Of Saints and Shadows (1994)

by Christopher Golden

  “We know you are here, thief and killer. Why not come out and we will free the girl? Come out before we do something irreversible to her.”

  Karl held back the urge to answer, exercising more control over his rage than he had. ever been able, ever been called to before. Then the cross continued its assault on her legs and belly. Two of the men grabbed Una’s ankles and forced her legs apart, and the silver cross was thrust unceremoniously between them. The black-haired man, the speaker of the group, held the cross with both hands and stirred hard, as if churning butter. There must have been six inches of silver inside her, burning and tearing, destroying everything it touched.

  Una’s screaming stopped and she began to vomit blood.

  Karl smelled kerosene and realized they were about to torch Una and the bed and the house around her. The only way to end her suffering was right behind him.

  He went quickly to the window and. as soundlessly as possible tore the bars from their place. The noise was partially obscured by Una’s retching, but nevertheless they heard him.

  “‘The attic!” one shouted, as if none of them had considered it before.

  Karl Von Reinman barely had time to consider Octavian’s advice. If he were to survive—if there were any way to save Una—he must accept his old. student’s claims. His eyes fluttered closed for a brief moment, and he concentrated. on his disbelief He backed up four steps, ran at the window, and crashed through, the noise of the breaking glass and shattering shutters enough to tell them Immediately what he had done . . . the last thing they had ever expected.

  He crashed to the ground amid the shattering glass, trying desperately to keep his concentration. He wished he could metamorphose, but he was certain the change would be strenuous, distracting, and therefore deadly. If he allowed himself even for a moment to become frightened, if he became even momentarily disoriented, he might fall back on his centuries of belief in the Christian myth of his own existence. And then he would hum just as surely as if he were at the center of the sun.

  He smiled as he got to his feet, and if he could have spared the energy, he might have laughed. Octavian, his bastard son, had been right all along.

  He glanced toward his front yard just as three men, led. by the one with the ax, rounded the corner and began to approach him. Though they were not dressed in their ritual garb, he knew them on sight, the way the mouse knows the cat, regardless of its breed. Vatican men. They were clergy!

  Well, he supposed he shouldn’t really be surprised. It was only that he hadn’t expected retaliation so soon.

  He sniffed the air—two more had come out the back and were behind the house and there was one cm the roof. The roof! Was he Santa Claus, that they thought he might climb out the chimney? No, they knew exactly what he was, and they were here to execute him. What Una had suffered would be nothing in comparison to what they must have planned for him.

  The clergymen were almost upon him and he prepared. to fight, his mouth set with grim determination and a dark silence forced upon him by his need for total concentration. Though he was not burning, the sun beating down on him still hurt. Its pressure bore down on his hack, driving spikes of pain from all over his body to his brain.

  The man on the roof dropped down onto Von Reinman’s hack with a net of some sort as another ran at him clutching a silver dagger. Looking at the dagger, he felt the vulnerability of his heart the way he had felt it in his eyes and testicles centuries ago as a human. He moved far faster than they, and had thrown off the net and its owner with one swift motion as he tossed the owner of the dagger to the ground yards away. The man with the net was scrambling to his feet as Von Reinman lashed out with his leg, his foot caving in the back of the man’s head. The skull gave way easily under his strength, and there was a slight sucking noise as he withdrew his foot.

  The smell hit him immediately, and the previous night’s feast raced through his brain, reminding him of poor Una. He could smell them now, their blood; he could hear their hearts heat. It beckoned him, that smell, that sound, called to him to come and slake his thirst, to relieve himself of his desire, his hunger.

  Karl looked up to see the man with the ax and another clergyman standing, unmoving, yards away. The priest who wielded the silver dagger and whom Von Reinman had hurled to the ground was up now and charging his back. His mind seethed as he realized this fool thought to take him by surprise. At the last moment he turned, a guttural snarl and the hate in his squinting eyes the only outward signs of his rage and pain. These priests and. monks, these pathetic, overconfident children, were insignificant. Yet the threat they posed was not. At a subvocal level, he chanted to himself “You do not believe, you do not believe.”

