Godin's right hand came out of his jacket holding his revolver. He opened the screen slowly. Annja held it for him. From somewhere he produced a short, thick flashlight. Holding it reversed in his left hand, he crossed wrists, bracing his gun hand on top. Clicking the flashlight on, he kicked open the door, stepped inward and immediately out of sight to the right.
None too sure what was expected of her, Annja went through the door after him. She did not summon the sword. It was unwieldy in close quarters, and she didn't want to accidentally stick Godin. Or Byron, should the young artist still be on his feet.
With Godin a dimly sensed presence hard on her right, her attention was drawn by the intense beam of white light angled downward. It illuminated a shape sprawled with its head toward the door. The head had wild, wavy dark hair. Parts of it seemed matted to the big, round skull.
With a cry Annja dropped to her knees beside the youth. She helped him sit up gingerly as Godin moved through the small apartment, checking room by room with light and handgun ready. She remembered vaguely that such room-clearing was supposed to be done by more than one person. But he knew what he was doing and she didn't. She deemed it best to keep out of the way and tend to Byron.
He wore a gray sweatshirt, dark sweatpants. His feet were bare. The shirt was ripped and spattered with blood. He had drying blood trailing down over his mouth, and his skin looked very pale.
"The house is clear," Godin reported, coming out of the back. He clicked off his flashlight, put it away, then moved to right a lamp on its end table and turn it on. The shade, madly askew, cast dizzying shadows up the wall.
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."