"I want you." Her hand curled around his velvet-covered fingers, and she moved over, making room for him. "Stay with me."

Lucan fought a silent battle with himself and lost. He pulled off his jacket, slipped his feet from his shoes, and lay down with her. Her bed was a third the size of his, and barely accommodated his length and bulk. He had never been more uncomfortable in his life, including the years he spent on his knees praying under the stern eye of the Templar master.

Then Samantha was curling up against him, and he forgot everything but putting his arms around her and holding her there.

He would not mouth empty platitudes; surely she had heard enough of those. "What will you do now?"

She thought about it. "Take a few days off. Bury my partner. Try to find a reason to stay on the job. They won't let me investigate Harry's murder because I was his partner, so I'm running low on reasons."

He would not permit her to go on risking her life to serve the police force. The man who had killed her partner could have easily done the same to her. Samantha didn't realize how much she needed his protection. She would also resent any insinuation that she did.

"Perhaps," he said carefully, "there is something else you could do besides police work."

"If I wasn't a cop, I'd be nothing. It's all I have." Her hair tickled his chin as she looked up at him. "You said you could help me find the man who killed Lena. Was that part of the come-on, or did you mean it?"

"Yes." Lucan hadn't considered how much of her self-esteem was involved in her work. He needed to show her what her life would be like with him, to give her a clear choice. But that would have to wait until after she had had proper time to grieve. "We will talk about it in a few days."

"I can't believe I'm in bed with you." Her voice slurred on the last words, and her eyes closed. "It's like a dream."

Lucan pulled the covers up around them. "Then go to sleep, Samantha."

Chapter 15

"Father, do you know where Brother Patrick is?" Mercer looked up from the chapter in Kings that he was pretending to read. "Not here, I hope."

"He's disappeared," Ignatius said. "He never came back from town with our supplies yesterday. He never came back at all."

"That's odd." Ignatius's voice was piercing the fog of wine Mercer had so carefully built over the last hour, but the old friar wouldn't go away until he showed some interest. "Did Brother Jacob receive a phone call from him?"

"I already checked, and no, he did not." Ignatius began pacing the floor in front of Mercer's desk. "You gave him cash to buy the supplies, didn't you? That was foolish. He has probably run off with it."

"Of course I gave him cash. John couldn't very well take the checkbook." Mercer wondered if Ignatius devoted all of his waking hours to looking for trouble. "Have you acquired new accommodations for him?"

"Not yet." Ignatius inserted his hands in the ends of his sleeves and assumed what he considered his most dignified posture. "There is something wrong with Brother Patrick. He shouldn't be here. He asks too many questions about us. I think we should report him to the Lightkeeper."

"I think you should remember who is in charge here," Mercer suggested. "I decide what Rome needs to know."

"Of course, Father." Ignatius's paranoia turned fearful. "Please do not think that I was questioning your judgment. I was only concerned. You have been under so much stress lately." He looked pointedly at the wine bottle on the desk.

Mercer magnanimously ignored that. "Ignatius, I am depending on you to hold things together here when I take the men out tonight to look for the maledicti. Please don't make me think I've made a poor choice."

"You haven't, Father." Now the guestmaster was babbling. "I have devoted myself to our cause, as you well know. Part of our promise to the Lightkeeper is to obey without question. I wouldn't dream of—"

"You needn't be so afraid of me." Mercer smiled. "Even Jesus questioned the Lord once. Go now."

After Ignatius left, Mercer contemplated his night's work. He had been sending the brothers in pairs to search the downtown clubs and report any suspicious activity, but he couldn't keep doing that, not after Rome's latest fax. The order was looking for a former priest named John Patrick Keller, and he was to be taken and detained for interrogators if possible, or terminated if not.

That pushed Mercer over the edge. He took out the bottle from his desk, began drinking, and hadn't stopped since.

That he had deviated from his mission now did not bother him in the slightest, for the order had asked too much of him this time. He was so close to finishing his work, after which he had planned to retire here at Barbastro and live out the rest of his life in peace. If he was careful, it was possible that he could. Over the years he had occasionally lived the life of a real priest; he longed to do so again. But the order was not willing to release him from their clutches, and no one ever left the order.

Death and destruction, that was all that mattered to them.

