm him, he heard her voice. “I'm over here, John.”

He turned his head, shuddering in agony, and saw her standing ten feet away, with Sullivan behind her. He gripped her hair with one hand and held the sack of bullet ants in the other. His expression had changed sometime in the past few minutes, while John lay unconscious. He no longer seemed comfortable or cheerful. His lips were pulled back from his teeth and he was sweating freely in his bomber jacket. His cheek twitched as he looked down at John. “Your face looks like porridge, paramour. Not even my slut of a sister would want to kiss you now.”

John strained at the rope binding his wrists, but it was as tight as ever. Bracing himself for more pain, he pursed his lips. “Why … haven't you … killed me yet?”