Of Saints and Shadows (1994)

by Christopher Golden

  Hannibal sneered, obscenely long fangs jutting from his mouth, his thin white hair flying across his blue eyes as he turned on Sheng. “Don’t be flip with me. Von Reinman should have taught you to respect your elders. Of course, he was nothing, so we shouldn’t expect much from his brood.”

  “Fucking pompous showboat, I’ll tear your—” Alexandra started, thrusting herself toward Hannibal, her own fangs bared.

  But Sheng held her back and kept his own mouth closed. It wasn’t that Hannibal frightened him, per se, only that he knew what the creature was capable of. And it wouldn’t do to have the animosity that existed between Hannibal’s clan and what remained of their own coven become open warfare. Sheng and his brothers and sisters wouldn’t stand a chance. They were too young, too weak, too inexperienced, and too few.

  “Now.” Hannibal fumed. “Let me tell you a little story. Last night I was in Monte Carlo. I’m not much of a gambler, but my companion, a human, enjoys it. When the Vatican killers entered the casino, I spotted them immediately. They were looking for someone, and because of my age, I automatically assumed it was me, even though I was not the only one of our kind there.”

  He paused for effect, all politician. “It was Cody October.”

  “You’ve seen him? He was there?” Sheng sputtered. “I can’t believe he’d come so close to the carnival. Unless . . . well, unless he’s planning on coming, but that would be crazy.”

  “He was always crazy.” Alex shook her head in disgust.

  “Regardless, it was Cody October. I, personally, have never understood what it was about him that so infuriated your group. Certainly his behavior is, shall we say, unorthodox, but his actions have been crude at best and no real threat.”

  “It’s really none of your business,” Sheng said coldly. “Get on with the story.”

  Hannibal only stared for a moment, then did so. These young ones were obscenely rude, and in his own home! He might have to kill them eventually just as an example.

  “Cody was there, gambling. Winning actually. At the time I took his presence as a matter of convenience. It was nothing to have my companion stagger drunkenly up to him, slap him on the back, and loudly shout his name as if he were a long-lost brother. The Vatican men couldn’t help but look his way and, of course, recognize him for what he was. That’s what they’re trained for, after all.

  “Cody, on the other hand, was so engrossed with the game, and with a rather attractive young woman who joined him, that he barely registered my friend’s greeting, didn’t realize that he’d never seen the man before in his life. And of course, he didn’t notice the assassins, even as they followed him out when he left with the woman. And I, of course, followed them.

  “As I said, I thought they were after me, but now I’m not entirely sure.” Hannibal returned from wherever his mind had gone when telling the story to find that Alexandra and Sheng were staring at him.

  “Well?” the two said in unison.

  “Well what?” he asked innocently.

  “Did they get him, you idiot?” Alex nearly shouted at him. “Is Cody dead?”

  Hannibal blinked.

  “Cody? Dead? Most certainly not. The assassins never had a chance. It was really quite a show. Pity, though, the woman he’d picked up in the casino didn’t survive.”

  Hannibal said all this very matter-of-factly, as if there was a point that Alex and Sheng were missing.

  “So what does all this have to do with us?” Sheng finally asked, not wanting to sound stupid but tired of waiting for clarification.

  “Well, that’s the pattern we’re discussing, child,” Hannibal said, and Sheng bristled. “Only truly ancient members of our race have been assassinated thus far, with the exception of your late mentor. Now the Vatican has tried to assassinate a renegade member of your coven. It could all be coincidence, but I doubt it.”

  “Seems pretty circumstantial to me,” Alex said.

  “As it did to me until this morning.”

  “What was this morning?” Sheng asked.

  “I had a call from a human . . . mmm, associate in Boston. It seems our friend Octavian has been investigating a strange series of murders involving a Roman Catholic cardinal.”

  “My blood,” Alex cursed, “you have us all under surveillance, don’t you?”

  Hannibal’s smile just then would have forced many reasoning creatures from the room.

