Of Saints and Shadows (1994)

by Christopher Golden

  “Shut the hell up and light!”

  Sandro Ricci was roaming the arcades of Calle de Ascensione on the west side of the square. The camera was running as the first monster appeared, and Tracey asked him if he could get any closer.

  Yeah, right!

  “I’m telling you,”’ Thomas Montesi was screaming to be heard, “my tracker, Pierre, was certain he saw the book at that house, at Hannibal’s house!”

  “Why did you leave?” Mulkerrin snapped, even as the two of them struggled to keep their spells intact, both offensive and defensive.

  “You ordered us to!” Thomas said.

  Mulkerrin grimaced under the strain of his magic, though he was able to take a breather for a moment now that the Montesis and Sister Mary had arrived with their troops. Unfortunately, the shadows were killing indiscriminately, and many of his own people were dying, but for the most part they were smart enough to stay out of the dark creatures’ way. The Defiant Ones, on the other hand, attacked them directly, dominating their attention. Only nine of the vampires remained. After several moments he looked back at Thomas.

  “Don’t worry,” he said with his first smile in several hours. “We’re in control still. This should not take too long, and then we’ll get that book, I assure you.”

  He surveyed the carnage in the square once more; many of the buildings around them had flames flickering at their windows. The corpses of several dozen civilians, martyrs in the eyes of God, had lain in the deepening snow, but now many were being eaten by the emerging demons. Smoke rose from the windows of the Doge’s Palace, next to the Basilica, and Mulkerrin wondered if those venerable old structures would survive the day. But no matter, victory was worth any sacrifice. In the distance, smoke rose from the purifying fires his soldiers had left behind. Of the Defiant Ones in the square, all but one had lost their hats and masks in the fighting. One dressed like a harlequin had taken on bat form and flown off; two were dead. Those remaining were in black, or harlequin costumes, save for the creature still masked, who was all in red with multicolored feathers in his hat.

  Mulkerrin watched this one closely. He knew Octavian, he knew Hannibal, and several of the others were familiar to him from records and Vincent Montesi’s reports. But it bothered him that he could not see the face of the thing in red, bothered him because the thing seemed familiar. His curiosity gnawing at him, he directed one of his mist-wraiths to attack the scarlet-garbed immortal and to rip off the mask. Such a simple thing, really, and when it was done, the creature’s face was revealed.

  Liam Mulkerrin knew him well enough. He had only seen him once, but his visage was forever etched in the priest’s memory.

  Montesi brothers! Mulkerrin thought, for he still had a psychic link with his acolytes. The Defiant One cloaked in scarlet is the one! It is the creature who killed your father. I have fulfilled my promise to you, and I expect that you will fulfill your oath to him. Have a care, now. Only one of you may break off We cannot divert all of our attention to this one.

  Mulkerrin had not expected a reply, but one came.

  What is his name? Robert Montesi asked, his mental voice loud in Mulkerrin’s head.

  But Father Liam Mulkerrin did not answer, for he did not know.

  Jasmine was dead. It seemed a simple thing, really. Though the wail of the banshees was not as effective outside, in the blowing snow, as it had been when Peter had faced them inside a Cambridge bookstore, when they got close, the noise was maddening and painful. Jasmine had been confronted by a demon, a huge shadow thing, and trapped in a corner by it and a banshee. While the screaming thing distracted her and blocked her escape, the huge, green-scaled beast look her down like a thing of the wild, disemboweling her and feasting on her entrails. It removed her head and held it high as a trophy. For the moment Peter didn’t dare to go after it, as the wailing might be a fatal distraction for him as well.

  Another of them, Opal, one of Hannibal’s coven, had also been killed. Mulkerrin’s creature was similar in appearance to a large firefly, and nearly invisible in the day. Had it not been snowing, Opal would not have seen it at all, but it was too late nevertheless. The thing flew into her open mouth and exploded with the concussive force and flames of a bomb. Peter’s spirits were dropping dangerously low. Only grief and a terrible anger burned in him now; all else was forgotten.

