Empire of Dust (20 page)

Tony moved aside, and she entered the room, letting the backpack slip to the carpeted floor. When the door clicked shut, she turned and faced him, her mouth open slightly, expectantly. Her ice-blue eyes looked into his, and before he knew what was happening, his arms were around her, circling her possessively and lovingly, and her mouth was on his.

The kiss ended, and she drew back from him, but allowed his arms to remain around her. "I didn't . . . intend for that to happen." Then she smiled. "At least, not that fast. Maybe being so tired has impaired my judgment."

"I think your judgment was very good." He drew her to him again, but this time she moved away.

"Let's not go so fast, Vincent. Can we just . . . talk?" She sat in one of the two easy chairs on either side of the table near the bed, and Tony took the other.

They talked for a long time about their lives, and when the silence finally came, it was rich between them. He drank in the sight of her, convinced more than ever that she was what he had always wanted in a woman, and dared to think that she felt the same about him.

He got up and stood next to her chair, looking down at her and resting his hand on her shoulder. "Stay with me tonight, Miriam. Please."

She put her hand on top of his, and her look made him feel his heart would break from wanting her. "If I do," she said softly, "will you hold me? Nothing else. Just hold me all night long."

To his surprise, he found the suggestion completely acceptable. Lust was a part of what he felt for Miriam, but the greater need was to do what she desired. And if that was for her to be held chastely through the night, then that would be his desire, and he would hold her as tenderly as he could.

"I would love to," he told her, crouching at her side. He took her hand and pressed his lips against the back of it, then stood up.

He turned off the light so that the only illumination came from the night light he always plugged into the wall, as he never slept in total darkness. Then he stripped to his boxers and got into bed.

Only then did Miriam begin to undress. Tony felt a tightness in his throat as she revealed her small and lovely breasts. Her waist was slender and her hips slight. She dropped her clothing and slipped under the covers next to him, wearing only a pair of panties and her gold cross. Then she moved into the crook of his arm as though she belonged there.

Though he was aroused by her warmth against him, he only kissed her scented hair and moved his other arm across her body as she nestled closer to him. He wanted to say something, but could not decide what, so he remained silent, cradling this woman he thought he loved, thinking how wonderful it was to just hear her breathing softly, beside him in the night.

A
t the same time Tony Luciano was falling asleep with Miriam Dominick in his arms, Father Alexander, on his cot inside the Mission of San Pedro, awoke. He had been plagued with terrifying dreams for the past few nights, but it was not a nightmare that had awakened him. Rather it was the sound of a vehicle rattling up the dirt road toward the mission.

Painfully, Father Alexander sat up on the cot. His back had been bothering him, and the condition had been exacerbated by the narrow canvas strip he slept on. He pulled on his robe and slippers, and padded outside onto the portico.

A large panel truck was coming up the slight rise on which the mission stood. Had it not been for its headlights, the old priest could not have made it out amid the darkness of the canyons that surrounded the old building where he stood. It was moving slowly, laboring as though it carried a heavy burden. That much was certainly true, he thought. It bore perhaps the greatest burden in all history, and now that burden would be his.

The van stopped directly in front of the portico, and Father Alexander walked down the three wooden steps to greet those inside. Three men climbed out, dressed in cowboy hats, plaid shirts, and jeans, but Father Alexander knew who they really were. Clothing could not disguise from him the fact that these were men of God. He knew his own.

He nodded a welcome, and the driver took off his hat and bowed slightly. "Father Alexander?" The old priest nodded again. "I'm Father William, and this is Father Donald and Father James. We're a little late. Took a wrong turn back there, nearly ended up over at the dam."

"These desert roads are confusing," Father Alexander said with an understanding smile. "The debris in the slot canyons can get washed out by flash floods so that you would swear they were roads, if the occasional boulder doesn't get in your way. I thank God you've arrived safely. And, um . . ." He looked toward the body of the van.

"Yes, he's there," said Father William. "And he's done no harm on the way, as far as we can tell."

"But you couldn't tell very well now, could you?" the old man chided.

"No. That's why we were chosen, after all. He cannot touch us."

"Nor me," said Father Alexander. "We are blessed in that at least." He said a silent prayer, asking God to forgive him for lying to these young men. He had been touched, though he would not be again. His faith would keep him strong.

"I'm not sure that it's that much of a blessing, Father," said Father William, "if our immunity to the creature's wiles makes us the perfect ones to be his keeper." He smiled at the others. "I can imagine more pleasant ways to serve God."

"But few so important as this," said Father Alexander. These boys must not think this was all a lark. Their task was dangerous and deadly, not only for them, but possibly for the entire world.

"No. I suppose you're right. Shall we take him to the kiva tonight?"

The old priest shook his head. "In the morning. I'm sure you're all tired, and it will be safe. You were not followed?"

"No, Father," said the fresh-faced young Father Donald. "We've been driving for days, mainly to throw off anyone who might have been on our trail, but believe me, nobody's behind us."

"Good. Come inside and have something to eat. There are cots to sleep on. Now that you're here, maybe we can move something better in," Father Alexander said, thinking of his back.

The cots didn't seem to keep the young men from sleeping soundly, although Father Alexander found it impossible to return to his own slumbers. What he had been waiting for and fearing had returned, and its presence kept him awake as though his canvas cot had been replaced by a bed of thorns.

Long after midnight, he arose quietly and walked outside. The van sat in the starlight, looking like a wide, heavy tombstone. Father Alexander approached it slowly and gingerly, as though he expected its doors to burst open and a horde of giant maggots to emerge from its interior.

