Virgin (46 page)

No, wait.
Emilio's ears picked up a hum, somewhere down the driveway, growing louder. It
sounded almost like . . .

A car.

Emilio gasped
and took a hesitant step toward the noise. He glanced at the carport. The
senador's
limousine and the ambulance were where he'd left them. And still the sound
grew louder.

No! This is
not possible!

Instinctively
he reached for his pistol before he remembered that he'd left it downstairs in
the great room when he went into town. He hadn't retrieved it because what need
for a pistol with the bridge out and Paraiso isolated from the outside world?

The bridge was
out!
He'd seen it fall. He'd almost gone down with it. How could--?

Emilio stood frozen
as a Ford sedan rounded the final curve in the rain-soaked, debris-littered
approach road and
pulled to a stop not a
hundred feet in front of him. Normally Emilio would have rushed forward to
confront any trespassers, but this was different. Something was
wrong
about
this car.

A short,
bearded man stepped out of the passenger side and glanced around before staring
at Emilio.

"The
Mother," he said in an unfamiliar accent. "She is here. She
has
to
be here. Where is the Mother?"

The Mother?
Emilio wondered. What is he--? He was jolted by a sudden thought: Can he be
talking about the ancient body below in the house?

But Emilio had
questions of his own.

"How did
you get here?"

"In the
car," the man said with ill-concealed impatience. "We drove up the
road."

"But the
bridge--!"

"Yes, we
came over the bridge."

"The
bridge is
out!
Down!"

The bearded man
looked at him as if he were crazy. "The bridge is intact. We just drove
over it."

No! This
couldn't be! This--

The driver door
opened then and out stepped a familiar figure. Emilio steeled himself not to
react, to hide the sudden mad thumping of his heart against the inner walls of
his chest.

The priest!
Father Daniel Fitzpatrick!

The priest
looked Emilio square in the face but there was no recognition there. Without
the hat, the mirrored glasses, and the phony beard he'd worn that night in the
church, Emilio was a different person.

But if he
hadn't come looking for Emilio, if he hadn't brought the police to arrest him
for the murder of the nun, why was he here?

"Where are
we?" the priest asked.

Emilio was
about to answer, to tell them both to get back into their car and get off the
senador's
private property, when the rear door opened and out stepped a dead woman.
He knew she was dead because he'd killed her himself.

"You,"
she said softly, staring at him levelly. "I know you. You murdered me.
Why? You didn't have to kill me. Why did you do that?"

Something
snapped within Emilio. He could stand no more. He turned and fled back inside,
slamming the door behind him. As he turned the deadbolt, he leaned against the
door, panting and sweating.

This was
loco\
A car carrying a walking, talking dead woman drives across a bridge that is
no longer there. He was going
loco.

He turned and
shut off the power to the elevator.

Good. If they
were real, they now were locked outside and would be at the mercy of the second
half of the storm. If they were not real, what did it matter?

Emilio pulled
himself together, took a deep breath, and descended to the great room.

"All is
well topside,
Senador.'"

But the
senador
did not seem to hear. He stood by Charlie's bed, staring out through the
windows, a mix of awe and terror distorting his features.

Emilio followed
his gaze and cringed against the stairway when he saw what was taking shape out
over the Pacific and racing toward them.

"Madre!"

Everything had
happened so fast.

You murdered
me.

Dan had been
momentarily stunned by Carrie's words. His mind whirled, adding a beard, hat,
and glasses to the mustachioed face staring at Carrie in horrified disbelief,
comparing this voice to the one he'd heard in the church, and then he was sure:
This was the motherless scum who had put a bullet in her heart.

Before he'd
been able to react, the man had turned and dashed back to the hemi-dome behind
him and vanished through a doorway. And then a Navy reconnaissance plane had
swooshed overhead. He'd just started wondering what sort of idiot would be
flying in this hellish storm when another sound captured his attention.

A dull roaring
filled Dan's ears. At first he assumed it was enraged blood shooting through
his battered brain, then he glanced beyond the hemi-dome and saw something
impossibly tall, incalculably huge looming out of the foggy distance and
hurtling toward them.

"Oh, my
God!"

Nearly a half a
mile wide and God knew how tall, it stretched--swirling, twisting, writhing--from
the dim, misty heights to the sea where it terminated in an eruption of foam on
the wave-racked surface of the Pacific. Water . . . an angry towering column of
spinning water. . . all water . . . yet bright lights flashed within it.

To call this
thing a waterspout was to call Mount Rushmore a piece of sculpture.

And it was
coming here, zeroed in on this spot.

Dan spun
around, looking for a place to hide, but saw none. The car--no . . . too
vulnerable. The door in the hemi-dome--it had to lead below, to safety.

He ran to it,
pulling Carrie with him, and tugged on the handle. The handle wouldn't turn,
the door wouldn't budge. Kesev stood back, strangely detached as he watched
death's irresistible approach.

"Locked!"
Dan shouted, and began pounding and kicking at the unyielding surface.
"Let us in, damn you! Open up!"

