Veil of the Goddess (30 page)

He looked at the line of cars waiting to exit, then at the helicopters.

"Keep your fingers crossed."

Ivy nodded. “Think about where we're going to go if we make it off. Because there's going to be a second invasion of Gallipoli any minute now. And this time, the Turkish military and police are likely to be on the same side as the invaders."

Zack roared off the ferry as soon as the cars in front of him cleared a path and headed for the village of Gelibolu.

Ivy rolled down her window and leaned out, giving him a blow-by-blow of the arrival of the helicopters.

"I wonder why they're not heading straight for us,” she said after he'd spent ten minutes trying to get lost in the narrow streets of the town. “We know they have sensors that can track the Cross."

"This place is chock full of war memorials, graveyards and chapels,” Zack said. “Lots of prayer. Should be plenty of power spots to disguise us. Can you sense them?"

She went still, examining their surroundings by that inner sight the Cross had given her.

"You're right. Maybe there's enough power here to confuse them for a bit. Let's keep moving."

Zack concentrated on driving, letting Ivy navigate.

She gave him directions using a cheap map they'd bought from a tourist shack and even more often, using her second sight.

Five times in the next couple of hours, she directed him off the road to nearby Mosques, chapels, or the ancient marble bones of what might have been Byzantine churches or possibly the ruins of even older pagan temples going back to the days when Alexander the Great had set off from this region on his quest to conquer the world.

Others had tried to emulate Alexander's quest. Crassus, The Emperor Julian, Richard the Lion Hearted, Barbarosa, Napoleon, Hitler—all had failed in their attempts to impose the sway of the west over the east. Most had been destroyed by that destructive goal.

It occurred to Zack that the Foundation might be following that same dream. Alexander had pulled it off and it was possible the Foundation could match his accomplishments. No one could stand against the U.S. military in open battle. Already, they occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and had powerful bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Oman as well as an aggressive and warlike ally in Israel. The True Cross had led the west into battle before. Could a new crusade be more successful?

"There's something weird ahead.” Ivy's voice broke through Zack's concentration. “Get ready to slow down."

"Dangerous?"

She shrugged. “Isn't everything?"

They'd just passed through the city of Kesan when Ivy spotted the pale lavender power glow.

Unlike the red of the Cross or the blue of the Veil, this power was more dispersed but it was definitely strong.

"Turn right here.” She directed Zack into a grove on the side of the road.

"What is it?"

She checked her Kalashnikov. With no bullets left, it might serve as a threat, but she'd learned one thing from her military training—never threaten if you aren't prepared to follow through.

Zack followed her directions, weaving the Opal through the grove until he emerged into a clearing.

Wooden carts, a huge bonfire, and a troop of children practicing acrobatic moves told Ivy they'd stumbled across a gypsy caravan.

"Perfect,” she said. “We'll blend in with them."

"What makes you think they're going our way?"

She smiled. “We'll persuade them."

Although the gypsy children pretended not to see them, Ivy noticed they didn't come too close to the car. She was pretty sure there must be adults around too, but she didn't see any. No one lingered around the fire. No mother supervised her children.

They got out, moving slowly. “Hello. Do any of you speak English?"

After a brief discussion, one of the children, a girl of maybe twelve, was appointed the spokesperson.

"Take my picture, then pay,” she suggested. “Maybe have fortune said?"

"I have a bad feeling I know my fortune,” Zack whispered. “If I'm right, I definitely don't want to find out for sure."

The girl grabbed Ivy's hand, stared at her palm for a moment, then dropped it and screamed.

"They'll probably try to sell you something to eliminate your bad luck.” Zack was being cynical. Maybe he'd had bad experiences with gypsies before. To Ivy, they seemed incredibly romantic and old-fashioned.

One thing for sure, she didn't think the girl's scream was anything planned. The other children had huddled around the girl and were speaking a mile a minute, but using whatever language gypsies use when they don't want strangers to understand them.

After considerable screeching and a lot of hand-pointing, a boy of maybe six separated from the group and ran off into the trees.

