Of Saints and Shadows (1994)

by Christopher Golden

  They rode the elevator in relative silence, pondering the connection between a serial killer and a Roman Catholic cardinal. When the doors slid open, instincts bred through lifetimes of danger (with one lifetime considerably longer than the other) moved Peter and Ted in front of Meaghan before even they realized they were doing it. They got off the same way and began walking down the hall toward Room 624 with her trailing behind.

  After Peter had rapped on the door three times without an answer, he suggested Ted return to the lobby to see if Mr. Lee could be coerced into admitting them to the cardinal’s room without a search warrant. As Ted turned to go Meaghan gave the door a knock of her own, a furrowed brow the only sign of her annoyance. With the impatience of someone refusing to accept that a light is out, a phone rings unanswered, or a door is indeed locked, she jiggled the doorknob.

  And looked down in shock, for truthfully, the impatient never really expect the light to work, the phone to be answered, or the door to be unlocked . . . and yet it was. Ted abandoned his quest for the concierge.

  “Is there a problem for you coming in here?” Meaghan asked Ted.

  “No can do without a warrant,” he answered, confirming her suspicions.

  “Which . . .” Peter began.

  “ . . . doesn’t prevent us from waltzing right in,” Meaghan finished, then smiled at him and started to walk in.

  Peter’s left hand was powerful, and when it landed on her shoulder, she stopped in her tracks. She turned around to see him draw his gun with his right hand, then slide past her.

  “Me first,” he said. “I’ve got a very bad feeling about this, and if I’m right, we might have reached a dead end for the moment.”

  When Meaghan saw the mutilated corpse of Candy Dunnigan, the novelty indeed wore off.

  “Oh, shit,” was all she said, and covered her mouth with her hand. Not to keep from vomiting, but to keep from screaming. After all she’d seen thus far, usual and impossible, the sight of the poor young girl before her aroused in Meaghan an emotion she had never truly experienced, something she only now discovered herself capable of: fury.

  For the first time in her life, and the hell with questions of morality, she knew without a doubt that she could kill a man. Just as unconsciously as she took her next breath, she could end the life of the creature responsible for the atrocity before her. And it wasn’t the fact of the murder. It wasn’t the waste of a young, beautiful girl’s life. It wasn’t the mutilation or the savage sexuality of the attack.

  It was the pleasure. The obvious pleasure the killer had taken in his work; that is what aroused the seed of vengeance in Meaghan’s soul.

  “And he’s a priest,” she whispered as Peter knelt beside the girl’s body, touching one of the few clean spots to establish body heat, then sniffing the blood.

  “Ted,” Peter said, quite softly actually, and certainly not loud enough to elicit the speed with which Ted entered the room, took in the scene, and picked up the phone. The two men had known each other for several years. Communication came easy to them.

  “Less than twenty, maybe fifteen minutes,” Peter said.

  Ted called in the corpse, then called the lobby and asked specifically for Mr. Lee.

  “This is Ted Gardiner, Boston PD. I’m up here visiting the cardinal. I think you ought to get the manager up here right away. And you’d be doing your other guests a service if you were to come quietly and unobtrusively.”

  “Ted.”

  “Hold on, Mr. Lee.” He turned to Peter.

  “The phone.”

  “Mr. Lee, please call up on your computer all phone calls made within the past hour from Room 624 . . . no, I don’t have a warrant, but if you don’t bring them up, I’ll throw you in jail for obstructing justice. A murderer is escaping while you jabber on the phone. Just do it. Now!”

  Returning the wandering books to their rightful places in the store hadn’t taken as long as Joe had expected, just more than a half an hour, really.

  The priest had walked in just as they were finishing, and Joe had seen his cousin visibly stiffen at the presence of the other clergyman. He couldn’t help but wonder at the cause of this reaction, though certainly the book had something to do with it.

  The young-looking priest nodded a good afternoon to the two men and began to browse—had been browsing, actually, for ten minutes or so. Apparently, he had no connection with Joe’s cousin the cardinal, yet the older man had not relaxed since his colleague had entered.

  And now the young priest was approaching the counter, empty-handed.

