Of Saints and Shadows (1994)

by Christopher Golden

  “God’s work,” Montesi said, and then there was nothing.

  Robert thought he might have seen some glimmer of understanding in the cardinal’s eyes as his head thumped to the floor, and then the light went out of them. He grinned at the head, thinking again what a pompous fool the man had been. Robert hadn’t needed a single spell to kill him, though it shouldn’t have been that easy.

  “What in the name of God!”

  Robert turned to see that a priest, likely the pastor of Sant Maria di Nazareth, had entered the church on his left, in clear view of the severed head and its former resting place. Robert was disturbed. He had meant to leave without cleanup of any kind. By morning all hell would have broken loose and the police wouldn’t think twice about one decapitated corpse. But now, well, it was a slight annoyance, this distraction.

  “Are you blind, Father?” he said to the priest, who had ceased his approach, and now took careful steps backward, toward the door through which he had entered. “Clearly this is murder in the name of God, as your death shall be.”

  The priest turned to run, but Brother Robert Montesi made no effort to follow. Rather he lifted his right hand and pointed his index finger at the retreating man.

  “Dothiel ah-nul spethu,” he said, and rocked back slightly on his heels as the power left his hand and flew, invisible, across the church, striking the priest and hurling him face-first into a beautiful fresco of Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was said that Christ cried tears of blood in the garden, and now this aspect of the work was all too realistically illustrated.

  He felt guilty for having used his magic on such a lazy spell—Mulkerrin had asked them to conserve their energy, but it had been reflex. And Robert Montesi was a magician, after all. Not a sorcerer like his superior, but he would be one day soon. Magic was the combination of spells of power and total control over the powers of one’s mind. Only when he had added the ability to completely control the creatures of darkness, demons and other supernatural beings, would he be able to call himself sorcerer.

  He longed for that day. The rest of this was but a prelude.

  Feeling a bit sheepish, Robert walked over to the fallen priest, but the man did not move. His head was leaning against the wall, his body crumpled. The neck was turned at an awkward angle, forehead to the wall, and Robert thought it might be broken.

  Best to be sure, though. He put his right foot on the back of the man’s neck, then lifted his left and stomped down with both feet and all his weight. A satisfying crack told him that the neck hadn’t been broken, and he was glad he’d taken the time to check. Not that anything the man might have said could have interfered with their plan, but Mulkerrin had taught him well. He didn’t like to leave any job unfinished.

  24

  “HAVE YOU GONE COMPLETELY CRAZY?” Peter was livid.

  “Exactly the opposite. I’ve never been more sane, or made more sense in my entire life,” Meaghan snapped, exasperated.

  “Meaghan, you don’t understand what—”

  “I do understand and I’m beginning to think I understand a lot more than any of you do.”

  The “any” she referred to had all gone, spreading the word and gathering together all of the Defiant Ones in Venice for a huge impromptu meeting scheduled that evening, Monday night, the night before carnival. They were alone now, in a huge and luxuriously appointed bedroom in Hannibal’s home, which he had generously offered to Meaghan. She had had very little rest for several days.

  “You all act like children,” she continued, “with your petty arguments and feuds and your arrogant posturing—God, even the females do it—it’s so frustrating. In light of what you’ve read in that damned book, you really have no idea of your power or the extent of it, do you?”

  “Meaghan, I—”

  “Do you?”

  Peter looked at her, attempting an angry glare but barely succeeding at a frown. Meaghan almost laughed but didn’t want to get off on a tangent. Peter did look cute, though, like a sulky child instead of a gun-toting outlaw from Cody’s youth, which was his usual image.

  “No,” he said finally, and both of them relaxed somewhat.

  “Listen to me,” she said softly. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to explain it to you again, and this time pay attention.

  “There are a lot of reasons I want this, some are selfish and some are practical. Let’s start with the selfish.

  “This is a life that my heart always wanted but my brain always told me was lost in the past, in history, if it had ever really existed outside of storybooks at all. Adventure, danger, romance . . . of course I never knew it would be combined with the childish antics of an entire race of undeserving immortals—”

  “Well,” Peter cut in, “you haven’t met us all yet.”

  “A representative sample,” Meaghan said archly, one eyebrow raised. She smacked him on the thigh. “Stop interrupting. What I’m saying, as goofy as it may sound, is that now that I’ve experienced this . . . life, that I always thought was impossible, well, I can’t give it up. My second selfish reason is that I love you, and I can’t give you up either.”

  They sat next to each other on the edge of the big bed, and Meaghan lowered her head for a moment, waiting as Peter’s mind raced. He took her hand and kissed it, and continued to hold it as he spoke.

  “I love you, and believe it or not, I understand how you’re feeling about this life, if you can call it that. You know things nobody else does, you’ve been in constant jeopardy and survived, you’ve had contact with people more powerful than you ever dreamed possible. The world has, in a sense, been totally re-created in your mind. It’s brand new, and you’re learning more about it every moment. And the most exciting thing is, you know almost as much about it as the creatures who inhabit it, and are learning with them.”