  Caught between shadows rampaging out of control and well-armed Defiant Ones, Mulkerrin’s forces had been thinned by a quarter since their reinforcements had arrived. Some of the demons had simply run off, raging across Venice and destroying innocents wherever they found them—Mulkerrin and his acolytes could only herd so many of them at once. Still, the odds were decidedly against Peter and his people. He would have to even things out.

  He cried out in sorrow and anger and pain as he mutated partially into his wolf form. He stood on his haunches and howled at the hellish creatures under the yoke of the Catholics. They were slaves, he knew, but to save his people, they had to be destroyed. Just before he leaped at the nearest creature—a blackish purple centaurlike beast with a huge bony phallus—he noticed that the mirror portals had disappeared for the moment. That the magicians were resting. This was the time, then, to fight the hardest.

  He destroyed the centaur creature in seconds, leaping on its back and tearing out its throat in the blink of an eye. It didn’t have a chance to react, never mind to attack him. Then he reverted back to his human form to shout a command.

  “The sorcerers are resting. Attack now. Kill the magicians and we win the day!”

  Peter had been born a warrior; it was a life he had given up long ago. And yet, for the first time since he had come to this life after life, he felt the excitement of the fight as he had so long ago behind the high walls of Constantinople, where he stood against the Turkish hordes alongside Carlo and Gregory and Andronicus. Then, they had no hope of winning, and he had left the city so that he might later exact vengeance for his friends. Now the odds were equally poor, but he felt strangely confident. He would not leave before Mulkerrin and his acolytes were dead, their blood melting the newfallen snow.

  “More of them!” one of the Vatican soldiers yelled, and pointed to the sky.

  As each group, killers all, followed the Vatican man’s direction to gaze at the sky, Peter leaped in wolf form again on one of the acolytes. He knew what they must be seeing; Sheng returning with whichever of the sleeping immortals he had convinced to brave the sunlight and come to their aid. He was grateful for the diversion, for now he was upon the man.

  Isaac Montesi looked to the sky along with the others and took in the new arrivals. Only two, he thought, and gave thanks to God. The two enormous bats were flying to join their comrades. Montesi turned to shout encouragement to his troops and saw the huge werewolf nearly upon him. Just before he was knocked to the ground, Isaac was able to retrieve the silver dagger from his belt. As the creature bit nearly through his left forearm, almost causing him to pass out from pain, he used his other arm to thrust the dagger deep into its belly.

  Peter howled and fell over, wolfen paws reaching for the blade, which hurt terribly with its poison silver. He looked up to see Isaac drawing a silver sword, lifting the heavy weapon above his head with his good arm, and preparing to bring down the deathstroke.

  The sword fell.

  When it struck, Peter was no longer there, and the thud of silver onto brick was joined by the clatter of the dagger as it fell from the mist where Peter had been a moment earlier. Montesi whirled at the mist, swinging his blade at it, but it moved in and around him until he was nearly surrounded by it. Suddenly two hands appeared, one at his throat and the other clutching his sword hand, holding the weapon at bay. A second later the ghostly hands grew a body, and Peter stood holding Isaac Montesi with horrible strength.

  “I’ve just had a revelation,” Peter said loudly, snapping the acolyte’s wrist and taking his sword—he’d had to abandon his earlier weapon when he shifted his shape. “I’ve just had the most a
mazing thought and I know it’s true. You have names for us—Defiant Ones, vampires—you even lump us in with these shadows, but we’re not. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE ARE!”

  He roared in Isaac’s face, and then quieted abruptly as he felt the Vatican man’s mind attempt to access his own. Peter’s face went slack for a moment, and then his rage was back.

  “You don’t have any better idea than we do, and that’s what scares you!” he yelled, then sank his sharp teeth into Isaac Montesi’s neck, taking human blood for the first time in a century. It felt good.

  He turned to see Sheng with the cavalry. The first two bats had been Cody and Genghis, who were arming themselves with silver weapons. Now Sheng had arrived with several others. With incredible speed only his kind could muster, Peter was at Cody’s side in seconds.

  “Buffalo were never this hard to kill,” Cody shouted upon seeing him. “In a way I wish they had been. Of course, these bastards don’t give me a moment’s pause.”

  “Why’d you leave the theater?” Peter asked.

