Tammy saw it before any of them, even Jack, and she screamed. A huge hand shot out of the hole in the wall, clutching George like a child’s doll, talons impaling his face, stomach and side. Tammy’s was the only scream as her brother disappeared through the hole in an instant. Matt stared, mouth open wide, and Jack just smiled.
“Jack!” Matt finally said. “Jack! Do something!”
Matt ran to the wall, but by the time he reached it, it was only stone again, and he pounded his fists against it. When he turned, Jack was standing out on the watchtower with Tammy in his arms. She was sobbing loudly with her eyes closed. But Jack was staring directly at him, and as Matt started to move into the open, Tammy’s crying began again. Jack lifted her, with incredible strength, and hurled her, wailing, out over the edge of the tower. From there, it was a straight drop to the trees five hundred feet below, and Tammy screamed all the way down.
Matt was on Jack in a moment, the two scrabbling on the stone floor of the tower. Matt was on top, and his hands locked around Jack’s throat, choking him, but Jack stopped fighting back. Instead, he touched the bare skin of Matt’s arm with one hand and the stone floor with the other hand and mumbled one word through his choking gasps.
Matt Monahan turned to stone, a statue, made from the same rock as the fortress itself, almost growing out of it. It was simple for not-Jack to pry himself loose from the statue’s grip, breaking several stone fingers in the process. The statue looked quite alone. And somehow, too new
“Well, this is an old castle,” not-Jack said in his not-Jack voice. “And you, boy, have got to look old.”
A hard roundhouse kick and the statue’s head, a head which had once belonged to Matt Monahan, flew into the air and tumbled down the mountainside to join the corpse of his wife, broken and twisted at the bottom of the cliff, an offering to the fortress itself
Above, the laughter began.
Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Tuesday, June 6, 2000, 2:16 P.M.:
Just below the watchtower, in a crumbling hallway with large, open windows, an area off-limits for visitors to Festung Hohensalzburg, Allison Vigeant and Will Cody heard the screaming begin. As Cody searched for the fastest way out and up, Allison gasped and called for him to come back to the window. Only seconds had passed, but Tammy Monahan’s body had already fallen too far for Will to rescue her, whatever form he took.
“Stay here,” Will said to her, and Allison winced.
“I’ll find my way up and meet you topside,” she said.
Will bit his lip.
“Please,” he asked. “Stay here?”
“Five minutes,” she said, and looked at her watch.
In seconds, a large raven flapped out of that window and took to the sky, circling above the fortress, the only bird in the sky. As he dipped among the wind currents at that height, Will Cody watched as the man who had been Jack Rice turned Matt Monahan to stone, then smashed the head from the statue’s neck and sent it flying over the edge.
Sorcery, Cody thought, and the very idea chilled him, ruffling his feathers. For as far as he knew, the one book that held the secrets to such magic, The Gospel of Shadows, was safe in Meaghan Gallagher’s possession. But this was magic, just the same.
The sorcerer moved away from the watchtower, back toward the main section of the castle, where dozens of tourists milled about the courtyard, ducking into hallways and rooms. He raised his arms to begin a spell, and Cody dove toward him, determined to stop whatever the magician had in mind. But as he flew, straight toward the man in T-shirt and blue jeans, a ripple ran through reality, an illusion taking hold, and the man changed. His clothes became black, blond hair turned white-gray, and his words picked up in rhythm, a new spell.
He turned.
It was Liam Mulkerrin.
Cody turned toward the sky, veering up and away before Mulkerrin could notice him, his mind in temporary shock.
No! he thought. He’s dead. I saw him die, and Peter with him.
But he knew that was untrue. He had not seen Mulkerrin die, but pass through into the realm of the real shadows, the demons that had done the sorcerer-priest’s bidding. And Cody’s friend, Peter Octavian, had carried him there, apparently sacrificing his life.
But if Mulkerrin was alive?
He did a slow circle, keeping behind the sorcerer, and when he looked again, Cody saw the spirits rising.