"Summoning adult supervision,” Zack said. “I wonder if we shouldn't get back in the car and get out of here while we still can."

"That might have been wise.” The voice was heavily accented, male, and positively threatening, although not as threatening as the over-under shotgun he pointed at Zack. “But it is too late for that decision."

"We are looking for some help crossing the border into Greece.” Ivy forced down her fear. “It's important that we get away from here."

"Important to an American does not necessitate important to the Romany."

The girl who'd grabbed her hand ran up to the man, being careful not to step between Zack and the shotgun, and started blabbing something.

It must have been convincing because after twenty seconds of listening, he shifted the shotgun so it pointed at Ivy.

"Who are you and what are you looking for?"

"As I said, we're looking for a way out of Turkey. Into Greece, if possible."

He narrowed his dark eyes into a squint. “Why would a vampire want to go to Greece?"

Where had that come from? “I'm not a vampire."

"Yolanda has the second sight. She says your lifeline is broken in the recent past. You were dead, then alive again. Who else but an undead would have such a line?"

"Are you Christian?"

He shrugged. “I ask the questions here."

"I just wondered because all Christians know the story of Lazarus, how he was dead and then came back to life. I've never heard he was a vampire."

The gypsy squinted. “Did you hear that he wasn't?"

Okay, he had her there. She thought the point of the Lazarus story was just about how Jesus brought him back, not about what happened once he'd been brought back, although presumably he had comforted his grieving relatives and got on with his life. Still, Ivy didn't think the Bible would have played up the story quite so much if he'd come back and started killing and drinking blood.

"Come on. You can touch me. Feel my pulse. Feel that I'm still warm. Oh, and I'll eat something with garlic.” What did gypsies eat? Ivy was hungry enough to give just about anything a try, although she might draw the line at human blood.

The gypsy ran a hand through his long greasy hair and then barked a question at the girl.

She nodded cautiously.

"This is beyond me. I will summon the Queen."

Ivy had noticed the second man sneaking up on her from behind. As he reached for her, she shifted her weight and let him stumble past.

Zack's fists knotted and the muscles on his neck tensed as he prepared to go into white knight mode and probably get both of them killed.

"It's okay, Zack. They probably just want to make sure we're not carrying."

The first gypsy nodded. “My friend gets sometimes over-ambitious. Please allow the tapdown."

Ivy anticipated some extra groping, but the quick search was professional and impersonal. “She's clean. And she's warm. Feels alive to me."

"Take her to the Queen."

Hidden in a dry wash a few hundred yards beyond the traditional carts of a gypsy caravan were the modern versions. Truck-pulled trailers, the aluminum dull and pitted, had been pulled in a circle reminiscent of old western movies showing wagon trails under Indian attack. Possibly, Ivy reflected, the gypsies would see themselves as continually under attack, just as the neighboring communities would see themselves as threatened by the gypsies.

The shotgun-wielding gypsy gestured them to open the door to one of the smaller trailers. “In there."

Ivy had collected the veil from Zack, but felt a bit naked with the Cross out of her sight. Still, the lavender haze of the gypsy camp would hide both Cross and veil from the Foundation. If she could win the gypsy Queen over to help them. If she couldn't, physically dragging the thing around with her wouldn't help.

She opened the door and stepped into the unlit interior.

The door slammed into her butt the instant both her feet were inside, shoving her forward and turning the dim interior into complete darkness.

Physical darkness, anyway. Because the power glow was strong inside. Incense smoldered on little alters devoted to otherwise forgotten gods and provided multicolored energy light that her newly developed senses picked up.

Behind her, she heard the sounds of a brief struggle, of fist hitting flesh.

"It's okay, Zack,” she called to her partner through the closed door. She sensed that this was a place reserved for women, that Zack would be making a horrible mistake if he tried to force his way into the trailer.

The struggle subsided, although she could practically smell the testosterone exuded by the males outside.

What appeared to be a heap of clothing in the center of the room shifted slightly and Ivy recognized the heap as something human. The Gypsy Queen.