  “Having trouble locating a book, Father?” Joe inquired in his usual tone.

  “Actually,” the priest replied, “yes, I am.”

  “Well, if you know the author’s name, I can probably help.”

  “There were many authors, really,” and now the man smiled, not at Joe, but over his shoulder, and Joe couldn’t help but look over that shoulder to find his cousin the cardinal answering this other priest’s stare with his own wide-eyed version.

  Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.

  “Well”—Joe broke a silence he hadn’t even noticed had fallen on the small shop—“if you’ll tell me what genre of novel you’re looking for, I can look up the title for you.”

  “It’s not a novel, really.” Still looking over Joe’s shoulder.

  “Not a novel? It’s nonfiction, then?”

  “Oh,” and now the priest paused and did bring his gaze down to meet Joe’s. “Yes. Most assuredly, yes.”

  “Well.” Joe sighed, relieved now that he could get rid of this strange person, holy man or not. “That solves that puzzle. I only carry novels, Father. Just stories. No non-fiction at all.”

  Mock surprise dawned on the priest’s face.

  “Oh, but surely you are mistaken,” he answered. “Surely you have one book here that is not a novel, not a work of fiction. An old book it is, and by many authors, as I’ve said. Certainly it may take a while to find a needle in a haystack, if the needle were in there. But really it’s hidden in a pile of needles, where nobody would think to look.”

  At this, Joe did not know what to say. He realized that he probably ought to tell the priest to leave. He opened his mouth, but was cut off.

  “Brilliant, really,” the priest said, and now stood back, away from the counter, and executed a short bow, obviously directed at Henri. “An excellent gambit, had you been playing with someone who followed the rules. But, it’s all for naught, I’m afraid.”

  Joe turned now, to stare at his cousin, certain that the book the priest was looking for was the one in the top drawer under the counter. Henri had a stunned look on his face, which at another time would have struck Joe as quite comical. And then the older man stepped around the counter and stood face-to-face with the newcomer, anger and disgust replacing the shock that had so recently ruled his features.

  “Your name?” the cardinal asked.

  “Liam Mulkerrin. Quite pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.”

  “Joseph.” Henri addressed him now. “Leave us now.”

  Joe was no idiot. As a matter of fact, he was quite intelligent. Intelligent enough to recognize a perfect opportunity to exercise his finely tuned skills as a quitter. He moved from behind the counter.

  With his left hand Mulkerrin drew several figures in the air, then pointed at the door. Henri and Joe both heard it lock.

  “I think not,” Mulkerrin said softly.

  “What are you?” Guiscard growled, shaking his head with revulsion.

  “A faithful servant of the Lord.” Mulkerrin smiled. “Which makes one of us.”

  Mulkerrin must have seen the slap coming from miles away, but he did nothing to stop it. The report echoed throughout the store, but he only smiled.

  “Bean sidhe.”

  Mulkerrin might have replied with more than those two words, but if so, Joe didn’t hear the rest. As soon as he had spoken them, the shrieking began. A wailing, howling scream that tore at
his ears had been born with a gale-force wind blowing through the store. He covered his ears as the combination of wind and shrieking nearly drove him to the floor. The bookshelves were swaying at first, and then the books started to fly off them, again! Mulkerrin simply stood there, seemingly unaffected, and Joe noticed that while Henri had initially fallen to his knees, he was now getting back to his feet, hands clamped over his ears.

  Henri was able to take a single step toward where Mulkerrin was standing, and Joe saw that his nose was bleeding.

  “In the name of God,” Henri began.

  And then the first book hit him in the forehead.

  On the stairs, Peter began running, with Ted and Meaghan close behind. The door to the Book Store was closed, and as Peter tried the knob Ted and Meaghan covered their ears. It was locked, and Ted put his shoulder to the door.

  “What the fuck is that noise?” he shouted to Peter.

  “Something I haven’t heard in a while,” Peter shouted back. “Get away from the door.”

  Ted did, then saw what Peter intended to do. “Hey, man, it’s not going to budge.”

