Morgan's Rescue (16 page)

     
"No, of course not.
You were asleep." Culver raked his fingers through his drying hair. "I don't blame you, Pilar. You're looking at me like some lost lamb. Stop it! I can't roll back the
past,
and neither can you." Frustration tinged his voice as he gazed at her. "The past is the past. It's over and done.
Destroyed."

     
"Yes," she whispered faintly, closing her eyes, unable to stand the terrible grief shining in Culver's eyes.

     
"Hell," he muttered, "
take
your bath and meet me back in the village. We've got a lot of planning to do before we head into that jungle." Turning on his booted heel, he strode down the path.

     
Breathing raggedly, Pilar opened her eyes and watched Culver stalk off. Even wounded as he was by her decision, he treated her with respect. A South American man would not have tolerated her behavior as he had, though a Quechua man would. Culver was a good man.
An honest one.
A man with a large and forgiving heart.
Much like Fernando.
Pushing her hair back from her face, she sat down on the log to undress.

     
The day was exquisite, but Pilar felt raw. Her heart was weeping. She could feel it pounding in her chest as she removed her blouse with trembling hands. As she closed her eyes to her feelings, she saw Culver's face—proud, fierce and defiant, yet with a tenderness burning in his eyes that made her want to weep for what they had lost. And it had all been her fault.
Hers alone.

     
C
ulver was busy setting their army-issue, two-way radios onto a special frequency when Pilar came back to the village. It had been brought in by a CIA helicopter from
Lima
—one that Hector did not know about. Rane, curious seven-year-old that she was, sat companionably near him in the dirt, watching him solemnly. She was a living, breathing miniature of Pilar, as far as Culver was concerned.

     
In front of him, on a clean blanket, was spread the array of state-of-the-art equipment they would take into the jungle with them. Don Alvaro, Pilar's grandfather and village shaman, well into his nineties, sat opposite them on a wooden chair, rocking slowly back and forth, his dark brown eyes flicking from Culver to the equipment and back to his great-granddaughter.

     
"You need these machines?" Don Alvaro finally asked in broken English.

     
Culver looked up. "Yes." The tall, thin old man was weather-beaten, his tobacco-brown skin, stretched tight across high cheekbones, and deep lines at the corners of his eyes attesting to his time working the corn and potato crops on the terraced hillsides. Yet he emanated the aura of power befitting his role as leader of the village.

     
"You challenge Don Ramirez, eh?"

     
Culver's hands stilled over the radio he was holding. How much had Pilar told her grandparents? Very little, he hoped. He wondered if she'd told him they were going to try to rescue Morgan. She must have. He chose his words carefully as he continued to assemble the radio.

     
"We're here on a secret mission, so I can't say much."

     
"Ahh," Don Alvaro murmured. His face stretched into a shining smile as he caught sight of Pilar walking toward him. "She walks like the jaguar she was born to become, does she not?"

     
Culver scowled, barely glancing in Pilar's direction. She was drying her hair with a thin white towel, the long black strands shining in sunlight dappled by the trees among which the village had been erected, to provide a modicum of summer shade, as well as protection against the winter's rainy weather.

     
"Yes, she's a jaguar all right," he muttered.

     
"You know," Don Alvaro continued pleasantly, gesturing toward Pilar, "that my wife, Aurelia, performed a special ceremony for Pilar's parents in order to bring her spirit into being." He beamed. "Once in every generation, if you are from a jaguar medicine clan, a special spirit child is brought forth to carry into the future all our knowledge, experience and ceremonies." His smile grew tender. "Pilar is our great
hope
."

     
"She doesn't live with you. How can she help your people?" Culver thought of her job at the horse farm and wondered how often she came back to the village, and if she was aware of her responsibility.

     
Chuckling, Don Alvaro slapped his knee. "You have lived among us many years, my friend. Surely you know that we are shamans?"

     
Culver placed the radio headset before him on the blanket, and Rane handed him the plastic bag containing the second unit. She smiled brightly up at him, and he couldn't help but smile a little in return. The child was innocent, and she came from Pilar's body—a body he had once loved.

     
"I know among the Indians you have medicine people," he answered slowly, again glancing to check Pilar's continued approach. She had draped the towel around her shoulders, the white creating a dramatic contrast with her dusky, golden skin and black hair. Culver knew she wasn't even aware of her ethereal beauty, which must have any number of men falling at her feet in adoring admiration. And her lack of vanity only added to the depth of his unwanted feelings for her.

     
"We are not ordinary people," Don Alvaro corrected, rocking in the chair. "Shamans are different. We travel to the other worlds. We fly to the past, work with the present and can see into the future. Medicine people heal with herbs, ceremony and songs. We do a great deal more." He lifted his hand. "Pilar possesses such skills. She can fly because she is a priestess to the jaguar."

     
"Really?"
Culver looked up at the old man, not certain how to take his confidently spoken statement.

     
"Mmm, but my granddaughter is afraid to embrace her power. Aurelia tells me to be patient with her—that in time she will become one with her gifts."

     
"And when she does, what will happen?" Culver attached the mike to the headset.

     
"She will be able to move at will into the other worlds and help others. She will become a healer, which is her true calling in this lifetime."

     
"Not a horse manager?"

