Of Saints and Shadows (1994)

by Christopher Golden

  “Eleven o’clock,” he said flatly, wide-awake.

  “You startled me!”

  “Sorry, good inner time sense.”

  “Good? I wish my Bulova was that accurate.”

  “Time to get to work.”

  Meaghan went to open the blinds.

  “Whoa. Not yet. Give me a few minutes, okay?”

  And she saw it all in that request, everything he had explained to her became clear with those few words. The pain and the struggle to learn a new existence, and then the triumph over generations of blind faith. The pain of that triumph and the courage it must have taken to make that first step, to test his theories for the first time. There were no guinea pigs for that kind of experiment.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Meaghan finally said, and she hoped that Peter read in that sentence all the things she had intended. She hadn’t wanted to look in the refrigerator, knowing what Marcopoulos had put there for Peter, just for today’s excursion. But she knew then, looking at him, that she would go to the fridge and feed it to him if that was necessary.

  And suddenly she realized that it wasn’t just the danger that drew her attention. It wasn’t his charisma or all the stories she knew he must have lived and never told. She admired this creature . . . no, this man. Meaghan admired Peter Octavian. He had already triumphed over insurmountable odds. She only hoped that his luck, that his perseverance would hold out.

  And then the phone rang, and she couldn’t look at him anymore, so she had to answer it. It was Ted. The news was very good.

  Father Liam Mulkerrin didn’t get much pleasure from the daytime. Sunshine did not bring a smile to his face, and the mere thought of summer made him cringe—with its forever days and whiplash nights and a heat to blister even the coldest soul, summer was anathema to him.

  Even now, in the winter in New England, with the sky overcast, promising snow, and a wonderfully chill wind slashing violently along the nearly empty, prelunch streets, it was still day. When he returned to Rome tomorrow, it would be much warmer, and though it could never be, he wished for a moment that he could stay in Boston. (Finish the job.) He’d been born here after all, though a lot more time had passed than was visible on his face, and he knew he’d been born at night. A cold winter night, New Year’s Eve.

  Liam Mulkerrin had never gotten much pleasure from the daytime. Never.

  He appeared to be in his twenties as he walked into the Park Plaza Hotel. Oh sure, he still looked like Liam, but he looked like Liam had at twenty-three, the map of Ireland on his face and Irish eyes a-smilin’. When he approached the registration desk, the young woman behind the counter took notice. Her eyes lit and her chin tilted up in greeting before she noticed the collar and deflated just a bit. He read it all. It was so easy looking this age.

  “Pardon me, miss,” he said, complete with Irish brogue, “but would you be havin’ the room number of me good friend, his Holiness the Cardinal Henri Guiscard?”

  “Yes, Father.” She smiled and emphasized the word “Father,” a bit coquettish even though he was a priest. Liam knew all of these tramps had seen The Thorn Birds on TV.

  “It’s Room 624,” she said after consulting her computer.

  “Thank you kindly. What’s yer name, lass?”

  “Candy.”

  “Aye.” Mulkerrin nodded and turned away. “’Twould be.”

  And enough with that accent, he thought, though he did not dispose of his youthful guise.

  At the door to Room 624, he paused only a moment to mutter a spell as he turned the door handle hard clockwise. On the final word of the spell, the knob turned and he pushed, a grin glowing on his face as he considered the joys of forcing the book’s location out of his traitorous brother clergyman. It would take a while. As long a while as he wanted.

  He shut the door behind him and turned expectantly, but the questions, the disturbance, the fear he expected did not materialize. And neither did Guiscard.

  He’d gone out.

  “No,” Mulkerrin said flatly, and smashed the lamp from the bureau. Its shade bounced off the wall, but its ceramic base shattered, sending shards all across the carpet. This was not a part of the plan. There were to be no complications. But Mulkerrin was not a fool. He knew that his anticipation of this moment had clouded his judgment enough that he hadn’t followed up before coming to the hotel. He had checked not half an hour earlier to be sure Guiscard was there.

