Mean Streets

to pull any punches.'

Michael frowned down at his hands. 'Harry. You're talking about murder.'

'What a shock,' I said, 'after taking one of those monster rounds in the back.'

'There must be some way to end this without bloodsh-'

Over his shoulder, I saw Molly abruptly spring to her feet and whip off her sunglasses, staring across the park with a puzzled frown on her face. Then the girls from the team appeared from the direction Molly had been staring. The girls were running as fast as they could, screaming as they came.

'Coach!' screamed Kelly. 'Coach! The man took her!'

'Easy, easy,' Michael said, rising. He put his hands on Kelly's shoulders as Molly came hurrying over. 'Easy. What are you talking about?'

'He came out of the van with one of those electric stunner things,' Kelly babbled, through her panting. 'He zapped her and then he put her in the van and drove away.'

Molly drew in a sudden breath and almost seemed to turn green.

Michael stared at the girl for a second, and then glanced at me. His eyes widened in horror. 'Alicia!' he called, stepping past Kelly and looking wildly around the park. 'Alicia!'

'He took her!' sobbed Kelly, her tears making her face blotchy. 'He took her!'

'Kelly,' I said, to get her attention. 'What did he look like?'

She shook her head. 'I don't, I can't… White, not really tall. His hair was cut really short. Like army haircuts.'

Buzz.

He'd threatened Michael to get me to bring a sword out in the open, where it was vulnerable. Then he'd tried to kill me before I locked it away again. And when that failed, he tried something else.

'Molly,' Michael said quietly. 'Take the truck. Drive Sandra and Donna home. Call your mother on the way and tell her what's happened. Stay at the house.'

'But-' Molly began.

Michael turned hard eyes to her and said, 'Now.'

'Yes, sir,' Molly said, instantly.

Michael tossed her the keys to the truck. Then he turned to a nearby equipment bag and smoothly withdrew an aluminum bat. He whipped it around in a flowing rondello motion, nodded as if satisfied, and turned to me. 'Let's go. You're driving.'

'Okay,' I said. 'Where?'

'St. Mary's,' Michael said, his tone positively grim. 'I'm going to talk to Forthill.'

Forthill had just finished giving evening Mass when we showed up. Father Paulo greeted Michael like a long-lost son, and how was he doing, and of course we could wait for Forthill in his chambers. I suspected Paulo held deep reservations in regards to me. But that was okay. I wasn't feeling particularly trusting toward him, either. We'd been waiting in Forthill's quarters for maybe five minutes when the old priest came in. He took one look at Michael and got pale.

'Talk to me about the order,' Michael said quietly.

'My son,' Forthill said. He shook his head. 'You know that I-'

'He's taken Alicia, Tony.'

Forthill's mouth dropped open. 'What?'

'He's taken my daughter,' Michael roared, his voice shaking the walls. 'I don't care what oaths you've sworn. I don't care what the Church thinks needs to be kept secret. We have to find this man and find him now.'

I blinked at Michael and found myself leaning a little away from him. The heat of his anger was palpable, a living thing that brought its own presence, its own gravity, into the room.

Forthill faced that anger like an old rock thrusting up stubbornly through a turbulent sea-worn and unmoving. 'I will not break my oaths, Michael. Not even for you.'

'I'm not asking you to do it for me,' Michael said. 'I'm asking you to do it for Alicia.'

Forthill flinched. 'Michael,' he said quietly. 'The order maintains security for a reason. Its enemies have sought to destroy it for two thousand years, and in that time the order has helped hundreds of thousands, even millions. You know that. A breach could put the entire order at risk-and that means more than my life, or yours.'

'Or an innocent child's, apparently,' I said. 'I guess you're going to take that 'suffer the little children to come unto Me' thing kind of literally, eh, padre?'

Forthill looked from Michael to me, and then to the floor. He took a slow breath, and then smoothed his hands over his vestments. 'It never gets any easier, does it? Trying to work out the right thing to do.' He answered his own question. 'No. I suppose it's often simpler to determine the proper path than it is to actually walk it.'