     
Chuckling indulgently, Don Alvaro said, "My son, her destiny was decided long ago." He gestured to the sky. "The moon and stars were right. The energy came, and life was breathed into my daughter's womb. Pilar was sent to us with a purpose. She rides horses and works at a rancho, but it is temporary." He frowned. "I am afraid there is great danger ahead of her, though. She is coming to a fork in her life path. If she chooses wrongly, she will leave us forever."

     
The calmly spoken words got Culver's instant attention. He stopped assembling the second radio, and narrowed his eyes speculatively on the old man. Don Alvaro had sunk back into the creaking old rocker, a sad look on his face as he studied Pilar. Culver believed that shamans possessed magical, inexplicable qualities. As a CIA agent stationed in
Lima
, he'd met such a shaman once, who had taken him to a jungle clearing and given him a drink called
ayahuasca
—the vision vine. He remembered heaving his guts out, time after time, while the shaman whistled and sang for hours on end. Finally, Culver had lain on the damp jungle floor, caught up in a series of vivid images. . . .

     
Culver sat apprehensively with a group of six other CIA agents in an oddly open area in the middle of the jungle. Don Gonzalez, the shaman who had promised to induce a vision of the future, had given him a blanket to sit or lie on. The moon was full, and it was near midnight, the jungle producing a virtual symphony of sounds around them. Because he'd experienced many things and had traveled the world in his twenty-four years, Culver treated this ceremony with deference, willing to approach it with an open mind. Don Gonzalez squatted in the middle of the circle of men mixing the "vision vine" herb in a bowl, whistling and singing.

     
The other agents, all Peruvians, sat solemnly, their legs crossed, their attention on the old shaman. Don Gonzalez's white hair shone like a startling halo around his head, the luminescence of the moon powerful in this meadow in the midst of the moist, fragrant jungle.

     
To Culver's surprise, the old shaman brought the
ayahuasca
first to him. His bony hands thrust the nondescript wooden cup toward Culver.

     
"Drink, my son," he urged.

     
Taking the cup, Culver stared down into the dark brown liquid.

     
"All of it," the shaman commanded with a flourish of his hand.

     
Without hesitation, but with some misgivings, Culver pressed the rim of the cup to his lips and drank. Surprisingly, the liquid was sweetish tasting and thick. As he finished gulping it, he saw the shaman's black eyes sparkle.

     
"Tonight you will meet your destiny," was all Don Gonzalez said as he moved away to refill the cup for the next recipient.

     
At first Culver became violently ill, his spasming stomach muscles contorting his body. As again and again he was sick with great shuddering heaves, he worried that he'd been poisoned. But gradually his body calmed, and he began to have the urge to lie down. He'd heard many things about
ayahuasca,
and the Peruvian agents swore by it. Culver noted the reverence with which the other agents, his friends, treated the experience. He knew shamans' powers were held sacred here.

     
The shaman began to whistle and sing again shortly after everyone had drunk from the cup, three of the other men getting sick as Culver had. The singing seemed hypnotic, and Culver finally gave in to the urge and lay down on his back, staring up at the sky.
A warmth
began to permeate him, starting in his toes and working slowly upward. In his mind, he knew it was impossible—at midnight, the jungle would be growing cooler, the inevitable, shroudlike fog appearing between the layers of tree canopy that covered its vast reaches. Still, the sensation of warmth was pleasant and lulling. The Shaman's singing was rhythmic, and soon Culver felt himself drifting into a state of deep relaxation.

     
Whatever it was, this altered state felt good. Warmth crested like small ocean waves toward the top of his head. As soon as it entered his skull, he felt a terrific whirling sensation, as if he were being sucked into a powerful whirlpool. The shaman's singing changed, growing higher pitched, and Culver felt his body changing with it, lengthening here, shortening there. Beneath his closed eyelids, lights began to flicker like blinking dots of sparkling color. At first they had no form, but soon they began to coalesce.

     
The lights
throbbed,
gathering intensity and purpose, and Culver felt a power radiating from the golden glow as it slowly took shape. He watched, mesmerized, as a female jaguar formed from the light and walked out of the radiance down a jungle path. Culver felt her incredible power and purposefulness as she trod silently on the huge pads of her feet. Her coat glowed like the sun, the thick, black crescent markings speaking of her silent, deadly power.

     
He found himself standing on the same jungle trail, directly in the path of the jaguar. Culver knew he should feel fear, for he'd seen a jaguar kill a man once. This cat was thickly muscled, low to the ground and unquestionably deadly. But as he awaited her approach, an incredible calm filled him. When she saw him, she halted about six feet away. Lifting her magnificent head, she studied him in the building silence.

     
Culver felt hypnotized by the jaguar's intense gaze. Suddenly, her nearly black eyes turned gold, the black becoming a mere pinhole in the center. As soon as that happened, he felt
himself
being pulled forward, hurtling toward her at a terrific rate of speed. He started to scream, but it was too late. Everything went black. At first he felt cramped, almost suffocated, but as he adjusted to the darkness, he felt the powerful beat of a heart against him, then the thick bone of curving ribs. In that moment, he realized he was inside the jaguar. Somehow, he'd become her! He
was
the jaguar. The power he felt was unlike any other he'd ever experienced. This feeling was wild, primeval—untrammeled animal power of the highest degree—and he felt the jaguar's confidence as she began walking again with her languidly graceful gait.