Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  Ivy wasn't fooled. Venice might be a vacation paradise, but danger lay close beneath the surface.

  After a brief negotiation, Zack took the point with Ivy trailing about ten meters behind.

  Zack seemed to have picked up a sense Venice, because he led them on a route Ivy had never seen before, circling back through the city rather than taking them straight for the church.

  "You notice something?” she whispered when they momentarily got closer."

  "Nothing I can put a finger on. But something feels wrong.” He considered, then turned down a narrow street, a street that looked exactly like every other to Ivy.

  Twenty feet down, a group of tourists stepped into the gap between she and Zack.

  The tour guide, a tiny Japanese woman, gesturing to stone carvings high on an old building that seemed to Ivy indistinguishable from thousands of others scattered throughout the city.

  One of the tourists snapped a picture at just the wrong moment, the flash only a few feet from her eyes, and she hesitated, abruptly blind.

  Without her second sight, she would have been caught completely unaware.

  Her physical blindness, though, opened her senses to the colors around her. The Japanese were almost colorless, dull beige glows. Behind her, though, a vivid maroon moved with implacable certainty.

  She spun around, her hands up in a guard.

  He didn't bother ordering her to surrender. Instead, he thrust his long knife at her.

  Her second sight had let her to recognize the threat, but it didn't provide the detail she needed to defend herself.

  The Foundation Agent, his blood-red glow reflecting the harsh certainty of the Foundation's faith, thrust straight for her heart, avoiding her warding arms.

  The knife slammed into her sending a wave of pain through her body and she collapsed to the ground.

  Chapter 23

  The agent had used the distraction brilliantly, attacking when Zack and Ivy were separated, unable to provide adequate backup.

  But a sound had alerted Zack and he turned in time to see the agent thrust his knife into Ivy's heart, then, as she started to fall, pull her too him as if she was a drunk he was helping home.

  Zack bulled through the Japanese tourists wishing he'd brought a weapon even though that would have been horribly incongruous to his disguise as a priest.

  Since Zack was unarmed, it would have been nice if the Agent had at least been distracted, but one of the tourists shouted something and Ivy's assailant looked up in time to see Zack bearing down on him.

  The agent dumped Ivy's body and took an awkward-looking swing toward Zack.

  Fortunately, Zack had seen the knife and knew the agent had palmed it. Like most knifemen, he planned for the knife to be a surprise.

  Zack wasn't taken unaware, but that didn't give him much of an advantage. The very awkwardness of the agent's attack made it that much harder to block.

  Adjusting his tactics to the situation, Zack blended with the attack rather than blocking. He shifted his center and let the knife come toward where he had been. As the blade sliced a layer from his priest outfit, he added his weight to the agent's momentum.

  It wasn't much, but it was enough to put the agent ever so slightly off balance.

  Zack flicked a kick into the agent's kneecap just as he used his hips to roll the muscular American's hand over, then down.

  The man crashed to the ground, his face suddenly bloody as it brushed against his own knife as he fell.

  Zack didn't think he'd managed a fatal blow, so he kicked the agent hard in the head to slow him down further, then picked up Ivy's limp form and fled.

  The two-note sound of European police sirens, a sound Zack still identified with the Gestapo from the World War II movies he'd grown up watching on television, told him that the police were not far behind.

  He wasn't going to be able to make it back to the Church of Mary of the Sailors.

  But Venice was filled with churches and he wasn't in a position to be fussy. He doubled back, took a couple of random turns, then ducked into the Church of Santa Lucia.

  He considered the confession booths along the walls of the church but rejected them. They were far too obvious as hiding places and wouldn't give him much room to help Ivy, assuming that she wasn't past all help. The Cross had saved her before, but they hadn't carried the Cross with them and he couldn't get her back to it now.

  Ignoring its morbid connotations, he ducked down into the crypt.

  Although much of Venice is built on piers, at least some of the city was constructed on the original islands off the Italian mainland. This church seemed located on one such spot because the crypt was dug a good twenty feet into the ground.