  “Not all of you, my dear,” he said. “Only . . . the truly dangerous ones. Regardless, Octavian is on his way here, to Italy. More precisely, as far as I’m told, he is going to Rome—may already be there, in fact.” Before they had a chance to react, he continued. “What I want to know is, why are he and Cody here? What special vendetta does the Vatican have planned for your coven? What are you not telling us?”

  They looked at each other, trying to digest what Hannibal was telling them, but he wasn’t finished.

  “And one more thing. Octavian made travel arrangements on a commercial airplane.” He looked at them expectantly, analyzing their faces, their reactions. “Much of his flight was to take place during the day.”

  For once, neither of the lovers could think of a single thing to say.

  Giuseppe Schiavoni ran his gondola across the Grand Canal a hundred times a day or more during the tourist season. When it got cold, though, that meant fewer and fewer tourists, fewer and fewer trips. Less and less money. So he saved up to take a long winter vacation, letting the younger men bear the brunt of the cold winter for the few tourists and the Venetian locals who wanted to cross the canal. But wherever Giuseppe vacationed, he was always sure to be back by carnival time. Not only did the tourists come despite the relatively chilly weather, but it was fun. And an old widower like Giuseppe Schiavoni didn’t have as much time for fun as he had in his younger days.

  Now he ran his traghetto across the canal with pleasure, for he carried two beautiful young American women, not a man in sight. This was something of a treat, generally. But tonight, well, tonight was different.

  “Ladies,” he said to them, raising his voice to be heard above the chilly breeze, “it’s cold and getting late. Are you certain you don’t want me to take you back to your hotel?”

  “But signore,” Linda Metcalf answered, “you are not the usual gondolier, you are a ferryman, and this is your post. You can’t very well abandon it to escort us home.”

  “I’m done for the night,” he answered, nodding his head, “and I’ll tell you, I don’t want to stay out any later than I must.”

  “But how will we get back?” Tracey Sacco asked, a worried look on her face.

  “Oh, there is a water taxi, every hour on the half until the day after carnival. But still . . .”

  “What are you so worried about?” Tracey’s eyes narrowed and she glanced at Linda, who was doing her best to ignore their exchange.

  Giuseppe looked from one of the women to the other, opened his mouth to speak, and then realized that nothing he could say would make any sense to them. “I’m an old man,” he said finally. “The older you get, the more shadows you see in the darkness. Humor me; be careful.”

  Now Tracey smiled at him. “We will.”

  “At least until we get to the party!” Linda said in that high-school cheerleader voice that grated on Tracey’s nerves. “Then all bets are off.”

  Linda’s eyes were glassy and she had a vague, almost delirious smile on her face. It made Tracey shiver.

  And then they had arrived.

  “Ca Rezzonico!” Giuseppe boomed, naming their destination as they pulled alongside a small dock. Then he leaned over to Tracey as Linda was scrambling out of the gondola and whispered to her.

  “Be careful,” was all he said.

  Tracey followed Linda up onto the dock and to the stone street that ran in front of Ca Rezzonico.

  “Ca Rezzonico,” Linda began, loudly operating as tour guide for her roommate, “designed by the baroque master Baldassare Longhena. Construction was begun in 1667. Eighty-f
ive years later it was finished, complete with ceilings painted by Tiepolo.”

  “Who the hell is Tiepolo?” Tracey asked, feigning interest but paying real attention to Giuseppe as he made his way back across the canal.

  You be careful, too, she thought, and closed her eyes for a moment to push the wish across the water to the man. She said a mental prayer for all of them.

  “Some artist, obviously,” Linda answered. “I don’t know, I cheeked this place out in the tour book before we left the room. I don’t want to seem uneducated. This is a high-society thing, y’know?”

  “You’re a quick study,” Tracey said, then looked up at the building for the first time.

  The structure sat facing the Grand Canal, a monolith, its walls echoing back the lapping sound of the water from the canal and from the Rio di San Barnaba that ran along its southern face. Huge and beautiful, lights displaying its glories for all to see, the building stirred an appreciation in Tracey, as truly great art and architecture often did.