  And it was working. In a blur of motion he moved from the dagger’s path, grabbed the hand that held it, and pulled, removing the arm at the shoulder. The man’s throat erupted in bellows of pain as his fresh wound spurted gouts of blood into the air. Karl pulled him close, driving the silver dagger into the man’s belly with such strength that its tip exited the back and Karl’s hand was buried in his guts. With the claws of his other hand he dug into the man’s face and pulled, tearing away much of the skin, leaving bone and muscle visible beneath.

  Von Reinman grabbed the dead man’s neck and crotch, lifting him easily above his head, and heaving the corpse at the one with the ax and his companion, who still stood idly by.

  And then he realized what it was, the other smell that the bloodlust had blocked from reaching his brain: it was fire.

  His house. His house was burning down. Those assholes around the back hadn’t attacked him yet because they’d been busy setting his house on fire so he couldn’t get back in, torching a century’s worth of treasures and the corpse of Una along with it.

  Now he was really angry.

  The two who had ignited the house now rushed at him from the back and he spun to face them, worried about turning his back on the mart with the ax. These two didn’t look like much, he thought, and was ready to disregard them when one stopped still and, lightning quick, threw another silver dagger straight for his heart. He was so taken off guard that he barely moved in time and the knife plunged into his chest only millimeters from his heart . . . and he screamed.

  Lord, it hurt! The blade seared his flesh as he removed it, all the while inwardly cursing himself. It did not hurt, he told himself yet he wondered. Octavian had never mentioned silver. Was that, too, a part of the brainwashing his people had undergone, a deadly hallucination? He was getting confused now, his concentration slipping. What was real and what was not?

  I do not believe, his mind chanted, and finally the pain began to fade. Far too late, though, as the four men converged on him.

  Worried about the shiny ax blade that might have been silver, Karl lashed out instinctively with the dagger, slicing deeply into a neck. The ax man’s head rocked back on its stalk, then spilled over, hanging from the spinal cord as the decapitated priest stumbled a few steps and then finally fell over.

  He struggled with the three remaining clergymen, noting that the men. looked strangely alike. Ah, these must be the Montesi brothers, he realized, the pups of the late sorcerer Vincent Montesi. Karl fought on, hut he was confused, distracted, a little scared perhaps. Surely the destruction of the heart would be a logical way to destroy his kind, but the silver had hurt so badly. Perhaps that was true, and if so, what of the spikes of pain being driven into him now by the sun? What was real?

  The man on his left was reaching into his coat, and Karl refused to allow another dagger to be brought into play. But it was a distraction, as the man on his right brought a large silver crucifix up in front of his face. A thousand questions stampeded through his brain, but before any of the answers could come, the cross was laid against his forehead and he was screaming.

  It burned. Burned so that he could smell it over the smoke from the pyre his home had become, the pyre they’d been dragging him toward. He could smell his own flesh cm fire from the cross, and he stumbl
ed and fell, dragging the priests down with him, on top of him. A dagger was plunged into his back at the precise moment that he gathered all his immortal strength and. tossed them away. He leaped to his feet, disoriented, and looked up at the sun. He howled as his face blistered and smoked. His clothes began to burn and his eyes withered and blackened in their sockets. His hair and face were aflame as well.

  In a blast of heat and ash, Karl Von Reinman exploded, leaving nothing but burning shards of cloth and a fine black powder.

  The three monks crossed themselves, muttering a silent prayer. One of them produced a small plastic vial in which he collected some of the ash that had been the German vampire, to keep the remains unwhole. The three dragged their dead over to the house and threw them into the flames. Another prayer was said, and then they turned and. began to walk hack the way they hud come.

  “I never thought he would he that difficult,” Thomas Montesi said.

  “Nor did I,” his brother Isaac continued. “He was one of the old ones. I was sure he would still believe.”

