Finally the wolf moved away from the body of Janet Harris, her friend, her lover, her would-be murderer. The wolf looked up at her, and in that moment she knew exactly what was going on, and exactly who was looking at her.
Meaghan did the only thing she could. She turned and went quietly to her room, shutting the door behind her. She wrapped her freely bleeding arm in a wet towel that had been hanging on the standing mirror in the corner. She pulled out her metal wastebasket. It had a pretty yellow-and-red floral print on the side, but she didn’t think about that at all as she puked into the can.
How? That was all she could think about.
And, of course, opening her bedroom door at some point.
Now Manny was well and truly screaming behind the gown stuffed in his mouth. And struggling as well as his body could. Fuck the wound! A valiant thought, but his struggles ceased after only a moment. He was spent. The priest was there, smiling. Carmela was there, smiling, riding him still with that steady rhythm.
“What others call cruelty,” the priest said softly, “I define as the highest and purest form of art.”
And then the true pain came, and Manny had not the voice to shout.
His eyes bulged with his agony as he watched the smile fall from her lips and her face turn into a rictus of her own pain. The nurse’s stomach bulged and those gorgeous breasts heaved and sweat poured from both of their bodies.
Manny realized he was crying.
Carmela’s stomach continued to bloat further outward, obscenely pregnant, until Manny heard a tearing sound and looked down to see her ripping apart, to accommodate an unnatural birth. The thing that appeared from inside her was dark green, almost black, and boiling with pus. Its body was a small mass of rotten flesh, with only two malformed limbs. Its head was larger than the main body itself and had two long, thin hornlike protrusions of a lighter green and a mouth, filled with razor sharp teeth, which were in turn attached to Manny’s penis, as if it were some freakish umbilical cord.
Carmela’s body slumped back, sliding off the bed, already dead as the thing she had spawned finished gnawing its way through Manny’s cock and swallowed it without chewing. Though he knew the priest was still there, he could not take his eyes off the thing, off the wound it had left. The pain was worse than he had ever experienced, and he was certain that if he had not had heavy drugs in him, he would have fainted before now. He should’ve been so lucky.
The demon used its meager limbs to drag itself up his chest. As it reached his wound the little demon paused, tearing away the bandages to reveal an already reopened hole. Manny hadn’t even felt it, and that, more than anything else, sent his voice soaring behind the gag, shrieking at its peak, which was barely as loud as his normal speaking voice at this point.
The thing bent its head, and what had first appeared to be horns now proved to be feelers of some kind, as they wavered and moved toward Manny’s wound. They plunged, stabbing into that wound for but a moment, and when they withdrew, even over the sounds of his own shrieking and crying in his ears, Manny could hear twin sucking noises, one coming from his chest, the other from the demon’s horns.
It moved yet again, farther up his body, and he realized it was coming for his face.
His hand, as completely helpless as he was, began to inch up his side. He had to get the thing away from him before it reached his face. No matter what else he endured, he didn’t want it near his eyes.
The feelers caressed his mouth and nose; they were sharp, somehow, and yet did not cut him. He strained with energy he did not have, that he had borrowed from some reserve, from faith perhaps, and grabbed hold of one of the demon’s arms. He had to keep it from his eyes.
But then the priest was beside him, and he was too weak to resist as the killer tsk-tsked and pulled Manny’s arm away from the creature. He was finished, without the energy to resist, to cry out, to struggle.
The demon’s horns plunged into Manny’s eyes, bursting them, and then into his brain. The thing tensed for a moment, and then relaxed, settling onto his chest as the sucking sounds began in earnest.
Father Liam Mulkerrin stood by, smiling. With a flutter of his hands, the creature, the penangglan, burst into a blue flame, which seemed to burn in on itself and was quickly snuffed. It was as if the creature had never been there. Such minor shadows, Mulkerrin mused. It amazed him to think that the Malaysians had once thought their kind akin to the Defiant Ones, the only shadow race that had withstood the call of Rome.
