Veil of the Goddess (25 page)

"I did not say that. She passed beyond the veil of the mundane, was translated into the separate world of the holy."

"Translation, you left her in the grotto?"

"She was badly injured, Zack. To bring her back to this world of suffering would be no kindness."

"I'm not interested in kindness. In fact, I'm thinking of ripping your throat out. So, why don't you tell me where you've hidden the Cross and I'll go fetch Ivy?"

"Alas, she took the Cross with her. She handed me the veil, then pulled the Cross after her."

Zack considered. He knew the priest was lying. He also knew that Father Galen was safe now, surrounded as they were by thousands of pilgrims who were aching for a fight and would be just as happy to turn on a western Catholic as they would on a Turkish Moslem.

"I'm going to get her out,” he said. “And when I come back, I'm going to collect the veil. So, if you're lying, you'd better start running."

"But...” Father Galen sputtered for words. “But I'm a priest."

"You're also a hashish-smoking weirdo. I'd trust your Patriarch, but I'd only trust you about as far as I could throw you.” Considering the bulk of the priest, that wouldn't be far. Still, he was ready to try.

"Will we be able to get in without the Cross?” Cejno asked as Zack turned on his heel and shoved his way away from the Hagia Sophia and toward the grotto where Father Galen had abandoned Ivy."

"If Father Galen wasn't lying, she'll have the Cross with her,” he said.

"Of course Father Galen was lying. Didn't you see the way his eyes flickered?"

Zack had missed that. “I'll tear him apart later."

"He means well,” Cejno said. “But his vision is small. He wants Greeks to return to Constantinople. Nothing seems more important to him."

"If the Foundation gets the Cross and veil, who lives in Istanbul is way down our list of worries."

"For us, yes. I think Father Galen would turn the rest of the world over to Shaitan himself if doing so would return Constantinople to Orthodox rule."

"If we can't save Ivy, he just might have turned the world over to Shaitan."

After her failed attempt to follow the policeman, Ivy rested, letting the blue power of the otherworldly church soak into her tired and injured body, trying to stay calm.

Surely Father Galen would return. Although he was absorbed in his belief, he wasn't a cruel man, and he
was
a priest.

Instead, as the pilgrims left, Foundation Agents, easily visible by their black suits and the red glow of religious fervor that surrounded them, trickled back into the area of the old church.

Several wandered through the territory of the church, but Ivy was careful not to repeat the experiment she'd tried with the policeman. The policeman had sensed something. She suspected that the Foundation agents would know exactly what they felt—and have weapons that could reach across the barriers that kept her enclosed and made her invisible to ordinary sight.

Although she couldn't make herself touch them, she did hobble toward the nearest one—and then froze when he reacted.

She'd been trained in firearms when she'd gone through basic in the National Guard, and she'd brushed up a lot when she'd gotten word her unit was being shipped to Iraq, but not even her drill inspector moved as quickly or made the gun as much a part of his body as did the agent.

His lips moved as he shouted something out to his fellow agents and they started to converge. One of them reached into his ubiquitous black briefcase and a chill ran down Ivy's back.

Before the Agent withdrew his crucifix, though, the whole group cocked their heads. Several pulled out cells, and started listening.

She strained her ears and could almost make out the words. Although she had no skill at lip-reading, she thought she recognized the shape of the words
veil
and
Cross
.

Abruptly the entire group of agents took off running in the direction of the Hagia Sophia.

Being abandoned had never felt better.

Ivy leaned against the insubstantial wall and closed her eyes. Impossible though it seemed, her leg was healing. Either the Cross, which she knew Zack would have put her on, or the power of this ancient and long-vanished church, was accelerating nature's healing power. The matter needed to replace the big hunk of her leg the Foundation Agents had blown away seemed to be coming from other parts of her body. After a few months of Iraqi heat, she'd already been too skinny. Now, she felt emaciated.

Starving to death in this peaceful prison was starting to seem more likely than dying of blood loss and shock.

That wasn't an improvement.

