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Walker looked at me thoughtfully. "Perhaps. I'd really hate to have to kill you, John. But I do have my orders."
Suzie pushed past me suddenly, standing at the edge of the pentacle so she glared right into Walker's face. "You set your pet on me. Set Belle on me. I could have died."
"Even I just have to do what I'm told, sometimes," said Walker. "However much I might regret the necessity."
"Wouldn't stop you doing it again, though, would it?"
"No," said Walker. "My position doesn't allow me to play favorites."
"I ought to shoot you dead where you stand," said Suzie, in a voice that was cold as ice, cold as death.
Walker didn't even flinch. "You'd be dead before you could pull the trigger, Suzie. I told you, I'm protected in ways you can't even imagine."
I moved quickly to stand between them. "Walker," I said, and something in my voice made him turn immediately to look at me. "There are things we need to talk about. Things you should have told me long ago. The Collector had some very interesting information about the old days, when you and he and my father were such very close friends."
"Ah yes," said Walker. "The Collector. Poor Mark. So many possessions, and none of them enough to make him happy. Haven't talked to him in years. How is he?"
"Well down the road to full on crazy," I said. "But there's nothing much wrong with his memory. He still remembers finding my mother, and putting her together with my father. If the three of you were as tight as he says, you had to know all about it. So who commissioned him to go out and find my mother, and why? What part did you play in it all? And how come you never told me anything about this before, Walker? What else do you know about my parents that you've never seen fit to share with me?"
By the end I was shouting right into his face, almost spitting out the words, but he held his ground, and the calm expression on his face never once changed. "I know all kinds of things," he said finally. "Comes with the territory. I told you all you needed to know. But there are some things I can't talk about, not even with old friends."
"Don't just think of us as old friends," said Suzie. "Think of us as old friends with a pump-action shotgun. Tell him what he needs to know, Walker, or we'll see how good your precious protections really are."
He raised a single eyebrow. "The consequences could be very unfortunate."
'To hell with consequences," said Suzie. Her smile was really unpleasant. "When have I ever given a damn for consequences?"
And perhaps he saw something in her eyes, heard something in her voice. Perhaps he knew Suzie Shooter's shotgun wasn't just any shotgun. So he smiled regretfully and used one of his oldest tricks. The Authorities had given him a Voice that could not be denied, by the living or the dead or anything in between. When he spoke in that Voice, gods and monsters alike would bow down to him.
"Put down the shotgun, Suzie, and step back. Everyone else, stand still."
Suzie put down her gun immediately and stepped back from the edge of the pentacle. Nobody else moved. Walker looked at me.
"John. Give me the bag. Now."
But what was in the bag burned against my side like a hot coal, fa
"Go to hell, Walker," I said. "Or better yet, stay right where you are while I come and beat the truth out of you. I'm in a really bad mood, and I could just use someone like you to take it out on. Can you still use the Voice when you're screaming, Walker?"
I stepped out of the pentacle, crossing the salt lines, and nothing could touch me. I could feel myself smiling, but it didn't feel like my smile at all. I was ready to do awful things, terrible things. I was going to enjoy doing them. Walker backed away from me.
"Don't do this, John. To attack me is to attack the Authorities. They won't stand for that. You don't want them on your trail, as well as your enemies."
"Hell with you," I said. "Hell with them."
"That isn't you talking, John. It's the Unholy Grail. That's why you're shielded from me. Listen to me, John. You don't know how much I've done to protect you, down the years, using my position in the Authorities."
I stopped advancing on him, though part of me didn't want to. "You protected me, Walker?"
"Of course," he said. "How else do you think you've survived, all these years?"
"Oh, you'd like me to think that, wouldn't you? But I know better. You belong to the Authorities, Walker. Body and soul. And now you're scared, because the Voice they gave you doesn't work on me. Perhaps it's the Grail, perhaps it's something I inherited from my mother or my father. You tell me. Are you ready to talk about my parents now?"
"No," said Walker. "Not now. Not ever."
I sighed, shrugged the airline bag off my shoulder, and let it fall onto the floor. Something cried out, in shock and rage, or maybe that was only in my mind. I stirred the bag with the toe of my shoe, and sneered a it. I'm my own man, now and always. I looked at Walker. "Why is it that everyone seems to know all about my parents except me?"
"The truth is, no-one really knows it all," said Walker. "We're all just guessing, and whistling in the dark."
"You're not getting the Unholy Grail," I said. "I don't trust you."
"Me, or the Authorities?"
"Is there a difference?"
"Now that was cruel, Taylor. Quite u
"You hurt Suzie."
"I know."
"Get out of here," I said. "You've done enough damage for one day."
He looked at me, then at Suzie and the others, still standing rigidly inside the pentacle. He nodded to them, and they all relaxed as the paralysis disappeared. Walker nodded once to me, then turned and walked briskly out of the bar and back up the metal steps. Suzie dived for her shotgun, but by the time she had it leveled he'd already disappeared. She scowled at me, her lower lip pouting in disappointment.
"You let him go? After everything he did? After what he did to me?"
"I couldn't let you kill him, Suzie," I said. "We're supposed to be better than that."
"Well done," said the man called Jude. "I'm really very impressed, Mr. Taylor."
We all looked round sharply, and there was my client, the undercover priest from the Vatican, standing patiently by the bar, waiting for us to notice him. Short and stocky, dark-completed, long, expensive coat. Dark hair, dark beard, kind eyes. Alex glared at him.
"Its getting so just anyone can walk in ... All right, how did you get in here, past two sets of homicidal angels and my supposedly state-of-the-art defenses that I'm begi
"No-one can prevent me from going where I must," Jude said calmly. "That was decided where all the things that matter are decided. In the Courts of the Holy."
"You aren't just an emissary for the Vatican, are you?" I said.
"No. Though the Vatican doesn't know that. I want to thank you for bringing me the Unholy Grail, Mr. Taylor. You've done me a great service."
"Hey, I helped," said Suzie.
Jude smiled at her. "Then thank you too, Suzie Shooter."
"Look," I said, a bit sharply, "this is all very civilized and pleasant, but whoever the hell you really are, how do you intend to get the Unholy Grail past the supernatural brigades surrounding this place?
They've already destroyed half the Nightside trying to get their hands on it. How can you keep it from them?"
"By making it worthless to them," Jude said simply. "May I have the cup, please?"
I hesitated, but only for a moment. Bottom line, he was the client. I never betray a client. And he had paid me a hell of a lot to find the Unholy Grail for him. I handed him the airline bag, and he reached in and took out the copper bowl. He dropped the bag on the floor and studied his prize, turning it back and forth. It was hard to read the expression on his face, but I thought it might be a kind of tired amusement.