“Me either,” Sheng said, thoughtful for a moment. “Listen,” he continued, “I don’t even know if Cody’s still alive, but if we find out he is, believe me, we’ll hunt him down and get some answers, and we won’t be the only ones on the trail. But right now we’ve got more important things to worry about. The assassinations are getting more and more frequent. I don’t know how the church is finding us, but finding us they are. Over the next few days we network, have a good time, make contacts with the eldest among us, see who’s here. We let everyone enjoy carnival, enjoy Valentine’s Day, but when Tuesday’s over, we call a meeting. We’ve got to either go underground or go to war, and it doesn’t look like going underground would help much.”
“So it’s war, then,” Alex mused, shaking her head. “I never thought I’d see the day. I never thought the church would chance it. And I find myself wishing Peter were here, and I sure as hell never thought I’d say that. He was the best of us when it came to this life. A warrior prince he was born, and as much as it seems to have left him, I doubt he’s able to betray his own blood, his heritage, as easily as he did the coven.”
“That’s the truth”—Sheng nodded—“though I’m loath to admit it. And if that book holds in its pages what Karl believed was there, we’ll need Peter even more.”
“He didn’t even call when Karl died,” Alex said.
“Bastard.”
9
IT’D BE A FEW DAYS BEFORE OLD MANNY Soares would be able to start pinching nurses’ butts, but in the meantime, he was determined to get an eyeful. Ever since he’d woken up several hours earlier, he’d been floating between drug-induced nirvana and a very special kind of pain. The kind that doesn’t fool around but comes right on up and says, “Hey, fuckhead. You’re not from around here are you?”
Manny turned his attention back to the TV set. Unfortunately the injury to his left hand prevented him from adjusting the volume or changing the channel. The nurses had to do that for him, on top of everything else. Which wasn’t that big a deal, considering how much he slept. He supposed that at this wee hour of the morning, his set wasn’t even supposed to be on, but Carmela, the night nurse, liked him, and knew he’d be floating in and out all night. He wasn’t really sure of the time, but Gary Grant played the dapper businessman in glorious black-and-white on TV38’s late late show. Also, he didn’t like the room to be too dark. Darkness led to thoughts of Roger’s murder, and the guy he’d seen, the bastard who’d shot him. The flickering of light from the late show broke the darkness, sapped its strength, and kept his mind off the nasty thoughts. For the moment.
His attention span was about ninety seconds, and he began to slide again. Down, down into that liquid plane where the brain floated and the eyes sank. He was about to drop anchor in that softly rolling ocean when he heard it.
At first he ignored it, the clattering sound in the hallway, which he of course did not recognize as anything but a disturbance in the water. But when it came again, it could not be ignored, followed as it was by the click of the door handle and the turning of the knob.
This time there was no buzzing at the door, only an insistent knocking. This time she did not drift slowly out of sleep, but snapped immediately awake. This time it could not be Peter at the door, because he was on the couch (rejected you). This time Meaghan was worried, but not scared. Even if Peter had rebuffed her advances, his presence lent her an assurance that was invaluable to her at this moment.
They had found Janet’s body. She was certain of it. She could think of no other reason why someone would be knocking on her door at five o’clock in the morning. Not only that, but wasn’t this the way she had envisioned it from the moment she realized that Janet was missing. Janet, the only person in the world she had ever been in love with, disappeared without a trace, and so of course it’s only natural that the police would show up at five o’clock in the morning to tell her they’d found the body so she wouldn’t learn about it on the morning news.
At least Peter was here. At least there was that. Even though he had turned her away, in her heart she knew that he had not done it for lack of desire. She could feel that there was something else holding him back, and as soon as she found that something, she would destroy it, leaving him open to whatever their obvious lust for each other might bring.
And maybe now that she knew the worst possible news awaited her at the door, maybe now she needed the glimmer of positive thinking that Peter represented.
She wiped sleep from her eyes as she entered the living room. Peter was already on his feet when she came in, reaching for the holster draped over an armchair and covered by his jacket. He looked at her, worried as well, though she didn’t sec her own certainty at the knocker’s identity mirrored in his eyes. Rather, she saw a fierce curiosity. She shouldn’t wonder, though; it had been a long night for both of them, but especially for Peter. And one way or the other, it was about to get longer.
Though she didn’t realize it, her lack of sleep had put her in an almost trancelike state, so that when she went to draw back the dead bolt on the door and Peter slapped her hand away, she actually looked at him with wonder on her face, about to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.
His look stopped her. And brought her to reality.
“No buzzer,” he hissed.
That’s right, Meaghan thought, you stupid bitch. No fucking buzzer and here you are sliding the dead bolt back when it could be just anyone, including the guy Peter was supposed to be here protecting you from.
She took a deep breath as the knock came again. Peter clicked off the safety on his gun and held it pointing toward the ceiling as Meaghan had seen detectives do in so many movies. Ah, another piece of TV myth confirmed. But I’m stalling, she knew, and only spoke when urged to do so by Peter’s silent exhortations.
