Veil of the Goddess (45 page)

Zack sniffed the pitcher. Water? “Ivy already tried that. He isn't the Wicked Witch of the West. I hardly think he's going to melt."

"It's the best chance we have. Hurry."

For a second, Zack was an altar boy again, following his priest's commands.

He took the crystal pitcher and hurried out of the church.

Smith was still tossing the occasional fireball, but he was also on his radio, screaming at the Navy fighters to start missile launches against anything that moved in the city. Pretty clearly the Navy pilots were arguing, but Zack suspected they would be ordered to obey Smith's commands.

Unless Zack stopped him.

"Smith."

The Agent whirled around. “You're still not dead, Captain?"

"Not yet. Which makes one of us.” He tossed the water over the Agent, then, realizing that the crystal decanter would make a far better weapon than simple water, threw it at Smith's head.

Smith knocked the pitcher back at Zack with his knife and glared at him contemptuously.

The liquid settled into Smith's skin and began ripping through it, exposing bone, rotting flesh, a grinning skull mask.

Zack hadn't seen Father Paulo come out from the church, but the Priest threw another pitcher of the horrible killing liquid over the Agent's body.

It gradually crumpled to the ground, skeletal ribs holding a heart that continued to throb despite the fact that no blood reached it.

Zack backed away from the skeletal remains. “What the heck was in that pitcher? Hydrochloric acid?"

"No, my son. Something far more powerful."

Zack's brain was too tired for riddles. “What's that?"

"Pure water, Holy Water, blessed by the Lord and Lady."

With no Agent commanding them to send their missiles into the civilian population of an allied nation, the Navy fighters didn't stick around long, heading back to their aircraft carriers and the chance to prepare to face real enemies.

Zack helped the Priests and police with the firefighting and cleanup, then collapsed.

He'd lost a lot of blood in his brief encounter with Smith.

Fathers Paulo and Francis visited him in the hospital a few days later. They'd signed him in as a local gondolier, avoiding any indication of his nationality or his current AWOL status from the U.S. Army.

"We were wondering if you had plans?” Father Paulo admitted after exchanging a few pleasantries about his health and healing.

"No.” Losing Ivy had ripped a hole out of his life and Zack didn't think he could ever heal it.

"In this increasingly secular world, too few men turn to God,” Father Francis said, speaking softly as if someone might overhear and accuse him of treason to the church. “Yet, consider this. You've spent time with a Saint, carried the Cross that our Lord carried, touched and been protected by the Veil of the Mother of God. What man, more than you, could be said to have received a calling? The church would be honored to have you consider the seminary, accept your calling into the service of the Lord."

When he'd been an altar boy, Zack had briefly considered the priesthood. But he'd discovered girls and then the army. Those had driven any inclination from him.

Now, it was a possibility again. The Catholic Church, unlike the Orthodox, required that its priests be celibate and unmarried, but that would hardly be a problem for Zack. He had found his woman and now she was lost. He wouldn't be interested in another. And he did have a message. He'd listened when Ivy had told him about her priestess, he'd heard her create new truths of peace in the Church of Saint Lucia. It was a message the Church, and the world, needed to hear.

"I'll think about it,” he said.

Father Francis beamed at him, patting him on the shoulder. “You will make an excellent priest. People would come from miles around to hear your account of the flight of the Cross across Europe and Asia. And what better advocate could Ivy have for her canonization?"

"Canonization?"

"Surely she deserves that. She died for the faith, protecting the Holy Cross from abomination. The Veil of the Mother of God came to her after being lost for hundreds of years. She received several visions from Saint Mary and became a vision of the Queen herself, an avatar. It will take time, but I feel certain that the Church will eventually recognize her as one of its martyrs."

"And there's wonderful news,” Father Paulo interjected. “We're reconsecrating the Church and consecrating Ivy's relic next week. You'll have to be there."

Dread fell over Zack. Had Ivy's sacrifice been wasted? Had they recovered the Cross despite everything. “Her relic?"