From out of the stone beneath the frightened tourists’ feet, from the walls around them, ghostly apparitions oozed in wet clouds the color of parchment yellowed with age. They were dark things, yes, but not demons, not the shadows of hell. As they overtook men, women and children, each fell in turn, the apparitions disappearing within them. When the people rose again, seconds later, new intelligence burned in their eyes.
Will Cody looked closer, using other senses, senses born of all that was inhuman within him, to focus his vision. And he saw. The apparitions were just that—ghosts. The spirits of those soldiers, warriors who had served the prince-archbishops of Salzburg and had been stationed in the fortress whose souls must have returned there, to the place of their greatest duty, after their deaths. Regardless of everything he knew to be true, Will Cody had never believed in ghosts. And yet here they were; Mulkerrin had called them to his service, and with the humans in the fortress as physical hosts for the spirits, the sorcerer now had a small force of slave warriors.
The question, Cody realized, was how he had done it. Mulkerrin had not had this ability before, or he would certainly have used it. Now he worked such magic with no visible effort? Wherever he had been, Cody thought, as he glided on raven’s wings, he’d been busy.
And what of Octavian? Where did that leave him?
Cody made one final circuit, soaring higher, away from the castle, and prepared to return to the time-worn window where he’d left Allison.
Allison! What if the spirits were all over the castle and not just around Mulkerrin? He dove now, hurtling down toward that window, but just before he passed out of sight of the courtyard, he saw something out of place, something not an attacking apparition or a fleeing human, something subtle—
It can’t be!
But he knew it was. Allison had ventured upstairs not bothering to wait the five minutes, her reporter’s instincts forcing her to break her word. She stood in the shadows of a doorway, and even now, as Cody crested the courtyard walls once again, she emerged into the light, to get a better look at what was happening.
Already, a dark and heavy cloud, the only true remains of a centuries-old soldier, drifted toward her as if it knew it had all the time in the world. After all, where could she run? And Allison, for all that she could see chaos had taken over, had not yet discovered the source of this anarchy. She had not yet seen Mulkerrin.
Where could she run? The question was moot; she wasn’t running.
The raven, Will Cody, sped on, past the floating thing. He was larger than any raven the world had ever seen, and even now he changed, becoming something else, something completely new in the world. His talons grew larger, their sharp ends turning soft, strong. Before she truly knew what was happening, Cody had picked up Allison at the arms and carried her over the side, five hundred feet above the city.
Mulkerrin turned, hearing a woman scream, but did not see them disappearing over the side. Instead, he assumed some human had been so overwhelmed with the terrors he had raised, that she had thrown herself over the edge. He had taken over the mind and body of Jack Rice, who was, for all intents and purposes, dead. And yet, clad in illusion, it was Liam Mulkerrin’s head that was thrown back, his mouth open wide, ringing with laughter. A maniacal gleam shone in the former priest’s eyes as he surveyed his work, and he laughed again as he thought of the woman who had jumped to her death rather than serve him.
“Ah,” he said and laughed, wiping tears from his eyes. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”
He could barely catch his breath from laughing.
/> “No place like home.”
2
Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Tuesday, June 6, 2000, 7:45 A.M.:
The sun rose slowly over Boston, its heat marching inexorably forward, like the tide rolling in. It was the fifth day of the worst heat wave in a decade—over one hundred degrees by noon, and not less than eighty at night. Fortunately, there was air-conditioning in the Back Bay brownstone shared by Meaghan Gallagher and Alexandra Nueva. Though their shadow physiology was quite adaptable, and they certainly did not sweat much, or often, still the week had taken its toll. Even with the a/c on full blast, they were tired and slightly cranky.
“Come on, sweetheart, get your ass in gear,” Alexandra said, and dragged Meaghan feet first out of bed.
“Noooo,” Meaghan howled, pillow held over her head even as she slammed to the floor from the height of the mattress. “Ouch.”
“Meaghan Rae Gallagher,’ Alex said, scolding, “we have got a video-conference with the shadow ambassador and the secretary-general of the United Nations in forty-five minutes. You. Must. Get. Up!”