The Queen looked as old as the Australian woman on the ferry, although Ivy suspected the strains of her office and of living on the road, rather than merely chronological years had created much of that sense of age.

"They told me we needed to see you,” she said.

"And do you see me?” The Queen's voice was harsh, like a rusty gate that had been too long without oil. “It is dark in here."

Ivy closed her eyes. “You're wearing a sort of poncho with an eight-sided cross pattern and sitting in the middle of the floor. It looks like you've got some sort of pentagram going with a little mount of sea-salt at each corner. I can't see your eyes and your hair is covered by a handkerchief."

Hope sprang up in her heart—the eight-sided pattern reminded her of the stars on Mary's veil.

"Yes, you see something. Give me your hand."

Ivy stepped toward the pentagram, then reached across the faint lines that ascended from the floor into infinity.

Her skin tingled where it crossed the line, but it wasn't painful.

The Queen snatched her hand and studied it carefully.

Only then did Ivy realize that the Queen's eyes had been sewn shut. She was blind. Blind, at least, to the wavelengths which normal humans could detect. Blind or not, though, clearly the Queen could see plenty.

"My granddaughter thinks you are a vampire."

Ivy hadn't thought about it before, but the original Dracula hadn't lived too far from where they were now. It shouldn't be a big surprise that the legends of the undead would be strong in his neighborhood.

"Your granddaughter sees part of the truth and fills in the rest from her imagination."

"That truth being that you are not a vampire but a saint?"

Ivy wished people would stop calling her that. She was a woman trying to stay alive.

"I just got lucky when someone tried to kill me."

The blind woman stared at her. “Show me what you're carrying."

For an instant, Ivy thought she meant the Cross. But the Cross was still outside, in the car. So, she must mean the Veil.

"It's very old."

The Queen gave a choking laugh. “I can be careful."

The Veil's power shined so brightly Ivy had to blink the tears out of her eyes. With her eyes sewn shut, the Queen couldn't do that. She reared back at first, then reached out her hand to stroke the precious material.

"Beautiful."

Ivy nodded, wondering if the Queen could see her gesture.

"Do you know what it is?"

"The Patriarch of Constantinople says that it is the veil of the Virgin Mary."

"Is it?” The Queen snorted.

"So he says. It was hidden for many hundreds of years."

"Hidden, yes. For more years than you can imagine. Mary may have worn it, but it was not Mary's alone, not hers first. This Veil was a secret for centuries before Mary was born. If this was indeed hers, Mary is more than your Christian faith allows you to believe."

She pushed her own poncho forward so Ivy could make out the design. She'd been right—the designs were almost identical to those on the veil. “What do you see?"

"Sorry, Queen. I don't believe that Mary was a gypsy.” Since she'd found the Cross, Ivy had been forced to believe plenty of things she had never even suspected, but there were lines she wasn't about to cross. It was a lot more likely that the gypsies had adopted Mary's design than that Mary had chosen theirs.

The Queen snorted. “Of course not. But if she wore that veil, she was more than just a mother."

Mother of God, Queen of Heaven
. Yeah, Ivy had been raised Catholic long enough to think of Mary as a lot more than
just
a mother.

"We need help.” Ivy figured it was time to change the subject. “We're trying to get to Greece but we don't have passports and I wouldn't be surprised if the Turkish army wasn't looking for us. As is the CIA."

"I see."

"Will you help us?"

The old woman moved her cheeks in and out. It wasn't an attractive gesture and Ivy made a mental note not to do anything like that, ever—especially if she one day lost all of her teeth.

"The Veil you carry was hidden well. Our people have walked the streets of old Constantinople searching for power for hundreds of years. How did you find it when we could not?"

Ivy suspected the Queen wasn't changing the subject. This question had something to do with whether the gypsies would help them. “It was not just hidden, it was locked and protected. I had the key."

"Ah, a key."

The Queen brushed away the ward lines and grasped Ivy's arm, her thin fingers cold and rough against Ivy's skin. “A bargain, then. We too have a lost object of power. If your key can recover it for us, we will help you get across the border."