  Now he was gone.

  But, perhaps, it still wasn’t too late.

  Mulkerrin picked up the phone and dialed the desk. “Hello?” he said. “Candy?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Who’s this?”

  “Ah, hello, this is Father Flanagan, I’m visiting with Cardinal Guiscard today. Candy was very helpful earlier and I thought you might be her but—”

  “I’m sorry, Father, Candy’s with room service. She was just filling in for me while I was on break. This is Lisa, how can I help you?”

  Liam was annoyed. He knew he could have gotten what he needed from Candy. This girl was an unknown. No matter, sorcery would prevail where the simple force of his personality could not. He told Lisa that his esteemed friend was lying down for a nap, but that he had been asked to pick up the cardinal’s messages for him.

  “I’m sorry, Father, but I really can’t—”

  Mulkerrin spoke softly, several words that weren’t in English, but Lisa couldn’t help but understand them.

  “I have the cardinal’s messages right here,” she said, and began to relate them.

  But then Liam remembered Lisa’s comment of just a moment before.

  Room service.

  “Thank you, lass. I knew you’d unnerstan’. But the cardinal asked me to fetch him a bottle of wine for when he awoke. Please send the messages up with the wine. ’Twill save me havin’ to write them down and I’d be much obliged. And make sure it’s Candy that brings them, won’t you, now?”

  “Certainly, Father,” Lisa replied, and after she’d given her instructions to room service, she forgot she had ever spoken to a Father Flanagan.

  When Candy knocked, Mulkerrin had already searched the room several times, just to be certain he would miss nothing, pages ripped from the book and held as security for instance. There was nothing. He pulled closed the door to the bedroom, to suggest the presence of the supposedly sleeping cardinal, picked up the pieces of the shattered lamp, and grabbed the two glasses from the bathroom. He placed them on top of the television.

  “Ah, Candy, is it?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  So demure. So acquiescent. She handed him the messages and he thanked her.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, smiling. “Usually we don’t deliver messages, but the manager wants to keep the cardinal happy, that’s for sure.”

  She fidgeted, enjoying his presence in a manner most inappropriate, though she probably didn’t even realize it. All of these Catholic-school girls soaked their panties around a handsome priest. Ever since grade school, girls like Candy had secretly hoped the wooden paddle would land on their behinds. Unfortunately, the paddle had been retired.

  Candy showed Father Mulkerrin the label of the wine.

  “Thank you,” he said again, “would you mind pouring?” He motioned to the glasses, and though she seemed at first a bit uncomfortable, knowing she had to get back to work, she also smiled. She wanted to do this for him. Candy began to work the corkscrew into the top of the wine bottle.

  And now the messages. From Claremont, the firm the lawyer Benedict had worked for before his untimely demise. From New Age Press—ah, Guiscard had been working quickly. From someone named Joe Boudreau, with a number.

  Mulkerrin went to the phone and dialed as Candy poured. He glanced at her as the phone rang and caught her looking at him. She blushed and looked away. Her attraction was obvious.

  “The Book Store,” a voice answered.

  “The what?” Mulkerrin inquired, almost forgetting his accent.

  “The Book Stor
e, not a tough concept. Can I help you?”

  And then it was obvious.

  “Where are you located?”

  “Right in the middle of Harvard Square, man. Next to Strawberries and diagonally across the street from Grendel’s.”

  “Thank you.” He hung up and turned to look at Candy, who was standing, almost at attention now, waiting like a good little Catholic girl to be excused.

  He stepped back toward her and picked up one of the glasses from the top of the bureau. He had something to celebrate. What had for a moment seemed a major roadblock had become simply a more public display of art.

  “Please, have a sip with me.”

  Her surprise was undisguisable.

  “Uh, Father. I’m sorry; I can’t. I’m not supposed to drink on the job. I’ve really got to get back.”

  “Please. I insist.” It took only a muttered phrase as he looked directly into her eyes. After all, it was what she really had wanted. What they all wanted in their secret hearts.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  By the time Father Liam Mulkerrin left the hotel, Candace Dunnigan had been violated many times, by the wine bottle, first whole, then broken and jagged.