  Stone tombs identified long-gone benefactors of the church. Intricate Byzantine-style mosaics covered the walls, reflecting the long history that Venice and Constantinople had shared as allies, competitors, and enemies. An iron door barred the crypt from the church's treasury.

  He set Ivy's figure on a monument that looked like a coffin rising from the floor, took a deep breath, then grasped the stone doorway to one of the older-looking family tombs.

  The door resisted, but finally yielded, opening with a groan. Fortunately, nobody had been buried there in a hundred years or more so he didn't have to deal with the odor of death and disintegration.

  He picked up Ivy, carried her in, then set her on a stone table whose use he couldn't guess at and about which he didn't want to speculate.

  Operating as much by feel as by the dim light seeping through from the Church above, Zack found a half-burned candle, lit it, the slowly closed the tomb door behind him. The Foundation might still be able to find them, but he wasn't making it any easier on them than he had to.

  He tried to ignore the solid thunk as the tomb's stone door slipped into place. He'd have time to worry about that later. Right now, he was a lot more worried about Ivy.

  He turned his attention to his friend.

  She hadn't stirred, hadn't even breathed from what he could tell, and he'd seen that knife bury itself deep in her chest.

  His own heart felt as if it had received that thrust. They'd shared so much, risked so much together, that Zack couldn't imagine going on without her. He couldn't remember when he'd fallen for her—that first night outside of Mosul, when they'd escaped together from the Turkish army, certainly before they'd shared that sensual experience in Aphrodite's temple. He'd always assumed that they would succeed together, or fail together, never dreamed she could leave him alone.

  Swallowing hard, forcing his limbs to move, he bent to check her.

  He didn't have much hope.

  He wouldn't give up on that small chance that something had gone right.

  Using the dim candlelight, he unbuttoned Ivy's ugly black dress.

  When he took them away from the buttons, his hands dripped with crimson blood, made even more macabre in the candle's yellow light.

  He pulled the dress back from her shoulders and ribs.

  The Veil of the Virgin Mary formed a second layer of garments. He'd forgotten that Ivy never let it go beyond her touch.

  He pealed that away.

  A huge bruise marred the soft tissue between her ribs—right where the Agent had stabbed toward her heart. But beneath the veil, the wound seemed to be an abrasion rather than a deep puncture. Despite the man's power and training, the knife hadn't penetrated. How was that possible? And where had all the blood come from.

  Ivy's chest moved, her small breasts rising as she inhaled.

  "What happened?” Ivy's voice was a faint croak.

  "You're alive."

  "Good. If I hurt this much after being dead, that would mean I'm not in heaven. And you know the alternative."

  "That's impossible."

  She started to sigh, then stopped with a gasp. “Damn, it's hard to breath. And trust me, I've done a lot of bad things. No way is heaven a sure thing."

  He shook his head. “That's not what I meant.” Alth
ough if there were a heaven, as he certainly believed, its gates would swing wide open when Ivy arrived. The imans in Turkey weren't the only ones who recognized Ivy as a saint. “How did you manage to stay alive, and where did all that blood come from? I saw that Agent stab you."

  Ivy shrugged, then barely converted a scream into a soft moan. “Think he broke some ribs. Hurts like the devil."

  A knife might break ribs as it cut through them into her heart. But somehow, that hadn't happened.

  He prodded at the bruise trying to ascertain the amount of damage and Ivy winced.

  "I don't think they're clean breaks. I think they're shattered."

  Unfortunately, there wasn't anything Zack could do for ribs, broken, bruised, or shattered. He buttoned back Ivy's dress. “I've got us hidden in a crypt. The cops and Foundation types are out there looking."

  "It was the Veil,” Ivy said.

  No big surprise that she was hallucinating after the trauma she'd just faced. And Zack thought she might have hit her head when she fell.

  "Sure. The Veil. Whatever you say."

  "I'm not crazy. I think the Veil saved me."