  But the door did budge. More precisely, it cracked into several pieces, which promptly blew back against the outer wall, catching Ted in the left elbow and barely missing Meaghan, who crouched low and followed Peter into the room.

  “How the hell . . .” Ted tried to ask her, but she was already inside.

  “What is it really?” she asked Peter, and then froze with her hands tightly clamped over her ears to gape at the bizarre tableau before them.

  On the floor, two indistinct human shapes, nearly covered with books, more of which violently struck the pile as the seconds ticked by. Several feet beyond them, a young priest, seemingly unaffected by the noise and wind. Finally, beyond him, near the window, a gossamer, translucent figure floated, its face barely visible. Its salient feature was its open mouth, and it was from that mouth that the shrieking issued.

  “Jesus,” Ted yelled as he brought up the rear.

  The priest looked at Peter, and all three of them clearly saw the shock register on his face.

  “But . . . it’s daylight?”

  “The better to see you with, my dear,” Peter replied, and smiled despite the pain in his sensitive ears, happy to have caught the killer off guard.

  “No matter,” Mulkerrin said, yet it was clear that he was greatly disturbed.

  “Peter,” Ted yelled again. “What the fuck is going on?”

  And Peter turned to his friends, finally, with an answer. “Bean sidhe,” he said. “Banshee.”

  “Banshee?”

  And then they were dodging books, mostly unsuccessfully. Watership Down thumped Peter in the chest and he yelled again.

  “On the ground. Both of you.”

  Meaghan listened, though she’d barely heard. Common sense sent her to the floor with her arms and hands shielding her head. Ted, on the other hand, had always been long on courage and short on common sense. And it took courage, Peter knew, to face that horrible noise and the wind that nearly stole the breath from their mouths.

  Of course, common sense might have prevented Ted from being struck in the temple by a hardcover romance, which sent him to his knees again. His nose was bleeding as he pulled his pistol. Aiming was difficult against the wind, not to mention his injured elbow, but he managed. As Ted’s finger pulled the trigger Mulkerrin glanced toward the Banshee and Ted could see his lips move.

  Ted fired.

  It was a hurricane. As he watched, the bullet slowed until it was visible, then built up speed in the other direction, back the way it had come. As the bullet punched through his lower abdomen Ted had a moment to wonder why Peter hadn’t drawn his gun.

  As he lay on the ground, clutching his wound, Ted watched Peter advance on the priest, winning the struggle against the riptide in the air around him.

  “That’s right, Mr. Octavian,” Mulkerrin said, haughty, his confidence back. “Banshee. But they prefer to be described with the language of their homeland.

  “Bean sidhe.”

  Just over Ted’s left shoulder, as he tried to stand, a second Banshee appeared. He turned to face it, only inches away, and stumbled backward as its wailing reached inside his head. Blood flowed freely from his nose as he let go of his stomach to hold his head with both hands. With a sound like the bursting of a water balloon, drowned out by the shrieking, blood began to seep from his ears.

  This time, when Ted fell down, he didn’t get up again.

  Even over the shrieking, Peter heard Ted hit the ground behind him and saw the smile spread across Mulkerrin’s lips. Octavian knew then what he was facing, not simply a sorcerer, but the Catholic sorcerer for this century. He himself had been branded evil so often, he could not help but recognize the true thing before him.

  For a moment he was afraid. He had lived too long not to be. Then he turned to see Ted’s corpse slowly being buried in books.

  Enough!

  Too many times he had led those humans he considered his friends to their deaths.

  He had only looked away for a moment, yet when he turned, the sorcerer seemed to be ignoring him. What arrogance! For Frank and Janet and Meaghan, for all the others, for himself and for all of his kind, for Karl, Peter needed to kill this man. For all his magic, he was human.

  But first, Meaghan must be removed. He scooped her from the floor, knocking aside the books that had already piled onto her. There was blood on her face, though whether from external or internal injury, he couldn’t tell. Seven long steps with the wind at his back and he unceremoniously dropped her outside the door. There were people at the bottom of the stairs, but so far, none had been brave enough to come up.

