The Obsidian Mirror, page 24
“No! All I had were suspicions. I had no documentation, no proof at all. What would your friends the police do with a bunch of unfounded allegations?”
“Nothing,” admitted Clancy, softening. “You’re right. Sorry.”
“Hmph,” Sierra said. She was a bit stung by Clancy’s manner and wasn’t eager to forgive. “Anyway, I guess I wasn’t too subtle about not liking what Clapper was doing, because he fired me, and then he moved to New York and that was the last I heard from him. Until Black Diamond hired his firm and booted me out.”
The doorbell rang again. “That’s Kaylee,” said Sierra quickly, and rose to answer the door. But Clancy waved her away.
“I’ll get it,” he said. He drew his handgun and went to the door, looking through the peephole. Then he relaxed, sheathed his gun, and opened the door to Kaylee. Sierra was happy to see that Kaylee had brought a sleeping bag. When she insisted that her friend come to stay, she hadn’t considered that her sleeping arrangements were all taken—including the sofas.
The kitchen table could no longer accommodate everyone, so they repaired to the living room. Clancy was still asking questions, and Sierra was having trouble remembering what she had told him and what she hadn’t. She finally started over from the beginning, trying not to leave anything out.
“…so I was making a necklace from the silver feathers. When the feathers come into contact with her skin, that’s supposed to liberate her soul—or something—from Necocyaotl.”
Clancy asked to see the feathers and she dug them out of her jeans pocket and placed them in his hand. He looked down at them, shining softly on his palm.
“I don’t feel any different,” he said, dubiously.
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Sierra said. “It means that you aren’t influenced by Necocyotl.”
“Well, I guess you’d better get to work. I think I might be able to help you with getting the feathers to Simmons,” Clancy said, standing up and handing the silver feathers back to Sierra.
She looked up at him hopelessly. “Thanks, but I don’t think it’s going to do any good at this point,” she said.
“Why not?”
“For a start, don’t you think that Clapper will tell Simmons that I have the feathers back? I don’t think she’s going to let anyone walk up to her and drape a necklace around her neck. As a matter of fact, I haven’t got the faintest idea of what to do at this point. It seems like the whole plan is pretty much blown.”
Clancy sat down again, and Sierra saw the realization dawning on every face. Chaco buried his dark head in his hands. Kaylee groaned and did likewise. There were several long moments of silence.
Finally, Chaco spoke. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to come up with another plan, then. Let’s start laying out some new ideas.” He looked hopefully around the room.
There was a prolonged bout of silence as the evening shadows crowded around Sierra’s little house. Finally, Kaylee spoke.
“Where’s Fred?” she asked, looking around the room.
Chapter 29
For a moment they all looked blankly at one other.
“Fred?” called Kaylee. “Fred, are you here?” There was no response. Sierra ran upstairs, calling the mannegishi. Chaco, morphing quickly, began pacing through the house, black nose quivering, while Kaylee and Clancy searched the garage and the small yard. Finally, they all reassembled in the living room shaking their heads and looking worried.
“When was the last time you remember being with Fred?” Clancy asked Sierra and Chaco.
Sierra said, “I was carrying him at the storage facility. He scrambled under the fence before me. Chaco had to make the hole bigger for me, but it was plenty big enough for Fred.”
“Did you talk to him at all on the way back?” asked Clancy.
“I don’t remember. Do you remember talking to Fred, Chaco?”
“Nope. I just assumed he was with us, and what with the cops and everything, I didn’t really think about him until just now,” Chaco responded.
“Where do you suppose he is?” fretted Sierra. “Maybe he got lost on the way home. Or maybe something happened to him!” He had been so brave and helpful to them in dealing with Clapper. How could she have forgotten about him?
“Well, there’s really no point in looking for him,” said Clancy, reasonably. “Fred is invisible when he wants to be. Maybe he just feels like being invisible right now.”
Kaylee shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like Fred at all,” she observed. “If he were here, he’d be wanting food. We’d have heard from him by now.”
“You’re right,” admitted Sierra, with another pang of guilt. She imagined Fred wandering the hot streets, famished and thirsty.
