Dark Heart (29 page)

T
he cathedral was practically empty, but it was always open for those who needed to come in and pray. Because it was in a big city, the hours of this church bent to the strange schedules of its inhabitants. The priests kept the sanctuary open twenty-four hours a day, even though they risked the worldly evils of looting and other urban dangers.

Sandra’s priest said that God was present at all hours—therefore, his house should be open to those who needed him at all times. There was no organized ceremony tonight. A few people wandered the side aisles, admiring the rows of sculpted apostles, prophets, saints, and patrons in the Gothic structure and lighting candles in the lady chapel. The building was filled with that wonderful smell—a hundred years’ worth of incense and holy candles—common to all old Catholic churches.

The nave—richly ornamented with gold leaf and mosaics—was a hand-built cavern, all perfect curves and right angles. Intricate stained glass windows glowed with jewel-like colors. Carefully positioned lighting outside the church made the windows nearly as beautiful in the evening as they were in daylight. Fluted stone columns speared into the vaulted ceilings. Sandra stared at their tops. The columns, reaching to become a part of the sky, always calmed her. The medieval artisans who had built the soaring stone churches of Europe had managed to paint the emotions of religion in stone. This New World imitation of their art captured that spirit. The very stones of the church cried out the convictions of those who shaped them—that the impossible was attainable. God is near. Reach for him, and perfect yourself for his coming. Work hard. Dedicate your life to the light.

She took comfort from her surroundings. She needed that comfort. It wasn’t the first time she’d sought relief from a crisis here. The church had been pivotal in her escape from Chuck. Those fluted columns had spoken to her then as well. From them, she gained the idea that she could be more than she was, that she could strive for a better fate than life as Chuck’s punching bag.

And now where was she? She was back in the same place. Her lover was a monster, just as Chuck had been. A monster with claws and teeth and wings. A mythical being. A dragon. Her lover was a dragon.

She’d finally placed that strangely familiar voice in the alley. Even distorted by a transformation into who knew what kind of monster, she’d recognized the cadences of her lover’s voice. The stories Justin had told her and Benny at the restaurant were not the products of his mind or his arcane reading. They were true. In his apartment was a mirror surrounded by dragons. Between the cycles of their lovemaking in that long, wonderful night, Sandra had stood in front of that mirror, bathed in her own sweat and Justin’s, and studied the medieval carvings on the border, entranced. An heirloom, he had said. The oldest, most prized possession of his family. He had brought it from overseas because he had always loved it, he had said.

Did his master speak to him through this mirror? She was sure it did. What was Justin? Was he truly some sort of demon?

She rested her head in her arms against the back of the next pew. What was she going to do now? She had fled the crime scene as soon as she could, after she’d surrendered her weapon for testing, had her hands swabbed to prove she had indeed fired shots, answered the questions for her captain and Internal Affairs. She’d had the paramedics patch her up but refused to go to the hospital to have the claw marks on her shoulder stitched. She was held together by butterfly bandages, medical gauze, and some painkiller the paramedics had given her. Good stuff, whatever it was. She’d have to look at the name when she had the prescription filled. Nice to know for the next time her life fell apart.

She was on medical leave, according to her boss. Don’t come into the office, he’d said. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

None of it had penetrated the soft, fuzzy cocoon of her shock. She left as soon as she could to come here, stopping only to retrieve the small Chief’s Special revolver that was her off-duty weapon. Now it pressed reassuringly against her bruised ribs, fully loaded. She was going to get the first priest she saw to bless it. Maybe dragons were like vampires or werewolves, vulnerable to bullets dipped in holy water or something.

It was too much. And who could she tell? Who would believe her? Mac might have, at least some of it…but Mac was dead.

She almost didn’t believe it herself. She had no proof. Not a shred of evidence. Certainly not an eyewitness. Not that an eyewitness would have helped. If nobody would believe her, a cop, why would they believe anybody else?

