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Benny wet a washcloth. He went to her and
pressed her thighs open. Blood. To her embarrassment he washed her,
cleaned her of the blood, then took a soft towel and patted her dry.
“Shh,” Benny whispered at the darkening
blush and her attempt to hide herself from him. “Estoy su mozo, señora.
Estoy el Lobo de la Montanas. May the God free us.”
“The savior of the mountains? The Quetzal
Lord?” She began to weep, wild, dry heaves, trying to talk, her
Spanish broken in a dialect he didn't understand.
“No! No sabe. Que? Qual dice?”
With much hand waving and some signing, she
explained. Was he the Promised Servant?
Elena smiled into his eye. Even if he wasn't,
she was content. Her family line would continue and expand with the
child she now carried. That crazy Norte, Cindy, would never find her
among the People. No, the Justicares didn’t dare invade the Mountains.
Not if they wanted to come out alive. This boy-child, her son, would
raise the People and defeat the socialistas in the Ciudad de
Mejico.
Benny opened his mouth to speak. Worn out by
the domination of the controls, he lay his head on her pillowing breasts
and slept.
With a sigh, the woman stroked the shaggy
hair, smoothing it out of the face and off the terrible scar that had
taken the right eye. How young he looked when he slept.
From the far corner of the room a pair of
suspicious, beady yellow eyes watched. Glowing in the dim lighting, they
drew her gaze. The raven, huge and young, strutted in complete arrogance
to the center of the room and hopped up on a bed post.
He glared at her and croaked a demand.
“How the hell did that get in there?”
The agent turned to Cindy, his face scowling
with shock.
Cindy shook her head. “I have no idea, nor
do I care. Benny . . . attracts such things to him.” Worse things,
terrible things. Cindy shivered and rubbed her chilled arms. Sometimes
dead things. Damn, she was getting morbid. The monster sighted on the
grounds was possibly a figment of Jason's overactive imagination. The
man admitted he had been nipping from a pocket flask last night.
His face a thundercloud of anger and fear, the
corpsman started to rise. Cindy shook her head. “I don't want them
disturbed for any reason, Miller.” She glanced at him, and he sank back
into the cushions of his chair, chest tight, his breathing difficult.
Too weird. He had to get away from the kid. From her. His eyes slid
sideways at Cindy, and he blinked at the sweat on his face.
Two hours later he nodded at the monitor.
“From the looks of things, all systems go, ma'am. She took, maybe the
second time they did it. All three eggs, too. Dr Haskels' pregnancy
serum-”
“A magic elixir, no doubt.” Cindy's voice
was cool. She watched the young couple on the floor. Benny had never
been that at ease around her. “It works every time, though this is the
first we've used it on a non-monkey instead of a chimp.” She offered
him a smile, and he returned it, hungry and with a more forceful stance
in his body than he had shown for the last several hours. He wanted her,
and it showed in the way he crossed his legs and caressed her with his
darkening eyes.
The GalonV: di:Danwa:yu called in the
softest of voices. Woman of the People, E:tsi, new mother.” He
cocked his shining black head at her. From beyond the Veil of the Sun an
eagle screamed. Elena awoke with a start.
“Dios,” she breathed, and crossed herself.
The attraction of Miller forgotten by a new
development, Cindy peered into her monitor. “What's happening? Why is
she praying to the raven? My, but these people have some strange
customs,” she laughed. “I've never heard of this one. Perhaps Dr
Pembroke of the Anthropological Society of London would like a piece of
this recording.”
Elena’s hands crossed over her breasts, her
head bowed.
The recorder's power was amplified. The
Eagle-Woman embraced her. With the force of the hug, Elena began to
sway, chanting in a soft voice, “Cuauh-Madre . . . Madre de los Lobos
. . . Mother of the mountains . . . Beloved Woman.” She lay her hands
on Benny, one on his forehead, the other over his heart and her voice
raised, shrill and demanding and beseeching all at once and the same
time.
The room took on an unearthly, gentle golden
glow. The scent of roses and soft earth filled the room and all the
rooms of the lower floor.
“What the hell is that?” Miller snarled,
his hands flashing over the controls of the monitor.
Cindy whooped and threw her arms around him.
Panting a kiss in the vicinity of his mouth, she jumped to her feet and
spun around the room.
“I knew it. I told those fools. She has it,
just like Benny.” Cindy dropped a kiss on the startled man's cheek.
“Look at her, Tim. Just look at her. My agents in Azcatzlan found her
living in a grass shack near the village dump. That superstitious fool
of a priest told him her mother had been killed for witchcraft, of all
things, been stoned to death.” Cindy opened a line to the guardroom.
“I want a collar and a remote brought up here, pronto.” She grinned
at Tim. “We have a small place in Brazil. Have her taken there, and
after the child is born, I want her impregnated again.”
Elena took a splinter of wood and pierced her
cheeks. “My tears are red with the blood of my sins, my
Mother-of-God.” She bowed her head and scratched her breasts and arms.
“My milk will feed a War-Priest in your name. My arms bleed with the
need of your help.” She drove the splinter into her tongue and pressed
her lips to Benny's.
“Tu eres mi libertad. Tu eres, mi
amor.”
He was rising higher and higher through a sky
so blue it hurt to open his eyes. Between his thighs was the powerful
neck of a golden eagle. At her every thrust of the truck length wings of
flashing gold, he was borne upwards into the sun.
Benny screamed and raised his arms in a fierce
joy. And then she was there, too, behind him and with him and loving him
as the God-Mother of all the many native Peoples screamed her spirit
over them.
Nothing for nothing and dammed little for a
dollar. Only love is free, this kind of love that the Oldest-Woman gave.
“O:Tsi:Yu. O:Tsi:Yu E:tsi Uohali!”
Then he was snatched away by the sound of
klaxons screaming and men shouting orders. Above it all was Cindy,
shrieking into the intercom. In mindless fury, the last camera blew up
in a muffled explosion. And then the laughing Raven-Protector, too, was
gone.
Elena was gone from the room. Benny put his
hands on his hips and roared with laughter.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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