She found the image of Father Godin's grinning face coming back to mind. Why?she demanded of herself. She just kept thinking about him – his easy charm. His equally easy competence. The fact that he'd treated her with respect, not as if she were a little girl in a man's world, despite being totally an old-school European.

He knows my secret,she reminded herself forcibly. Not to mention the fact that he tried to kill me.

She had done some Internet research on him. It turned out he was quite notorious. He had a fascinating history. None of it was exactly confidence inspiring. Some was actively scary.

Still, Godin's smiling, homely yet charismatic face was far preferable to the image that hovered around the edge of her awareness, always looking to push inside, like a horrific specter at a banquet in a yarn by Poe or Lovecraft. The sight of that poor man burning in his own taxicab. Even if he was already dead.

Her phone rang. With a sigh of relief she flipped it open to her ear. "Annja."

"Ms. Creed? This is your doctor friend."

"Doctor?" she echoed, momentarily blank. Her first response was that this was a call from some fan of the show who had cadged her number somewhere. Maybe he offered Doug twenty bucks, she thought unkindly. She almost broke the connection then.

Almost. But the voice sounded familiar. Where earlier it had been jovial, now it was gruff.

She stopped walking. "Dr. Co – "

"Yes. Please. No more names. No questions. It is imperative that you listen. Will you?" Cogswell's voice sounded strained.

"Yes, of course."

"I have not been altogether open with you, I'm afraid. There is no more time for subterfuge. There may be no more time at all. Forces beyond your expectation are on the move. They may pose a danger to all humanity. They pose a highly specific danger to you. Do you understand?"

Her first response was to laugh. Cogswell was probably just a sad old monster crank, lonely and looking for a little drama to liven the aimless winding down of his life. Except – she clearly wasthe object of a conspiracy, of entirely deadly intent.

"Yes," she said.

"The sightings – you must study the sightings. Carefully, Annja. You have a scholar's mind. Treat them as puzzle pieces. Find how they fit – wait. Damn."

From the rush of wind into the phone it sounded as if he had turned his head momentarily away. He must be calling from a pay phone, she realized.

"Time's up," he said. "Seek the center, Annja Creed. Seek the – no! Damn your eyes, take your hands off – "

The connection died.

She stood there staring at the razor-thin flip phone in her hand. "A hoax," she said aloud. "Just theater."

But however much her mind wanted to believe that, her heart knew it lied.

Chapter 17

What Annja gathered was a premature heavy snowfall had laid a thick blanket of white over the low mountains surrounding Chimayó. Through breaks in thick cloud, the stars shone brightly enough to make the snow seem to glow.

She was still a good mile from the sanctuary when she started to see cars parked along the sides of the road. She had already come well off the beaten path here. Chimayó was solidly up into the lower reaches of the Sangre de Christos and not, from all indications, anybody's idea of a metropolis.

She parked the rented Honda on a shoulder of the road that was relatively flat and seemed to have a fair amount of bunch grass beneath the snow. The temperature was well above freezing and not likely to drop much, given the low ceiling of cloud. She had no desire to have her car bog down in mud – especially if she had to make a speedy getaway. She'd found herself having to do that with distressing frequency these days. The roots of the tough grass would tend to bind the soil and keep it from swallowing the car whole if the snow started to melt.

She got out. The air was surprisingly cold, especially after the mellow autumn afternoon she had left behind in Albuquerque. Her breath puffed out in clouds.

She made a face at the pine trees standing around with snow gleaming on their boughs. She had not brought a proper winter coat to New Mexico with her. Just days before the dig ended she had been working in shorts and halter top, and it was still flat-out hot. Even with a T-shirt and a long-sleeved flannel shirt on over it, her jacket was not likely to be terrifically warm. I'd better get moving, she thought.

Cars were rolling past her steadily if not very fast. A fair number were coming back the other way, cruising slowly, evidently in search of places to park. She chose to walk on the pavement, preferring to check behind herself frequently and moving off the road when vehicles approached rather than trying to slog along the snow-covered shoulder. Especially since that picture-postcard snow could hide all kinds of nasty pitfalls and snags to trip her or twist her ankle.

Striding briskly, she came around a forested ridge to see a double line of red taillights in front of her, with some flashlights waving a few hundred yards down the nearly static line. State police or sheriff's deputies were turning cars back. Apparently the sanctuary grounds were full enough already.

Other people made their way on foot around her.

Byron had filled her in on some curious details about the sanctuary. Aside from the chapel devoted to the Holy Child, where the faithful came to offer baby shoes and slippers, there was a pit dug behind the church. The blessed dirt was alleged to have healing properties. It had the miraculous character of never running low no matter how much was dug out. Annja suspected that was the sort of thing Dr. Lauren Perovich had been talking about when she enumerated reasons she loved living in New Mexico.

Byron had also told her of friends of his who came from the hills up here, who had served as altar boys. They'd been told to go and fill the hole with fresh sand when nobody was around. It appeared to be a semiopen secret. Yet each Easter attracted thousands of pilgrims to the sanctuary. Some walked from Albuquerque or farther away, others from Santa Fe – on their knees.

Approaching the police checkpoint, she felt a shiver run through her body that didn't have anything to do with the cold. Byron had told her that pilgrims were gathering for a memorial for the unfortunate snowboarder. They were also gathering out of fear from all the strange sightings.

As Annja got closer she could see the church was a conventional enough looking building in the Spanish Colonial style. It had a pitched roof flanked by two little square towers with belfries. A four-foot adobe wall surrounded it. An adobe-arched gate led into the courtyard. Its simplicity reflected the relative poverty and isolation of the area during the church's construction in the early 1800s. Yet, made of the local soil itself, with timber from local trees for its bones, it gave the appearance of strength, of enduring as the tiny community it served itself endured in the face of time and neglect and endemic poverty. As well as the encroachments of the modern world.

The light of candles danced above and among the gathered throng like fireflies. The effect would, under most circumstances, have put Annja in mind of a rock concert. But something about the mood of the crowd, the way everyone spoke in low, hushed tones as if in a church instead of outside it, gave it a far different feel.

No cars had been permitted to park within several hundred feet of the church. No new ones arrived, and no headlights shone. A few news crews stood off to the sides in isolated pools of glare, but otherwise very little artificial illumination was visible except a few lights from the village nearby. Annja saw a number of law-enforcement officers bundled in black fake-fur hats and dark bulky jackets with big reflective initials on the back.