Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  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.

  Chapter 15

  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.

  A feather's weight pressed against his shoulders, then impossibly entered into his body, pressing through it without disturbing anything but leaving him with a feeling that he had been vulnerable, that Ivy, or the demon if it wasn't Ivy, could have reached in and rearranged things without his being able to do anything to prevent it.

  He had to have faith. Faith that this was Ivy. Faith that she'd chosen him as her bridge to the Istanbul of the present and from the lost Constantinople of the Roman Empire. If he had faith, he could only do what she asked.

  He tried to kiss her back.

  One moment, his lips met a cool fog. A moment later, he was kissing a warm, breathing, and completely delectable female.

  He opened his eyes, fearful that his imagination had run completely wild. But she was here, she was real—and she was kissing the daylights out of him.

  And now she was going to think him a big pervert for pushing his straining erection directly into her crotch.

  "You made it. Thank God. I was worried sick about you.” He held her, fearing that if he let him go, she might vanish again, return into the mists that had hidden her from his sight.

  She pulled away abruptly. “That was tough."

  That wasn't the reaction he'd hoped for. “Sorry."

  "Yeah. Me too."

  So much for any fantasy that she wanted him. “How's your leg?"

  She bent down and pushed on it. “Seems to be healed. This magic stuff is weird and unpredictable, but it has a lot of power."

  "No kidding."

  Even when she'd moved, she'd kept one hand gripped on Saint Christopher, that hand also resting on his chest. Now she let it go, finger by finger, her face showing her fear that, without the medal, she'd be whisked back into whatever invisible world had kept her trapped.

  He'd never forget the grin she gave him when she didn't vanish back into the blue haze or wherever it was she'd been trapped. The imam had called her a saint. With that smile, she could certainly model for any religious painting.<
br />
  "Father Galen stole the veil from me,” she said.

  "I think he's got the Cross too,” Zack admitted.

  Her smile vanished. “Those objects are too dangerous. We've got to get them back and take them to Venice."

  Zack nodded. He was way past questioning Ivy's visions now. If she said it needed to happen, he would do his best to make it happen. “I'm open to suggestions."

  "We go to the Patriarch,” Cejno said. “We tell him Father Galen steal these things. He give them back to us."

  It wasn't much of a plan, especially since they didn't know that Father Galen hadn't just been following the Patriarch's orders. But they had to start somewhere. Zack didn't have any better ideas. From the grim look on her eyes, Ivy didn't either.

  * * * *

  The pilgrims melted away.

  They would have rioted for the Patriarch and for the incredible miracle of Mary's Veil, returned after so many hundred years. They would have fought for him, burned for him, killed for him, even died for him. What they wouldn't do was live for him. Not here. Not in Constantinople, the city of so many of their ancestors.

  Tears blurred the Bishop's vision as he greeted those who stopped to pay their respects before returning to their homes.

  When he'd been a child, not so very many years before, the streets of Constantinople still rang with the musical sound of the Greek language. Back then, church bells competed with the Mosque's calls to prayer. The dream of a cosmopolitan city rather than a wholly Turkish one, a dream that had been sustained by both Roman and Ottoman Emperors, had not seemed impossible.

  Back then, his seminary had been filled with fellow students, Greek by culture and language but Turkish by nationality and birth. Then, the young were everywhere. The land of their fathers and grandfathers and countless generations had still been largely Greek.

  But that had been before. Before the anti-Christian pogroms that had created fear in a city that had once welcomed everyone. Before steady and insidious pressure to make Turkey a unified whole—despite treaties and agreements. Both priests and parishioners had fled, driven from a city where their ancestors had lived for two thousand years, from a part of the world where Greeks had thrived a thousand years even before that, going back to the days of Achilles and Odysseus. Greeks had survived in this land through Trojan, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, Gothic, Hunish, Arab, Slavic, Bulgar, Seljuk, Ottoman, and finally nationalist Turkish invasion and conquest.

  But no more. The dreams were dying. The Miracle of the Veil's return had proven to be more bitter than sweet. Perhaps Mary had been right to take the Veil and hide it. Perhaps he had been wrong to drag it out of its holy resting place for the gratification of a mob and the crushing of his dreams.

  "Dream new dreams,” his visitors whispered to him. Even priests who had studied with him, here in Constantinople, but who had fled the city in the hard years shook their heads when he begged them to stay.

  "Constantinople is lost to us, at least for our generation. Perhaps one day, we shall return like the Jews have to Jerusalem, but our time is not yet. Faith, even with the protective shield of the veil, cannot protect us. The Turks do not welcome us."

  It was easy for them to say. They had their parishes, their Greek, Serbian, or Bulgar weddings and babies. They had the resurgent Church in Russia as a solid anchor of support. They didn't face vast but empty cathedrals of faith, the few graying faces of those too old to flee trembling on the edge of their benches as if only waiting to be swept into the arms of the Lord.

  The Patriarch had no new dreams to dream; he had only his old dreams, dreams his father had whispered to him when he'd come home drunk, telling him of the war, of betrayal by the French, the incompetence of the Greek Generals, but that some day, Constantinople would stand at the head of a renewed Greek nation, would lead the world from the darkness of their dangerous days.