“Who’s there?” she asked in a loud voice, louder and stronger than she would have expected. And the knocking ceased.
“Meaghan?” came the voice from the other side of the door, soft and feminine, almost a whisper.
Peter shot her a questioning glance.
“Meaghan, let me in,” the voice came again, pleading in that low whisper. “It’s cold out here.”
“Holy shit, it’s Janet.”
She and Peter exchanged shocked looks as Meaghan slid back the dead bolt, though she couldn’t help but note that Peter’s hands were still wrapped around the pistol he held in the air.
She pulled open the door, wide-eyed as she took in the figure standing in the deep darkness of the hall.
“Janet?”
In the moment between regaining what passed for full consciousness for him these days and the opening of his hospital-room door, Manny had felt an overwhelming sense of dread seize him. He felt cold, colder than any drugs could make him, colder than his Anita’s feet would get on a winter night.
And then the door opened and in walked Carmela, backlit by the harsh lights in the hall, and that cold started to turn back to a dull throbbing heat. Though he barely noticed it, the chill did not disappear entirely.
“Manny,” came her beautiful voice, silken, with an accent that was, in itself, enough to warm any man.
She carried a metal tray upon which sat a plastic bedpan and water pitcher, as well as what appeared to be the medication for several patients. “I’m sorry about that noise. Had a little accident. Then I figured it prob’ly woke you up, so I thought I’d come in and say hi.”
She bent over to fluff his pillow and gave him a long view down the front of her uniform.
“Hi,” he said weakly.
“You like that peek?” she asked, and smiled a naughty smile. “I can see that you do.” She laughed aloud as she motioned to the erection under his sheets. “If you’re a good boy, I’ll let you get a better look.”
He was stunned into silence for a moment. “As soon as I’m a little better healed, I might take you up on that offer,” he said, though he was finding the possibility pretty tough to believe.
“Why wait?” she asked him, and a few buttons later, with his jaw dropped onto his chest, he found out that she didn’t wear underwear.
“Janet!” Meaghan yelled.
And the young Miss Harris came into Meaghan’s outspread arms with all the vigor of someone who’d been lost and was now found. Amazing grace, Peter thought as he clicked the safety back on his pistol and shoved it into the waistband of his pants. He closed the door and slid the bolt back into place.
“Oh God, I thought you were dead!” Meaghan sobbed, sniffling into Janet’s coal. “Jesus, you slink. Where the hell have you been?”
“Your dad’s been half out of his mind,” Octavian said, his eyebrows furrowing as he looked at her.
“Oh, Peter,” Janet said without even turning around, “you’re such a silly goose.”
She giggled, and it came out an awful gurgling noise. Meaghan laughed right along with her, looking up at Peter with smiling eyes, so happy to have Janet home. He knew then how deeply Meaghan felt for the other woman, and that disturbed him even further. Try as he might, he couldn’t force the pieces of the puzzle where they didn’t fit. And there were a whole bunch right in this room that didn’t fit.
“Where have you been?” Peter asked her, and this time she did turn around.
Even in the dim light that streamed from the hallway and Meaghan’s room, Peter could see the hollow look in Janet’s eyes. Her experience must have been traumatic to create such a haunted gaze. But even that observation didn’t ring true. She looked around her like a blind person looks, turning her head to direct conversation to a person or to signal her attention, but not following anything with her eyes. And she did smell, that was for sure.
“I was lost.”
“Lost?”
“Just lost. That’s all I can really say.”
In the back of a garbage truck, Peter was beginning to think, and the stains he could see on her dark jacket didn’t do anything to kill that theory either. Of course, all of these things added up to about nothing. Here was the woman herself. In the flesh. Of course she’d have a story to tell, and might be hesitant to tell it with him standing right there . . . but that was the kicker, wasn’t it?
That was why he knew something was way off with this whole situation. Several hundred years of watching people gives one a unique observational ability, but that didn’t mean squat compared with the blatantly obvious.
Janet hadn’t looked at him as she came in.
She hadn’t turned around the first time he’d spoken to her.
She had known who he was immediately, recognized him right away out of what could only be the corner of her eye. She had felt comfortable enough with his presence to act like he wasn’t even there, comfortable enough to call him by his first name. She didn’t seem at all surprised that he was in her apartment at five in the morning.
Recognized him right away. Her father’s buddy, the detective. No problem. Understandable, right?
Wrong.
Peter rarely let his picture be taken, and he was certain that that Frank Harris had never had any photo of him.
And they’d never met.
Manny Soares was still struck dumb with awe as Carmela walked, naked as a jaybird, to his door and turned the lock. When she faced him again, her grin was almost too wide for her face. Her hands ran over her body as she strolled to the edge of the bed.
“Baby, look at that,” she whispered with obvious pleasure at the sight of his erection, which had become even harder (if that were possible) under the sheet. She pulled down the hospital whites and looked longingly at his groin.
“I don’t think I’m up to this,” he said, shocking himself with how truly he meant that statement. He was in no condition to handle a real fucking. A gentle blowjob, maybe, but not much more.
“I’ll be nice to you, Manny. Very nice.”