He’d been feeling a bit guilty for going so overboard with the lawyer.
But he had enjoyed it so. And now . . . he did not care. Let them find the nurse, the dead man.
He looked at the Janitor’s corpse one more time. He smiled.
“A true artist never leaves a work unfinished,” he said.
10
“NEVER . . . NEVER WISH TOO HARD FOR something,” Meaghan whispered as she lay, curled in a fetal position, on her bed.
For the first ten minutes she’d sat there staring at the wall, rocking herself back and forth. When Peter stopped the soft rapping at her door, the quiet pleading for her to open it, that was when she lay down. She’d been alternately silent and then talking to herself as she heard him make a phone call, then take a shower—he’s in my shower—and now she could hear him puttering around the kitchen.
“FUCK!” she grunted as she sprang to her feel, pacing now from east to west. All her life she’d been waiting for something to happen to her, something exciting, something dangerous. She’d dreamed she’d meet an exciting guy and run off to Europe.
Oh, she met a real exciting guy. Handsome and charismatic, the kind of guy you lose sleep over. The kind of guy your thoughts drift to when you’re soaping up in the shower. Definitely hot.
And he’s a goddamn werewolf!
Meaghan heard the teakettle whistle, and that sent her over the edge. Lon Chaney making fucking TEA in my house! She opened her door, not knowing what to expect, not knowing what to say.
But the last thing she expected to find in her living room was a kind-looking old white-bearded gentleman eating Vienna Fingers and flipping through her copy of Cosmo.
That stopped her cold, and she took in the zipped body bag just as Peter stepped into the room with a tray of tea for three.
She was stunned speechless, and so could only stare as Peter came in and put the tray down on the coffee table, all without looking at her. He opened his mouth to speak, but the old fellow shook his head and beat him to it.
“Meaghan,” he said, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Some barrier had fallen, and she felt for the first time on the verge of tears.
She wouldn’t cry, though.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, sir.”
“I’m sorry. I’m George Marcopoulos. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He stuck out his hand.
Meaghan could not have begun to explain how surreal it felt to be observing such formalities with a bona fide monster in the room, but she took the man’s hand by reflex. He held it softly.
“I’m a doctor, a friend of Peter’s,” and that’s when she pulled her hand away.
“Then you’re . . . are you . . . oh, shit,” she said softly. And then she couldn’t help it; she turned her back as she sobbed quietly.
Suck it up, Gallagher!
She did, quickly, and turned back to the doctor, careful to avoid Peter’s eyes, for when she glanced at them just for a moment, she saw a fear and a pain there that called to her, made her forget for a moment what she had seen.
“No,” George said finally. “I am not one of Peter’s race. I’m as human as you are, and the day that he saved my life, much as he did yours tonight, you can believe I was just as frightened as you are right now.”
“But”—sniff—“he’s a werewolf or something. Jesus, what the hell am I doing here?” She wanted to tell herself it wasn’t real, that it was a dream or something, but she’d gone way beyond that.
<
br /> “No, he’s not. A werewolf, that is. Nor is he a monster. He’s just not human.”
“Oh, well, that explains it. That makes it all just hunkydory, Doc! Thanks for getting me up to speed—”
“Meaghan!” Peter finally spoke, and she wanted to cover her ears, but would not.
“No!” she said, looking straight in his eyes for the first time. “You just shut the fuck up for now, buddy. I am not an idiot and I’m not one of these silly bimbos you see in the monster movies. God knows I never thought things like you were real, but sittin’ in the movie theater, I always promised myself that if I ever found out there were Martians, or werewolves, or goddamn bigfoots, that I’d deal with it rationally. And that’s just what I intend to do once I’m through being scared and angry.
“Again, I am not an idiot. If you’d wanted to hurt me, or eat me or suck my blood, you’ve had plenty of chances to do it. Jesus Christ, I offered myself to you a few hours ago, and you turned me down. And here I was wondering why you didn’t want me.