But nothing of the sort occurred. The desert night was silent. Yet as he turned to go back to his cot, he thought he heard a whisper, a voice both inside and outside his head that said one word:

Alex . . .

He froze for a long moment, but the voice said no more. He walked into the mission without turning around and looking back.

Father Alexander was very much afraid to look back.

N
early two hundred miles southeast of the Mission of San Pedro lies Canyon de Chelly, a national monument near the New Mexico border in northeastern Arizona. The sandstone canyon stretches for twenty-six miles, and is a protected national monument. Since the canyon is within the Navajo reservation, and Navajo families live and farm on the canyon floor, visitors must be accompanied at all times by a Navajo guide or a park ranger.

The people who had followed Ezekiel Swain, and who now followed his sister Jezebel and their new leader, Damon, did not know about the regulation, and would not have cared if they had. They got into the canyon in the first place by ignoring a sign that read, INDIAN ROAD: RESIDENTS AND PARK SERVICE OFFICIALS ONLY.

There were only six of them now, and Damon was having trouble holding even them together. Frustration had driven the deserters away, and most of it had come from the slow and tentative pace Jezebel's psychic searching required. Also, as Damon had to admit, he did not have the power over them that Ezekiel Swain had possessed. But then, Damon did not have the psychic power that Swain had shown and of which Jezebel had only a fraction.

Some of the cultists had come to Damon and Jezebel and told them they were leaving. Though he had tried to persuade them to stay, first by flattery and then by telling them that they were traitors to the Divine, they still left, angry and bitter. Chang and Eng had slipped out one night in their van, leaving only a single van for the six who remained and all their gear.

Though Damon had expected Ted and Aileen to be the first to leave, they had hung in there. They still looked on Damon as an interloper and an adversary, but remained, Damon was convinced, in hopes that Ted could take over the leadership of the tiny band.

With Rodney by his side, however, that was damned unlikely, and Charlotte had stayed as well. Damon could tell the woman wanted him but was too damn shy to say anything. She just hung around him whenever she could, which was often. The six of them drove, ate, slept, and practically shit together, and Damon was getting as sick of it as the rest of them.

Jezebel, who had seemed such a witty smartass when he had first met her, was a damp rag without her brother around. Her indecisiveness when they came to a crossroad was driving Damon insane. She would get out, look around, close her eyes, and then open them again. Sometimes she would see a little dust devil blowing toward one of the roads, and then she would nod in that direction. Once she had noticed that the leaves on a pi
ñ
on oak were rustling when there was no wind to be felt, and then she had motioned in that direction, and they had driven on.

Shit, Damon had thought,
he
could look for things like that. You didn't have to be psychic to see a goddamn dust devil. Soon she'd be cutting open jackrabbits and examining their guts for signs. If they didn't soon get some indication that the Divine was near, he was going to kick her ass.

And now here they were on some stupid Indian reservation, after zigging and zagging for days, but always moving north. Rodney had said that back in the late seventies, when Damon was in
kindergarten
, for Chrissake, his motorcycle gang had stayed in this canyon several times without getting hassled by the Indians.

"They were scared of us, man," Rodney said, as they drove along through the dark, the canyon walls growing higher on either side. "Peaceful little Navajos, and here comes a bunch of bikers. Hell, I guess they thought we'da scalped them if they bitched." Rodney thought for a moment. "Some of the guys probably woulda, too."

They stopped the van about a half mile into the canyon and set up camp a hundred yards off the dirt road. They had three tents, the one Jezebel had shared with Ezekiel and now slept in alone, a two-man tent Ted and Aileen slept in, and the pup tent Damon had brought. Charlotte slept in the van, and Rodney just tossed an air mattress and a sleeping bag on the ground.

The day had been annoying all the way around, and everyone's patience was short. As they set up their tents, Ted and Aileen eyed Damon with undisguised hatred, while Jezebel sat on the ground, as though too weary to do anything else.

"Why don't you get up off your ass and help?" Damon said to the woman. "Or do you expect Charlotte and Rodney to set up your damn tent
every
night?"

"I don't mind," Charlotte said quickly, picking up a hammer to drive in the pegs.

"Well, damn it, you
should
mind," Damon said, wrenching the hammer from her hands and throwing it at Jezebel's feet so that it nearly hit her. "If you can't bring anything else to this party, at least pull your own damn weight!"

"She
is
bringing something else to the party," Ted said. "You forgot who's got the power to bring us to the Divine."

"Well, then, why doesn't she use it?" Damon answered. "We're wandering through the desert like the Israelites behind Moses—maybe forty years from now she'll finally hone in, huh?"

"It's not her fault!" blurted Aileen. "If Ezekiel hadn't been killed—"

"What?" Damon shouted. "You don't know he was killed, you dumb bitch!"

"Doesn't she?" Ted said coldly. Damon glanced at Rodney, but the look the big man gave him in return told him that Rodney hadn't betrayed him.

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Damon said. "Come on, man, spit it out—you think
I
had something to do with Ezekiel disappearing?"

"Well, you tell me. Everything was fine till you came. Ezekiel would go out in the desert all night sometimes, but he always came back. Then you come along, he gives you some shit—the same kind of shit that we all learned how to take because he was our
leader
, damn it—and that night he disappears and doesn't show up again. And he didn't get lost, man! You ever heard of a psychic getting lost?"