Virgin

  Rage flared. Damn Emilio!

  But he’d only been following orders. Arthur remembered his own words: Bring me that body—no matter what the cost.

  But he’d meant money and effort and expense—not life.

  Hadn’t he?

  Not that it mattered now. The inescapable reality of Charlie’s impending death blotted out all other considerations.

  “He’s going to die, Emilio,” he said, staring at Charlie’s slack features. “Charlie … my son … flesh of my flesh and Olivia’s … the last surviving part of Olivia … is going to be gone. Why didn’t I appreciate him while he was here, Emilio? When did I stop thinking of him of a son and start seeing him as a liability? That never would have happened if Olivia were still here. She was my heart, Emilio. My soul. When I lost her, something went out of me … something good. Charlie was harmless but I came to loathe him. My own son! And that loathing infected Charlie, causing him to loathe himself. That’s when he stopped being harmless, Emilio. That’s when he started becoming harmful to himself. His self-loathing made him sick so he’d end up here in this pathetic miniature intensive care unit in the big gaudy showplace of a home where he was never really welcome when he was well.”

  Arthur bit back a sob.

  “I’ve got so much to answer for!”

  Unbidden, unwelcome, another thought slithered out of the darkest corner of his mind, whispering how if Paraiso were damaged by the storm … if, say, some of the windows were smashed and Charlie’s terminally ill body were washed out into the Pacific, he’d be listed as a storm victim instead of an AIDS victim, wouldn’t he?

  Arthur shook off the thought—though, despairingly, not without effort—and shoved it back down the dank hole it had crawled out of.

  Is this what I’ve come to?

  He backed away from the windows as the wind doubled its fury, battering those floor-to-ceiling panes until he was certain one of them was going to give.

  ‡

  Emilio watched the Senador retreat from the storm, but he stood firm. He felt no fear of wind and rain. What were they but air and water? And even if he were afraid, he would not show it. He feared nothing … except perhaps that body he’d brought back from New York. He had to get rid of it.

  An idea formed … put the body in the back of the ambulance … send them both over the edge of the cliffs into the wild, pounding surf far below …

  And as the plan took shape …

  The storm stopped.

  The thunder faded, the wind died, the rain ebbed to a drizzle. Suddenly only swirling fog danced beyond the windows.

  “Senador?” Emilio said. He rested his hands against the now still glass and stared out at the featureless gray. “It is over?”

  “Not yet,” the Senador said, his voice hushed. “I’ve read about this type of thing. I believe this is what they call the eye of the storm, the calm at its center. It won’t last long. But why don’t you hurry up topside and take a look around, see how much damage we’ve got up there. Don’t get too far from the door. As soon as the wind starts to blow again, get back inside, because the back end is going to be just as bad as the front, maybe worse.”

  Emilio nodded. “Of course.”

  He hurried up the stairs and stepped outside into a dead calm.

  The still, warm air hung heavy with moisture. Fog drifted lazily around him, insinuating through his clothes, clinging to his skin. So strange to have no wind. Emilio could not remember a time when a breeze wasn’t blowing across the cliff tops.

  And silent … so eerily silent. Like cotton wadding, the fog muffled everything, even the sound of the surf below. No birds, no insects, no rustling grass … silence.

  No, wait. Emilio’s ears picked up a hum, somewhere down the driveway, growing louder. It sounded almost like …

  A car.

  Emilio gasped and took a hesitant step toward the noise. He glanced at the carport. The Senador’s limousine and the ambulance were where he’d left them. And still the sound grew louder.

  No! This is not possible!

  Instinctively he reached for his pistol before he remembered that he’d left it downstairs in the great room when he went into town. He hadn’t retrieved it because what need for a pistol with the bridge out and Paraiso isolated from the outside world?

  The bridge was out! He’d seen it fall. He’d almost gone down with it. How could—?