Forthill rose and walked over to a section of the wood-paneled wall. He put his hands at the top right and lower left section of the panel, and with a grunt, pushed it in. It slid aside, revealing a space the size of a closet, filled with file cabinets and a small bookshelf.

I traded a glance with Michael, who raised his eyebrows in surprise. He hadn't known about the hidey-hole.

Forthill opened a drawer and started thumbing through files. 'The Ordo Malleus has existed, in one form or another, since the founding of the Church. Originally, we were tasked with the casting out of demons from the possessed, but as the Church grew, it became clear that we needed to be able to counter the threats from other enemies as well.'

'Other enemies?' I asked.

'Various beings who were masquerading as gods,' Forthill said. 'Vampires and other supernatural predators. Wicked faeries who resented the Church's influence.' He glanced at me. 'Practitioners of witchcraft who turned their hand against the followers of Christ.'

'Hell's bells,' I muttered. 'The Inquisition.'

Forthill grimaced. 'The Inquisition has become the primary reason Malleus maintains itself in secrecy-and why we very seldom engage in direct action ourselves. It's all too easy to let power go to your head when you're certain that God is on your side. The Inquisition, in many ways, attempted to bring our struggle into the light-and because of the situation it helped create, more innocent men and women died than centuries of the most savage supernatural depredation.

'We support the Knights of the Cross and do whatever we can to counsel and protect God's children against supernatural threats-the way we protected the girl you brought to me the year Michael's youngest was born. Now the order recruits people singly, after years of personal observation, and maintains the highest levels of personal, ethical integrity humanly possible.' He turned to us, with a file folder in his hands. 'But as you pointed out earlier, Harry. We're only human.'

I took the folder from him, opened it, and found Buzz's picture. I recognized the short haircut, and the severe lines of his chin and jaw. His eyes were new to me, though. They were as grey as stone, but less warm and fuzzy.

'Father Roarke Douglas,' I read. 'Age forty-three. Five eleven, hundred eighty-five. Sniper for the Rangers, trained in demolitions, U.S. Army Chaplain, parish priest in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Rwanda.'

'Good Lord preserve us,' Michael said.

'Yeah. A real holy warrior,' I said. I eyed Forthill. 'And this guy was brought in?'

'I've met Roarke on several occasions,' Forthill said. 'I was always impressed with his reserve and calm in the face of crisis. He repeatedly distinguished himself by acts of courage in protecting his parishioners in some of the most dangerous locations in the world.' He shook his head. 'But he… changed, in the last few years.'

'Changed,' Michael said. 'How?'

'He became a strong advocate for… preemptive intervention.'

'He wanted to hit back first, eh?' I asked.

'You wouldn't say that if you'd seen what life can be like in some of the places Father Douglas has lived,' Forthill said. 'It's not so simple.'

'It never is,' I said.

'He was, in particular, an admirer of Shiro's,' Forthill continued. 'When Shiro died, he was devastated. They had worked together several times.'

'The way you worked with Michael,' I said.

Forthill nodded. 'Roarke was… not satisfied with the disposition of Fidelacchius. He made it known to the rest of Malleus, too. As time went by, he became increasingly frustrated that the sword was not being put to use.'

I could see where this one was going. 'And then I got hold of Amoracchius, too.'

Forthill nodded. 'He spent the last year trying to convince the senior members of Malleus that we had been deceived. That you were, in fact,' an agent of an enemy power, who had taken the swords so that they could not be used.'

'And no one thought to mention the way those archangels gave orders that I was supposed to hold them?'

'They never appear to more than one or two people at a time-and you are a wizard, Harry,' Forthill said. 'Father Douglas hypothesized that you had created an illusion to serve your purpose, or else had tampered directly with our minds.'

'And now he's on a crusade,' I muttered.

Forthill nodded. 'So it would seem.'

I kept on reading the file. 'He's versed in magic-well enough, at least, to be smart about how he deals with me. Contacts in various supernatural communities, like the Venatori Umbrorum, which probably explains that protective amulet.' I shook my head. 'And he thinks he's saving the world. The guy's a certifiable nightmare.'

'Where is he?' Michael asked quietly.