The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Then I had a worse thought. Much worse. I'd been acting on the assumption that the people from Chocolate Weasel had something to do with kidnapping Judy. If she was hidden away somewhere in the building when the constables flew into the lot…

"God forbid," I whispered. I tried not to think about it, to tell myself it was impossible, but I knew too well it wasn't.

Just then, the roof of the building that housed Chocolate Weasel started burning a lot brighter. It wasn't an ordinary flame; it wasn't even like the flame from a salamander, which is powered from the Other Side but manifests itself here.

This flame you didn't just see; you felt it in the place where prayers come from. I close my eyes, but that didn't help. My soul still felt scorched.

"Huehueteod," Legate Kawaguchi and Michael said in the same breath. Quietly, Michael added, "One must conclude that the sacrifices within the building have reached a critical mass, allowing him to manifest himself fully in Angels City."

"I wonder how long we have to wait for Huitzilopochtii," I said numbly.

"He being a greater Power, more sacrifice will be necessary to bring him onto This Side," Michael answered.

"Hueheuteod's manifestation, however, will only speed his translation from the Aztecian gods' realm on the Other Side to our present location." "Thanks for the encouragement," I said. Michael gave me a puzzled look, then recognized irony and nodded.

The flames on the roof leapt higher. After some delay, thick smoke began to rise as real flames joined the spectral ones emanating from Huehueteod. I wondered how the people inside the Chocolate Weasel building were faring now that it burned around them. Maybe Huehueteod protected them from the flames so they could go on sacrificing. Or maybe they'd just keep doing what they were doing until they burned to death. Every faiUi has its martyrs willing, even eager, to the for the greater glory of the Powers they reverence.

I wished the Aztecians would have shown their piety another way.

Kawaguchi was shouting into a constabulary-model ethemet set. It held two different imps, so he could both send and receive messages. He looked toward the burning building, then to Michael and me. "Are you gentlemen familiar with the Hanese ideogram for the term 'crisis'?"

"I am," Michael said; I might have guessed he would be.

He went on, "It combines the ideograms for 'danger' and 'opportunity.'"

Kawaguchi looked surprised and maybe a little disappointed that,a pale blond chap had stepped on his lines. But he nodded and said, "Exactly so. And developments here have now reached the crisis stage. If in the next few minutes Huitdlopochdi succeeds in manifesting himself as dioroughlyas Huehueteod has-"

That was the danger, all right. If it happened. Angels City was in more trouble than it had ever known. The only problem was, I didn't see any skin of the opportunity.

"I have been in touch with the archdiocese of Angels City," Kawaguchi said. They will do what they can for us."

"An acute strategic move. Legate," Michael said, nodding in approval. The Power based at Rome successfully overcame those centered on Tenochtitlan almost five hundred years ago; with luck, it will do so again."

"Alevai," I said, a most un-Catholic endorsement of his sentiment. But I didn't stop worrying, or even slow down.

The Spainish who'd brought Christianity to Aztecia were fanatics, nothing else but; they had to be, or else they never would have tried it. But over the years, the Church has turned fat and lazy and rich and comfortable. The fanatics were in the Chocolate Weasel building now, doing their best to fuel the revival of the old Aztecian gods.

Balance of Powers, I thought, and shivered.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked Kawaguchi. "Exorcists to come and try to drive Huitzilopochtii back to the Other Side before he can fully establish himself here?"

The constable, you will have gathered, was a worn, dour fellow. Now he surprised me with a wall-to-wall smile. The response the cardinal offered me was nowhere near so halfhearted."

I wished he hadn't said halfhearted, not when you thought about how Huitzilopochtii and Huehueteod were being summoned into Angels City. But the cardinal, that stiffnecked Erseman - I'd thought he was on the fanatical side when he refused to grant the burned Thomas Brothers monks a dispensation for cosmetic sorcery. Most of the time, I still thought that kind of fanaticism out of place in our century.

But right this minute, it might end up saving all our asses - and maybe our souls, too.

Kawaguchi kept watching the sky. Had Quetzalcoad shown any skin of manifesting himself along with the other Aztecian Powers, I would have tried to get hold of Burbank again to see what the Garuda Bird could do against the Feathered Serpent As things were, though, I didn't see how the Bird could help.