Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  If this was dreaming, he didn't want to wake. Still, he wasn't going to argue with her. How could he argue with the perfect woman?

  "Help me with the Cross, Zack."

  "Huh?"

  "We've got to get back to the van. I've got a nasty feeling that whatever happened here is sending off alarm bells in Washington, or wherever it is that the Foundation has its headquarters."

  Zack wanted Ivy, wanted to have sex with her, make babies with her, sacrifice himself for her. But he also needed to protect her. If she thought there was danger, that was good enough for him. He reached down and grasped his section of the Cross.

  The instant he touched the iron-hard wood, he realized what he'd done. “I just made an idiot of myself, didn't I?"

  An idiot? He'd almost raped her. It was odd that he hadn't really noticed how attractive she was, but there were a lot of attractive women in the world—and he'd been raised well enough not to go around attacking them just because he thought they were sexy.

  "Yeah. But then, so did I.” Ivy grasped her own section and looked around the temple. “But we'd better get our butts in gear while we still can."

  Despite the weight of timber on her back and the broken ground they had to cross, Ivy broke into a run as soon as they had cleared the temple.

  Zack glanced back and almost tripped in a double-take. The dusty mosaic glowed like new. It was probably a lighting effect, but the temple walls glistened with what looked like fresh whitewash. And he'd been sure the roof had fallen in: it now seemed intact.

  "Hurry, Zack. We don't have long."

  Chapter 9

  Ivy shoved her section of the Cross into the back of the van, grabbed the keys from Zack's hand, and opened the driver's door. “I'll drive. See if you can spot the kid."

  Zack looked like he wanted to argue but simply nodded.

  She shoved the shifter into reverse and gave the big Mercedes gas. She didn't want to believe the CIA would launch missiles against an archeological site as valuable as this, but she'd been underestimating their capacity for pure nastiness ever since she'd come to Iraq.

  "He's over there on the beach,” Zack reported.

  "The kid?"

  "Yeah, Cejno."

  She leaned on the horn, then shifted into four-wheel drive and pointed the van toward the beach.

  "If we get stuck, we're dead,” Zack reminded her. “Sand is tricky."

  "We're in a hurry."

  "We won't go faster if we can't move."

  She leaned on the horn again.

  Cejno looked up, then laughed and waved.

  She rolled down her window. “You've got thirty seconds to get in the van, kid. If you don't make it, we're leaving without you."

  He waved again, gave a hand up to an attractive and completely naked middle-aged woman, kissed her on the cheek, then ran to join them.

  "I don't know what happened to me in that temple,” Zack said as they waited for Cejno to join them. “All of a sudden, I saw the true you for the first time. I mean, you were still Ivy, but everything about you was perfect and I'd never realized—"

  "Shut up, Zack. You're not making me feel any better. That was a temple of Aphrodite. She's the love goddess, you know, Venus to the Romans. We used the Cross as a key again and unloosed the power that had been bottled up inside it for centuries. Naturally you'd have a sexual reaction."

  She didn't want to think about her own reaction. Because she hadn't suddenly seen Zack as different and perfect the way he claimed he'd seen her. He'd been exactly the same person, but she'd still kissed him—and enjoyed the kiss.

  That she'd taken advantage of Zack's magic-induced confusion to kiss him senseless made her feel a bit like a pervert.

  Fortunately, Cejno joined them in the front seat and quickly dominated the conversation, providing at least a bit of distraction from her shame.

  "It was amazing.” Cejno was so excited, he had problems keeping his volume down. “I was on the beach and there was this woman. She was French, I think. Very pretty. Did you see how pretty she was? All of a sudden, she wanted me. We could hardly understand each other because her English is worse than my own, but no talking was to happen. I had no idea how it is with a woman, really."

  He looked away from them. “I talk the big story, and no doubt you find me very sophisticated. But in my city it is not so easy to find a girl whose father and brothers will not be guarding over her all the time."

  "So you had a good time?” Zack suggested.

