He lay still a moment, listening. There was no whisper of breath, only the distant brush of wind through leaves. No point in faking unconsciousness if there was no audience to appreciate it.
When he opened his eyes again, half-veiling them with his lids, he thought for a moment that he was in a tent. There was red and gold fabric all around, thick and muffling. But when he pushed it aside, he saw that it was suspended from the ceiling of a white-painted room to form a rough tepee over the bed. There were geometric patterns on the fabric that PD guessed were meant to imitate Indian work. But it was fake, all of it.
There was a sink in the room. PD used it to splash water on his face, trying to clear the last of the drug-induced fuzziness from his mind. He felt in his ear and at his throat for the com links he'd been wearing and wasn't surprised to find both gone. His memory was beginning to return. He recalled being trapped in the house on Alamo Square, locked in Marriott's study while the Croatoans closed in.
Alex
, he thought in sudden panic.
Hammond would end PD's career and maybe his life if anything had happened to her. And... he remembered the way she'd smiled after he'd rolled from on top of her, breath coming in heaving gasps. Her smile had made him look away, too unguarded. The instant he'd seen it, he'd known he should have kept his hands off her. But when she'd stroked a finger from his throat to his cock, he'd felt it twitch back into life and he'd lifted her on top of him and started all over again.
A part of him had felt she
owed
him this, for all the shit he'd taken protecting her from Hammond over the years. And the bigger part of him had just wanted her. Almost as if by taking this from her, he could take the other thing she possessed that he so badly wanted. And then the Croatoans had come and the door had locked, shutting him away from any possibility of making things right with her.
Except he'd been locked in
before
the cultists came.
She'd set him up. Jesus, he was an idiot. She'd been planning it all day. That's why she'd insisted on going to the bank. And she was a god-awful useless liar. He'd have known she was deceiving him the instant he looked in her eyes. But he hadn't, had he? He'd fucked her and then let her fuck him over because he hadn't been able to face up to what he'd done. His chest burned with a toxic combination of rage at Alex and self-disgust.
His room had a window hidden behind a gauzy curtain. When he pulled it back, sunlight streamed in, the pure white of the deep desert. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious so he couldn't guess how far he'd been taken. Had he left the country altogether? But the shape of the distant mountains looked familiar, and he thought he might be in the Mojave, somewhere south and east of San Francisco. There was a fence a hundred or so feet away, separating the dusty desert plants from the irrigated greenery which surrounded the building.
The window wasn't barred. He opened it to let in a gust of hot, dry air. The fence was high and topped with razor wire and his room was on the third floor. Besides, his mission objective was to discover more about the Croatoans. He'd fucked up everything else, but he could still do this.
For the first time he noticed what he was wearing. Someone had dressed him in buckskin pants and a tunic cinched at the waist with a beaded belt. He looked like a Red Indian extra from a 1950s Western. He saw a camera peering at him from one corner of the ceiling. They were watching him. He searched the room anyway, but aside from a bar of cinnamon-scented soap there was nothing and no sign of his own clothes.
He didn't really expect the door to open, but the handle turned smoothly. He slipped into the corridor without anyone trying to stop him.
There was a man outside, leaning against the far wall and PD's muscles tensed as he took a step back. The man barely seemed to notice. He smiled vacantly then walked away in an unsteady zig-zag. Drugged too, PD guessed. Another prisoner? He was dressed in the same absurd tunic and pants, though he was white, his long hair swinging around a blandly handsome face.
PD followed the man down the featureless white corridor until they entered a larger, more crowded space. The hundred or so people inside sat in loose circles, eating from communal bowls. Some of the circles passed a peace pipe around along with the food. From the pungent smell in the air, PD could tell it was filled with something other than tobacco. There was music coming from hidden speakers, an inoffensive New Age tinkling.
These people were a joke. PD had been searching his whole life for the thing that should have been his birthright. Then he'd found Alex and he'd seen it in her eyes, the crazy reflection of the spirit world which had always eluded him. It was so near when he was with her, and yet frustratingly still out of his reach. And these people... they didn't even understand the thing they pretended to want.