  “Rolf is doing fine.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  Cody smiled at him before a claw ripped through the old scout’s face. For a moment Will Cody was all work, pissed off and slicing through the black-furred demon in front of him with a terrible hate, which Peter did not like to see on his face. When Cody had finished, he touched his hand to his cut cheek, but even Peter could see that the furrows ripped by the demon’s talons were almost gone.

  “We went out through the bathroom window!” Cody finally answered, and laughed to himself. “How we doing, boss?”

  “One acolyte down, three to go. The two that look like brothers and the one-eyed witch. Of course, that doesn’t count Mulkerrin! But we’ve got to shut those banshees up first. We can’t afford to lose any more of our people from distractions.”

  Punctuating his statement, two of the new arrivals and another of Hannibal’s coven went up in flames as they were being attacked by a banshee and five hellish things, not to mention the mist creatures. The things had made a concentrated effort, obviously led by Mulkerrin’s manipulations. No wonder he’d closed the portals, Peter thought, if it allows him that kind of control.

  Under Mulkerrin’s direct manipulation, the same shadows had apparently become a “pack” of some sort. Together, they turned toward where Hannibal, Genghis, and Sheng were attacking a group of Vatican soldiers and two huge female demons that were protecting Thomas Montesi, the next acolyte to be targeted. Unfortunately, the creatures being directly controlled by Mulkerrin were about to make the odds decidedly uneven.

  Peter and Cody would change that, or get themselves in the middle.

  “Y’know,” Peter said to him as they stepped into the path of the oncoming demonic horde, “a master showman like you could’ve sold a lot of tickets to an event like this!”

  “Well,” Cody answered, raising his sword and mentally setting fire to his left hand, “isn’t that what I did?”

  Peter hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but for the first time he realized what Cody meant. What they’d done, by talking to the reporter, Tracey, was give the world a show it could never forget. Mulkerrin and Garbarino, who he thought was most probably dead, might have figured out a way, whether magical or political, to keep the police out of it.

  But the media? No way.

  He and Cody had blown the status quo to hell.

  Just as they ripped into the approaching demons, giving their brothers time to take out Thomas Montesi’s protectors, Lazarus joined them.

  “We can’t do this forever!” he said to Peter.

  “If we can kill the sorcerers, we won’t have to,” Peter replied. “We’re still badly in need of an equalizer, though, something to turn the tide.”

  PETER!

  The voice shouted in his head just as he was about to slice into the banshee, and he doubled over. Vulnerable for a moment, he was batted away by a huge fleshy shadow and slammed into a building before sliding down its side. He heard an unearthly scream and was satisfied as he opened his eyes to see Cody destroying the banshee. Will’s fist was aflame, and he shoved it into the ghostly thing, which somehow forced it to solidify, to stabilize in order to combat the flame. Cody’s blade whipped down and sliced a hole in the thing, and he was forced back by the wind that came from the banshee’s wound.

  Peter remembered the gale-force wind that had blown in the bookstore and realized that though weakened, the winds blowing the snow about had probably come from the banshees as well. This new wind was different, though, accompanied by a terrible noise, a howl of pain and dying that rose in pitch and volume until the banshee, flying in circles above their heads and screaming from its mouth and the tear in its body, flew out over the canal and disappeared.

  One down, he thought. And now we know how to get rid of them, even if we can’t kill them.

  But whose voice was it that had distracted him in the first place?

  MINE, SILLY!

  Meaghan?

  None other.

  You’re awake?

  That and more, she thought to him, and he could sense irony in the words, but not their meaning.

  We’re coming over, Alex and I, she thought.

  No, Peter answered, you’re not ready.

  I am ready, you’ll have to trust me.

  What about the hook? Peter asked, slightly panicked now. Not only did he worry about Mulkerrin finding the book, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to fight, with Meaghan to worry about. Even reborn as one of his kind, she had just woken. She’d be weak, in need of food. And the sun . . .

  Don’t he an idiot, her words came to him, and he realized their telepathy went further than he’d known.

  You made me, she continued. I don’t have the constraints that the others do. You need me!

  Okay, maybe I do, but what about the damn hook?

  Send Sheng to guard it, you can trust him.

  He considered for a moment, but then he was under attack again, and the decision was made.

