(21) Crucia

Sanguineus took a quick look at the ritual's participants, then he listened, head bent and eyes closed, to what he could hear of the conversation.

Berenice: "Vlepo tin apodeixi arketo." ('I see proof enough.')

Marianne: "Einai Pigosos to kanai!" ('It's Pegasus doing it!')

Berenice: "Ambrosia, as Omiros mas fardy!" ('let Homer cut us loose!') "Ra prin einai poly arga!" ('Hurry before it's too late!')

Ambrosia: "Perimenete! Den echei akomi... Pigosos! Ela!" ('Wait! Not yet... Pegasus! Come!')

At that, Sanguineus looked through his handheld night goggles and saw the horse canter up to the hooded person, apparently the man Homer. He, like all the other men, was perfectly still but for the heaving of his chest, as though he and the others were having grave trouble breathing.

To the protest of the two women on the levitating crosses, who now struggled to free themselves, Ambrosia swung herself up upon the back of Pegasus. She leaned over to take the raised hand of an excited Fabienne. It was then that Sanguineus saw the anxious searching look of Ambrosia.

She pulled Fabienne up behind her, where the girl straddled the broad grey back, her arms around Ambrosia's waist.

"Ambrosia's looking for you," whispered Sally Anne. "She knows we're here. Do the other women know?"

"It's very doubtful," Sanguineus said. He put aside the goggles and settled himself to take aim on the clearing with his carbine. "She's expecting me to take out Marianne, or possibly the hooded guy, this Homer. But something's not right. That thug next to Agape. A chest shot. Take it. I'll watch the other two thugs. Do it!"

Sally Anne felt a sudden electric sensation. She put the crosshairs of her scope on the center of the bodyguard's chest. He stood motionless but in a tense attitude. The moment her aim was true she squeezed the trigger. A low pulsing beat, a mild pressing against her shoulder, and the target blurred.

She looked up. The black-suited figure lay on its face a yard from the canvas chair of Agape. Her electric feeling dissolved into a strangely numb euphoria.

Through his scope Sanguineus scanned the faces of Agape and the two other thugs, seeing the same identical expression on each: a look of dawning horror and a crumbling of disbelief.

Homer seemed to be struggling to turn and walk, or run. His face in the depths of the hood was dark green with black blotches. He could not uproot himself from his place in the drama.

Ambrosia glanced at the fallen thug, then she again searched the darkness and all that was silvered within it by the moon.

"Sanguineus!" she called. "Eimaste makria gia na ta asteria!" ('We are off to the stars!')

He turned his face to Sally Anne. "Take out the other two thugs. Keep an eye on Agape. If he moves a hand from his thermos bottle, snuff him. I'm going in."

Sanguineus placed the carbine against her left leg. He unslung his Glock machine pistol, got to his feet, and, as the first of the two thugs dropped, he strode out to the clearing, pulling off his hood, tossing it aside, the Glock pointing dead steady at Homer.

Pegasus reared at his approach. The forehoofs came down in a paddling motion but did not touch the ground. Even so he kicked out his back legs, and like a rockinghorse he lurched forwards and back, but in midair.

Sanguineus felt an oppressive force striking him. He dared not look at the horse or at its two riders. He felt violated. But he would not try to stop Ambrosia from whatever she was attempting, and the girl was the reason. Let Fabienne have her chance to be healed, however forlorn a chance it was.

But if her death was Ambrosia's intention?

He came up to the robed and hooded Homer as Pegasus leaped impossibly high and the two women screamed, they and their crosses rising swiftly as though attached to the flying horse by invisible wires.

Sanguineus pulled back the coarse brown hood. The bared head could not raise its face to look up at him, though it tried.

It was Mr Saranikos.

And immediately Sanguineus thought of the two teen girls, Hidalga and Heidi. The moment his intuitive thoughts turned to the car he heard its engine roar, then quieten to a raspy purr.

He looked up, just as Agape slumped forward and then back, the chair collapsing under his sprawling body.

Pegasus was weaving drunkenly over the tree tops. Sanguineus heard Fabienne cry out in fear, Ambrosia shouting commands to the super horse whose power was fast failing it. "Epano!" ('Up!') she pleaded.

The two laden crosses spun like falling maple leafs.

"Mr Cruor!"

It was Sally Anne coming over to him with both carbines, her eyes wide with wonder. "What the fucking hell!"

Sanguineus gave her an appraising look. "Go down toward the car. Stealthily. Don't make a target of yourself. Shoot anything that moves. But don't get too close to it. Wait for me to join you. Here--" He relieved her of his carbine. "Go."

As she moved off to the grotesque postures of the olive trees she swept the clearing with a last look: four dead men and one left standing, whose face was as twisted as the olive trunks. But the face seemed to be softening. The sleeved arms were jerking, twitching. The effects of the girl and the horse were wearing off.

Sally Anne turned her eyes to the moonlit vista beyond the trees just as Sanguineus put a forearm full of pressure on the carotid artery of Homer Saranikos.

She crouched under the branches and dropped to her belly in the rocky, grassy ground.

The car, a Chrysler, stood sideways to her on the edge of the slope, up to which the tracks led from the dirt road sixty yards or more from her position. The lights of Corinth blazed in a line along the horizon. Moonlight glittered on the velvet blackness of the Corinthian gulf. There was no movement or any sign of passengers in the car, though its motor continued purring.

But these things were a blink on the radar of her consciousness.

She was watching Pegasus stumbling down from the sky in a tragic miracle.