That made her want to laugh, but she clamped down on the impulse. At this point of emotional exhaustion, laughter opened the gates to hysteria. She could not afford that. Her lover was out there, somewhere, with his claws and his invisible body and his irresistible strength. And his
friend
was out there as well, waiting for her. Waiting to do Justin the
favor
of killing her.

She was going to have to file a report. What would she say? There would be an office full of questions for her, and she had no answers. She had discharged her firearm nine times. She had slow-bleeding punctures around her left breast, a three-clawed gash on her shoulder and on her hand. Her partner was dead.

And Linda…and McKenzie’s kids…What could she tell them? What could anyone possibly tell them? She would never again hear Mac arguing with Linda. Linda would never again call him at work. Never.

“Oh, Mac…,” she whispered, fighting her tears. Soft footsteps intruded on her private pain, and she lifted her head, though she did not look behind her. She heard the steps move into the pew just behind her and stop. Somebody settled into the seat with the swish of fabric brushing across wood.

Fear rustled across her skin. She knew who it was, who it had to be. She didn’t even need to turn around. Somehow, she’d known he would come.

“Tell me the truth, Justin…,” she said quietly. “Tell me I’m going insane. Tell me everything I saw was a hallucination brought on by stress, brought on by something. Tell me that.”

“That is not the truth,” he answered, his voice soothing.

Still she did not look at him. She stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on a statue of the Virgin Mary.

“Your friend said I look like your wife. Is that the truth?”

“Yes.” Justin paused, then said, “He is not my friend.”

“Where is she?”

“She died a long time ago.”

“A long time ago? What exactly are we talking here—decades, centuries? Are you going to tell me next that you live forever?”

Justin said nothing.

Sandra choked on the truth. “I don’t believe this!” she cried. “This isn’t happening. What are you, a vampire or something?”

“No.”

“Worse? A demon? One of the devil’s creatures?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“You remember the story I told you and Benny at dinner the other night?”

“Of course, I remember. I’ve been thinking about it since…tonight. What does that make you, then?”

“One of the Dragon’s disciples.”

“You’re a dragon man?”

“Something like that.”

“Then that was you tonight, fighting with…that other…dragon man.”

“Yes. His name is Kalzar.”

“I shot my pistol at both of you. Did I hit you?”

“Yes.”

Sandra swallowed. “But you’re okay, of course,” she said sardonically.

“Weapons can only kill me if they are appropriately blessed. I am not mortal,” Justin replied. “They hurt, but aren’t fatal. I was impressed, however, by your calm in being able to shoot me at all.”

“You’re not mortal. Of course not. What self-respecting demon would be?” She started to laugh, heard the harsh hysteria in it, and stopped herself. “Did the gunshots hurt badly?”

“Yes.”

Again, she swallowed, but said nothing.

“Sandra—” Justin began.

“How do I look like her?” she interrupted him. “In what ways?”

He paused, then, “If you took your hair down, and looked into a mirror, you might see Gwendolyne looking back.”

“Gwendolyne…Gwendolyne’s Flight. You named your club after her? That was her name?”

“Yes.”

“What did she flee?”

“This life. Too soon.”

“And I look exactly like her?”

“Yes. She was beautiful, inside and out, as you are. Her beauty took my breath away every time I looked at her. But in other ways, the two of you are nothing alike. She was quiet, soft-spoken. She moved through life gently, like a murmuring brook over smooth stones. You’re a fighter who challenges the world to come and meet you. Everything you touch, you ignite with your passion.”

“How did she die?”

“We were taken by the plague, both of us. We were at death’s door. The Dragon came to me in a silver mirror. I was swollen with pustules, lying on the cold stone floor in a puddle of my own urine. The Dragon offered me immortality, and the strength to change the world for the better, to fight for his cause. I accepted. Someday the world will be safe for the Dragon to return, and that day will usher humanity into a new and brighter age of evolution. The Dragon cannot come back as long as there are people who would hunt it, people like Saint George.”

“Why didn’t the Dragon make the same offer to Gwendolyne that he did to you?” Sandra asked, still staring at the Virgin Mary, still unwilling to turn around and let the plea in Justin’s eyes threaten her resolve, steal her strength.