Were they a threat? Alex had said they were, but then Alex might have been lying for days. The Croatoans had seemed harmless until that confrontation in the restaurant -
after
Alex had been inside their base. Had she made her deal with them then? He'd thought they were trying to kidnap her from the restaurant, but maybe he'd actually foiled an escape attempt. Shit. It all made sense. He should have guessed it then, but he'd let her lead him along by the cock. She'd played him like a pro.
He needed to get back to base and start the search for her. He couldn't let her get away. With her powers she was more of a danger than the Croatoans could ever be. The embers of rage burned inside him as he walked through the room.
One long wall was glass, looking out on the compound and the arid desert beyond. PD walked beside it, unremarked by the people in the room, until he came to an archway and the entrance hall beyond.
The door to the outside wasn't locked either. PD took a deep breath of the desert air as he swung it open. There were cars outside. He might have to jack one of them if he wanted to complete his escape. He thought they wouldn't try too hard to stop him. Alex had probably paid them to keep him out of the way while she ran for it, but could she have paid them enough to risk killing him?
"Leaving already?" a man said behind him. "Don't you want to see what you came for?"
PD tensed, considering running, but he was outnumbered and unarmed. He released the door handle and turned round slowly, hands held away from his body.
The man who'd addressed him looked in his thirties, curly haired and unremarkable except for his wide hazel eyes. They made his expression seem startled, but the eyes themselves were just blank.
"We brought you here for a reason," the man said. "We have no intention of harming you." His gaze travelling over PD's body made him twitch with unease. It wasn't quite sexual, but it was oddly appraising.
"Kidnapping is a federal crime," PD said. "You're all in on a busted flush. Let me go and I might just drop it."
The man shrugged. "You're free to go."
PD stared at him. He didn't sense a lie. But he didn't move and after a moment the man smiled, as if he'd known that was how PD would react. "I lead the Croatoans," he said. "I'm Laughing Wolf."
"I'm PD, but I guess you know that. What do you want with me? If you're not working with Alex, what are you doing? No more bullshit."
Laughing Wolf opened his arms wide, a studied and theatrical gesture. PD saw that he was dressed as a Mojave shaman, the costume not a pastiche like those of the other Croatoans but the real deal. "I want you to spirit walk with me," he said. "Let me show you what we can really do."
PD sensed the trap, of course he did. But they already had him in their power. They could have killed him before he woke. And every scrap of information he brought back to the Agency was worth the risk to his life.
Especially if they really could teach him to spirit walk. Especially then.
"OK," he said. "I'll call that raise."
A timid young woman led PD back to his room, where an even more absurd outfit had been laid out on the bed for him. He raised a sceptical eyebrow at her, but she looked back blankly.
"The ceremony isn't until sunset," she said. "Laughing Wolf said you can relax till then."
She left and this time PD heard a key turning in the lock. He grimaced and looked down at the beaded jacket on the bed, then shrugged and began to change into it. He had a flash of childhood memory, his grandfather helping him dress for his cousin's naming ceremony back when they'd still lived on the rez. He'd complained bitterly, hating the meaningless tradition, a vestigial remnant of a long-gone time as useless as an appendix.
Then the casino had changed everything, bringing money and an escape route into the white man's world. And now here he was, among the white people he'd always despised most - the wannabes who wished they were red.
He lay on the bed, staring up at the fake tepee until the girl returned for him.
"You're lucky," she said as she closed the door behind him. "I've been here three months, and they tell me I'm still not ready to take the spirit road."
"Take my advice, kid," he said. "Stay away from that place. It isn't Disneyland."
She looked offended, as if she thought he was patronising her. Maybe he was. The one with the real knowledge was Alex - the bitch who didn't want or deserve it.
The girl led him through a maze of white corridors to the opposite side of the compound. She opened a door to let in a waft of hot air and a view of the desert beyond, the sun reddening as it approached the far horizon. There was only the fence between him and freedom.