"Smith's knife which marked her with Christ's stigmata. Wounds in her hands, feet, and side."

"You're making Smith's knife into a holy object?” The thought sickened him.

Father Francis touched him lightly on the forehead. “Don't be concerned, Brother Zack. The Faithful recognize the implements of martyrdom to remind them of the sacrifice. Think of the Cross itself. Forget the superstitious belief that it came from a seed from the Garden of Eden. What is a Cross other than the device the Romans used to torture and kill our King? Yet it became the perpetual symbol of our faith."

"I'll be there,” Zack promised.

Church bells rang through the city.

The waters beneath the city of water responded to the bells, small waves in the nearly glass-smooth waters rippling in cadence with the sounds.

Over time as they sailed down the Grand Canal from the causeway to the Church of Mary of the Fishermen, Zack's heart began to resonate to that same powerful beat.

Fathers Francis and Paulo had been joined by two Bishops and a Cardinal, but the local priests were the stars of the show, holding the still-bloody knife high in the air as their gondola sliced through the city's ever-present water.

Zack, along with the surviving priests from the group that had carried the Cross, followed in a second Gondola. The priests from the Church of Santa Lucia, where he and Ivy had hidden, followed behind, their censers billowing blue smoke that mimicked the smells Ivy had produced with the herbs she'd bought rather than the Church's familiar bitter myrrh. Behind them came other religious and civic leaders.

Crowds lined the walkways along the canal and the bridges over it.

Portraits of the Virgin Mary and of Ivy, many of them ethereal creations representing nothing close to the very human woman Zack had known, hung in banners over the river.

Zack had to pinch himself a few times when he thought he saw familiar faces. Surely the Patriarch of Constantinople couldn't have come to Venice. And that first imam from the village in Turkey? Gypsies could travel anywhere, but the Greek sailors would have left long before.

The whole city of Venice seemed intent on squeezing into the Church of St. Mary of the Sailors. A couple of burly priests opened a passage for the dignitaries from the first three boats leaving the others to fend for themselves, and the Cardinal blessed the assembly and conducted a Mass.

As they blessed the knife, adding it to the Church's treasury of real and suspected holy relics, Father Francis slipped next to Zack.

"Have you reconsidered our suggestion? Today, many men receive their calling later in life, perhaps after losing a loved one. You would not be alone."

Zack shook his head slowly. He'd always be alone. Only one person had shared that horrible, yet wonderful journey across Asia and Europe. No one could replace her in his mind and heart. And believing that he could be her advocate in the Church was self-delusional.

"I'm not ready for that,” Zack said.

Father Francis shook his head slowly. “Don't retreat from human contact, my brother. You've done much to be proud of, but we humans are not designed to be solitary. If you don't find companionship in the church, find it somewhere. Otherwise, what you have seen and survived will make your crazy."

It sounded like good advice and Zack thanked the aging priest. Still, he wasn't sure how he could take it. He didn't want the company of others.

The next person who joined him was the imam. “The Saint has defeated the powers of Shaitan, for the time at least. Allah will not look unkindly upon you for all you have done."

"Don't Moslems think Christians are doomed to hell?"

The holy man shook his head. “Not at all. Our faith teaches that the compassion of Allah extends to the many. I pray that even the Agent, Smith, will be cleansed and receive Allah's grace."

Which was part of what Ivy had been trying to say. Moslems, even more than Catholics, resist the notion of the Goddess or Queen of Heaven. Yet Ivy's teachings of the Goddess and her final decision to accept the pain of the knife rather than fight back were more in keeping with those of the imam than they were those of the Church itself.

"We recognized her as a Saint long before her fellow Christians did,” the imam concluded.

"For all the good it did her."

"Bitterness is not the tree she would wish to grow from the seed she planted,” the imam admonished him.

The Mass wound down and the citizens and tourists of Venice returned to their everyday lives leaving Zack and a few of the ubiquitous black-clad women alone in the church.