  Wait till Sheng gets there!

  With Cody gone, Rolf had been left alone to guard the entrance to the theater. Though the job had become considerably easier—they’d killed more than thirty of their attackers—he reveled in it. He had been left with a great responsibility, a sign of respect from his people. The church was attempting genocide, and the majority of the population of his kind lay awake in the darkened theater, relying on his protection. He would not let them down.

  The soldiers had begun to get imaginative, for they knew that he could hold out forever if they simply went for one failed frontal assault after another. Their numbers would dwindle until they were all gone. They’d tried to distract him to no avail. As a mute, Rolf had found learning a challenge, and his powers of concentration were based on a fierce, controlled attention.

  A soldier bearing a flamethrower—Rolf imagined it to be one of few that remained—attempted a frontal assault just then, and Rolf cut him down with barely a glance. Yet that glance was enough to distract him for just a moment, and he was rushed from either side. Each man was armed with a flamethrower and a silver dagger, and blowing snow or no, Rolf didn’t think he would stand a chance in the daylight if one of them got close enough to him. And he couldn’t shoot them both at once.

  Rolf Sechs was far more quick-witted than his coven had known, and ever calm in the face of danger, even when he’d been human.

  He took one big step backward, through the door and into the foyer of the theater, forcing his attackers to come together in front of him. Crouched down as he was, two bursts of flame singed his wavy hair as he pulled the trigger, knocking both men off their feet, up and back quite a ways, only to land on the flamethrowers they wore. Rolf imagined that one of the two must have ruptured on the brick street, as twin explosions, one right after the other, rocked the entryway to the theater, and knocked him off his own feet to sprawl against the theater’s inner doors.

  He was up in a flash, th
ough, and back at his post even as burning flesh and clothing rained from the air. He didn’t think they’d try that again, at least for a while. He looked at the heavy sky, through the falling snow, and realized that soon they’d be getting desperate. It wouldn’t be too long until dusk. Not long at all.

  His eyes were torn from the clouds by the roar of the demon that charged him, the blood of churchmen decorating its mouth and claws.

  They were desperate all right.

  29

  “NO, ROBERT!” MULKERRIN YELLED TO THE youngest Montesi. “We can’t afford to break off now, with Isaac dead.”

  “I didn’t ask you to stop, Liam. You’ll have to make do without me for a few moments.”

  “Do not approach the creature personally! Use your sorcery!”

  “No,” Robert answered, dropping one sword and unsheathing another, far more ornate. “This sword is meant to spill the blood of the hellspawn that killed my father. And it shall!”

  With that, he ran off toward the Doge’s Palace, in front of which Lazarus was eliminating the largest demon they had yet seen, a twenty-foot monstrosity with what appeared to be vaginal openings covering its body. The ancient Defiant One slashed at the demon’s legs and body, only to have the silver sword become stuck within one of its thousands of vaginas. Instead of fighting to withdraw it, Lazarus stuck the sword deeper, twisting and hacking, as the deadly metal cut through the thing like butter. The demon doubled over from the pain, and Lazarus drove the silver sword deeper into its abdomen, where he knew its hellish heart would be.

  As Robert ran toward Lazarus a voice cried out in his mind, but this time, it was his own.

  How in the name of God did he know where to strike?

  Clearly, there was more to this Defiant One than even Mulkerrin knew, but Robert was not deterred. They all would die, but this one was his sole target now. His father’s murder would be avenged. He raised high his sword as Lazarus turned to meet him.

  Mulkerrin had worried for a time, especially at the death of Isaac Montesi, and then when the Defiant Ones had been joined by more of their kind. Though Robert’s impetuousness gave him pause, he now realized he had been foolish to feel such concern. Their reinforcements had been even less confident about being out in the daylight than the previous group. Even though the sun was obscured by the clouds and snow, making it seem nearly night, its rays were still too powerful when combined with the suggestions long ago implanted in their minds. Though his group had taken severe losses both from the Defiant Ones and from Mulkerrin’s shadow slaves, were in fact down to barely more than fifty, though he and his acolytes were feeling weak from both summoning and manipulating demons, they still had the upper hand. The newly arrived Defiant Ones had barely made a difference in the inevitable outcome.