Alex grabbed Meaghan under her armpits, pillow falling to the ground, and lifted her easily to her feet. At first Meaghan played dead, but then she whipped her face around to meet Alex’s gaze, and spit her words like venom.
“Bitch! You couldn’t let me sleep fifteen more minutes?”
“You don’t have fifteen minutes,” Alex snapped back, getting mad now. “And besides, you’re dead. You don’t need to sleep!”
A smile crept over Meaghan’s face, as her feet finally took her own weight. She pulled Alex to her, pressing herself against the other woman. Meaghan’s full breasts against her own reminded Alex that they were both naked. Meaghan’s tongue snaked out, licking the ridge of Alexandra’s chin, then her neck, and finally finding her lips. As their mouths met, Meaghan slipped a hand between Alex’s thighs and began to stroke her there. Alexandra purred against her lover.
Meaghan turned her around, and began to lower her to the bed. Alex looked up into Meaghan’s face, to share her pleasure, but was puzzled by the mischievous smile she saw there.
And then Meaghan dropped her, and Alex flopped onto the bed, already starting to laugh.
“Dead, am I?” Meaghan said, then she lifted an eyebrow, picked up her towel from a chair by the bed and headed for the shower.
“Well,” Alex said, rising once again, her hand reaching down to rub where Meaghan’s had been only moments before. “Maybe ‘dead’ was a poor word choice.”
“Hey,” Meaghan said, rushing to the bathroom as Alex followed, closing the distance between them, “I thought you said we didn’t have fifteen minutes to spare.”
“Not for sleep!” Alex said, kicking at the door Meaghan had locked behind her. It flew open, and Alex saw that rather than running the shower, Meaghan had begun to fill the big Jacuzzi tub they had installed. She was sitting on the edge of the tub, both hands on her left breast.
The hell with the office, Alex thought, we’ll take the vid-conference right here in the apartment.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Meaghan said. “I never start something I don’t intend to finish.”
Then there were no more words. Alex went to Meaghan, their kiss deep and full of truth and love, pushed her back into the tub and joined her there. They made love with purpose and without hurry.
Before the Jihad, before the world changed, their love would have seemed incredible. In the new world order, it was merely extraordinary. Meaghan: auburn hair and truly green eyes, her body subconsciously made near perfect by the shape-shifting ability all shadows shared. She had only become a shadow five years before, and yet she was one of the most powerful, both physically and politically. Before the Jihad, she had been a young, attractive professional woman, orphaned as a child and bored with her life.
Peter Octavian had taken her away from all that, made her a shadow and brought her into a war that changed everything, for her, for the world. And he died for it.
Alexandra: black hair and brown eyes, skin as dark and soft as sable. Tall and elegant, her heart made hard as diamonds by life in Karl Von Reinman’s coven, she had also been a lover of Peter Octavian’s. Later, she wanted to kill him. But the war had changed her as well; the loss of her lover, Shi-er Zhi Sheng, had threatened to shatter that diamond heart. Instead, Meaghan was there, and Alex felt alive again for the first time since Von Reinman had discovered her, a runaway slave not long off the trading ships, and brought her to the life of the vampire.
They were open about their relationship. They were lovers, plain and simple. They claimed neither homosexual nor heterosexual origin. Such terminology was useless to shadows, because of course if one of them had wanted a penis, they most assuredly could have managed such a minor change in form. Still, gay and lesbian groups around the world, still fighting against discrimination and injustice, claimed Meaghan and Alex as their own. While the discrimination went on, very few dared to be critical of the two vampire women. And if their status could help the plight of those fighting prejudice, the lovers would not deny them that. When Will Cody cast the film version of Allison Vigeant’s book, Jihad, every woman in Hollywood vied for the roles of Meaghan Gallagher and Alexandra Nueva.
They were running late, but after their bath, Alex and Meaghan dried each other off, enjoying the afterglow of their lovemaking and the sensations of the soft cotton. The conference had been planned to discuss the hottest topic of the day: whether world government could, or should, put some controls on the passing of vampirism from one being to another. Within the boundaries of this subject fell many other, seemingly smaller topics such as marriage, integration, adoption, hiring practices . . . but what it boiled down to was, how much could the world really trust them?
