Chapter 37
Prophet stared up at her, aghast. Her face was like that of a marble statue in a moonlit garden at midnight. Classical. Mysterious. Mythical in its worldly anguish.
Enthralling.
Lou reached up and gently placed his hand on it, lightly ran his thumb across the nub of her cheek, as though to prove to himself that she was really here, that she wasn’t just another concoction of his inebriated imagination.
“Ale . . . Alejandra . . . ?”
“Yes.” She placed her hand on his. “Yes, I’m Alejandra. Will you help me, Mr. Prophet? He can’t, you see. He can’t help me. I . . . I very much need your help.”
“Yes.” Prophet smiled. He’d found her at last! Or . . . she’d found him. “Yes, I’ll help you.”
She squeezed his hand. “Come.”
“Wait. Now?”
“Yes, now. ¡Vamos, por favor! Hurry—you must!”
“All right.” Lou looked around at his soaked clothes rolling in the surf.
“I’ll go ahead,” the girl said. “So no one suspects us.
“All . . . right . . .”
Then she was gone as abruptly as she’d materialized. He turned to stare after her, wanting to reassure himself that she was real. Don’t fall in love with her, Marisol had warned him. Now he knew why she’d been worried. He felt that he’d already tumbled for the bewitching, red-haired goddess of the Sea of Cortez!
He could see her tall, lithe figure in the blowing gauzy dress drift away from him and the rolling wavelets. She was lifting the soaked hem of the long dress halfway up her bare legs, just above her knees. Her long legs were slender and supple and the color of alabaster.
No wonder Yeats had chosen her and secreted her away here at Baluarte Santiago, keeping her all for himself . . .
Lou gathered his clothes. He started to pull on his summer longhandles then nixed the idea. He was too drunk to go through the labor of pulling on the sopping duds. He’d walk naked back to the bastion.
Most of the village was likely asleep by now, and most of the debauchers in the bastion were likely three sheets to the wind. Aside from the guards, but they’d likely seen more than their share of debauchery and partaken in enough of it, as well, when they’d not been on guard duty. They wouldn’t be overly shocked to see a naked man walking through the bastion’s open gate.
Prophet walked barefoot along the trail through the village. He wasn’t accustomed to walking barefoot, of course, but few rocks or thorns grieved him. Likely the nerves in his feet as elsewhere were still dead from all the liquor he’d drunk and the locoweed he’d smoked.
For a time, he could see the vague, pale figure of Alejandra walking ahead of him, but then she stretched the distance between them and disappeared into the darkness. When he mounted the stone ramp, he could feel the eyes of guards on him though he could not see them up there in the darkness capped by a sky full of stars. He heard a couple of men chuckle mockingly at him as he passed over the bridge and tramped on into the compound in which a couple of cookfires glowed softly, men slumped around them in drunken slumber.
The bastion itself loomed before him—hulking and massive, like a large pale mountain of granite.
He stopped, looked around, frowning.
Where was the girl? His blood quickened desperately, fearful he’d lost her or, worse, that she’d been spawned only by Baja Jack’s locoweed.
“Pssst! Señor!”
He jerked his head in the direction from which the raspy call had come. She was a pale smudge in the darkness ahead and on his left. Leaning out from a heavy shadow, she beckoned.
Clutching his clothes before him, his shell belt, Peacemaker, and bowie knife looped over his arm, he hurried his pace. His legs and feet felt spongy from all the drink. He stumbled, nearly fell, and dropped his hat. He cursed as he stooped to pick it up and then continued walking as quickly as he could to where he’d last seen the girl though she’d disappeared again now, swallowed by the shadows of the massive masonry building.
As he approached the hulking castlelike structure, he saw a small, arched doorway near the far-left end. She reappeared in the doorway, again beckoning. “Come quickly! ¡Rápido!”
Prophet strode quickly to her. She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the entrance’s deep shadows, gave a husky laugh, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.
Her lips were warm and as smooth as silk.
His heart hammered.
She gave another husky chuckle, then wheeled. “Come, come! We’ve no time to waste. It will be dawn soon!”
She wheeled and moved quickly into a corridor, and Prophet followed her heavily on his bare feet, not sure where they were going or what they were doing. Surely, she didn’t think he could take her away from here tonight. One, he was in no condition. Two, they hadn’t prepared horses . . . trail supplies . . .
These were vague concerns fluttering through his brain. More powerful was the allure of the girl herself. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t have done anything except follow her down a cold stone corridor then up a flight of stone stairs, stubbing his toes as he climbed. They tramped down another corridor.
He could hear the slap of the girl’s bare feet ahead of him, the soft crunch of the sand clinging to the soles. He could hear her breathing. Occasionally, she chuckled—a soft, earthy, almost musical sound of barely restrained emotion.
They came to another doorway. She pushed through a heavy wooden door and into a room lit by two small arched windows through which milky moonlight angled.
“Here we are,” she said, whirling toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pressing her supple body against his. “Here we are, my love. Help me! Por el amor de todos los santos en el cielo, por favor ¡sálvame de este desierto!”
Prophet’s slow-working brain translated the plea as “For the love of all the saints in heaven, please save me from this desert!”
She rose up onto her bare toes and kissed him again, hungrily, flicking her tongue between his lips. Passion hammered at him. “I will, Alejandra,” he groaned. “I will . . . but . . .”
She grabbed his hand and wheeled. He dropped his clothes and his gun on the floor as she led him over to a massive bed that appeared to be one of the large room’s few furnishings.
It was soon apparent that all the help she wanted at the moment was his help in her bed.
In his current stare of intoxication and raging passion, who was he to deny this young siren anything?