  Cejno brightened. “Oh, my, yes. A very good time."

  "I just hope she doesn't get pregnant.” Ivy wasn't getting into this male sex-bonding thing.

  "She looked a bit old for that,” Zack said.

  Like that would matter. “Aphrodite is the goddess of fertility. Have you ever thought about why the Bible is full of stories about women way past childbearing age having babies in the Bible? Power over fertility is important, is a manifestation of deity."

  "Aphrodite isn't real,” Zack assured her. “And those Bible stories aren't about Aphrodite or any other fertility goddess. They're about the Lord."

  "There is no God but God,” Cejno, the not-so-good Moslem agreed.

  "Maybe.” But Ivy wasn't convinced. Something had happened back in the ruins. The more she learned, the more there seemed to be a connection between the Cross and all sorts of ancient and long-buried religions.

  For the next few minutes, she concentrated on keeping on the road while putting as much distance as she could between the three of them and the Temple she'd opened.

  Zack scanned the horizon in what they both hoped was a bit of pointless paranoia—until he suddenly froze.

  "You might want to give it a bit more gas."

  "What do you see?"

  "Looks like a navy fighter squadron."

  Which meant Americans. At least she didn't think the Turks had aircraft carriers.

  They were in the Mediterranean theater now, which meant they might be out of range of spy planes and black helicopters based in Iraq, but they were close to home base for the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet. Like the rest of the U.S. military, it had been denuded to help support the Iraq war, but it was still among the largest force concentrations in the world.

  "Maybe sending that temple-opening calling card wasn't the smartest thing we've ever done,” Zack suggested.

  "If it had anything to do with Monique, it was very smart,” Cejno argued. “Very very smart."

  "Even if it ends up killing you?"

  Cejno shrugged. “Who cares? I can die now: now that I have lived."

  Ivy would never understand men. She figured that was a sign of her intelligence.

  The Navy fighters circled over the abandoned city, but they didn't bomb anything. Whoever was flying those fighters probably didn't want to have to explain to the Turkish authorities why they'd destroyed a priceless cultural artifact.

  That didn't mean they weren't going to investigate, though.

  Helicopters move more slowly than jet fighters, but their van was still in the hills overlooking the abandoned city when three of the lumbering beasts crawled over the horizon and headed directly toward the temple.

  Ivy veered to the side of the road looking for a turnoff where she could safely close her eyes and use her newly developed senses to find a hiding place.

  "Keep moving,” Zack said.

  "They'll spot us."

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But do you really think the Foundation has Cross-finding equipment on every ship in the fleet? I'm betting it will take a little while for them to get it here. And we're better off putting some distance between us and them than just sitting here and waiting for them to show up with all of their forces."

  She'd just been thinking about how irrational men could be, but she couldn't argue with Zack's logic. Besides, even if he were wrong, it wasn't as if they could hide forever.

  * * * *

  They were a hundred kilometers up the coast from Anamur when Ivy screamed and clutched her
head.

  Zack grabbed the steering wheel as the heavily loaded van veered off the road. Wrenching it from Ivy's unresisting hands, he managed to mostly avoid a scrub tree that grabbed at them, sacrificing a few paint shavings in return for staying alive.

  He yanked up the emergency brake and finally breathed again when the van crunched to a stop.

  "What was that about?” he demanded.

  Ivy opened her mouth, but not to answer. A gob of blood gushed out.

  Before they'd discovered the Cross and the Foundation had forced them to run, Zack had been on his fourth tour in Iraq. He knew was first aid. What he didn't know was how to deal with serious internal injuries.

  He was going to have to assume that whatever had hit Ivy was something he knew how to deal with.

  "Out,” he told Cejno.

  "Where should I—"

  "Get some water from the back. And some clean rags if you can find any."

  Cejno nodded, happy to be given a task.

  Zack wished someone would tell him what to do, take this responsibility from him.

  Ivy's pulse was fast, fluttering. She murmured something, but she appeared unconscious, unresponsive to his words or touch.

