" Ave Maria," he gasped. Another spell of coughing shook his body.
With a mighty effort he came up to his knees. He jackknifed forward, coughing brutally, stopping himself with hands on thighs. He forced his body vertical, raised a knee, got his foot planted. " Sancta Maria," he said, and thrust himself upright.
"'Mother of God,'" he rasped in English. His face contorted, his body began to buckle. He clutched at his side with a black-gloved hand, which seemed to arrest the spasm.
"'Pray for us sinners – '" he stood fully erect once more "' – now and in the hour of our death. Amen.'"
Without meaning to Annja echoed his final words. As he crossed himself, she did the same.
"You are a daughter of the holy mother the church," Godin said, with more than a touch of the raven's croak, "no matter how hard you pretend not to be."
"But I've seen how the church treats her daughters!" she retorted defiantly, the more because her cheeks were wet, for some unaccountable reason.
"And may God have mercy on my soul, child, for I do what I must – " He reached behind himself.
She charged him. The sword sprang into her hand. She brought it looping up into a side cut at his neck.
He snapped a black autopistol out right into her face. She heard the safety snick off as the muzzle aligned with her right eye. She froze.
For a few heartbeats they stood that way, her blade pressed into the skin of his neck, the barrel of his pistol almost touching her eye.
"You should come back by daylight and examine that statue up the hill," he said conversationally. A trickle of blood was drying down the right side of his chin, maroon in the bluish light. "It's a naive representation of popular Mexican myths. The warrior is the personification of Popocatepetl, the languishing maid his lover Ixtaccihuatl. I mention this because I believe you have recently seen the originals firsthand, yes?"
She had to smile. But she never relaxed the sword's pressure against his neck.
"Is it just me or are you even more full of bullshit than any man I've ever met, Father?" she asked.
His grin made him look almost boyish. "Given my order, and my life experience, I would most assuredly hope so," he said. "And now we seem to find ourselves at a New Mexican standoff."
"Now, you can blow my head off with that piece of yours," she told him. "It's possibleI'll just relax, and my arm won't twitch enough to sever your carotid artery before I fall. So you need to ask yourself just one question, Padre. 'Do I feel lucky?'"
He laughed incredulously. "You quote Clint Eastwood?"
"It was all I could think of," she said.
Sirens began to wail. They weren't far and they were getting closer in a hurry. From multiple directions, by the way the sounds surrounded the pair.
Godin tipped his gun toward the star-filled sky. His thumb let the hammer down and snapped the safety back on.
"If you want to cut my head off," he said, holstering the weapon behind the small of his back, "now's your chance. But I'd suggest you do whatever you choose to do quickly and leave with alacrity. The police will not care for any of the answers you will be able to give them."
For a moment she still stood, feeling the pressure of her steel against the skin of his neck through her hand and arm. Then she deliberately moved the blade sideways before making the sword disappear.
"I don't have it in me to kill a man who doesn't pose a direct threat," she said. "I hope I never do. But I also hope I'm not making a mistake not going ahead and taking your head off and letting my soul take the consequences."
"Refraining from burdening your soul with such a weight is never a bad choice, child," he said. "And now by your leave, I bid you adieu. You have given me much to contemplate."
She watched him walk away. Just before he passed out of the direct shine of the light illuminating the play area he stooped to scoop up his big, gleaming revolver and stuff it back inside his jacket. Then he continued on his way, moving along with no apparent hurry. Once beyond the circle of light he seemed to dissolve into the night.
She turned to run in a different direction.
Chapter 14
"Sit, sit," the big man in the herringbone coat with the black fake-fur collar said, gesturing her back down with a gloved hand. He beamed at her through his full salt-and-pepper beard. Cars choked the narrow street behind him. A horde of tourists, many wearing brightly-colored lapel pins in the shape of balloons, milled along the sidewalks to either side.
Halfway out of her metal chair on the small patio in front of the Purple Sage Coffee House, Annja halted. "You're Dr. Cogswell?" she asked.
"Affirmative, affirmative," he puffed. He was a tall man, heavyset, with round pink cheeks and lively brown eyes beneath extravagant black-and-white eyebrows. Like his beard his thinning hair was gray with a showy black streak down the middle. He held himself almost militarily erect and moved with brisk authority. "And you are the famous Annja Creed?"
"Not that famous," she said, resuming her seat. "I'm pleased to meet you, Doctor."
The coffee house was tucked back from San Felipe Street, just north of Old Town Plaza in Albuquerque. San Felipe Cathedral stood across the lane. It was a bright autumn noon. The sun was warm enough Annja had taken off her jacket.
"Puff," Cogswell said, taking his own seat across the round metal table from her. "The pleasure's all mine. I'm flattered you took time out of your busy schedule to meet with an old coot like me."
For a moment he sat regarding her. He had a keen gaze. His scrutiny could well have been taken as obtrusive and inappropriate, though she detected nothing sexual in it. She wondered if he understood that and was using the fact that his age and professorial mien made him relatively innocuous, or whether, like a great many scientists of her acquaintance, he knew too little of human interactions even to be aware of it.
Make no assumptions, she told herself sternly, behind a carefully bland smile.
He nodded his round head once, briskly, as if she had passed examination. He leaned forward slightly. "We live, it would appear, in interesting times."
He nodded to Annja's left, where a thirtyish brown-haired man dressed in slacks, a pullover and red-and-white athletic shoes sat reading an early-afternoon paper. The headline read, or rather screamed, Nine Die In Gang War.
Her smile crumpled a little. "Yes," she said. "I guess we do." She had never really thought she'd be grateful for the War on Drugs, but she had to admit it kept providing excellent cover for her. She wondered how long that could last.
Cogswell cocked his head to one side. "Ah, but I suppose you know that better than any of us," he said.
Her blood turned cold. She felt as if he had read the thoughts right out of her head. Her cheeks burned. What does he know?
The next moment he reassured her by saying, "You are acquiring quite a reputation in paranormal circles."
"Ah," she said. "Well. I hope they aren't too hard on me." Some people were, she knew. She had once made the mistake of wandering onto the public forum the Knowledge Channel maintained online for Chasing History's Monsters.
He smiled. "I suppose you've been quite occupied researching the remarkable events transpiring here in the land of enchantment. In fact, I gather you've been a firsthand witness of one of the more alarming phenomena."