Vanquished. Part 13

That's why G.o.d makes me live, he thought, trying not to be bitter.

"You're awfully quiet, Padre," Esther said, breaking the silence. "Spending too much time in your own head?"

He chuckled. "Don't we all?"

"A little hard to escape sometimes," she noted drily. "An old lady like me doesn't want to spend too much time there."

"You're not old," he said, too quickly.

"Uh-huh. Speaking of old, been meaning to talk to you about that."

He felt his skin p.r.i.c.kle. Esther Leitner was sharp, with the cunning of a fox and the vision of an eagle. He had often sensed that she was watching him, studying him. It had been so long since any had done that with eyes that truly wanted to know the truth, and it frightened him a little.

"What is it, Esther?" he asked.

"Well, Juan, you strike me as a very old man."

"War makes men old."

"And lies make men older."

Her eyes were locked on him, intense, probing. "I don't know what you mean," he said.

They climbed deeper into the thicket where outlaws and, later, Free French Forces and so many others had hidden. He only hoped the flower they sought had also remained hidden. The entire area was under vampire control. Still, the sun was s.h.i.+ning high in the sky, and as thick and tall as the brush was, a Cursed One would be hard-pressed to find cover from the burning of the sun.

"You have the eyes of a very old man," she persisted.

He didn't say anything.

"You look young, but you're not."

That caught him by surprise. He struggled not to give any sign of his intense discomfort. Esther would make a formidable enemy, and he had the sudden, overwhelming realization that he had underestimated her.

And underutilized her.

She, too, had spent a lifetime hiding her ident.i.ty. Of course she would look at the world differently, a.s.sume others were hiding things as well. Maybe that was all it was. Perhaps he could allay her concerns.

Esther grabbed his arm with enough force to turn him to face her.

Her eyes were hard. "Listen, you want to hide who you are from my granddaughter and all her friends, that's fine. But I need to know who I'm fighting with."

"I promise you we're on the same side," he said.

She pursed her lips. "You know, I did a little research while we were staying at the monastery."

He licked his lips. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I've got my suspicions about who you really are."

He realized that denying it would do him no good. But he was not going to admit it, either.

"You don't want to fess up, fine. But I need to know one thing," she said, squinting at him.

"What?"

"How are you still alive?"

Somewhere to the left a roar split the air.

He spun to face the sound, and Esther aimed her submachine gun.

In the hush she whispered, "What is it?"

He crossed himself. "I don't know."

The tops of the bushes began to shake, and the sounds of breaking branches crackled through the air. The ground beneath his feet began to tremble.

"That can't be good," Esther muttered.

And then they saw it. It was tall, approaching seven feet, and its skin was chalk white except for where it was covered with dingy gray fur. Ragged military clothes hung off its nearly naked body. Its head, shoulders, and chest were bulbous and misshapen, and its overly long arms ended in claws. Its legs were knotted with muscles, and its feet were bare.

"Hybrid!" he shouted, grabbing for his Uzi. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. "It's jammed!"

"Got it," Esther said, as she let loose with her own submachine gun. The bullets thudded into the thing as it kept coming toward them.

Father Juan thanked the Holy Mother that the monstrosity didn't have super speed. But Esther's bullets weren't slowing it down.

He raised his hands, murmured a spell, and let loose with fireb.a.l.l.s that hit the hybrid, one after another, in the face. The creature screamed, sounding all too human, and raised a hand to its eyes.

And then it charged Father Juan and Esther. With a shout Father Juan threw up a protective barrier, and the creature crashed against it so hard that it bounced back and fell on its back.

Esther dashed forward, and he barely had time to drop the barricade before she, too, hit it. She leaped on top of the creature and emptied what had to be most or all of her clip into its skull and chest. The bullets ricocheted off the bony protrusions of its head.

Which meant beheading it would probably be out of the question.

Father Juan raced up beside her. The hybrid was bleeding from several chest wounds. The face was batlike, with an inverted triangle of cartilage and two holes for nostrils. The eyes were dark black, and its mouth was a jagged mess of fangs.

Father Juan conjured a fireball and showed it to the creature. "Are there more of you?"

The hybrid groaned and shook its head, but snapped its jaws at them. Blood and saliva mixed together. And something green and foul-smelling.

"It's sick-infection, gangrene, something," Father Juan said.

"Then it should take this as a kindness," Esther said. She jabbed it in the eye with the barrel of her submachine gun and pulled the trigger.

Blood splattered everywhere, and Juan jumped back with a shout.

Esther nudged the body with a toe as it slowly began to turn to ash.

"Why did you do that?" he demanded, anger flooding him. "We could have taken it hostage, questioned it."

"We did question it. No others around. That's all we needed to know. Anything else wasn't worth the danger of trying to keep him subdued."

"Jenn would have listened to me," he snapped at her.

"Jenn hasn't lived as long as I have," she retorted.

He took a deep breath, struggling to regain his composure. He took one last look at Dantalion's monstrous creation and then turned away, not wanting to watch it decompose any further.

"It might have been able to tell us if the flower we're looking for is anywhere near here. It might have seen it," he said bitterly. It was a foolish wish; he doubted something so small and fragile would have mattered to the creature.