  He rinsed Ivy's mouth out with water Cejno brought him and made sure her windpipe was clear. He knew how to do a pocket-knife tracheotomy, and he'd try it if he had to, but he wasn't sure his patient would survive the exercise.

  Ivy moaned as he shifted her on the van seat, but she didn't say anything coherent or regain consciousness. The tracheotomy was out, but that didn't give him any answers.

  "Hospitals would ask many questions,” Cejno told him as he passed Zack another bottle of water. “They would demand to see the passports."

  If it came down to a choice between that and letting Ivy die, he'd take his chances with the Turkish medical system. He hoped that wasn't a decision he'd have to make. Ivy wouldn't thank him if he got her turned over to the CIA torturers.

  One possibility no first aid class had ever mentioned was putting her back on the Cross. It had saved her at least once already. But he knew so little about how it worked, what its risks might be, and whether using it might have sent the signal that the Navy had used to home in on the Temple back in Anamur, that he was reluctant to do that as long as Ivy didn't seem to be getting worse. He'd try it before he resorted to the hospital, though.

  "Those men in evil helicopters. Perhaps they do something that hurts Miss Ivy,” Cejno said.

  It was as good an explanation as any. It would also mean he'd underestimated how long it would take the Foundation to respond to sighting the Cross, or perhaps he'd never shaken them as completely as he'd hoped. Either way, the search was back on, in spades.

  Which meant they couldn't stay here like mice frozen by the hypnotic gaze of a cobra.

  He gathered Ivy up in his arms and carried her around the van to the passenger side. “Lay down the passenger seat,” he told Cejno. “We're going to keep moving."

  "Is that safe for Miss Ivy?"

  "Better than sitting here."

  After making Ivy a pillow out of a couple of blankets, rejecting Cejno's offer to ease her pain by feeding her a bit of hashish, and inspecting the van's underpinnings for broken transmission or oil lines, Zack reversed back to the highway and headed west.

  By European standards, Turkey is a good-sized country, one and a half times as large as France. By American standards, it was maybe the size of Texas, but with a population much larger than that of California.

  Using decent freeways, they could have crossed it in a long day.

  But while Turkey does have superhighways, Zack didn't trust them. It would be too easy for the military to put roadblocks across the major arteries. He guessed that the Navy hadn't positively identified their van as holding the Cross, but they probably had photographed all of the vehicles in the area of the temple. Within hours, the the Turkish authorities and an official suggestion that each of them be inspected.

  Since they'd left the heavily Kurdish territories, he couldn't even rely on Cejno's contacts for updates on where the roadblocks might be located.

  Fortunately, as he veered away from the coast, he and Cejno were able to spot a series of small roads, some paved, many not. With a bit of help from the GPS, He picked one that seemed to lead in the right direction.

  There were probably a million such roads in Turkey. It would take incredibly bad luck for them to stumble across a military checkpoint as long as they stayed off the beaten path.

  * * * *

  Ivy emptied her Kalashnikov into the monster, but her bullets seemed to pass through it like a sword through the fog.

  It reared closer, its breath foul, stinking of rotten flesh and fresh blood.

  She considered fighting but her courage failed. Instead, she turned and ran.

  Tried to run, anyway.

  Her feet couldn't grip the ground. With each step, she slipped back almost as much as she moved forward. Terror swept over her and she could do nothing to control it.

  The monster didn't have any problems with his chase, though. He came closer until she felt the heat of its breath against her neck and naked back.

  She redoubled her efforts to run, but now her legs wouldn't move at all. Something wrapped around them, constrained them.

  The monster's tentacles, she realized. How could she have missed seeing those?

  She was going to have to fight after all.

  She tried to turn, but even that was beyond her.

  "I'm not going that easy, you son of a bitch,” she screamed.

  "Hey. Are you all right?"

  Zack. He was here too? Why wasn't he doing something to help her? Could they have gotten to him, converted him? Was he too one of her enemies?

  "Come on and fight me, bastard."