"You are hungry, perhaps,” one of the women said. She shoved a bag holding bread, cheese, and apples at him.

Zack nodded. He hadn't been able to eat for days since they'd faced the Agent. Suddenly he felt famished.

"Thank you."

"It is what I did for her."

He'd forgotten, but the women of the church had helped Ivy during the time she'd spent in what had seemed unanswered prayer.

"I thank you for your kindness to her as well."

"We would have done it even if she hadn't been a saint. Being a woman is not so easy."

Being a man wasn't any great shakes either, Zack thought. But Ivy had had it tougher than he had. “I don't imagine so."

"That one never speaks.” The woman gestured at another woman who was kneeling in front of one of the small chapels off to the side of the main church.

The statue of Mary, rising from the sea, caught Zack by surprise. It was definitely Mary, but the sensuality of the carving hinted at a different Mary than the Church had taught him. This was both Mary and Aphrodite.

He swallowed hard. Things were going to remind him of Ivy for the rest of his life. He couldn't get all choked up every time he saw a statue.

Still, he stepped over, plunked a two-Euro coin in the slot, and lit one of the white candles.

"I hope you're in a better place, Ivy,” he whispered as he placed the candle in the holder beside the dozens of others burning down to nothingness.

"Ivy?” The female voice was hoarse, as if it hadn't been used in a thousand years. “Who is Ivy?"

She
was one with eternity.

The Goddess floated on a sea of celestial harmony. No boundary existed between herself and that outside herself. She simply was.

"Do you wish to remain?"

She started. If there was nothing outside of herself, who could ask her a question? Then she smiled. She could ask it of herself, of course. Did she wish to remain here?

Why not? She wasn't in a place, she was everywhere. Ordinary restrictions of space and time were meaningless. She couldn't remember it, but a part of her knew she hadn't always been the way. Once, she'd been more limited. Time had been a linear thing that could only be experienced and never repeated. Space had been solid thing. Then, she'd been limited to a single point in space and time.

Why would she want to return to that?

"I hope you're in a better place, Ivy."

She considered the words. Why would she say them to herself? The word
hope
meant nothing in the universe she occupied. Whatever she wished
was. Hope
implied limitations, that something desired could fail to be attained.

And
Ivy
? The word resonated with her; it should have meaning, but it didn't.

She shared the pain. The voice was suffering.

She'd forgotten suffering. Now that she was reminded of it, though, she knew she wouldn't forget it again.

She peered into the pain and saw something called loneliness. Another almost incomprehensible meaning. How could one be alone when one was whole and filled the universe?

"Ivy is the person who all this procession and celebration was about. Didn't you know?"

More confusion. This voice couldn't be hers. Why would she think such disconnected thoughts?

But the pain and loneliness brought back memories and shook at the foundation of her oneness with the universe. Because memories implied time, and time implied limitation.

She hadn't always been the Goddess. Once she'd been Ivy. Or a part of her had been Ivy. Or maybe even she had been a part of Ivy. Confusion too was new.

"You can go back if you wish."

Now she recognized that voice—it was her own voice, the voice of the Goddess speaking absolute truth.

"You have done much, headed off one hideous attack, but there is more to do."

"Aren't there others?” She remembered pain too well. Horrible pain shooting through her body. The Agent's knife had not just cut her physically, it had assaulted her soul.

"There are others. You may rest. Do you wish to stay?"

Another foolish question. How could she not want to stay here? She was complete here. There, in the shadow world, she'd be incomplete, would forget.

"I need to go back.” Her answer startled both her limited self-aware self and her greater self that was the Goddess.

"If you go back, you'll go without the gifts."

"I must go. I'm needed."

The part of her that was the Goddess nodded, slowly, eternally. “So be it. Our doors will open when you seek us again."

A thousand pale lights flashed in her eyes and she staggered.

Strong hands caught her.

"Are you all right?"

It was the voice that had called her back.

She looked on his face. He was a man. Strange. She'd forgotten men.

"I don't know."

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “This isn't possible."