Esther bent down. "Maybe it already did," she said.

He looked sharply at her and saw that she was pulling something off the bottom of the creature's left shoe. A moment later the shoe had turned to ash along with the leg. She stood slowly and showed him what she had found.

A crushed flower petal.

A blood-red rose petal.

"Is this it?" she asked him.

He stared in disbelief. It was a petal of the Tears of Christ.

He looked up at Esther in wonder, and she smiled at him. "You might be older than dirt, Father, but stick with me and maybe I can teach you a thing or two."

He nodded mutely. She was just lucky, he thought, but he didn't believe it. He believed that someone-G.o.d, or the Lady-had made this happen.

She pointed to the direction from which the creature had come. "I suggest we go that way."

He nodded and then set off, leading the way. She fell into step behind him and a moment later spoke again.

"You never answered my question."

"G.o.d keeps me alive. I don't know why. Every time I think it's over . . . it's not." It hurt to talk about it, but there was a sense of relief, too. "When there is great danger to mankind, I'm there. He wants me to help."

"For how long?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I believe that if we win this war, then He will finally let me be at peace." He took a breath. "At least that's my hope."

A few minutes later they found a small clearing, and there, stretching toward the warmth of the sun, a trio-a trinity-of rosebushes glittered in the sun. Deep, blood red, with petals shaped like tears. The Tears of Christ. Tears stinging his eyes, he choked back a sob. He had prayed they would be able to find enough flowers so that he could make the elixir to give his team the extra strength and speed they needed.

And G.o.d had answered.

Esther clapped a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him as if reading his mind. "The Lord moves in mysterious ways," she said.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"Maybe you're one step closer to that rest you're looking forward to."

"From your lips to G.o.d's ears," he whispered.

PROJECT CRUSADE HEADQUARTERS, BUDAPEST.

NOAH.

Noah couldn't help but wonder how the rest of the team was faring as he made his way deeper underground through the network of buildings that housed the laboratories and war rooms for the shadow organization that wore the black Jerusalem crosses.

Mostly he was worrying about Jenn. She was so sweet, so vulnerable, and yet she had depths of strength that were astonis.h.i.+ng. In so many ways she reminded him of his beloved Chayna.

It was best to put thoughts of both of them from his mind, though, as he strode along the corridors. He was dressed as many others: white s.h.i.+rt, black suit, and black Jerusalem-cross lapel pin. He had learned long before that when infiltrating enemy territory the best way to do it was to walk openly, wearing their uniform, and a.s.sume an air of authority and purposefulness. People rarely questioned those who seemed to belong.

Of course, the black-cross guys weren't exactly enemies. They were supposed to all be fighting on the same team. Noah still wished that they hadn't interfered when Jenn and her team had had a chance to kill Solomon. If they wanted to lead the way in the battle to take back the world from the Cursed Ones, that was fine.

But they should actually lead.

The time for skulking in shadows was over. The Cursed Ones had come out into the light of day and taken over the planet.

The resistance-in all its forms-needed to learn from that example. Hiding in groups of three and four, cl.u.s.tered together in tiny rooms whispering in the dark, wasn't going to liberate the planet, wasn't going to drive the Cursed Ones back into the shadows.

We are the ones who need to be the light.

He came to a steel door, glanced at it, and then turned down a different corridor. He needed to get behind the door, but biometric scanners guarded it. It was the only place in the entire complex that had scanners, which meant it was the one place he needed most to go.

What are they planning? What are they hiding even from each other?

He kept walking, turning down a few more corridors, making a mental map of the place in his mind so that he could get out later even if he was being chased.

He thought of everything Jenn and Father Juan had told him about the black crosses-like Dr. Michael Sherman, the scientist who had been developing a weapon to use against the vampires. The one who had been helping the team while Jenn was in Berkeley with her family. Sherman had been converted by a vampire during the battle and then kidnapped by the black-cross commandos who had shown up at the laboratory too.

If they had kept Sherman alive-Noah supposed that was the right word-they'd have to have him locked down someplace. Someplace he couldn't escape.

It took several more hours, but Noah eventually spotted a dark-skinned man leaving the scanner room. Remaining calm and casual, Noah shadowed him to what ended up being a men's room.

As the man stretched his hands beneath the flow of water, Noah knocked him out. Fortunately, the bathroom wasn't far from the locked room, and Noah was able to sling the man's arm over his shoulders and walk the unconscious body down the hall. He didn't see cameras, but he knew better than to a.s.sume that meant they weren't there. He'd have minutes if he was lucky, seconds if he wasn't, before his presence was discovered.

He pressed the man's fingertips against the pad next to the door, and it slid open. Once inside, he deposited the man on the floor and stared at a second door. This one had a key-card scanner. He unclipped the badge from the man's pocket and slid it through.

The light turned green, and the door opened soundlessly. Noah stepped inside, trying not to panic when the door closed swiftly behind him.

He was in a laboratory, larger than he would have expected, but still small enough to make him claustrophobic. Everything was gray. No posters on the walls, not even a clock. A small, lone man with pale brown hair, wearing a lab coat, worked at a military-issue metal desk, head bent over a microscope.