  “Ca Rezzonico is home to the Museum of the Eighteenth Century,” Linda continued as they walked down Calle Bernardo, and now Tracey tuned her out completely, for they were passing Ca Rezzonico and their true destination was coming into view.

  For all that it was significantly smaller than Ca Rezzonico and not lit up like a Christmas tree, the home of their host was even more impressive. Though its stone face was impassive, it was brought to some semblance of life by the plants that grew and hung all around it, the vines that crawled over it. It was a singular sight in Venice, for while they had seen numerous potted plants and flowers, no building had appeared so completely overgrown as this.

  It was clear that the party had long since begun. Where light normally streamed from the windows of a home, here music and revelry spewed forth in its place; and where the sounds of life were usually a dim undertone, an echo from within, so here the lights were but a shadowy flickering. It seemed almost . . . normal, the comfortably familiar scene of celebration.

  But Tracey knew that whatever waited inside, it was far from normal.

  “I don’t know. . . .” she started to say, and then the door opened.

  The two women both took an involuntary step backward as the music coming from the house climbed a decibel. Neither said a word, only watched as a strange couple came down the steps. A tall, exotically beautiful black woman and a shorter, dangerous-looking Asian man walked arm in arm toward the two women, leaning close together. The woman looked over her shoulder at the door, as if to satisfy herself that it was indeed closed.

  “Do you believe any of this?” Alexandra Nueva said to her companion, just loud enough for Tracey and Linda to hear.

  “Unfortunately, I do,” Shi-er Zhi Sheng answered. “Indeed I do. And all it does is confuse me more. For the first time in a long time, I’m scared to—”

  Tracey and Linda froze where they stood, face-to-face with the strange couple. As Tracey looked at the Asian man’s face she felt her muscles contract and realized she was fighting to keep from wetting herself. For in that moment, staring into the man’s face drawn tight in an animal growl, she thought he would kill her.

  Even as his face softened, she did not relax. Her mind still held a terrifying picture of him.

  “Where are you women going?” the man asked brusquely, and now Tracey looked away from him, at Linda, who still wore her strange smile, at the woman, whose face was even more stern than her man’s.

  “To a party,” Linda told them happily.

  “Go back to your rooms,” the tall woman said, and now the smile finally dropped from Linda Metcalf’s face.

  “Will not!” she whimpered, like a petulant child.

  “Why do people keep telling us to go home?” Tracey asked, looking at the man. She had been feeling more and more that this story wasn’t worth it, and the deeper into it she got, the more frightened she became. She didn’t think she wanted to know what the Defiant Ones truly were after all. “Why?” she asked the man again.

  He approached her now, uncoiling his thick arm from that of his partner’s and stepping up close. He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and captured her eyes with his gaze. She stared into those eyes and was lost for a minute, drifting there in the moment before he spoke.

  What the hell is going on?

  There was something in those eyes that was far from normal.

  And then he spoke.

  “The only thing waiting for you inside that house is death,” the man said, never taking his eyes from Tracey’s.

  “Then we’ve come to the right place!” Linda said, and now Tracey wanted to hit her, to hurt her.

  But she could barely move, and when she spoke, it was a whisper. “But why do you care?” she asked, and incredibly, it was the woman, surely out of earshot, who answered.

  “We don’t. Be certain of that. But the owner of that house . . .” She gestured in disgust.

  “And the host of your party,” the man added.

  “He’s no more a friend of ours than he is of yours.”

  Now the man let her go and stood back. The tall woman came up to join him and Tracey again noticed how beautiful she was, statuesque. They walked away together as if the meeting had never taken place, as if she and Linda had just disappeared. It was damned unnerving.

  “Let’s go-ooh,” Linda whined.