Chaco said, “Fred’s a big mannegishi. He can take care of himself. He’s been doing it for millennia. And don’t forget those teeth. He’ll show up when he’s ready.” He scooted a little closer to Kaylee on the sofa and leaned forward. “We ought to be making plans, not worrying about Fred.”
“That’s right,” said Clancy. “We need to figure out what to do next, now that Plan A is apparently a no-go.”
A long and gloomy silence followed as they pondered the situation. Finally, Sierra retrieved pads of paper and pens from her desk, which she passed out to everyone.
“Let’s brainstorm,” she suggested. “All ideas are welcome. There are no bad ideas. Let’s just get them down on paper.”
They sat for several more minutes, pens poised and brows furrowed. No one wrote anything, although Kaylee began listlessly doodling. The silence was so complete that Sierra could hear the ticking of her kitchen clock, even from the living room. Every tick seemed to underscore the fact that no one appeared to have any useful ideas. Or even any wild and crazy ideas.
Finally, Clancy set his pen down and looked around. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s just reset and start over from the top. Jenna Simmons, our esteemed leader”—here he glanced at Sierra and Kaylee—“…is a servant of, um, Necocoyote.”
Chaco sighed gustily. “Necocyaotl.”
“Of Necocyaotl, right. Necocyaotl is trying to get humanity to destroy itself, apparently because he just enjoys that kind of thing.” He glanced at Chaco. “Right so far?” Chaco nodded.
“Okay. Jenna is using Necocyaotl’s obsidian, imbued with his evil essence, to make products that are incorporated in electronic devices everywhere, all around the world. These products emit some sort of, um, field? Radiation? Aura?…”
“Magic,” said Chaco, and Clancy looked as though he had bitten into a chocolate, only to find a worm at the center.
“Magic, then,” he said, letting the word drop from his lips with distaste. “Some sort of magic that enraptures people, causes them to—what? Ignore the consequences of what they’re doing?” He looked at Chaco again. Sierra and Kaylee said nothing, but Sierra nodded.
“That sums it up, I guess,” responded Chaco. “We call it looking into the obsidian mirror. They see only themselves, and care only about their own short-term gratification. They don’t see or don’t care about the consequences to other beings or to the earth.”
“Right. So that explains why people do stupid stuff like dumping toxins or storing radioactive materials in caves, where it can leak into groundwater supplies,” Clancy said. “What I don’t understand is why some people still do smart things, or unselfish things, like banning chlorofluorocarbons or developing alternative fuels. You can’t tell me these people don’t have cell phones or microwaves.”
“I don’t know,” said Chaco serenely. “Why do some people get colds all the time, and other people don’t? Maybe some people have a sort of psychic immune system.”
Clancy pondered this briefly. “It would be worth finding out why,” he said, finally. “But I don’t think it enters into our current problem. So Quetzalcoatl, Necocyaotl’s good twin, calls on Sierra to stop Jenna Simmons. He gives her several, um, magical feathers that will exorcise the influence of the evil twin if they come into contact with Jenna’s skin.
“Now we come to the part I don’t understand—I mean, one of the parts I don’t understand. This other evil avatar, Zin-Zin—the one that is presumably in cahoots with Necocyaotl—comes to the house with Jack Clapper, Sierra’s old boss, and Clapper steals the feathers. Clapper is working with Simmons and is part of the gang. We know he attacked Aiden Sullivan and tried his best to kill him. So far, it makes a weird kind of sense.
“But someone else was also looking for the feathers: Chris Jumlin. Jumlin is one of the bad guys. He eats people, he tried to sacrifice Sierra, and apparently he is also a worshipper of Necocyaotl. But Jumlin didn’t know that Clapper had stolen the feathers—he thought Sierra still had them. If Jumlin’s part of the Necocyaotl gang, why didn’t he know? Why was he looking for the feathers, and what was he going to do with them if he found them? How does Jumlin fit in with the rest of what’s going on?”
