Chocan Author:Brian Butler Derek Reed is a botanist and treasure hunter with an overpowering need to succeed. His previous adventures all had ended in failure. This time, he has a chance to make something of himself and prove to his soon to be ex-wife that he is not a fool. He is not the only one searching for the sacred Mayan emerald known as Chocan that had been cur... more »sed in an ancient ceremony after the conquistadores had stolen it from the Lacandones. Not only is the baseball-sized emerald worth millions, but within the gem's snake face that replicates the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl's visage lays the essence of Asmodeus, the despoiler of Adam and Eve, promising fortunes to anyone possessing the icon and disaster to those who defy its foul disposition. A murder that takes place within a hundred feet of him triggers his pursuit of a legless man and his two bodyguards who have stolen the emerald from its previous owner and made a zombie slave of his only friend, Alex Scott. Derek's quest takes him from a dingy voodoo shop in Los Angeles to Yuma, Arizona, where he witnesses the start of his own autopsy, and then through Cancun, Mexico, to the newly discovered Mayan ruins of Yaxchilan on the Mexican/Guatemalan border. Time is an important factor for him to use the deconsecration ceremony he acquired from the voodoo priestess in Los Angeles to expel the evil presence living within the beryl as he takes on the legless man on more than one occasion to gain control of the priceless emerald. Ikoki Uac, the new medical examiner from Yuma and Captain Jorge Aguiar from the Cancun Police Department, help him search for his friend and the sacred gemstone. Deep within the Mexican rain forest, genealogy and ethnic motivations enter the equation as Derek Reed tells his story about the demonic icon and voodoo power.« less