The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

I wondered what Kawaguchi was waiting for. Whatever it was, I hoped it would be good - and powerful. Something nasty - something else nasty, I mean - was going to happen inside that building any minute now. I could feel it coming, in the same part of the inner me that felt the growing presence of Huehueteod like a bad sunburn.

Suddenly, Kawaguchi pointed. I spotted a flying carpet, way above the usual flyways and ignoring their traffic grid as if it didn't exist. Maybe it had a constabulary clearance that overcame all the anti-flying invocations that gave people and business their privacy… or maybe it was under the control of a higher Power.

As it got closer, I saw it was a big carpet, a freight hauler, and heavily loaded. It was gold, with a white cross - the colors of the Vatican flag. I knew the Vatican rug would also bear a woven - in legend in white - IN HOC SIGNO VINCES - but it was too high and too far away for me to be able to read that.

It was heading straight over the Chocolate Weasel building. Huehueteod's magical fire flamed up to meet it. I was afraid the flames would bum down the carpet and everybody on it. But one thing I give the Catholic Church - it has a saintly hierarchy in charge of looking out for more different things than all the bureaucrats in D.StC. put together. St. Florian watches specially over those who must contend with fire. I have no idea whether his power would have been enough to overcome Huehueteod down inside the Chocolate Weasel building, but it sufficed to keep the god from crisping the carpets. One of the monks riding the carpet (I could see his bare pate shining in the late afternoon sun) tipped a big earthenware urn down onto the roof of the Chocolate Weasel building, then another and another and another, mediodical as if he were on a carpet bombing run over Alemania in the Second Sorcerous War.

Those ums and whatever they held were heavy - I could hear them smashing on and maybe through the roof from several blocks away. And whatever was in them was spectacularly efficacious. The constant heat on my soul that radiated from Huehueteod went away, as if my spirit had suddenly dived into a clear stream. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He refresheth my said ran through my head.

I turned to Kawaguchi and Michael Manstein and asked,

"What are they dropping on them?"

They both stared at me as if I were an idiot. Then Michael said, "That's right, you are Jewish," as if reminding himself.

Very gently, he went on, "It's holy water, David."

"Oh." All right, I was an idiot. In fact, I was doubly an idiot not only was the stuff thaumaturgically potent in and of itself, it was also perfect symbolically - what better to oppose fire of any sort than its opposite among the elements?

Once Chocolate Weasel took all the punishment it had urned from the carpet, Kawaguchi blew a long, shrill blast on a whistle. SWAT teams, Yolanda's hazmat crew, and the EPA hazmat outfit swarmed toward the Chocolate Weasel building. Ordinary constables, the guys with mostly passive sorcerous gear and merely physical weapons - the grunts - followed in their wake.

"They were thrown back twice before," Kawaguchi said, more to himself than to me or Michael. This time-"

This time they moved forward. The SWAT team wizards carried holy water sprinklers like the ones the Loki guards in Burbank packed. Those hadn't been enough to protect them against the growing might of the Aztedan Powers before.

Now those Powers had been reduced by bombardment from On High, so to speak. And now the SWAT teams advanced cautiously toward the parking lot in front of Chocolate Weasel, then toward the building itself.

I got distracted at that point: the archdiocesan carpet floated down and landed just a few feet from me. "Good afternoon, Inspector Fisher," one of the monks on it said. "I wondered it I might see you here today. Somehow it seems fitting."

"Brother Vahan!" I exclaimed. "It certainly does." I trotted over to shake his hand. "Were you the bombardier up there?"

"I was indeed," he said with a sober nod. "God moves in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform. Not scriptural, but in this case accurate."

A curate? No, you're an abbot, my mind gibbered. I forced myself back to the here-and-now: "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I was in the cardinal's office, beseeching him on bended knee to reconsider his prohibition against my brethren's use of cosmetic sorcery to restore their appearance, when Legate Kawaguchi's communication reached His Eminence. He thought me an appropriate agent for the task requested, and I was pleased to obey him in this instance."