At least thirty cultists sat in a loose double circle around a central fire. The outer ring faced inward and the inner ring faced outward, pairs of white faces gazing at each other. The flames were almost transparent in the sunlight, shivering the image of the world behind them.
Laughing Wolf stood near the fire, no longer dressed as a shaman. It took a moment for PD to identify the fringed white cloth over his shoulders as a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl. It was out of place here, a genuine piece of one culture in this fake recreation of another. And he recognised the curved horn hanging from Laughing Wolf's belt, too. It was a shofar. He'd heard its sound throughout his childhood every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, welcoming in the new year and marking the end of the Day of Atonement's twenty-five hour fast. But this horn looked... weighty. PD thought he could see the air shimmering around it, just as the air around the fire did, as if the shofar too was burning.
Laughing Wolf nodded as he approached. The people in the ring were silent as they sat cross-legged, wood smoke the only scent in the air and the crackle of the fire the only sound. Laughing Wolf's wide hazel eyes looked flat in the firelight. "Sit," he said. "Join our circle. Be welcome."
PD could see no weapons among the Croatoans, but he found himself moving to obey. He needed to know. It was the point of his mission - it was the central question of his life.
He had an unwelcome memory of Alex telling him he only wanted what he didn't have because he didn't understand what it was. He shook his head to deny her claim as he settled on the hard ground.
In front of him, the inner ring looked back. For the first time, PD realised that the outer ring of cultists were all young and pretty. The inner ring were older, some leaning awkwardly sideways as if kneeling hurt arthritic joints. PD was opposite a man so wizened that he looked mummified. His rheumy eyes raked over PD's body and he didn't like the expression in them.
The sun seemed to be rushing towards the horizon. It looked like the red giant it was too small to ever become, a glimpse of a future that couldn't be. It was an odd thought, and PD tried to shake it away, but his head felt muzzy. He glanced at the fire, at the smoke rising from the green wood, but he smelt nothing herbal and he'd eaten or drunk nothing since he'd been in the Croatoan compound.
He looked at Laughing Wolf and saw he'd raised the shofar to his lips. His cheeks were puffed as if he was blowing it, but no sound emerged. PD felt something, though, a vibration in his chest that matched the traditional notes of the horn.
Tekia
, he thought, as a long deep soundless blast seemed to echo through him. And then
teruah
, a treble trill the human ear wasn't built to hear. It seemed to tug against a part of him that wasn't quite physical and he felt the first flash of pure terror. Inside him, something was breaking loose which had been firmly anchored for the whole of his life.
There was another noise, a desperate howling PD thought came from this strange congregation. He looked around, the movement of his head a supreme effort. But their faces showed only the same fear he felt. Had any of them done this before, or was this the first time for all of them? Was it possible to undergo this terrible spiritual parting more than once?
PD turned to peer into the darkening desert behind him. When he saw the yellow flash of eyes, low to the ground, he tried to rear back. But his body was no longer his to command. Though he still occupied his physical form, he no longer controlled it.
The eyes drew closer. They blinked and when the howling came again PD saw that they were coyotes. They slunk closer, bellies low to the ground, teeth bared in a snarl. PD knew, though he couldn't explain how, that they'd been drawn by the same force that was tugging at something inside him, worrying at it with invisible teeth until it remained connected only by a thread.
PD wanted to see what Laughing Wolf was doing. But he remained motionless, gaze fixed on the nearest coyote as it crept closer. Its tongue looked black in the darkness and its fur sparked with flecks of gold as the firelight caught it. Its flat yellow eyes remained locked on his as it took another step closer. He could smell its rank musk and feel its breath hot against his face.
PD felt eyes behind him, too. He sensed them travelling over his body, possessing it. And then the shofar spoke again, soundless and powerful.
Tekia. Tekia. Sheravim-teruah.
The vibrations went on and on, shaking everything inside him, shaking it all loose.