Mercer could not wantonly, destroy life; it went against everything he believed in. That was what had driven him to look outside the order, to consult with the priests of other faiths. His lengthy search had revealed one cult that wielded true mystical powers.

The santeros of Lukumi.

Mercer had not believed it the first time he had witnessed the old man practicing his witchcraft, or the second. The third time he tried to dismiss it as hysteria. Then one of the younger brothers had been caught in a minor scandal involving a young Cuban girl, and Mercer had gone to the santero to ask for his intervention. The old man had done better than that. He had made the problem vanish into thin air.

Even Mercer couldn't do that.

He picked up the phone and dialed a number in Little Havana, where the santero kept his church. The old man spoke only Spanish, but Mercer knew enough to make himself understood. They agreed upon a meeting time, the price to be negotiated. Then he called a local cab company and ordered a taxi to pick him up at the front gate within thirty minutes. When asked his destination, he told the dispatcher that he would give the address to the driver upon arrival.

"Whaddya mean, you want to go to Little Havana?" the cab-driver asked when Mercer climbed into the back thirty minutes later and gave him the address. "Do you know how far that is?"

Mercer handed him three twenties. "If the meter runs over that I have more."

"Whatever you say, pal."

The drive to Little Havana took over an hour, but it gave Mercer time to consider his options and to sober up a little more. The cabdriver stopped in front of the little church at the address Mercer had given him.

"You sure you want to get out in this neighborhood, Father?" The cabdriver looked at a posse of Cuban teenagers strolling casually by. All had knives and handguns tucked in the front pockets of their baggy jeans, and examined the cab with negligent interest. "You're gonna end up getting mugged or something."

"I'll be perfectly safe," Mercer assured him as he handed him another twenty. "Would you return for me in an hour, please?"

"Yeah, if you're still alive." The driver was still shaking his head as he drove away.

Mercer walked up the narrow sidewalk to the front of the little church. The hand-painted sign above the door read, CAPILLA DEL SAGRADO CORAZON DE OGUN in small, poorly sized lettering. Dents and rust blooms defaced the cheap tin siding, while an unadorned wooden cross, nailed to the roof peak, cast a skewed shadow with its sagging crossbeam.

Mercer had cast off most of his fears over time, but there was nothing on earth he feared more than walking through this door. The last time he had, Mercer had sworn he would never do so again. And yet, here he was. Come to beg for help from the helpless.

The stink of cigar smoke and rum greeted him as he stepped inside. To honor Babalu Aye, the Afro-Cuban version of Saint Lazarus, the worshipers here smoked cigars during church services, and drank from open bottles. There were no Bibles, no prayer guides, no canon or formal texts in this religion. The storytelling traditions of their native land combined with the need for secrecy kept them from permanently recording anything about their religion. Everything was passed along by word of mouth alone.

"Hola, Padre Lane," a young, sly voice greeted him. "Mi abuelo is expecting you."

Mercer told himself it was the heat that made him sweat as he moved farther into the church. Everywhere cheap votive and tealight candles flickered; no matter what hour of the day or night they were always left burning. The young grinning Cuban boy sitting by the altar waiting for him had a long, thick Havana cigar in his right hand. He tucked it in the corner of his mouth as he jumped up.

"Abuelo say for me to translate for you this time," the boy told him, and seized his hand with one small, dirty paw. "He say your Spanish suck."

Mercer wanted to laugh at the little church, the cigar-smoking boy, and his wicked, wicked grandfather. He wanted to run outside where the air was clean, where desperate men didn't consort with the unholy. But this man had helped him before, and each time everything he had promised had happened.

Lukumi was not that much different from Catholicism. Certainly it had embraced the practices and rituals of the church. Some said that it had also corrupted them with evil pagan practices born in Africa and brought to Cuba by slaves. Whatever it was, sometimes Mercer thought it might be the only true magic left in the world. It had been born in the cradle of civilization and had been blended with the greatest of the world's faiths. Perhaps that was what made it so powerful. .

The old man was sitting in his usual rocking chair, dressed in a faded Panama Jack T-shirt and frayed boxers. He had a quarter of a bottle of rum in his hand, from which he took a drink before he rose on unsteady legs.

"Padre."

"Santera." Mercer did not touch him, but bowed with respect. "Tell your grandfather that I need to remove a threat to our abbey. Tell him I must do this in secret, as before."