by Alex Archer
The snow still lay thick on the ground and clotted in the branches of the trees. Annja drove as carefully as she could, mindful of the risk of black ice, for all that Godin kept gently urging her to hurry.
He had cancer. It was terminal. It had riddled his body. Although he was a lifelong smoker, ironically his lungs were the most recent part of him to be invaded. He had kept himself going from sheer force of will.
Annja could not conceive of the agonies he must have undergone. He assured her it wasn't bad – most of the time.
On a wide pullout overlooking a sheer drop to the west he asked her to pull over. He got out of the car.
"What are we doing here?" she asked.
"I have come to the end of the road, my dear," he said.
"I won't give up the sword! No matter what you say, I can't."
His smile was strangely sweet for a man so hard, who looked so haggard. "No, you must not," he said. "Not ever. It is where it belongs."
"What makes you say that?"
"You have proved it, have you not? Now help me walk, if you will, please."
The sun had become a blinding ball of brilliance, almost level with them. At the same time snow began to fall, fierce and hard. A wind rose, whistling, driving flakes with stinging force into Annja's eyes.
He guided her toward the edge of the cliff. Uncertain of what he intended, she went reluctantly along.
A few feet from the brink he pulled away from her. "The sword is where it belongs," he said. "And a very great threat to the world is ended."
He dug a thumb in his collar and pulled out his silver medallion. "And now the time has come for me to pass along my own burden," he said, lifting it over his head. "I'd say I deserve a vacation."
Despite herself she recoiled from it. "Take it," he said. "Whatever it once stood for, this medallion now stands for what I have stood for. And what you now stand for, whether you wish to believe it or not."
Numbly she reached out her hand and took it.
He turned his face to the sun. Its light shone beneath the clouds and struck him full in the face, lighting his tired features despite the swirling snow, his own personal floodlight. He smiled.
"I have done many terrible things in my life," he told her. "All of them for what I believed to be the greater good. And all scarred my soul. But there is a child within me, still pure after all. I hope today I have redeemed myself."
And it seemed that as he spoke the last words his voice was the voice of a child – of the innocent he had once been.
He turned a smile toward her. "Goodbye, Annja," he said. "Go with God."
He turned and walked away from her.
"No!" she shouted. Yet she made no move to restrain him. She knew she lacked the right.
The snow was alive with glare that seemed to enfold him. It blew against her face with redoubled fury.
Yet it seemed to her that she saw him walking on, impossibly, beyond the point where earth gave way to air.
Annja fell to her knees on the gravel and cried.
Epilogue
Albuquerque
"Let me guess," the beautiful young man with the unruly black hair said. "What happened up in Rio Arriba didn't have anything to do with any long forgotten WWII stockpile of bombs going up. And you were right in the middle of it."
Byron Mondragón traded glances with the young woman who sat beside him. She was a plump, pretty, pale girl with dark brown hair. He had introduced her to Annja as Dorothy Enright, his fiancée. Dorothy giggled and sipped her limeade through a straw from her old-fashioned flare-topped fountain glass.
Sitting sprawled into the corner of booth and wall in the Frontier restaurant, Annja turned away from the window to look at her companions.
"You've got that about right," she said. "Except for the me being in the middle of it part. I wasn't. Or I wouldn't be here talking to you."
Annja told them the story. More than perhaps she should have, but far from all. She reckoned that after what he'd been through Byron was entitled to at least a major helping of truth. And if he chose to confide in his fiancée, she didn't feel like second-guessing him.
"I think I've figured out the creatures," she told the young couple. "The researchers used animals in their experiments. Maybe they even genetically-engineered some. They might have been intending to use them as living weapons. They were designed and probably tortured to be vicious."
She didn't mention the Holy Child. She knew Byron truly believed he'd seen him and tourists were still reporting sightings. Were all the sightings the product of overeager imaginations or the power of suggestion? She had no answers and knew she might never get any.
At the last, she left out what had become of Father Godin, as she left out certain details of what had passed between them. She gave the impression they had shaken hands and parted ways after the covert lab blew up, their work done.
Annja had called in an anonymous tip to 911 from a payphone in the valley. She'd claimed she had seen a man fall from a scenic overlook up on the mountain. There had been no reports of a body being found.
When she was done Dorothy said, "Wow." Annja couldn't tell whether the girl believed her or was merely being polite.
Byron just nodded, smiling. "I knew you could do it," he said.
A vibration at her hip made her jump. Then she remembered she had set her cell phone to buzz her instead of ring.
"Hello?"
"Annja, baby," a voice said. "Remember me? Doug? Doug Morrell?"
"Of course I remember you, Doug," Annja said with a sigh.
"Doug, please don't tap on the damned mic."
"Where's the feature on that epic monster rally down in Nuevo México? See? I even learned the real name of the country. That's how much this story means to me. Now where's my show? I need it yesterday..."