She closed her eyes to rest for a few minutes, and to think about what she could do next.

She didn't even notice Cejno and Zack when they first entered the grotto.

Their conversation barely seeped through the dimensional barrier. Their bodies were insubstantial shadows rather than complete people.

When Zack called her name, though, his meaning penetrated where sound alone could not.

She stumbled to her feet. “I'm here, Zack. Did you bring the Cross?"

He cocked his head as if he'd almost heard her.

She ran to him, threw her arms around him—and watched as they passed through his body without any resistance whatsoever.

"I'm here,” she repeated, shouting this time with her lips only inches from his ear—inches and a million miles.

He brushed at his ear as if pawing away a mosquito.

"Damn it, Zack. Get the Cross. You know that's the only way to get through the barrier."

"We must go back and get the Cross,” Cejno announced. “If she is here, she is beyond the sight of the merely human."

"I don't know how to use the Cross,” Zack said. “It's part of Ivy's talent, something she was given when the Cross brought her back."

"Then you must kill me and put me on the Cross. When I am healed, I too may be able to see between our world and the world of Allah.” The young man looked horribly pale, but wonderfully brave.

Zack shuddered. “The Cross didn't help much when Ivy got shot. It's too big a risk."

If anyone was going to lay down his life on a long-shot to save Ivy, it was going to be him, not the Kurdish teen who'd already gone way beyond the bounds of hospitality and kindness. “Not that I wouldn't try something if we actually had the Cross."

"I can speak to the imam. The Moslems could riot for real rather than for play."

Zack shook his head firmly. He hadn't quite bought into Ivy's theory that the Foundation was seeking the relics that could provoke a war between the faiths, but he wasn't going to risk launching one himself. Especially with no certainty that it would help Ivy.

"Give me a second, will you?"

It was strange that Ivy, with her casual attitude toward religion, had been tagged as the saint, while he, who had always been devout, was nothing more than her sidekick. But that didn't make his faith any less genuine. He knelt and prayed.

Lord, help me find Ivy now. I need her and the world needs her.

It would have been a good time for a divine revelation. Unfortunately, no trumpets blared, no deep voice thundered instructions, no bushes burned. A bug kept buzzing in his ears, distracting him from his prayer, but he waved it away and really tried to concentrate.

None of it did any good.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to Cejno. “All right, let's go beat up on Father Galen."

"I can offer him more Hashish."

"I thought you were out."

Cejno shrugged. “I did not tell the priest the complete truth when he demanded more. His greed is too vast."

Zack felt a strange shape in his pocket and absently pulled out the St. Christopher medal he'd stuffed there the day he and Ivy had first fought their way free of the Iraqi insurgents. Since then, he'd transferred it from pocket to pocket whenever he'd managed a change of clothing. The modern Catholic Church had stripped St. Christopher of his Saint's Day and relegated him to a sort of ambiguous status, but more traditional Catholics like Zack's mother still swore by the giant's protective power.

If he were going to go beat up a priest, he'd need all the protection he could get. Ol’ Chris might not do him any good, but he'd be able to tell his mother he'd done everything possible when he got back to Texas.

Ivy's throat was raw from shouting at Zack, her fists bleeding from when she'd tried to touch him and instead banged into walls that Zack simply walked through. She wasn't ready to despair, but she couldn't deny feeling down.

Then he pulled out his St. Christopher medal.

Unlike the rest of the external world, which remained blurred and distant from her vantage point, the silver metal glistened with hard solidity as Zack draped it over his muscular chest.

He'd told her that his mother had given him the St. Christopher as protection during his distant travels. She hoped Zack's mother wouldn't mind if she shared a bit of that shelter. Nobody needed protection more than Ivy did, and she knew of no one on earth who had traveled so far.

The bright gleam of the St. Christopher medal was a ray of hope, but a ray that was getting away fast.

Zack was already near the boundary to the grotto and walking out when he took out the medal. She launched himself at him, grasping for his shoulders with one arm while her left hand reached for the medallion.