  “You put it into words so much better than I do,” she said, nodding and squeezing his hand.

  “That’s because you’re at your most eloquent when you’re angry,” Peter answered, and gave a soft laugh. “But even though all these things are understandable, rational, admirable really, there is nothing which says you cannot simply go on participating in this new world as you are.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said flatly, and now her eyes narrowed. “You know what I’m going to say, so I don’t know why you don’t simply give in. I am human, vulnerable, and therefore a liability for you because you care about me. I am incapable of earning more than a grudging respect from your kind because of this vulnerability.

  “All my life I have been complimented on work well done, and yet the majority of these compliments were delivered with an unspoken, usually unspoken, addendum. ‘For a woman.’ Do you understand that, Peter? I did a great Job ‘for a woman.’ Only now it’s ‘for a human.’ I’ll never escape that feeling around the Defiant Ones, because this time they’ll be right. Certainly they are no more intelligent than I, though many have lived ray life hundreds of times over, but they live their lives and play their games on a plateau I can never hope to reach.

  “I’m not really in it, am I? Though I’ve been involved in the most important discovery your people will probably ever make, I’m not a player in any sense except as your Achilles’ heel. I can’t live with that.”

  She looked at him, such fierce emotion in her eyes that he had to turn away for a moment. When he looked back, he seemed to have reached a resolution.

  “Okay,” he said.

  They undressed each other slowly, and their lovemaking was equally deliberate. They savored every moment, every caress, every inch of one another. Meaghan rode him, her hair falling in his face. After several minutes she looked down and noticed that he cried bloody tears.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I’ve never done this before,” he croaked, and met her movements with a yearning thrust of his own.

  She smiled then, her heart happy and light and confident.

  “I’m glad,” she whis
pered. “I love you, Peter.”

  “Love you, too,” he said, then sank his sharp teeth into her breast and drank deeply of her.

  Meaghan moaned and leaned into him, feeding him, giving herself over to him even as they made love. After a few moments their movements sped up. Peter withdrew his mouth from her breast, and she felt a loss there similar to the feeling of his penis drawing out of her. He pulled her down toward him, and she felt her breasts press against his chest as he pushed her face to his own throat.

  “Bite me,” he said.

  And she couldn’t, couldn’t tear into his flesh.

  “Fuck me,” he said then, “Hard.”

  They moved together, faster and deeper. She slid her sweaty breasts across his cool body and gripped the pillow behind his head. She felt her orgasm coming seconds before it arrived, building to a crescendo of ecstasy.

  And then it stopped. With his extraordinary strength Peter held her down tight on him, filling her deeper than she’d ever been filled, but not letting her move, not letting her reach that peak. She felt as though she couldn’t breathe.

  “Now,” he said, “bite me!”

  Her head dipped to his neck and she clamped her teeth down on his flesh, tearing into the softness there. Blood spurted on her face before she caught it in her mouth, an ejaculation of life. At the first swallow her orgasm began, and then Peter’s hands were gone and they were pounding at each other again. She felt herself exploding again and again, the taste of his blood bringing a tingling, no, a screaming excitement that was completely new to her. She drank deep, and just as her orgasm began to subside, Peter climaxed, pouring himself into her and moaning under her. The predator, she held his powerful arms down at his sides as she lapped at the wound on his neck, which was already healing.

  Exhausted, she lay on him as he dwindled inside her, drifting slowly toward badly needed rest. She barely grimaced as his teeth sank into her own neck, then smiled as he began to drink of her. It was a pleasantly sexual feeling, especially in the afterglow of such wonderful lovemaking.

  As Peter continued to feed, Meaghan fell down through sleep to another place, a place of waiting and decision. But her decisions had all been made, and the smile was still on her face as she fell farther still, out of the realm of life.

  Arriving at the Hotel Venezia, she went to the desk and introduced herself as Tracey Sacco, from CNN. She asked what rooms she might find her coworkers in, planning to mumble something about being in the wrong hotel if nobody from the network was there. Then she’d have to figure out how to track down someone from ABC or CBS.

  But that wouldn’t be necessary. The CNN “team” was apparently one person, with a room along the front of the building, and Tracey went up to the fourth floor with her fingers crossed.

  Five minutes of determined knocking left her satisfied that nobody was there, but she kept knocking another minute anyway. She knew it wasn’t realistic to think they would have sent an earth station, never mind a flyaway, but that was what she was wishing for. A live broadcast would be that much easier, and she wouldn’t have to worry about getting any tape to Rome. She knocked again, but she didn’t have time to wait. She would go to the lobby and ask about ABC, and if she couldn’t find anybody, she’d have to come back up here and try to break in, hoping there was a camera in the room.

  Just as she turned to go she heard the doorknob rattling behind her and turned to see the door opening and a sheepish-looking young man emerging. He was adjusting his belt.

  “Sorry, I was, uh, indisposed. Can I help you?” he asked, innocence and embarrassment combining to redden his face.

  She wanted to yell, but he had no way of knowing what was going on. She resolved to keep her cool.

