Divine Night

by Melanie Jackson

  And he understood about her work, was involved in the same area, so she didn’t have to explain or shade the truth or even flat-out lie about what she was doing. She could be The Spider and not worry that he would be angry, frightened, condescending, or jealous. She could also admit to trying to write a fictional book and not be ridiculed for her goal because it was shallow.

  Harmony sighed with pleasure and for the first time gave herself over completely to the experience of brain-fogging passion, letting Alex enter her thoughts fully and willing him to share her elation and arousal.

  She knew that this was a night she’d never forget.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alas! In every man’s life there are but two genuine loves—the first, which dies;and the last, of which he dies. That, unfortunately, is the love I feel for you.

  —Letter from Alexandre Dumas to Isabelle Constant

  I find my subjects in my dreams. My son takes his from life. I work with my eyes shut, he with his open. I draw, he photographs.

  —Dumas père on Dumas fils

  1801, near Brindisi, Italy

  A turbulent darkness had fallen over the Cistercian monastery, literally and spiritually. Saint Germain, though distracted by an overwhelming sense of accomplishment at his unearthing of La Cuore del Strega Sicilian, still found time to appreciate the thunderous setting that lighted the austere beauty of the twelfth-century architecture with flashes of heavenly fire. It was a fitting setting for his hour of triumph.

  Around him, oil torches burned, filling the air with noxious smoke that was damaging the beautiful frescoes on the chapel’s ceiling. It was probable that the four monks in the room would have liked to protest the vandalism, but they had taken a vow of silence, and anyway, they were already dead, dispatched one by one with a bayonet to the heart.

  Four men wearing various uniforms of Napoleon’s army were busy packing up oaken crates with the many treasures that had been secreted in the monastery over the years. There was some lowvoiced commentary about the smell coming from the corpses, an odd whistle of appreciation for certain relics made of gold and set with precious stones, and covetous glances as the men loaded the crates with spoils of which they would receive only a fraction, since they would need to bribe a lot of people to get the treasure home. The raid had already been an expensive one and required much planning and effort, not the least of which was convincing Napoleon Bonaparte that his Minister of Humanity needed to be imprisoned.

  Once the boxes were loaded, the men began dragging them out to the cart that waited in the courtyard. It was hard work, but no one disturbed Saint Germain or suggested that he should participate in the physical labor that occupied the other men.

  This might have been a sign of respect for the man who had masterminded the raid. It might equally have been due to the fact that Saint Germain’s right-hand man was watching over them. The Russian, known only as Ivan, was a cold creature who had no passions for the things men were supposed to enjoy, like booze, whores, and looting. Ivan’s two passions seemed to be serving Saint Germain and hurting people that his master was angry with. Rumor had it that Ivan sometimes went into a kind of blood frenzy and had been known to kill prisoners with his teeth and bare hands. That night, he also had an English blunderbuss, which he kept fingering suggestively.

  Finally Saint Germain seemed to awaken from his fugue and he reluctantly closed the lid on the small casket that held the withered heart he had been searching for. The relic was misnamed; it hadn’t come from a witch. It was something far rarer and more useful. His men thought that he had arranged this raid on the monastery for the gold and treasure inside the ancient building, but that wasn’t the case. Of course, he loved gold as much as the next man, but there were other, wealthier targets he could have looted had that been his sole aim. No, the men were in this monastery because of this not-quite-dead heart. They were after a prize that he had desired most of his already long, long life.

  Saint Germain’s father had told him many fantastic tales when he was growing up, but the one that had most grabbed his imagination was the one about the Vesper massacre of Palermo.

  It had happened on a gray Easter, in March of 1282. Through the collusion of Pope Urban IV and King Charles of Anjou, the French had been in occupation of Sicily for several years. As was the case in so many towns, the soldiers had rendered themselves abhorrent to the population by looting, raping, and generally carrying on as an army of occupation. The Sicilians had learned that they were not just Charles’s new subjects, but were in fact being subjugated and with a fair degree of brutality.