  He realized he hadn't put the square of silk back where he'd found it and so he looked at it more closely.

  Ivy had folded the veil into a packet about six inches on a side. Despite the number of folds, the resulting square was still insubstantially thin, and deformed by the shape of a knife point.

  "This is absolutely incredible, but it looks like you're right. Somehow the silk fibers kept the knife from going through. I knew Kevlar can do that, but I wouldn't think silk, especially two thousand year-old silk, would stand up to that kind of attack."

  "The ancient Japanese used to make armor from silk. Besides, this isn't ordinary silk,” she reminded him. “And if Father Paulo was right, it's a lot older than two thousand years. The priestesses of Ishtar would have handed it down over generations."

  But he'd seen the blood. “It's another miracle."

  "Miracle or not, it happened and I'm still alive. So, what do we do next?"

  * * * *

  Zack's crypt wasn't much for comfort, but Ivy couldn't have imagined a more secure hiding place. The church above them and the religious artifacts within the crypt itself would obscure any magical glow coming from Zack and herself, or from the Veil. The stone walls cut off any thermal impression and muffled any sounds they made.

  She tried not to think about the pain ripping through her chest, or how much it hurt to breathe, and concentrated on relaxing, on letting her body begin the healing process.

  After a few minutes, she asked for the Veil back from Zack and draped it over herself. It might be sacrilegious to use the relic like that, but she needed its power to help her. She couldn't spend months disabled and out of the fight. The Agent's sudden attack had proved that they were going to keep searching until they got what they were looking for.

  Zack's candle slowly shrank into a puddle of molten wax, then winked out and they were plunged into absolute darkness.

  Physical darkness, that is. Ivy's second senses picked up the emanations from everywhere around them. Mostly red, of course, from the great paternalistic and monotheistic tradition. But quite a few blue, and some of the other colors of the esoteric rainbow. As some Protestants complained, multiple traditions coexisted under the broad umbrella of the Catholic Church.

  "This crypt may have been a horrible idea,” Zack admitted. “I don't like enclosed places, I don't like the dark, and I'm not absolutely sure I'll be able to shift the stone door from inside of this place."

  She reached for his hand and brought it to her cheek. “It's all right, Zack. I'm sure you'll get us out of here when the time is right. In the meantime, you've found us one of the safest spots in Venice."

  "How safe do you figure that is?” His hand trembled against her like a baby bird cupped in her hands, needing the warmth of touch but afraid of being crushed.

  "Not very safe.” They're not going to give up. If I were them, I'd bring in every agent plus the FBI, the Navy, and every Italian policeman they can. Based on what Father Francis told us, I'll bet they have priests and Opus Dei scouring the city as well. Even if the Pope isn't completely in bed with the Foundation, he'll want the Cross for himself."

  "You know, I'm not exactly comfortable with the thought of the Pope in bed with anyone."

  "Sorry. Bad metaphor.” Although the crypt's stone walls muffled sound, they kept their voices down, barely murmuring.

  They stopped even that when they heard hard-heeled footsteps outside.

  Ivy tried to project a vision of nothingness. It wasn't easy and she wasn't sure she'd accomplished anything. Still, it made sense that if the power could be used to heal and to hide or recover hidden objects, it could also be used for other purposes.

  The sounds stopped abruptly and Ivy froze. They'd come a long way since Iraq, but in some ways nothing had changed at all. Once again, as in Mosul, they were huddled in a stone room waiting to be discovered and killed by gunmen. Although the insurgents had been tracking them in Iraq, and the Foundation was here, the difference didn't extend their life expectancy any.

  Maybe trying to use the power had been an error. Perhaps it had sent the very signal she was trying to obscure.

  But the echoing footsteps finally resumed, stumped their way down the stone walkway.

  Rusty iron screeched against itself and then, abruptly, the sense of horrible presence faded.

  "I think—"

  She pressed her hand against Zack's mouth. It was too soon to assume safety.