“The Dragon did make that offer to her.”

“I see,” Sandra said softly. “She refused.”

“You must understand,” Justin said, “she was a child of the Dark Ages, raised on stories of witches and devils. Like all superstitious people she thought anything she could not understand must be evil in nature. When she saw the Dragon’s face, she saw only its intimidating appearance. She did not hear the wisdom of its words, could not know the wisdom of its years, its benevolence. Her fear of the Dragon was greater than her love for me.”

Sandra paused. It was all so strange, but she had seen enough evidence to convince herself that he spoke the truth. She nodded slowly.

“There’s something I don’t understand. Who killed that girl’s boyfriend? What great purpose could that possibly serve?”

“Does it matter? He hurt her. He deserved to be punished.”

“That girl looked like me. Like your wife.”

“Yes.”

“So you slept with her, too?”

“No!” Justin’s reply was vehement. “She was just a child.”

“Then what? You watched her? Spied on her?”

“Protected her,” he insisted.

“Those sketches on your wall—you didn’t tell me the truth, did you? You said they were of me, but they’re not. Only some of them are me. Some of them are that girl, aren’t they? And some of them are other women. Centuries of women who live in your memories…yet all the same…”

“Sandra, please understand. You cannot know what it is like to live so many years and never have the chance to live a normal life. Through the years I choose people to watch and I live my life through them vicariously. My normal life. From them, I can taste what it would be like to grow up, to have mortal concerns, to love, to die…”

“By chance, are all of these people you watch young, pretty women with wavy hair and brown eyes?”

Justin paused. “I am afraid so. We all have our eccentricities.”

“Do your eccentricities include ripping people’s hearts out of their chests, by any chance? Trying to kill me? Killing my partner?”

“That was Kalzar’s doing.” Justin’s voice was firm.

“Why?”

“You cannot understand a mind like Kalzar’s without first understanding the conditions under which he was raised. He was born on the Arabian peninsula in a time of holy war and vast ruin. Everything is a
jihad
to him, a divine battle. He believes my need for a personal life jeopardizes our mission. He has taken it upon himself to rid me of what he sees as my weakness. He is a shortsighted soul who cannot appreciate the beauty at the end of the road we travel. He can only appreciate the necessarily bloody work we must do to get there.”

“And you tolerate that?” she asked.

“Believe me, I would kill him if I could. But we do not die easily. And our master forbids us to fight among ourselves. That is one of the Dragon’s few laws.”

“And you broke that law tonight?”

“I did.”

“For me.”

“For you. I would break it again. Kalzar knows this. It may make him wary of coming near you. On the other hand, it may make it more tantalizing to him to try. I do not know.”

“And your guardian Dragon, doesn’t it care that Kalzar is a bloody murderer?”

“You cannot judge the Dragon by human standards. The Dragon is over four thousand years old. It carries the memories of every other Dragon before it. To the Dragon, a single human life is nothing. The Dragon cares for the whole of the human race, not the sum of the parts. It cannot afford to lose sight of the long view for momentary compassion. It is not a generous master, but its purpose is the highest possible.”

“And the end justifies the means?”

“Of course. You know this as well as I do. You’re that kind of detective. Your own police force has people trained as snipers for SWAT teams as well as those officers who travel to grade schools and teach bicycle safety. The city needs all kinds of law enforcement officers. So does the Dragon.”

“Kalzar just killed my partner. Somebody killed Jack Madrone, Baxter, and Zack. And Omar, Kalzar’s buddy. Is he one of you, too?

“In a way.”

“Would he have killed me if you hadn’t intervened that night in front of the jazz club?”

“You know a great deal about us now,” Justin said softly. “That makes you a liability…or an asset.”

Sandra finally turned around, looked into Justin’s vibrant blue eyes. If he was hurting from the fight, he didn’t show it. It was impossible to believe she’d pumped nine bullets into him and the other dragon man. But then, this was all impossible to believe.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I want you to join me,” he answered. His eyes entranced her. “I beg of you.”