“Then—and oh this is the precious part—then my roommate, probably the only person I’ve every really loved in the world, shows up after being missing for nearly a week, and she’s a zombie. And she’s ready to eat me like I’ve never been eaten before. And that’s where you come in.”
“Miss Gallagher—” George began.
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten you, good Dr. Van Helsing or whatever your name is. I’m in the middle of what I only wish was the Twilight Zone in not much more than my underwear and you’ve got the nerve to tell me that your ‘friend’ Peter is a good monster. Well, fuck that and fuck you. Since this is the day when reality takes a breather, I can say that to you, a kind old gentleman. I can say I wanted to have sex with your fanged buddy here, I can say I was in love with a woman in front of a man I’ve never met who’s probably old enough to be my grandfather. I can say whatever I want, ’cause all bets are off.”
By now she had a smile on her face, while Peter and George were slack-jawed and staring. She could see that whatever they’d expected of her, it had not been this. Her smile widened and she took a breath to calm down, adrenaline pumping.
“So,” she said calmly. “You were saying . . .”
Ted Gardiner stepped past doctors and nurses on his way to Manny Soares’s hospital room. He was a little grumpy, and a little worried. A little grumpy because he hadn’t had much sleep, and because once again, he was the last one on the scene. A little worried because he was the investigating officer and he didn’t have a clue what was going on. A series of bizarre murders without one damn thing to link the victims other than coincidence. The captain was going to start kicking some butt if they couldn’t come up with something soon.
And then Ted was pushing past the family of the victim, and the family of the dead nurse, families the other boys in blue were having trouble keeping away from the site of the murder. Suddenly Ted didn’t feel so sorry for himself. Suddenly he wasn’t worrying about losing sleep or about the captain.
Just what the hell was going on here?
He was surprised when part of an answer came. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew someone who might . . . Octavian, of course. This shit was right up the spook’s alley. He respected Peter, even liked him nine times out of ten, certainly often enough to call him a good friend, but he had to admit that the PI sometimes gave him the willies.
And he seemed to know a bit more about all of this than he was letting on.
It turned out that Soares had ID’d Roger Martin’s killer as being dressed like a priest, and Daniel Benedict’s neighbor had said the same about the lawyer’s murderer. It didn’t take a genius to connect them. Of course, Janet Harris worked with Benedict, so her disappearance could be easily assumed to be a part of this whole thing. Ted expected her corpse to turn up on his doorstep at any time.
But Octavian, smarter than the average bear, had been one step ahead of the cops all the way, and Ted really ought to fill the captain in on that lead. But dammit, he’d promised Peter, and Ted had a thing about promises. Besides, he probably had a better chance of finding this guy through Peter than he did with the jokers with whom he shared a uniform.
Finally, and unfortunately, Ted got a really good look at Soares. He stumbled to the adjoining sanitized hospital bathroom. He hadn’t been the first one there.
George was smiling. Yes, Peter had told him the woman was strong-willed, but he’d also said she was smart and pretty, so he didn’t think much about it then. But this went far past strong.
She wasn’t hysterical, she was just pissed off, getting all worked up as a reaction to her fear and disbelief. And he could see in her face that she found it exhilarating.
“What I was saying,” George went on, the two of them smiling at one another as if they were sharing a joke. “What I was saying was that some years ago, I would have died if not for Peter’s intervention. And though it is nearly impossible for him to die, he nearly did, that night, in saving me. He’s my best friend, and being a doctor, I supply him with what sustenance he needs so he doesn’t have to take it from unwilling donors. We all have our secrets, and what are friends really but the people we share them with?”
George watched her as she took it all in, but she was digesting it fine. It was almost as if once she accepted the reality of the situation, logic only dictated that she see the sense of the rest of it.
“And he is a detective?” she asked.
“Oh, yes, certainly,” George answered.
“An investigator,” Peter added, speaking for the first time since she’d shut him up.