  The official story went something like: As the sullen crowd gathered under an equally sullen sky outside the Palermo Cathedral, a band of French officials joined the crowds, insisting on participating in the local worship. One of the soldiers in their retinue, drunk on the newly discovered stores of raisin wine stolen from a merchant from Malvasia, assaulted a woman at the edge of the crowd, attempting to drag her into an alley where it was assumed he was not planning to discuss theological issues. Most versions of the story said he intended rape, but Saint Germain knew better. The soldier had been one of his father’s first inventions: a ghoul. He had not been able to get his regular meal of raw meat the night before and had gone crazy.

  Unfortunately for this newly made ghoul, and indeed for France, the woman had an equally drunken and violent husband, one Galizia Caruana, who objected to the soldier’s treatment of his wife. Caruana had come up behind the soldier and stabbed him. Repeatedly. Some would say excessively, since a bungled pig slaughter would not have been as messy.

  Ofcourse, such a mess had to be expected when you were cutting out someone’s heart.

  Naturally, when the murder was discovered, the officials ordered the soldiers to retaliate against Caruana by dragging him into the square for execution. And, naturally—but quite unexpectedly, at least for the French officials who had thought their positions secure—the crowd also responded in violent kind. Numerical superiority assured victory for the Sicilians. French blood ran down the steps and into the street outside the cathedral in a satisfying torrent. Caruana was said to have bathed in it. Saint Germain knew what he had been doing. He wasn’t bathing; he was drinking. And eating. Those early ghouls had been highly contagious, their condition passed on through blood contact. It was why his father had had to find another way to make them. Like smallpox or plague, their disease spread quickly and efficiently.

  Father Charles Issert, a priest from Anjou visiting Palermo in the company of another French cleric, Father Jean Miroy, saw the violence erupting from inside the church and attempted to stop the bloodshed by rushing into the crowd with a cross upraised. But he was also slaughtered—by Caruana. History recorded it as a tragic, pointless death. Issert’s dying did serve a useful purpose, though. Seeing a man of the cloth crumpled on the very steps of the house of God was a profanity profound enough to interrupt the escalating violence and allowed time for the Dark Man to clean up his experiment. Nevertheless, when the bells tolled later that morning, they did not call the faithful to church; they called the people to arms.

  However, this was not the part of the story that fascinated Saint Germain. Slaughters in Sicily were commonplace. It was a side drama conducted between the dead ghoul soldier and the husband of the woman he had assaulted that interested him. Drunken Caruana, not content with killing the soldier and priest and escaping execution, had rounded up an ax and returned to the soldier’s corpse. They said that he was setting about taking a trophy that could be displayed in the town square as a warning to others. He did not get far in this bloody task. His first blow severed the Frenchman’s head, but rather than lying about as a dead head should do, the bloodied thing was said to have started cursing the drunken Caruana. Beside the body, the heart he had torn out earlier began to beat. Hearing fresh screams from the alley beside the cathedral, the shocked mob rushed into the narrow side street and discovered Caruana with a still-beating heart clutched in his hands.<
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  Too horrified to intervene with anything more than prayers, the crowd allowed Caruana to be killed by the remaining soldiers, who, fortunately for them, used their pikes and therefore were not covered in corrupted blood. Only the second French priest was brave enough to approach the body. Enraged by what he had witnessed and perhaps a little mad, Father Miroy had held aloft the beating heart and pronounced it to have been a judgment from God against the Sicilian people for defiling their cathedral and murdering innocent men on a holy day.

  After the verbal excoriation was complete, the chastened crowd had parted for him—and for his grizzly trophy, now wrapped in a cassock—and the Frenchman had returned to the cathedral unmolested.