  “Ah,” said the third and youngest, Robert Montesi, “but he believed in the end. That’s what counts.”

  “Still,” argued Thomas, “His Holiness will surely want us to investigate further.”

  “Yes,” agreed. Isaac. “He’ll want to know how this old one discovered the truth. It means a lot of work for us.”

  “Perhaps,” Robert said, and smiled. “But only if we tell him. Besides, when he returns from his quest, we will all have more than enough to do.”

  And then they were all smiling, and soon they began to whistle, the three of them, a song they had heard in a Bavarian inn the night before.

  Peter Octavian woke with the smell of burned flesh in his nostrils. It was not suddenly, as if from a nightmare, or slowly and leisurely, as if from a long and profound slumber. He simply woke. One moment he was paralyzed and the next he could move and think and his eyes began to focus in the darkness of his room. Disoriented, he attempted to pull together the reality of what had happened. Even when he had made such psychic connections with Karl of his own accord, they had never been so vivid, so clear. He had been unable to analyze what he was seeing, only to react. And now that he could think it over, one thing remained clear. Whoever had done this to his old friend must pay with their lives.

  The problem was that already the details were beginning to fade from memory. He knew the assailants in his vision were from the Vatican, but their faces were losing shape in his mind, as were, thankfully, the more gruesome details of the battle. Only the bare facts remained. Karl was dead, presumably murdered by the church. The Vatican rarely went after his kind unless a particular creature had directly challenged their authority.

  He hungered for revenge and could not help but be angry with himself. He knew he could have done nothing, but a terrible guilt still hounded him. Perhaps if he hadn’t abandoned Karl and Alexandra and the others that New Year’s Eve almost a hundred years before, perhaps Karl would still be alive. Ah, but such fancy was idiocy. The question now was what to do about it.

  As he got up and paced around the room, coming back to sit on the bed before getting up again and repeating the circuit, he realized that for now the answer was, do nothing. Though he mourned his longtime friend, he knew that there were others, still members of the coven, who were far closer geographically to Karl, and they would have to begin the investigation without him. He had business to take care of here in Boston. He only hoped they would not begin the revenge without him, even though he knew they would not welcome his presence. One way or the other, though, he would make sure Karl’s death did not go without retaliation.

  The phone rang, and he realized he was still panting with his fury. He took a couple of deep breaths to try to calm down and answered it on the third ring.

  “Octavian.”

  “Yeah, Peter. Ted Gardiner.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s up, Ted?”

  “Um, listen, have I caught you at a bad time? I could call back.”

  His voice had betrayed the anger he felt, but it was not time to share it. “No, I’m fine. Go ’head.”

  “I’ve got the file on Janet’s disappearance for you whenever you want to pick it up. There isn’t much in here, but I’m sure you can do more with it than we can. Also, you asked me to call about that garage killing last night. Roger Martin, remember? Anyway, it seems he’d been working late on a rush job for his manager, not uncommon according to her.”

  “What was the job? What corporation?” Peter asked, more out of habit than interest.

  “Some church thing is all I know. Anyway, he went to the Publik House for a drink after work, which his wife says is unusual. He was coming back for his car when he got hit. We’ll know more about it when the janitor comes around. The docs are pretty sure now that he will.”

  “Thanks, Ted. Keep me posted.”

  “Peter? You okay?”

  “Fine, Ted. Maybe a little tired. Sorry.”

  When he hung up the phone, Peter was much more relaxed and genuinely sorry to have been so short with Ted. He was in a bitter frame of mind as the alarm clock buzzed, startling him. He swore and knocked it from the bedside table. Its plastic window cracked as it landed, and he cursed again.

  Stop it, he told himself, and forced his lungs to draw a deep breath, hold it, and let it out slowly. He fought to contain the emotion that was overwhelming him. Rage and fear and grief gnawed at his heart. Steeling himself against these emotions, he walked to the window and opened it, swinging the shutters wide and breathing in the cold night air.

