My Favorite Fantasy Story [anthology]

"Do you have it?"

"No. It isn't here."

Even the guys with the long guns were treating Maggie with respect— she must rate in someone's organization, I thought. Meanwhile, she was getting close to the light switch. I kept watch out of the corner of my eye, ready to make my move when she made hers.

"Where is it?" Remington said again.

She drifted another step sideways. "Do you know the stoneyard for St. John the Divine?"

Then her elbow smashed backward against the switch and the lights went out. I leaped over the sofa in a flat dive, rolled, and came up crouching in the corner near the window, with my back to the wall and the .45 in a two-hand grip in front of me.

I heard a nine-millimeter go popping off where Maggie had been standing, and an answering roar from the Remington— both of them laid over the stitching sound of the Stoner firing full auto.

That about did it for my ears. Too much gunfire and you're hearing bells ring an hour later. Of course, now the bad guys couldn't hear me, either. But my eyes were adjusting to the dark, and anyone standing up in front of the windows would be silhouetted against the skyglow.

I started duckwalking in the direction of the door, keeping my head low. My foot hit something hard. I reached down with my right hand, my left holding the .45 steady in front of me. It was the Stoner. The barrel was warm, which was more than you could say about the hand that held it. No pulse in the radial artery. I mouthed an absolution and continued moving along the wall.

Over by the window, another shadow was moving— a male, standing, with the distinctive shape of a pump-action in his hands. The weapon was swinging in slow arcs across the room. It stopped— he'd seen something. He started raising the shotgun to his shoulder.

I drew a careful bead on him. "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord," I muttered, and pulled the trigger.

Then I was rolling away, because a scattergun like the Remington doesn't need much aiming. But I needn't have worried— I saw his shadow drop in that boneless way people get when they're shot. A .45 yields a 98 percent one-shot kill rate. If I hit him… well, I don't miss often.

I fetched up against someone very soft and very warm— Maggie, waiting in the shadows by the other corner. She reached up and flipped the lights back on.

I stood flattened against the wall and looked around. Stone and Remington had both bought their parts of the farm. Maggie's two prettyboys were hugging the carpet and playing possum— at least they'd been smart enough not to be targets.

The tall one got to his feet.

"You found it?" he said to Maggie. "Come on, let's get over there."

"It isn't so far," Maggie said. "In fact it's—"

"Shut up," I said. "These two jokers aren't on your team."

"What do you mean?"

She was bringing the nine-mike-mike to bear on me. I pointed my own weapon at the floor, so she wouldn't get the wrong idea and make a hasty move, and nodded at the pair of corpses.

"How do you think the Bobbsey Twins over there found this place?" I asked. "They sure didn't follow us. I bet these two guys brought 'em along, and were going to play good cop/bad cop with us."

"But—" Maggie began.

"He's right, you know," the shorter one said. He produced an Uzi and brought it up to cover us. "Put down your weapons."

There comes a time when you know you've lost. I dropped my piece. Maggie did the same. The guy with the Uzi nodded at his buddy.

"Fred, pick them up."

The tall one— Fred, I guess his name was— stepped forward and bent over to pick up the handguns.

Shorty was still talking to Maggie. "The Grail isn't at St. John the Divine. We already checked. So I'm afraid I'll have to search you— several times, in a variety of positions. Unless you tell me where the Grail is right now. The truth and no tricks."

Maggie shook her head. "I don't think so."

"A pity," said Shorty. "You'll still be a Bride of Christ— you just won't be a virgin Bride of Christ— and you'll wind up telling me anyway."

"I don't know where it is," Maggie said.

"Then all my work will be for nothing," Shorty said, but he was grinning as he said it.

"Please," I said, trying to make my voice sound like I was scared witless. "I don't know what any of this is about. Please let me go—"

"Shut him up," Shorty said.

At least I'd gotten his eyes on me instead of Maggie. And Fred was coming up, his pistol in one hand, mine in the other. That's when I kicked him, a reaping circular kick, taking him in the throat. It raised him to his feet and set him stumbling backward.

Shorty fired— but someone should have taught him how to shoot. His round missed me, thought I could feel the wind of it past my cheek and the answering spatter of plaster from the wall. I dove forward, spearing Fred in the belly with my head. Shorty's second shot took his partner between the shoulder blades as Fred was driven backward into him.

Then all three of us went down, and a moment later it was over. I rolled onto my back. Maggie was standing over me.

"You've been hit."

"I don't think so." But when I looked down at myself, sure enough here was blood pouring out, soaking the pocket where I'd put her bag— and where I kept my supply of Hosts. The Hosts were bleeding.

At that moment I knew. And looking into her eyes, I could tell she knew, too.

"It really was the Grail," she said.

"Looks like. Let's get out of here before the cops show up."

"Where to?"

"I'll introduce you to a man," I said. "You'll like him."

We left. The first police car arrived, lights flashing, when we were halfway down the block.

As dawn was breaking over a soggy New York morning, I was in the Rambles again. Prester John was waiting.

"Here it is," I said, tossing the sack to him. He opened the bag and rolled out the gemstones inside it.

"Yes," he said. "The substance is here, though the accidents have changed." The accidents. I should have thought of that back at the UN, when the Host that touched the meditation stone didn't bleed. A wafer, when its transubstantiated, still has the outward appearance— the accidents— of a flat bit of unleavened bread, while it's substance is the body of Christ. In the same way, the Grail's substance— whatever it is that makes it truly the Grail— now had the accidents of a handful of precious stones.

John looked back up at me, his hand clenching around the Grail. "Who's your friend?"

"Sister Mary Magdalene," she said. "From the Special Action Executive of the Poor Clares. I presume you're with the Temple?"

Prester John inclined his head.

"Pleased to meet you," she said. "We'd heard that there was some hanky-panky going on, especially when the Cathar Liberation Army started moving people into town."

"I can fill in the rest," I said. "Maggie's group was infiltrated by the Cathars, just before they got sold out themselves by the Luciferians. That's where Max Lang fits in. The Lucies had been contracted to grab the Grail because they were the only ones besides us who could handle it. Lang carried a bag of jewels in— swapped the substance of the jewels into the lodestone and the substance of the Grail into the jewels— and walked out. That gave them the Grail, but once the Lucies had it, they didn't want to turn it over, at least not to the Cathars. You remember what kind of mess there was last time they owned it."

"As if you can speak of anyone owning the Grail," Prester John said. "You're right: Lang must have transubstantiated the Grail into this little sack of jewels, and left the stone in the Meditation Room transubstantiated into a hunk of rock."

It all made sense. It also explained how the Lucies had smuggled six and a half tons of lodestone into and out of the UN— they hadn't. Nobody had carried anything through security that was bigger and heavier than a bag of marbles.