Angel of the Winds
by John W. Steele
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 2
His thick calloused hands were as cold as ice and gripped my throat like a vise. I struggled for air and my vision began to fade. I knew I didn’t have much time. I reached down beneath the pant leg of my left ankle, and loosed my custom made dagger from its sheath. I focused what was left of my consciousness, and concentrated all my strength in my left hand.
In a powerful swoop, I slid the nine-inch blade into the Indian’s hip, in the area where his leg connects to his pelvis. He screamed and loosened his grip around my throat for a moment, just long enough for me to get a lungful of air. The monster reached down, grabbed my hand, and tried to pull out the knife. But he was as stupid as he was big, and as soon as he got control of his pain, he started to choke me again, but I had a little surprise for him.
Hess had the knife specially crafted by a toolmaker in Germany. Tucked within the blade along its razor sharp edges, were two powerful spring loaded barbs. I pressed the little button on the pommel, and the wicked tines flung open, creating a wound about three inches wide, deep inside the monster’s hip.
The Indian let out a howl like a wounded animal, released his grip around my throat, and fell off me to the floor.
I thought I had him, and said, “A lot of men have met a nasty fate because they were too stupid to understand superior intelligence, chief. You don’t want to fall into that category do you?”
The giant still had some fight in him and tried to grab me once again. I slowly withdrew the blade from his hip, and let the barbs do the talking. He howled like a coyote and yelled, “No más! No más!”
“You sure?” I said. “This is getting to be fun.” I twitched the knife a little.
“No más, Gringo! No más.” The giant shrieiked.
I retracted the barbs and pulled the blade from the thing. He lay on the ground bleeding hard, and whimpering.
“I could have killed you, Hoss, remember that,” I said, in a hoarse whisper.
I staggered to my feet and looked up at the other characters at the bar. They all appeared timid and contrite, like I’d just slain Goliath. Blood dripped from my nose, and my throat felt like it had been crushed by a steamroller. I waved my vicious knife in front of them, snapped and retracted its wicked barbs, and coughed out. “Anybody else want to dance the Mexican Polka?”
No one said a word; they sat on the barstools like ghosts. I backed out of the bar and stumbled toward my jeep. My head ached and my ears were ringing.
As I neared my vehicle I heard a female voice call out from behind me. “I know why you’re here.”
I turned, Esmeralda stood on the porch of the hotel. “No one comes to this God-forsaken place to see the sights,” she said. “You’re a soldier of fortune. The desert is filled with skeletons of those that have preceded you, but you’re different. I see that. They all come here looking for Aztec treasure, gold, jade, or emeralds. Some seek The Angel of the Winds, but all they find is death.”
“That thing you stabbed in the bar is not human, nor is she a beast. She is not dead, nor is she alive. Her name is Lady Celestina. She is a sorceress and no one has ever beaten her... until now. Those phantoms in the bar are friends of hers from the astral. She invited them here to watch the show.
“I argued with one of them in the kitchen and asked him to spare your life. I was told you wouldn’t be harmed, but lying is as common in the spirit world as it is here. A person is measured by their perception, no matter where they dwell. You shamed Lady Celestina in front of her guides, and they will seek revenge. You must leave here quickly.”
I wanted to ask her a lot of things, but my throat was still in spasm. I could hardly breathe, let alone speak.
“You need to seek out Don Ambrosio,” she said. “He is the only one that can lead you to what you’re seeking.”
I wanted to shout, but my words came out hissing and muted. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
Esmeralda looked at me for a moment; I saw a twinkle in her eyes. “Maybe I like you, maybe I hate Celestina, or maybe I owe someone a favor. Whatever the answer is, you will never know. We exist in different worlds. Your life is based on wishes, and wishes are the folly of the damned.
“Twenty miles south of here you will come to a crossroad marked with a stack of boulders, she said. “A raven will be sitting on top of the marker. If you don’t see it, you will hear its cry. Turn left and continue east into the desert. Eventually you’ll see an adobe villa on the left side of the road. When Don Ambrosio answers the door tell him Esmeralda sent you. He’s very powerful. Listen to him. As long as you remain in this area you’re in danger. Now go quickly. You haven’t got much time.”
There was a lot more I wanted to know, but I’m not stupid. I got in my jeep, and sped out into the desert, leaving a cloud of dust in my wake.