  The night air? The alarm had gone off. He knew his vision or whatever had come to him in the early hours of the morning, not long after he’d gone to sleep. It seemed so immediate. And even though he didn’t really need to sleep, or at least very little, he still felt tired somehow.

  He smiled grimly. No rest for the wicked.

  He turned back into the room and surveyed his art collection, his eyes perfectly capable of clear sight in the dark room. The paintings were incredibly dissimilar, not a repetition of theme or style in the room. Some were calm and sensual, others angry and violent, and the sculptures showed the same variety. Away from it all, standing on a marble base in the corner, was a traditional bust. His father, he had once explained to a young woman amazed at the remarkable resemblance he bore to the subject of the sculpture. Now, today, he thought, he would have to claim it was his great-great-great-grandfather.

  The Publik House. That was the last place that Roger Martin had been seen alive as well as the last place Janet Harris had been seen. A coincidence, almost certainly, but something to store in his mind.

  He stood there staring about the room for quite some time. Then, feeling calm but with a heavy heart, he went about preparing for the night. He had to meet Meaghan at eight o’clock and he was running late. He hoped that she had done as he’d asked.

  Peter stood by the window watching the snow fall. He was dressed and ready to go, but the snow, though beautiful, had him worried about traffic—it must be bumper-to-bumper in the storm. He looked at the cracked clock face and saw that it was a quarter to eight. It would take him at least twenty-five minutes to reach Meaghan’s place if he had to fight the storm and Boston’s own brand of intimate traffic relationships. Even in a raging blizzard, many a Bostonian would be happy to roll down his window to let you know that you “fuck ya muthaa.”

  Only because he counted on Bostonians to be less well armed than residents of Los Angeles or New York, Peter felt comfortable flipping these pleasant folks the bird, or when he was in a particularly cynical mood, rolling down his window to shout back, “You’re an excellent judge of character.”

  No. No traffic tonight; he couldn’t deal with it right now. With all that had happened already that day, he might just lose control. He zipped up his jacket and went out, but rather than take the elevator down, he walked the three flights to the roof, stepped out onto the windswept surface, and closed his eyes as
the snow flew in his face. He could feel the cold, but it didn’t bother him.

  As the storm screamed around him he walked to the edge of the roof and surveyed the city he called home. It was the kind of night in the kind of city where you’d really have to go out of your way to attract attention. Peter didn’t want attention, he just wanted to be on time for his date . . . appointment with Meaghan. And he wanted to fly.

  Of course it was quite painful—excruciating in fact—but hey, what’s five hundred years of living do if it doesn’t heighten your tolerance for pain?

  The metamorphosis began as painfully as ever, and Peter tried to keep his concentration on the city lights and heavy snow. It was an effort not to voice his pain, and he set tight his lips against the urge. Neither he nor Karl nor anyone he had ever met truly understood the nature of the thing that was happening to him now. He only knew that it must be magic pure and simple, for now his clothes were changing with him and the pistol in its holster, and when he returned to his human form—a much less painful process—he would be dressed just as he’d been when he left his apartment.

  Ah, the pain again. Over the years he had waited for it to go away, for his body to grow accustomed to the change. It never happened. Though it was often worse, it was never better.

  And then the metamorphosis was complete, the pain was ended. Until next time.

  It was nearly eight, now, and he flew quickly, manipulating the high winds, using them to bolster his speed. Though he knew it was nothing but a myth he could not completely thrust from his mind, the initial transformation always made him feel somehow unclean. Riding the winds was a relief—soaring, cleansing.

  Meaghan did not mention his lateness, nor did he apologize. Her mind was on Janet and, more and more, on Peter. There was something about him that was at once incredibly strong and amazingly gentle, something . . . unnaturally natural, if that could be. The only word she found to describe him was human. He seemed a prime example of what people want to be, of humanity. And yet he scared her as well, as if somehow, being around him might lead her to some self-examination she wasn’t entirely prepared for.