  Certainly not a breach of his vow of chastity.

  14

  JOE COULDN’T STAND IT ANYMORE. IT HAD been an unusually slow day thus far, and nobody had come into the store for more than twenty minutes, even to browse. As long as the customers had been coming in, he could keep his mind off that book. But with no distractions, it was all he thought about. It held a strange attraction for him, called to him somehow. He had never been particularly susceptible to curiosity until now. And yet, something inside of him realized that his growing preoccupation with the book might not be entirely generated from within him.

  Still, though, he couldn’t take it. He pulled open the drawer and opened the book about a quarter of the way through. It was gibberish. Well, not precisely gibberish, but he was disappointed nonetheless. No, it was an almost indeciperable Latin, a dead language despite its status as the basis for English and the Romance languages, and one with which he had no more than a passing familiarity.

  Joe stared at the page for a full two and one half minutes before beginning to read aloud what was written there. Halfway through the third sentence, he felt it.

  A breeze blew through his store, though the door was closed and there were no windows to open. There was a smell on the breeze that he could not quite place, but that he disliked nonetheless. Somehow, it reminded him of all the times he’d failed, and the time when he was six years old and had gotten sick worse than ever before or since. The wind reminded him of that.

  And then it stopped. For a moment there was silence. Then the first book, Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry, jumped off the shelf and hit the floor with a bang. After a moment several other books seemed to jostle about, but did not fall.

  And then they all moved.

  Tolkein and King slammed together and landed in a heap on the floor. Ludlum and Heinlein drifted slowly across the aisle and took each other’s place. Every other Agatha Christie jumped off the shelf, turned spine in, then slid back into place. Danielle Steel, Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon, and so many more circled up one aisle, down the next, and around again at an ever-increasing speed.

  Joe was nailed to the spot, finger in his cousin’s book, jaw agape, and a single tear on his cheek.

  A bell rang; he had a customer. His head swiveled from the books for but a moment, and his jaws clacked together when he saw his visitor. His cousin the cardinal, Henri Guiscard, whose own mouth now hung open.

  Then the complete Sherlock Holmes slammed into Joe’s skull, and he went down, behind the counter. As he sat up, rubbing his temple where blood now ran, he heard Henri’s voice, raised in anger or hysteria.

  “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you. Leave this place.”

  Joe pulled himself to his feel to see that nothing had changed. The tumult continued unabated.

  “By God, in whom I yet place my faith, I command you.”

  The books froze in place, whether feet or inches from the ground.

  “Leave this place.”

  And they fell, in a pile.

  Now his cousin was stomping over to him, and Joe was afraid again. The look on the cardinal’s face was one of disgust, of rage. But then Joe saw something else there, a combination of fear and a sorrow so deep it warranted another name, yet had none. Henri slammed the book shut and spoke through gritted teeth, sounding more in pain than angry.

  “I thought. I told. You. Not. To open. This book,” he growled, thumping the book with the last two words.

  Joe didn’t know what to say. Take the guilt a family member can instill, then add the guilt a clergyman can inspire. He wanted to be sick.

  “I don’t, uh, suppose there’s something in here that could, um . . . put them back?”

  He could see the anger rise again in Henri’s eyes. He’d tried to lighten up the situation—never mind that the situation was impossible, and therefore had never happened. Now he was getting shit and all because he agreed, against his belter judgment, to do a favor for a relative.

  “Are you so completely . . .” Henri began, and then rolled his eyes heavenward, turned, and walked toward the books on the floor. “Come on. Four hands can do the work faster than two.”

  And the work began, painstaking alphabetizing and categorizing. It would take a while, even with four hands. But one book would remain without its rightful place in the Book Store, Joe Boudreau knew. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong there, on that counter, in that store.

  Really, it didn’t belong anywhere.