  Reentering the store, he covered his ears again, searing pain crushing his skull. Next to him, the second banshee flapped like a sail drawn tight, and somehow the cacophonous siren call seemed to increase in volume, and finally the two large windows at the front of the store exploded outward, sending shattered glass rocketing into the street below.

  With his great strength, Peter was having trouble standing, and so he could hardly believe it when one of the two piles of books moved. Paperbacks tumbled to either side as another clergyman emerged from the mountain of fiction. Peter knew this could only be Henri Guiscard. The man was bleeding from the nose, ears, and eyes. He held his obviously broken left arm across his torso, with the right protecting it, and he stayed kneeling, bent over as if to protect his stomach as well. A glance at Mulkerrin showed him opening drawers behind the counter, but he still paid no attention to Peter, giving the detective time to help the cardinal. Peter rushed to Henri’s side.

  “Guiscard.”

  The old man nodded. Peter tried to lift him, but the man motioned to be let alone. Peter looked at him for a reason, and he and the cardinal locked eyes. He could read his fear and determination.

  “Don’t. Let him. Take. The book!”

  “What book?”

  “This book!” Mulkerrin yelled, triumphant, and held aloft an enormous leather volume. “The Gospel of Shadows.”

  His eyes glowed and his grin was a razor slash of teeth.

  He looked right at Peter. Right through him really, and Peter read the challenge there. You never had a chance, Defiant One, that grin said. It told him all sorts of other things as well, but the most important message it delivered was this: He needed to see what was inside that book. It was obviously the reason for all of this death, and he needed to know what was so important. The sorcerer had slaughtered innocent people, including Ted, and surely was the essence of evil. For that he deserved to die. But the book added another factor. Peter had to get that book.

  Mulkerrin pulled from inside his collar a silver cross, holding it before him as he rounded the counter. He started to walk toward the door, confident that Peter would not take up the gauntlet, that he was in too much pain or was simply too frightened to attack. He was wrong.

  Peter sprang the eight feet to where Mulkerrin walked, forg
etting the pain in his ears and the power he knew the sorcerer must control. The cross was nothing, much easier to ignore than the sun, while the silver was a bit more of a nuisance, a poison to him, but only if it penetrated his flesh.

  He began to shape-shift as he moved, the metamorphosis faster than the eye could follow. In moments he had become a huge wolflike creature, standing on his hind legs. His claws reached the murderous priest, tearing furrows down his cheek. Mulkerrin screamed in rage and surprise, but did not drop the book. Peter attempted to tear it from his hands, and they struggled. Mulkerrin was far stronger than the average human, and Peter knew this must be some magical augmentation, though he’d never encountered such strength in any being other than his own kind. Still, he himself was by far the more powerful physically, and Mulkerrin had not been prepared to lose his imagined advantages.

  The two creatures slammed each other into walls and shelving, Peter using his claws to tear at the sorcerer to no avail. Mulkerrin began yelling something that Peter did not understand, though he could certainly hear it. When he looked up, though, he saw that an aura of black light surrounded Mulkerrin’s closed left fist, a light pulsing with sickness and death. He knew then that he was in trouble, that they were all dead.

  Then he saw his opportunity.

  Amid the shrieking and the wind and the flying books, the two banshees had not moved, and the first one was still standing by the shattered window, screaming. Peter and his enemy had moved within feet of that banshee, of that window. Peter shoved the priest back, holding the left arm aloft. Mulkerrin stepped back, still clutching the book in his right hand, and screamed in agony as the left passed through the body of the spirit. In seconds, ice had formed on it and the aura had dissipated in a light blue mist.

  Mulkerrin kept screaming and lunged at Peter, who side-stepped and grappled with him as he went past, increasing his momentum until it carried both of them out the window, into the cloud-diffused sunlight.

  And they fell, immortal detective, sorcerer priest, and the book, toward the glass-strewn pavement of Harvard Square, where afternoon shoppers were just making way for the cops. Never one around when you need ’em, Peter thought as he plummeted, and the only good one was dead back in that room. Peter held on tight, digging his claws into Mulkerrin’s back, the book in the priest’s hands pressed between them.