  And something happened in Tracey’s head as she watched the couple walk away, calmly strolling into the night yet with complete knowledge of whatever was going on in Venice. Something was born or something died, she wasn’t quite sure, but suddenly she knew she was going into that house, to that party. She knew she would do whatever she had to in order to find the answers to all the questions in her mind. Not for the story, or a career, or anything so obvious. It was more simple than that. She just had to know. And she couldn’t let fear stop her.

  “Quit whining, you little twit!” she snapped at Linda, who looked at her as if slapped. “Just shut up and follow me and try not to look so excited. It’s embarrassing.”

  Tracey went up the steps and Linda followed her, still staring but subdued.

  18

  THEY’D BEEN INSIDE THE HOUSE FOR LESS than ten minutes when Tracey realized exactly what the Defiant Ones were. She almost said it out loud, but caught herself.

  Inside the front door, their coats had been taken by a huge and silent Italian man. Tracey didn’t know whether the man was silent because he would not speak or because he could not, but what good to ask him? As they made their way into the house few people paid them any mind. There were many rooms and practically a new spectacle in each. In one, people danced normally in the center while onlookers sipped drinks from a bar. In another, lit only by a flickering fireplace on one wall, an orgy raged on while Linda and Tracey paused in a failed attempt to connect legs to bodies to arms in their minds.

  In the hallways, couples of all description held each other tight, opposite and same sex, different colors, different sizes, and in all stages of undress. Tracey gawked momentarily at the inhumanly large breasts of one woman before looking between her legs and spotting a huge penis dangling there. Cries came from a room upstairs where the crack of a whip kept Tracey from looking through the door. Linda, it appeared, had no such compunctions and mentioned to Tracey that she might like to go back to that room later.

  They’d been handed drinks on the first floor, and they now made their way up the steps to the third. Their entire journey through the house had been accompanied by gropes and feels in the dark, spanks on the rump, tweaks of the nipples, hands sliding up their skirts. After a few moments it had seemed foolish to worry about, but now, on these steps, it was worst of all. They could not help but rub themselves on people as they squeezed to get through, to gel up the steps, to get past the hands.

  And why were they going up?

  We’re looking for something, Traccy knew.

  Tracey was squeezing by a blond woman now, chest to chest, and she looked toward the top of the stair
s to avoid making eye contact with any of these people. Before her brain even registered what was happening, the blond woman had a hand up her skirt, pushing her panties aside to get at her.

  “God,” the woman breathed at her, “you’re shaved. I love it when they’re shaved.”

  Tracey batted her hand away and used her elbows to shove the woman back. With people sitting on the steps, though, she lost her own balance, her drink hit the carpeted steps, and she came down hard on her knees. She took a moment to get a breath, reached for her glass before it could be shattered, and began to stand.

  She looked up to see the face of a man, eyes closed in ecstasy as his lips massaged somebody’s penis. Tracey couldn’t see the face of the man receiving the blow job for the forest of people above her blocked her view, but it was clear from the way his knees almost buckled that the cocksucker was doing a good job. The man’s lips curled back slightly from the huge penis in his hand, and a bloody red tear of saliva fell to the steps. Then another. And then Tracey could see a drop of blood, real blood, escape his lips and slowly drip down the side of the standing man’s cock.

  But the man wouldn’t let it go. And he didn’t even need to open his eyes. His tongue snaked out, longer than Tracey thought possible, and caught the blood before it could drop. Then he pulled the cock from his mouth and Tracey could see that it was covered with the bloody saliva. Once more the man opened his mouth wide to accept the width of that penis.

  Tracey saw his teeth. That’s when she knew what the Defiant Ones were, and more importantly, that they were real and she stood here among them.

  She stood up quickly, almost knocking down the blond woman who looked as if she was ready for another try, but scowled now as she saw the look of terror on Tracey’s face.

  “Shouldn’t have come,” the blond woman said, misinterpreting her horror.

  Now Tracey shoved Linda ahead of her, rudely knocking people out of the way as they cleared the last few steps to the top.

  “Tracey, what the hell?” Linda yelled at her, but Tracey came barreling up behind her, almost knocking them both down when the stairs ended. There was more room up here, but still too many people.