Serrin, reeling back from the blood spirit even as it sputtered out of existence with the death of its summoner, saw the devastation left behind by the Jesuit mage’s spell. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the mage’s next target was them.
Then the grenade burst among the Jesuits, paralyzant gas surrounding them. But they didn’t stop moving.
The bastards have internalized respirators, internal air tanks, nose filters something, Streak thought, his combat-hardened brain assessing the situation coolly. Okay, frag you, guys. Here comes the acid. If it isn’t too late.
Of course, it was.
Serrin could see the mage clearly, impossibly. The man was, after all, shrouded in gas. And yet somehow he could see him. The mage was saying, quite clearly. “And now you die, heretic.”
The spell was one-tenth of a second away from doing to him what it had done to the Aztechnology samurai and mage.
And then everything stopped. Stopped dead, and everyone was absolutely still. Everyone was seized by an emotion somehow unknown to them, and their heads were turned to the doorways of the basilica as if gripped by hands they could not resist.
A figure moved forward through the doorways. Whether it was a real person, or a spirit, or an illusion, was not obvious at first. It walked in midair, perhaps three meters above them, shining slightly. It was a woman, and Serrin saw her at once as the Magdalene. In her hands she held out to the crowd, on a gold platter, the severed, bleeding head of John the Baptist. A terrible cry of lamentation went up all around, a soul-scouring wail as if from hell itself, and it was all they could do to stay upright. Geraint managed to put his hands to his ears as if to try and force out the agonizing sound.
In a panic the Jesuits looked as if the devil himself had just appeared among them. They were utterly unable to move or act. They were virtually catatonic.
Streak recovered his senses first and pushed through a crowd of fainting and screaming people and grabbed Serrin.
“For frag’s sake, let’s get out of here!” he screamed. Serrin grabbed Kristen and began to run. Geraint had to be half-dragged away by the elf, Juan moving in to help him, Xavier getting to Michael. The Jesuits were still standing utterly stunned. They looked as if they were going to be completely beyond the help of the best psychiatrists money could buy for a very long time.
Despite the urgent need to flee. Serrin couldn’t resist the urge to turn and look back. He still couldn’t identify the image as real or illusion or spirit, but he was astonished to find an intense feeling of grief welling up inside him, as if some terrible wrong had been done, and the woman was there to face everyone with the tragedy and awfulness of that wrong. And although he did not know what that was, the grief was painfully real to him and he did not want to run away from her, to abandon her. But his wife was in his care and people had tried to kill her twice today, and he turned away to Streak.
“Where to?” he asked.
“I don’t fragging care,” the other elf said. “Out of town. Get to the airport, get on a plane. Let’s just get the frag out of here before any more drek starts. I don’t know what this is, but it’s not something we can handle right now.
“Lets just get out, frag it!”
It really was all they could do.
26
Getting out of the city was a nightmare. Panic radiated out from the square like a tidal wave, and they were trying to outrun it. The mayhem was fueled by the trid broadcasts from on-the-spot camera crews expecting to be showing the proud Doge to his people. The drunkenness of the carnival added to the propensity for hysteria, and the lurid trid report of the blood spirit even had wild rumors of the return of the Red Death and numerous variants on the same theme circulating within minutes like wildfire through a tinder-dry forest in August. Venetians and tourists were running everywhere. In their costumes and masks they made the streets, bridges, and canals of the city look like a labyrinth peopled by the escaped, deranged inmates of an immense asylum.
They couldn’t just take Streak’s advice and run like the blazes. Michael had a million-nuyen cyberdeck at Quadri’s and much of their research notes were there. Sneaking in through the kitchens at the back of the building, they got in without being seen and stuffed everything into bags faster than they’d ever done in their lives. Michael gave Claudio a vast tip by way of thanks. At the sight of all of the money, the man’s eyes widened and he grew suspicious.
“Are you a part of this? What has been happening to our great city?” he growled.
“I think we were intended to be victims of what happened to your great city,” Michael told him, “and we’re running for our lives, and that’s no exaggeration.”
That disarmed Claudio immediately. He kissed Michael on both cheeks and wished him good luck.
“You, too, and when this is all over we’ll come bark for some quieter times.” Michael said.
Streak was impatient to get moving. “Look, bugger the sweet goodbyes and let’s just get in the car.”
“Oh, God, we don’t have one,” Michael suddenly remembered.
“Yes, we do.” Streak was dangling some keys on a Lancia keyring in Michael’s face.
“Thank heavens you had the sense to hire one,” Michael said with a sigh of relief.
“Who says I hired the fragger? Come on move your hoop. There’s no telling if we can actually get through the bloody streets,” the elf said.
“I’ll just hang my arm out the window and they’ll get out of the way,” Juan said laconically.
“We can get seven people in the car?” Geraint wondered.
“It means some people sitting on others’ laps in the back, but don’t waste my time and yours making no jokes. Now move your rakking arses!” Streak yelled at him.
Geraint might be the employer of the pair, but he wasn’t going to argue. They ran out the back of the cafe, piled into the car, and started what was obviously going to be a tortuous and uncomfortable journey to the airport.
“Just exactly where are we going?” Serrin asked. “I don’t know, and it doesn’t much matter!” Streak said. “Nnnngh,” he added suddenly, wrenching the wheel sharply to avoid a stray pedestrian who fell into their path from one of the packed sidewalks. “We can hop across to Padova, it’s only twenty klicks or so, and collect our thoughts there.”
Geraint nodded. “We’ll find an airport hotel and figure out what we’re going to do.”
And that is what they did, though a drive that should have taken a few minutes took almost an hour, with some streets so jammed with hysterical people that backtracks and detours became inevitable. The longer the journey got, the jumpier everyone became.
“I think we’re being followed,” Michael said anxiously, looking out the back window for the umpteenth time.
“No, we aren’t,” Juan informed him. “I’ve been watching in the mirrors. It’d be impossible to follow anyone anyway. In all this, I mean.”
“We could be astrally traced.”
“I don’t detect anything, and believe me I’ve been trying. I’m actually quite good at that sort of thing,” Serrin said, grim-jawed. “Years of practice.”
“Sometimes paranoia can be a definite advantage,” Michael said more happily.
“Its only paranoia if it isn’t real,” Serrin grumbled and said no more about it. Kristen was looking dubiously from one to the other as they spoke, but made no comment of her own.
“Poor Raoul,” Xavier chuckled. “Boy, did he catch it in the hoop. What a frying.”
“You know,” Streak said, “we were amazingly lucky he Azzies turned up.”
“Yeah, right, their bullet missed Kristen’s head by a hair. Real lucky,” Serrin shot back.
“Nah, think about it, you pillock. If they hadn’t been there the Inquisition would have had you on toast. We didn’t have a line of fire and you didn’t see them. But the Inquisition boys saw the Azzies and they came first in the firing line-before us.”