"You fight demons?" Annja asked.

"Demonic influences. When they break into our world and begin to cause actual destruction and pain. It happens far more frequently than you would feel comfortable believing. You will come to know the unsettling truth soon enough."

"Are you serious?"

"Only when absolutely necessary. On that subject you might consider lightening up somewhat. You're still young. There's time to head off certain tendencies toward humorlessness before they become set in the stone of habit. That frown, for example. Do you want that lovely face stuck that way?"

She laughed. Then quickly stifled herself and looked around, feeling guilty. She didn't want to incur any more matronly wrath. Nor did she wish to show disrespect for the event or the participants.

But she had little call to worry about being overheard. They stood apart from the crowd. The doors to the church itself had opened. The pilgrims had begun to file inside. Some sang hymns.

"Truce?" Godin asked.

She glared at him. "Why should I trust you?"

"Because we may face a common enemy," he said, "quite soon."

"But what about your determination to repossess your precious relic?"

"Let us say that the jury is still out about your suitability to carry it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The sword does seem to have chosen you. In spite of your almost defiant refusal to believe. Yet you acquit yourself as a true warrior ought."

"Are you trying to flatter me into letting down my guard?" Annja asked.

"I would if I thought it would do any good," he said artlessly. "What do you feel are my intentions? Think deeply, if expeditiously. If you are worthy of the relic must your judgment not be of the utmost reliability?"

She thought a moment, drawing in a deep breath. The sense of responsibility his words evoked washed over her like a wave that threatened momentarily to swamp her.

No, she thought. I must not doubt myself now.

"You're right," she said. "I believe you're sincere. So far as the words you just spoke. So yes, I agree to a truce. But if you play me false, may your God have mercy on your soul. Because I won't hesitate to send it to him!"

He laughed and offered a black-gloved hand. She shook it firmly.

"Do you note the disparity of persons?" he asked quietly, turning away to nod at the throng entering the church. The sea of folk outside seemed scarcely diminished.

She did. The seekers gathered, at least a thousand strong, she guessed, were your proverbial all-walksof-life assortment.

"What do you feel," Godin asked as they walked toward the church, "from the people?"

"Fear,"she said without he sitation. "These people are genuinely afraid. They've come here looking for – "

She broke off, shaking her head.

Godin was not merciful. "Spiritual shelter? A sense of solace and reassurance that ruthless materialism cannot offer them?"

"I don't see how giving in to – superstition – can be a meaningful response to the problems of the world," she said.

"Why do you dismiss anything spiritual as superstition? Is that not itself a superstition from the days of the Age of Enlightenment, when men and women were defensive because professing reasoncarried genuine risks? Perhaps it's time to realize that there is no necessary conflict between science and spirituality?"

She still furrowed her brow and shook her head. "It's just hard for me to reconcile reason with faith, with either witch-hunting righteousness or New Age goofiness."

"Which do you sense here, Annja Creed?"

"Neither," she said after a reluctant interval.

A sound trilled through the night nearby, from among the pilgrims now all around, their bodies dark or illuminated in front with the flickering orange of candlelight. Annja's face compressed in bewilderment.

"Is that the theme from The Simpsons?" she asked.

"I believe so," Godin said, even as the jaunty little tune cut off. To her right Annja heard classical music peal out, then a rap tune she was unfamiliar with, bars of a current chart-topper from some English band she could never bear to listen to, the epic fanfare of the Star Warstheme, a Kanye West song, electronic chirps and warbles in half a dozen keys. Each was soon cut off by a muted voice saying, "Hello?"

A middle-aged woman spoke into a cell phone held to her ear not fifteen feet from where Annja and Godin stood. With a start Annja recognized her as the woman she had seen in the Shed restaurant what seemed a lifetime or two ago, complaining about the furtive but frightening black creature that haunted the backyard of her expensive home on Lamy ridge.

"Saw him?" she said. "You saw the Holy Child?" She turned to her companion, presumably her husband. "Harry, Margaret says she and Louis just parked their car and who do you think they saw? The Holy Child! He appeared right in front of them!"

"He told you what?" a man said in hasty Spanish, passing from Annja's right. Everywhere around them people were holding their hands to their ears and talking into them. More and more ringtones sounded, like a chorus of dissimilar crickets, filling the night with tinny dissonance.

"He told you to stay away from the church?" a young woman with a pierced eyebrow and lower lip said.

" – stay away – "

" – from the sanctuary?"

" – there's danger here?"

Annja looked from side to side and then at Godin's face. But his air of confident, slightly humorous detachment was gone. He was frowning.

From the church door, screams echoed.

The crowd went stiff as one. It was as if the bodies around Annja and Godin instantly changed state, like some sudden shift in crystalline structure.

A figure staggered from the open doors that led into the sanctuary. It was a priest, a stocky, middle-aged Latino. His glasses were askew on his face. He clutched the front of his surplice as if carrying some heavy load. The pristine white was splashed with some dark taint, gleaming wetly in the candlelight and the glow from thickening clouds overhead.

He fell to his knees. More screams rang from behind him, shrill as bat cries and edged with hysteria.

His arms sagged. Dark loops of entrails moistly glistening slopped out over them upon the stoop of the church.

Chapter 18

Terrified people rushed from the church door. The first shied back like startled horses at the sight of the disemboweled priest lying right at their feet. The pressure of others behind thrust them forward irresistibly. Some were forced to trample the body or were crushed in the entryway in front of the door as the fleeing mob drove them onward to the gate.

The outflow met the crowd condensing and flowing in through the arched gateway. It produced swirling turbulence that filled the courtyard and jammed the gate.

Annja ran for the gate. Cell phones still went off all around. The Holy Child was a busy little apparition tonight, it appeared. People were listening to distraught friends and relatives on the other end while looking around trying to figure out why everybody around them was so upset.

Outside the courtyard wall people began to scream, seeing what was going on inside. The pressure of pilgrims seeking entry to the sanctuary ceased. People fell back from the gates in apprehension or frank terror, depending on how much they had seen.