The Devil's Elixir

22

Walker watched aghast as the man’s right boot kicked down on his shoulder and flipped him onto his back.

The Mexican was still looking down on him with cold bemusement. Walker felt an onslaught of blood in his temples and as he stared into the man’s eyes, a sudden realization speared through him.

This was no “ex-lieutenant” of Navarro’s, no “Nacho” or whatever the hell he’d called himself.

It was Navarro himself.

The sonofabitch wasn’t dead.

The ramifications of that realization sent his already turbulent thoughts into a tailspin as he just lay there helplessly while Navarro held up his hand and adjusted a big silver ring that, oddly, bridged across two of his fingers, the right middle and the fourth next to it.

“Works like magic, doesn’t it? The tribe it comes from, that’s what they believe—that it’s magic. Which in a way, it is. A potent little neurotoxin cocktail that denervates the motor neurons at the level of the upper spinal cord and causes quadriplegia,” he said with genuine exuberance, like he was marveling at its effects for the first time—something Walker knew firsthand was definitely not the case.

He’d seen its effects before, in Mexico. On someone they’d suspected of being a snitch.

The memory drenched him with fear.

“You’d need a pretty capable anesthetist and some decent equipment to achieve that in an operating room,” Navarro added, “and yet, here it is, just a simple toxin from a jungle spider . . .”

Navarro got down on his haunches for a closer look at him, and his eyes suddenly lost their wonder and turned more predatory. “The great thing about it is, it doesn’t cripple all your muscles. You may have noticed that some of your nerves—the ones from your neck and above—they still work, don’t they? Which means you can talk. So tell me, amigo,” he said softly, almost in a whisper now. “What is this ‘grotto’ you mentioned, and who is this ‘Scrape’ you were talking to?”

Walker steeled himself and spat into the Mexican’s face.

“Fuck you.”

The Mexican’s face brightened, almost as if Walker’s reply was the one he’d been hoping for. He stared at the biker like he was proud of him again while swinging his arm out behind him without turning back.

Walker strained to see what he was doing. He saw one of Navarro’s enforcers hand him something but couldn’t see what it was. Then Navarro smiled at him and brought it out, like a magician pulling out a rabbit, holding it up in front of Walker—a pair of garden shears, the one-handed kind with a spring between the blades.

He snapped the blades together as a demonstration, then turned his attention farther down Walker’s body.

“Let’s see . . . what shall we start with?”

Walker tensed up and tried to lean his head up to see what Navarro was doing, but he couldn’t see much beyond the back of the Mexican, whose arms were busy with something. Then he heard a sickening crunch and a snap, and Navarro turned back to face him. He looked gleeful as he brought something up for Walker to see.

A finger, held in his blood-soaked hand.

Walker felt his stomach shoot up to his throat.

“One down, nineteen to go. Shall we try again?”

Walker felt rivers of sweat seeping out of him. “Like I said,” he grunted. “Fuck. You.”

He heard another crunch.

Another snap.

He couldn’t stop himself from retching, and although he knew he shouldn’t be feeling any pain, his mind was still conjuring some up for him. He felt his consciousness seeping away.

Navarro asked, “Well?”

Walker summoned up the little strength he still possessed and spat at the Mexican. He couldn’t manage anything more than a weak, pathetic spit that missed its target and sank his spirits even further.

Navarro looked at him like a disappointed parent, then turned away.

“I don’t have that much time, so . . . how about we forget about the rest of them for now and skip to something much more . . . convincing?”

He saw Navarro nod to his enforcers, and a perverse, surreal mix of terror and fascination burned through him as he watched the Mexicans bend down and pull his belt and jeans down.

Then Navarro went to work again.