The place looked as if a struggle had taken place, but was not thoroughly trashed or ransacked. Whatever the intruders wanted they had got without much searching. She doubted the goal was merely to rough up Byron Mondragón.

She examined him as best she could. His face was puffed to a weird asymmetric caricature of its usual fine-boned beauty. It was mottled with the blue-black of a truly brutal bruising. Though he winced frequently to her unskilled probing, she found no broken bones. Godin came and squatted next to them, shone his flashlight briefly in Byron's eyes.

"No pupil dilation," he pronounced with grim satisfaction. "No concussion, and probably no subdural hematoma to kill you in a few hours. Bon. You would appear to have been subjected to a thoroughly professional beating, young man."

"They seemed to know what they were doing," Byron croaked, feeling the back of his head. They were the first words he had spoken. "That didn't make it fun."

Annja rose and went through the door into the back. She found a little kitchen, fairly clean but none too tidy, with cracked gray linoleum tiles on the floor and cabinets with peeling facades. A dish rack by the sink held a jumble of plastic cups and plates. She found a roll of paper towels, ripped off a big wad and soaked them in cool water. Filling a big red plastic cup with water, she went back into the living room.

Godin sat on the couch with his elbows braced inside splayed knees and his fists to either side of his chin, studying the young artist. Annja allowed herself to notice now that the walls were a riot of paintings in a multiplicity of styles. None of them suggested Byron's own hand to her. Most favored broad strokes and big colors. Not his trademark near obsessive precision and attention to detail.

"You like to hang your friends' artwork?" she asked, kneeling beside him and giving him the water. His hand shook slightly. She helped guide the cup to his lips.

He drank deeply, choked, coughed, drank a little more. Then he nodded as Annja began to daub blood from his face.

"They're a very talented bunch," he said. "And it's cheap. They lend it to me, then they don't have to store it. A lot of it's Billie's. She's one of the best."

"Your studio in back is in disarray, too," Godin said. "Suppose you tell us what happened."

The young artist sighed. His eyes were infinitely sad. They were also well blackened – he'd look like a raccoon by morning.

"They took him," he said.

"Who's 'he'?" Godin asked.

"Who's 'they'?" Annja asked.

He drank some more. His hand still shook. Water ran down his chin, diluting the blood that had halfway dried there. Annja availed herself of the opportunity to wipe most of it away when he lowered the cup to his lap. He was sitting cross-legged on a rumpled dusty throw rug in the center of the hardwood floor.

"I've been painting mostly from a sitting model," he said. He showed Annja a shy smile. "I think you suspected it from the first."

"I did," she said. Not really, she thought. But maybe. Somehow.

"As for who 'they' were – " He shrugged, then grimaced at the pain the movement caused. " Theyare whoever comes in the night to capture beings like the Santo Niño. Men in black suits with masks. And guns. Machine guns."

Annja looked quickly to Godin, who shrugged. They might have been the same men last seen descending from the clouds to the slaughter scene at Chimayó. They might just as well have come from any number of federal, state or even local agencies. Or from some government contractor. Or even been conventional if well-equipped criminals, although that seemed unlikely.

"How do you capture a being who can walk through walls?" she asked.

"They used Tasers to stun him," Byron said mournfully. "They were holding me down by then. Then they put him in a sort of sack. That's when they started to beat me so I didn't see what happened other than that they carried him out. I – I thought I heard a helicopter. But it was hard to tell with them hitting me."

"An eight-year-old boy?" Annja said, aghast. "Who on earth would Taser an eight-year-old boy?"

"Any of a number of your local American police agencies, to judge by the wire services," Father Godin said. "That would certainly explain his inability to escape."

"I think he wanted to help me," Byron said. "He couldn't. He isn't violent. He doesn't have that capability. He tried to talk to them, reason with them. But they just shot him with those darts and shocked him."

"Jesus," Annja said.

"He spoke to you?" Godin said, leaning forward slightly. He was twining his fists together between his knees now.

"Often," Byron said as Annja finished cleaning his face, or at least smearing the blood and grime around to a more consistent film. There was no hope of effecting any better cleanup with the tools at hand, so she tossed the pink-stained paper towel aside and sat back to give the young man space to breathe. And talk.

"Of what?" the priest asked.

Byron smiled sadly and shook his head. "Many things. Some of the same things he said to the people he met on the roads. He seemed sad tonight. That was strange. Usually he's very cheerful. That makes his prognostications of doom a little more shocking. If effective. He would never specify what exactly was going to happen, though. Only that it was bad.

"Other things we talked about – those were just for me. Please."

"It could be vital – "

Annja held up a hand, cutting the Jesuit off. "What is he?"

Byron's smile was magical. It lit his face. It seemed to light the room, small, cramped and dingy though it was. "A marvelous child."

"Is he – ?" She could not force herself to pick a next word, much less say it. Jesus? An alien? A remarkably clever impostor?

A siren cut the night like a razor. It was still thin, with distance. But unmistakable. Godin stood up. "Time to go," he said.

Annja rose. Byron waved off her attempt to help him up. "I think I'll be fine here. I'd better let them take me to the hospital."

"Good idea," Godin said. "Get X-rays, in case my field-expedient diagnosis was wrong."

"Byron, this is important," Annja said. "Is there anything else you can tell us?"

"Oh, yes," Byron said. "Just before the men burst in he said to give you a message."

" What?" Annja was gratified, if slightly, to hear Godin utter the incredulous monosyllable in unison with her.

He nodded carefully. "He said to tell what he called 'those who come after'to seek for him 'within three leagues' of the spot he was first found."

Godin stood by the door, poised to exit. The slight frown furrowing his brow indicated he was very upset. Puzzled but knowing no time remained, Annja joined him.

As he held the door for her, Annja's conscience twinged. She looked back at Byron, who now sat holding his head in his hands. He's hurt. He's innocent. Isn't my duty to look after him?

Byron looked up at her and smiled. "Don't worry, Annja," he said beatifically. "I'm not the one you're meant to look out for."

"Leagues?" Annja said.

Godin lay on his back on her motel-room bed with his shoes off and the backs of his hands over his eyes. "You're a historian," he said with unaccustomed asperity. "Surely you know what a league is."