  Peter was extremely happy to be out of the light, but even inside the hotel, he kept on the dark sunglasses that hid his perpetual squint from Ted and Meaghan. George was at work now, at the hospital, probably asleep at his desk. That’s what Peter would do if he actually had a desk to speak of.

  Instead he’d made an odyssey across town, in the noonday sun (mad dogs and Englishmen). Yes, it was overcast and cold, but to him daylight was daylight. Certainly, thanks to Ted’s timely phone call confirming their destination as the Park Plaza Hotel, the journey was a hell of a lot shorter than it would have been.

  “But the day ain’t over yet,” Peter muttered under his breath, prompting quizzical looks from Meaghan and Ted.

  Meaghan had been wonderful, simply walking alongside him and only noting his discomfort by touching him on the elbow from time to time to share a look of encouragement. And even that he couldn’t believe, after the evening they’d shared the night before. She was either totally in control, and had a lot of class, or she was out of her mind. Either way, Peter figured, she was one of a kind.

  On the other hand, the gravity of their situation notwithstanding, Ted had not stopped talking since they’d rendezvoused with him nearly forty-five minutes earlier. Ted alternately cracked jokes, some actually funny, and inquired quite seriously about Peter’s health; what his behavior amounted to was a constant reminder to Peter that he was, indeed, exposed to sunlight. Luckily, Ted didn’t require more than grunts and uh-huh’s in response, otherwise Peter would have had trouble ignoring his every word. Certainly, he had overcome something that to his knowledge, none of his kind had triumphed over in many centuries, but that did not mean that there was no concentration involved, or that he didn’t still have that nagging voice in the back of his head saying, “You ought to have blown up by now, you stupid asshole.”

  And of course, more than anything else, there was the fact that it hurt. Oh, yes, did it hurt. But that was to be expected. Until he could completely wipe that programming from his head, the pain would still be there. And he knew that the day would come, just as the day had come when he did not feel weakened by the sun’s rays; one day the pain would be gone. Or almost gone, and in this one instance, almost would be quite close enough.

  But now he could take a moment to breathe, and when Ted spoke, he could actually g
ive a cogent answer.

  “Your show, Peter. What’s the deal?”

  “We’re just visiting, buddy. Unless there’s a problem,” he answered as they approached the portly Asian man a sign declared to be the concierge.

  “And then?” Meaghan asked.

  “Then we’re all business.”

  The three of them must have presented quite a sight to the concierge, Peter realized. A tall, thin, scraggly-looking white guy with a ponytail and sunglasses; a handsome, muscular clean-cut black guy; and a pretty white woman whose every movement declared her status as a businesswoman used to getting answers. The man must be baffled, indeed.

  Peter also enjoyed the astonished look on the man’s face when he discovered just who this strange trio were visiting.

  “What room is Cardinal Guiscard in, please?” Meaghan asked in a practiced tone, cordial yet demanding, and smiled coolly at the concierge, whose name tag proclaimed him to be Jim Lee.

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Lee replied, as polite as can be, “but the cardinal has asked not to be disturbed for the rest of the day. It appears he isn’t feeling at all well.”

  “I see,” Meaghan said, smiling again. “Well, we won’t disturb him just now, but I would still like to know his room number for future reference.”

  “Ah, well, you understand it is the hotel policy not to give out the guests’ room numbers. Rather, we connect visitors by house phone and leave it to the guests to give their visitors their own room numbers.”

  “But you’ve said we cannot disturb the cardinal, which would, I suppose, include a call to him on the house phone to establish his room number. Correct?”

  “Just so,” said Mr. Lee.

  “Um-hm,” Meaghan said, raised an eyebrow, and looked at Ted. “Theodore . . .”

  As Ted flashed his badge and received the cardinal’s room number in response, Meaghan looked at Peter and smiled.

  “I’m enjoying this.”

  And he could tell she was. But he had a feeling the novelty would be wearing off pretty quick.

  “I’m sorry if I was, uh, short in any way. Seems one of my employees has abandoned us in the middle of her shift. The, uh, cardinal is in Room 624.”