It was beginning to get dark. I flicked on the headlights and continued down the furrowed road. The lighted El Sonar sign faded in my rear view mirror, my breathing started to improve, and my apprehension diminished. I knew I had escaped the angel of death. I drove along in the darkness and thought once again about the last time I talked with Hess, and his prophecy regarding the Angel of the Winds.
* * *
It was late one evening. Hess and I were sitting at the large round oak table in his antique shop. He’d been trying to convince me of the simplicity of this mission for a long time. Hess was drunk half the time, and when he wasn’t drunk he was working on it. I never saw a man that could hold his liquor like him. He’s a huge man and likes Schnapps; he drinks the stuff like it’s Kool Aid.
Before us on the table lay the map. All the writing on it was in Spanish, and I could see it was quite detailed. Hess transcribed every word into English so I could understand. “This map will put you within ten miles of the Angel,” he said. “She’s hidden in a cave somewhere around this area of the Magdalena Sierras, in some kind of depression in the desert.”
“That’s great, Hess,” I said. “Let me see if I’ve got it straight. All I have to do is drive a thousand miles into a desert in the middle of Mexico and mingle with the spirit people. Then trespass on their real estate and scout around on their sacred burial grounds like a grave robber. Then, after I disarm them with my sparkling charm, I need to find a tiny hole hidden in a mountain side somewhere and retrieve a mysterious sacred idol, right?”
“Well, it’s not quite that simple,” Hess said, and he laughed deeply. “Listen. The Angel of the Winds is an ancient ceremonial mask made of pure gold. It is supposed to represent the Aztec goddess of wind Ehecatl. It’s studded with rubies, and has two perfect emeralds the size of a golf balls for eyes. I have a buyer in Mexico City that will pay us twenty million to find her and deliver her to him.”
I stared at the map with skepticism.
“Don’t be shy, Brian, you’ve been through worse than this. The electronic long-range locators I’ve provided you with should lock right in on a gold signal as strong as this. You march into the cave, grab the mask, head back to the city, and presto you’ve made ten million dollars. What could be simpler?”
“How about holding up Fort Knox?” I said. “I heard the damn thing is cursed.”
“You sound like a sensitive man, Brian. They plant these legends around artifacts to keep the squeamish away. You’re not squeamish are you?”
“Nah... I like having a big red target painted on my ass.”
“Good!” Hess said. “So you can be ready to leave by next week then.”
* * *
In the high beam of the headlights I saw what looked like a pile of stones at the corner of a crossroad. I looked for the Raven but I couldn’t see it. How the hell am I supposed to see a Raven in the dark? I thought, and then I heard a noise. Caw, caw, caw. I turned left, and headed down the narrow bumpy trail.
In the distance stood a large adobe structure. It looked like at one time it might have been a Spanish mission. As I drew nearer, I could see it had a short steeple with a bell in the tower. A light burned in the window. The villa had an open front porch and there were figures that looked like men made of sticks tied together, they hung like accursed effigies from the overhang of the roof. The place looked weird and gave me the creeps.
My neck was swollen and bruised, and I was covered with dried blood. I was hungry, tired, and pissed off that I had ever come down to this third-world ghetto. I didn’t have a clue what to expect next, and there didn’t seem to be any way out. I knocked on the door.
In a while the door creaked open. I started to speak, but the figure in the doorway interrupted me. “You’re Brian,” it said. “I’ve been expecting you. Come on in.”
I entered a large, rustic, but comfortable looking room. A fire burned in an open stone hearth. Several oil lamps illuminated the enclosure, and I saw no sign the house had electricity. The smooth adobe walls reflected the light of the fire and the inside of the house looked like a man-made cavern. A big mesquite wood table sat up against the mud plaster wall.
My first impression of Don Ambrosio was that he looked almost like the rest of the natives I’d seen down here. His hair was long, silver, and hung to his shoulders. He kept it in place with a leather headband. He was a lean, solid-looking man, and he appeared to be wiry. His face was lined with fine shallow wrinkles.
He looked young and old at the same time. It was hard to tell if he was fifty or a hundred years old. At least he wasn’t wearing a blanket, and I felt a little more relaxed when I saw he had on a pair of Wranglers. His presence was sharp and intense, and his eyes were dark and intimidating, like deep empty holes.
“Looks like you’ve been dancing with Celestina,” Ambrosio said. “I hear she has velvet hands.”
“She’s got quite a set of hips too.” I forced a shallow laugh.
“Why don’t you have a seat? Are you hungry?”
“I’m hungry, but what I really need is a drink,” I said.