  Emilio stood frozen as a Ford sedan rounded the final curve in the rain-soaked, debris-littered approach road and pulled to a stop not a hundred feet in front of him. Normally Emilio would have rushed forward to confront any trespassers, but this was different. Something was wrong about this car.

  A short, bearded man stepped out of the passenger side and glanced around before staring at Emilio.

  “The Mother,” he said in an unfamiliar accent. “She is here. She has to be here. Where is the Mother?”

  The Mother? Emilio wondered. What is he—? He was jolted by a sudden thought: Can he be talking about the ancient body below in the house?

  But Emilio had questions of his own.

  “How did you get here?”

  “In the car,” the man said with ill-concealed impatience. “We drove up the road.”

  “But the bridge—!”

  “Yes, we came over the bridge.”

  “The bridge is out! Down!”

  The bearded man looked at him as if he were crazy. “The bridge is intact. We just drove over it.”

  No! This couldn’t be! This—

  The driver door opened then and out stepped a familiar figure. Emilio steeled himself not to react, to hide the sudden mad thumping of his heart against the inner walls of his chest.

  The priest! Father Daniel Fitzpatrick!

  The priest looked Emilio square in the face but gave no sign of recognition. Without the hat, the mirrored glasses, and the phony beard he’d worn that night in the church, Emilio was a different person.

  But if he hadn’t come looking for Emilio, if he hadn’t brought the police to arrest him for the murder of the nun, why was he here?

  “Where are we?” the priest asked.

  Emilio was about to answer, to tell them both to get back into their car and get off the Senador’s private property, when the rear door opened and out stepped a dead woman. He knew she was dead because he’d killed her himself.

  “You,” she said softly, staring at him levelly. “I know you. You murdered me. Why? You didn’t have to kill me. Why did you do that?”

  Something snapped within Emilio. He could stand no more. He turned and fled back inside, slamming the door behind him. As he turned the deadbolt, he leaned against the door, panting and sweating.

  This was loco! A car carrying a walking, talking dead woman drives across a bridge that is no longer there. He was going loco.

  He turned and shut off the power to the elevator.

  Good. If they were real, they now were locked outside and would be at the mercy of the second half of the storm. If they were not real, what did it matter?

  Emilio pulled himself together, took a deep breath, and descended to the great room.

  “All is well topside, Senador.”

  But the Senador did not seem to hear. He stood by Charlie’s bed, staring out through the windows, a mix of awe and terror distorting his features.

  Emilio followed his gaze and cringed against the stairway when he saw what was taking shape out over the Pacific and racing toward them.

  “Madre!”

  Everything had happened so fast.

  You murdered me.

  Dan had been momentarily stunned by Carrie’s words. His mind whirled, adding a beard, hat, and glasses to the mustachioed face staring at Carrie in horrified disbelief, comparing this voice to the one he’d heard in the church, and then he was sure: Here was the motherless scu
m who had put a bullet in her heart.

  Before he’d been able to react, the man had turned and dashed back to the hemi-dome behind him and vanished through a doorway. And then a Navy reconnaissance plane had swooshed overhead. He’d just started wondering what sort of idiot would be flying in this hellish storm when another sound captured his attention.

  A dull roaring filled Dan’s ears. At first he assumed it was enraged blood shooting through his battered brain, then he glanced beyond the hemi-dome and saw something impossibly tall, incalculably huge looming out of the foggy distance and hurtling toward them.

  “Oh, my God!”

  Nearly half a mile wide and God knew how tall, it stretched—swirling, twisting, writhing—from the dim, misty heights to the sea where it terminated in an eruption of foam on the wave-wracked surface of the Pacific. Water … an angry towering column of spinning water … all water … yet bright lights flashed within it.

  To call this thing a waterspout was to call Mount Rushmore a piece of sculpture. And it was coming here, zeroed in on this spot.

  Dan spun around, looking for a place to hide, but saw none. The car—no … too vulnerable. The door in the hemi-dome—it had to lead below, to safety.