  Something struck her shoulder, gripped her, shook her.

  She lashed out with a palm thrust and connected with something.

  "Jesus."

  Good. It might kill her, but at least the monster would know it had been in a fight.

  "Wake up, Ivy. You're having a nightmare."

  Nightmare? She didn't think so. Her eyes were open. She could see the monster, feel the tentacles around her.

  Just to prove it, she opened her eyes—again.

  "Oh."

  Zack leaned over her. One of his eyes was puffy and red, showing signs of what she suspected would become a monster of a shiner before long.

  "Was that me? Sorry I hit you. I must have been dreaming after all.” A horrible thought hit her. She'd been driving. “Did I fall asleep at the wheel? Is everyone all right?"

  "You didn't fall asleep. Something hit you all of a sudden. You went unconscious and bled like a pig."

  That didn't make much sense. If the Foundation could reach out and disable her, she had to believe they would have done more than send her into a nasty nightmare. But she didn't have time to worry about that now. “Okay, so where are we?"

  "We're getting near a town called Yaylaalan."

  She tried to remember what she'd seen of the map of Turkey they'd studied earlier that day—or the last day she'd been conscious anyway. “Is that on the coast?"

  "Maybe thirty kilometers inland,” Cejno said. “We thought it wise to get off the coast road. The Army will be looking for us there."

  There was that. It seemed that no matter what they did, the CIA and the Foundation always found them. Of course, her trick with Aphrodite's temple hadn't helped.

  "So, why are we parked by the side of the road?” If there was one thing they'd learned for certain, it was that the CIA was better at spotting them still than when they were moving.

  "You started thrashing so badly you hit me a couple of times,” Zack admitted. “I was afraid you were going to make me drive off the road."

  "Is that what happened to your eye?"

  He rubbed it. “That was a few minutes later when I tried to wake you up. Do you have any idea what happened? Do you think the Cross's
cure could be wearing off?"

  Since she'd been dead before the Cross had ‘cured' her, she had to hope that wasn't it.

  "Who knows? Anyway, I'm not going to clobber you again so let's get going."

  Zack headed for the drivers side and Ivy shook her head. “Maybe I should drive."

  "You almost killed us last time you tried that."

  "I really think I should drive."

  "Listen, you got sick, bled all over the place, and then had a nightmare you couldn't wake up from. You can drive some tomorrow, after you've had a good night's sleep and something to eat."

  Her stomach churned. “I've got a feeling, Zack."

  "You also had a feeling you should go into that temple. I'm not sure we can trust your feelings to keep us safe, Ivy."

  She felt a painful emptiness when she thought about that temple to Aphrodite. She still thought she'd done something important and powerful, although she wouldn't argue that it had been smart. And she guessed she shouldn't argue with Zack about that, either. It wasn't as if he was going to change his mind.

  Still, her body remained tense as Zack rattled the Mercedes along a road that had certainly been paved once, but could hardly be considered paved now.

  They were in the mountains again. Although the sea was only a few miles distant, low shrubs and the occasional grazing goat had replaced the beach-going tourists and the denser populations of the Mediterranean coast.

  When Zack had insisted on taking the wheel, she'd felt uneasy, but the pressure on the inside of her brain abruptly multiplied into a huge headache. “Stop.” She could barely make the words out as a whisper.

  "There's a crossroad in Yaylaalan.” Zack's voice held pity and annoying condescension. “We can decide on our directions there."

  "Damn it Zack, don't humor me. Turn this crate around. Now."

  Fortunately, he listened this time, hitting the brakes despite the disbelief written all over his face.

  Unfortunately, he'd waited too long.

  "I think we have the company,” Cejno said.

  Ivy's instincts might have warned them away from the Turkish Army roadblock. Once they'd been spotted, though, she would have wanted Zack at the wheel. He'd been armor and it showed.

  He leaned his skid into a turn, abruptly reversing direction without fully coming to a stop and headed away from the roadblock even faster than he'd approached it.