Ambrosio walked over to the sink and drew some water from the well with a hand pump. The pump squeaked as the cool water flowed into a stoneware pitcher. I thought he was being obtuse, but then he went over to the cupboard, and pulled out a bottle of good bourbon. He set the water, the bourbon, and a clear glass on the table and then pulled up a chair at the other end.
“Aren’t you going to have one?” I asked.
“I don’t drink,” Ambrosio said. “It gives me nightmares.” I sat down, filled my glass, and savored the taste of the fine spirits as they numbed my throat. I threw the next one down to kill the pain, followed by another, and I began to feel a bit better.
“So how did you know my name,” I said. “You got a telephone?”
Ambrosio laughed. “Telephone? The desert is filled with eyes and ears. Just because you don’t see them it doesn’t mean they are not there. I know everything that goes on in the desert, and more,” he said.
“Why did Esmeralda send me to you?” I asked.
“Let’s just say she owes me a favor. Sometimes I wish I were a couple hundred years younger, I’d take her for a gallop. But I have interests bigger than her... much bigger. The only reason you’re here is because you defeated Celestina. No one has ever survived her.
“The best thing you ever did was to allow her to live. She can’t harm you now. If you killed her, she’d come after you in a dream. You would go to sleep one night and never wake up, imprisoned as her slave on the astral forever. She’ll leave you alone now, as long as you stay off her turf.”
I continued to work on the bottle of bourbon, and wonder why I let Hess talk me into this whole damn mess. Ambrosio measured me for a moment, and continued to speak.
“I don’t think you’re smart enough to realize what you’ve done. Only the chosen one could accomplish what you did. Celestina is the guardian of the Angel of the Winds.
“Many men have tried to recover the Angel, but Celestina was appointed to protect her, and she has always killed them. Because you made it through her, I am allowed to reveal to you the whereabouts of the Angel. But unless you do exactly as I say, you will never be able to retrieve her. The Angel is far more powerful than Celestina; just as the sun is more powerful than the moon.”
Ambrosio opened a wooden box lying on the table, and pulled out a carved stone pipe. He reached into a leather pouch he wore on his belt and retrieved a pinch of dry brown herb. He walked over to the fire and grabbed a red-hot coal with his bare hand and dropped it into the bowl of the pipe. When he sat down again he took a long deep puff on the pipe, held it for a moment, and blew a cloud of smoke into the air.
He stared at me, his gaze grew intense, and I felt bewildered. “Salvia divinorum, the finest in the desert,” he said. He held out his hand and offered the pipe to me. “Would you like to try her? She’s incredibly alluring. But I must warn you she can be fickle. If she desires you, she will give you nearly anything, but if she does not, she will use you.”
I looked at the pipe. “No, I’ve had enough fickle women for today. I think I’ll travel with Jim Beam for a while.”
“Smart choice,” Ambrosio said. “The power in Salvia is known as Lady Maria Pastora; she despises the Angel of the Winds and is jealous of her. By denying her, you’ve passed another test: you are the one destined to recover the Angel.”
We sat in silence. I watched Ambrosio as he savored the charms of Lady Maria. For a while he seemed quite oblivious to my presence, and then in a measured voice he said, “There is an entity that resides in the Angel of the Winds, Brian. But entities are controlled by laws. Just as a seed cannot come to life until conditions are right; powers cannot exert their will unless circumstances are favorable for them to do so.”
“Why is everything dead down here alive?” I asked. “I’m looking for gold, not ghosts.”
“The only difference between life and death is knowledge,” he said. “You see, Brian, the Angel of the Winds is of little value to an average man. Most fools like you would trade her for a stack of gold coins. But to a brujo like me she is priceless and possesses the power of destruction and dominance.
“That is why the deities on the astral will not allow a sorcerer to touch her. They fear the Angel, and know what a capable brujo could accomplish with her in his command. The warriors in the spirit realms won’t allow me to take her. They claim her power is too easily corrupted, and that no one is strong enough to control her.”
Ambrosio slammed his fist on the table with a powerful thud and yelled. “To hell with them all. I can control her. It is my destiny to possess her, with or without their blessing. But now I am confined to a body of flesh, so the powerful beings in the other world have dominion over me. But you are the chosen one, and you can give her to me.”
I chewed the inside of my lower lip and listened to Ambrosio in silence. I didn’t like where this was heading. And I knew no matter what the outcome, I’d stepped into something I no longer wanted.
Copyright © 2007 by John W. Steele
