Alexander Death(42)

“That's amazing,” she said. “Your power's so much better than mine.”

“I've seen you wipe out an entire army in a day. I have nothing compared to what you have, Jenny.”

“It's no good for anything but hurting and killing people,” Jenny said. “There's nothing positive I can do.”

“Sometimes destroying the right people is a positive thing,” he said. “Everything depends on the situation.”

“What was I like, in my Mayan life?”

“Beautiful. Powerful. Intriguing. Frightening. Godlike. Just like you are now.”

“I'm not any of those things. Well, maybe frightening.”

“You were believed to be divine,” Alexander said. “Which you are, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“We keep coming back, lifetime after lifetime. We wield power over everyone else. We are, in our way, immortal. We aren't entirely wrong to consider ourselves godlike.”

“I don't know. I would think of a God, or gods, as being sort of wise, and kind of above everything, not stuck in the world and trying to figure things out and being clueless most of the time.”

“I've never encountered such a being,” Alexander said. “There is only us. We are the natural rulers of the humans, because we are so much stronger. They are the sheep. We are the shepherds and the wolves.”

“And which are you?” Jenny asked. “Shepherd or wolf?”

He laughed. “I'm a builder. I despise the love-charmer because she is only a taker.”

“You mean Ashleigh?”

“She's a vulture who preys on others and creates nothing herself. A scavenger with no vision.”

“And what do you build?”

“It depends on the age. I had constructed for my tomb in Egypt a step pyramid, which was quite influential on later kings. I have built canals, roads, temples, arenas, harbors, depending on the age. I always leave a mark behind.”

“And what mark are you making in this lifetime?”

“When you see what lies ahead, you'll see what we can accomplish.”

“With cocaine?”

“That will only be the beginning of our revenue. Start-up capital. In time, we will build whatever we like. And your vision will be as important as mine.”

“My vision? So what am I, if she's a scavenger, and you're a builder?”

Alexander grinned. “You're just in it for the adventure.” He urged his horse on, and the stallion galloped fast along the trail. “Try to keep up!”

“Yah!” Jenny yelled, kneeing her horse. The brown and white mare picked up speed, and Jenny lowered her head. She found horseback riding came naturally, as if she'd done it a million times before.

They raced up the narrow rainforest trail, Jenny's heart pounding in her chest. The trail was mostly uphill, except for a few switchbacks along the way.

Jenny lost track of time—it might have been thirty minutes before Alexander slowed down, and Jenny did the same.

They rounded a bend in the trail and came upon a pair of men with rags tied over their faces, hiding everything but their eyes. They pointed AK-47s at the jaguars, who stood side by side on the trail, like statues.

“Hola,” Alexander said, as he and Jenny stopped their horses just behind the jaguars.

“Hola, El Brujo,” one of the men replied, lowering the cloth to reveal his face. The two armed men stood aside, allowing them to pass. The jaguars darted ahead on the trail. Alexander chatted with them, in a mix of Spanish and Mayan, as he and Jenny rode past.

“Why are they wearing masks?” Jenny whispered when they were out of earshot.

“If another cartel finds us, we don't want them going to their villages. Tracking them down, threatening their families.”

“Threatening their families?”

“Papa Calderon has many enemies,” Alexander said. “But if our work here were discovered, he would have many more.”

They reached a sloped clearing, where dense, overlapping rows of coca plants grew in the shadow of ancient rainforest trees. Workers picked the leaves and dropped them into woven baskets. They moved at a painfully slow pace, but there must have been thirty or more of them harvesting the crop. They were men and women and children, their skin decayed, many with an empty eye socket or missing limb.

Jenny caught her breath. She thought she'd been prepared to see this, but it was still a horrifying sight.

“You okay?” Alexander asked her. “You just went a little pale.”

“It's so weird,” Jenny said. “I expect them all to turn around and attack me, like in Army of Darkness.”

“Good movie,” Alexander said.

“Not you, too.”

“What's wrong with the Evil Dead movies?”