* * *
Sunlight woke him. He could see it through his eyelids.
At first, he thought he must be lying on the seashore again, as had become his custom of late. Faintly, he could hear the surf and smell the salty tang of the air. Only the sound of the surf was too faint, the tang too light. Also, he couldn’t feel the wind on his skin, only a very soft breeze.
He lifted his head, opened his eyes. He had no recognition of where he was. It must be a puta’s crib, only it was larger than he’d have expected—a large, cavelike, stone-floored room with a domelike ceiling and two small, arched windows hewn through a thick, masonry wall. A church? Humor touched Prophet. It was tempered by a faint disappointment.
He’d dreamed that he’d found Alejandra de la Paz on the seashore, late at night. She’d had red hair like her mother’s, and she’d worn a lacy white gown, and the wind had done intoxicating things to her hair and the gown under which it had been quite obvious she’d worn nothing.
He smiled longingly as he looked around at the strange room, trying to get his bearings. Of course, it had only been a dream.
Wait.
He turned his head to his left. His eyes widened.
She lay belly up beside him, half covered by only a thin white sheet. A red-haired goddess with alabaster skin. Her head was turned to one side, her hair fanned out around the pillow like a red halo. Her face couldn’t have been any more classically sculpted unless a master artist had chipped it out of ivory for the most expensive cameo pin ever made. God himself had crafted this one, smiling devilishly as he’d done so, knowing full well that it was a face to ravage the hearts of mortal men.
Prophet’s heart hiccupped. No, it hadn’t been a dream. She was real. He had only a vague recollection of what they’d done here in this bed last night, but what he remembered stirred him once again. He felt a dull ache in his right shoulder, and he turned to see a bite mark.
He smiled at that. They’d had a good time, all right.
He ran his gaze down her body. The sheet covered only her legs. He couldn’t help lifting it for a peek beneath.
“My God,” he heard himself whisper.
She groaned, stirred, opened her eyes. She stared up at him and smiled. Her enchanting brown eyes flashed in the sunlight angling through one of the room’s two arched windows.
Lou let the sheet drop back down, covering her legs. “Beg your pardon.”
“It’s all right. I like being appreciated.” Her smile widened. “Most of all, I like being satisfied.” She sat up, brushed her lips across his. She frowned at the tooth marks on his shoulder then kissed them softly, lowering her gaze demurely, a soft flush rising in her creamy cheeks. “Sorry.”
“The mark of satisfaction.”
“I don’t remember doing that.”
“I don’t remember feeling it.”
“We had a good time. Gracias, amigo.” Alejandra kissed his cheek then lay back down against her pillow, not bothering to draw the sheet up any farther than it already was. She crooked her arms behind her head. “You better go now. You don’t want to be found in here.”
“I reckon not.”
Prophet climbed off the bed, wincing against the ravages of a violent hangover, bells clanging in his ears. It took him a while to dress for he was still a little drunk and wobbly on his feet. His clothes were damp but they’d dry out quickly in the desert sun.
He crouched to pluck his boots off the floor then sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on. There were few other furnishings besides the bed. There was a large armoire, a marble-topped washstand with a bowl and a pitcher, and a single chair. A fine one, upholstered in brocade and with wide, finely scrolled arms, but the only one. It was buried under the mess of a woman’s fine wardrobe likely taken hastily from her bedroom at Hacienda de la Paz.
There was no glass in the windows. Beyond them, birds flew across the bastion’s yard, and Lou could hear the regular wash of the sea rolling its waves onto the shore. Gulls cried.
He finished pulling on a boot with a grunt and turned to where Alejandra lay on the bed, watching him with a dreamy smile showing the ends of her fine, white teeth. “I’ll be back.”
Again, her smile broadened. “Tonight?”
“When I can get you out of here.”
She frowned a little with her eyes, leaving the smile on her lips. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll come back. Later. I have to work out a plan first with the kid. We gotta get you a horse and . . .”
Lou let his voice trail off. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him now, all traces of her smile gone. Her lovely brows formed a severe ridge.
“I figured you must’ve realized,” he said, sitting there on the edge of the bed, only one boot on, twisting around to regard her on the bed behind him. “Your father sent me. He hired me to kill Yeats and get you out of this perdition.”
Slowly, staring at him in shock, Alejandra pulled her hands out from behind her head. “My father sent you?”
“Yeah. I thought you knew. Since you knew my name.”
“I overheard the major talking to you. I saw you out in the courtyard, facing his men. I saw what you did . . . and . . . well, it stirred me. You’re a big, strapping man, Señor Prophet. Ciaran . . .” She shook her head slowly. “He can’t . . . he can’t . . . you know . . . hacer el amor. He wants to. He tries. But always he leaves howling and sobbing in frustration, leaving me here in this big room he gave me, sobbing and howling in frustration. I need a man to please me, señor. That man was you. I don’t want to be rescued from this perdition, as you call it. The perdition, Mr. Prophet, is Hacienda de la Paz!”
Lou stared at her in hang-jawed shock.
Fury flared in the girl’s eyes. “My father sent you to kill Yeats? What a cowardly old devil. If he wanted me back so badly, the least he could have done was come for me himself. Him and his men. But he and they are all useless. They are old women. I like my life here. I didn’t want to come at first, but the major has given me the life of a queen, complete with all the spice I could ever want.”
“Ah, Jesus,” Prophet said, rubbing his jaw in astonishment. “You’re all woolly-headed on the stuff. You’re addicted. You want to stay here and . . .”
“Life is good here. It is paradise!” Alejandra turned her fine chin toward one of the windows and screamed in Spanish, “Rape! Someone help me, this americano is trying to have his way with me. ¡Violación!”