There was silence for a few minutes. “Maybe he isn’t in with the rest of them,” Sierra suggested. “Maybe he’s not one of the inner circle.” Another period of silence greeted this speculation. Then Sierra shook her head. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “Jumlin worships Necocyaotl. He called him ‘Lord Tezcatlipoca.’ He has his creepy dungeon set up with an altar to him. He was going to sacrifice me to Necocyaotl. How could he not be in with the rest of them?”
After several minutes, Clancy sighed and said, “Well, maybe we should set Jumlin aside for the moment and concentrate on the main crew. The problem at hand is how to get the feathers into contact with Simmons, now that the, ah, bad guys understand our strategy. Alternatively, how do we accomplish the same thing without using the feathers?”
“I wish we could communicate with Quetzalcoatl,” Sierra said, with an edge of irritation in her voice. “It would be a lot easier to know how to do this if we had some good advice. Or better still, some help.” She turned to Chaco. “Short of sacrificing Henrietta there, how do you get in touch with him?”
Chaco looked confused, “Henrietta?”
“Yes, the chicken,” Sierra explained. “Sacrificing a chicken is not going to happen. So how do you normally communicate with him?”
Chaco continued to look confused. “I don’t,” he said simply.
“What do you mean?” Sierra queried on a rising note. “How do you tell him what’s going on?” Everyone looked inquisitively at Chaco, who began to exchange his confused expression for an embarrassed one.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he muttered, looking at his feet as though he had never seen anything so interesting before. “You mortals always think it’s all…organized, or something. Like a business. But it’s not like that at all. Q has his interests, I have mine. Sometimes we work together, and sometimes not. When he doesn’t want to be found, nobody can find him. Not even me.” He looked at Sierra, as though willing her to understand.
Sierra looked at him in disbelief. “You mean that you don’t have any way to communicate with Quetzalcoatl?” Chaco shook his dark head. “What kind of a way is that to run a world?” she demanded angrily. “I was counting on Q to help us out if we got into trouble. Now you’re saying he doesn’t want to be found? He’s leaving us high and dry? He started this mess, and now he’s just gone fishing?” her voice reached a pitch of outrage so high that it almost came out as a squeak.
For the first time, the look that Chaco gave her was cold. Although to the eye, he was still an impossibly beautiful young man, his presence now filled the room. The waning light outside faded completely, and the room became dark. Chaco seemed to grow, taking on a persona that was remote, ancient, and powerful, and his eyes burned like molten gold in the dark room. There was no trace of the amiable youth that Sierra knew. Kaylee, seated beside Chaco, shrank away, though her eyes never left his face. The others were equally mesmerized, sitting utterly still with startled and wary faces. Sierra heard a roaring in her ears, and her awareness seemed to narrow down to the twin suns of Chaco’s eyes.
As though from a great distance, she heard a voice. It was as loud as the roaring of the wind in a great storm and yet also as quiet as the tunneling of worms through leaf mold. “The Plumed Serpent did not lay waste to this planet. His work is his work, and not for you to know. My work is my work, and not for you to know. Your people, and your people alone, have given themselves to the Obsidian Mirror. It is for your people to set it right again. Do it or don’t do it. But do not wag your little finger at the Old Ones and lay your blame at our door.”
The silence that followed was the stillness of the desert, where there are no trees to sough in the wind, in the remote arroyos where the cars and airplanes and other devices of man’s making never intrude. The room gradually returned to the everyday twilight of impending night. Chaco slumped on the sofa and sighed—a small sound in the stillness.
“Please don’t make me do that again,” he said wearily. He lifted his eyes, no longer burning suns, but merely the warm, friendly amber they had always been. “That really takes it out of me.” He moved closer to Kaylee and put an arm around her shoulders. She eyed him with eyes so wide that the whites showed all around her pupils, but did not move away.
After a respectful few minutes had passed, Sierra said quietly, “Chaco, you’re right that people have done the damage. But Necocyaotl isn’t human. How can we go up against something so powerful, with so many agents working for him? We are only human, after all.”
“That’s right,” Clancy chimed in. “How can he—or you—expect us to combat magic? We have nothing that we can use in return. Except for the feathers, and I don’t know how we can use them, now.”