  “Tracey Sacco, I work for Jim Thomas in Atlanta,” she said, hoping he didn’t recognize her. “And you can start by letting me in.”

  He did.

  “I’m Sandro Ricci,” he said, without any trace of an Italian accent, then turned to her expectantly once they were in his small but comfortable room. “What’s up?”

  “Sandro,” she said, “that’s an unusual name.”

  “Not around here.” He laughed. “It’s short for Alessandro.”

  “They send you out here alone, Alessandro?”

  One side of his mouth rose in an unhappy face, and Sandro nodded.

  “I’m a cameraman, really, and originally they only wanted footage. Now, though, they want me to set up the camera and do a lead-in myself.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and urged her to take the comfortable-looking chair in front of it. Tracey was ecstatic. The guy was by himself. She would still have to get tape to Rome, but at least she wouldn’t have to waste time with some dorky field producer.

  “That’s why I’m here,” she said, and he raised an eyebrow.

  “Come again?”

  “I was on a story in Rome and ready to go home when I got instructions to head here and do your reporting for you.”

  Sandro was silent for a moment, studying her. She wondered what he was thinking. Then he smiled.

  “Yeah, I thought I recognized you,” he said, and she was worried then that he might know she’d been fired. “What was your name again?”

  “Tracey,” she said, and sighed relief. “Tracey Sacco.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Now, how to get him and his camera where she needed him to be. According to her lie, she was there to help him, and he wouldn’t go where he didn’t want to go.

  “You don’t sound Italian,” she said, very friendly.

  “I grew up outside Rome, but my family moved to the States when I was in junior high school. I spent high school in Baltimore and college in Chicago,” he explained.

  Sandro got up and began to unpack his camera. “We ought to get started,” he said, and Tracey decided that she might as well just jump in.

  “Listen, how would you like to make your career?” she asked. “I mean tonight. Wanna be the world’s most famous cameraman?”

  “What’ve you got?” he asked, doubtful but not sarcastic. He was too young for that, and Tracey was grateful.

  “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll shoot the footage we need for the carnival story, with whatever setup and lead-in you want, and we take a trip to a house I was at earlier today.

  “It’s the biggest story ever, period.” She smiled, though she was cringing at the thought of going back to Hannibal’s house. But then, where else could she start?

  “Okay with me as long as we get this stuff in the can first. I hope you’re not going to get me in trouble.”

  “Oh, come on, do I look like the kind of woman who gets into a lot of trouble?” Tracey smiled at him, though Sandro did take another look at her when she asked the question.

  “By the way,” she added, “you don’t happen to have a crucifix around here anywhere?”

  Two hours later they had plenty of footage of carnival. More than enough film, with colorful intros by Tracey, of Venetians and tourists decked out in outlandish costumes and intricate uniforms. A light snow had begun to fall, which was uncommon for the season. It was a beautiful night, filled with music and wonder, and quite a number of drunken revelers as well.

  Tracey was not happy. The longer they stayed out without coming upon anything out of the ordinary—for carnival anyway—the more nervous she became. Adrenaline had carried her earlier, but now she was tired and becoming frightened again. When they reached the Grand Canal, Giuseppe Schiavoni was gone, and another man was in his place.

  “Where’s Giuseppe?” she asked the man as they boarded the traghetto (though Sandro didn’t want to take his camera on the gondola, she didn’t leave him much choice).

  “Left for Sicily,” the man said. “His sister is ill, he said.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence, Tracey becoming ever more nervous as they approached Ca Rezzonico, and the host that she knew lay beyond it.

  After they disembarked and paid
the man, something she had never thought to do earlier when Giuseppe had been kind enough to run her halfway across Venice, they made their way up Calle Bernardo very slowly. Tracey expected to hear the noise of a party, and was surprised to see the house in darkness. From her vantage point she could not see a single light burning inside.

  “This is it,” she said.

  “This is what?” Sandro asked, and she could tell by his tone that he was tired and wanted to get home.

  “You want to know? Roll tape,” she said, and then the camera was running.

  “My name is Tracey Sacco,” she began, “or at least it has been for several years now. But it’s not my only name. Terry Shaughnessy. That’s another name I’ve used recently. My real name is Allison Vigeant, and some of you may remember me from before I went undercover. That’s where I’ve been for four years. And now I’m breaking that cover to bring you this story. I’ll start by telling you about my involvement in it, and before we’re over, my cameraman, CNN’s Sandro Ricci and I will show you how it affects all of you.”

  She went on, quickly describing what led her to investigate the Defiant Ones, her arrangement with Jim Thomas, and then giving a detailed account of the previous twenty-four hours. Through it all, Sandro’s eyes grew wider and wider, until the end.

  “Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, myth and legend become real. Hollywood horror leaves the screen and creeps into your living room. Tonight you will call into doubt everything you’ve ever known, or thought you knew. There are vampires among us, and this home behind me is owned by one of them. A savage monster named Hannibal,” she concluded.

  “Oh shit,” Sandro said, shutting off his camera. “I’m dead. I’m going to get fired for certain. Look, lady, what is this, ‘Hard Copy’? I don’t need this!”