But a woman and child had died. And Cash lay in a hospitalbed, maimed. I hoped she lay in ahospital bed. I still didn’t know — I hadn’t dared to check. Sandy might not bethe only threat. I’ve been wrong before.
And Sandy was crazy, flat out criminal psychotic jealousy. She’dframed Maggie long before the relic reared its ugly head. It didn’t matter howmuch civic virtue might be driving this current mess.
Ends justifying means. I’d thought that way, often enough. Youcould say Sandy learned her approach to the law from me. I’d been her boss. We’ddone enough nasty things in the name of higher good. Not as bad as imitatingKratz to cover up our tracks — criminals had died, but not under torture. Thathad been a matter of degree rather than of kind. And of course we’d been on theside of God and Truth and Right.
Kratz burned to death, screaming, no merciful “smokeinhalation” to knock him out before the heat and flames wore through hisshields. We could have captured him alive. I just hadn’t bothered to spend afew more minutes on my plan, too hot on the chase, smelled blood in the water,adrenaline pumping — more to the point, I hadn’t cared that much. I’ve relivedthose screams in the black depths of far too many sleepless midnights. Those,and others. I’ve left at least as many corpses in my wake as she had, allcertified Bad Guys.
I think.
“Why’d you use Kratz’s signature? His crime scene? Wasn’t thatdrawing attention to yourself?”
Sandy frowned. “I wanted that. The city was supposed tocall me in. I wanted someone distinctive, dead but questions about thebody, a case tied to my time on the force. I had better connections with thecurrent city mage. You’d never even met him.”
If Cash hadn’t gotten back from that graduation when she did,the plan might have worked. Fox in charge of the hen-house.
I looked up from my coffee, the mug sitting there and contentscooling and turning foul, waste of good coffee brewed right. “What do you planto do with it?”
I meant the relic, of course. She didn’t need to ask.
Sandy shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s precious. I think it’sreal, that we’re not looking at afake bit of the True Cross or one of a thousand scraps of medieval linenpurporting to have caught Christ’s sweat and blood and tears at theCrucifixion. Fish bones are just too mundane for someone to bother faking.Maybe we should give it to the Vatican . . .”
“You think they wouldn’t use it?”
“We’d have to go public, so everyone would know . . .”
My turn to shake my head. “And then the monastery would claimit, show the original documents, get it back. Do you trust them? They sent it to Reverend Fred, for no other reason than bloodties in the Bycheck tribe. They know what it can do. You think next time it won’tgo to some genocidal Caucasus warlord?”
Frankly, I was surprised that the Bycheck clan tie held. I’msure there was more to it than I knew, some reason why that uncle wanted therelic out of his hands, out of his monastery and his country. It might havebeen still other leaks, and other ruthless people closing in on him. TheBalkans and the Russian fringe seem good at generating ruthless people.
There are plenty of things about this tale I never did figureout, and that’s one of them. I didn’t dare ask the questions, find the people,follow the trail. Or maybe I’m lying again, hiding the truth under anotherlayer of smoke and mirrors.
“Sandy, we have to destroy that thing. It’s too dangerous.Always will be.”
She stared at me as if I was the crazy one. “John, it’s holy. We have proof that Christ actuallywalked the Galilee, fed the multitude, divided the loaves and fishes with Hisown hands. We can’t destroy it!”
Just like me, like Maggie, Sandy never trotted out her faithin public. A lot of witches and wizards are like that, avoiding churches of anykind because of the . . . history . . . behindthem. That doesn’t mean we’re not spiritual people.
The relic lay there between us — radiating magnetism,charisma, trust. “No, it only proves that thousands of people believed thosethings for almost two thousand years. You know how magic works. Belief holds asmuch power as truth. Even belief in a lie.”
She reached out and pulled the thing closer to her, guardingit with her hand. Her gun hand, thankfully.
“It isn’t a lie, John. It’s real. I can feel love and peaceflowing into me when I hold it. We have to guard it, not destroy it.”
The hell of it was, I think the thing was real. Sure, men have made thousands of deliberate fakes overthe centuries, have found ancient mundane things and thought they were holy. This one, well, I’m not any kind of expert.I’m a burned-out retired cop with forensic wizard training. But it feltdifferent. Like I said, it didn’t feel like just gold and quartz and oldbelief. It felt like something Otherhad touched it. Something I’ve never felt before or since, something I can’tbegin to describe.
Maybe something holy. Something beyond Christian and intouniversal God, if that makes sense.
That just made it more dangerous. “Sandy, do you know anyone worthy of holding that power? You’vekilled seven people for it, in spite of that love and peace.”
“They deserved to die. They wanted to do evil with it.”
She seemed calm and rational when she said it. She seemedbelievable. You had to play the words back to get the dissonance. Psychotic. Icould feel the power of that relic working on me, the charisma, the will tofollow, the will to believe.
Seven people. Dead. I forced myself to hold that image, to seeand feel my car exploding in flames and shrapnel, to smell the charred craterwhere Nef’s cruiser had stood. I remembered the “Kratz” murder scenes, theblood, the stink, the pain still vibrating in the air. Seven people. Dead.Including a baby.
The thing
