Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [132]
The mambo whirled around at our abrupt entrance. Her face was a mask of shock. She and Max faced each other in tense silence for a moment.
I realized we weren’t alone in the room. Biko and Puma were both there, standing a few feet behind the mambo. I gasped and raised my sword, pointing it at Biko. But it was immediately apparent that he didn’t even know I was in the room.
He and Puma stood in identical positions, their arms raised in worship, their blank faces gazing unblinkingly at the eerie altar. They continued with the chant that the mambo had ceased when we burst into the room.
Looking at her now, Max said in a dark, furious voice, “You hurt Nelli!”
The mambo’s face contorted angrily and she started shouting at us in Creole. Max ignored her and swept his machete across the altar, destroying several ritual objects with a single blow.
The mambo screamed and threw her enormous snake at him. Max fell to the ground, wrestling with the writhing reptile. Puma and Biko continued chanting, motionless and unblinking. The mambo made a beeline for the door. I blocked her path. When she tried to shove past me, I hit her with my sword.
She shrieked in Creole and then hissed at me. She had done that earlier tonight, when I had been trying to rouse Lopez from his possession trance. Only this time, red mist poured out of her mouth.
The next thing I knew, I was lying in a pool of darkness, and Max was calling my name from far away.
I heard a groan. Then another. Upon hearing the next one, I realized that I was the one making that noise. I saw flashing lights, and they made me dizzy. I groaned again. My head was killing me.
“Esther! Esther!”
Someone was patting my cheeks, chafing my wrists, and shaking me gently. It was all very irritating. I tried to shove him away.
It dawned on me that the flashing lights were actually just the dazed fluttering of my eyelids. I willed myself to stop doing that. Peaceful darkness descended.
“Esther!” Max said. “Wake up! Are you all right? Esther!”
I opened my eyes, squinted against the candlelight, and saw Max peering down into my face.
“Oh, thank goodness! Esther?”
I tried to speak, coughed, then tried again. “Why am I on the floor?”
“In her escape, the mambo did something that made you pass out.”
I frowned . . . and then recalled her hissing a cloud of red mist at me. I shuddered in revulsion. “Oh. Right.”
Fortunately, the pain in my head was already fading.
“I believe you must have been unconscious before you hit the floor. You fell with quite a heavy thud,” he said. “I noticed it even though I was locked in mortal combat with Napoleon.”
“The snake!” I gasped and scrambled up off the floor with impressive speed for someone who’d been barely conscious a moment ago. “Where is it?”
“I have dispatched it.” Max rose, too, and gestured in the direction of the altar. “I don’t approve of cruelty to animals, but the circumstances were extreme. He was trying to suffocate me.”
I saw the snake’s head lying at some distance from his body, and realized that Max had killed the reptile with his machete. Napoleon’s blood was everywhere.
“That is so disgusting,” I said with feeling. Then I realized what Max had said right after I regained consciousness. “The mambo escaped?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Max. “She fled while you were unconscious and I was wrestling with the snake. By the time I beheaded the creature, I knew it was too late to find the mambo. And I couldn’t leave you, in any case. I wasn’t sure what she had done to you.”
“What’ll we do?”
“We shall proceed with destroying the altar and purifying this ritual space,” he said. “Then we will search the building for baka and zombies—though I suspect they are not here, or we would have encountered them already.”
Puma and Biko stood silently nearby, facing the altar.
“How