  He nodded, silently.

  Ivy tracked time by counting her heartbeats. They seemed to come incredibly slowly. A hundred beats felt like an hour. Another hundred seemed like a year. Finally the footsteps returned, moving more quickly now as the agents completed whatever they'd been doing on the other side of the iron door and headed away from the church.

  "I guess we can talk now,” she said when the sounds had been gone for several minutes.

  "We can talk, but what are we going to do? When we come out, they'll catch us. They'll be on every street corner now, not just on the bridges. There's no way we can make it back to Father Paulo and Father Francis. And we can't stay here. The only thing we have to eat is those herbs we bought in the market."

  The herbs weren't for eating, though.

  "We'll just have to do it here."

  Zack's hand jerked against her face leaving her with a sense of coldness, aloneness even beyond that of the crypt itself.

  "If we burn those things here, we'll suffocate. It's already getting hard to breathe."

  "You're letting your claustrophobia get to you. It isn't that bad. Yet."

  But it would get bad. The stone door was close enough to airtight to make no difference. She could only guess how much oxygen her body was consuming as it transformed energy from the veil into healing power.

  "I could open the vault a crack."

  "Might as well. If we wait too long, we'll be too weak to do it."

  While Zack fussed with the door, Ivy opened the packets of herbs they'd bought, ran her finger through the course-ground powders, tried to visualize any essence of the Priestess, to call her into existence through sheer force of will.

  The only response she got was a feeling of echoing emptiness, as if she were knocking at a door to a deserted mansion. Which couldn't be right. She'd seen the priestess only weeks before.

  "Uh-oh."

  "I don't like it when you say that."

  "I don't like it either.” Zack's voice was calm now, but Ivy knew him well enough to recognize that tone. He'd clamped down. There was bad news.

  "Tell me."

  "I can't budge the door. We're sealed in."

  * * * *

  Moments before, the air had seemed fine to Ivy. All of a sudden, breathing took an effort.

  Zack sat down beside her and seized her hand. “I'm pissed about dying. And I'm sorry that I put us into a trap that I couldn't g
et out of, but I'm even more angry that this means the Foundation wins. They'll track the Cross down to Father Paulo's church in no time. They won't even have to bother fighting us. Thanks to me, we've taken care of that ourselves."

  She squeezed his hand back. “We're not dead yet."

  "Nope. We get to wait and wonder whether bad air or thirst will kill us first. I'll bet nobody has been buried in this particular tomb for better than a hundred years. I don't see the gravediggers opening it any time soon. Certainly not in time to help us."

  Ivy hadn't known how much she'd counted on Zack's confidence, his willingness to keep going when things looked hopeless. She needed that confidence now, but realized it would have to come from herself.

  "Calm down and breath slowly,” she said. “We're not beat yet."

  His pulse beat through his hands under the pressure of her fingers and she willed him to calm. They needed to think, plan. Sure they'd made mistakes, but after all they'd been through, could a blocked stone door really be the end?

  "I'm healing. Wait an hour and we'll push together,” she whispered.

  She sensed his headshake. “The door is sealed. It doesn't move at all."

  "Give me an hour. The air should last."

  It would last or it wouldn't. The Veil had caught the knife, kept it from penetrating her heart, but the soft fabric had done little to stop the force behind the Agent's blow. Her shattered ribs meant she couldn't move, lacked any strength. They'd also been the source of the blood Zack had found. She must have exhaled pounds of the stuff as it flowed into her lungs. Her body was pulling itself together now, far faster than would have been possible without the protective healing from the Veil, but she knew she still couldn't stand.

  "I'll give you the rest of my life."

  He might have meant that as bitter humor but Ivy had to swallow hard to eliminate the choked up feeling in her throat.

  "I'm not big on mushy stuff, Zack. But the past weeks with you have been special. You're a good friend."

  She stopped abruptly. The bad air must have gotten to her. Ivy didn't talk to men that way—ever. She maintained her cool—always.