But she didn’t shut him up this time. No, this time, as George opened a bag he had brought and began to disinfect and then bandage her arm, she smiled right at him and George thought he saw something being born in her eyes right then, a spirit he had never had. It was George’s turn to be quiet.
“So, who are you then, really?” Meaghan asked Peter, and at first he seemed not to understand the question. And then he sat a little higher in his seat before replying, his eyes still quite serious.
“I’m sure after all this there’s very little you won’t believe, so the truth will do as well as anything. I was born May twenty-ninth, 1420, in the city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine empire. Once the capital of the world. My birth name was Nicephorus Dragases, and I’m the bastard son of Constantine the Eleventh, Palaeologus, the last Byzantine emperor.
“So, if you want to get all technical about it, you could say I’m the last Prince of Byzantium. Technically.”
And, finally, he was smiling, but now George was not.
“You never told me that.”
He’d known of Peter’s past, even his real name, but not of his lineage.
“You never asked,” Peter answered, still smiling.
And now George looked at Meaghan, who seemed mesmerized by the whole thing. He could read it in her face—the undead she could accept, monsters and death were no problem, but a living piece of history sitting on her couch sipping tea? George knew how she felt. His ancestors would have knelt at Peter’s feet, for Byzantine they were.
“Ah,” George grunted in mock disgust, “a tidbit he holds on to for use in impressing girls.”
Carnage!
Mulkerrin loved the carnage, loved the absolute destruction of a human life. His passion for the massacre was unmatched by any other emotion he had experienced. In many ways, it made the fact of his celibacy a moot point.
Yes, he had a gift. Unfortunately, his superior expected him to separate the art from the work. Get the job done was the only criterion, ignoring the quality of the work in favor of the efficiency of the job. But he didn’t want to be a hack painter mass-producing landscapes, he wanted to be a true artist.
And he did have the talent.
But sometimes it got in the way. Sometimes he lingered a bit too long before forcing a point, waiting perhaps for just the right slant of sunlight for the shadows he felt compelled t
o portray. Sometimes he messed up.
This was one of those times.
Wasn’t it enough that the janitor had survived his first attack? Wasn’t it enough that the lawyer had gotten involved, and the other girl and the detective? And yet it could all have been taken care of. No one would have complained that he had waited too long to savor his art, too long to force Guiscard to give up the whereabouts of the book. As long as all the loose ends had been tied up, and he had been confident that they would be, before he retrieved the book and returned to Rome to prepare for the Blessed Event.
No. Nothing would have come of it. Another job well done, Garbarino would have said, and he would have retained his artistic integrity.
But that would have been too easy. The detective was the scourge of the earth, a Defiant One, and the human woman probably nothing more than his fatted calf. Had he known in advance, he could have destroyed the creature easily. Even now, with the Defiant One alarmed, he could almost certainly destroy it. But time was running out. More important, there could be no possibility of the creature getting its hands on the book.
That would spell disaster.
But Mulkerrin reassured himself, the cleanup had already begun. Once he’d realized, on his way out of the hospital, exactly what had happened in the Gallagher woman’s apartment, which events had caused Liam no small amount of physical pain due to his link with the corpse, he’d begun the cleanup right away. No more dillydallying for Father Mulkerrin.
A visit to Daniel Benedict’s office, through doors whose alarms he hadn’t allowed to sound when broken open, revealed that the police had been through Benedict’s things and, not finding anything of interest, obviously not knowing what to look for, had left everything pretty much as it was. Even Benedict’s Rolodex was still on the desk. Mulkerrin found such inefficiency amusing and appalling at the same time. He would never put up with it from his own men, but he almost expected it now from others. Corruption, stupidity, and just plain laziness were the order of the day. As far as the cops were concerned, any clues to be found in Benedict’s office would not be easy to find, therefore it was not worth the trouble of finding them.
Of Saints and Shadows (1994) Page 12