One hand started to jerk him off, real slow and deliberate, like she was truly enjoying the feel of him in her hand. Her other hand went between her own legs, and he could hear the damp, sucking noises her lingers made as they pumped in and out.
God, he thought, she was so wet already.
Carmela climbed up on the bed and straddled him, being as nice and gentle as she’d promised. Though the movements of the bed caused him pain, the drugs helped, and she moved awful slow. When Carmela eased down onto his cock, Manny was in ecstasy.
There was a little more pain as she held on to his arms to steady herself over him, but he fought it back easily now. Being inside her was overwhelming, and his only regret was that even if she hadn’t been holding them down, his arms didn’t have the strength to reach up and caress those amazing breasts. She raised and lowered herself on him very delicately, and that in itself was bringing him to the edge.
Carmela reached down and pulled up his johnny, which was simple, as the hospital gown was open in the back. She drew it up to reveal the wound, nicely closed by the doctors and covered with bandages. He worried for a moment that their activity might open the wound . . . but only for a moment.
Then Carmela stuffed the bottom of his gown into his mouth, returning her binding hold on his weak left arm as he tried to reach for it. What the fuck? This wasn’t a part of the plan. His muffled yelling was weak to begin with; with the cloth in his mouth, it was nearly inaudible. Carmela kept riding him with that slow, hot rhythm, but now he’d had enough. He was afraid, and with his fear, the pain returned.
Only then did he see, stepping from the shadows by the window where he was sure there’d been nothing only moments before, the priest.
And his smile was the widest of all.
Normally Peter would have looked and looked for some kind of logical explanation for Janet’s reappearance, bizarre behavior, and instant recognition of a man she’d never met. But this was different. Not only could he smell it, he could feel that something was wrong. It became more tangible by the moment as he became more awake, and now he looked even more closely at the stains on her jacket, especially a huge stain in the middle of the back, which appeared somehow to be growing.
He moved toward the overhead light as Janet whispered something softly to Meaghan, and the two of them laughed a lovers’ laugh. Meaghan was obviously happy to see her friend, though the smell had moved her a few inches farther away than when they’d first sat down on the couch. His hand was on the switch.
“Janet?” he asked.
“Peter, what is it?” she said with a huff as she turned toward him, her hand firmly holding Meaghan’s arm.
He turned on the light, Meaghan yelled, and he drew his gun as they realized, simultaneously, the source of the stains and smell.
“Bad move,” said the thing that had been Janet Harris while it was alive, and Meaghan screamed as the thing stood up, pulling her, struggling, with it.
Peter aimed his gun at the thing’s head. Though he’d never killed one before, he’d heard from some of his kin that the movies were right. There was but one problem.
“Not that that gun could hurt me, but if you don’t put it down, I’ll rip her head off,” the thing said, and Peter’s new knowledge of its nature allowed him to truly hear for the first time the hollowness of its dead voice. The stench of it was far worse than before, and now it occurred to him that all of its actions, its words, were not its own—that no undead creature could so resemble life without direction through some other agent. That’s why it had seemed like a blind person. Somehow the thing was being controlled by a second party, and now Peter had a pretty good idea who, though he did not have a name for the priest.
His actions were not a matter of choice, but necessity. He dropped the gun.
The moment it hit the floor the creature’s jaw was dipping toward Meaghan’s
neck. She screamed and struggled.
“This isn’t real!” she screamed, though at that moment she realized those three words wouldn’t make much of an epitaph.
And then she screamed again. No words this time, only agonizing wails. She looked down to see the furrows torn in her arm, bleeding freely on her carpet, and then shook the mist from her head as she realized that she was no longer captive. She turned, holding her wounded arm, to see Peter struggling with her insane roommate on the floor, her conscious mind attempting to deny what was obviously, impossibly true.
Peter’s fist buried itself in the dead thing’s stomach, coming up with something rotten, torn from the inside. The creature’s hands ripped easily through Octavian’s shirt, and Meaghan nearly fainted as she saw chunks of flesh ripped from Peter’s bare back. She turned away.
“No, No, No, NONONONONO!”
She could not watch this thing.
And then the growling began, and at first she thought it was the thing, the creature, the dead woman on the floor.
But it wasn’t.
The sounds of struggling slowly ceased as the growling increased and now Meaghan had to look.
No, she wanted to look. The hysterics were over. She had been waiting her whole life for something to happen to her. If she was going to die, she wanted to see whatever this thing was.
If she was going to live—well, she still wanted to see it.
She turned.
The wolf was enormous, the largest Meaghan had ever seen, though she’d never seen one outside of the zoo. It used that bulk to hold down the still slowly struggling corpse it stood astride. Its muzzle was buried in the dead thing’s neck and its teeth were obviously worrying bone.
There came the snapping sound of something both wet and dry breaking, and the thing under the wolf stopped moving. The huge, gray animal turned its head from its kill and vomited up whatever of the dead thing it had swallowed, whether it had done so intentionally or not.
Meaghan could only stare; her thought processes had stalled entirely.
Of Saints and Shadows (1994) Page 11