  Pulling Carrie with him, he ran to it and tugged on the handle. The handle wouldn’t turn, the door wouldn’t budge. Kesev stood back, strangely detached as he watched death’s irresistible approach.

  “Locked!” Dan shouted, and began pounding and kicking at the unyielding surface. “Let us in, damn you! Open up!”

  And all around him the roaring of the approaching waterspout grew to a deafening crescendo.

  This is it, he thought. We’re going to die right here. In a few minutes it’ll all be over. But God, I’m not ready to go yet!

  And then Carrie laid a hand on his shoulder, reached past him and turned the knob.

  The door swung open.

  Dan swallowed his shock—no time to wonder how the door had become unlocked—and propelled Carrie through ahead of him. Kesev followed at a more leisurely pace, closing the door behind him.

  Stairs ahead, leading downward toward light. Dan went to squeeze past Carrie but she’d already begun her descent. He followed her down the curved stairway into a huge, luxuriously furnished room. His hope of surviving this storm rose as he saw that it was carved out of the living rock of the cliff itself, and then that hope was dashed when he saw the huge glass front overhanging the ocean. The monstrous waterspout was out there, still headed directly for them, and no glass on earth would stop that thing.

  He noticed two—no, three—other people in the room: a new face, unconscious in a hospital bed, the man who had shot Carrie, and … Senator Arthur Crenshaw. The killer and the senator stood transfixed before the onrushing doom.

  And supine beside the bed … the Virgin.

  Carrie must have spotted her, too, for she began moving toward the body—

  —just as the windows exploded.

  With a deafening crash every pane shattered into countless tiny daggers. Dan leaped upon Carrie to shield her—she was already dead, he remembered as he pushed her to the floor and covered her, yet his protective instincts prevailed. Instead of slashing everyone and everything in the room to ribbons, the glass shards blew outward, sucked into the swirl of the storm outside.

  A thundering roar filled the room as warm seawater splashed against his back, soaking him. Dan squeezed his eyes shut, encircled Carrie with his arms, and held her cold body tight against him … one last embrace …

  Any second now …

  But nothing happened. The water continued to splatter him but the roar of the waterspout remained level. Dan lifted his head and risked a peek.

  It had backed off to a quarter mile or so, but remained out there in the mist, dominating the panoramic view, lit by flashes within and around it, swirling, twisting, a thousand yards wide, snaking from the sea to the sky, but moving no closer.

  Dan rose and studied it. For no reason he could explain, it occurred to Dan that it seemed to be … waiting.

  Ahead of him, the senator and the murderer were struggling to their feet and staring at it through the empty window frames.

  “What is that?” Senator Crenshaw cried.

  “Not ‘what,’” Carrie said as she rose to her feet behind Dan. “Who.”

  The senator turned and stared at her a moment. He seemed about to ask her who she was, then decided that wasn’t important now.

  “‘Who?’” He glanced back at the looming tower. “All right, then … who is it?”

  “It’s Him,” Carrie said, beaming. She pointed to the Virgin. “He’s come for His mother.”

  The senator glanced at the Virgin, gasped, and gripped the edge of the hospital bed for support. Dan looked to see what was wrong.

  The Virgin was changing.

  The seawater from the spout that had soaked into her robes, into her skin and hair was having a rejuvenating effect. The blue of the fabric deepened, her hair darkened and thickened, and her face … the cheeks were filling out, the wrinkles fading as color surged into her skin.

  The murderer cringed back and murmured something in Spanish as the senator leaned more heavily against the bed. Carrie moved closer and dropped to her knees. Dan glanced to his right and saw that Kesev, even the imperturbable Kesev, was gaping in awe.

  And then the Virgin moved.

  In a single smooth motion she sat up, then stood and faced them.

  Dan saw Kesev drop to his knees not far from Carrie, but Dan remained standing, too overwhelmed to move.