  The heart had disappeared after that, but it was rumored that it was kept by the other terrified priests after Miroy died that night—driven mad by what he had seen, they thought, but really by the contagion in the bloody heart he had handled. A good man, and by his own standards a damned one, he had gone ahead and hung himself rather than give in to the impulse to eat his brothers in Christ. It had saved the Dark Man a lot of trouble.

  Now, finally, Saint Germain had the heart back—and he would put it to good use. Perhaps not at once, but someday he would have a use for this heart that wouldn’t die. His father was wrong to have wanted it destroyed…

  No longer burdened with outgoing chests, two soldiers entered the looted chapel rolling a large barrel of wine between them. They laid it on its side near the altar and then set about punching a hole in its staves. It was unnecessary, since the barrel had been tapped and set with a spigot, but Saint Germain let them have their fun. A third soldier arrived, this one carrying a small drum of gunpowder and a flaring torch. Saint Germain was careful to remain a safe distance back, though this soldier was more prudent than the others and seemed content to merely remove the cork, rather than beat the gunpowder-filled drum into submission.

  The remaining soldiers soon returned with several more kegs of gunpowder, which they stacked up near the leaking wine. The men had conveniently left their rifles out in the hall.

  “The cart is loaded?” Saint Germain asked, his voice almost jovial.

  “To the rails and she’s ready to roll,” one of the soldiers answered, flashing a small grin as he opened the last of the gunpowder.

  “Good.” Saint Germain nodded to Ivan and then, transferring his treasure to his left arm, picked up his dueling pistol. Taking careful aim, he shot the nearest soldier dead center in the back. Ivan, being careful of the drums, shot the other three unarmed men with the blunderbuss. They weren’t killed, but they were too injured to do more than crawl.

  “Ivan, I do believe we are ready to depart.” A loud clap of thunder echoing up the passage underscored Saint Germain’s words. The storm was worsening and so were the conditions of the road. It was time to go. He took down a torch, preparing to throw it into one of the many connected puddles of wine on the floor.

  The Russian cleared his throat. Saint Germain turned and was met with a hopeful look.

  “My apologies, Ivan. By all means, you may have the honor.” Saint Germain handed the torch to his henchman and then walked quickly away. He heard a whoosh and then the heavy slam of the door. The explosion that followed was loud, but not sufficient to bring the building down. That didn’t trouble Saint Germain. He wanted to get rid of the bodies of his comrades so that they could never be identified and traced back to him, not burn down the monastery. He was a godless thief and murderer, not a vandal.

  Ivan rushed ahead of Saint Germain, shaking out his cloak and holding it aloft so that his master wouldn’t get wet on the short walk to the heavily laden cart.

  “Chi vuol esser lieto, sia; di doman non c’e certezza,” Saint Germain whispered softly, staring sightlessly out into the night as Ivan settled the second cloak around him.

  “What’s that, sir?” Ivan asked, starting carefully down the mountainous road. The storm continued to rage about them, keeping close to Saint Germain, and Ivan began to shiver with cold.

  “Whoever desires to be merry, let him; for tomorrow is never certain,” Saint Germain translated, raising his voice slightly. “I do believe that this calls for some champagne. Why stint ourselves? Almost all the scattered pieces have been gathered up. And isn’t one of life’s pleasures savoring the job that is well done? Is not the laborer worthy of his hire?”

  “Yes. Certainly, sir.” Uncomprehending and unconcerned as long as Saint Germain looked happy, Ivan turned his attention back to the rain-slicked road. He never sensed the bullet that killed him a moment later.

  Saint Germain laid the second of his dueling pistols aside and took up the reins. Ivan’s body was pushed out into the mud. If he had more time, he would remake the man, but traveling with a corpse was inconvenient.

  It was a pity that he couldn’t tell his father about what he’d done. But the Dark Man was busy destroying an old rival, General Dumas, so that he could consolidate his power and influence over the emperor. He’d left it a bit too late, though. Word was that the general had already married, and the Dark Man’s dream that he would produce a son, a child with certain gifts, might well come true.