Alex herded Meaghan into the bedroom, and they dressed hurriedly. If they were going to do this thing from home, the least they could do was look presentable. Meaghan was buttoning her shirt while Alex stepped into a floral-print summer dress.
“Button me up,” she said, and turned her back to Meaghan.
As Meaghan reached out to do so, Alexandra went rigid, fell to her knees, then backward into Meaghan’s arms. Her eyes were wide, dilated, and she twitched, a single tear rolling down her cheek.
“Alex!” Meaghan knelt by her. “What is it, honey? What’s wrong?”
Alex’s head was in her lap. Meaghan looked into her lover’s eyes and saw no recognition there. Wherever Alex had gone, she was far away. Meaghan slapped her face, trying to bring her back. She knew what was happening. Alexandra’s mind was linked to those of each of Karl Von Reinman’s vampiric children. But as far as Meaghan knew, only two of Von Reinman’s brood still lived: Rolf Sechs and . . .
“Cody!” Alex yelled from within her catatonia, confirming Meaghan’s suspicions but frightening her as well. She had never guessed that anything could force Cody to communicate in this way. Years past, he had shut down the mind-link he shared with his blood-brothers and -sisters, as part of an ongoing feud. But now, his mind had opened again.
All vampires related by blood could converse, mentally, with words and pictures. In times of trauma, such linkages were overwhelming for the recipient as well as the sender. Whatever was happening to Cody, he obviously had no time for subtlety.
Meaghan could only hold Alexandra’s head, stroke her hair and wait for the linking to end. As she waited, she wondered if she would ever experience such an intimate communication. Peter Octavian had been her blood-father, and had passed the gift to no one else. Now he was dead, or gone, and unless she passed the gift on, she would never be able to communicate the way Cody and Alex now did.
“Oh, shit,” Alex said, choking and coming awake, and then Meaghan saw something she’d never expected to see.
Alexandra Nueva was crying. Tears streamed down her face as she gritted her teeth, babbling angrily to herself.
“How can we . . . got to kill that son of a . . . Fuck!”
<
br /> “Cody,” Meaghan said, bringing Alex truly around, “is he . . .?”
Alex looked up, her face ugly with rage but her eyes betraying a softness, a trace of fear that frightened Meaghan even as she kissed the tears from her lover’s cheek. Meaghan smelled apples, their shampoo.
“Cody’s fine,” Alex growled, her upper lip drawn back in a scowl. “For now, Cody’s fine. But we’ve got to act fast or we’re all going to be dead.”
Alexandra got to her feet, grabbed the blue jeans that lay on the bed and began to step into them.
“What the . . .,” Meaghan began, but Alex whirled on her, the warrior that she had become in Von Reinman’s coven evident in her every move.
“I vowed that we wouldn’t go through this again, Meg!” she snapped. “We’ve lost so much already, but I swear . . .”
Then she stopped, realizing that Meaghan did not know what she knew, had not been privy to the mental images, the message from Cody. Alex hated to have to tell her.
“He’s back, Meaghan,” Alexandra said, her teeth clenched. “Mulkerrin’s back, and it looks like he’s much more powerful than before.”
“Back?” George Marcopoulos said, incredulous. “How could he be back? What does that mean, back?”
“What the hell do you think it means?” Alexandra shouted.
They had been fifteen minutes late calling in for the video-conference, and found that everyone else had been late as well. Things were just beginning.
“But he’s dead,” added Rafael Nieto, the UN secretary-general. “You both saw him die, along with Peter Octavian.”
The thirty-five-inch screen on the wall of their apartment was split four ways, and each quarter of the screen held a face. Marcopoulos, the Boston doctor whom the shadows had chosen as their ambassador to the United Nations (Who better than a human, they’d thought, and though some member nations criticized his lack of political experience, he’d done an exceptional job thus far) was in the top left quarter, and Nieto in the top right. The bottom left corner held the face of Julie Graham, the United States secretary of state, and the bottom right showed the frowning countenance of Hannibal, once upon a time among the most feared of shadows.
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