  She was small framed, almost petite. Olive skin, deep, dark hair, Semitic features, not attractive by Dan’s tastes, but he sensed an inner beauty, and an undeniable strength radiating from her sharp brown eyes.

  Those eyes were moving, finally fixing on Carrie, kneeling before her. Smiling like a mother gazing upon a beloved child, she reached out and touched Carrie’s head. “Dear one,” the Virgin said softly, her voice gentle, soothing. “Rise, both of you. I am not to be worshipped. We are almost through here.”

  Kesev rose but Carrie remained on her knees.

  The Virgin’s smile faded as she turned to Senator Crenshaw.

  “Arthur,” she said. “The prayermaker.”

  Crenshaw held her gaze, but with obvious difficulty

  “Emilio,” she said, frowning at the murderer. “The killer.”

  He turned away.

  Then it was Dan’s turn.

  A tiny smile curved her lips as she trapped his eyes with her own.

  “Daniel. The hunger-feeder.”

  Dan felt lifted, exalted. He sensed her approval and basked in it.

  Finally she turned away and Dan felt the breath rush out of him. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it. She could have called him vow-breaker, fornicator, doubter … so many things. But hunger-feeder … he’d take that any day.

  Her expression was neutral as she faced Kesev.

  “So, Iscariot … you broke another trust.”

  Iscariot! Dan’s mind reeled. No … it couldn’t be!

  “Mother, events conspired against me. I beg your forgiveness.”

  “It is not my place to forgive.”

  “Perhaps it is I who should forgive!” Iscariot cried. “Once again I have been used! Used!”

  “You are not alone in that,” the Virgin said pointedly.

  Iscariot’s head snapped back, as if he been struck, but he recovered quickly.

  “Perhaps not. But it is I who have been reviled throughout the Christian Era. And yet without me, there would be no Christian Era—no crucifixion, no resurrection.”

  “You wish to be celebrated for betraying Him?”

  “No. Simply understood. I believed in Him more than the others—I was led to believe He was divine. I thought He would destroy the Romans??
?all of them—as soon as they dared to lay a hand on Him. But he didn’t! He allowed them to torture and kill him! I was the one who was betrayed! And I’ve spent nearly two thousand years paying for it, most of them alone, all of them miserable. Haven’t I suffered enough?”

  Her expression softened into sympathy. “I decide nothing, Judas. You know that.”

  Judas Iscariot! Of course! It all fit.

  They’d been reading the real Gospel of Judas. The scroll’s author had mentioned being educated as a Pharisee, and of being an anti-Roman assassin, using a knife—they were called iscarii. Judas Iscariot had been all those things. And Kesev was Hebrew for … silver!

  “But you hung yourself!” Dan blurted.

  The man he’d known as Kesev looked at him and nodded slowly. “Yes. Many times. But I am not allowed to die.”

  “W-why are you here?” Crenshaw said.

  The Virgin turned to him and pointed to Emilio.

  “Because you told him to bring me here.”

  “Yes-yes,” Crenshaw said quickly, “and I’m terribly sorry about that. Grievously sorry.” He pointed at the waterspout still roaring outside the empty window frames. “But why is He here?”

  Again the Virgin pointed to Emilio.

  “Because you told him to bring me here.”

  “No!” Emilio screamed.

  He had a pistol—no silencer this time—and was holding it in a two-handed grip. The wavering barrel was pointed at the Virgin. A wild look filled his eyes; he crouched like a cornered animal as he let loose a rapid-fire stream of Spanish that Dan had difficulty following. Something about all this being a treta, a trick, and he’d show them all.

  Then he began pulling the trigger and firing at the Virgin.

  The reports sounded sharp and rather pitiful against the towering roar from outside. Dan didn’t know where the bullets went. Emilio was firing madly, the empty brass casings flying through the air and bouncing along the floor, but the Virgin didn’t even flinch. No holes appeared in her robes, and Dan saw no breakage in the area behind her. The bullets just seemed to disappear after they left the muzzle.