  When he'd dared touch the True Cross, then again when Father Galen had handed the veil to him, the Patriarch had believed that those old dreams would come true.

  The last of the priests who'd been visiting him left and the Patriarch wiped his eyes, gathered the wine glasses, and rinsed them off in his sink, smiling to himself as he imagined his housekeeper's face if she saw what he was doing.

  So be it. He was the servant of the servant.

  The creaking sounds of the old building didn't surprise him. Constantinople has a revered place among the Orthodox Bishops, but his Church lacked the strict hierarchy of western Catholicism. Respect flowed upward from the many Orthodox churches around the world, but little money came with it. And the few hundreds of the faithful remaining in the ancient city couldn't afford the maintenance all of the Church's structures required. He spent what money they had on Churches, on the poor and aged. Little had been spared for his personal comfort.

  He started, though, when a shadow moved against the wall.

  "You have stolen what is ours."

  He whirled around to see the people whose gift had made his dream seem within reach.

  The woman's pants had been ripped and a solid sheet of dried blood covered the torn fabric and had soaked through her once-white athletic shoes. The man looked angry and he certainly looked as if he knew how to handle the submachine gun he carried as lightly as a toy. Father Galen's torturer, the young Kurdish smuggler, lagged behind them.

  "I don't understand.” He considered offering them wine, but they didn't seem in the mood for conversation.

  "Where is my Cross? Where is my Veil?"

  "Both remain within the protection of the Holy Church. Where else should such precious objects remain?"

  "They are not yours, your Grace. We need them back if we're going to prevent something horrible."

  The woman had changed. A priest learns to recognize the eyes of someone who has peered beyond the ordinary world and gazed too deeply on the holy. There is a reason why the Lord shrouds so many of his mysteries from casual view. Her tall and slender form had gone gaunt, but she stared at him with neither anger nor mercy. So the angel set by God to stand guard at the Garden of Eden must look. Wisely did the angels tell the shepherds to fear not, for the face of an angel inspires both awe and dread.

  "Father Galen told me you had given the Cross and Veil to us,” the Patriarch said. “If he was lying, of course you shall have them. I hope, though, that once you have finished, you can return the Veil to Constantinople. It has been a symbol of our city for a thousand years or more."

  The woman considered, then nodded. “If it can be done, it will be done. But I need them now."

  He glanced at his watch. He should be in bed. It was after three in the morning and he was expected to perform mass in a few hours. But a man does not ask questions or complain of the hour when an Angel of the Lord visits him and tells him to rise.

  "We'll go to Father Galen now and recover the relics."

  "That is a wise decision,” Ivy said.

  * * * *

  It was about time something went right.

  The Patriarch seemed subdued, but the red glow of his faith still surrounded him.

  Ivy was ever-conscious of power now. Back in eastern Turkey, she'd had to shut her eyes to see its outlines. Now, she sometimes had to concentrate to see the real world through the bright glare of the holy and anti-holy.

  The Bishop led them through narrow alleyways to a two story stone building that stood out from all of the similar buildings around it only by being a bit more dilapidated, then pounded on the massive doorknocker.

  It took a good five minutes before a priest finally opened the door, an angry scowl on his face.

  The scowl vanished when he saw who was knocking. “Your All Holiness!"

  "Bring Father Galen to me."

  "At once, your All Holiness. Will you and your guests wait here?” He ushered them in, giving Ivy what looked like an unfriendly gaze. She knew that the Orthodox allow married priests, but this one still seemed uncomfortable with the presence of a woman.

  Or maybe
it was the Kalashnikov around her shoulders.

  The priest shot another look at her, then squeaked out of the waiting room and backed up the stairs.

  He reappeared moments later, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Father Galen is not here, Your All Holiness."

  That couldn't be good news.

  "We will inspect his apartment,” the Patriarch announced before Ivy had a chance to react.

  He swept forward, not giving the priest a moment to complain or come up with a reason why something like this was simply not done.

  Ivy tagged along, her hands relaxed but ready to swing around the assault rifle if anyone made a suspicious move.

  A row of identical doors lined the second story hallway. Only one of these was opened. Without hesitation, the Patriarch led them to it, then stepped inside.

  "Father Galen does not usually leave his room in such a state,” the priest explained as they stared at the ransacked closet, the open chest of drawers, and the books spilled from a large bookcase. “I cannot understand what possessed him."

  Ivy could guess. “He was packing."

  "But he hasn't asked his superiors for permission to travel and his vacation isn't scheduled for months,” the priest argued.

  She shrugged.

  Ivy wouldn't have guessed that greed would have motivated the fat priest, but the monetary value of Mary's Veil and the True Cross would have to be measured in millions, if not billions of dollars. With the possible exceptions of the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, these were the most holy artifacts in the Christian religion.

  "He is a faithful member of the Church,” the priest protested.

  "All our faiths are continually tested,” the Patriarch reminded him. “Mine has been tested severely over the past twenty-four hours as I realized that not even the return of Mary's Veil would bring our people back to the holy city. Father Galen is not the strongest vessel, although I have always believed him to mean well. Gather all of the priests you can and follow me to the treasury."