  Something—some ghostly finger—touched Alex lightly on the earlobe, the one in which he wore Thomasina’s ring. It wasn’t Harmony; her hands were busy elsewhere.

  Disturbed, Alex raised his head and looked out through the gazebo’s latticework and forced his eyes to focus. It was difficult at first because the night seemed ablaze with lights, an aurora borealis of color. But he forced himself to concentrate and finally saw something disturbing enough to engage his brain. Sly movement on the horizon. Were those clouds at the edge of town—a sudden summer storm? Or something else? As he watched, the stray wisps seemed to gather themselves. Then, in defiance of normal weather patterns, they began moving due east. A moment later, as though sensing they were observed and abandoning all pretense of stealth, they veered slightly north. They came rolling toward the gazebo and church, seeming eager to reach the only buildings of any size. Ahead of it came a hot wind that smelled of things unworldly.

  Al Azif, he thought, remembering this Arabic word that referred both to the chirping of nocturnal insects and to the eerie, dry sound made by the chattering of demons who brought great storms at the behest of the wizard Abdul Alhazred, also called the Dark Man.

  Alex gave himself a mental shake.

  A storm…that wasn’t the best news. He and storms had a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, they made him feel very high and potent and were the source of power from which he drew life. But they also sometimes made him lose control, his brain and body seized by a divine madness that made him do crazy things. They also interfered with his ability to mind-jack safely. And fight as he might against sexual arousal, the storm called up his erectile tissues, some delightful, but some old and vibrant-colored wounds that spoke of encounters that should have killed a normal man. In moments his body could be laced with a cobweb of golden scars that would actually begin to glow. If the storm was strong enough, he could sometimes be completely overcome, glowing unnaturally and shorting out anything electrical that was near him. Once, he had blown out a transformer that left several blocks near his Paris apartment dark for almost two days.

  Alex glanced down. Harmony was lost in the moment of arousal, reveling in the strange new feelings. She wasn’t paying attention to their surroundings, but surely even the most besotted of women would be bound to notice if he lit up like a sunrise and lightning began hitting the ground around them.

  That cold touch came again, doing its best to regain his attention, and he knew even without the second warning that they had to leave this open space at once. As much as he desired to complete the act of sex—and he did, more than he desired his next breath—he couldn’t spend any more time with Harmony Nix until they were away from the influence of this storm. As much as he hated to admit it, there was real danger of exposing his oddity to her before she had time to know and trust him.
He was sometimes adventurous, but not foolhardy. Already the channel from his mind to hers was filling up with white noise and what looked and felt like black dust.

  This thought had no sooner formed than a cloud of bats rose up from the church tower and momentarily blocked out what there was of the moonlight. For a moment he thought they were a murder of crows and he had another instant of dread. The bats did not fly as if on a hunt, but rather as if they were fleeing the approaching bank of clouds. They circled the gazebo twice, leaving him and Harmony at the center of a black tornado. Their shrill screaming pierced his ears, making him wince with pain.

  Danger! Danger. Flee!

  Yes, they should flee. But…

  Alex frowned and shook his head, trying to clear away the sensual haze that, rather than diminishing before his resolve, was growing stronger by the second. If he didn’t know better, he would think that someone was attempting to mind-jack his own brain.

  Not knowing what else to do, he broke away from Harmony completely, realizing that their shared arousal was distracting him far more than he had appreciated. Her arousal was feeding his, which in turn fed hers and so forth, making it exponentially greater than anything he had before experienced.

  This was bad—very bad. It was like some nuclear accident about to reach critical mass. Any more and he would be lost, out of control.

  Shaken by his close call, he realized that for the first time the mind-jack truly was working two ways. Gooseflesh spread over his skin. Who or what was this Harmony Nix? This two-way mind-jack had never happened before—ever—and the recognition that it could made him wary.