Her body slipped through his and she slammed into the hard glowing walls of her prison when her fingertips finally reached the medallion.

"Something's choking me. Cejno, help me get this medal away from me before it tears off my head."

She could make out his words, although they seemed impossibly distant, like an accidental signal picked up by a radio.

"Don't you dare,” she screamed. It was a thin lifeline indeed, but if Zack took off the chain, she would be left holding a silver medal on the wrong side of the barrier.

"Ivy? It's almost like I can hear her, Cejno."

Cejno's eyes bugged out over the way Zack's medal hung straight out from his body, defying gravity. As if he hadn't seen a lot of stranger things since they'd been hanging around together.

"Perhaps it is Ivy trying to come through, but also perhaps it is a monster from the other side,” the smuggler suggested.

Details of the mundane world were getting clearer. Ivy could hear Cejno as well. Unfortunately, her body still rested where it had fallen on a stone floor inches higher than the dirt where Zack stood, solidly trapped in the walls of power.

"Shout out a warning if it's dangerous, Ivy,” Zack said. “Is it you, or a monster?"

"Me, obviously."

"A monster could imitate her voice,” Cejno warned.

"I'm willing to take that chance."

Which was a relief for Ivy. But not much of one. Unlike the Cross, which opened a portal from the mundane to the mystical universe of power, Zack's medal had an existence in both the world of the mundane and that of faith and power, but it didn't really open anything.

She'd have to do this the hard way.

She wrapped her fingers completely around the St. Christopher medal and savored the sensation of something solid, earthly, mundane.

Her leg twinged as she built a connection to the darker world outside, and she shivered. Maybe Father Galen had been right and she was best off if she stayed within the protective power of the temple. Maybe her wounds would reopen if she managed to breach the barriers. Maybe she'd cross over and instantly die.

She shoved her doubts away. Dying quickly of battle-wounds was better than a slow and lonely death by starvation.

Since she'd fallen down when she'd grabbed for the St. Christopher medal, the chain around Zack's neck was supporting almost all of her weight. Which meant either the chain would break or he'd choke to death. Neither was an attractive option.

She pulled her feet under her to take the weight off the chain and considered.

She needed to deepen the connection between herself and the mundane world.

Getting closer to the Turkish cop hadn't done her any good at all. Getting close to the Foundation Agents had nearly gotten her killed. Getting closer to Zack seemed simultaneously dangerous and unlikely to help. But she didn't have any choice.

She stepped into him, brought her lips to his, wrapped her right arm, the one she wasn't holding the medal in, around his shoulders. She concentrated every ounce of her energy, every drop of concentration on deepening the connection between Zack and herself.

Her arm passed through his body as if he were no more solid than a fog. Her lips met his and didn't touch. Her tongue tasted nothing but the acidic ozone of mystical energy.

Her plan hadn't worked.

Zack
knew
Ivy was at the other end of his chain, hanging on for dear life. He couldn't have explained how he knew, but he was certain.

That was about the only certainty he had. Because his body seemed to be acting up in mysterious ways. One thing that didn't make sense at all was for him to be sexually aroused.

He closed his eyes and strained for any contact from Ivy on the other side of the invisible wall. But straining only made her seem more distant.

Finally, acting against every instinct, he forced himself to relax, using the muscle-by-muscle approach a yoga-loving physical therapist had taught him while he'd been recovering from a Baghdad roadside bomb during his previous tour of duty.

Starting with his toes, he willed each muscle group into submission.

He slowly overcame his soldier-trained instincts to stay alert, to be instantly ready for an attack and made himself open to whatever might happen.

His imagination started playing tricks on him.

Ivy's hand, disembodied and hanging in midair, appeared, apparently solid. But, impossibly, it didn't obscure the shape of the ancient saint, which was completely enclosed within her fist. Then the hand vanished again, leaving him to wonder whether he was fooling himself.

Cool softness pressed against his lips—"an angel's kiss,” his mother would have called it. But no face slanted against his own.