“But that is what you must do, nonetheless,” Chaco said. “It’s just the way the world works. It’s the way that magic works, too. You broke it, you fix it.”
“I didn’t break it!” said Kaylee. “Neither did Sierra, or Clancy. Why do we get the job of saving the world?” She looked at Chaco rebelliously.
“No, you didn’t break it,” Chaco sighed. “You’re missing the point. And you and Clancy aren’t the ones who have to do it. Quetzalcoatl chose Sierra. Q gave her his feathers, and maybe more besides. You’re only here because you want to be here.”
“And I’m the only one who doesn’t have any choice in the matter? Is that it?” snapped Sierra. The awe that accompanied Chaco’s transformation into something—other—had waned slightly, though she would not forget the experience.
Chaco turned his eyes to hers. “You always have a choice,” he said. “You just have to decide if you’re willing to take the consequences.”
Sierra buried her head in her hands. “I don’t know!” she cried. “I mean, no, I don’t want to see Necocyaotl win. But I don’t…know…what…to…do!”
Clancy stood, apparently intending to go to Sierra to comfort her, but just as he straightened up, the doorbell rang. He tensed like a nervous cat. His hand went to his holster. “I’ll get it,” he said grimly, and went to the front door. The others heard a brief murmur, then the door shut, and they heard the sound of Clancy locking the deadbolt. He came back into the living room, carrying a small package, which he handed to Sierra.
Sierra held the package on her lap. She couldn’t remember ordering anything lately, and the address was unfamiliar. “Where is Lee Vining, California?” she asked.
“Eastern Sierras,” responded Clancy. “East of Yosemite, on Mono Lake. High desert. I’ve camped out there. Lee Vining is just a wide spot in the road, really.”
“What could this be?” Sierra wondered aloud, tearing off the clear plastic tape that sealed the box. She opened the flaps and pulled out something flat and white, wrapped in bubble wrap, which she peeled away. She picked up the contents, and drew out a single sheet of paper and read it. Gasping, she dropped the white object, which fell to the floor and broke in half as the sheet of paper floated onto the floor.
“Fred!” Sierra rasped, fighting back tears. “They’ve got Fred!”
Chapter 30
“What?” exclaimed Chaco. “How is that possible?” He leaned down to pick up the two pieces of the object Sierra had dropped. As he slid the pieces together, everyone crowded around to see. It was a rounded pancake made of plaster of Paris. Kaylee remembered making something like it in grade school as a Mother’s Day gift, imprinted with the shape of her six-year-old hand. Embedded in the center was the impression of a small, six-fingered paw, similar to a salamander’s foot, with rounded ends to the digits. It was unmistakably a cast of one of Fred’s paws.
“What does the note say?” asked Clancy quietly. Sierra mutely handed him the paper.
“’We’ve got your little green friend,’” he read. “’If you don’t do exactly as we say, the next package will contain his actual paw. Then each of his paws, one by one. Then bits of the rest of him, one bit at a time. So don’t screw around with us. Sierra Carter is to come ALONE to the location on the map.’” Clancy turned the paper over. There was a map printed on the reverse side. He flipped the paper again. “’…to the location on the map. You will receive further instructions there. Be there by noon tomorrow, WITH THE FEATHERS, or you’ll get another special delivery.’”
“Is it signed?” asked Kaylee. Clancy shook his head.
“No, there’s just this little drawing.” He held up the paper for them to see. At the bottom of the printed note, there was a small drawing:
Chaco craned forward to take a closer look. “That’s Necocyaotl’s sign,” he said softly. “It’s actually the glyph that means ‘Two Reed,’ which was used for the spring sacrifice to Necocyaotl.”
Sierra viewed the small glyph with distaste. The blocky, stylized shape reminded her of the bloody murals lining the walls of Necocyaotl’s stone temple. “Well,” she said, “I guess I’d better get going. Noon tomorrow? Can I make it, Clancy?”
In a decisive tone of voice, Clancy said, “You can’t go there alone, Sierra. These people are thugs. Murderers. You can’t go. It’s too dangerous.”