And all around
him the roaring of the approaching waterspout grew to a deafening crescendo.

This is it, he
thought. We're going to die right here. In a few minutes it'll all be over. But
God,
I'm
not ready to go yet!

And then Carrie
laid a hand on his shoulder, reached past him and turned the knob.

The door swung
open.

Dan swallowed
his shock--he had no time to wonder how the door had become unlocked--and
propelled Carrie through ahead of him. Kesev followed at a more leisurely pace,
closing the door behind him.

Stairs ahead,
leading downward toward light. Dan went to squeeze past Carrie but she'd
already begun her descent.

He followed her
down the curved stairway into a huge, luxuriously furnished room. His hope of
surviving this storm rose as he saw that it was carved out of the living rock
of the cliff itself, and then that hope was dashed when he saw the huge glass
front overhanging the ocean. The monstrous waterspout was out there, still
headed directly for them, and no glass on earth would stop that thing.

He noticed
two--no, three--other people in the room: a new face, unconscious in a hospital
bed, the man who had shot Carrie, and . . . Senator Arthur Crenshaw. The killer
and the senator stood transfixed before the onrushing doom.

And supine
beside the bed . . . the Virgin.

Carrie must
have spotted her, too, for she began moving toward the body . . .

Just as the
windows exploded.

With a
deafening crash every pane shattered into countless tiny daggers. Dan leaped
upon Carrie to shield her-- she was already dead, he remembered as he pushed her
to the floor and covered her, yet his instincts still propelled him to protect
her. Instead of slashing everyone and everything in the room to ribbons, the
glass shards blew outward, sucked into the swirl of the storm outside.

A thundering
roar filled the room as warm sea water splashed against his back, soaking him.
Dan squeezed
his eyes shut, encircled Carrie with his arms, and held her cold body tight against
him . . . one last embrace . . .

Any second
now . . .

But nothing
happened. The water continued to splatter him but the roar of the waterspout
remained level. Dan lifted his head and risked a peek.

It had backed
off to a quarter mile or so, but still it was out there in the mist, dominating
the panoramic view, lit by flashes within and around it, swirling, twisting, a
thousand yards wide, snaking from the sea to the sky, but moving no closer.

Dan rose and
studied it. For no reason he could explain, it occurred to Dan that it seemed
to be
... waiting.

Ahead of him,
the senator and the murderer were struggling to their feet and staring at it
through the empty window frames.

"What
is
that?" Senator Crenshaw cried.

"Not
'what,'" Carrie said as she rose to her feet behind Dan.
"Who"

The senator
turned and stared at her a moment. He seemed about to ask her who
she
was,
then decided that wasn't important now.

" 'Who?'"
He glanced back at the looming tower. "All right, then . . .
who
is
it?"

"It's
Him," Carrie said, beaming. She pointed to the Virgin. "He's come for
His Mother."

The senator
glanced at the Virgin, gasped, and gripped the edge of the hospital bed for
support. Dan looked to see what was wrong.

The Virgin was
changing.

The sea water
from the spout that had soaked into her robes, into her skin and hair, was
having a rejuvenating effect. The blue of the fabric deepened, her hair
darkened and thickened, and her face . . . the cheeks were filling out, the
wrinkles fading as color surged into her skin.

The murderer
cringed back and murmured something in Spanish as the senator leaned more
heavily against the bed. Carrie moved closer and dropped to her knees. Dan
glanced to his right and saw that Kesev, even the imperturbable Kesev, was
gaping in awe.

And then the
Virgin moved.

Moving so
smoothly it seemed like a single motion, she sat up, then stood and faced them.

Dan saw Kesev
drop to his knees not far from Carrie, but Dan remained standing, too
overwhelmed to move.

She was small
framed, almost petite. Olive skin, deep, dark hair, Semitic features, not
attractive by Dan's tastes, but he sensed an inner beauty, and there was no
denying the strength that radiated from her sharp brown eyes.

And those eyes
were moving, finally fixing on Carrie, kneeling before her. Smiling like a
mother gazing upon a beloved child, she reached out and touched Carrie's head.

"Dear one,"
the Virgin said softly. Her voice was gentle, soothing. "We're almost
through
here."

Her smile faded
as she turned to Senator Crenshaw.

"Arthur,"
she said. "The prayermaker."

Crenshaw held
her gaze, but with obvious difficulty.

"Emilio," she said, frowning at the murderer.
"The killer."

He turned away.

Then it was
Dan's turn.

A tiny smile
curved her lips as she trapped his eyes with her own.

"Daniel.
The hunger-feeder."

Dan felt
lifted, exalted. He sensed her approval and basked in it.

Finally she
turned away and Dan felt the breath rush out of him. He hadn't realized he'd
been holding it. She could have called him vow-breaker, fornicator, doubter . .
. so many things. But hunger-feeder . . . he'd take that any day.

Her expression
was neutral as she faced Kesev.

"So,
Iscariot . . . you broke another trust."

Iscariot!
Dan's mind reeled. No . . . it couldn't be!